'Brake lights. How could there be brake lights?'
She'd been doing well until she'd seen them. Daryl had dismissed her requests that he navigate beyond prompting her to shift gears as needed, so it had been her prerogative to roam wherever she pleased. She had stuck to the back roads around Herschel's farm. It was too late to stray very far. Initially she hadn't given much thought to the beat up Dodge Ram parked off to the side, its tailgate parallel to the road and the front end faced out into a small wooded valley. There were abandoned cars everywhere anymore. They had been less than 20 feet away when the dull plastic brake lights had flashed cherry red.
The pit of her stomach dropped, filling with dread as she slowed to an ungraceful stop. Daryl's arm tensed around her so she knew he'd seen it too. She felt him slide his left foot under hers and deftly shift the bike into neutral.
"Don't move," he breathed into her ear to be heard over the roaring of the Triumph's engine without shouting. Surely whoever it was would have heard them approaching. She felt the bike lighten beneath her, as he dismounted, touching down to her right. Her knuckles were white and trembling clenched tightly around the handgrips. He touched her right fist and gestured for her to move back.
Her hands dropped. She nimbly shifted back to make a space in front for him. He settled astride the bike again and she promptly wrapped her arms tightly around him. The truck's engine fired up, the brake lights blinked out again, and the vehicle began to lumber backwards.
"Hold on." he called back to her, as the truck finished backing up and was now facing them head on.
"This might get ugly."
"What the fuck is that!?" she faintly heard someone shout from the tree line below, "Hey, you! On the bike… stop!"
He turned the bike sharply and peeled out in the direction they'd come from, kicking up a shower of gravel and a heavy cloud of dust behind them. The unmistakable sound of a shot rang out. Carol shrieked reflexively and ducked her head, pressing her face into the ash colored wings of Daryl's vest.
The wind gusted savagely, whipping at her shirt. Her stomach lurched as she felt them bouncing flat-out down a long, steep decline. She tried to will herself to open her eyes, find out where they were headed and if the strangers had given chase. It was a losing battle with her fight or flight response which knew that huddling here behind the solid leather-clad wall of Daryl's back was the surest way to stay out of harm's way.
They were slowing now, though the bike sounded more taxed than ever. The ground under their feet had changed. She could feel the swish of grasses sweeping against her boots as they rode by and branches whipped on her exposed legs and arms. She finally ventured a peek around his arm to see the lush green grass beneath them and overgrown forest on all sides. It wasn't until she noticed the dark silhouette of a house began to take shape that she gained her bearings. Her heart twinged. It wasn't the first time he'd brought her here.
Daryl coasted to a stop behind the house. Well-obscured, he cut the engine and restored the property back into a deceptively serene silence.
"This place should be safe." he said tersely, looking back over his shoulder at her as she dismounted, "We've been through, clearing out the trash. They can't follow us the way I came in no truck. If they want us that bad they'll have to hoof it."
She looked around, uncomfortably. Trying to ignore how much his glacial blue gaze flagrantly tracking her every response unsettled her and compounded the fact that she didn't want to linger here. Not with him anticipating and openly irritated with her smothered emotional response. She wasn't sure how much longer she could suppress it. She'd been holding everything in trying to convince everyone at camp that she hadn't lost her mind so long that sometimes it felt like drowning. And now, to be swept back to the place hope had crested in the drawn out search for Sophia was like allowing a wound to partially heal only to tear it open again.
"They saw what direction we rode in from. They might decide to follow it and take the farm by surprise. We should try to get there first…" she ventured.
Daryl shook his head, "If I were them I'd be up there patrolling the road, waiting to see if we're going to come back out. We start up the bike they can follow the noise right to us. Besides, if they're stupid enough to show up at the farm they'll flush Rick and Shane. That's a hell of a welcoming party."
"Could go wrong. Someone could get hurt." Carol fretted aloud.
Daryl cut his eyes at her, "We stay here long enough to be sure they ain't got anyone that can track us. We'll head back before nightfall."
Carol gave an exasperated sigh, realizing too late from the shift in his face that she'd just exhausted the last bit of restraint Daryl had in him.
"They're gonna find it sooner or later, you know that, right? Rick and Shane and whatever this bullshit pissing contest between them is really about… it's all for shit. Why you think those guys shot at us, huh? We got no beef with them. Sooner or later someone's gonna find that goddamned farm that y'all think is your salvation. It ain't no better or no worse than the farmhouse ten miles down the road, but people ain't no smarter than dogs when it comes to stuff like this. They see how tight y'all are holdin' onto it and figure you got a bigger bone… want what you got just 'cause you're so afraid of losin' it."
"I just… I think maybe it doesn't have to be that way." she said softly.
"Yeah, but you'd believe it if they said so." he muttered bitterly, "Who you gotta hear it from before your stubborn ass will fall in line, huh? You need ol'Rick Grimes with a "good guy" star pinned on his chest to tell you how it is? Maybe ole commando Shane'll storm in and mow down the bad guys in a goddamn mushroom cloud…"
She could only watch speechless as he began to whip himself up into a sudden and startling rage. He closed the gap between them, daring her to flee. Their faces were so close now she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face. The air suffused with the smell of leather and motor oil that clung to him.
"Yeah well, sorry Sweetheart. It's just me here. Just Daryl fuckin' Dixon, backwoods hick from some shithole town you ain't never heard of. Guess nobody told ya 'fore ya came sniffin' around, I'm the clean-up guy. That's why they keep me around. I do their shit work, dirty stuff that might keep them up at night; and then I go away so they don't have to think about it. That's what I'm here for. Not no big-time heroics like savin' little girls or nothin'."
She flinched and averted her eyes. Her vacant gaze was drawn to the ragged remnants of the Cherokee rose bush that had bloomed there so picturesquely. She remembered how she'd torn it to shreds and scattered it on the wind, too numb with despair to notice the rivulets of blood surfacing from the dozens of tiny lacerations where she'd gouged herself on the thorny vines.
Then she had cried. For days, she'd cried. Sobbed. Screamed. Beat her fists raw and bloody against the RV walls. Because how could it be? What did it all mean? She'd come so far and grown so much, and yet the cruelty of this world was unfathomable. It made no sense. It defied everything she'd learned. At every turn she was confronted by something that challenged everything that had gone before, and so when the old ingrained impulse to steel herself against Daryl's onslaught rose she ignored it. Carving out an emotional void to hide from Ed had been easy, but it had never served her.
What you really want, Carol Peletier, is to be fit for him, and you are very far from it. It's touching that you want to repay him for the kindness he's shown you, but really, what do you think you have that he needs or wants? And don't be a romantic – don't, for heaven's sake, say you. You, Carol?
Instead, she puzzled over the things he'd already said. She studiously disassociated everything, lovingly wiping away the cruelty and the malice to weigh each word and it's worth in what she thought might be a psychological equivalent to the way Shane had tended to her battered hands so patiently that day.
All I've done is question his instincts, and it's triggering the part of him that believes if he showed vulnerability we'd reject him as weak. And look at what Rick's doing with Randall… what we're doing… what we have Daryl doing… Who could blame him? God, Dale was right about so much…
She reached up slowly and deliberately with her hand and cupped the side of his face. She wasn't sure if he was trembling from rage or from exhaustion, but he still drew his breaths in ragged huffs. She braced for him to swat her away or spin away from her, but he didn't. He just glared at her contemptuously.
She was tired of this lump in her throat, and the way she never seemed to be able to say anything during those moments when she had the brunt of their enigmatic intimacy filling her chest. She wished she knew what needed saying so desperately, but sometimes he seemed so dark and impenetrable wrestling with words felt futile. Some folks just aren't meant for simple lexical answers.
That was when she had kissed him.
She hadn't planned it. Hadn't even thought about it really beyond the rote movement it took to close the negligible bit of space that he'd left between them. Just her lips pressed chastely against his, hoping to channel some vestige of the security she instinctually accredited to him and couldn't articulate.
He had flinched at the contact, but he hadn't pulled away. Hadn't touched her. Hadn't kissed her back. He just stood there, coiled with tension. The look he gave her afterwards was a muddle of incredulity, and betrayal. You'd have thought he'd been struck rather than kissed. His mouth opened, perhaps to respond, only to close again. His jaw visibly tightened beneath his taut skin. He let out an audible scoff as whirled around on his heel to stalk away, but he'd barely made it a step before slowing to a stop.
Her stomach twisted. Would this be it then?
That's what you bitches do, always trying to manipulate men with your cunt.
That's what Ed would have said to a move like that. When had she become so bold? Even the idyllic calm of the forest around them couldn't mask the barren spirit of this longing, which rode on the tears of misunderstanding and love too long neglected. Still, it would be self-loathing to regret it. It seemed perverse, but the present sometimes seemed brimming with life compared to the past. Actual life, robust and meaningful; not the parody of it she had played out before, micromanaging housework and concealing her bruises for other people's benefit.
"I—" Carol began, when without warning Daryl seized her so tightly and kissed her so hard that whatever she had been about to say was instantly gone forever. Finally, blissfully, her mind was quiet.
The kinetic force behind his advance had taken her by surprise and she lost her footing, stumbling backwards until her back met the exterior wall behind them with a thud. He was undeterred. If anything he exploited his dominant positioning, rough hands rutting beneath the soft cotton of her t-shirt, running greedily over the curve of her waist and her ribs until he'd worked his way up to the elastic clasp in the middle of her back. He hesitated less than a moment before yanking at it impatiently until she felt it fall slack and he broke the kiss to sweep the entire fistful of clothing over her head and drop it to the ground.
She could see his face now, but his eyes weren't seeking hers. All traces of the uncertain boy she'd been worrying over had vanished. His slitted gaze was locked onto the expanse of her skin bared beneath him with the cool calculation of a predator. Stalking her, studying her…
The charged surface of her skin was begging to be touched again. Her back arched despite her, eager to actuate contact again. She couldn't wait; now that the prospect of solace was becoming a reality, Carol's emptiness had become unbearable. He understood her non-verbal pleading, and even gratified her by opening his mouth over the delicately rendered sinews and hollows of her neck and dragging the flat of his tongue along the fluttering skin, grazing her with his teeth.
Most of her senses were hopelessly caught up in the precision of his caresses. Somewhere on the blurry edges of her perception, she could feel his hands working at her shorts, coaxing them over the flare of her hips until they dropped to the ground to be stepped out of and kicked aside. Then he seized her firmly by the waist and interposed his leg between hers, grinding his rigid sex into her sensitive inner thigh bullishly until she compliantly shifted her feet apart enough for him to fix himself between them.
She shivered as his hand trailed along her thigh, testing her response to variations in the pressure and techniques he applied. He slipped a finger between the folds of her sex and she moaned appreciatively as the calloused tip dragged lightly over her clit. He smirked when his next pass was met with a gush of warm slick fluid signaling her arousal.
He grasped her by the arm and whirled her around. She barely kept up, bracing herself against the exterior wall with her forearms. She heard the jingling of him working at his belt and zipper, and then he was carefully guiding himself inside her with a deep breath. She moaned hungrily. He hovered there with her a moment, the length of his body pressed tight against her curves. The transitory pause felt like an eternity as his hands locked onto her waist again, but she was startled by the power in his next thrust. She writhed and whimpered beneath him, which stoked him to drive into her harder and faster. Then as suddenly as it has begun, it was over. He pulled out hastily and collapsed against her with a shuddering groan. A hot stream of cum jetted between their bodies and ran down the small of her back. She felt the coarseness of his beard against her shoulder, his labored breathing on the nape of her neck. The leather of his vest stuck to her back in the muggy Georgia heat.
A moment passed until her uneasiness got the better of her and she wriggled out of his grasp and turned on him expectantly. Her blue eyes searching his for meaning. She found no trace of cruelty or smugness in his face. He looked astonished, ashamed even. His hands had gone stiff and rigid at her sides, like he was suddenly afraid to touch her. Afraid to look down and admire the sheen of sweat that glistened on her sun-kissed golden skin.
"The fuck do you keep hangin' around for? I keep trying to tell you…" he said, barely audibly." He swallowed, "I ain't no good at this stuff."
Her chest tightened with panic, he was starting to retreat. She moved forward insistently and nestled herself against his chest. She closed her eyes and rested there, willing him to draw her in until his arms lowered gingerly around her.
"I'm sorry." he whispered.
"I'm not." she reassured him. She hadn't cum, but she still felt gloriously unbottled, relieved of the ubiquitous magnetism that had been mounting between them for so long.
"Think you were right." she heard the rumble of his voice through his chest, "It's not safe out here. We should get back." he gently untangled himself from her embrace and bent down to retrieve her shirt, which he dutifully held in front her until she humored him by securing it to her chest with a palm, covering her breasts. Then he turned his back and walked away from her, leaving her to clothe herself in troubled seclusion.