Hi, everyone! This collaborative work cowritten with PrintDust was originally posted under her profile, but we decided to move it to mine. For those of you who don't know, this is a collection of oneshots revolving around the enigmatic relationship between Daryl and Carol. Their backgrounds are quite similar and fascinating. Most of these will contain no overt Caryl, but if you squint hard and tilt your head, you may be able to see just a little. Haha. There will be one chapter for each letter of the alphabet (Alcohol, Bruises, etc). The first chapter is Printdust's. Read on and enjoy!
Disclaimer: Not ours!
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Alcohol
He'd grown up with the smell of cigarettes and stale wine clinging everything around him: to the worn carpets, the stained fabrics that covered their furniture, his own clothes, and the kisses that she pressed to his head when she was sober enough to get out of bed. She'd wander through their trailer, her robe opened to expose her nakedness, a Virginia Slim dangling from her thin fingers on one hand, the neck of a cheap bottle of wine in the other. She'd laugh and tell him she was Joan Crawford or Elizabeth Taylor and throw herself down on the couch, one prickly leg draped over its soiled arm.
When Merle was home he'd throw a blanket at her and tell her to cover up, that she was a disgusting whore. But when it was just him he'd hang his head and avoid looking at her titties; ashamed by his own embarrassment.
When she'd died the smell had gone away.
When he got older, sometimes he sought it out, in the back booth at a hole-in-the wall bar, a cold beer and an empty ashtray on the sticky varnished table before him. He'd run his hands over the crusty velveteen seat and think about Joan Crawford, Virginia Slims and cheap wine.
Ed hadn't always been the man that he was at the end of his life. When she'd met him, barefoot and sitting on the tailgate of Toby Walton's blue Ford pick-up he'd been the most handsome boy in town. The girls had giggled behind her when he found his way over to her, backlit by a bonfire, his letterman jacket slung over one shoulder and an unlit cigarette in his mouth.
They'd stood close enough that her knees touched his stomach and she'd looked over her shoulder to Becky Holler for approval. Her friend had nodded and turned back to the girls, though she continued to watch the pair out of the corner of her eye.
Carol had felt like she was Joan Crawford or something that Fall back at school. Everyone had wanted to know if it was true- if she was really dating Ed Peletier. If she would go with him when he went to Texas to go pro. She'd blushed and told them she would go anywhere that he wanted to- if he asked her.
She'd kept good on her promise and followed him all the way to a leaky trailer next to the communal bathroom in a pad rental park in Murphy, North Carolina.
At almost seventeen she had become his wife in a backyard ceremony, her Mama's dress let out at the waist to hide her swollen pregnant belly.
Before their baby was even born he'd changed- become angry and bitter towards her and their life together. He'd gone from football star to armchair quarterback- from a man of honour to a man who barely stayed sober long enough after work to change out of his motor-oil stained jumpsuit and collapse on the couch.
Their lives had become a dance of violence and they moved together to the tune of a blaring television set, crowds cheering for people who had done the things that Ed said they would do one day.
Late at night, when he'd collapsed in their bed she'd kneel on the floor with a bucket of water and vinegar and scrub beer and blood stains from the carpet and she'd dream about a man of honour.