AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I'm a little stuck on this one, so this is one update in a row of several. I know that not many people have read the last chapter (at least to my knowledge), so I'm letting you know it's there in case you missed it.
I hope that you enjoy the chapter! Let me know what you think!
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Daryl unpacked the food onto the table and, as he did so, he arranged Carol's food in front of her. They had matching meals—a burger, fries, and a milkshake. Daryl had insisted she have large everything, and the only substitutions were that she'd traded out his strawberry milkshake for a chocolate one, and he'd gotten bacon on the burger that was more than she was sure she could eat without adding more meat.
They stopped by their little house to enjoy the food in privacy before they returned to the motel to work until Carol would leave to pick up Sophia—who would then accompany her back to the motel.
"Dr. Fannigan," Carol said, "James to Alice, is an OB-GYN."
Daryl stared at her. He chewed through three fries at once. He was, at the same time, looking at her like she was the most interesting person he'd ever met and like she was telling him the most mundane story every told.
She couldn't help but smile.
"You have no idea what that is, do you?" Carol asked. "But you're going to listen anyway."
Daryl laughed to himself. His focus fell away as he nodded his head and shrugged his shoulders and accepted, all the way around, that he'd been caught.
"I figured I'd catch up eventually," Daryl said. "I know it's a doctor, and I know he's got to do with lady stuff."
"And do you even really know what that means, Daryl?" Carol asked.
He snorted, catching her teasing.
"You think I'm an idiot?" He asked.
"No," Carol said. "I just don't know—how much you know about things that I imagine, at least, you've had very little reason to think about in the past."
"Lady shit," Daryl said. "So that would be like your—like your…well, gotta be tits an' pussy."
Carol didn't miss Daryl's expression at all. The way he lifted his eyebrow at her and the way that he smirked. He was waiting to see if he'd get a rise out of her. He wanted to see if he she'd laugh, and she did. She appreciated his teasing a great deal. It helped to loosen up some of the anxiety that she was still dealing with—the anxiety that had made it almost impossible for her to imagine choking down all the food that he was going to insist that she eat.
"Asshole," Carol offered, selecting some of her own fries to eat.
"Well, am I wrong?" Daryl asked around the mouthful of burger that he'd just taken. He chewed a moment, clearly trying to lessen the amount of food that he had to work around. "Ain't tits an' pussies lady shit, or is there somethin' that I been missin' all these years?"
Carol laughed to herself.
"And uteruses and ovaries," Carol said. "But—yes, I guess he deals with tits and pussies and all that entails."
"Sounds like a pretty solid career choice," Daryl offered, clearly amusing himself.
"You want to go back to school?" Carol asked.
"And look at strange all day?" Daryl asked. Carol raised her eyebrows at him and he laughed. "Nah," he said.
Carol smirked at him.
"Because there's only one pussy you're interested in?" She teased. She could tell, immediately, from his expression that he was about to try to get her. She knew that expression well. Nearly every single brother had a version of it.
"'Cause you can't control what the hell comes in there," Daryl said. "They'd lock me up for discrimination if I was to put up a sign on the door that said no ugly pussies welcome."
"What the hell does a pretty pussy look like?" Carol asked, shaking her head.
Daryl's smile was a little more sincere, this time.
"Yours. Get you a mirror if you wanna see one," he said, shrugging his shoulders as he took another oversized bite of his burger. Carol's stomach growled and he pointed at her own burger. She certainly didn't tell him that she appreciated his humor and the levity of the conversation because it had actually helped to make her feel hungry instead of like her stomach was gnawing its way out of her body. She unwrapped her burger, took a bite, and hummed her satisfaction over it. For a moment, the two of them simply inhaled fatty food together in comfortable silence. Then, Daryl broke the silence and reminded Carol of what had begun the conversation—what she'd almost forgotten entirely for the moment. "Somethin' wrong with your pussy?" Daryl asked, abruptly, like he'd clearly been chewing on the thought along with his burger. "It seemed just fine to me last night."
Carol drank in the last bit of amusement she could as her stomach slowly knotted itself back up. She put down her burger and she saw Daryl's features sink as her hands lowered.
"What's wrong?" He asked, his voice changing tone, as she moved her hands away from her burger and wiped them clean on her napkin. He mirrored her actions.
"Nothing's wrong," Carol said as quickly as possible. She might have been imagining it, but she thought Daryl had gone a little pale. "Dr. Fannigan is an OB-GYN. But—Alice says he's a lot like she is. He's a jack of all trades because Liberty's so small and…so he works as an OB-GYN, but his specialty is actually in fertility. He does some of that on the side." Daryl nodded his understanding. Whether or not it was genuine, Carol wasn't sure. She continued, sure that he would, as he said earlier, catch up. "He can tell me if—if there's any chance that…that we'll ever have a baby together or if there's anything we can do to help those chances or if…I guess, if it's just something that we have to accept is probably not going to happen."
Daryl stared at her a moment, clearly worked to process what she'd said, and then picked up his burger again. He chewed through a large bite of it without saying anything or looking moved in any real way.
"Aren't you—going to say something?" Carol asked.
"What you want me to say?" Daryl asked with the same tone of voice as a shrugged shoulder. "You goin' to the LMNOP doctor and he's gonna tell you if we can have more kids than Sophia or we can't."
"You say it like it's really simple, Daryl," Carol said.
Daryl laughed and ran his tongue around the outside of his burger, catching all the condiments that were escaping to drip down to the greasy paper spread on the table beneath him.
"It's so damn complicated?" Daryl asked. "I miss somethin'?"
"I think we really need to talk about it," Carol said. "You really need to think about it and we need to…we just need to talk about it."
"Then talk," Daryl said. "That's what we come here for to eat instead of eatin' in the Dairy-O. Come here so we could talk, an' we wouldn't get overheard by nobody. Me not havin' nothin' much to say on the whole thing don't mean that I'm tellin' you that you can't talk. Just means—I don't know what I'm supposed to say."
"You would like children," Carol said. "You know you would. You've said it."
Daryl hummed.
"And if we had ten of 'em," he offered, "I'd buy a whole fuckin' bus to haul 'em places. Paint Dixon down the side of it. Put you some flames on there or somethin'. Be the hottest damn Dixon bus you ever seen."
"I've told you before that there's a very real chance that he says that—it won't happen. I mean—not the ten…nothing at all," Carol said.
"Then we set with the vehicles we got for now," Daryl said. "Your car's got a lot more miles left in it if you just around town."
Carol growled at him.
"I'm trying to be serious and have a conversation," Carol said.
Daryl put his burger down—now little more than a few bites left, and he wiped his hands thoughtfully with a few napkins he pulled from the bottom of the paper bag he'd tossed to the side.
"I'm talkin', Carol," Daryl said. "It's you who seems to be havin' a hard fuckin' time listenin' to what the helll's comin' outta my mouth." For the words he chose, his tone was even. He didn't sound angry. He hardly even sounded irritated at the moment. He leaned a little and touched his finger to Carol's hand where she had them resting on the table in front of her. "What's that?" He asked.
"My ring," Carol said without breaking her eye contact with him.
"Who give it to you?" Daryl asked.
"You did," Carol responded.
"Why'd I do that?" He asked.
Carol swallowed at the humor that bubbled up in her chest. She almost wanted to kick him under the table for making her want to laugh when, for at least part of her, the last thing she wanted to do was laugh.
"You asked me to marry you," Carol said.
"You said you would," Daryl said. Carol hummed. "I never said vows, but I've heard some of 'em. Different kinds. All kinds. I never, ever heard none of them vows include somethin' like—only if we get everything we fuckin' want outta life." Carol hummed and nodded her head.
"But vows don't really mean anything," Carol said. "People break them all the time."
"They mean somethin' to me," Daryl said. "That's good enough for me. Look—Carol—it was promises that made me a decent asshole instead of lettin' me be my fuckin' old man—Rooster 2 point fuckin' 0. It was vows that took Rooster outta my life. Freed me from him. Got me somethin' better. Best things in my life come from vows. From speeches that ain't nothin' but words an' the meanin' we put behind 'em. What you think it is? When we stand up there an' we say—we say that we swear to support our brothers an' sisters until the very end? It's a vow—but it's one that more than one damn Judge has died for in the past. And it's a vow that keeps some people gettin' up in the morning, puttin' on a cut, an' facin' the world knowin' they got good they gotta do, an' they got people that's got their backs no matter what—no matter if the whole damn world turns against 'em 'cause they can't fuckin' understand 'em. So, vows, Carol? They mean a whole fuckin' lot to me. And—when I say them vows? Whatever it is I choose to say to you when we standin' there in front of Hershel an' anybody else that wants to come? You can put 'em somewhere inside you that you ain't never gonna lose 'em, 'cause they're what the hell I mean an' I ain't gonna change."
Carol swallowed against the lump in her throat. She wiped away the tear on her cheek and got up to find a napkin for herself that was softer than the brown ones from the restaurant. She settled for a paper towel and was thankful for its absorbency as she wiped her face and then blew her nose.
She threw it away and washed her hands. While her back was to Daryl, she was able to find her voice again.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"I don't want you to be sorry," Daryl said. "I just want you to hear me—so I don't have to repeat myself." His voice had softened again. Carol smiled to herself.
"I hear you. I understand you. I love you," she said.
"We got a lot in common," Daryl said. "Because I love the hell outta you."
Carol felt the smile that spread across her face almost in spite of herself—and certainly in spite of the ache in her chest.
"I—just don't want you to wake up one day and realize that you didn't get what you wanted," Carol said. "You deserve to get what you want. Everything you want."
Daryl hummed.
"I hope you mean that," Daryl said. "That I deserve what the hell I want."
"I do," Carol said.
Daryl hummed again.
"Because the only thing that scares my ass, right now? Is that you gonna—try to save me from a pinprick by shovin' a rusty damn knife between my ribs. You really the only thing I want—so I don't wanna wake up and find out that I ain't gonna get that. You an' Sophia? I'm good with that shit. Whatever else comes with it or don't—I'm good with that."
Carol jumped because she didn't hear him get up. She jumped because she didn't hear him cross the floor. She jumped because she didn't expect his arms to wrap around her from behind as she held onto the double sink in front of her.
But she relaxed into his arms the minute he whispered a soft "shhh" into her ear and pressed his lips gently against the back of her neck. She closed her eyes and drew in a breath as he nuzzled against her and squeezed her gently into him.
She laughed to herself.
"Where'd you come from?" She asked.
Daryl laughed quietly, still not letting her go. He swayed her a little, and she didn't know if it was for his benefit or hers.
"Gutter, mostly," he said. "With the rest of the trash."
"No, stop," Carol said. "No—I think—you had to come from somewhere like heaven. Because—I can hardly believe you're real."
Daryl's lips pressed gently against her neck again and she shivered.
"That's the worst damn pick-up line ever," he teased. Carol laughed. "But I can promise you that ain't where I'm from. If it was? I'da already seen you there."
Carol turned around and Daryl let her. She smiled at him as she wrapped her arms around him.
"That's the worst damn pick-up line ever," she teased. "But—I still love you for it."
He pecked her lips playfully.
"Can we stop talkin' about shit now?" He asked. "At least—shit that don't matter? I mean—it is what it is, right?"
"It is what it is," Carol said, wishing that she could convince her gut to calm down and believe that rationale.
"Then let's eat that lunch 'fore this turns into somethin' else," Daryl teased. "We gotta get the hell back to that hotel 'cause my old lady's got her a restaurant to get open."