AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl smiled to himself as he plucked the bright pink piece of paper from his lunchbox.
"I love you. I can't wait until you get home."
It was dotted with a few hearts, here and there, and Daryl looked at the little square of paper far longer than it really took to read something so simple.
A commercial had come on television. Daryl couldn't recall what it had been advertising, but he'd been snuggled up with Carol on the couch, and the person had slipped a note into a lunchbox. It was a kid's lunchbox, and it was the kid's parent that had done it, but Daryl simply pointed out that he liked that idea.
The very next day, he'd gotten a message, written on a napkin, in his lunch. And then Carol had bought these cubes of multi-colored paper on her way home from work. She'd been sticking one in his lunchbox every day since then, and he'd collected them. He had only a couple, for now, and he wasn't sure what he was going to do with them, but he couldn't stand the thought of throwing them away, so he tucked them into the glovebox of his truck after lunch.
Merle teased him when he saw Daryl fold the little note up and tuck it in his wallet.
"You keepin' that?" Merle asked.
"The hell's it matter to you?" Daryl asked.
Merle laughed to himself.
"You can just smooth your fur out there, lil' brother. I ain't gonna take your little love note or nothin'. You better enjoy it while it lasts." Daryl rolled his eyes at his brother. The shit eating grin on his face was clear evidence that Merle had a hair up his ass and wanted a rise out of Daryl. Daryl returned his wallet to his pocket and turned to his lunch—a ham sandwich, cut on the diagonal, a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich for dessert, also cut on the diagonal, a bag of plain potato chips, and the drink he'd picked up at the store on the way over. It didn't do any good for Daryl to offer to make Carol lunch—she would eat the café, and that's just the way it was—but she'd asked him what kinds of things he'd like to have packed in a lunch bag on the days when she wasn't able to slip away during lunch and bring him something.
He'd admitted to her that he appreciated having the packed lunches because he knew that she'd been thinking about him. He liked the idea of eating something, in the middle of his day, that she'd prepared for him with love. It felt like, with the little pieces of paper, that she put just a little extra love to-go in the bag.
In return, she'd confessed that she really loved surprises—good surprises like she said the ones he gave her were—where it was just a reminder that he was thinking of her, and that he still loved her, when there seemed to be nothing else prompting the show or declaration. As a result, Daryl texted her at random intervals throughout the day and, when he happened to be near the café and could spare a moment, he'd run inside and offer a kiss as quickly as he could before darting out again.
She liked surprises, she seemed to like his surprise displays of affection, and she certainly seemed to appreciate his efforts—no matter how clumsy they might be—at loving on her every chance he got. In the short time since they'd been married and Daryl had been allowed to spend almost all his not-working time with her, he'd found that he enjoyed turning her clit into his own little worry stone. While they sat on the couch reading or watching a movie, it wasn't unusual for Daryl to slip his hands down into Carol's pajama pants—something that had started with him teasing that he'd never been a fan of licking his fingers to moisten them for turning the pages, so he found this a great deal more satisfactory. When he woke before her, he would often slip his fingers between her legs and teased her gently until she woke entirely and came seeking more from him. He'd even dared, once, in the car, to slip his hand under her skirt while they'd been driving to the store to pick up a late-night box of popcorn to calm a craving.
She playfully teased him that she was going to go through more underwear in a year—from constantly having to change and wash her soaked panties—than she ever had in her life, but he didn't imagine it was a real complaint. She never seemed genuinely pissed about any of it, and she had yet to ask him to take his hand back when he went seeking out his new toy to keep his fingers busy.
"Your lil' woman cut your sandwich into triangles like that?" Axel asked from across the table. He was eating his way through four of the hot dogs from the nearby convenience store. They were actually pretty good, as far as hotdogs went, but Daryl silently agreed with Axel—it took at least a handful of them to begin to knock down the hunger cramps from half a day of work; especially if it was a day of real work.
"She did," Daryl confirmed, biting a large bite off of his ham sandwich.
"Why she cut 'em like that?" Axel asked.
"Because it's how the hell I like 'em," Daryl said.
"That's what his lil' woman does," Merle said, laughing to himself. "Whatever the hell Daryl likes."
"You can make fun of me until you grow ass's ears," Daryl offered. "You ain't gonna bother me, Merle. You right. She's my wife and she does what the hell I like 'cause she likes it, too. You want me to feel bad for that or somethin'? I do what the hell she likes, too. It's called bein' married, dumbass."
Merle hummed.
"It ain't bein' real married," Merle said, his voice taking on the quality that it did when he was giving Daryl a hard time about something. "That's bein' honeymoon married. Right now, you just both playin' games."
Daryl rolled his eyes at his brother.
They were playing games. They were playing lots of games. Since they both worked, they had to really pack as much as they could into their time together. So when Daryl mused, while reading one of Carol's cowboy romance books, how much he liked westerns and how he'd always had the hots for the prostitutes—which was why he'd chosen one of the outfits for Carol that he'd picked—she'd promised him that, for fun one night, she'd surprise him with his own trip to a saloon, more than likely imagined right in their kitchen, where he could "buy" exactly what he wanted off the managing madam.
The promise of the surprise—when he might least expect it—was as good as getting it, really.
Carol had also promised him that, one of these nights, she'd meet him in the biker bitch selection he'd made, and he could pick her up at the biker bar—more than likely located right where the saloon might be any other night—and have his way with her. He'd already started working on his pick-up line, sure that it would involve inviting her to ride something besides his "bike."
He'd already created a game for her pleasure, and the game had gotten her motor running for wanting to play more. She'd shown him a scene out of one of her Scottish books that he found less problematic than some of the others. It was a scene where the man had chased down the woman and, much to her pleasure, Carol had assured him, had ravaged her—because that was the word that the author had liked enough to pepper it in every few words— when he'd finally caught her and, apparently, won the right to have his way with her on some rocky cliffside next to the ocean. Daryl hadn't had an ocean handy, or a cliffside, but he'd spread a blanket down in the living room, gathered up every single pillow the house had to offer to make a comfortable rocky cliffside, donned his kilt, and he'd chased Carol around the house until he'd finally caught her and, tossing her over his shoulder, he'd carried her laughing into the living room.
It hadn't gone exactly like her fantasy, perhaps, but rolling around among their half-destroyed faux cliffside, she'd assured him that it had been everything she'd wanted and more.
They played a lot, and though he might not want to tell his brother and colleagues about their play—for the teasing he'd be sure to endure—Daryl would rather admit their pastime to every person he encountered for the next twenty years of his life than do without it.
"You right, we playin' games," Daryl said, leaving it at that. "And lovin' the hell out of it."
"He's got a point, though," Axel said. "That newlywed shine wears off and then you stuck with it."
"Both of you know that," Daryl said. "Given you both got damn gobs of experience."
"Everyone knows it," Axel said with a shrug. "She'll do all kinds of shit to get that ring. Then, though, it's like the Sahara. Everything goes dry."
"Dick don't get wet for months at a time. Rains just once a year, if you're lucky, for your birthday…if you don't piss her off first," Merle added.
Daryl could see that the two of them needed this. They needed to rib him and give him a hard time. Axel probably needed it because it had been so long since Axel had been in a relationship that he probably couldn't even remember the last time he'd had a more meaningful conversation with a woman than the one required to order food somewhere. Merle needed it for an entirely different reason, and Daryl could practically smell it on him.
Merle was getting nervous.
Merle was very much like an armadillo mixed with a hedgehog when he got overrun with any feeling he didn't particularly know how to deal with or want to deal with. He would either roll up and cover himself in a protective armor of silence and defensiveness or, feeling like that wouldn't work or be allowed, he would puff up and cover himself in thorny little spikes to cause enough irritation, at least, that the attention would be turned away from him.
Daryl wouldn't know—at least not until he got Merle off to himself, sometime, and got him relaxed enough to talk about it—exactly why he was nervous, but Daryl had his suspicions.
Merle was either feeling like Andrea, upon seeing Carol married, was going to start pressuring him toward such a thing—which he didn't want; or else he was starting to think he might actually want such a thing and that thought was making him nervous because it was something he'd long-since tried to convince himself he didn't want or need. After all, if he could believe he didn't want it, it wouldn't hurt when he discovered that, for whatever reason, it wasn't meant for him.
Daryl could forgive both Axel and Merle for their ribbing because it didn't bother him in the least.
"My dick's worn the fuck out," Daryl teased. "Asshole don't even wanna wake up some mornings. He's dead straight like 'five more minutes' when the alarm goes off."
Merle snorted, clearly amused. His ribbing was insincere and a defense mechanism. His eyes told Daryl that he was happy enough for him.
"That's 'cause you ain't hardly been married long enough for the ink to dry on the license," Merle mused.
"Whatever," Daryl said around the large bite of peanut butter and jelly sandwich he was eating. "Tell you what…I'll keep you informed about the current situation. As for now? I just know that every asshole in Livin' Springs oughta be jealous 'cause I hit the fuckin' jackpot."
While he munched on his chips, and half-assed listened to Merle and Axel share bullshit stories of people they supposedly knew, but had probably made up, who had married angels who turned into harpies at the strike of midnight on their fourteenth day of marriage—or some shit like that—Daryl texted Carol to ask her what she wanted for dinner. When she texted back to tell him that work was crazy, she was exhausted, and she hadn't thought that far ahead, he'd happily texted her back to tell her that he loved her, hoped her day got better, and that she didn't need to make plans because he had a special date planned for his best girl. All she needed to do, when she got home, was go and soak in the tub a bit—washing off the day.
Daryl was so preoccupied making plans for the night, that he forgot to tell Axel and Merle goodbye as he tossed his trash into the big trash can, lit a cigarette, and started around the side of the building for the front parking lot, mentally making a shopping list for when he clocked out for the evening.
Maybe there was a point where the magic wore off. Or maybe there were just people who expected too much from their spouses, who were also people.
Either way, Daryl wasn't too worried. With as good as it started, and how much better it seemed to get with every passing hour of their so-far short marriage, he had nothing but high hopes for the future.
