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This fucking ice pack is dripping all over your hand.
It’s all you can think about. The blackening bruise on your ribcage pulsates sickeningly, and every time you breathe, pain lashes through your intercostals courtesy of the snapped ribs you’ve acquired. Your head is throbbing – steel-toed boots to the skull make for a fairly severe concussion, as it turns out. Every nominal turn of your head to one side or the other inspires a sweep of nausea throughout your entire body, so you’ve taken to sitting very, very still, with your eyes squeezed shut.
Well. Eye.
The one you’re icing swelled shut hours ago, purpled flesh ballooning to completely obscure the vision on your left side.
You’re an exposed nerve, every inch of your body pulsing or aching with electric licks of pain, and yet the thing that’s foregrounded in your mind right now is how fucking uncomfortable the icy water dribbling down the back of your hand is.
Frustrated, you lash the half-melted ice pack into a corner. It splatters against the wall and spits lumpy chunks of ice in your direction, and you’re certain you’re going to slip in the resultant puddle later if you don’t go mop them up, but if you try to stand, you’ll either vomit, keel over, or both. You draw in as deep a breath as you can manage.
Hold it.
Let it out.
In. Hold. Out.
In. Hold –
“What the fuck were you thinkin’?”
– Out . Air hisses past your pursed lips, and you squint ahead at the angry smears of shadow standing at the foot of your bed. You purposefully didn’t switch the lights on when you stumbled into your bedroom, but you know that voice, you know their smell, and you knew from the second that first blow landed against your temple (fuckin’ lowlifes hit you from behind first, who does that?) that this was coming.
“I seem to recall getting the go-ahead from both of y’all to go on that run,” you mutter. And then, because you’re in pain, and nauseous, and the taste of blood is starting to sour on the back of your tongue: “Not that I fuckin’ needed it.”
“Like hell you don’t,” Rick snaps. You flinch, mostly because any volume he can achieve above a whisper feels like getting cracked in the head with a baseball bat (again). You barely make out Daryl clapping Rick upside the back of his head, and you’d like to laugh, but the first sharp expulsion of air out of your busted nose makes your ribs twinge and bloody snot shoot out across your lips.
“What happened?” Daryl asks quietly, which does fuck all to disguise how freaked out he sounds. You scrub your forearm across your mouth and sniffle.
“It’s not a big deal,” you start, and you don’t need to see to know that Rick just rolled his eyes. “I was finishing up the run and some fuckin’ scumbags laid a spike strip in the road. I didn’t see it, blew my tires, they got the drop on me before I could even get two feet away from the truck. But I handled it .”
Rick scoffs, and Daryl’s shoulders snap into a stiff line.
You did handle it. Contrary to what you might pretend around these men, you’re quite capable out on your own, beyond the walls of Alexandria. Hell, you survived for years without the aid of another living soul before you met Rick and Daryl, and if need be, you could do it again. Not that you want to (good God, do you really not want to), but the point is, you’re not helpless or fragile.
That pack of survivors descended upon you like wild dogs, two of them raiding your truck for the medical supplies and food you’d trekked all the way out there for, the other three taking turns beating the ever-loving shit out of you. They got some good hits in, you’ll give them that, but they underestimated how much of a beating you could take – you’re sure you looked very convincing, crumpled on your side, mouth open, blood and drool puddling on the asphalt beneath your cheek, eyes rolled grotesquely into your skull, playing possum like you were trying to win a goddamned award . It’s not easy being totally limp and silent while sustaining blows from three desperate, starving people who no longer see you as human, but rather an obstacle, a thing that is needlessly obstructing their path to food and medicine, but you fucking did it.
You didn’t jump up right when you heard the baseball bat that’d initially clocked you clatter to the road. Or when the ragged panting above your head receded into the distance. Or when you cracked an eye open – the one that wasn’t clouded with blood and rapidly bruising shut – and saw that these people were gearing up to leave you dead in the street. Some of them had the duffel bags you’d packed full of supplies slung over their backs, the others were bundling up the spike strip they’d unfurled across the road, but they were all talking amongst themselves. You saw one, a man with sweaty blond hair and missing teeth, looking back at you over his shoulder.
And he fucking laughed .
You waited until he turned back around before sliding the gun out of your boot.
You aimed, squinted against the harsh sunlight bouncing off the road and the ringing in your ears, and shot him square in the back of the head – blood and brain matter splattered all over the face of the tiny, redheaded woman he was talking to, and just as she opened her mouth to scream, you popped her between the eyes.
You were a good shot before meeting him, but knowing Rick Grimes has made you an excellent shot.
Guns are, unfortunately, fucking loud, so the other three survivors whirled on you quickly after you’d eliminated their friends.
You squeezed the trigger. Click . Clickclickclick.
That’s what you get for not heeding Daryl’s warnings about checking that your weapons were fully loaded before going on a run.
You’re still not sure how you managed to encounter maybe the only group of survivors in the whole fucked up world who didn’t have guns strapped to every extremity, but such was your luck today. The other two were dispatched with the baseball bat, and you were about to do the same to the third when he stumbled over the outstretched leg of his fallen friend. Down he went, arms pinwheeling, eyes bugging out –
Right onto the spike strip.
You’ve never heard someone try to scream around two lungfuls of blood before. You can’t say that you’re itching to hear it ever again.
He would have died anyway if you’d turned and left, collected your bags and stalked down the road like these people were planning on doing to you, but…well, you’ve done a lot of things in the name of surviving the literal apocalypse, but you still don’t feel good about dooming people to a shambling, half-aware, undead existence.
So maybe the dozens of blows you delivered to the motherfucker’s head – or the fact that you beat him until his nose was flattened and squashed into the glistening, cavernous wound that once was a human face – were overkill , but, hey. Beats being a walker, in your humble opinion.
All of that, you feel, indicates that you are a grown woman who is fully capable of taking care of herself, and yet –
“Shouldn’t have let you go out there alone,” Daryl murmurs, shaking his head. Rick is pacing, hands on his hips, the heels of his boots thud-thud-thudding across the hardwood, a blur that flits from one end of the room to the other. The sun hasn’t fully vanished over the horizon yet, leaving the cool blue of dusk to linger and press against your window panes; both men exist only in silhouette without the aid of your bedside lamps. Even so, you feel Rick’s gaze on you like a hand curved around the back of your neck, demanding your attention.
“Shit happens. I’m fine ,” you insist. Rick scuffs to a stop in front of you.
“You call passing out at the wall like that fine ?” he asks, volume blissfully lowered. You chew on the inside of your bottom lip and cast your bleary gaze down to your lap, flexing your still-frozen fingers.
The truck’s tires were, in a word, fucked. You’re not sure you could’ve even called them tires at that point, because most of their rubber was scattered in shards all over the road instead of wrapped around the rims, so the spare wouldn’t have done you any good.
A six-mile walk doesn’t seem like much until you’re half-conscious, heavily concussed and seeing triple, wheezing around splintered ribs, and at the mercy of the August sun at its highest point. By the time you finally made it back to Alexandria, your skin was tingling with the itch of a nasty sunburn, and all the sweat pouring into your good eye rendered you nearly blind.
You didn’t think when you saw Rick and Daryl at the wall, blithely unaware of your current state. You just fumbled forward, duffel bags crashing to the ground, and whimpered, “Daddy…”
They both turned around, but Rick was closer, and so he was the one who caught you under the arms when you fell, face-first, into his chest.
You heard them both calling for you, felt warmth beneath the backs of your knees and around your back, the whoosh of air as Rick sprinted for help, but everything else was dragged under the powerful black tide of unconsciousness.
“I call it a natural consequence of walking for six fuckin’ miles with the sun beating down on my back and no water,” you grumble. “Y’all act like that shit wouldn’t make anybody pass out.”
“That’s not the…ugh.” Rick wipes a hand down his face and fixes you with a look. Normally, it’s the look that means you’re about to get pulled over his knee and spanked until you cry, but you have it on pretty good authority he wouldn’t do that when you’re a walking, talking bruise. Still, you find yourself shrinking, even more so when Rick squats down between your knees and gazes up into your face, blue eyes sharp and shadowed.
“Ain’t the point,” he finishes, tenuously calm.
“What’s the point, then?”
“Watch your tone, girly,” Daryl warns, and your tongue glues itself to the roof of your mouth. You live to antagonize Rick; it’s what gets you out of bed in the morning, knowing you have a full day ahead of you with ample opportunities to piss him off . In your defense, Rick fucking loves it. You’ve never met a man so willing to take your attitude in stride and then give as good as he was getting. Honestly, it’s one of the reasons why you love him.
Daryl, however…you know better than to be a brat to Daryl. When he tells you to watch your mouth, you listen .
“You are not goin’ on a run by yourself again,” Rick says definitively. “Ever. You hear me?”
“But–”
“You start arguin’ with me, I will tan your hide, little girl,” Rick says, and you know he means it. “I am not in the mood.”
You look up at Daryl pleadingly. He crosses his arms, expression stony.
“Uh-uh, don’t gimme that face,” he chides, and you are powerless to stop your bottom lip from pouting out. Yeah, really selling the whole “grown woman” thing, here.
“Daryl agrees with me,” Rick says, tapping your knee. You glance back down and have to forcibly swallow around the lump in your throat in order to speak next.
“But…I can do it ,” you say feebly, voice cracking. “I can . I’m not helpless, I…this was just one time.”
“Yeah, the one time was enough,” Daryl says, settling onto the bed next to you. He presses your bodies together, shoulder to hip, and delicately brushes a blood-crusted lock of hair off your face.
“It’s not that we don’t think you can do it, baby girl,” Rick says, and wraps both of his hands around yours to stop them from fidgeting. You follow the thick blue veins in his hands down the length of his muscled forearms, mentally tracing their branching paths over and over again to avoid looking at his face. His weary, exhausted, scared face.
You put that expression there. That knowledge tastes like guilt, slides slick and oily down your throat, and squirms in your gut.
“We know you can. But you scared the shit out of your Daddy and me today, and I don’t ever wanna feel like that again. So you’re done. You wanna go on a run, you ask me or Daryl if we can come with, and if we can’t, you sit your ass at home. You understand me?”
You want to cry. You nearly do. Because it’s not that you’re itching to run around in the blistering heat all day, fending off walkers and feral survivors and rooting around in abandoned buildings – you just wanted to take some of the burden off Rick and Daryl’s shoulders, and you failed . Shame scalds you from the inside out, and when you sniffle this time, it’s to try and suck back the tears that are threatening to fall.
You nod because you don’t trust yourself to speak, but it’s not enough.
“Use your words,” Daryl interjects. “Yes, or no?”
“Yes, Daddy,” you say, glancing between both men. “I understand. I’m sorry.”
Rick’s face softens considerably. His thumbs smooth circles into your roughened palms, stroking sweetly over years-old scars and callouses. You’re sure you reek of blood and sweat and filth, but Daryl doesn’t seem to mind, because he drapes an arm around your shoulder and noses at the side of your face.
“You know we ain’t mad at you, right?” he asks, and you make a small, affirmative noise in the back of your throat.
There’s solid heat at your back, fingers sliding across the delicate skin of your wrists, and suddenly you’re vertical; Rick cups both of your hands and takes small, careful steps backward while Daryl nudges you toward him, his grip firm on either side of your waist. The room jerks and spins violently, and you have to slam your eyes shut to avoid puking down Rick’s front.
“Gonna shower and get some food in you,” Rick says, and there’s the creeeakk of rusted hinges to your right. They’re guiding you into the bathroom. “And then you’re gonna get some rest.”
The bathroom fan buzzes to life, and light prods persistently at your closed eyelids. It smells like mildew and eucalyptus soap in here, and the ratty old towel you all decided could serve as a bath mat is still damp beneath your bare toes as Rick and Daryl shuffle you into (what you assume is) the middle of the room.
“Can you stand by yourself?” Rick asks.
“Mmhm.”
“You wanna get undressed, or d’you need our help?”
The fiercely independent part of yourself, the part that carried you through life for years , wants to sneer, turn her nose skyward, and demonstrate that you don’t need help with something as simple as peeling your nasty clothes off, thank you. The part of you that willfully and enthusiastically calls these men Daddy , however, calls the shots more often than not these days, and she’s the one who has you spreading your arms to the side and saying, “Help, please.”
While Rick and Daryl busy themselves with peeling your ruined T-shirt from your body and shimmying your pants down your legs, you crack your good eye open a slit.
And that, you realize, was a stupid fucking idea, because you’re parked in front of the mirror overhanging the sink, and you hadn’t bothered looking at yourself until this very moment. Yikes .
Your hair is slicked down to your scalp in gravelly, bloody snarls; your broken nose tips noticeably to one side, and smudges of dried blood flake off around your crooked nostrils; your face is lumpy and swollen from all the radiant purple bruising daubed into your flesh; there’s a fucking boot print on your ribcage, clear as day, in mottled red and indigo, and you don’t know what pisses you off more – the fact that it’s there at all, or the fact that you cannot, for the life of you, remember getting stomped on hard enough to warrant such an ugly mark.
You’ve…certainly looked better.
“Eugh,” you groan, low enough under your breath that Rick, who’s delicately lifting your feet out of your panties and jeans one at a time, doesn’t hear you. Daryl, however, does.
“What?” he asks, meeting your gaze in the mirror.
“Sorry y’all have to…look at me…like this.” You gesture broadly at your body, from face to hips. “At least for a while. I know it ain’t pretty.”
A beat of silence passes. Rick finishes stripping off your socks; Daryl successfully unhooks your bra and tosses it into a corner.
“Dunno what you mean,” Daryl says measuredly, leaning over to twist on the faucet. Water splatters noisily into the bottom of the tub and mists Rick’s curls through the gap in the curtain. He’s looking up at you, brows pinched, jaw set.
“You look plenty pretty to me, baby,” he says, and it should be fucking illegal for someone to not only look the way Rick Grimes does, but sound like that too, all rumbly and earnest.
“Y’all don’t have to lie to me.” You poke at the boot print, frowning. It’s narrow enough that it could be from that redheaded woman. Bitch. You hope some chunks of her friend’s brain landed in her mouth.
“I don’t give a shit what you look like,” Daryl says, pivoting you away from the fogging mirror and pointing you toward the shower. “You’re alive. Bruises heal.”
“And why the hell would we be lyin’?” Rick asks sharply, climbing to his feet. You never considered yourself a particularly short woman, but both Rick and Daryl tower over you all the same, and when either one of them gets up in your face like this, you feel even smaller .
Rick’s staring down his nose at you, a muscle in his jaw jumping every time he clenches it. It’s both intimidating and stupidly arousing. “We ever lied to you before?”
“Well, no, but –”
“I don’t appreciate bein’ called a liar, little girl,” Rick says, but he’s not looking at you. His eyes are focused on a spot above your head, glittering with something you can’t discern. “Don’t think Daryl does, either.”
“Sure don’t,” Daryl chimes in, chest butting against your bare back.
“I wasn’t – I didn’t mean –”
“Hush up an’ take your shower, girly.” Daryl splays his fingers across the small of your back, urging you forward, and you huffily oblige. Truthfully, you’ve been dying to scrub the grime off your skin since the moment you regained consciousness. Rick cradles the bend of your elbow in one hand, just to steady you as you lift a foot over the lip of the tub and step inside the spray of the shower. It sears the wounds on your scalp and face, but you dive into it anyway, inclining your head toward the stream and allowing rivulets of hot water to caress your cheeks.
You’re not sure how much time passes – could be seconds, could be ten minutes – but eventually the shower curtain rustles and captures your attention. You squint through the deluge of water pouring into your eye and realize it’s Rick.
A very, very nude Rick, sidling up behind you, hands somehow already soapy and smelling of eucalyptus as he beckons you closer.
“C’mon, baby,” he says, “this’ll go faster if I help you.”
You, admittedly, are too distracted to argue. You’re more focused on the droplets of water clinging to his beard, the way they wobble precariously close to his full lips, the piercing blue of his eyes behind the dark, wet curls that have plastered themselves to his forehead. He is a fucking sight, one that, during the thorough ass-kicking you received today, you wondered if you’d ever see again.
There was a moment, a fraught, blood-soaked moment, in which you were sure those survivors were going to kill you. Surely, the next blow would be the last, and then what? Rick and Daryl would never know what happened to you or who did it. Would they eventually find you out there, a withered, sun-bleached husk in the middle of the street?
Or would you plod up to the walls of Alexandria, unwillingly reanimated, a blundering corpse who wouldn’t recognize the faces of the men you loved? Something that would try to kill them?
Another loved one they’d have to put down like a dog.
You lurch forward, burying your face in the crook of Rick’s neck before you can stop yourself.
“Woah – y’allright?”
“Mmhm. Fine.”
The silence that lapses between the two of you says that he doesn’t believe you, but he also doesn’t press the issue. He starts to work the shampoo into your tender scalp, careful to skirt around any particularly raw areas when you hiss or wince, and you watch fat clumps of soap plop around your feet before swirling down the drain. He grasps the back of your head and angles you into the water to rinse the shampoo out, thumbs circling the hinge of your jaw.
“M’sorry,” you say after a while, after Rick’s wetted down a washcloth and lathered a bar of soap against its fibers. He’s washing you, movements especially delicate around your heavily bruised areas, and the peeling patches of sunburnt flesh on the tops of your shoulders.
“For?”
“Today.”
“Mm. Well. We shouldn’t have let you go by yourself. That’s our fault, not yours,” Rick says, not meeting your eyes and gingerly lifting your arm so he can scrub under it. “Don’t gotta be sorry.”
“I am. For scaring you.” You jut your chin toward the shower curtain. “And Daryl.”
Rick’s cheek hollows slightly, which means he’s gnawing on the inside of it. He wrings the washcloth out and drapes it over the showerhead before cranking the faucet off, leaving both of you dripping wet in the resonant silence. He whips back the shower curtain and steps out, hands extended to help you, and pats you dry with a towel.
Then, he pushes your hair off your face and plants a kiss right between your eyes.
“Just happy you’re safe,” he murmurs. “We both are.”
“Food’s gonna get cold if y’all keep screwin’ around in there,” Daryl calls suddenly, and it’s only then, when the steam has begun to roll out of the bathroom, that you detect the smell of something warm and delicious. Your stomach audibly seethes, a boisterous reminder that you haven’t eaten since this morning.
You snatch the shirt Rick had been wearing off the bathroom counter and slip it over your head as Rick drags his jeans on. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror again – still not pretty, still swollen, a kaleidoscope of rotten purple and sour yellow and injurious pink, but then there’s Rick. His gaze is soft as it roams over the exposed sections of your body, lingering where you know your ass is peeking out beneath the hem of his shirt.
Rick helps you into the bedroom, where Daryl has made himself comfortable. He’s sprawled out over half the bed, one leg dangling off the side, mindlessly thumbing through a dog-eared copy of The Lord of the Rings . There’s a scrap of blue fabric dangling out of the top, a makeshift bookmark so he’d stop losing his place every night after he read you a chapter.
You’re hesitant to call it a “bedtime story,” because you’re a grown-ass adult, and grown-ass adults don’t typically get bedtime stories read to them by their partners who are also (and by a much wider margin than you) grown-ass adults, but it’s the only thing that lulls you to sleep after particularly hard days, or calms you down enough after a nightmare, so…
Yeah, fuck it, whatever. Daryl reads you bedtime stories.
Next to him is a plated grilled cheese sandwich, cut diagonally, and a tall glass of water. It’s a very simple meal, one he’s made for you probably dozens of times, but your stomach growls and saliva collects under your tongue as you hobble toward the bed anyway.
“Thank you, Daddy,” you say, without having to be reminded. You wouldn’t call what you usually do “forgetting,” per se – you know you’re supposed to say thank you after one of them cooks for you, but the stern “Hey, little girl, what do you say?” from Rick when you “forget” is deeply thrilling. You’re far too tired to bother with the pretense, however, and you can tell by the faint smile on Rick’s lips that you’ve pleased him.
“Slow down, baby, you’re gonna choke,” he says as you hork down several mouthfuls of the sandwich in a matter of seconds. You pare the crust from the bread and drop the brown curls back onto the plate.
Daryl waves a hand, then rests it on your bare thigh. “She’s fine, ‘m watchin’ her.” He picks at your discarded crusts, popping a few into his mouth and stealing a couple of sips of water.
The majority of your sandwich is gone in a minute flat. Crumbs litter the front of your – Rick’s – shirt and sprinkle onto the bed. Daryl sweeps them casually onto the floor, and it’s then that you realize something…strange.
Rick hasn’t joined the two of you in bed. He’s still standing at the foot of it, damp and rosy from the shower, jeans slung low and unzipped on his hips. You’d assumed when he dictated the plans for the evening – shower, food, bed – that he’d climb into bed after you, but he’s...not.
His eyes flicker back and forth between you and Daryl, like the two of them are having a silent, deeply engrossing conversation, and you’d very much like to know what that’s about, so you swallow around the hunk of cheesy bread in your mouth.
“Something wrong?”
Rick shrugs. “Nope. Just waitin’ for you to finish your dinner.”
You look at Daryl, who also shrugs, unhelpfully.
You pop the last corner of your sandwich into your mouth, chew, swallow, and tip the rest of your water down your throat. You feel remarkably more like a human being now, albeit a very injured one, but the longer Rick and Daryl linger over you, silent and attentive and trading these knowing glances, the more you start to feel like a very stupid human being who hasn’t realized she’s caught in a trap.
Then, Rick grabs his belt by the buckle. He tugs it; the worn, brown leather hisses through the loops on his jeans until it’s dangling, unfurled, from one large fist.
“Daryl, tie our baby’s hands for me, wouldja?”
Huh?!
“Wh-What – what’d I – Daddy –”
Rick’s belt is soaring through the air and into Daryl’s waiting hands before you can finish stammering out a reply.
“Don’t squirm so damn much, you’re gonna hurt yourself,” Daryl chastises, because you’re unsuccessfully attempting to wriggle out of his grasp, more out of practiced habit than anything else. He skillfully guides both of your wrists behind your back, encircling them with twin loops of smooth leather and then yanking – one of Daryl’s toned arms bands around yours, pinning your elbows to your sides, and the stubble on his chin tickles your neck as he rests his head there.
“Daddy?” you try again, batting your lashes up at Rick. Puppy dog eyes never work on him, try as you might, but that doesn’t ever stop you from doing it. You think he likes watching you supplicate just as much as he likes telling you no .
Rick glides around the edge of the bed and bends at the waist, smelling warm and herbal and there’s a lock of hair that’s fallen into his face and God , it shouldn’t be this fucking easy. You shouldn’t be this easy, and yet, you are – you’re so fucking easy for these men you know it makes you look stupid.
But you love it .
“Yeah, baby?” Rick hums.
“Why am I…what did I do?” you whine, purposefully making your voice thinner, higher, and looking up at Rick through your eyelashes.
“Like I said, your Daddy and I don’t appreciate bein’ called liars,” Rick says simply. He cards a hand through his curls, and you shamelessly track the motion, watching the muscles in his arm twitch and flex.
“But–”
“We just figured,” Daryl says, warm breath fogging over your throat, “that you could use a reminder about how pretty you are, girly. Got whacked in the head somethin’ awful today, s’okay if you forgot.”
“But,” Rick says, pinching your chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Little girl like you has no business telling us what we think. Assumin’ a couple bumps an’ bruises are gonna turn us off to you, like you know better. Gonna knock some sense back into you, yeah?”
You don’t get the chance to respond, even though the answer is a resounding fuck yes . Rick surges forward and doesn’t bother easing you into it – he kisses you filthily , beard scratching against your cheeks, tongue running along the seam of your lips until you part them with a gasp and allow him access. Daryl hooks a finger into the collar of your shirt and pulls it out of his way, and the edge of his teeth sinking into the meat of your shoulder sends heat rippling down your spine. He nips and licks at your flesh, climbing higher and higher until he’s sucking fresh hickeys into the soft skin just below your jaw. Meanwhile, Rick’s fingers dance up the length of your leg, nudging it aside, searching and searching until –
“Aww, sweet thing,” Rick drawls, and the sound you make in response is truly pathetic, but you can’t force yourself to care because he’s dragging his first two fingers against the slick mess your pussy has turned into and it feels fucking incredible . You try to arch into his touch, but Daryl drags you back into his chest by the slack length of belt between your wrists.
“She wet?” he asks, amused.
Rick nods, a wicked smile quirking the corners of his mouth. “Soakin’.” He removes his hand from between your thighs and displays his glistening fingers. The intrigued sound Daryl makes in response vibrates into your back.
“That all for us?” he coos. “Barely even touched ya.”
“Cunt’s drippin’ all over the blankets,” Rick breathes, like he’s amazed, and he must see the way your lips slide apart – to say what, you’re not sure, because your brain ceased proper function the second Rick started rubbing your pussy – because he clamps his free hand down over them.
“Don’t need your input, little girl,” he says, “the grown-ups are talkin’ now. Come feel for yourself.” The last part is for Daryl, who eagerly complies. He relinquishes the grip around your waist in favor of gliding his hand down your belly and grazing rough digits across your oversensitive clit. You buck your hips, whimpering into Rick’s palm, and both men shush you.
“Push her legs back for me, wouldja?” Daryl rasps, and Rick does – he clambers onto the bed and slots his thighs beneath yours, forcing them up and apart. Your knees bump either side of his ribcage now, and you’re so thoroughly, embarrassingly exposed it makes you shy , so you try to duck your face into your shoulder.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Rick admonishes, flexing his fingers against your cheekbones and dragging your eyes back to him. “You know better than that, look at me.”
You’d love to argue – really, nothing would make you happier – but Daryl and Rick choose that exact moment to both try to stuff their fingers in your pussy, and then you’re clutching for air, spine bowing and legs struggling to snap shut as their thick digits prod inquisitively at your entrance. They chuckle , like they’re two old friends bumping clumsily into each other at the supermarket and not dizzyingly sexy men trying to synchronously fill your cunt.
“Think she can take all that?” Daryl asks, and Rick sucks his teeth thoughtfully.
“Sure wouldn’t mind finding out.”
“‘S a little mean.”
“She can handle it.”
“Yeah?”
“If I say so, she will. Ain’t that right?” Rick jostles you a bit by the face, prompting you to answer even though you know it doesn’t matter what your response is. You can’t hide the way you’re throbbing from him, can’t hide the effect being spoken about like you’re not even here, like your opinions on what should or shouldn’t happen to your body are wholly irrelevant, has on you.
And you don’t want to.
You love this. You love feeling like a toy, like a pretty, silly thing created for their amusement, pushed and pulled in whatever direction suits them at the moment. This game the three of you play, however temporarily, relieves you of all your responsibilities, of having to worry about whether the wall requires maintenance and, if so, where , and how urgently, of busying yourself with tedious chores around the house when either Daryl or Rick is out on a run by themselves. (Which, if anyone were to ask you, is a little fucking hypocritical given the rule they just implemented for you, but whatever, arguing that point would be as effective as shouting at two brick walls.)
You don’t have to think. You don’t have to stress. You’re handed this reprieve, this perfect little pocket of the world that feels suspended in time, to shut your brain off and just be , on a silver platter, and you’d be foolish not to take it.
So when Rick and Daryl both start to push inside of you, their fingers stretching and searching until four are buried in your pussy up to the knuckle, you let it happen. Your eyes whirl back into your skull, body sagging against Daryl’s chest, broken moans suppressed by the palm of Rick’s other hand, and you take it .
Right now, all you are is Daryl and Rick’s little girl, and your sole job is to let them use you.
“Look at our baby,” Rick says, deceptively sweet. “Not even puttin’ up a fight, just takin’ it, huh? Knew you could, told ya she could.” Daryl grunts in your ear, a sound that’s half-impressed, half-annoyed.
When he thrusts in, Rick pulls out, and vice versa. It’s maddening, it’s too much, pain and pleasure scorching through you indiscernibly, but you know you’d sob and throw a fit if they stopped. You feel so full, and the angle of Daryl’s hand, in particular, is causing you to be stretched open more than you think you’ve ever been. If only they’d rub your clit, one of them, if Daryl adjusted his wrist just so, maybe you could –
“What’s that?”
Rick’s dropped his hand from your face, palm smeared with your saliva, and is staring at you.
Oops . You must’ve been trying to say all that out loud.
You swallow hard, throat clicking dry. “Rub my clit, please, Daddy,” you plead. “I need it, I really need it.”
“Aww, you hear that?” Daryl taunts, hooking his fingers and pressing the pads into just the right place. You suck in a breath, one that shatters into a moan the second Daryl starts fervently rubbing your g-spot. “She needs it, Rick.”
“Bet she does.”
“I do,” you insist, and Rick shakes his head, tsking like you’re very, very stupid.
“That ain’t up to you,” he says, slowing the pace of his fingers to nothing , an action that Daryl replicates immediately, and you can physically feel the tantrum building inside of you like gathering storm clouds. However, before you vocalize that, something catches your attention.
Rick is hard. Wonderfully, obscenely hard – because his jeans are still on (for some fucking reason) his cock is squished up against his belly, thick and flushed and dribbling precum into the coarse, greying hair thatched between his hips. It’s then that you finally realize that there’s something poking you rather forcefully in the ass. When you rock back against it, Daryl sips a breath through his teeth, quiet enough that, if his face wasn’t pressed so close to yours, you wouldn’t have heard it.
“Daddy,” you mewl, not quite sure which one of them you’re talking to. Both, you suppose, or whichever one will give you what you want the fastest. You shift, angling your thighs further apart, hitching one ankle over Rick’s shoulder and turning your pretty pout his way. You’re staring openly at his cock, unabashed, because you know how the wetness beading at the head of it tastes, how the length feels filling your throat, the sounds Rick makes when you gag on it so hard your eyes well with tears, and you’re fucking ravenous for it. “Daddy, please , I want it…need it…don’t be mean …”
“Oh, ‘m mean now, huh?” Rick asks, brows knitting together and mouth split wide in what you can only describe as a shit-eating grin. You call him mean more than you call him his own name, but he is goddamned mean, and a tease, and he knows it . He loves to make you beg, loves to give you the most paltry taste of what you want just to snatch it away the second after. He admitted, once, when he’d had a bit too much whiskey and was feeling candid, that the sight of you pleading, tears sparkling in your eyes and clinging to your lashes, cheeks flushed pink and mouth slick with drool, pitifully and wantonly on display, made him hard as a fucking rock.
You called him a pervert. He used your pussy until you sobbed and made you call him that while you came.
“This what you want?” he asks, taking his dick in hand and pulling it out of his jeans. Saliva threatens to spill onto your chin.
When you first met him, you surmised (to yourself, of course, because you’d yet to make any friends with whom you could share this theory) that Rick felt comfortable acting the way he did, all brazen and domineering, because he was hung.
Was it a juvenile assumption? Perhaps. But for one thing, you are about twenty years his and Daryl’s junior, and for another, you were fucking right.
You’ve never been able to take all of it at once, as much as you would love to, because it’s just physiologically impossible – your gag reflex has remained obstinate, and your pussy can only accommodate so much of him before he starts battering your poor cervix.
Which isn’t a bad thing, but you can’t always afford to be waddling around Alexandria, almost incapacitated, when you’re trying to accomplish your chores.
Daryl’s not as big, but that’s never mattered. He knows precisely what he’s doing with what he has, and besides, he’s fucking pretty , all pale and veiny and thick enough that you have something to choke on whenever he eases himself down your throat.
Oh, and the snug, silver barbell pierced through the head of his cock is endlessly fun to play with.
“Yes,” you gasp, canting your hips and driving the fingers inside you even deeper. “Yes, I want that – want you – both of you, please, please –”
“Whatcha think, Daryl?” Rick asks, stroking himself lazily and looking over your head. “Think she deserves it?”
Daryl hums contemplatively. “Dunno. Still kinda sore about her doggin’ on herself earlier, don’t think we should reward that behavior. Do you?”
“No, I don’t,” Rick says, and you’re about two seconds away from screaming at the top of your lungs. Your pussy is pulsing, drooling all over their fingers and making a sticky mess of your inner thighs, and you think if they keep teasing you like this you’ll literally spontaneously combust. Rick crowds you further into Daryl’s lap, and the junction of your thigh and pelvis burns from the stretch he’s forcing, but he’s dipping his face close to yours like he’s gonna kiss you again, he’s right there –
“Apologize,” he murmurs, low and dangerous. “For talkin’ about our little girl the way you did earlier.”
“I’m sorry,” you blurt. “I’m sorry, Daddy. Please.”
“Sorry for what?” Rick’s touching himself faster, now, the slick sounds of his palm stripping up and down his length speeding up, and the way he’s slotted between the lewd spread of your legs means that every pump of his fist just barely misses your cunt. He’s so close, so fucking close, and Daryl is twitching under your ass, and you’re going to lose your goddamned mind .
“For…for sayin’ I wasn’t pretty,” you pule. “And for thinkin’ that I know better.”
“‘Cause you don’t know better, huh, girly?” Daryl asks sweetly, voice so thick with condescension it rolls off his tongue like syrup. You whip your head side to side, flinging damp hair into Daryl’s face.
“No, Daddy, I don’t, I don’t know better,” you relent.
“Who does?” Rick asks raggedly.
“You. Both of you,” you whimper, heart rabbiting inside your chest, your breathing quick and shallow. “You know better. I’m just a little girl, I-I shouldn’t…shouldn’t tell you what to do…I won’t do it again, I swear, I won’t, just please , please fuck me. Use me, breed me, I can’t take it anymore.”
You’re lying. You absolutely will tell them what to do again, probably as soon as an hour from now. You live to boss them around, high up on the throne they built just for you, and they live to grumble and roll their eyes and fulfill your every whim. Because beneath every scoff or exasperated complaint, there’s a softness there, an undeniable affection that rolls off the two of them in waves, even when you’re being downright unreasonable.
You’ve got them wrapped around your little finger, which is probably why Rick glances at Daryl, nods, and says, “Lay her back for me.”
You wheeze when they pull their fingers out of you, devastatingly empty, but Daryl shushes you and ushers you onto your back. He’s mindful of your broken ribs, risking only featherlight touches over your bruised skin, and stuffs a pillow under your ass before his weight lifts off the bed. Your shoulders tingle in their sockets, pins and needles vibrating down the length of both your bound arms, and your wrists are chafing where the leather’s bitten into your skin, but you don’t dream of complaining. You love being tied up like this, love being totally helpless and at their mercy. That’s why when Rick shuffles you further down the bed, until your head is dangling off the side, the most you offer is a small, puzzled noise.
You feel Rick positioning himself between your thighs, and then Daryl is striding into view, deftly unbuckling his belt and pulling himself out through the zipper. Precum pearls around the gleaming silver stud at the very tip of his cock before dripping onto the floor, and you want to catch every single drop of it with your tongue.
“Open up, pretty girl,” he says huskily, like he read your mind, and your body obeys before your brain fully processes what he said. You drop your jaw and stick your tongue all the way out, and Daryl snickers.
“Nice an’ open for me here too, baby,” Rick mumbles, and you gasp like you’ve been electrocuted as he drags his fat cockhead around the rim of your hole, over and over again. “Made you fuckin’ gape.”
“Ain’t surprised,” Daryl sighs, smearing the driveling mess at the crown of his cock down the length, slicking his slow, languid strokes. “Tiny little cunt, can barely handle anythin’.”
“She manages just fine. Don’t you, baby girl?”
“Yes, Da – ah! ” You jerk, hard, spine curving, head pinning itself against the side of the mattress as Rick suddenly thrusts forward, thick fingers bruising into your hips, burying over half his length inside in one swift push.
You choke – or, well, you start to, because Rick’s never just fucked into you like that before, and the burning pressure in your cunt takes your breath away, but then Daryl’s sliding into your throat and you actually choke. There’s a long, stupid moment where you forget how to breathe out of your nose, and so while Rick is groaning between your thighs, and Daryl is tossing his head back onto his shoulders, you’re breathlessly struggling against the sheets. Every inch you swallow further hinders your airway, but you can’t stop, you don’t have a choice, because Daryl cradles the back of your skull and bullies deeper, deeper, deeper, until eventually his balls are crushed against your nose.
“Your Daddy was right,” Daryl says, a bit winded. “You take anythin’ we give you, huh?”
Rick sniggers, beard etching along the soft skin of your sternum as he bends to kiss you, still sheathed inside your pussy. It’s then that you finally remember how to fucking breathe, because that tickles , and you kick out involuntarily with a wet, broken gurgle.
“She’s sure tryin’ ,” he says, patting your flank patronizingly. “Can only go so deep inside her ‘lil pussy before I hit the back of her.”
“Don’t stop you from fuckin’ her stupid,” Daryl fires back, thrusting shallowly into your mouth. You want to hollow your cheeks, swirl your tongue around his head, pull out all the stops to impress and dazzle them like normal, but you can’t . You’re so overwhelmed that your weak, jellowy limbs are trembling, and so all you’re capable of is lying there and taking whatever these men decide to give you. “I see her limpin’ everywhere after she spends a night with you, like you’re tryna split her in half.”
“Can’t help it,” Rick purrs, and there’s an edge to his voice, something feral and mean that makes you shudder. He picks up the pace, nestling himself between your legs and digging his fingers into the meat of your ass for purchase as he pumps his hips. Daryl’s not wrong – Rick fucks you like he’s trying to break you, like he’s trying to brand himself into the core of your body, but you don’t mind.
In fact, you beg him for it.
You splutter, voice high and strangled as Rick inevitably bumps your cervix trying to fit his whole length inside your cunt, and it hurts, of course, but it’s exquisite . Every thrust forces you to take Daryl’s cock deeper, as well, until you’re gagging and leaking drool down the sides of your face.
Daryl strokes his thumbs across your cheeks, breath rasping out in short bursts, tracing the bruise encompassing the left half of your face with something that feels like reverence. He’s gentler with you than Rick is, handles you more like you’re something that might crack apart at the slightest provocation, but he’s no less passionate. He just likes to take his time with you, likes to wind you up take you apart, piece by piece, until you’re a shivery, blabbering mess – and he’s so fucking good at it .
He backs up, dragging his cock out of your throat completely, thick strands of saliva stretching and snapping between your lips and the glistening ball of his piercing. You whine , immediately on the verge of tears, because your slow, cottony brain can only comprehend pleasure and more, and his absence directly defies both of those imperatives. If your arms weren’t numb beneath your body, you’d grab him by the root and put him back where he belongs, but they are, so you can’t, and so you cry .
“Aww, see whatcha did,” Rick huffs, rhythm undisrupted. With your mouth now (painfully, wretchedly) empty, he keeps punching these pitiable uh uh uh sounds out of you. “Made the little baby cry.”
“Daddy, c…come back,” you implore, gazing up at Daryl’s flushed face, the way his hair is falling into his eyes, the sheen of sweat glowing on the hint of exposed collarbone beneath his shirt. He pushes air out through his pursed lips and smiles, bright and sweet, down at you.
“I am, I am, shh,” he soothes. “Don’t gotta cry. My knees are killin’ me. Scoot ‘er back, Rick, I gotta get up on the bed.”
Rick snorts but obliges, hooking his arms in the ditches of your knees and dragging you further up the mattress, damp sheets skidding beneath your ass. The blood that’s pooled in your head starts to sluggishly flow back into the rest of your body, which is more than a little disorienting, but then Daryl’s back, kneeling by your head, and suddenly you couldn’t give a fuck about how dizzy you are.
“Showin’ your age, old man,” Rick pokes, and Daryl cuffs him on the shoulder.
“Fuck you, dude,” he says, grinning, combing your hair out of your face and gripping himself by the base. He guides his dick back to where it belongs, hot and throbbing in the back of your throat, and he’s pulling your hair just a little too hard, but only because he’s supporting your head. He doesn’t mean to, and even though pain is seething along the barely-scabbed wounds dappled at your temple, it’s grounding. Without that little bite of pain, you’re worried you might float away from these men.
Rick moans , a low, rough sound that twirls the blood-hot coil winding between your hips tighter, and places one calloused palm on the cushy swell of your lower stomach.
“Fuckin’ pokin’ outta your tummy, baby, god damn . You seein’ this?” He juts his chin down at you, and you know he feels how you spasm around his length when Daryl reaches down and replaces Rick’s hand with his own, massaging the spot where Rick’s cock is pounding against your insides. Your flesh ripples and bulges in time with Rick’s pistoning hips, and beneath the thinly affected veneer of irritation, Daryl is fucking impressed.
“Showoff,” he says.
“I can see you stickin’ out her throat, man,” Rick points out. “Takin’ that shit like a champ, baby girl, lookit you go .”
Daryl looks down and flashes you that adoring, small smile again. You can hardly make it out through the tears spilling over your waterline, but it warms you from the inside out nevertheless.
That’s for you . Daryl doesn’t really smile at a whole bunch of people, but on the rare occasion one slips across his face, it’s never like this. You know that this expression is meant for your eyes alone, and it’s equal parts exhilarating and heart-melting.
Then, of course, Daryl grips you gently around the throat, and his eyes round at the edges once he realizes he can, indeed, feel his cock through it. The way he raises his other hand and digs his teeth into the knuckles makes you throb , because you’ve fucked enough times to know that means he’s close and trying to stave off an impending orgasm. He never stops thrusting, though, doesn’t even slow his pace, and when he bumps your soft palate hard enough to make you gag, Rick groans .
“Fuck, do that again, man,” he wheezes, sitting back on his haunches. He lifts your lower body and holds your hips in place, ensuring that you’re tilted at the perfect angle while he fucks into you like a life-sized cocksleeve.
“Huh?” he huffs after a moment, clearly distracted.
“Gag her,” Rick elaborates, and when you cut your eye to the side, you see the pink of his tongue darting out to wet his lips, like a wolf salivating over its kill. “Gets so fuckin’ tight when she can’t breathe. Do it again.”
Daryl shakes his head, his laughter coarse and quiet. “You’re sick, man,” he says, and it sounds like a reprimand, but he must not think Rick’s all that sick – he cups the dip of your skull and thrusts aaallll the way into your throat in one long, smooth motion until you’re kissing the mound of dark hair on his pelvis.
Predictably, you gag, hard . What you don’t expect, however, is for Daryl’s thumb and index finger to come down and pinch your fucking nostrils shut.
Your lungs cramp, and you stare up at Daryl with wild, imploring eyes, but he just pumps his hips and shushes you.
“I know, I know,” he coos. “Y’look so fuckin’ cute when you choke, though, baby, jus’ relax. You can take it.”
“If you wanna breathe,” Rick pants, lightly smacking your hip to draw your attention back to him, “you’re gonna cum on Daddy’s cock while I breed your pretty ‘lil cunt. Gotta make sure it sticks, baby girl.”
Your body fights to draw a breath, chest squeezing, throat contracting, as your eyes spin back into your head and you cum hard . It fucking hurts – your body reminds you it’s still deeply injured as every muscle you have goes taut, so pain simmers beneath the staggering pleasure that crashes through each of your nerve endings. It’s like pressing your thumb into a fresh bruise, achy and uncomfortable but fucking addictive , and Rick just keeps going, and going, and going .
If you had any air to spare, you’d scream .
But you don’t, and that’s made abundantly clear by the way black creeps into the edges of your vision, further and further, until you can hardly make out either of the men inside you –
Rick’s cumming, filling your cunt with so much liquid heat you know it has to be gushing down your inner thighs, soaking the sheets, and he’s grinding the heel of his hand into the pouch of your stomach so hard that you feel fuller than you ever thought was possible –
What is that? There’s a ringing in your ears, tinny and obnoxious, and it drowns out whatever Rick is saying –
The room grows dimmer and dimmer still, and the primitive part of your brain dedicated to survival is wailing at you, urging you to run , to escape , to do something , but even if you could, you don’t want to –
It dawns on you, distantly, that you’re going to pass out, any second now, speared on both his and Daryl’s cocks, and you don’t care because you’re still fucking cumming –
The pressure on your nose abates at the same time Daryl pulls himself out of your mouth.
Fresh, cool air quenches your burning lungs, so much that you choke on it, and the world snaps back into vivid color. You cough, though it comes out more like a sob – oh , well, that would be because you’re actively crying. Weeping, really, might be the better word for the way big, fat tears cascade down your flushed cheeks, and how you’re hiccupping around the lump in your throat. You sink back into the bed, and it’s only when your pussy starts clenching around nothing that you realize you’re suddenly, woefully empty. Once you swallow a few mouthfuls of drool and have your breathing (somewhat) under control, you call out.
“Daddy?”
You’re not sure which one of them you’re talking to – both, you suppose. Either way, it’s Daryl who responds.
“Easy, girly,” he says, voice further away than it was a second ago, “‘m right here.”
“Ain’t done, sweet thing,” Rick says. He’s taken Daryl’s spot beside your head, a fact you’re only marginally aware of by the time he’s grasping both of your shoulders and tugging you into a sitting position. He unloops his belt from around your wrists, and your arms ache with fresh blood once you roll your shoulders out and drop your hands into your lap. The leather rasps and the buckle clinks once Rick tosses it to the ground, and then your back is colliding with his sweaty chest while he noses at the column of your throat.
“Still gotta take care of your Daddy,” he murmurs, slipping both hands down the length of your arms. He laces his fingers through the gaps in yours, and at first, you think he’s just doing it to be sweet, to hold you – you understand however, once your head rolls forward and you focus on what’s happening between your thighs, that this is Rick’s way of keeping you still. “You don’t wanna leave him hangin’, do ya?”
You blink with leaden eyelids. Daryl’s inching himself closer to your slit, one hand braced on the tender give of your inner thigh, the other stroking up and down the length of his cock. His piercing glitters among the mess of precum and spit welling at the flushed tip, and air hisses out through your teeth once he slaps it once, twice , three times against your messy little hole.
“She looks sleepy,” he says, head tilted slightly to one side. You drop your legs open further, and let Daryl hitch his palm in the ditch of your knee and push it toward your chest .
“Well, she ain’t gotta be awake for you to cum in her, man,” Rick laughs. “Right, baby?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“That’s our big girl.” He’s warm and solid at your back, and his thumbs are swirling circles into the mildly excoriated flesh of your wrists, and when Daryl eases himself inside you, Rick peppers kisses along the slope of your shoulder.
You’re so sore already, and your swollen walls almost force Daryl out before he’s had a chance to notch the head of his cock past the edge of your hole, but you just sag against Rick and take deep, slow breaths. Because the burn of Daryl’s cock inside of you is soothing , distracts you from the way your battered body is beginning to throb anew as the glow of your orgasm dissipates, and when you whimper, he bends and presses his lips to your forehead.
“You can doze if you wanna, pretty girl,” he says, but if the way he’s pulsing inside you is any indication, you know he’s seconds away from blowing his load.
“S’okay,” you say, breath stuttering around a yawn. “I’m okay.”
You jolt and cry out like you’ve been hit with a live wire when you feel fingers at your clit, rubbing tentative circles around the oversensitive little nub, and Rick snickers.
“Oh, I know ,” he mocks. “But you can give us another, baby. Know ya can. ‘S gotta catch, remember?”
“I-I…I can’t, Daddy, I–”
“Shhh, none a’ that,” Daryl chides, and he’s not fucking you nearly as hard as Rick was, but you’re gasping and twitching around his length all the same. You can’t believe their ministrations are actually bringing you to the edge again, because you were certain they’d wrung you dry, but pleasure licks up your spine and smolders between your hipbones as Daryl bucks away at your cunt.
“Wonder which load’s gonna take,” Rick muses aloud, and you whine . “But even if it don’t this time, we’ll just keep tryin’. That sound good, baby?”
“Y-Yes, Daddy, fuck, please, ah –”
Rick’s mouth is at your ear, beard scuffing your jaw. “Better pray it’s mine, sweet thing, or I’ll just have to fill you while you’re dreamin’,” he says, quiet enough that you know Daryl can’t hear, nasty and possessive .
“Oh, fuck , there it is – ”
Daryl embeds himself inside you to the hilt as he cums, shoulders trembling and brows knotted together, and there’s the unmistakable sound of liquid gushing out of your pussy as you follow right behind, sobbing and thrashing.
“That’s it, girly, fuck, keep goin’ –”
“Knew you’d squirt if I promised we’d knock you up,” Rick brags, and you feel your face bloom red.
You’re half-asleep by the time Daryl finally pulls out, spent and soft, and mostly asleep after they’ve both finished cleaning cum off your lower body, checking the bruises on your ribcage again, and feeding you sips of cold water. Rick even fetches some oily, medicinal-smelling cream and rubs it into your wrists, but not before he flips each one and presses a chaste kiss into the thin, raw flesh. They strip you, flinging Rick’s shirt into the same corner your deflated ice pack resides in, and pile your various, mismatched blankets on top of you. You’re tucked against Daryl’s side, his chin balanced atop your sweaty head, when the hard line of Rick’s body shimmies up behind you.
The three of you hardly ever sleep together in the same bed. For one, it gets far too hot, and you’ve been told you’re a bit fussy after a full night of tossing and turning and flinging off blankets only to have the body of a grown man drape itself across your back. It’s also quite cramped, because while you can fit in a full-sized bed just fine, Rick and Daryl have to fight not to fall off the sides when they’re cuddling you – and that’s when there’s only one of them present. It’s not practical, often uncomfortable, and they’re not too keen on the idea of accidentally snuggling up to each other during the night (men and their weird hang-ups), but Rick is banding his arms around your waist and bumping his nose against your nape while Daryl hooks your ankles together anyway.
You’re not sure when you fall asleep. It’s somewhere between Daryl whispering about how well you did into the crown of your head, and Rick swirling delicate circles into the flesh of your stomach, like he’s hoping to feel something.
Maybe, in the safety of your dreams, bracketed between both men, you’re hoping he does, too.