That night, Carol ventured to Daryl's room after Sophia was in bed. She knocked once because the door was closed.
"Unlocked," he grunted from within.
It was an uncertain invitation. She crept inside and found him sitting atop his bed, in his white muscle shirt and tan work pants, bare feet down on the covers, arms on his knees, staring at Merle's tin hand with the attached blade, which he'd taken off the body before burial. The "hand" stood upright on the writing desk, beneath the antlers on the wall, which Carol had neatly mounted yesterday.
The bedside lamp was on a higher than usual setting tonight. It emitted a stark, cold glare. Daryl's bow was on the opposite bed, and his freshly sharpened arrows lay scattered across the comforter. That's what he'd been doing for the past two hours, she supposed, sharpening and sharpening, and maybe thinking of putting one of those bolts in the man who had killed his brother.
She leaned back against the wall beside the open frame of the door. "Do you want me stay with you or leave you alone?" she asked. "Either one is fine. Whichever one you need."
He closed his eyes. Then he swallowed, let out a shaky sigh, and opened them again. He turned those eyes from the hand-blade to her. "Need you."
Carol quickly shut and locked the door behind herself, turned off the unmerciful glare of the lamp, and crawled into bed with him in the star-scattered darkness, wrapping herself around him like a comforting blanket. She drew his bent head to her breast and buried her fingers in his hair the way she knew he loved.
He lay like that for a long while, making little noise, a stray tear wetting her tank top from time to time as she dug her fingers against his scalp. Eventually, he dragged his head up and kissed her desperately on the mouth. She returned his need with hard kisses of her own.
Carol wasn't quite sure how it all happened from there. She wouldn't be able to go back and recall all the details later, but their clothes were shed. In his need to be as close as possible to her, to take comfort from her, his hands roamed everywhere across her naked body, and then his body was pressed against hers and entangled with hers. In her need to swallow his grief, she drew him into her, before she even realized that she had.
Her body made no objection to the intrusion. He groaned once inside her, and she wrapped her legs around his back to give him the perch to push deeper. He thrust, slow and deep, grunting each time with mingled grief and pleasure – three, four, and then five hard times before suddenly stilling. He moaned, low and long, and then let out a strangled cry as he spilled hotly inside her. He collapsed half on top of her.
Carol hadn't cum, but she hadn't needed to, not tonight. She'd received him, without tightening, without some old emotional scar being torn open. She'd pulled him in instead of pushing him out. She'd welcomed him, accepted him – fully and completely.
Daryl slid away to keep from crushing her but kept an arm draped over her. He bent his head against her shoulder and buried his nose in the crook of her neck. She felt the heavy, recovering warmth of his breath on her shoulder, and then his hot tears.
A minute later, he was asleep.
Monday, November 16
Daryl was gone when the sun woke her. He had left a note on the nightstand, just two words:
Thank you.
Carol showered and dressed and had a cup of coffee, and then she walked to the graveyard behind the haunted castle, where she suspected she would find him. She did. He was standing before Merle's cross with a dark brown beer bottle in his hand.
"Early for beer," she said as she came and stood beside him, crossing her arms over herself because she'd only put on a long-sleeve shirt and the morning was cool.
"Budweiser. First beer Merle ever gave me. I was nine and he was goin' off to join the army. Thought…now...He's gone off again. One last time. And there oughtta be a toast." Daryl took a long swig. Then he thrust the bottle forward as if toasting the cross, turned it over, and poured the last few ounces out onto the earth below. He stooped and dug the neck of the bottle into the earth and left it standing upside down there.
When he stood again, he drew her against his chest and kissed the top of her head. "Thank you," he murmured. "For last night. Dunno know how I could of…" He swallowed. "Just dunno. Without you." He pulled back, his hands still on the small of her back.
She smiled. "It worked. Our pieces fit together after all."
He chuckled, ducked his head, and then looked back up at her, grimacing. "But ou didn't get to…it didn't…"
"- I didn't need to," she reassured him. "I will. Next time. Or the time after that."
"Sorry I didn't do anything for you after, I was – "
"- I know," she said softly.
"Sorry I feel asleep."
"I'm not. I'm glad you could." She kissed him and took his hand and pulled him away from the grave. When they were beyond the haunted castle near a picnic table, she led him over, leaned back against it, and said, "Listen. I'm glad we did what we did last night. Very much."
He smiled.
"But…in the passion of the moment…we forgot to use a condom."
Daryl's smile hitched. He looked as if a hundred thoughts and fears were shooting behind his eyes.
"Don't worry," she told him. "We have - had - about a dozen morning after pills from the pharmacy. Assuming Andrea hasn't popped them all, but I doubt that very much. It's an emergency contraceptive. It's not meant to be used regularly. I think I should probably take one, though. I just wanted to tell you first. That I was going to. I didn't want to just do it and not tell you."
"A'ight." He breathed the word with some relief, she thought.
Then, more to reassure herself than him: "It doesn't end an implantation. It's not an abortifacient. It just delays ovulation or maybe it prevents the implantation of a fertilized egg or – " She sighed. "I don't know how it works exactly. But I think, given the world as it is now…and given everything you're going through…given…." She let out a breath. "I just think it's best we not risk a pregnancy right now."
Right now.
She wasn't quite sure where that clarifier had come from, but he didn't seem to notice it. "A'ight." He leaned back next to her and crossed his arms over his chest. "It safe?" he asked. "For you?"
"They sold this kind over the counter. I'm sure it's safe. I might possibly get nauseous for a day. Get a headache. Have some bleeding before menstrual periods. Those are some of the possible side effects. But nothing serious. It'll be safe."
"A'ight then."
"And next time, wrap it?"
Daryl nodded.
"I found six month's worth of birth control pills at one of the houses. I snagged those for myself. If things continue well with us…in the sex department…I'll go on those and you can stop using the condoms for several months." That assumed he would still be with her several moths from now, of course.
He seemed to accept the assumption. "Good."
She pushed away from the table, turned, and wrapped her arms around his neck. "How are you?"
"Fine. Gotta be."
"No. You don't gotta be." She slid a hand down and pressed her palm flat against his heart. "You've got to let yourself feel it. And if that means you need time…I understand. If you need to go hunting again to be alone and process it...If you need to be gone two nights this time. Three. Whatever you need."
He nodded. "Do wanna go huntin' tomorrow. But this afternoon I got that tea party with Soph."
Carol laughed. "You remembered that?"
"'Course I 'membered it. Got the exclusive invitation on m'desk."
"You don't have to go if you don't feel like it. She'll understand."
"Can't leave her hangin'. Think I'm the only one she invited this time. Carl kept bitchin' 'bout the tea tastin' funny, and Andre kept puttin' his hand in the sugar bowl. 'Sides, invite said this one's gonna have Snickerdoodles. I don't know what the hell a Snickerdoodle is, but it sounds damn good."
Carol laughed. Then her face grew serious. "You're holding up better than I expected. But you don't have to put on a face for us. You just the lost the most important person in the world to you."
"Lost my brother," he said. "And it hurts like hell. But the most important person in the world to me…" He looked straight in her eyes. "She's standin' right here in front of me."
Carol felt like the breath went out of her. And maybe it had, because he leaned forward and caught her surprised gasp with a kiss.
[*]
Daryl strolled to a stop on the dock beside Andrea and leaned with his arms crossed on the banister. She was wearing that dumbass floppy sun hat and had a line cast between the opening between the boats, almost halfway into the lake. "Fuck you," he said.
"Good morning to you, too," she replied.
"Hell you thinkin', askin' me to leave my brother behind on the farm like that?"
"I wasn't thinking," she admitted. "And I'm sorry."
He huffed.
"You were going to burn my sister with the same walker that killed her, you know. Back at the quarry camp. You were just going to pile her together with all those walkers and set them on fire. One happy funeral pyre. Until Glenn stopped you. You remember that?"
"Yeah," he admitted. "So that was payback? You sayin' to leave Merle?"
"No, it wasn't payback," she said. "It was insensitivity. On my part. Especially after what I went through with Amy. I guess I was thinking we need to high tail it off this farm before Hershel comes back. And I guess you were thinking the same sort of thing in the quarry - that we needed to get the hell out of that camp. So again. I'm sorry."
He nodded and turned his gaze to the lake. "Bitin'?"
"I got one in the cooler earlier. But this may be the last week I have any luck." She pushed up her floppy sunhat up a little and peered at him. "So that's it? You're actually accepting my apology?"
"Sorry, too."
Andrea peered at him curiously. "About what?"
"'Bout thinkin' you should of got over it faster. Your sister. 'Bout thinkin' you were weak for wantin' to check out. Wantin' to stay at the CDC when it blew. I got Carol. And we got this place here. When Amy died…fuck. We were on the run. Didn't know what the hell we'd find. And all you had was Dale."
"Yeah, well, I guess Dale was enough. I'm here because of him. He manipulated me out of it, and I hated him for it at the time, but…" She shook her head. "Not now."
"Glad to be alive?"
"Well, I don't know what you'd all do without me to fish. You'd have to eat deer and squirrel all the time."
"And beaver," he said. "And grouse. And quail. Oh, yeah, and fish. 'Cause I done caught all that at some point."
"But not much fish," Andre insisted.
"Got me an alligator too!"
"All right, Crocodile Dundee. I'll continue to believe I'm useful to the group."
"Well, only 'cause you are," he said.
She smiled. Then she turned with an "Oooh!" and began reeling in her line. She cursed when she saw the sandal rising from the water. "What did people do on those paddle boats? Just toss all their shoes in the lake?"
Daryl chuckled.
She rid herself of the sandal, baited the hook, and tossed the line again.
"Hell you baitin' that with?" Daryl asked.
"A small bit of venison. Works great. The fish love deer. Who would have thought?"
"Waistin' venison to catch fish?"
"It's a tiny bit," Andrea insisted. "There's much more meat on a fish."
"Yeah, but how many tiny bits have fallen off your hook in the water when you been reelin' in shoes?"
"That's the first one I've lost! Except the one that's in the fish I caught."
Daryl shook his head.
"Venison-stuffed fish," she said. "Sounds like something they'd serve in a fancy restaurant."
"Pfft."
"Is Glenn back yet?" Andrea asked.
"Ain't seen 'em. Must of stayed the night."
"If he did, things couldn't have gone too badly."
"Guess we'll find out." Daryl pushed back from the banister and walked on. "See ya." He had a tea party to get to, after all.
[*]
When Daryl got to the breakfast nook in the kitchen, the tea party was all set up, with name place holders written in Sophia's script in thick cursive on folded pieces of cardstock paper. There was one that said Sophia, and one that said Daryl, and one that said Merle, and she'd put that one in front of that hand-blade contraption Daryl had taken off Merle's arm, which now sat in one of the eggshell chairs. Daryl froze before the table and stared at it.
Sophia took one look at his face and hastened, "I thought we'd have this tea party in honor of your brother. Like a memorial banquet. I'm sorry." She stood from her chair. "I shouldn't have. I'll put it back in your room. I'll – "
"-Nah." He held out a hand toward her and waved it down. "Sit down." He nodded. "'S a'right. Merle's going to a tea party and there ain't a god damn thing he can say about it." He laughed. "Wish I could see his face now." Daryl pulled out his chair and sat down.
"I made the jasmine tea again," Sophia told him as she lifted her porcelain teapot and began to fill his cup on the saucer. "And we have honey straws this time instead of sugar." She poured Merle's cup and then her own.
"Love to see Merle stir a honey straw into his cup. Give 'em that pink one! 'S that?"
"Raspberry infused honey," she said, and placed the straw on Merle's saucer.
"Hear that, Merle?" Daryl asked the hand-blade. "Raspberry infused. How you like that? How much you think that cost in the tea shop? How much you think all them rich pricks paid for that?"
"Do you want the regular honey straw or the raw honey straw for your tea?" Sophia asked him.
Daryl turned to Merle's blade again. "Shut up, Merle."
"What did he say?" Sophia asked.
"Said he likes it raw. Thought he was bein' funny."
"How's that funny?"
"Ain't. Merle just thinks it is. Give me the raw honey one."
Sophia did. Daryl pulled out his pocket knife to cut off the top of his straw and then turned the straw upside down in his tea cup and squeezed.
"If you stir it it'll come out gradually on its own and sweeten the tea very nicely," Sophia informed him.
"Yeah, but I ain't got the patience for that." He took a sip of his tea and set it back on the saucer. "Merle heard there was gonna be Snickerdoodles."
"One minute," she told him. She cut open her straw and stirred it and there was the ding of the time. She stood and removed a cookie sheet from the oven and set it on a potholder on the counter. Then she began taking cookies off it with a spatula and putting them on a plate. She'd made about a dozen, but she only brought four over and set them on the table.
"Aww, I've had these!" Daryl said. "Didn't know what they was called, though." He picked one up and they singed his fingers, and he dropped it half on the table and half on the saucer and licked his fingers one by one.
"Careful," Sophia warned him. "They're fresh out of the oven. What was Merle's favorite cookie?"
"Them fake ones. In the Cookie Crisp Cereal."
"Cookie Crisp Cereal?" Sophia asked.
"Yeah, that cereal with them little fake cookies in it. Ain't you never had it?"
Sophia shook her head. "My mom never bought cold cereal. She always made grits or oatmeal for breakfast. Or eggs and pancakes."
"That's 'cause you got yourself a fantastic mama. Mine didn't fix us no breakfast. But sometimes, if she was feelin' generous, she'd buy us Cookie Crisp cereal with the food stamps. Or the Pac-Man cereal with marshmallows."
"Pac-Man cereal?" Sophia asked. "You're making that up."
"Nah, no, we had it when I was kindergarten and Merle was in high school. Ask Merle if you don't believe me."
Sophia turned to the hand-blade. "Did you really have Pac Man cereal when you were kids?" She turned back to Daryl. "He said you're full of shit."
Daryl snorted out the tea he'd just sipped. He set his cup down on the saucer and wiped his nose and mouth with the back of his hand. "Damn. He really is talkin' to ya." He laughed. And then his laugh hitched and he had to swallow down the sob it threatened to turn into. "Have some more tea?" he choked.
"Of course." Sophia topped his cup off.