Disclaimer: Nope, not mine. Just borrowing them for a bit.
He doesn't allow himself to dwell on it often, because it was before and now it's too far. A daydream at best, a distraction at worst. But on nights like this, starry and clear, when a summer breeze ruffles the curtains, he can't help but think of Georgia.
It begins with the open bay window. A gust woke him up with a bittersweet shock of nostalgia and drew him to the window seat. Daryl can identify the subtleties in summer air like some can tell the vintage of a wine with one good sniff. It's all sun-baked air infused with cut grass and wildflowers, but Virginia's always has a salty quality to it that leaves him thirsty.
Georgia air was-is-sweeter, and he knows that observation is not tinted through rose colored glasses. Gotta be the peaches. The air down there coats his throat like a chaser, smooth and pleasant.
Folded up in the nook, Daryl dangles one leg off the edge of the cushion and is bombarded with memories of where he is not. Prickly spikes of longing accompany his view of the walls outside, visible even in the dead of night. Alexandria sleeps while the wind circulates, carrying traces of grilled meat and charcoal from the picnic just hours before. From his perch he stares out into the night, blinks too many times, and wonders.
How many miles is it to the state line?
Carol shifts in her sleep behind him, cocooned in their sheet. One glance over her soft curves and his breathing slows while his heart rate dances, reminiscent of when he spots a doe through a thicket. All the nagging thoughts about Georgia thunder and crash into a stampede between his ears. There's been a growing desire to take her back there, to where they began. That simple look at her sleeping form and a whiff of not-Georgian air overflows his chest with aching impossibilities.
To take her to the peach farm he and Merle used to stalk at night when they were kids. Maybe lick the juices from her chin when she bites into a ripe fruit under the glow of the moon.
To walk the deer trails he used to follow, find the oldest tree in the state and stand in awe of its permanence. Push her up against the bark and kiss her senseless away from the prying eyes of others.
To settle in an abandoned farm, because there he could provide for her. He knows Georgia, all its game and plants, its seasons and dangers, and Georgia knows him, his background, his heartbreak, his rebirth.
Daryl snorts at himself which brings his vision back into focus.
This homesickness twitches his fingers into a tapping rhythm along the perfectly painted window sill. It isn't long before shame flares up on his cheekbones. The entire thing is foolish and fantastical; they nearly died traveling to Virginia and the world hasn't gotten any better. (Though, sometimes he thinks, watching walkers clump together less and chuckling at Judith's first steps, maybe it has at least stabilized.)
He's needed here, his family is here.
They are safe here, as safe as anywhere.
What's left in Georgia besides ghosts?
Daryl shudders to think that maybe he's getting soft.
Carol stirs again, so he turns and is blessed with getting to watch her stretch and unravel herself from the sheet. Their bed is a simple affair, even more so in the hot months; fresh sheets, a pillow for each of them. A knot in the grey fabric catches her foot, but her grace provides an easy escape.
Tonight she's sporting a large, sleeveless t-shirt, too clean to ever have been his. It drapes over her shoulders and ends just about mid-thigh.
She's stunning.
He never falls asleep naked, always afraid of being caught off guard, unable to protect her. The times when she rolls of him, leaving him breathless and satisfied, he takes a stunned moment to soak it all in: the lingering shockwaves, Carol's labored breathing, the way she chuckles softly while planting hot kisses down his throat. Once their sweat has cooled, he'll pull an old pair of jeans over his hips and socks on his feet before wrapping around her. More often than not, he tosses a shirt over his head as well.
Carol, on the other hand, while sharing his general feelings about preparedness, has relaxed her sleeping attire rules. He takes pride, maybe, in the fact that she feels comfortable enough with him around to let her guard down. The only thing she asks is that he makes sure whatever he wears to bed is clean.
"Up again?" Her pale legs and arms catch the moonlight with her smooth strides.
"Mm. Can't sleep."
Carol wraps one arm around his shoulders and leans into him. The summer smell is replaced by hers, with a hint of mint.
"What are you thinking about?"
Daryl's tempted to shrug the inquiry off, mutter a flat "Nothin'" and crawl back into bed with her, bury his face in the crook of her neck and forget about Georgia. Forget about the past and its hold on his heart. Forget the daydreams that have haunted him since the front gate locked behind their group. But it isn't the first time she's caught him awake at the open window and there's worry tinting her irises. And he can't shake the dream of that peach farm.
"Been thinkin' about Georgia," he answers, nibbling his thumbnail. They've both suffered damage from bottling feelings up; they've been working at it together, pressing gentle questions to counter each other's evasiveness. He thinks he's gotten better at it, but tonight, the subject is so silly, the words slide out in a rush.
She surprises him with a kiss to his temple. "What about Georgia?"
Instantly sheepish, Daryl confesses his thoughts like sins, "I want to take you there."
"Back to Georgia?" Disbelief colors her words, but then amusement gathers at the corners of her eyes and Carol rests her head against his.
"It's dumb," Daryl grumbles.
This is the point where he knows he should brush off these thoughts now that they have been purged. Yes, he's thinking about Georgia, yes, he's homesick. It's nothing to worry about; he fulfilled their promise to be better at sharing thoughts and that's that. But the crickets raise up a new symphony and he turns back to the outside.
Still smells like Virginia.
Maybe there's still purging to do.
Her lazy finger strokes part his hair off his face, somehow negating his dismissal with no words. He's stuck in limbo then with the draw to the past and the present he shares with her. This house, the security, Carol, everything he never allowed himself to wish for, all the pieces clicked together in Alexandria. Begrudgingly, Daryl admits that this place has given them a chance. In a snapping rebuke, the bitter part of him argues that they could have had this at the prison.
Carol drops her hands and moves to curl up across from him, wiggling her toes under his folded leg. He finds her ankle and gives it a squeeze, enjoying the way her shirt rides up and exposes more of her skin.
"Maybe this is your midlife crisis," Carol muses after a moment and he snorts. Forty-five is midlife in this world? Could he really make it to ninety? After all, there are days when he feels as if his bones have been replaced with dried sticks. Then again, there are the times when she smiles at him and he feels like unbendable steel. "Some guys buy sports cars, others chase young tail...you want to take a road trip. I should consider myself lucky that that's all you want."
"Stop." One finger tickles the arch of her foot and he smirks at her feeble attempt to not squirm. The very idea of being with someone else horrifies him. He resigned his heart and soul to her years ago, and they are hers to do with as she wishes.
She knows that.
A round of silence breaks their chatter. The wind chime next door joins the crickets' and frogs' conversations. Without light pollution, the stars command the sky, a sight he first remembers seeing in the deepest bowels of Georgian wilderness. Standing under that river of space dust and planets, Daryl had thought he finally knew what it was like to believe in God.
Carol leans her head against the wall, eyes drooping, but he knows she hasn't fallen asleep yet from her steady breathing. "What's in Georgia?" Her eyelids flutter, but remain closed.
Everything from before, he thinks: a rotten childhood, the farm, the prison, Atlanta, too many graves. It's a terrible muddle of old life and the beginning of the new. Yet, it's the only place he ever could march across and actually call his own; Alexandria as adopted him, but will never call him a son.
"Merle an' I used to steal peaches from this one orchard," he begins. "Got caught once comin' home late with sticky fingers and pockets full of peaches." A smile cracks his mouth with the memory. "Mum's standing there in the dark, thought we were gonna get it for sure. But she just confiscated all that stolen fruit and baked a pie. Old man musta been passed out drunk."
"No punishment for her robbing sons?" Carol cocks an eyebrow over her opened eye.
"We didn' get any of that pie," Daryl admits, childhood disappointment now an adult's amusement, "and the whippin' came in the morning." He chuckles at the memory and Carol echoes with her light laughter. Quieter, he laments, "I can't get it outta my head."
Like an itch he can't scratch, what he wants is out of reach.
Ignoring it only intensifies the bother.
Sitting here, with her presence tangling up with the summer air, Daryl's aware that this round of homesickness didn't come about just because the window was open. Hell, they've been here for years, the differences have been apparent to him since day one; the Virginia winter air burns his eyes, the northern deer always seem to have extra weight on them, the seasons change just slightly off kilter compared to what he's used to. He pines for Georgia because it was the only place he had ever known, but he's not foolish enough to think he'll ever really make it back there.
It all comes down to Carol.
He's fucked up so many times within the last week, a cluster of social stumbles. The familial acceptance he earned on the road all those years ago doesn't make up for the fact that Alexandria isn't 'the road.' Eating barely-cooked squirrels earns him crooked frowns and wearing a constant coat of dust makes people laugh and roll their eyes. The inability to say more than two words to anyone but other outcasts marks him as one. During war, he's a useful pawn, at other times, he's an oddity. That much hasn't changed since the world fell.
People here sling their guns on their hips, slay walkers, and expect you to sip lemonade and keep up with the Jones'.
And he just can't.
Daryl bites his bottom lip, remembering the looks some pass over him when he crosses the street up to the house they share. Carol, for all her resourcefulness and pragmatism, knows how to make small talk and blend in with these people. He's still the odd man out and his sharp ears have picked up on the whispering gossip about him, and by extension, about her.
How weird it is that he skips all community picnics.
How condemning it is that he prefers to walk outside the walls, out with the danger.
How he'll growl at any man who so much as looks at Carol the wrong way, but never musters any form of public affection.
Carol's never said anything, but he still feels obligated to apologize, for the awkwardness, because he's still a shit-head Dixon, and for trying to make this just about Georgia, because he noted the pain that flickered across her face at the mention of it.
"'M sorry."
She responds swiftly, "Don't be."
"Carol..." Another breeze rushes through them, slightly brackish underneath the humidity. Without warning, a tear slides down his cheek and Daryl presses worn fingers to his clamped eyelids. Squished against the wall of the window seat, he manages to catch the sob in the back of his throat and in between his shoulders.
Fuck.
He's lived his entire life with dirty stares at his back, curled lips, and low expectations.
He's willing to carry that shit again, but not at her expense.
After all, how many times in her life should she have to withstand gossip about her husband?
The rustle of fabric and skin on cushion signals Carol's shifting. When he finally feels confident that he's done being dramatic, Daryl cracks his eyes open and meets hers. She's copied his pose, one leg folded in front, the other swinging over the edge, leaving room between them to breathe.
"I think about it too." After her quiet admission, she too, turns her head and fills her lungs with the fresh air. His vision warps around him and he casts them back to the prison, late nights on watch, handfuls of a shared dinner on top of a bus. "I even miss it sometimes. Georgia was home for so long." A sparkle in her eye warns him of the impending tease, "You were much more ornery back then."
"Stop." He was a lot of things back then: angrier, brasher, cruder. Damn it, he has gotten soft.
Still.
Some things never change.
Some things can't be changed.
He just wants her to be happy.
Prays that he can at least try to do that much even in this foreign place.
Carol crawls into his lap, back against his chest, before he can say something stupid. Like a magnet, her hand is drawn to his and traces scars along his knuckles. Again, his senses are flooded with her, dragging him gradually out of that fantasy and back to the present. She drapes his arm across her collarbone so his palm rests over her heart and states, "You belong here." It hits his core like a sucker punch.
"'M tryin' to," he amends, a choked promise.
"That's what we do, right? We try." Carol plucks his hand up in hers and plants the softest kiss in the center of his palm, before returning it to its place. Ever realistic, she then offers, "Georgia is a little too far away, but if you want to be a wild man in the forests of Virginia every once in awhile, that's fine." Craning her neck, she casts one glimmering eye on him. "Just come back to me, okay?"
It takes him a few seconds to find his voice, struck dumb by her understanding. When he finally forms words, they're small and hopeful. "I'd take you with me, if you wanna." The room's not dark enough to hide the blood flushing his face, but he can't help but jump at a chance to spend time with just her.
Away from the perfect houses and social expectations.
Separated from the head shakes and questions.
Out there where maybe he can pretend it's Georgia, if only for a second.
Pretend it's just them.
Carol nods, "We might even find our own peach farm to pillage."
He could have kissed her for that. Should have, but all his mouth manages is a brief grin at the thought of one daydream coming true. (Well, almost. It's still not Georgia.) While fighting back more tears, Daryl tries to stuff all his gratitude into one crushing embrace, one she answers with a caress to his forearm.
The two of them inhale the not-Georgian air for a time. His foot is falling asleep under her weight, but he resists movement, preferring to let his fingers explore her neck, the crease in her arm, eventually mapping her knee before trailing back up her leg as far as the shirt permits.
The sky lightens, the sun a smudge of pale yellow on the horizon.
The stars give their last twinkles and then fade.
The quiet that welcomes the dawn settles outside with a blanketing fog.
Daryl rests his head against her shoulder blade and grounds himself in her presence.
Here. He belongs here.
Just as he was about to convince himself, she moves. One fluid motion and Carol's standing, offering an open palm. "Come back to bed."
He allows himself to turn his back on the open window and drinks her in. Her grey curls, ruffled from sleep, flick out from around her ears. Freckles pepper her shoulders and nose. Two seconds of that comforting, but always surprising light in her eyes that he recently learned to identify as love, constricts his chest.
Daryl stands, heart bandaged, and shakes out the tingles in his leg before gathering her close. An incoming gust ruffles the hairs on the back of his neck as he dips his head, the past forced away with one kiss. It's slow, careful; he has a lot to say, but he still has a lot to learn. Carol breaks their contact with a grin and a tug toward the bed, but Daryl reels her back in, chasing some fleeting flavor.
It's probably just his imagination, then again, he's good at sensing things, but he swears he caught the taste of peaches on her tongue.
And that, for now, is enough to kill any remaining desire to leave.
Author's Note: Thanks for reading! Feedback is greatly appreciated!