"The thing with Daryl is that I think you have to drink with him. I'd definitely drink with him. I don't think Daryl hates everyone off the bat; he's just super cautious. If you want to share some Southern Comfort, I think that's a good way to get to know Daryl."
Norman Reedus

_.+._

"Care for any company?" A woman's voice asked as a bottle of Southern Comfort was set down in front of his face.
Daryl Dixon had been laying half way across the greasy booth table after a long day and a short night before.
He'd been so focused on peeling the label off his beer bottle that he'd not even heard the clacking of woman's heals as he was walked up to.

With a tilt and a roll of his head, he turned to look at who was speaking to him, ready to tell the –prostitute most likely- to get lost and to leave him to his misery and weak alcohol.

She was tall and thin, dressed in a deep red dress that showed off the skin of her arms and her collarbone, but still somehow hid everything else carefully away- A gift on Christmas, begging to be unwrapped.
There was an awful lot of leg showing under the folds of red fabric.

He grunted, though did not comment.
He cursed his lack of decorum when she sat primly across from him with a smile.
She looked better suited for a Baptist Church service Downtown Savannah and not the nasty bar tucked between two rundown buildings.
The air smelled of sawdust, and of stale spilled beer-
Not to mention the desperation of old drunkards and the hopes and dreams of losers like him.
Some piss was in there too.

No, she was much too pretty to be in a place like this.

He sat all the way up, eyeing her with a raised brow and a suspicious expression.

"Was SoCo okay?" She asked nervously as she ran her hand through her short reddish curls.
It was a choppy sort of haircut- he could see several spots where the hairdresser had missed.

'Who the fuck calls it SoCo?' He thought wryly as he crossed his arms and stuck his thumbs into his armpits.

"I can go get something else if..." she started out.
How strange she'd be nervous? What the fuck she have to be nervous for? She was the one who started talking to him.

"It's fine." He said with an almost smile, his face still cautious.

"Well!" The woman grinned, red lips parting in a smile and blue eyes twinkling as she poured two glasses of the amber liquid. "cheers." She sang lightly, tapping the glass on the one now in his hand.
She took a swig without so much as a flinch as her other hand waved the other in front of her face to rid herself of the string of smoke that had floated up from the cigarette between his fingers.

"Oh." He commented, watching the smoke float around her eyelashes like pearls pulled from their string.
He went to snuff out the flame but her hand caught his as it was about to rest over the ashtray.

"It's okay. I like Parliaments." She pulled her hand back, but the sensation of his skin on hers was still there.
His eyes trailed from his wrist where she had held his skin in hers back to the faint bruise on her temple.

He squinted his eyes, wondering how she knew what he smoked.

"Mind if I bum one?" she asked.

He said nothing, simply taking out the package from his breast pocket and holding it out to her, filter first.
She caught it with her lips, as he brought the lighter up to the end, watching as the flame flickered across the shadows and plains of her face.
Her eyes seemed to glow in that instant from the fire as the end caught light and she inhaled deeply.
It had given her an almost ethereal glow about her- she'd looked like a nymph. Or a siren coming to call him into her bosom (which was quite nice, he noted) where he might be swamped forever.

He lifted his own cigarette to his lips as she inhaled softly, the smoke streaming out of her nose.
She looked as though she were in bliss as the nicotine reached her brain.

After a few more drags and a gulp of liquid(courage) on his part, she stretched out her hand, holding it out to him.

"I'm Carol."

"Dixon." He said after a moment and a gulp with a twitch of his lips, not unlike a cat. "Daryl Dixon."

_.+._
Any relation to 'THE LADY IN RED' by The Readers Muse is simply a coincidence and in no way am I trying to mooch off of that beautiful, beautiful work of fiction.
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