World War II AU. Carol and Daryl meet at a USO canteen in 1945 Atlanta.
Notes: For visual reference, Daryl would look like short haired, clean shaven NR in "The Notorious Betty Page" and MMB like more like she did in "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys."
In 1940, pianist Fats Waller recorded a novelty song called "Abercrombie Had a Zombie" about the effects of the cocktail on a previously law-abiding citizen who has a few Zombies and becomes a public menace. The rum and fruit juice drink had been a big hit at the 1939 World's Fair in New York, but was infamous for the punch it packed while seeming merely to be an innocent fruity concoction. Something like our Carol in Alexandria...
The Very Merry Widow
When it was teatime she used to stop in
For a cup of tea with Mrs. Abercrombie
But now at teatime she likes to drop in
For a double scotch and soda or a zombie
The merry widow wore the smartest dresses
In the sheerest black she looked excitingly swell
But she packed her pretties away
Wears a uniform ev'ry day
Now the little lady has no time for dancing
Does her job with great devotion
She's a cinch for big promotion
And they say she does her duties very, very well
Very, very well,
Very, very well.
CHORUS:
Now she hasn't any time for sambas
And she hasn't a minute to spare for boogie-woogie
Hip-hip-hooray, she's on her way, no time to play now
This merry little widow is a busy little widow
Working for the U.S.A.
From the film "Pin Up Girl" (1944), Lyrics: Mack Gordon / Music: James V. Monaco, Betty Grable & Chorus (Film Soundtrack) – 1944
"Europe or the Pacific?" Carol asked the tall soldier who was holding her so carefully in his arms.
"Pacific, Miss. 6th Marine Division scout and sniper, Company H of 29th Marine Regiment, just out of Okinawa." the man said somewhat softly in a gravely south Georgia drawl as if he was reporting for duty. His demeanor and his looks were an odd combination. His broad shoulders and muscular arms pulled tight against his beige uniform shirt, tailored to his lean frame. The long length of his legs was emphasized by the red stripe down the side of the dark blue razor creased pants, a tan belt circling his narrow waist, and there was a spit polish shine on his brown shoes.
He exuded strength, but there was an edge to it, as if he'd been restored to health after a serious illness and so didn't take it for granted. The rust blonde hair was clipped short against the tanned column of his neck, making his slightly pointed ears stick out a bit from his head, but fell in slightly longer than regulation bangs down onto his brow, giving him a bashful look when he ducked his head down as he spoke.
Carol met his eyes and got lost in the sadness and longing she saw there behind the warm blue.
"I...I...I heard it was bad there, Marine." Carol said, feeling anything she could say would be inadequate.
"Suppose that's why they give us an extended R n' R, Miss."
"Carol."
"Miss Carol." he nodded with a hint of a smile playing at his lips. They turned up more on the left, which was emphasized by the beauty mark at the curve of his cheek.
Carol looked at him expectantly.
He blinked at her and his feet briefly faltered in the dance as if he couldn't concentrate on more than one thing at a time.
"My buddies call me Dix...or Double D..." he mumbled, coming to a standstill.
"What did your folks name you?" Carol asked him, her eyes crinkling at the corners with her sweet encouraging smile.
"Uh—oh...Daryl...Lance Corporal Daryl Dixon." he said, staring down at her.
"And where are you from, Daryl?" Carol asked, gently trying to start him moving again by stepping towards him, but instead she came up hard against the wall of his chest when he didn't move.
"Oh—s-sorry Miss...Carol..." he stammered, his hands going to her upper arms to stabilize her. "Ain't much of a dancer..." he added, embarrassed.
"Then why'd you ask me to dance?" Carol asked him, curious.
She'd just started here at the USO, one of the many things her husband had never let her do. Now that he was gone, now that she was alone, she felt it was her duty to volunteer here while she waited for her application to join the women's service core was being processed. She'd been standing along the edge of the dance floor talking to her young friends, the lovely Maggie Greene and her vivacious blonde younger sister, Beth, who'd just turn eighteen and had finally been given permission to come work at the canteen by their strict father, a Baptist preacher.
Both girls were dressed stylishly, Beth in virginal white with blue ribbons that matched her kewpie doll eyes and Maggie in palest saffron yellow. One of them alone would have been a KO to any young man's heart and standing next to them in her widow black, Carol felt like a crow amongst song birds.
When the handsome southerner in his crisp dress uniform had approached them, Carol had expected him to gravitate to one or the other of the sisters and had started to step back to give him a clear field. Instead he had stopped in front of her and held out his hand.
"Only way I could think to talk to you." Daryl said, blushing, and his guileless honesty made Carol's lipstick red rosebud mouth open in surprise.
"How about we get a cup of Joe?" Carol suggested, raising her eyebrows at him.
"I'd like that." Daryl nodded and stepped back, releasing her arms and sticking out his elbow in invitation to escort her to the coffee urn at the back of the room.
Sitting at one of the small café tables in the outdoor courtyard, the sounds of the orchestra playing their version of Red Sails in the Sunset, Carol studied the man seated across from her.
"May I ask you something?" Carol said.
"Only if I get to ask you something back." Daryl said, leaning back and giving her a smiling narrow eyed look as he tapped his pack of Pall Malls against the table before pulling one out and lighting it.
Daryl silently offered her a cigarette, but she declined, taking a sip of her black coffee instead, grimacing slightly before she spoke.
"Long as I'm free to say no." Carol quipped back.
Daryl nodded in agreement, the bargain struck, and then blew out a smoke trail to the side to keep it from going into her face.
Carol studied him again for a minute before she spoke, wondering what it was about him that was so different than the other young men she'd met tonight; why his soul in particular spoke to hers.
"There must be twenty women here tonight—why did you ask me to dance?"
"Your dress." he said, his voice dropping into that low gentle register as he stared back at her. "It's in your eyes...you lost someone...right?"
Carol stared back, caught in some spell of shared grief he was casting.
"I lost someone too..." he huffed out a little sigh, tapping the ash off his half smoked cigarette, a crooked trail of smoke rising from the still burning end, "lost everyone... my folks before the war... my brother Merle—he was in the Navy- a few weeks ago; kamikaze attack on his ship."
"My husband..." Carol said, "Six months ago."
Daryl nodded in understanding, taking another drag into his lungs and exhaling slowly; the number of war widows grew every day.
"Not in the war—he was 4F—he went to pick up our daughter after dance class. He was drinking... hit head on with a logging truck; died instantly. She lived for a few days after the accident." Carol said, her quiet voice raw. Even six months later, talking about it was like someone was plunging a razor sharp blade through her heart.
"Shit—I didn't mean for you to have to—shit, I'm sorry!" Daryl said, berating himself, stubbing his cigarette out rapidly into the ashtray. He'd just wanted to be with someone real, someone who'd shared the experience of grief and instead he'd opened up obviously fresh wounds. Reaching out, he put his hand over hers, his thumb locking her delicate fingers against his palm.
"Are you hungry?" Carol asked him suddenly, gripping his hand back.
At first Daryl looked perplexed, but then nodded agreeably, glad she wasn't mad at him. The lukewarm coffee and stale donuts here weren't much of a reason to stay. If she wanted to go grab a bite he was game.
"Come on." Carol said, and stood, keeping a firm hold on his hand. "I know a great place."
The great place turned out to be her place, a fourth floor walk-up near the hospital. Daryl learned she was a nurse and that she had enlisted and was waiting for her orders. Carol learned his tour of duty was up, he was being honorably discharged in a month, and was stationed here in Atlanta until then.
She made omelets with dried eggs and some tinned ham she'd been saving for a special occasion, sautéed with tomatoes, peppers and onions from the courtyard V-garden plot everyone in the building had. While she cooked he talked about his days in the back hills and hollows of King County, hunting squirrels and rabbits, which had gotten him a marksmanship duty in the Marines , eventually asked to join the scout and sniper company, one of the most demanding of all jobs in the military.
The mostly solitary nature of it, sitting with one other man, his spotter, in some high vantage place form long stretches suited him, but he had also made friends with the other men in his company, all of them dependent on the others for their survival. As his buddy Glenn always said, "We can make it together, but we can only make it together." Only four of them had made it back from Okinawa, out of a group of twenty. It was more than just his brother by blood that he had lost in the war.
After dinner he helped her clear the table, rolling up his sleeves and starting the dishes without being asked, and was shocked to see that the simple gesture made her start to cry. Unsure of what he should do, he just stood and waited for her to let him know what she needed. When she wrapped her arms around him from behind and rested her head on his back, thanking him, he stayed still.
Her warmth against him felt right.
She released him after a couple of minutes and moved up to stand next to him, picking up the dishcloth to dry the few dishes from their supper after he washed and rinsed them. When the skillet was set to soak she took his hand and led him to her bedroom.
Carol had never been made love to with such reverence. Every touch, every gesture was worshipful and gentle. He'd started by pressing her back against the bed room door and thoroughly kissing her, spending more time on just that than her husband had ever spent on the entire act during the fifteen years of their marriage.
"You're so soft...forgot there could be anything so soft n' good in this world..." Daryl whispered as he found the pins in her hair, loosening the curls to spill down over her nape. He nosed into her neck, snuffling deep, making her give a giggling snort at him.
"What? Smell good too. Everything you got goin' on here is pretty damn perfect." he told her, his hands circling around her slender waist, his lips kissing down to her collarbone, just visible in the scoop neck collar of her dress, right next to the tiny gold cross nestled there in the hollow of her throat.
Carol pushed at his chest until he looked at her face.
"You don't have to say things like that..."
"You don't know me very well sweetheart, but I don't lie." Daryl said, quietly staring down at her, "I tell the plain truth, call 'em how I see 'em. Someone made you believe different, he's the liar."
He said it with such sincerity that she found herself believing him. Keeping her eyes on his, slowly she reached her hands up and began unbuttoning her dress, but he stopped her.
"Let me?" he asked, somehow shy and seductive and reassuring all at the same time.
He undressed her as if he was unwrapping her, as if she was a gift to him he'd been waiting for, but wanted to savor its reveal. With each piece of clothing he removed, his lips found the silken skin underneath, tasting, lavishing it with kisses and tongue.
"Ah fuck..." he moaned when he saw that her under things were black as well, lace trimmed cotton, even the brassiere. He sucked at the nipples through the cloth while he reached around to work the clasp and then helped her remove it, making her moan as he returned his mouth to its insistent mapping of the tight peaks and valleys revealed.
When he came to her garters he unclipped them easily and then knelt before her so he could slide the stockings down her legs to pool on the floor, lifting her delicately arched feet one at a time. He ran his hands back up the long smooth insides of her legs while he pressed kisses to the curve of her abdomen under her navel.
Carol gasped when his lips trailed lower just as his hands sleeked up her thighs and he repeated the same scenting of her there as he'd done at her throat.
"Ah shit, sweetheart—you're like candy—so sweet..." Daryl groaned.
"Daryl?" Carol panted, unsure. "I thought you wanted—" she could see the hard length of him outlined clearly under the pressed cloth of his uniform pants.
"Trust me?" he asked, kissing back up over her belly and then lifting her so he could take her to the bed. He set her on the edge, leaning over her to kiss her more until she was strung tight, wanting whatever it was he was trying to give her.
Carol leaned back on her elbows, watching him through passion drugged narrowed eyes as he took off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt just far enough to pull it and his undershirt off over his head and then knelt in front of her again. She absently noted he had several tattoos and scars on his tightly muscled torso, but the needy look in his eyes was what held her attention.
"Trust me?" he asked again, waiting until she dipped her chin in acquiescence.
Daryl put his hands on her knees and she flinched involuntarily.
"Easy..." he soothed, turning his hands so he could rub his knuckles over and over on the insides of her knees until she relaxed and let them drift apart further for him. Using his fingertips only, keeping his eyes on hers he played delicate caresses up and down the down soft skin of her thighs.
What he did next shocked Carol; she was a nurse, she'd studied anatomy, but somehow all of the text books failed to mention that when tenderly caressed by a man who clearly knew what he was doing, there was a place on her body that could send her higher than any number of Zombies imbibed, her head lighter than a German airship...
He'd already made her feel wonderful with his touch and kisses, better than she'd ever felt, desired and cared for, but when his soft strong tongue rasped against that place...
"What...what are you doing to me?" she asked breathlessly, lifting her hips and reaching her hands down to touch his head buried between her thighs. She felt the fresh stubble at his nape and tangled her fingers in the softer long locks above it.
Daryl didn't answer. Instead he sucked down, holding her hips still by spreading his hands over them, and strummed rapidly with the tip of his tongue against that most sensitive spot.
He shocked her again when, after she had just started to return to herself after the first orgasm of her life, he slid up and kissed her deeply, sharing with her the sweet taste her body had given him. Feeling wicked and bold then, she moved her hands to his belt, working the buckle, and felt his smile break the kiss.
"Your turn." Carol said, looking onto his warm blue eyes.
"You sure?" Daryl asked, looking at her searchingly.
Carol nodded yes and Daryl nodded back and reached in his pants pocket for his wallet. Opening it, he pulled out a small thin red white and blue tin about one inch square. The legend across the front read "Merry Widows, Rubber Prophylactics, Sold for Prevention of Disease, Service Packet."
Carol's eyes went wide.
"They give 'em to us when we came off the ship for R&R..." Daryl said, blushing. "I didn't plan... I mean that's not why I asked you to—" and then he lay back on the bed and put his arm over his eyes, about to die of embarrassment. "Shit."
"I think it's pretty romantic—to think of protecting us both..." and then she giggled, reading the name of the things again, "And I am a very merry widow presently..." she plucked the tin from his unresistant hand, and asked, tongue in cheek, pursing her lips at him, "What do you say, Marine? Wanna screw around?"
Daryl lowered his arm and tilted his head up so he could look down at her to see if she was serious. In response she held out the tin, a dimple creasing her cheek, while she boldly placed her other hand firmly on the fly of his deep blue, now not quite so freshly pressed uniform pants.
"The world's never going to be the same after this is all over, is it?" Carol asked, resting her head on his chest. They lay in the rumpled mess of her sheets, still tangled together, sated for now, with no place else to be until morning. She thought he'd want a smoke and offered to get up and find one of her husband's old ashtrays, but he could tell it bothered her, so he'd told her he was quitting.
"No—can't be. Too much dyin'; too many changes." Daryl replied. He'd killed others to survive, but as he watched both his friends and enemies die he'd realized there wasn't much difference. When a life was snuffed out the world lost something...the possibilities that person represented.
"When she died, I wished it had been me in that car instead of him. So he'd been the one left behind, trying to live with the pain." Carol admitted. "I couldn't think of a reason to go on..."
"That why you enlisted?" Daryl asked. "Lookin' for a way out?"
Carol stared at him. Her friends and co-workers had been proud of her decision, congratulated her on her patriotism, her ability to 'soldier on' after her losses. Only this man, this stranger who was now something more, had seen through to her real reason.
"Seen it in your eyes." Daryl said, and then reached up to hold her chin and softly kissed her. "Seen it in my mirror after Merle died."
Carol's eyes started to fill with tears.
"You know the beautiful thing I realized when I saw you standing there tonight?" Daryl said, rubbing his thumb against her jaw gently, "It ain't over. There's still good things. We get to start over; all of us, with each other."
He watched her, saw her eyes move to the picture of her daughter on her nightstand, saw the guilt that all survivors felt reflected in her eyes.
"Hey—we ain't dead, whatever happened, happened." Daryl said, his voice rougher to draw her attention back to him, "Let's start over."
"I want to." Carol said, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a ragged sigh.
"Well, you can." Daryl growled low in his throat, sounding almost desperate to convince her. He'd just found her; he wasn't going to let her slip away.
AN: With a period piece like this I always like to do some research to make it as accurate as possible. The prompt was the Betty Grable film I saw on TCM, in which she sang the song that seemed so fitting to Carol, part of which is quoted above.
Then when I found out that some of the WWII era condoms were named "Merry Widows," it all fell into place;-)
"By the time the U.S. entered World War II, American soldiers were much better prepared for VD. The military stopped focusing only on prevention through abstinence and post-infection treatment, incorporating condoms on its approved list of prophylactics. Troops could purchase sets of three condoms for ten cents at "pro stations" placed for easy access, day or night. The military also created an aggressive advertising campaign promoting safe sex through prevention, combining images of sexy women with the not-so-sexy effects of VD...Subtle hints at the tawdry or dangerous worked well for condoms, with brands like Devil Skin, Shadows, and Salome hitting the shelves in the '20s and '30s. One popular label, Merry Widows, was named after a long-standing slang term for condoms that implied a certain illicit pleasure." Source: a fascinating article: Hunter Oatman-Stanford. "Getting it on: the Covert History of the American Condom." Collector's Weekly, Aug. 16, 2012.
Daryl's unit in the story is based on a real one of Scout and Sniper Marines that was at Okinawa in 1945. His uniform as described is what they wore in the Pacific theater for formal dress at that time. Source: US Marine Corps. website.
Thanks for reading-let me know if you like this enough for me to continue it.