Chapter 7
Daryl was stringing wire, wrapping it hard between fence posts. He needed to think, and his brain bound all up when his hands weren't busy. 'Sides, they needed a better fence than the single tripwire they'd had. He didn't know how long they'd be at this farmhouse, but even a night or two was better with a fence, and there was plenty of wire in the shed.
Thing about Carol was, if he really needed something, he could ask her and she wouldn't laugh. Like that day when Rick and Lori kept talking about B.A.'s and he couldn't puzzle out from the sentences what the hell the thing could be. Or when Carol showed him all the names of the secret parts of her body, or how she liked him to use his fingers on her.
But now he needed to know something a lot more complicated.
He needed to know how to make her happy.
There was no one else to ask. He was damn near desperate enough to ask Glenn, if the guy had still been around. Better humiliate himself in front of the other man so he could at least look like he knew what he was doing when he was with Carol. Besides, if Glenn laughed, he could just punch him until he stopped.
He wrapped the wire around the fencepost, cursing when he caught a chunk of his skin on one of the barbs.
You got to stay who you are. Not who you were.
Beth was in his head now, her words stuck there good. He looked for signs of that black car that took her, every time he went out. Found nothing. But he remembered every word she said to him. The nice ones, and the rude ones. She thought he was something other than that dog-mean kid tagging along after Merle. The man he was without his brother, the man he wanted to be, was a lot more like Rick or Glenn. But he was neither of them, and he had to figure out where he wanted to fall.
He kicked the post, just to make sure it was solid, but he'd dug it nice and deep. It was a good post. They never had a fence, back when they was kids. Nothing worth keeping anybody else out of. He'd learned how to build a fence himself, from watching how it broke when the walkers knocked it down.
Back at the prison, he used to know when Glenn and Maggie were fighting, because they wouldn't talk. And when they made up, he knew it because he'd hear quiet little voices coming from her room. Then nothing, because they were back out in the guard tower, and the next morning they were all smiles over breakfast. But talking came first.
He wasn't good at talking.
He stared into the forest and whipped the rag out of his pocket to rub sweat off his forehead. He was good at manning up, though. Doing what needed to be done.
He wanted to be the kind of man Carol wanted to spend time with. In the living room, not just the bedroom and the forest. And if he had to look like a dumbass for a minute or two to get there, well, it wouldn't be the first time.
He let himself back into the house. Carol sat on the living room floor, sewing on a scavenged pair of pants, Tyreese sitting beside her doing a crap ass job of cleaning their guns.
"Get out," Daryl grunted.
Tyreese looked up and started to scowl, then his eyes flickered back down and he shoved the guns away and got up.
Carol sighed. "We just need a minute to talk, Tyreese. I'm sorry, do you mind?"
He gestured to Daryl. "He could have asked, same as you just did." He stared at Daryl. "I'm not some kid or servant for you to order around."
Daryl stared back.
Tyreese shook his head and stomped outside, slamming the door behind him.
Carol kept sewing, sending him a reproachful look over the top. "I know you've got more manners than that. It wouldn't cost you anything to use them."
"Cost me time and energy he ain't worth." Guy'd be dead soon anyway. Carol basically kept him alive like a baby every time they left the house together. She practically had to hold his hand to cross the street.
"Spit it out," she said, still sewing.
"What?"
"You've been working up to something for days." She held up the pants to better catch the light from the window. "Get any twitchier and poor Tyreese is going to get an ulcer. So spit it out. You wouldn't be in here if you weren't ready to talk about it."
"Don't laugh," he warned.
She smiled. "Oh, this is going to be good."
He headed for the door.
"Simmer down, Pookie," she called after him. "If you wanted a partner without a sense of humor, you could have kissed Oscar. You two would have had a beautiful, very silent relationship."
He looked back. "You ain't half as funny as you think you are."
"That makes me twice as funny as anybody else around." She smiled and patted the floor next to her. "Silver lining to the apocalypse."
His lips twitched.
"See?" she said sunnily. "You're already feeling better. Sit down close enough I can get grabby with you and you'll feel even better."
He slung himself down on the floor next to her, knees propped up and arms hitched over them, his foot already jiggling up and down to bounce his hands. He spit it out quick, because that's how you get your ass to jump off a cliff when it's a long long way down to the lake and you don't want to look like a pussy in front of your big brother's friends.
"I need you to tell me what to do." He jerked at a stray thread on his pants and it tore a new, jagged hole in the worn fabric. "And it's about the only time I'm gonna ask, so enjoy it all you want to."
She made another tiny, precise stitch and he realized she was lengthening out the hem of the pants. For him?
"What to do with what?"
"With you, with us. This whole…" He shoved his knees down, sat up cross-legged, pushed his weight back against the recliner he was leaning against. "Relationship thing. My parents…they didn't exactly have that all sorted out. And the rest of my family…" He huffed out a breath. "It don't run in my blood."
He wanted to be better than his blood. When people said "Dixon" at the prison, they didn't say it like they needed to spit the taste out of their mouths. Leastways, not until they met Merle.
Carol set aside her sewing and leaned back against the chair, her on the front, him on the side. "It isn't about what you need to do. It's about what you need to stop doing."
"What?" Shit, how many ways had he upset her without him even knowing?
"I told you, remember? All I need is for you to stop bracing like I'm just looking for an excuse to laugh at you. To hurt you."
She let out a breath, sounding a little frustrated. She scooted around so she was facing him.
"Daryl, I don't see how you can know I care about you and still think I would want to—" She stopped. "Yes. Yes, I do," she said, and pressed her lips together. "I can see why you'd think that." She looked back at him. "But I'm not Merle. And I'm not…whoever else treated you like shit, before."
She hooked a finger in the armhole of his vest, inside the sleeveless shirt beneath, just letting that one finger play against the bare skin of his chest.
"When you relax, I like you just fine. You don't need to learn how to act like someone else. I just need you to stop bracing and just be you, Daryl."
He looked at her. Not dead on. Just quick little flicks of his eyes between her face and the ground, because that was as much as he could handle. "Okay."
"Yeah?" She waited, but he wasn't sure what for. "Is that what you wanted to ask me?" she said finally. "I can't tell if you got what you came for, because you're still all stiff."
"Yeah, I guess."
He tried to puzzle it out, but the two things didn't connect. He wanted to be the kind of guy she came to in order feel better, and she was saying just to be himself. But when he was being himself, it was mostly when he was doing stuff. Whittling or fixing the bike or gutting a deer. None of those things were things he did with Carol. But she'd sounded so certain, before, he didn't have the words to explain which part of that didn't fit, for him.
"Like…" He scratched the back of his neck. "How, though?"
She smiled, and it lit up her whole face. She reminded him of a stained glass window, sometimes. In the church he'd only been to when he was small enough his mom had to hold his hand as they walked in. All made of light, the picture of her only coming clearer the brighter it got.
She pursed her lips and shook her head. "I can show you, but you're not going to like it."
He stiffened. "Come on, what?" He was the one everyone called for the dirty work, for the stuff nobody else had the sack to do. What was it Carol thought would make him squirm?
"You sure?" she asked dubiously.
"Yeah, what?" He stood up, anxious to get going on whatever it was and stop hanging around talking about it.
She sighed. "You trust me, right?"
"Yeah," he said, though he'd been more certain of that a minute ago.
She stood up, too, and cocked her head toward something in the house behind her. "Come here."
He started that direction, but when he passed her, she held out a hand to stop him. He looked over, confused. She drew him back in front of her, and then, gently, into her arms.
She laid her head on his shoulder and relaxed into his chest. "A little more of this might be nice," she whispered.
Hugging? Yeah, he guessed he could see that. Back at the prison, she was always hugging the kids, patting them on the shoulders or the back. Of course she'd want someone to do that for her, too. He was stupid not to have figured that out on his own.
He put his arms around her, but they felt too low, so he moved them up. That didn't feel right, either, so he squirmed them out from under hers and wrapped them over her shoulders. But then her head was buried between his neck and his arms and he worried she couldn't breathe.
She started to shake against him, laughing quietly, and he scowled and pushed her off. "You were the one that asked. Shit, Carol. Told you I'm no good at that stuff."
"You are." She stepped back, smiling, and wrapped her sweater a little closer around her. The one he'd found her at a store in town. He'd had to hold it up over his head as he stomped the jaw out of a walker so he wouldn't get blood on the sweater, but it had been worth it because he brought it back clean.
He realized then that she was smiling. She smiled a lot these days. He was pretty sure she was laughing because he fucked up her whole hug experiment, but she wasn't looking at him like he was dumb. She was looking at him like she liked him.
"Said you wouldn't laugh," he warned.
"Well, I didn't know you were going to be so damned cute, did I?"
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, cute. That's me."
She burst out laughing and he threw out an arm and hauled her into his chest, exasperated. It was quick, and hard, and he ducked his head quick so nobody watching would have seen the little kiss he dropped on her forehead. He'd seen her do that to the little kids, so he thought she might like it, too. Then he stepped back, just as fast.
"I got to go. All this talking and shit's not going to get the rest of the fence up before dark."
She was looking at him oddly, though. Not smiling anymore, and she looked a little off-balance. Her hand fluttered up to her throat and she swallowed.
He looked behind himself for danger, but there was nothing but sunlight through dusty windows and a solidly closed front door.
"That was, um—" She pointed at him, as if that would clear something up. Her eyes sparkled with abrupt tears.
"What?" he asked, increasingly alarmed. "What'd I do?"
"I just…didn't realize you already knew how to hug." She smoothed a hand over the strap of his crossbow where it crossed his shoulder. "Just keep being you, Daryl," she said. "It's working just fine."
Author's Note: Only one more chapter of this one, guys! *sniffles* I've enjoyed getting to know the people in this fandom so much! I just put out a couple of one-shots, I've got another one that will come out soon from the Alexandria times, and as soon as this story wraps, I'm going to start posting a longer, slow-burn Caryl friendship to romance story that I've been working on. I'm really excited for that one. It has a lot of funny/cute little scene setups that I enjoyed writing. Thanks so much for your reviews and support!
