So I'm going to try and do Rhinozilla's 30 Days of Caryl Challenge on Tumblr. I can't promise that I'll get to one every day, now that I am an Employed Member of Society, and I can't promise they'll even be any good, but I can promise that I will do them all, eventually, and I hope you enjoy them (actually, I can't promise that last one either, but I hope for it in any case). :)
Day 1: The first time Carol/Daryl heard Daryl/Carol laugh.
Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead. TWD is the property of Robert Kirkman/AMC, and are not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only.
He was sitting in front of his tent, wiping down one of his bolts, when he heard it. Laughter. Quiet, , soft, but strong, a laugh that wasn't hiding. A laugh that was meant to be heard.
Daryl jerked his head up and looked over towards the tables. It was the mother and their kids. The dark-haired widow. Her boy. The little girl. And the quiet one.
Not a single one was paying him any attention, disproving his immediate reaction that they were somehow laughing at him, so his hackles settled back and he went back to his cleaning. One of his eyes, though, kept straying lazily over to the tables.
"Do you have one, Sophia?"
The girl looked as though she had been asked to give a presentation, her eyes wide in her freckled, sun-kissed face.
"I don't know. None of them are any good."
"That's okay," said the girl's mother. The quiet one. Carol. "We'll be the judge of that. If you have one, you should share it."
Sophia looked at the three of them — Carl, Lori, Carol — as though to make sure she really had their permission. Then she turned her head towards him, and Daryl shifted his gaze back down to his bolts, only to realize a second later that she wasn't looking at him, but rather, she was looking for someone. Someone else. Someone with a mean glaze who stomped around camp and loved the sound of his own, heavy footfalls. Someone Daryl had known before.
But that someone wasn't around, and so, relieved, she turned back to the group.
"Um, okay, well here's one I heard from school…what's long, brown, and sticky?"
Lori and Carol hummed appreciatively, pausing appropriately before asking, "I don't know, what?"
"A stick!"
Daryl's snort caught him by surprise and discretely he checked to see if anyone had heard him, the tips of his ears flaming. But no, nobody heard him, the mothers and the boy and the girl were too busy laughing themselves, and while three voices blended together, one stood out, clear and ringing like a bell chime. Her eyes were crinkled at the corners, and her tongue stuck a little bit between her teeth as she giggled away, and it didn't occur to Daryl to be annoyed by it. He only wondered if she would laugh like that again, if her daughter would tell another dumb joke, the key to unlocking that light sound from within. But with the world the way it was, and a person like Ed skulking and lumbering about, there wasn't really too much to laugh at these days.
So just in case, Daryl bottled that sound and kept it close, so when he needed to, he could open it up again and her listen to her waiting voice.