A/N: This story assumes canon up through Season 9, episode 4, but goes AU from there.
[*]
Carol pushes the toe of her boot against the rough planks of the deck and sets the creaky porch swing to swaying. Across the way, twenty children spill out of the schoolhouse, scatter into the dirt road, and begin playing kickball. Hershel takes the pitcher's mound, and the headmistress of the school bounces the big red ball to the seven-year-old. She steps outside of the playing field and blows her whistle for the game to begin.
A green and black motorcycle gleams on the porch to Carol's left, where it leans lazily on its iron kickstand as Daryl crouches to polish it. With Eugene's help, he built the bike to run on a rechargeable solar-powered battery. He slides the white cloth over the rear fender as if he's caressing a woman's thigh.
"The way you look at that thing," Carol says, "I'm about to be jealous of a machine."
"Yeah?" He sits down on the planks and rests with his back against the wall of the cabin and his arms on his drawn-up knees. "Well think how I felt when I found that vibrator in your dresser drawer when I's helpin' you move out the Kingdom."
"That was from before," Carol insists.
"'Fore what?"
"Before you cornered me that morning I was supposed to marry Ezekiel." With his hand flat against the closed door of her dressing room, where he'd pinned her so he could say some shit he just had to get off his chest, Daryl told her that Ezekiel was a good man, and he wanted her to be happy. More than anything in the world, he wanted her to be happy, but ain't no fuckin' chemistry there, and you goddamn know it. "That was pre-Daryl."
Daryl twists the white cloth in a knot around his left hand. "But not pre-'Zekiel?"
Carol shrugs.
Daryl unwinds the cloth from his hand and winds it back again as he talks. "Merle always told me: once you go black, you never go back. Unless you let Merle take you for a whirl. Then you're ruined for life from bein' anyone's wife."
Carol snorts. "I had no idea he was a poet."
"Mhmhm. Wrote lots of poems. Knew how to rhyme, but his meter was shit."
"Tell me another one."
"Nah. Too dirty for an innocent lady like you."
Carol snorts. "Well, just so you know, I threw that vibrator away before I ever moved here. I don't need it anymore."
"Kind of wish you hadn't," he mumbles.
She shoots him a puzzled look. "Why?"
He ducks his head, dips the cloth in his can of polish, and scoots forward to rub it over the frame of his bike.
"Why?" she asks again.
"Would of liked to watch...maybe," he admits in a mutter.
Carol's eyes widen. "Really?" They've been together for a few years now, and Daryl's always been pretty conservative about sex, but maybe that's just been out of respect for her, because of what she went through with Ed. "You've never asked for anything like that."
Daryl reddens. Carol prepares to tease him, but she sees Jesus and Aaron strolling toward their cabin. Jesus pauses to kick the out-of-bounds ball back on the field.
The two men mount the three porch stairs, and Jesus leans back against the rail, his hands down behind himself. Aaron holds a set of rolled up blueprints.
"Construction should be completed on the dormitory tomorrow," Aaron says. "We'll be able to properly house the last of the refugees and get them out of the common rooms." Currently, some are housed in the mansion's library, some in the chapel, and some in cramped RVs. Hilltop has already assimilated its half of the Alexandrian refugees, but now Oceanside has abandoned its camp and divided its people between the Kingdom and the Hilltop. Fire destroyed Alexandria during the War with the Whisperers two years ago, but storm battered Oceanside more recently. Both groups thought it less costly to move than to rebuild. Besides, there is strength in numbers, and this way they only need to secure one trade route – between the Hilltop and the Kingdom.
"Good work," Carol assures him. Being Mayor of Hilltop might not be as prestigious as being Queen of the Kingdom, but she finds it's more her style. She just wishes Maggie had lived to see the thriving town this once rustic colony has become, but she died in the War with Whisperers.
"Have you decided who you're appointing for your Deputy Director of Forestry yet?" Jesus asks Daryl.
"Ya mean who's gonna help me be in charge of the hunters 'n fishermen?"
"You're going to have to get used to the bureaucratic names, Daryl," Carol tells him. "The Council likes them." She looks teasingly at Aaron. "Especially the Chairman."
"Nothing wrong with a little structure and formality," Aaron insists.
"Ain't never needed no fancy title," Daryl insists, "and I don't need no deputy. Ain't no one starved."
"We're growing," Jesus reminds him. "We took in forty-eight people from Oceanside. Two babies were born this year. And only one person died." A year with only one death is a remarkable thing indeed. "You should lighten your load and appoint a deputy to help you with the scheduling and to help you recruit and train new hunters."
"Fine. Wanna appoint Henry," Daryl says.
"Uh…" Aaron exchanges a glance with Jesus. "I think that might technically violate the nepotism prohibition."
"Why?" Daryl grunts.
"Because he's Carol's adopted son," Aaron explains. "And you're Carol's…" He trails off and looks questioningly at Jesus.
"Husband?" Jesus ventures.
"Husband," Aaron agrees.
"Did we just get married, Pookie?" Carol asks.
"Reckon maybe we did," Daryl replies.
Carol smirks. "Well it's about time you made an honest woman out of me."
Aaron scratches his neck with the rolled-up blue prints. "Isn't Henry a bit young for a deputy director's position?"
"Nah," Daryl says. "'S nineteen."
"He just turned nineteen," Carol clarifies.
"'S a man," Daryl tells her. "Whether you want 'em to be or not."
"Do you have anybody else at all in mind?" Jesus asks Daryl. "I just think it would look better if you didn't appoint a member of your own household."
"Cyndie, maybe. Mean…hell…she's already taken over the fishin' since she got here. And I ain't even asked her to." Cyndie was used to ocean fishing, and here they have two ponds and a fresh water stream, but she didn't have much trouble adapting.
"Good," Aaron says. "Officially put her name in before the Council, and we'll confirm" her."
"A'ight." Daryl puts down his cloth and picks up a wrench to tighten a bolt. "'M officially puttin' her name in 'fore the Council."
"You have to do the paperwork, Daryl," Aaron tells him.
"A'ight. I'll have my personal secretary get that right to ya."
"I am not doing your paperwork," Carol assures him. "It's one letter, Daryl. Two sentences, and a signature. I think you can manage."
[*]
Carol sits at the rolltop desk she took from the mansion and put in a corner of their cabin and reads the day's pony express correspondence from the Kingdom while Daryl tucks Hershey into bed. Only Daryl doesn't call it tucking in. Hershey insists that he is much too old for tuck-ins, so it's a pow-wow. A pow-wow that might happen to involve Daryl reading the boy a chapter or two from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Henry, who is taller than Daryl now, and almost as muscular, comes through the front door, leans his staff against the side of the door, and hangs his bow on the cabin wall. He stomps his boots on the inside mat before yanking them off.
"You missed dinner," Carol tells him.
"I ate on the hunt." That's all she gets out of him before he disappears into his bedroom and shuts the door. He used to talk to her all the time, about everything, but now she's lucky if she can get fifty words out of him in a day.
[*]
Carol has just finished signing her name to an official piece of correspondence to the Kingdom when she senses Daryl standing behind her. He puts one calloused hand on each of her shoulders and leans down to kiss her neck. She stretches it to give him access. He kisses her ear next, and murmurs, "Turnin' in. Ya comin'?"
"Why, do you want company?"
"Might could use some."
Carol smiles. "I'll be in in a little while. I just have a few more things to do." She turns in her chair to face him, and he steps back. "Did you know Henry was going to eat with the hunters again today?"
Daryl sighs. "Carol, 's time for 'em to move out. Ya know he wants to. Let 'em move into one of them dorm rooms."
"He's nineteen."
"I's sixteen when I left home, 'n I didn't even grow up in an apocalypse."
"It doesn't make any sense for him to move out when we have a housing shortage issue already and a bedroom here."
"Could bring in one of the refugees, maybe," he suggests. "Let 'em have that bedroom." He smirks. "Samantha, maybe."
Carol narrows her eyes at him. "The thirty-five-year-old blonde with the big tits? No thank you."
He chuckles, and she frowns sternly. "Seriously though," he says. "'S that elderly couple from Oceanside."
"Elderly couple?"
"Yeah, the ones they found livin' in that church last year. Could give 'em Henry's old room when he moves out."
"Daryl, they're only in their early sixties." And Carol will turn fifty-six soon. Does that make her elderly?
Daryl's brow crinkles. "Thought they was like eighty."
"Well, they haven't stayed as fit as we have, I guess."
"Mhmh. Guess. Ya look just like ya did when I first met ya. Better."
Carol smiles.
"So ya wanna do it? Have Henry move out and take in the geezers?"
"I'll think about it." She turns back to her letter.
Daryl walks off toward the bedroom, muttering, "Don't work all damn night."