…
His coworkers usually all left the office for their lunch hour at noon. One or two would stay behind to handle the phone in case it rang but mostly, everyone scattered to either eat, run errands or Spencer used his lunch hour to take a nap in his car every day.
Daryl Dixon always hung out in the warehouse, either finishing up morning paperwork or putting away some deliveries or talking with his wife on the phone to see how her day was going and how the kids were. Olive was four and had started preschool that year. She was in the morning class – Daryl dropping her off on his way to work – and Beth would pick her up at eleven and Olive would often take the phone from Beth to tell her daddy everything she learned that day. There was also their son, Chris – named for Daryl's Grandpa Chris – who had just turned two and kept Beth occupied for most of her day until Daryl came home again to help.
Everyday for lunch, he packed himself a sandwich and a bag of chips and some kind of fruit. Beth did not let him leave in the morning without making sure he had fruit. And usually some cookies or something sweet to finish it off.
Daryl had just tossed his apple core away into his trashcan when the back door in the warehouse – that led into the office – opened and the branch manager, Abraham, stepped in. At the sight of him, Daryl immediately stood from his stool.
"Is everythin' alrigh'?" Daryl had to ask. Abraham came out to the warehouse, sure, but never during the lunch hour. He was usually out, too, like the rest of his employees.
"Of course it is. Do you have a second?" Abraham asked him with a grin and Daryl told himself that the man wouldn't be grinning if he was about to fire Daryl.
But Daryl also knew that company policy was, if someone had to be laid off, the higher-ups liked to do it on a Monday rather than a Friday so the person's weekend wasn't ruined.
Today was Wednesday. Daryl told himself he wasn't getting fired but it was also just one of those thoughts always in his head – even if he knew he did a damn good job managing this warehouse; especially when the boss came out to talk with him on his lunch break.
"Course," Daryl nodded.
"Let's go into my office. I have Julie on the phone."
Alright. Something was obviously happening. Julie was VP of Sales for their district. She was one of those higher-ups who made all of those decisions that affected everyone in the company below them and everyone was below them.
Daryl followed Abraham from the warehouse through the office like he was heading to his own public hanging. When he stepped into the office, Abraham closed the door behind them and then headed back to his desk, gesturing for Daryl to sit in the chair across from him.
"Alright, Julie," Abraham spoke to the phone on his desk. "I've got him."
"Hi, Daryl," Julie said and he could hear the woman smiling from her end.
Daryl swallowed. "Hey," he managed to speak as he lowered himself into the chair and he was glad he didn't sound like he had grunted the word.
Though if he was about to be fired, who could blame him for grunting?
But if Abraham was going to fire him, why would Julie be on the phone? Abraham was the branch manager, and yeah, if he was going to let someone go, he talked it over with Julie first but he handled the actual firing himself. Had he screwed up something that big where the VP of Sales had to be on the phone, too?
"How are you doing?" Julie asked, sounding friendly as anything.
"Fine," Daryl answered, his answer cautious, his body tense.
"Abraham and I were talking about you," Julie continued. If she could hear the edge in Daryl's tone, she made no indication. "You have family outside of Georgia, right? North somewhere?"
"Kentucky, right?" Abraham asked.
"Kentucky," Daryl answered slowly because now he really had no idea what the Hell was going on. Were they about to tell him he was fired and get the Hell out and move out of the state?
"Kentucky," Julie repeated and Daryl swore he could hear her smile grow. "So, obviously you wouldn't know this, but every week, all of the district leaders have a conference call, just to talk about what's going on in our regions. The manager for the East Division mentioned that their warehouse manager in the Bennington, West Virginia branch is retiring and they haven't gotten any viable candidates to fill his position."
Daryl found his body tensing even more now but for a different reason. Maybe he wasn't getting fired but something was definitely coming.
"Now, I admit, I immediately thought of you," Julie continued.
If Daryl was thinking clearly, he would have almost felt good about that. Julie oversaw hundreds of people and she knew him specifically enough to think of him in a particular situation? Most would look to that as being something very good but Daryl was still too nervous to notice it.
"And I saw on your yearly performance review that you said you would be willing to locate within the United States if that situation might arise," Julie said.
The office and phone fell silent and Daryl knew that they were waiting for him to speak.
"Uh, yeah. At the time… my daughter is four and my son is two so I figured if my family had to move, for whatever reason, it wouldn't be the worst time," he managed to say.
The truth was, he, Beth and the kids had just come back from visiting his family when he had sat down to fill out his yearly performance review and he was feeling a little sad to be back at work like anyone else was after having come back from vacation and wished he could visit his family longer.
At the end, there was always the question, "Would you be willing to relocate in the United States?" followed by "Would you be willing to relocate outside of the United States?" Daryl knew that there were company branches in Kentucky and maybe, if it all worked out, he could transfer to one of them. He had clicked that box without much thought and he definitely hadn't been thinking of it since. He never expected to be called on it and also, he just hadn't thought that the higher-ups read the performance reviews too closely.
He and Beth had never talked about moving. Daryl had lived in Georgia his whole life and he loved living in Georgia. He couldn't imagine living anywhere else. And yet… yet…
…
Julie and Abraham told him that they weren't expecting an answer right that second and to go home and talk it over with his wife. The rest of the day, in between his usual work, Daryl was on his computer, reading up on Bennington, West Virginia and the GE branch that was there. The warehouse there wasn't like the warehouse here. It was a hub center for most of West Virginia, some of Kentucky and some of Virginia. No wonder Julie said that this job also came with a raise. He'd be in charge of a warehouse much larger than the one he ran here as well as a fleet of at least a dozen delivery drivers. Just thinking of it all, Daryl exhaled a stream of breath.
Christ. Julie had actually thought of him in the context of him able to be good at a job like this?
Bennington was located in the southwest bit of the state, where West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia met and it was a small town; rural. The whole state was in the Appalachia mountains so there were a lot of hills, rolling yards and woods. Daryl admitted that it looked pretty good to him as he curiously went to a real estate website.
He didn't call Beth. This wasn't a conversation for a phone call and he didn't want her thinking about it for hours until he got home. He wanted to tell her face-to-face so he could see her initial, true reaction to the bomb he was dropping over her head.
He had no idea how Beth would react. Like him, she had lived in Georgia her whole life and had never made any kind of indication – even in passing – that she would ever want to live anywhere else. Her pops, Hershel, was getting up there in years and they lived within eight minutes of him. Would Beth really want to leave him? Even if her brother, sister, and brother-in-law all lived in town, too? Would she want to move at least six hours away? It'd be closer to his family, yeah – within a three hour's drive – but he'd be moving her away from hers.
Thinking about it, Daryl didn't even know if he wanted to tell Beth about this. Maybe he'd just go back to Abraham and get Julie on the phone and turn the offer down.
But even as all of these thoughts rolled around in his head, Daryl still stayed on the realtors website, taking note of any of the houses listed there that could work for them.
…
To no surprise, Olive and Chris were a bunch of banshees when Daryl got home that evening.
When they had first had Olive, Beth admitted that she didn't know how to do it; be a mom. She had always wanted to be a mom but she didn't think she understand how hard it would be.
Daryl thought she was an amazing mom but Beth had crawled into her own mind and convinced herself otherwise. She thought everything would come to her naturally but it hadn't and she had struggled, figuring out how to be not just a mom but how to be an amazing one to Olive. She lost her patience more times than she would have liked and sometimes, cried from the frustration of it all, but she was nothing if not determined.
She didn't read parenting books – she didn't think those could help since every child was so different – and she stayed off of social media. The last thing she wanted was seeing pictures of friends and acquaintances, boasting about their perfect lives and children and how awesome everything was. She didn't even ask for help or advice from family. She wanted to do this on her own – with help from Daryl, of course.
Slowly, eventually, Beth was confident that she had gotten the hang of it and was no longer convinced that somehow, she was irrevocably damaging Olive so much so that the girl would need a steady stream of therapists later on in her life.
Daryl had always thought Beth was fantastic at this – especially since she was the one home all day with the kids when he was working. She taught piano lessons out of their living room, which had been quite the feat with a toddler running around, but she and her dad worked that out. Beth condensed her schedule down to three days and on those afternoons she taught, Olive went off to spend a few hours with her grandpa at the Greene farm.
And then, Chris came around and she had to put lessons on hold for a bit before she could start up again. Luckily, Chris was well behaved as far as babies went and laid in his bassinet or had tummy time without any fuss as he listened to the students practicing their piano pieces.
Now, with a four-year-old and a two-year-old, Daryl sometimes worried that he would come home to find that Beth had ripped all of her hair out, but instead, his wife had completely relaxed; as if she found having two insane kids was better than one. Or maybe she just stopped worrying about messing everything up and just went with it.
Either way, Daryl came home, the kids were insane and Beth was in the kitchen, finishing dinner.
"Hi!" Beth called out as the kids clambered all over their daddy, happy he was home again. "I've made beef stroganoff. Does that work?"
"Sounds good," Daryl said and he commended himself for sounding completely normal.
Olive was hopping around him in circles, going on and on about colors and the rainbow and her favorite color was pink and daddy, why wasn't pink part of the rainbow?
"Thought it was," Daryl said as he picked up Chris, the toddler holding his arms up, demanding it. Holding the boy easily in one arm, Daryl set his wallet and keys down on the kitchen counter next to the front door. "Aren't all colors part of the rainbow if you mix 'em together?" He asked.
Olive had already moved on from that though and was now talking about the Berenstain Bears book her teacher had read to the class that morning. Daryl was able to hear every word his daughter said – even if he wasn't necessarily listening – and he went into the kitchen to give Beth a kiss on the cheek hello.
Beth smiled up at him, Olive still talking next to them. "How was work?" She asked him as she always did when he walked through their front door, promptly at five o'clock every evening.
"Same ol'," Daryl answered with a shrug and he hated the idea of keeping this from her but he still couldn't tell her about Julie and West Virginia. That would have to come after dinner and after they got the kids into their beds.
Chris was wiggling now because being up in Daryl's arms was now the last thing he wanted and Daryl bent down, setting him down on his feet. The boy immediately took off, racing back for the living room and the mess of his toys left all over the floor. Olive, done with talking with her parents and making sure that daddy was up to date on everything that happened to her, followed after her brother.
"Where's Moseley?" Daryl asked about the family Beagle.
"Hiding," Beth smiled as she took plates down from the cabinet. "Chris was chasing him around with a marker so I don't think we'll see him again until later tonight."
Daryl smirked at that and taking the plates from her, he began setting the table. "Hey," he said suddenly turning back towards her. Beth looked up from stirring at the pot. "I got to talk to you."
"Okay." Her brow began to furrow and she set the spoon down. "What is it?"
Daryl looked over to the kids. Olive was playing with her dollhouse and Chris was playing postman. Maggie had recently come over with a new toy she had bought.
"I know, I know. I promised I would stop but LOOK at this!" Maggie exclaimed while showing the box of the wooden blue mailbox and a variety of plastic stamps, envelopes and it also came with a blue mailman hat. Chris was officially obsessed with it.
"Olive! Letter!" Chris now exclaimed and stood up to carry a plastic envelope over to her.
"Who's it from?" Olive asked.
"Detective Butt," he informed her.
"Daryl," Beth said his name and it caused him to stop looking at the kids to look back to her.
"I wanted to wait till tonight but I can't… I gotta tell you."
Beth turned the stove off and then turned completely towards him. She looked a little pale. "Did you lose your job?"
"No," he shook his head and went to her, taking both of her hands in his. "Actually, 's kind of the exact opposite of me losin' my job. You wanna eat dinner first and then deal with the feral kids 'fore I get into it?"
"Tell me right this second, Daryl Dixon," she demanded of him and he wanted to smile but to be honest, he was just feeling too damn nervous now; like when Julie and Abraham first told him. He wasn't saying anything and Beth squeezed his hands. "Daryl," she snapped him out of it again.
"Abraham and our boss, Julie, called me today and there's an openin' of headin' the Bennington warehouse and it comes with a really good raise and 's a really good promotion but I told 'em I had to talk with you first."
"Oh my gosh, Daryl!" Beth exclaimed and her outburst startled him for a second. "Oh my gosh! Are you serious? Of course you're serious! Daryl!" She pulled her hands from his and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly.
Daryl smiled and hugged her back. That was why he didn't tell her over the phone as soon as he found out. He hadn't wanted to miss her reaction though he left out one slightly big part.
Beth pulled back to look at him. Her smile was still there – just not as wide – and her eyes were definitely still sparkling. "So where's Bennington?" She asked.
Daryl's own smile was gone and his arms slid back so his hands could rest on her waist. He exhaled a deep breath. "West Virginia."
For a moment, it seemed as if the words didn't register in her brain and Daryl swore he saw the exact second when they did.
She blinked and shook her head slightly. "I'm sorry. It sounded like you said West Virginia."
"West Virginia," he confirmed.
"The state?"
"The state."
Beth fell quiet again as those words took the time to register in her brain.
"Daddy!" Chris suddenly appeared at their side and Chris poked Daryl in the leg. Daryl looked down to the boy as he held up a plastic envelope. "Letter from Detective Butt!"
"Detective Butt is busy today," Daryl commented as he took the envelope and Chris giggled.
Chris went back to the living room and Daryl looked back to Beth for her reaction and to say something. Nothing yet though.
"Beth, I don't have to take it. Julie and Abraham told me that I don't have to give 'em an answer right away. They know we have a lot to talk about and consider and it'll be okay if I don't take it."
Beth was still quiet. "West Virginia?" She then asked; as if she wanted to be absolutely sure.
"West Virginia," Daryl gave a nod. "I was doin' some research after they told me and… some of the stuff I read isn' the best stuff in the world so we can do more research like that. But I was also lookin' at a real estate website and it won't break our bank to live there so that's a plus."
Beth's smile was slowly returning.
"Wha'?" He asked.
"You're talking. A lot."
It was his turn to be quiet and think that over. "I guess I am," he then decided.
…
I have been trying to think of different things to write for Daryl/Beth that I haven't read before and Daryl getting a transfer for work is definitely one of those things. (I made up Bennington, WV but if it really exists, the Bennington in this story will be different lol)
THANK YOU so much for reading!