Author's Note: Just in case I scared anybody with the A/N in the last update, this chapter marks the 2/3 point of the fic. So you still have lots of story left to enjoy, no worries!

Chapter 23: Snow Animals

It was different, waking up on the run.

You had to download a whole new reality into your brain, every day. What had happened the day before. Who you lost. How safe the night's hideout was. When the last time was that you'd eaten. How soon you could find water. Food. Gas. Bullets. Blankets. Coats. Who was mad at you, and why. Who was okay with you, and how that might help ease the day ahead.

Today, Carol woke up with Daryl. Not next to her, but on top of her. He was sprawled with more relaxation than she'd ever seen from him, his face burrowed against her breasts and his feet splayed carelessly. She wrapped her arms over his hard, leather-clad shoulders and whispered, "Don't you even think about running off or I'll kick your redneck ass."

He made a little, rough sound and lifted his head. His hair was thrashed and his blue eyes hazy with sleep. When he saw her, he leaned a little forward. A little more. He ducked his head, his nose nudging hers, and she didn't dare move. His eyelashes tickled her brows when he blinked, and then his lips touched hers.

Carol closed her eyes, all the breath fluttering out of her. In this moment, she couldn't even remember when her first kiss had been, but it felt like this was it.

Daryl kissed sweet. Needy somehow, and ticklish, with the scruff of his untrimmed whiskers against her chin. But uncertain, softer than she'd thought he'd be. She slid her fingers up the nape of his neck, into his hair, and he made a small sound in his chest that sounded good to her.

The fly of his pants raked over her hip and behind it, he was iron hard. Carol wriggled a little, pressing up against him, and their lips parted as he lost his breath. He came back to her, more urgently this time, his hand coming up alongside her face.

Carol let her hand sneak inside his vest, under his shirt. The feel of his hard, hot stomach made her head spin a little. Her thumb slipped beneath the button of his pants before she really planned it, and his abs contracted under her touch.

He ran a hand over her ribs, kissing her harder, and his shaggy hair tickled her forehead as he moved more on top of her, his touch teasing the edges of her breasts now. Moving by centimeters, not inches. She arched into him, telling him every way she could that this was okay, more than okay with her.

A low growl rattled deep in his chest, and then his tongue touched her lips. Tracing them, then stealing inside when she let him. He was rough like this, a little clumsy and hard, but in a way that made all her inner muscles clench. She liked that he wasn't entirely in control.

A throat cleared, and a second later, the door rattled under a knock. Daryl pulled away, panting, and the shift in position pressed his erection into her leg. She grabbed his ass in a sudden burst of confidence, holding him against her. He made a choked sound.

"Daryl?" Rick called through the door. "You still in there?"

"What." The grunt was mean enough a couple of months ago, it would have made her flinch. Now, she grinned and pressed a kiss to the corner of his scowling mouth.

"It snowed," Rick said. "There's some walkers wandering around. We need to decide what we're going to do."

"Kill 'em!" Daryl burst out, then dropped his head to Carol's neck. She pressed her lips together to hold in her giggles. "Fuck's sake, Sheriff, ain't rocket science. What else you gonna do with walkers, hang 'em on the wall like a cross stitch kitty cat?"

Carol lost the battle against laughter, grabbing the pillow and hauling it over her face, smothering Daryl in the process as she choked and gasped and giggled.

"Uh-huh," Rick said, managing to make even those two syllables sound dry. "Well, if you're too busy, I'll just be out here. Entertaining the children in this very small house. Waiting on you."

Daryl fought his way out of the pillow. "Comin'. Shit's sake, Grimes." He stuck a foot down onto the ground, stumbling a little as he tried to detangle from the blankets. Carol stole her chance and let her hand drag across the very noticeable tent in the front of his pants as he stood up. He reeled, caught his balance, and stared. "You do that on purpose?"

She flushed, grinned, and grabbed at his vest, pulling him back toward the bed. He uttered one, maybe two more swear words before she stole an off-center kiss.

"Shit," he mumbled when he stood back up, jerking at his clothes like they were any more mussed than usual.

"That your idea of romance?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "How about one that isn't expressed in four letters?"

His ears flushed red.

She winked. "Just kidding. I like your idea of romance."

#

"The hell is that?"

Carol's head came up immediately when she heard Daryl's question from outside the house. She left the water boiling on the propane stove and moved to the windows. The house they'd found to wait out the storm was dug down into the ground, so the windows looked out just above the dirt.

She spotted Daryl's boots outside the window above the sink, his toes pointed right at where Carl had been playing in the snow. She relaxed when she saw Carl crouching on the ground, his gloved hands all snowy, but clearly unhurt.

"It's 'posed to be a snowman, but the snow won't stick together."

"Ain't enough snow to make a decent snowball."

Carl sighed. "I know. It sucks."

"When Merle and me was kids, we used to make mud animals. Weren't hardly ever any snow, but there's good red clay. Stick it in the sun and it'll dry hard as anything."

"Like what'd you make?" Carl sat back on his heels. "Snowmen are made out of balls, so how do you make animals instead?"

Daryl sat down in the snow right outside the glass and she laughed. The man was just like a kid, the way he never thought about what might make his clothes wet or dirty. He pulled a bolt out of his quiver and dug up some snow, mixed it with frozen dirt so it stuck together better, and started to sculpt.

Carol leaned a hip against the sink, strangely transfixed by the way his hands moved. They were so quick, like they always knew exactly the right motions to make. He compacted the snow, squeezing hard as if he didn't feel the biting cold of it. She shivered just watching him.

When he was done, he dug around until he found a stick, then snapped off two tiny pieces and implanted them in the face of the animal he'd made. Then he used a thumbnail to delineate a neck, a fin at the end of the tail. It was long, like a seal, but with tusks…a walrus! Carol grinned. A snow walrus.

Where would Daryl ever have seen a walrus? She got the idea he hadn't been much past his hometown. Maybe in those library books, he'd gone past what he could find in the forests of home and ventured out into pictures of the world beyond that he had no way to get to.

"It's done?" Carl asked when Daryl set it back on the ground. "What's it supposed to be?"

"It's a walrus, dumbass. What the hell else got a tail and tusks?"

"It looks like a turd with fangs."

Daryl snorted, but he didn't sound particularly offended. He shifted, leaning back against the wall next to Carol's window.

"You still have any of the animals?" Carl asked. "I mean, not now, but before the turn? Did you save any that you and Merle made?"

"Nah. Got broke."

Carol grimaced, a black taste in her mouth like she'd been licking soot. She wished she could get her hands on Daryl's father. She'd see how he liked to have his things broken. His legs, for starters.

"Weren't like they was art or nothin'. Probly mostly looked like turds with fangs." Daryl's fist flashed down and smashed the walrus, the two sticks exploding off the snow animal's face, one of them pinging off the glass of the window. Carol winced, sadness tugging at the lines of her face.

Carl used Daryl's bolt to dig up frozen dirt to mix with some snow. Carol tensed, waiting for him to yell at the boy for putting so much stress on one of his few remaining aluminum shafts, but Daryl just pulled out his knife and started toying with it instead. She couldn't see his face but she bet from his posture that he was watching the horizon for walkers. The storm seemed to have confused them, maybe broken up the herds. They'd only killed two walkers since they'd gotten here last night.

Carl made a pleased sound, sculpting faster now that his snow was sticking together. She couldn't tell what he was making, but it looked fish-like.

"Daryl?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Are you mad at Andrea? For shooting you?"

Carol had gone back to the stove to check the water, which still wasn't boiling, but she hurried back to the window when she heard that question. Why would Carl ask about Andrea now, when they hadn't seen her in months? Carol hugged her arms over her chest, squeezing hard to suppress the flare of guilt.

"Nope."

"Why not?" Carl said. "She was your friend and she shot you in the head."

"Thought I was a walker. She did good, protecting the group like that. Hell, if I'd'a seen me, I'd'a thought I's a walker, too."

Carl scratched at his snow fish, slowly adding gills. "Yeah, maybe."

"Why'd you care what Andrea thinks?"

"Because everybody at the farm said Otis was so nice, but like, why didn't he look around before he shot at that deer? How great could he be if he didn't even look to be sure he wasn't shooting a kid by accident?"

"Ya don't see what ya don't see."

"I guess." Carl got a stick and started drawing scales onto his snowfish.

Daryl poked his knife into the snow, twirled it, pulled it out again. Used it to snip a loose thread off his pant cuff. She couldn't tell if he was being patient for the boy, or if he was just keeping watch like usual. Either way, she couldn't stop watching, and eventually, Carl spoke up.

"I just get so mad. When I think about Otis shooting me, and Dad killing Shane. And everybody says Dad had to kill Shane and Otis didn't mean to shoot me, but still…I don't know." He poked his stick through his snow fish, then twisted it viciously so the hole in the fish gaped bigger. Carol bit her lip, something in her uneasy at the turn in his method of play. "I mean, why's the world have to be so stupid? Why's everybody have to be dead? Why can't we have a house again?"

Daryl's knife was plunged deep in the snow, his hand resting on the hilt.

"My old man used to get mad," he said. "'Bout pretty well everything. His boss, our crappy cabin. Me. Merle. My mama, before she burned the cabin all up. Whatever stupid thing there was, he'd get mad about it over and over and over again. Never changed nothin'. He was just an asshole, mosta the time." He dried his knife on his pants and stuck it back into its sheath. Stood up. "You can be mad, if you want. Ain't nobody gonna stop ya. But it makes ya an asshole."

Carol sucked in a breath, not sure if she should intervene, or at least tell Daryl to watch his mouth in front of the kids. But then his boots moved off.

Carl stayed, sitting just in front of the window. After a minute, he picked up a little snow and filled up the hole in his snowfish, smoothed over the patch. And then he started to draw new scales across the top.

Author's Note: Oh Daryl, how I love your redneck parenting.

Funny story about this: when I got the idea for this scene, I could "see" the whole thing through Carol's eyes but from this weird vantage point—way down low so I could only see their feet and the snow animals on the ground. Then I realized I'd written an earlier chapter all out of order, where they were staying in a building that was dug into the ground so the windows looked out at ground level. And that's how I knew where the snow animals scene took place. Isn't that a weird, magical, backwards way for a muse to work?

Does anybody else feel like we need another night in the snowed-in house where Carol and Daryl have a private room? Because I think we do. Let it snow, let it snow…(even in Georgia…)