AN: Here we go, another little chapter for you. Sorry that all of my chapters are few and far between, but I'm on vacation and I don't have the kind of time to write that I do sometimes.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"Daryl, it's only natural that she would say that," Carol said as Daryl shucked the rest of his clothes to join her in the bed. "Russ calls you Daddy and the man painting the house called you her Daddy...she hardly ever called Ed anything...it's just natural, I think, that she would call you Daddy."
"Fine, but it ain't true an' I don't want her gettin' the wrong idea an' thinkin' it is when you ain't ready ta commit ta somethin'," Daryl replied.
"How much more committed do I have to be?" Carol asked. "You're here almost all the time, and when you're not here then we're with you. I don't know how much more I could give, or you could give for that matter."
Daryl sighed.
"You gonna marry me?" He asked.
Carol made a face at him.
"My divorce isn't even final and you're talking about marriage?" She responded. "I couldn't marry you…not legally."
"Not tomorrow," Daryl replied quickly. "But eventually. I just wanna know where this is headed, where we're headed. We talked about it before an' you said it yourself, this ain't just you an' me. This is Russ an' Sophia too. We kinda need ta know what's OK an' what ain't."
Carol ceded him that point. They did need to know where they were headed and how they planned to get there. It wasn't going to be fair to leave the kids in some kind of position where there would be questions, sooner or later, that they were always saying they didn't have an answer to just yet.
"Give it until Christmas," Carol responded. "That's just a few months. We keep doing what we're doing, and by then my divorce will be final if all the paperwork to push it through goes through without a problem, I'll be through with half the school year...then we can talk about it."
Daryl considered it a moment and finally nodded.
"Fine," he responded. "Christmas and ain't neither one a' us changed our minds or backed outta this an' we gonna talk about it like we serious."
"We have a deal then," Carol responded. "We'll discuss it seriously at Christmas."
Daryl snorted and patted the bed right beside him so Carol would close the small gap between them.
"What's so funny?" She asked, curling up next to him.
"Nothin'," he replied, "except you 'bout the most hardheaded woman I ever knowed in my life."
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"I'm sayin' you ain't hard ta find 'cause you such a damn creature a' habit," Merle declared.
"What the hell else I'm gonna be?" Daryl asked. "I got a kid an' he don't love the hell outta change. He likes his routine."
Merle snorted and from across the shop Mac laughed too.
Heather had called the shop, determined to talk to Daryl and he was slightly annoyed that after all these years she'd found him at his house and found him working the same job.
But he'd agreed to talk to her, though it hadn't stopped him from bitching with the men he worked with, men who remembered when Russ had come into his life and Heather had passed out of it.
"You been the same damn way since you was a kid," Merle called at him. "Once you get somethin' you like at all, you do anythin' ya damn well can ta hold the hell onto it. Don't have no damn dreams a' gettin' nothin' better outta simple fear that shit ain't gonna be good as whatcha done had."
"An' your ass ain't like that I reckon?" Daryl shot back. "Married ta Andrea all this damn time?"
Merle laughed.
"Ain't just talkin' 'bout a man's pussy boy," Merle retorted. "Ya ass is gonna be hard pressed ta find ya a man don't feel that way 'bout his pussy."
"Got a damn point," Wren threw in. "You find the one you like, one that fits ya just right, an' ain't a damn soul anxious ta give that shit up."
Daryl curled his lip.
In a lot of ways he was outnumbered at the shop. The three men that he worked with sometimes had some ideas he didn't entirely agree with, but the three of them very regularly agreed wholeheartedly on those points, leaving him somewhere on the outside.
"A pussy is a pussy," Daryl mumbled. "Every damn woman's got one an' it's the woman you holdin' on to, not the pussy."
And someone may very we'll have argued the worthless point with him, but they didn't get the chance because there was the rumble of a car pulling up outside and the arrival of Walt White, a man coming to shoot the shit and escape his home life a little most likely, to entertain everyone for the next little bit. Daryl, who could easily and gladly do without the man's annoying bullshitting, went back to work, only coming out of his running daydreams again when he heard another car.
It was a car he recognized right away. It belonged to Heather's old man. It was an old gold Cadillac.
Daryl went outside himself, already knowing the visitor was his.
Heather got out of the car. She looked a little different than she had even when she'd shown up outside Daryl's house that day.
She was blonde...the bottle variety and Daryl knew that...and she was always a woman who'd been worried about her figure. She'd obviously gotten it back after Russ, but the drugs she used for recreation had probably helped with that immensely.
She smiled at Daryl.
"Daddy wants you to write him up a estimate on his car. Somebody bumped him good 'bout two weeks ago...said he wouldn't trust no one else but you with his car," Heather said as Daryl approached.
Her parents lived in the next town over, if they were still alive, which evidently the old man was. Daryl had no use for the couple that had supported her decision and had chosen, like the rest of Heather's family, to pretend that Russ didn't even exist.
"You come here ta talk shop?" Daryl asked.
Heather made a face like she was disappointed in her reception.
"Fine," she responded. "Daddy does want you to look at the car, but you're right, I didn't come for just that."
"Whatta you want then?" Daryl asked. "You the one called me, asked me ta take off work, 'cause you had somethin' you wanna say. So, say whatever the hell it is."
Heather sighed and looked around her at the landscape surrounding the shop.
"Walk with me?" She asked.
Daryl didn't particularly want to walk with her. He nodded, though and started toward her, letting her pick out whatever meandering path the two of them would follow.
"You act like you mad at me," Heather said. "I done nothin' to you, you know. Everything you done, you done it to yourself."
"You right," Daryl said. "You ain't done shit ta me. An' I ain't mad atcha. I'd have ta give a damn about your ass ta be mad atcha an' I don't care about you at all."
Heather nodded her head slightly.
"I want my boy back, Daryl," she said frankly. "I want him back an' I come back for him."
Daryl felt his pulse pick up. He'd been rolling around in his mind what the hell he might say or do if Heather tried to get Russ from him. He'd thought of everything he might say, and really he wasn't sold on any of the speeches he'd imagined because in the end the only thing his mind offered him that he considered even partially acceptable was the simple and constant repetition of the word "no", and beyond that he scared himself because he thought that he'd have no problem whatsoever killing anyone who tried to take Russ from him, whether it was Heather or someone else. And that frightened him.
"He ain't your boy," Daryl said. "An' you can't have him back 'cause you ain't never had him ta start with. You signed them papers an' you give him up 'fore he was a damn hour old an' I fed him his first meal outta a plastic bottle in a hospital nursery. He weren't never yours, an' he don't know you. We just fine without you an' they ain't no way in hell I'm lettin' you take him from me. You figure out how ta take that shit ta court an' I'll fight your ass 'til the day he turns eighteen."
Even Daryl was surprised when the words, complete with just enough bite to make it clear he was sincere but with considerably less hatred than he'd imagined they might have, came rolling out of his mouth.
Heather was evidently taken aback as well because it took her more than a moment to respond.
"I know I give him up," she said. "An' I know you chose to keep him, but I weren't ready for him then. I weren't ready to be no kinda mama. I'm ready to be his mama now, though. I growed up a lot. I'm damn near clean. I drink an' sometimes I smoke a lil' pot sometimes, but I'm damn near clean an' I've had a lotta time, you know? A lotta time to think about things an' I know now I'm ready to give it a go. I'm ready to be his mama."
"Ain't how the hell the damn thing works, Heather," Daryl replied. "You can't just have a kid an' decide you ain't want 'em yet. You can't just put 'em up on some shelf 'til you ready for 'em."
Daryl considered what she'd said a moment longer while she guarded her silence.
"An' ya don't just give it a go," he added. "You can't just up an' try it like you might decide later your ass don't like it."
"I don't know what I'm doin'," Heather responded. "But you didn't know what you was doin' neither."
Daryl growled at her and turned his steps to start back in the direction of the shop.
"Difference is I done it, I didn't walk out on him," he said. "You ain't takin' Russ ta try an' play at bein' some kinda Ma 'til you get tired."
He shook his head hard at her and the situation.
"I'll look atcha old man's car, but you ain't takin' my son," Daryl said definitively.
Heather stopped walking just behind him.
"He's our son," she called. "And I weren't gonna take him. I weren't talkin' 'bout doin' it alone."
