AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Daryl waited in the bathroom in the complete silence. He felt like his breathing was louder than it usually was. He felt like his heart was drumming in his ears loudly enough that anyone might be able to hear it. Knowing that if he got caught—especially if Carol came and they were caught together—had him reacting to every perceived sound. The fact that they might get caught, in fact, had him so nervous that he'd barely been able to think about how nervous he might be about what she was even proposing to him.

When he heard light footfalls in the bathroom, Daryl didn't know if he should peek out to see if Carol was there, and give himself away if it was someone else, or if he should stay hidden. He finally sucked in a breath, attempted to hold it as best he could, and flattened himself against the inside of the shower. That was, after all, where she'd told him to be. Stay out of sight. Stay out of mind.

Daryl let out the breath when Carol's figure appeared in the doorway of the shower stall—none of which had the luxury of curtains.

"I thought you weren't coming," Daryl said.

"Jury's still out," Carol said. He heard the light laugh that followed it. Suddenly, his heart did a skip that was entirely unrelated to the fact that they had officers and guards to fear.

Carol stepped into the shower and walked close enough to him that they were almost touching. Daryl wet his lips and swallowed. He'd made the decision to come here. He'd made the decision to take this chance. The least he could do was be the first to kiss her and make it clear that he was on board with this—not just coming against his will. He wasn't very good at kissing, though, and he hoped that wasn't going to be a deal breaker for her. He leaned forward and she lifted her face toward his in anticipation, making it easier for him. He brought their lips together and simply held the soft kiss for a moment. It wasn't long, though, before the simple kiss wasn't enough. He wanted more than that. So he deepened it. Carol shuffled back a half a step, clearly from faulty footing on the shower floor, and Daryl reached an arm out and caught her behind the back, pulling her into him.

As soon as her body was against his, Daryl realized that he'd wanted this more than he'd known before. Maybe it was all the time that it had been since he'd even seen a woman that wasn't under lock and key. Maybe it was Carol herself. Maybe it was some combination. Whatever it was, though, Daryl found that he simply stopped thinking about anything except the kiss—which led into another and another. He was allowing his hands to explore, keeping her pulled tight against his body, when she finally broke the kiss and, panting, pushed away from him.

"Not here," Carol whispered. "Not—here. Too easy to get caught."

Daryl furrowed his brows at her and leaned forward to steal another kiss. His lips made contact with the corner of her mouth as she pulled away from him and repeated the mantra that this wasn't the place.

"Then where?" He asked finally.

"I know a place," Carol said. "They don't check there. Not often. Everybody knows about it, but—they don't go there often. Don't want the guards to find out about it."

Daryl didn't care, at this point, if they were going to jump the fences. His mind had already abandoned worrying about getting caught.

"Where?" He pressed. "Let's go. Where you wanna go?"

Carol froze for a moment and looked at him. Daryl got the quick stab of panic that he'd said or done something wrong. He'd been too fast. He'd been too enthusiastic. He'd been something wrong and now she was regretting even coming here. She was rethinking the whole thing because he didn't know how to control himself when she kissed him. He felt his face burn hot and he was glad that it was dimly lit enough in the space that she probably couldn't see the color burning up to the surface of his cheeks.

She didn't tell him that she'd changed her mind, though. She just looked at him a moment, nodded her head gently, and then turned. She looked in both directions before stepping out of the shower stall and then she waved at him to follow her and put a finger to her mouth to signal that he should be quiet—in case he wasn't smart enough to figure that out on his own.

Daryl followed Carol down dark hallways, stopping when she stopped and mimicking her every move until he wasn't even sure where he was and he wasn't sure how she still knew where she was. Clearly there was a great deal that he didn't know about Region Thirty Three, but it wasn't entirely unknown to the "veterans" of the establishment. Finally, she opened and door and pulled him inside. She fumbled around in the almost complete darkness now and he stood still because he had no idea where he was or what was happening. There was a clicking noise and following it there was a little bit of a light from a naked bulb in the corner of the small room cluttered with stuff.

"Where the hell are we?" Daryl asked.

"Storage room," Carol said. "Hardly anyone comes here, though."

"Because it's a hundred miles from everything else?" Daryl asked.

Carol smiled.

"It's secluded," she said. "Closest thing to privacy there is around here."

Daryl looked around. Storage room was one name for the place. Abandoned room full of abandoned junk might be another. The room was almost too full of things for them to be here as well. It was cramped and dirty. Nobody came here to check on things, but they also didn't come here to clean, that much was certain.

The bathroom shower stall, complete with no curtain, was actually a more romantic location.

"You wanna—here?" Daryl asked.

"You had a suite booked somewhere?" Carol asked, looking around.

Daryl cleared his throat at her quick response.

"It's just—not very nice," Daryl said. "Almost feels..."

He stopped himself because he hated to admit that, somewhere deep down inside of him, was the kind of man that his brother would make fun of. It was the kind of man that had never really been that into relationships, but also hadn't been into hook ups. Maybe it was owing to the fact that the women he was around weren't really the relationship kinds. He'd certainly never felt comfortable, though, with the idea of hook ups in bathrooms, back seats, and other questionable locations that his brother had bragged about and never seemed to think was less than extraordinary.

Carol stepped toward him. She was wearing concern on her face. It was legitimate concern. It was real. She wasn't mocking him like he somewhat feared she might.

"If you don't want to," she said, "then we don't have to. It's just—this is as good as it gets. We probably won't get caught here, as long as we don't do this often, and we'd get caught anywhere else."

Daryl glanced around again and then he looked at her. His aversion to the space was pretty great. Maybe it was, more than to the space, the fact that they were going to be together in this space—if they were treated like animals elsewhere, this certainly reduced them to behaving in a less than dignified fashion. However, his desire to kiss her again, and his desire to see what else that might lead to, outweighed his aversion to every other aspect of the situation.

He only responded by kissing her again and she brought her body back against his like she had in the shower. This time it was his step that faltered and broke them apart for a moment. She took the momentary separation as an opportunity to work her way out of the uniform that she was wearing and revealed that under it she was wearing the pajamas they were issued—which Daryl barely bothered to wear.

He watched her, frozen for a moment, as she stripped down. He knew there was no telling how many times, since coming to Region Thirty Three, she'd been asked to take everything off. She did it methodically. Like she didn't notice what she was doing. She did it almost like she didn't want to notice what she was doing. The only difference, Daryl supposed, was that this time she was making the decision to take everything off and stand before him.

She almost presented herself when she was done, assuming a stance of presentation, and she offered him an oddly placed and muttered apology. He shook his head at her, finding that he couldn't really speak, and rid himself of his own clothes.

Immediately, she brought her body against him and warmed his skin against the chill of the dirty little room. He kissed her, all the while trying to figure out if there was even a suitable place to suggest that they take this to some other level.

"We can't take too long," Carol whispered, when she broke out of the kiss. "They're less likely to notice we're gone because it's night. But—too long? They'll notice."

Daryl understood her urgency. Though he might have wanted to take his time and lazily explore her body, and though he might have wanted her to do the same to him, there just wasn't time for that. This wasn't the place for it. This was a case of finding what they could among what they had.

"Where?" He asked.

Carol looked around, shrugged, and finally led him to a place where there was a counter. She pushed some of the items that were cluttered up on it to the side and started to hoist herself up there. Daryl shook his head at her, caught her shoulders, and pushed at them to keep her feet firmly on the floor. Understanding his request that she wait, he went and dug his t-shirt out of the pile of clothes and came back to put it on the counter.

"Better'n nothing," he declared, though he felt his cheeks burn red at the words. Carol wrapped her arms around him in response, kissing him, and then she dropped her face to the crook of his neck. In response, Daryl dropped his hands and hoisted her up so that she was resting on the counter. He held onto her for a moment after he rested her weight there to assure himself that the whole thing wasn't going to collapse.

Neither of them said anything, but there wasn't much to say. They couldn't make declarations of love to one another. Most words, these days, tasted strange in their mouths. All they had was the moment—whatever it might mean—that was between them and that didn't require words.

The sounds around them were the sounds of their bodies, the creaking of the cabinet underneath Carol, and the sound of her breathing and a few soft noises as she kept changing her position just enough that she was wrapped into him with her breath blowing near his neck. He felt her body respond to him and he felt her when she reached her release, clawing at him as she did, and he followed right behind her.

For a moment, he stayed right where he was. He slumped into her, pressing her somewhat against the wall behind her and she responded by wrapping herself around him even tighter than before. That moment, just before he finally had to admit that it was really over, was the best of all to Daryl. He couldn't recall when he'd ever been that close to a person. He couldn't recall when he'd ever felt so physically comfortable—or comforted—by the proximity of someone else. Despite the sting of the scratches she'd lavished on his back and shoulders, it was the best feeling of touch that he could recall.

And he missed her the very moment that her feet gained the floor again and quickly she returned to dress.

He watched her dress for only a moment before he started to dress too. He ran through his mind, searching for words, hoping that he could come up with something to say that would be exactly what he wanted. The words hadn't been there before, though, and they weren't there now. When she was dressed, she offered him her lips again in the same manner that she had in the shower and he kissed her. This time the kiss remained soft and gentle. Knowing they were leaving this space—cramped and dirty and distasteful as it was—Daryl didn't let the kiss go any farther than that.

Carol turned off the little light to the room and then she opened the door. Daryl stood behind her while she checked in one direction and the other. She stepped back in and pushed the door almost closed to speak to him again.

"I'll show you to the bathroom," she whispered. "Then—we each go back. On our own."

Daryl tried to stammer out something—knowing he should say something, but not knowing what to say, until he heard Carol hum at him in the negative.

"You don't have to say anything," Carol said. "I think—we said all there was to say."

Daryl accepted that for what it was. After all, he couldn't argue with it. He didn't feel at all dissatisfied with what had happened—and he didn't have the words to argue anyway.