Let us spread some positive Caryl feelings! :) What would they say is their favorite memory of the other? Who talks to the other while they're sleeping? Where do they like to kiss each other/be kissed by the other? How do they comfort each other? Who watches cartoons, and who watches the true crime murder mysteries? What do they do when they're bored and together?
You are positively evil for making me think these fluffy thoughts when I have approximately 3k things to do, but hey, I make awesome decisions in bike stores, so here we go! (p.s. This is totally AU to the absolute max because it’s Christmastime and I need Sophia in my life.)
What would they say is their favorite memory of the other?
Daryl’s favorite memory – forever and ever, world without end – is the expression on Carol’s face when he staggered up the stairs of Hershel’s house cradling a barely conscious Sophia in his arms. He’ll never forget a second of what happened in the few seconds after she registered the fact that her baby was alive. A moment of disbelief that transformed quickly into shock. Then a gasp so loud it felt like slicing, her hand to her stomach in a futile attempt to keep her shit together. Finally, more overwhelming joy than he’s ever seen in someone’s eyes before or sense, and the tears dripping off her chin as she closed the few steps between them and took her baby girl into her arms. It’s the greatest thing he’s ever done.
Carol’s favorite memory is the night she first told Daryl that she loved him. He’d been helping her and Sophia make Christmas cookies, but Sophia got tired and wandered off to bed, leaving something like four dozen cookies still left to frost. Daryl turned the Wynton Marsalis Christmas album up a little louder and dug right in, doing his best to make each Christmas tree cutout perfect – deep green icing and just the right amount of multicolored sprinkles, all evenly distributed.
She’d loved him forever already, so she’ll never know what it was about that specific moment that made the words tumble out of her mouth before she could even think about the possible consequences. But he was just so goddamn adorable, sitting at the table with frosting all over his chapped knuckles, softly humming offkey and licking a touch of sweetness off his fingers every now and then. “Are there more?” he asked. “Cause you can working on something else if you need to. I’ve got these.” Something exploded like a firecracker in her chest and she blurted, “Wow, I love you.”
She’ll never forget what happened in his eyes when he realized what she’d said. His whole body went very still, frosting knife clutched in his right palm. His eyes went glisteny and he swallowed hard a couple times, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t figure out how to make words. Panicked, she followed up in half a second with, “You don’t have to say it back. I just wanted you to know because-”
“Stop.” His voice was strained, an octave lower than usual. “I love you.” He breathed in, a long slow inhale for courage. “I was jus’ scared to say it because I still wake up next to you in the morning and wonder if I’m having the longest, best dream of my life.”
Her hand squeezed into a tight ball of vibrating anxiety, she leaned down to touch her lips to his, tasting the sweet, slightly lemony tang of the frosting and the mulled wine he’d been sipping as they worked. Then she tilted his chin up to make sure he was looking at her and said, her voice so unreliable it was close to a whisper, “It’s real. It always has been.”
At that point he yanked her into his lap, and she still giggles when she thinks about all the places that frosting wound up that night.
Who talks to the other while they’re sleeping?
Daryl, no question. He’s gotten so much better at using his words since he and Carol have been together, but the hard stuff – the emotions that grab you in the gut – those are still hard for him to verbalize some days. So at night, when she’s curled up on her side with her foot between his ankles (her feet are always cold) and the smooth softness of her back pressed up against his chest, he sometimes tells her things he wouldn’t know how to say if she were awake and he was looking into her eyes. He tells her about how Sophia called him “Dad” again that morning and it took everything inside him not to cry. He tells her how much he loves to watch her face as she reads one of her favorite books, the ever-changing expressions of delight that flicker and dissolve. He tells her how much he wishes he’d been there 15 years ago, so that maybe – just maybe – he could have spared her the nightmare that was everything about her relationship with Ed. And of course he tells her how every time he gets to touch her, every time she reaches for the hem of a tank top or shirt and pulls it over her head, he feels like the luckiest man in the universe. But he’s learned to say that to her face too, sometimes.
Where do they like to kiss each other/be kissed by each other?
Carol is the world’s most cliche human apparently, because she loves kissing Daryl’s lips. Ed was a shitty kisser even when he bothered, and that was only for about a year of their marriage. Daryl, on the other hand, can’t get enough of kissing. Sometimes he’ll just kiss her for twenty minutes straight without asking for anything else, and she loves every single thing about that experience, from the sound of his breathing to the feel of her lower lip caught gently between his teeth. As for where she likes him to kiss her, definitely on her neck. Apparently there are about 25 erogenous zones located there that she never had a clue about, and he’s found every last one.
Daryl loves to kiss the inside of Carol’s thighs, because going down on her is one of his favorite parts of sex and he loves teasing her mercilessly and making her wait for it. When he starts slowly working his way up the inside of her legs, licking and kissing and tasting, the noises she makes drive him out of his mind. He could do it forever, but eventually she’ll whisper, “Daryl, please,” and because he can’t say no to her he’ll finally slide his tongue upward and get on with it. Daryl’s favorite place to be kissed by Carol is his chest. Just after sex, when they’re both sweaty and panting, she’ll drop tiny, soft, sweet kisses all over his chest and shoulders while they’re trying to get their breath back, and he loves every single thing about the light movement of her lips over his skin.
How do they comfort each other?
This one is super simple – touch. If Carol has a rough day at work, she walks in the door and makes a beeline for Daryl’s arms. Sure, she sometimes explains why she’s upset while he’s holding her and gently rubbing his hand up and down her back, but sometimes she just let’s herself relax there, closing her eyes and letting the warmth of him chase away everything else.
Daryl’s less into words than she is, so if he wakes up from a nightmare, all he wants is to put his head on her chest and feel her hands in his hair, smoothing back and forth until he can breathe again and his heart rate’s back in the safe range.
Who watches cartoons, and who watches the true crime murder mysteries?
Tbh, they’re not particularly into tv, probably due to the fact that both of them carry around tons of life baggage. The tv was on nonstop in Daryl’s house when he was a child, his mother either watching and smoking or passed out drunk by the time he got home from school. Carol’s associations are close to the same – Ed working his way through a six pack while watching football on the couch, the endless loud drone (he always turned the damn thing up to full volume, to the point where Sophia would have to go upstairs if she had to study) of the the commentators threatening to erode her sanity. So every now and then they’ll sit down and watch a silly comedy, and they have a whole list of Christmas shows/movies that are 100% must-sees every year – It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Miracle on 34th St., A Christmas Carol, Rudolph, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Olive the Other Reindeer, etc. But beyond that they don’t watch a ton of tv.
What do they do when they’re bored and together?
If Sophia’s not home, showering together is a huge treat, because they don’t get to do that very often. Daryl can’t think of many things he loves more than soaping Carol’s entire body from ankles all the way up to shampooing her hair, and then rinsing her off and going down on her as she leans back against the wall and gasps out in the swirling steam, her body quivering while her hands play with his hair.
But Carol’s also gotten him into both certain board games (he actually likes Scrabble now) and audio books, so on quiet evenings when nothing else is going on, they’ll often grab the giant fluffy polartec blanket Andrea bought them as a housewarming gift and cuddle up on the couch with a glass of wine and a plate of cheese, sausage, and crackers. Then they turn on Audible and listen to Sophia’s latest recommendation.
Damn, that was fun. Thank you sooooo much for the ask. Although this mess is rusty af, it really helped me just to put some damn words on a page.
