AN: Here we are, another chapter.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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At one-thirty in the morning, Carol hadn't been expecting her phone to ring. Sophia was spending Friday night with a friend, though, so Carol was on high enough alert that she'd answered the phone within two rings and was already prepared for whatever crisis might follow her confirmation that she was there and she was listening. It wasn't Sophia at all, though, and it wasn't Rebecca, the mother of Sophia's friend.
It took Carol a moment to even muddle through who Daryl was and why he might be calling her at this hour. But as soon as he started to ramble—how she'd told him she could help him and she'd told him he could talk—she remembered where the man had come into possession of her number.
She did the only thing that she could do. She did the only thing that she felt was right.
Carol had the coffee brewing when Daryl knocked at her door. When she opened the door to him, he was standing there with a brown paper bag in one hand. The other hand had a veritable death grip on her doorframe to steady his body. He'd said that he'd had something to drink, but now Carol assumed that was probably the kind of gross understatement that drunk people often made.
"Come in," Carol said quickly. "Come inside. Come in..."
She ushered Daryl in and gestured toward her living room since the front door allowed him the option of choosing either the kitchen or the living room as a place to congregate. He missed her gesture entirely and invited himself into the kitchen. Carol might've protested, but he was sitting—rather roughly—in one of her kitchen chairs before she could get the words out.
The brown paper bag clanked when he put it on the table in front of him. It held whatever was left of what he'd been drinking.
"Let me get you some coffee," Carol offered.
"Too damn late for coffee," Daryl said, his tongue much looser than she recalled it being the night that she'd met him at the Center.
"Too late for booze too," Carol commented. "I'll make the coffee."
"Don't want no damn coffee," Daryl said. Carol watched him. He appeared to be talking to the bag in front of him more than he was talking to her. He also appeared to be dreadfully close to simply passing out.
"How much have you had to drink?" Carol asked, ignoring him just long enough to fix a mug of the liquid for both of them. It would, maybe, sober him up a little and it would keep her awake—both good things for the night she felt might be ahead of them.
"Not fuckin' enough...it's never enough," Daryl commented. To illustrate his point, he picked up the bag and drank from the bottle it concealed. Carol cringed. She quickly came to the table and put the coffee in front of him.
"I make really good coffee," Carol said. "And in my experience? A good cup of coffee solves a lot more problems than a bottle of—whatever that is."
Daryl looked at her. She hadn't really studied him yet. She was busy trying to get things set up to have time to sit with him. He looked like he had that night at the Center. He looked like he needed a shower. He looked tired. He looked like he could stand to sleep for a few days. His eye was a darker purple than it had been, though, and it looked like it was bruising still.
The old bruise was quickly covering over with a new one.
Carol got up from the table. Daryl returned to the bottle that he was drinking out of, deciding that her coffee wasn't going to solve a single problem, and Carol let him be. It was Friday. Odds were he had nowhere to be in the morning and if he did? He wasn't going to make it there anyway. He could sleep it off. Helping people looked different for everyone. Maybe that was the first step to helping him—he could just sleep it off. Carol took a dishrag and carefully filled it with ice cubes from the freezer. She wrapped them up and slipped the rag into a plastic bag that she wrapped with another rag. She shifted it around in her hands a few times to satisfy herself that it was cold enough to do the trick without being too cold and it wouldn't hurt the bruise any more than was absolutely necessary.
"Here," Carol said, offering the homemade ice pack to him. "Put this on that eye."
He started to refuse her, but Carol simply moved to hold it over his eye for him—and finally he had no choice but to put his hand up and allow her to make the transfer over to him. She sat again, tasted her own coffee, and tried to figure out where to start.
She didn't really do this. She'd given her number out to a lot of people before, but rarely had anyone actually called her. And the few who had? They were women. She knew what to say to them.
She didn't know what to say to Daryl.
But he needed her help, and she hoped she would figure it out. Preferably before he drank himself into an absolute stupor.
"You want to talk about it," Carol said. "That's what you told me on the phone. So—let's talk about it." Daryl groaned or growled. It was difficult to tell which. "What happened?" He sucked his teeth in response.
"I know what the hell you're thinkin'," Daryl said, his face mostly hidden from Carol by the combination of his unruly hair and the ice pack covering half his face.
"I don't think you do," Carol responded. "I don't know what I'm thinking—so I'm pretty sure that you don't."
"You're thinkin'—why the hell don't he just hit the old bastard back? Why the—why the hell don't he just..." Daryl stopped for a moment and laughed at a joke that only he was privy to before he drank from the bottle again. Carol resisted the urge to reach over and simply take it away from him. She didn't know what kind of drunk he could be—and she didn't want to move him from the state he was in to one that was much more volatile. The energy around him felt like he was teetering on an edge. She didn't want to push him in the wrong direction. "You're thinkin' why the hell don't he just kill the old bastard...right? Kill him. Hit him. Just—go the fuck away and never come back. Leave 'em both to die. Rot in that house. Forget to turn the damn stove off and...whoosh. Just fuckin' gone."
Carol swallowed.
"Daryl...?" She asked softly, just testing to see if he was in a place to respond to her at all. He moved his head enough to look at her from around the ice pack. He was in his head—but he could be there too, with her, at least to some degree. "Who did this?" He hummed at her. He sucked his teeth. He shook his head. "You said you wanted to talk to me," Carol said. "And I want—I want very much to talk to you. But—to do that? You have to talk to me. That's the trick in all this. Who did it?"
He stared at her. He took his time, but finally he answered her.
"Rooster," he said. He shrugged. "Rooster. Always Rooster. From the time—from the time—I can't even remember. Rooster."
Carol furrowed her brow at him.
"Is Rooster a person?" Carol asked. He found some amusement in that. This time it seemed to be genuine amusement and not the somewhat ironic laugh that had accompanied his earlier imagined joke. He drank from the bottle and sucked his teeth again. He smacked his mouth. Carol got up to get a glass of water. If he wouldn't drink the coffee, maybe he'd drink the water.
"Ye-ep," he slurred. "Rooster Dixon. My old man. Rooster. Mean ass fuckin' birds. Mean ass fuckin' old ass men."
Carol's stomach turned as she returned and put the water in front of him before she took her seat again. He studied the glass and seemed to think that it was something he might want to drink because he went for it. And once he tasted it, he must have liked it. He drank half the glass before Carol could even think of a response to the revelation that his abuser was his father.
With the men that came to the Center, it was always difficult to tell who their abuser might be. And, more than that, it was often difficult to keep them there. None of them, it seemed, wanted to admit that somebody in their home was treating them worse than anybody had a right to. The men, more than the women, showed up to a first meeting and never came back.
Carol knew how delicate this whole situation could be.
"You live with him?" Carol asked.
Daryl stopped drinking long enough to nod at her, and then he returned to drinking. She got to her feet immediately and took the glass to refill it as soon as it was empty. If he wanted to drink half the water in Georgia, tonight she'd let him.
"Rooster. My brother. We're Dixons. That's what Dixons do. Stick by each other," Daryl said. He laughed to himself. "For better or for fuckin' worse." His interest in the water was renewed when Carol returned the glass and he drank half of it with the same vigor he'd used to drain the first glass. Carol remained standing this time because she could sense that she'd be refilling it again in a moment. She crossed her arms across her chest.
"Is there anyone else?" Carol asked.
He stopped drinking and looked at her. He lowered his ice pack because it was obstructing his vision. Carol moved her hand toward him, touched his, and raised it up to hold the ice in place again. He hissed when the rag made contact with his skin.
"Who the hell else do you think there is, lady?" He asked. "Who the hell else you think would stay around for that? I know you're thinkin' that's what the hell I oughta do. Run out. Get the hell out and stay out. But there ain't nobody else—and that ain't what we do."
Carol swallowed. She felt like she could feel his pain. It was radiating around him like a cloud. She could hear it in his voice. It was streaked across his features. She knew that the irritation and the anger in his voice wasn't directed at her.
She distracted herself by taking the glass, as soon as he was done with it, to refill it again.
He groaned when she returned it to the table, but he made no indication if he was groaning at the reappearing water or at something else. He put his head on his hand and his elbow slipped. Sober he might have had the reflexes to stop the fall forward that he made, but drunk he didn't. His elbow sent the bottle flying to the side and Carol jumped when it hit the floor even though she'd somewhat seen it coming. The coffee, too, that had been forgotten in front of him was knocked over and it spilled out over the table.
He sat up, suddenly a little more sobered than he had been.
"Shit," he spat, looking at the spreading mess across the table and the floor. "Shit...fuck...I..."
But he stopped because he was in no condition to finish what it was he had to say. And he didn't need to. It had been an accident. He'd been drinking—a great deal given how little really spilled out of the bottle. And he was tired—and it was clear that he was giving into that fatigue now that he was in her kitchen. Carol, too, had passed out on a friend's couch before while Sophia slept in the woman's bedroom just because, immediately, being closed in her home had felt like being in the safe kind of place where they could both sleep without worry or judgment.
"It's OK," Carol said quickly. She smiled at Daryl when he looked at her, even though she was choking back her own desire to cry for him. "It's OK. It's just a little spill." She shook her head at him. "It's nothing to worry about. Come on—let me show you where the bathroom is? You want to—you need to go to the bathroom?"
Maybe he hadn't had to, but upon her suggestion of it, he seemed to think it was a good idea. He didn't seem to be able to muddle through what he might do with the ice pack, so Carol took it and rested it on the table. She offered a hand to him to help him up. She steadied him when he stood. His eyelids drooped under the weight of it all. He looked around again at the mess. Then he looked at her.
"Shit," he said again, less force behind the word this time. "Shit—I'm...gotta go. Shouldn'ta come here. I shouldn't..."
Carol shook her head at him.
"You're going to sleep here," she said. "You already said you would," she lied. "And you're going to go to the bathroom and—I'm going to clean this up because it isn't anything. It's just a little spill. I—did way worse this morning. Come on."
He went with her. In the hallway to the bathroom, he stumbled. His full weight went onto Carol and, finding that she couldn't support it, the both of them slammed into the wall. She soothed over his new round of apology and got him into the bathroom. She was afraid to leave him alone in there, but she couldn't very well offer to help him. She cringed when she heard the crashing and clattering around that followed. Quickly she darted back to the kitchen and cleaned up the mess as fast as she could. She could wipe it up better once he was down for the count, but she wanted enough of it gone that he wouldn't worry about it.
As soon as she was satisfied he'd find no evidence of the spill, Carol returned to the bathroom and knocked on the door. When he didn't come out, she knocked again. Panic rose up in her chest a little and finally she tried the door. She half-shielded her eyes as she stepped in. She didn't want to embarrass him. He was dressed, though, and leaned against the sink with his head on his hands.
"Come on," Carol said, checking her tone of voice to keep it as gentle as she could. "Let's get you to the couch. Let's—get some sleep. It'll be better in the morning."
"No," he responded, not lifting his head. "No. No. It ain't gonna be better'n mornin'..."
Carol walked in and rubbed her hand across his back.
"It'll be better in the morning," she said. "I promise you. It'll be better in the morning. All you have to do right now? Is go to sleep. And—it'll be better in the morning."
He looked at her, and he must have believed her. He straightened himself up.
"Are you done in here?" Carol asked, taking inventory of a few things she'd need to clean up now that they'd been knocked over. He looked around and hummed. She took it as confirmation and slipped her arms around him to pull him with her. He came, only running her into the wall once, and eventually she got him to the couch. Quickly she made the best makeshift bed that she could for him and got him to lie down. She agreed to everything he said, most of it unintelligible because it was mumbled in drunken slurs and he was half-sleep, and she promised him again that things would be better in the morning.
She didn't know how, exactly, they'd be better, but she knew that they had to get better.
And he must have believed her then too, because he was fast asleep by the time she returned, only seconds later, with the pillow and the blanket that she promised him.