That night Daryl dreamed he was eight years old, back on the mountain. School was out for the summer and his brother had come home after three months in Juvie. Merle and Daddy were packing a cooler with beer.
"I wanna go fishing too." Daryl grabbed one of the cane poles leaning against the cabin wall. "Laundry can wait 'til tomorrow."
"Tomorrow never comes, boy," his daddy said. "There's only yesterday and today, so do your damn chores 'fore I take off my belt."
"I'll do 'em later. Later comes, don't it?"
Merle sniggered.
Daddy shot Merle a warning look. "So does the day of reckoning. Forget and you'll do the dance of a thousand devils."
Daryl didn't want an ass whupping. He just didn't want to be left alone. Without mama around, the cabin was dark and spooky. "Yes, sir."
His daddy hauled the cooler out to the truck.
"Ain't seen you dance in a while." Merle smirked. "You any better at leapin' away from the belt?"
"I'll do my chores," Daryl said.
Merle punched him on the arm. "Best pray you do."
Daryl woke to the smell of coffee.
"Good morning." Carol sat on her sleeping bag and held out a white-flecked blue enamel mug. "One of the tower guards was an outdoorsy type. He used a backpacking stove to make coffee. I thought you deserved the first cup."
Daryl raised himself on one elbow and took the mug. "How do you know it was one guard and not all of them?"
"A note taped to an electric brewer said Happy Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Leave my coffeepot alone." She pursed her lips, a giveaway that she was about to tease. "Any chance one of your relatives works for the prison system?"
"If there was, he'd wear an orange vest to pick trash off the side of the road." Daryl sipped the coffee and glanced around. Wisps of fog still hovered over dew-laden grass. "You're up early."
"I wasn't awake half the night standing watch."
He pretended not to see her pointed look. "Nice night for stargazing." He'd missed being able to stand in the open and look for constellations. Not that he'd enjoyed the peace and quiet for long. Walkers along the fence line groaned whenever the breeze carried the scent of living flesh. Daryl had used them to practice hand-to-hand combat; they'd stared like deer at the red glow of his hunting flashlight.
Arrow jabbed through a walker's eye . . . knife plunged into a rotting brain . . . .
"Earth to Daryl, come in, Daryl."
He looked at Carol. "What?"
"Is the coffee sweet enough for you?"
For some crazy reason, an old Def Leppard song started playing in his head. Pour Some Sugar on Me. Daryl's face grew warm.
Carol said, "I tried to put in enough to give you energy without giving you a sugar high."
He scoffed. "That's a myth. Merle ate a four-pound bag of Dixie Crystals once and all he got was sick. After Daddy gave him a whupping, he told Merle the government lied about sugar to make it easier to ration during the war."
"Your father whipped an ill child?"
Guess it was hard to care about government lies when there wasn't a government anymore. "He waited until Merle stopped puking."
"Big of him."
That was Daddy: big, mean, and merciless. Daryl shrugged. "Stupid hurts."
Carol's eyes flashed. "There's no excuse for physical cruelty."
"No." Not that it stopped people from justifying their actions.
Her gaze lowered to his chest, his covered scars. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." He lifted his cup. "Coffee's good. One lump or two?"
"Of sugar?" She made a face. "What am I saying, of course sugar, what else could it be, my lovely lady lumps?" Carol shook her head. "I can't believe I used that expression, and the sugar came from packets. I didn't know it was still sold in lum—er—cubes."
He hadn't known women called parts of their body "lovely lady lumps." Suddenly his cheekbones were trying to burn through his skin. He had to focus on something else. Merle getting a dumbass mullet haircut. "Where's Rick?"
"At the fence gate, planning the assault on precinct thirteen—it was an Ethan Hawke movie. You kind of look like him."
She blushed pink, so Daryl figured she was paying him a compliment. "Thanks."
"I used to watch a lot of movies and television. It made the dreaded ironing go faster." She grimaced. "You can imagine how I hated the cast iron monstrosity Ed forced me to use in camp."
"Yeah." She wasn't the little Suzy homemaker he'd thought she was back when she'd meekly cooked and cleaned for her family and everyone else.
Daryl heard the others stirring. The scent of coffee had acted like an alarm.
"If that smell isn't real don't wake me up," T-Dog said loudly.
Chuckles rang out.
"Guess I'd better help Lori," Carol said.
Daryl held onto the empty mug when Carol reached to take it. "Wait. What I said last night was bullshit."
She dropped her hand. "What do you mean?"
He sat up, needing the cool morning air to clear his head. "Tomorrow is a bullshit word. It's not real. It never comes. Forget I said it." Daryl spoke in a low voice, but Carol recoiled as if he'd shouted.
Her chin came up even as her lips trembled. "If that's the way you want it." She attempted to wrench the mug out of his hand.
He didn't let go. "Ask me later."
She stared at him with stormy blue eyes.
Daryl struggled for words that wouldn't make him sound like a jackass. "Later is real," he said. "It doesn't happen on some perfect schedule, but it isn't bullshit. It means something."
"Does it?"
Hadn't he just told her? "Hell yeah."
Her expression softened.
"Hey! Whatever's going on over there, save it for later," T-Dog called from across the burned out campfire. "I'm in serious need of coffee."
"You need a cup of shut the hell up," Daryl yelled back.
Carol giggled. "I'll fetch coffee, you check your crossbow, or whatever it is that turns you into a lean, mean, fighting machine." She leaned over to kiss his cheek; her lips brushed the corner of his mouth. "I want a later worth saving myself for, okay?"
Daryl nodded. As Carol walked away, he reached for the green plastic tube he'd fashioned into a quiver, dumping the arrows onto his sleeping bag to be counted and re-counted.
.
.
A/N: Episode 305 didn't give me much to work with (the preview of the 306 episode with Daryl holding a knife and saying it was Carol's was just a tease), and I'm still hoping Carol will be found (alive, NOT as Sophia 2.0), so I decided to continue from the first chapter, episode 301 and show a little more couple interaction and backstory. The way Daryl (and Carol, by giggling) teased Glenn at the beginning of episode 304 made me think they might have had romance on the brain (as opposed to Daryl being mentally 14), so I wanted to show how that developed.
Special thanks to bigpinkstork, carylshipper4life, Emberka-2012, fynnsmom, hopelesslydevoted2svu, lalalove-Rae, Laura, Marina Del Pilar, MarionArnold, Rose of the West, SGed, Shipperwolf, tambrathegreat, xXxThe Phantom's RosexXx, and zombieslayer5 for reviewing last chapter. This is my first Walking Dead fanfic, and each review means a lot.
