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“Come in? Carol. Come in. Y’ read me? Y’ okay…?”
He releases the button on his walkie, gets a moment of static and then her voice. She starts to respond but there’s some kind of scuffle and she’s cut off. The others try to summon her using her call sign.
“Georgia Peach. Come in, Georgia Peach.”
Nothin’. Nothin’ but empty bursts of static.
He and Carol don’t use call signs with each other. They usually just identify the other by voices, positions or locations. She didn’t pick her call sign either. The group assigned it, initially as a joke. One of them must have overheard him, decided to tease them about it. Not that they knew the origin of the affectionate nickname. Though at this point, they’d all realized that he and Carol were…what? Together? A couple? Involved? Lovers…?
Daryl doesn’t know what to call them. Even in his own head. He’s still figuring all that stuff out. Still wrapping his head around what they are to each other and what they do with each other when no one else is around. The available words seem inadequate, inaccurate. Too shallow, too conventional. Is Carol, what…his girlfriend now? Are they having sex or hooking up or making love or just plain fucking?
The first time he went down on her, he didn’t know what to call her…her her. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, that she was letting him look, that she’d just open her legs and show him the warm, wet epicenter of her body. He’d never witnessed one, studied one, not up close like that. And it wasn’t easy for her. She kept an arm thrown over her eyes the entire time. Her cheeks were flushed, not just with arousal, but deep embarrassment.
He’d reached out with one finger, stroking the outer layer. The fuzz surrounding her still showed remnants of her original strawberry blonde hair color. Her inner lips were a delicate pale pink, an exact color match to her nipples.
“Ain’t you a peach,” he murmured into her succulent open flesh.
He was mesmerized. Awed by the hue of her, the sight of her. The taste and smell of her. She held his head, fingers digging into his scalp, as he licked her with his tongue, nudged her with his nose, grazed her with his beard. Her peachy interior opened and melted, dripping tangy nectar into his mouth. Her body squirmed, her throat stretched in ecstasy and her mouth released a moan. Going down on Carol instantly became his favorite activity. Or his first favorite. Of many.
The walkie-talkie in his hand squarks and Carol responds in broken sentences. She tells the others she’s okay, she just took a quick detour for some promising canned goods.
Daryl presses the button on his walkie, pauses before asking, “...Need help?”
“All good,” she responds. “Heading your way now.”
He shuffles his feet on the wooden boards, squints his eyes at the distant horizon. “Copy.”
He tells the others he’ll stay in position, they’ll catch up on his bike. They respond to him without a call sign, though that’s not due to a lack of trying. They’ve tested out several – Fallen Angel, Possum Slayer, Grease Fire – but none have stuck. At least nobody’s overheard Carol’s pet name for him. ‘Cause he’s pretty sure that one would. He’d never live it down. No matter how playful or private, the group would make sure that that one stayed with him for life.
It was awkward at first, they were awkward with each other. There were parts of his body he didn’t want to show her, parts of her body she didn’t want to share with him. The first time they slept in the same bed, he woke before she did. He rolled onto his side, rose up on one elbow. Carol was passed out naked, her hair mussed and her face half-squished into the pillowcase. Daryl kissed her freckled shoulder, stroked her back to wake her.
She smiled, eyes still closed and voice crackly with sleep. “Mornin’ Pookie.”
“Mornin’...” his mind cast about for a fitting pet name, landing on, “Peachie.”
Carol laughed in her throat, opening her eyes and adjusting her head to look up at him. She didn’t rise or roll over, not until he tried to sweep the sheet off her lower body. Later, he’d find out that she didn’t like her bottom. Ed used to ping-pong between telling her she had a fat ass and a scrawny ass, that she was damn lucky he kept her saggy, useless old behind around.
Daryl’s response was to pilfer some fresh underwear on his next foray into a department store. Years into the apocalypse, such items were considered quite the boon. He mulled over his choice, and could've gone for plain greys, whites, beiges and blacks. He settled instead on a pack of five, each a different color and each stamped with a cute fruit. The light green pair had an apple, the red pair had a strawberry. The yellow pair had a lemon, pink had a grapefruit and orange had a peach.
Her bottom looked like a juicy peach when she wore those ones. He told her so as she stood at the mirror one morning in just her underwear, arms raised to brush her hair. After that, his new favorite activity was waking with Carol naked, rolling over to kiss her neck, caress her back and squeeze her sweet ass. She’d let him pull the covers down, let him bare her and look at her. She’d let him molest the heavy ripeness of her with his hands, bite into her flesh with his teeth.
She’d lie on her stomach as he moved on top of her. She’d tuck her arms under her pillow as he tucked his pillow under her hips. He’d tilt her up and back, enter her from behind and fuck her deep and slow. Sometimes he’d lower himself on top of her, press his chest to her back as he kissed her neck and nipped her shoulders. Sometimes, he’d prop himself up on both hands and watch himself press against her ass, watch her flesh receive his.
Daryl starts to feel antsy, starts to pace. He doesn’t like this. They shouldn’t have split up, that wasn’t the plan. His walkie-talkie continues to relay messages from the rest of the crew, where they are and what they’re doing. But Carol is silent. He stalks to the other end of the empty loft, checks the other window. He kills a walker that’s completely incapacitated but at least it’ll stop growling. He lifts the walkie to his mouth, presses the button to speak but nothing comes out.
Her pet name became a private code after one run went sideways. A routine run, just like this one. Some other group got the jump on her, knocked her out and tied her hands behind her back. They used her to lure him, told her what to say when they held the walkie up to her mouth. Carol obeyed, told him she was fine. But her tone was off, her voice breathy and high-pitched. Daryl tracked them down within minutes, taking her captors out with three well-aimed arrows. He ungagged her, asked again if she was okay. She repeated that she was fine.
He untied her wrists and helped her to her feet. “Y’ sure?”
“Oh yeah…” Carol dusted herself off, answering in a light but droll tone, “Peachy.”
After that, peachy became code for fine and fine code for SOS: come immediately. Daryl cranes his head out the window, lifts his crossbow halfway. He’s starting to rethink her previous all good. She didn’t say peachy but then she didn’t say fine either. He lifts the walkie-talkie, presses the button, only to be interrupted by a series of loud bangs.
He turns and sees her coming in through the half destroyed wall behind him. The jagged hole exposes a rickety staircase on which he can see her boots. She kicks at the edges of the hole to widen it then drops a sack of goodies through, creating a small dust cloud on the floor. Daryl shoves his crossbow over his shoulder and heads over to help. She passes him her rifle and knapsack, then squirms through the opening feet first. She kicks his ribs a bit, rips her clothes as she reports that she had to take the long way round, going up and over. She grips his shoulders with both hands and he grips her hips as she jumps down to his level. She’s covered in dust and sweat but looks more than slightly satisfied. And completely unharmed.
He gives her a onceover to make sure. “You alright?”
Carol meets his anxious gaze then gives a tiny wink. “Peachy keen, jellybean.”
They have to rush to catch up with the others, so she doesn’t reveal what she stumbled across. Not until later, when she enters the bedroom with a small can in each hand and a silent smirk. The rest of her haul was distributed amongst the group but she held back two cans, just for them. One of syrupy peaches and one of sweetened condensed milk. They polish them off in bed, the sweet treat leaving them both with sticky chins. She cleans his sticky beard with her tongue and he licks all around her creamy, sugary mouth. And Daryl thinks that kissing her will probably always be his absolute favorite.
He proceeds down her body, pulling at her dusty, ripped clothing. He sucks her sweet nipples, nips her fleshy tummy, tugs at her inconvenient belt. He gets her naked, spreads her legs and licks her tangy interior, drawing the sweetest juice from her deepest core with his fingers, lips and tongue. He enters her before she comes, works himself into her then flips them over on the bed. Carol settles on top of him, shifts her hips to adjust the angle of penetration, then starts to move. Her hands run up and down his chest and her head lolls lazily on her neck. His big palms paw at her sweet little mounds, his fingers claw at her ripe, round ass cheeks as they steadily rise and fall.
He watches every micro-movement of her skin and muscles and bones, drinks in every response of her body to his, eats up every strained and sentimental expression that touches her features. His mouth opens and breath pants in unison with hers. He wants to say something, name what’s occurring, but words fail him. So he rises beneath her, thrusts up into her, sits up enough to capture her nipples between his teeth.
Afterwards, as they lie naked in sticky, white sheets, he locates a freckle near her heart that looks just like a peach. He tells her that the second a tattoo artist materializes in their fallen civilization, he’s gonna demand a tattoo of a peach. They joke about where on his body it should be etched with Carol suggesting his ass. She muses that she always wanted some ink but Ed wouldn’t allow it. When he asks what she’d like tattooed onto her flesh, she jokingly suggests Pookie + Peachie 4eva. In a big love heart. With an arrow through it. It’s the first time the ‘L’ word has been mentioned, even in jest, and Daryl falls silent.
Carol gazes up at the ceiling, fingers playing with his hair. “Tattoo’s pretty permanent,” she comments after a moment.
“So’s love,” he answers with a hitch of hesitation, "i’n't it?” He feels her smile, feels her chest rise and fall calmly beneath his cheek.
“If you’re lucky…” she answers quietly.
He lifts his head from her breast, looks up at her. “Think we’re lucky?”
Carol’s eyes run over his face, her fingers still playing with his hair. “We found each other in all of this. That’s pretty lucky.”
They wash up and wear pajamas to bed, which makes everything seem more settled, more permanent. Just another feeling he can’t name and doesn’t voice. Cuddling a pajamaed Carol to sleep might be his new favorite thing though.
Daryl wraps his body around her and buries his face in her neck with a sigh. “Night, Peaches.”
Carol chuckles and kisses his knuckles. “Night, Pookie-Bear.”
The words mean something, if not everything. They lack a lot, conceal multitudes. But maybe in time, he’ll find better words, words that capture…more. More of what is happening and how he feels and who she is to him. Maybe one day he’ll call Carol my girlfriend or my partner or my love. They'll use that all-important, all-encompassing, hopefully eternal L-word for real. For now, she’s just Peachie or Peaches. She’s his own sweet Georgia Peach.
END.