AN: Here we go, another little chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"What you doin' up here?" Merle asked, coming out to meet Andrea and Carol before they made any move at all to get out of the vehicle with Hays.
"Come to get that tire," Andrea responded. "Figured if it's at the house I've got a better chance of getting it changed."
Merle growled low in his throat at her and then directed his eyes toward Carol. He tipped his head slightly at her and greeted her and she returned the greeting.
For brothers, there were more ways that Daryl and Merle were different than alike. And the most obvious of those ways were how they felt in regard to their families.
Both men thought their children were treasures, that was one thing they had in common. And both men were proud of their families. Merle counted it as some sort of testament to his manhood that he had four healthy boys while Daryl thought he was blessed to have four healthy girls. The difference, really, came in that Daryl made Carol feel like, all throughout their time dating and through their marriage, that she was a special blessing to him…made only more precious because she was the mother of his children. Merle, on the other hand, seemed at times to think that Andrea was nothing more than someone he was "strapped with" and he often treated her as such.
And Carol wouldn't have traded one for the other for the world. She often teased Andrea that she was on a special mission from God simply to tolerate Merle Dixon the way that she did…four boys or not.
"I told ya I was bringin' that tire home," Merle said.
"And you didn't," Andrea responded. "At least if it's at the house I can change it and get my mobility back without having to wait on people to drive me everywhere."
Merle clenched his jaw at her.
"I tell you I'ma do somethin', I'ma do it. Don't need you comin' up here tryin' ta bust my balls in fronta nobody," Merle said.
Andrea leaned up in the passenger seat and looked around. At the moment it appeared that Merle was the only one who was even at the shop. He and Daryl ran the place and they had a handful of others who worked there, but they tended to work on shifts and sometimes the place was crowded while other times it was just the two of them keeping steady hours. Without Daryl for a few days, it looked like Merle was alone at the moment.
"Doesn't look like I'm busting your balls in front of anyone, Merle," Andrea said. "There isn't a soul here."
Merle rolled his eyes toward Carol and Carol shook her head slightly as a reaction.
"Can we just get the tire?" Carol asked. "We'll trade you…sandwiches for a tire?"
She reached across and gathered up the bag with sandwiches in it that would "hold him over" until he got home for dinner. Merle accepted the bag, but still looked a little irritated with the whole thing.
"I'll load it," he said. "Just stay in the car."
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Carol tried not to draw attention to the fact that Daryl was moving a little stiffly when he came to sit at the table and help with homework and sign any and every document that needed to be signed for this club or another. She appreciated the help because it cleared her up to get dinner ready and focus on Judith's needs.
"What are we having?" Sophia called from the table.
"Chicken casserole," Carol responded back.
"We had that three days ago," Sophia pointed out.
"And when you start cooking dinner," Carol responded, "then you can make sure we eat something different every day of the week."
Daryl snorted.
"Your Ma ain't no short order cook," Daryl said. "Besides, chicken casserole's good even if you eat it every day…I'ma sure enjoy what's left over tomorrow."
"We might have it again tomorrow," Lizzie muttered.
"And you might not have nothin'," Daryl commented.
Carol bit her lip a moment, listening to Lizzie's protests at Daryl's insistence that she didn't need to eat if she didn't know how to appreciate what was put in front of her. It was something she should be accustomed to hearing, honestly, since it was Daryl's motto with the girls from the moment they got around to eating solid food. She had always had to convince him that he couldn't have the same motto with baby food…the baby had to eat, even if she was being picky.
But, for Daryl, a lot of it boiled down to the rule that the Dixons were thankful for what they had.
"Everyone's eating," Carol said from the kitchen. "You're just eating chicken casserole and you better start clearing the table. Mikka? Can you get the dishes? Lizzie and Soph? Drinks?"
There was shuffling about at the table and then the kitchen began to fill as Carol's "helpers" started to move into get things ready. Daryl came, as well, and offered to take the oven mits from Carol to get the casseroles and move them to the stove so that everyone could serve themselves and meet at the table.
Once they were all settled and Carol had moved Judith's chair close enough to help her with her meal, everyone who had even thought of complaining about the food was too busy eating to continue with their earlier grumblings.
"Soph…" Daryl started, speaking around his food before he paused to swallow and then continued. "Found you a car, maybe…but, uh, you gotta tell me what'cha doin' if you want it. How you intend to earn the thing?"
Daryl had Sophia's interest, but it was divided with her desire to be annoyed at the suggestion that she had to earn the car in question.
"What am I supposed to do for it?" Sophia asked.
"Well," Daryl said. "Way I see it is you get an allowance for what'cha do now…which is damn near nothing. So you start doin' a little more around the house? Let me hear you getting good reports for doing your chores and then some? That'll maybe make a raise on your allowance…but you gonna have to do something extra. Get some kinda job. Show me you serious about this and you're responsible enough to be trusted with a car."
"What kind of job?" Sophia asked.
Daryl shook his head slightly.
"I don't care about that," he said. "You wanna find one, find one…get out there and look. You don't wanna find somethin' on your own? I'll find somethin' for you up at the shop…cleanin' up, washin' cars? That kinda stuff's always available."
"When am I supposed to do homework?" Sophia asked. "If I'm running this house and I'm working at the shop?"
Carol stifled a laugh by turning her face against her shoulder as she reached to help Judith with the problem she was having due to trying to pick up more than she could eat at one time. Daryl chuckled too. Sophia, at times, was given to dramatics. This time wasn't any different.
"Somehow," Daryl said, "I got a feeling that you can juggle all you gotta do, but…if you can't? Somethin' tells me you don't need no car 'cause you need to keep right here at home working on all that homework."
"Mama…" Sophia said, her voice threatening a whine.
Carol chuckled and shook her head.
"Don't think I'm intervening on your behalf," Carol said. "Your Daddy is right. If you've got enough homework that you can't do your chores and work a few hours? Then you certainly don't need a car."
Carol rolled her eyes in Daryl's direction and caught him smirking at her even as he pretended to have turned his attention back to his food.
"And besides, I need someone around here to run this household…and if I can't even run my own household, I certainly can't be expected to stand up for any of the people living in it," Carol teased.
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"He's an asshole," Carol said.
Daryl reached around her and plucked his toothbrush out of the decorative cup that she'd put up in the bathroom for them. He ignored, on the whole, that everything in his bathroom matched. It was something he'd have never put time and energy into, but he didn't really mind it simply being there when she'd been the one to put it together.
"He's always been an asshole," Daryl said. "Tell me somethin' I don't know."
"You should say something to him," Carol said.
She moved to the side, allowing Daryl better access to the sink and the toothpaste while she went through her meticulous beauty routine.
"What the hell you want me to say?" Daryl slurred through a mouth full of toothbrush and toothpaste.
"You could start with you ought to treat your wife better," Carol said. "Or…you could go with…I don't know…Daryl have you seen how he treats Andrea? She deserves better than that. As long as they've been together? And they have four boys together and he can't even treat her with…not even respect, he's just an asshole."
Daryl chuckled.
"You're right," he said. "He's an asshole. He is. You ain't gonna hear no disputing that on my part, but I don't know what you want me to say to him that you think he's gonna listen to."
He rinsed his mouth and watched her shaking her head, more at what she was thinking than at him.
Merle had been an asshole since, or at least Daryl suspected since there was no way of knowing for sure, the moment he'd been born. If it were possible, he was probably an asshole in the womb. Marrying Andrea had, in a lot of ways, mellowed him out, but that didn't mean that he had done some kind of entire turn around.
That was sometimes the scary part. Merle with Andrea was much better than Merle without Andrea had ever been. It was terrifying to think what he'd be like now if he'd never married her in the first place.
And he loved his kids. There wasn't anyone who could dispute that Merle Dixon cared about his boys, but he just wasn't the warm and fuzzy kind. He'd always been the kind of old man that, when his kid got hurt, instead of being able to offer them the band aid and hug that might have made it all better, he was going to tell them to rub some dirt on it and inform them that boys, especially Dixon boys, didn't cry.
Merle Dixon was all about "tough love," and maybe that extended in his mind to his wife as well. At least, that's what Daryl told himself most of the time to keep from saying something to his brother about not acting the way that he thought he should act.
It seemed, though, that Carol was determined he was going to address the issue in some way, and though he really didn't like the idea of trying to have some heart to heart with Merle about his marriage, it appeared that he was going to have to figure out a way to make it happen.
Because Daryl wasn't too much in the practice of not giving Carol what she wanted, especially when it was something as simple as saying something to someone about being a jackass.
Daryl sighed and pushed Carol out of the bathroom in front of him, catching her shoulders as he did and squeezing them.
"Let's go to bed," he said. "I'll talk to him tomorrow. Don't got a damn clue what I'ma say to him, but I'll talk to him…tell him to try to undo all these years of becomin' an asshole to try to be somethin' looks a little like a damn human being."
Carol laughed at him and brought her hands up to catch his. She pulled one of them around and kissed it before she rubbed her face against it.
"I'm lucky that I picked the right Dixon out of the bunch," Carol commented.
"Damn lucky," Daryl commented with a laugh before he turned her around and kissed her, lingering a moment and just enjoying the warmth of the embrace and the soft kiss that accompanied it. He laughed when he pulled away, bumping her nose with his own in a teasing movement. "You won the damn Dixon lottery."
