"I'm dead serious. This bitch insults me, and then just smiles at me and goes 'oh, don't take it personally, I'm practically your mother-in-law.'"

Carol snorted, clutching her glass of wine a little tighter. After all of the stressful events and changes Alexandria had gone through in the past few weeks, Deanna had thrown a bit of a block party, to lift spirits. It was mostly just alcohol and a huge potluck dinner at the Monroes'. Carol had made her rounds for a couple of hours, but was worn out enough that she had gone home early, settling on the back porch steps.

Lucky for her, Michonne had shown up with a bottle of wine shortly after, and after a few glasses, they'd started trying to one-up each other with ridiculous stories. At the moment, Michonne was in the middle of one about her old boyfriend's mother.

"I'm telling you," she continued with a slight slur. "It took every ounce of willpower I had to not tell her she was the reason I wasn't marrying her son. She was horrible."

"She couldn't have been the whole reason," Carol argued, snickering.

"No," the other woman conceded. "She was only, like, half. But she was such a bitch that I wanted to tell her that it was all her."

Carol laughed hard at that, her wine nearly going up her nose. She barely even registered the back door opening, but looked up when she realized it was Daryl who was standing over them, eyebrow raised.

"I was wonderin' where you went," he remarked, smirking a little. "Can't believe you left me by myself back there."

"Oh, please, you were having fun," Carol giggled. "I didn't want to interrupt yours and Eric's conversation. And you didn't even notice when I left!"

"'Course I noticed," he scoffed.

"But you didn't follow me, 'cause you were having fun," she said matter-of-factly, taking another sip of wine, and Michonne snickered.

Daryl snorted, his gaze flickering from the two of them to the nearly empty bottle of wine.

"Sweetheart, I think it's time I cut you off," he said, reaching down to either offer her a hand up, or, as Carol assumed, to take the wine glass.

Instinctively, she held it on her other side, out of his reach. "Uh-uh. I don't think so. This is mine-" she hiccuped, cutting herself off and kind of defeating her own point.

Daryl rolled his eyes and squatted down next to her. "C'mon, Carol. How about you 'n me call it a night?"

She pursed her lips, considering. "OK… I'll make a trade. My glass for your shirt."

Daryl snorted again at the cheshire grin she wore. He paused, glancing at Michonne to see her reaction… but the other woman had nodded off against the railing.

Looking back to Carol, he smirked again. "Tell you what, sweetheart: give me the glass and come on inside, and I'll give you a lot more than my shirt."

"Deal."

He couldn't bite back a grin at her quick response as she finally let him help her to her feet, handing over the wine glass. She glanced down at Michonne, finally noticing that she'd fallen asleep.

"I just can't believe Michonne is such a lightweight drunk," she giggled, leaning into him to keep her balance as he led her inside.

"Darlin', I hate to break it to you, but so are you."

Author's note: Since I missed my season 6 premiere deadline, I've decided to continue these for a while. I'm not setting a new deadline yet- we'll see how long it takes for me to want to stop.