Work Text:
“Daaaaaaare! Where did you say my black tee-shirt is again?” Rick yelled from the closet by the bathroom and Daryl smiled to himself as he made his way to him from the kitchen.
“Ya ever stop yellin’?” Daryl smirked at Rick's appearance, bent over and almost disappearing in the closet in search of his clothes, his round backside peeking from under the towel tightly fastened around his hips. “I have it, idiot.”
Rick got out of under the hanging shirts looking utterly too cute to be true with his curls dangling, wet and tousled over his forehead and down his neck. He smiled with all his teeth as he looked into Daryl's eyes. “What?”
“What would I do without you, huh?” and Daryl wanted to be gruff, if only for appearances’ sake but he couldn't, not with how fond the man sounded as he talked, his southern drawl giving warmth to every syllable.
“C'mon, put yer pants on, we're already late.”
Rick nodded twice, a child almost ready to salute and then he walked back to the bathroom, pants and underwear in hand, a new strut to his steps, leaving Daryl to walk his way back to the living-room, hands going up to his hair to knot them in a messy bun above his nape. Too damn hot again.
A few minutes later, Daryl looked up from his phone as Rick entered the room as well, all ready except for his bare torso and his hair still dripping steadily over his shoulders. Grinning gently, Daryl got up from the couch and beckoned his husband closer.
“C’mere, you wet dog,”
Rick laughed and shook himself in kind, prompting Daryl to push him gently in an effort to stay well and dry. “Ok, ok, enough! Raise yer arms.”
Rick did, and Daryl passed his head and arms through the designated holes of a black tee-shirt not dissimilar to the one he was wearing himself under his winged vest. The other man watched him closely as he let himself be dressed. “S'there something different about you today?” Rick bowed his head a little as he talked, trying to catch Daryl's fleeting gaze.
The fact that he wouldn't meet his eyes was worrying at first but then he did, and he was smiling, and there was mischief in his eyes and Rick loved that so much his chest heaved. “Nope.” Daryl clicked his tongue and his husband let it go, thinking that if there was an explanation to the look in his man's eyes, he'd find out soon enough.
The officer bent down to catch the other man's lips in a soft, quick kiss and Daryl let him, resting their foreheads together when he broke it. “Can we go now?” the man whispered and Rick nodded, “Let's, yeah.”
The drive to Hershel's farm was quiet. A silent exchange of smiles and loving glances and still, there was that little glint in Daryl's eyes, humorous, tender even emotional at times it seemed. Rick refrained from asking questions. He didn't have to, Daryl sometimes needed space to find his words and that had always been a-okay, now wouldn't be any different.
The invitation to the Greene Farm had taken Rick by surprise, it was the middle of March and only a few weeks before the traditional Easter gathering that was planned every year but well, it would be one more occasion to be with their family of happy strays. And Hershel had been uncharacteristically firm about it. So here they went.
And here they were, too. Daryl pulled the car up Hershel's driveway before he killed the engine. Turning sideways in his seat as he gestured for Rick to get out. “Go on, I got somethin’ I need to get from the trunk. I'll be right after ya.”
Rick paused with his hand on the door handle as he listened to Daryl's carefully poised voice, the words following each other in perfect order but again, Rick had to smile. He looked up to Daryl, I hear you , his bright eyes said, you're hiding something and I can't wait to know what , his toothy smile said. And then he got out, and Daryl chuckled as he watched him, the back of him, going up the steps of the porch and entering the house.
Getting out of the car and grabbing the bag he'd prepared for later only took a few more seconds but Daryl needed to be sure Rick would walk in first. Once he heard greetings filtering through the panel door, Daryl shouldered said bag and followed in.
The sight he was met with not only warmed his heart but made it flutter so much that his eyes watered a bit. Goddamnit. And they all looked at him right then, when he coughed to disguise his sudden emotion and their gentle gazes to him just how miserably he'd failed.
Most of them waved or simply came to peck his cheek in lieu of hellos but Maggie just had to hug the hell out of him. Carol, too. And, weirdly enough, Abraham as well. When that was done and everyone had had their chance to squeeze his breath from his lungs, Daryl caught Rick's gaze on him, confusion painted over his features at the unusually warm welcome they'd both received. Daryl just shrugged, and winked. Rick chuckled. Okay .
The hours that followed were pretty much the same, filled with gentle looks from everyone and Rick’s questions swirling in his mind. They sat a the massive pine dinner table, all of them easily fitting around it, Hershel taking the lead as he sat as the head of the table.
Their bellies filled to the brim with Annette’s fine cooking they eventually migrated to the various sofas of the sitting-room, falling into an easy chatter, the gentle banter between them made easier when the discussions turned away from mundane topics to land onto the more adventurous territory of adult subjects.
Rick laughed at Maggie’s retelling of Glenn’s awkward courting, he grinned at Abraham’s speech on seducing women and smirked when Carol was quick to shut him up, he smiled gently when Andrea and Michonne hugged just a little more closely on their loveseat, the latter seemingly uncharacteristically uncomfortable.
And then came blushing time. That was a thing. Daryl did this to him, turned him into an adolescent mess of flush quite often and in the presence of their gathered family, knowing they did nothing but exacerbate his husband’s reactions, Daryl made a point of making that happen first chance he got.
He’d laughed too loud at Abraham’s over-sexual jokes. Or so it seemed, because a minute later, “Wanna hear what happened the first time I accepted to sleep with that dork?” Daryl said, and caught everyone’s attention, even Hershel’s and Rick gasped, “You would not ?!”
“Yes, yes, I’m just ‘bout to,”
“Yeah, we wanna hear it, what happened Dare?” Maggie’s over-excited voice resounded in the otherwise silent room. It wasn’t often that Daryl shared anything of the kind and everyone was suddenly dying to listen to what he was about to say.
Daryl smiled, a wide, wicked thing that showed all his teeth, Rick was already blushing and hid his face in the crook of the archer’s neck with a flushed groan. “The stupid sweet boy he was got soft every time my face showed even the slightest sign of discomfort, it took us ages.”
Rick might have died of embarrassment. Or heat. Yeah, the burn in his cheeks and down his neck might have accelerated his disappearing from the land of the living and everyone was laughing and Daryl’s shoulder jumped under his chin as he let himself take in the full glory of the memory. But then he turned just enough to deposit a kiss in Rick’s wild curls and all was okay.
Rick looked up, just slightly leaving his safe refuge to peer into his husband’s eyes and all he saw was glee, adoration, waves of infinite love and nothing would ever be able to soothe Rick’s heart of its aches better than those eyes, better than this man--
“Ya gettin’ sappy on me again?” Rick nodded bashfully against the other man’s shoulder and this time around, Carol’s chuckles behind him just furthered the comfort he felt. Happiness looked just like that, it didn’t get any better than that.
Or so he thought, until that look was back in Daryl’s eyes, mischief , blue eyes so clearly proud of themselves that their joy flowed out of them and straight to bringing back Rick’s questions, “Can ya grab the camera from the bag for me? I wanna take some pictures.”
It seemed out of the blue but Rick nodded, “Sure,” he detangled his legs from Daryl’s and got up from the couch, going a little way back to the living-room where Daryl’s shoulder bag was sitting next to the man’s chair. He opened the bag and was blindly starting to look for the camera when his hand touched something so soft he had to see what it was. He unzipped the bag further and uncovered something that looked like... footed pajamas?
He looked back into the living-room, the camera forgotten and clutching at the small piece of clothing he’d found. He passed his head through the doorframe just as Daryl got up from his seat, facing away from Rick as he shed his jacket and stretched his back, arms going up to the ceiling and showing off his gorgeous biceps and shoulders, or at least that’s were Rick’s focus might have gone had he not cocked his head to the side to read the inscription on the man’s back, “Dare, why does it only say “WE ARE” on your back?” Rick asked, his hand wrapping reflexively around the soft pajamas, and his voice small, unsure even as his lips were battling with a barely born smile, a barely there intuition.
Daryl turned to face him with the greatest grin Rick had ever seen on his face, “I dunno, why don’t ya look at yers?”
And Rick immediately tried but the angle was all wrong and after a few pitiful attempts at contorsioning to be able to read, Daryl huffed a laugh, “Find a mirror, Grimes.” he pointed right behind the couch they’d been sitting on, how had he not noticed it before?
Rick walked the few steps that separated him from finally piercing the mystery and his eyes went wide, so wide indeed that Daryl wasn’t sure which one was widest, his smile or his gaze.
“PREGGO”
Rick seemed to go through all existing emotions at once and eventually, his jaw went down to the floor as his mind struggled to process the simple word, it went down the floor at the same time as his eyebrows tried to climb up to his hairline, his heart, much more caught up to the meaning of it all, jumping to reshape his eyes.
A fish out of the water, Rick's lips opened and closed as he looked deep into the blue pools of his husband's tender eyes, then down at the velvet-soft green baby PJs and back to Daryl. He gasped, looking for air before his head tilted again, True? and Daryl nodded quickly.
Everyone around sat frozen in silent emotion, waiting on Rick.
Like a reflex answer of his body, an essential need to be close to his love, Rick extended his one free hand at the same time as he walked to Daryl, wordlessly crushing the other man in a shaking embrace, breathing deep into his messily bunned hair, kissing his neck in a frenzy of lips needing to find skin, warmth.
Utter, unaltered, absolute, pure happiness coming out of him in waves.
He gasped again when Daryl's arms circled his back and clutched at him with just as much strength, a wet chuckle escaping the archer's throat.
This was what they'd always wanted, always talked about, hours on end spent discussing parenthood and parenting, being a family, recognizing each other in a single, tiny, adorable face. A legacy of the love that was coursing through their veins, creating a life of their own to adore and cherish, to protect and bring happiness to. A child of their own.
They'd talked about it so much and tried for so long. “ It's harder for men” , “there's only patience and perseverance” , “you'll get there” , years and years of doctors and family alike, encouraging and helping them throughout.
A child of their own.
Rick was crying and as Daryl nestled his face in the crook of his neck, the officer was sure his man wasn't faring any better. Rick was crying because, yeah, that was what happiness looked like and it just got as good as it could ever be.
They were preggo. They were going to be Dads. They were going to be a family, together, and they had never been more ready.