AN: Here we go, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Everyone was settled in for the night, or at least for the first part of the night. It had been agreed upon that Daryl would take watch at the double doors of the hotel for the first part of the night and then Rick had agreed to switch off with him. It was possible, as always, that they might not be alone for their shifts either. It was not uncommon to find someone in the group that couldn't sleep and would, for lack of anything else to do to pass the long and quiet hours, offer to sit in silence and wait for something to happen—something they all hoped wouldn't happen.
Rick had convinced Carol to take one of the hotel rooms and to actually try to sleep. She was one of the few that seemed to exist entirely on a scant amount of water, a bite or two of food, and time—and she needed to rest. She needed to be off guard for a little while.
So he'd convinced her to sleep, but more than that he'd almost commanded her to simply go in a room and be quiet, and he'd found himself backed up by some of the others.
Everyone else had welcomed the chance to sleep in real beds. They'd found enough water to offer everyone the sought after sponge baths that were the only kinds of baths they got when they were on the road, and they'd all eaten as well as their scant supply of food ever allowed, passing around treats from the vending machine as a little something extra to celebrate the idea of sleeping in comfortable beds with relatively full stomachs.
Now the hotel was quiet.
It was so quiet, in fact, that Rick almost doubted that the upper floors, blocked off from them by the barricaded stairwell doors, even had Walkers to offer. It appeared the place had been pretty well abandoned before things had gone to hell and it hadn't become a refuge for anyone in the meantime other than the few Walkers that he and Carol had taken outside when they'd arrived.
Rick left the room where Carl and Judith were both sleeping, one of the closets even offering one of the "complimentary" fold out cribs so that Judith could get a proper night's sleep too, and he made his way down the quiet hallway in the dark, following the distant flicker of the lamp that dimly lit the entrance way where Daryl was keeping watch.
"Anything?" Rick asked, letting his voice announce his presence if Daryl had been unaware of his approach.
"No," Daryl said. "Not a thing. Not too bad, considering."
"Maybe we'll get lucky," Rick said. "Maybe it'll be like that all night."
Daryl hummed.
"If it is," Rick continued, "we might consider another night here. It wouldn't be bad to stock up on more water? Go out and search the area tomorrow? We're running low on food. There's got to be some around."
Daryl hummed again.
He wasn't much for conversation when there wasn't really anything that needed to be discussed. And, at the moment, there wasn't really anything that they had to discuss. Whether or not they would stay another night and go searching for food in the morning was really depending on how little Walker attention they drew, and that was something that they wouldn't know about until the whole night had passed.
"Abraham," Daryl offered, "said he would take second watch—if you don't wanna. You took last night."
"So did you," Rick said.
"I'm alright," Daryl commented. "Can't sleep all night no way."
"Yeah," Rick responded. "Me either."
He stood there a moment and stared at Daryl as the man sat with his back against the wall, staring out into the darkness of the night.
And he lingered longer than he had to because he was hyper-aware of the fact that, in the pocket of the jeans that he was wearing, there was a candy bar that he'd been keeping hid for most of the night. And he'd thought, all through dinner and all through making the evening arrangements, that he might take it to Carol and he might offer it to her. He'd thought that he might apologize to her again—that he might never really stop apologizing—and that he might…
He wasn't even sure what he might do. But the one thing that concerned him was that, if he ever did what he truly wanted to do? If he ever confessed to her the ways that he'd thought about her and the things that he'd wanted to say to her? And if she ever, instead of finding them wildly inappropriate and throwing him out of her presence in disgust, were to respond to them favorably, in the way that he wanted? The one thing that concerned him was that he'd be overstepping some boundaries that he wasn't even one hundred percent sure were there.
He had come to count on Daryl for almost everything. He'd come to know him as someone who was steady in their loyalty, even if his temper had a tendency to flare up unexpectedly and sometimes inappropriately. He'd come to think of Daryl as someone that he could count on.
But he knew that Daryl had a lot of his own demons to contend with, a lot of which he didn't speak about and Rick could only guess about—and Rick didn't want to stir any of those up.
And Rick, like most of the people in the group, had lived in a long and perpetual confusion over whether or not there was anything between Carol and Daryl that was more than met the eye.
Because, for a long time, it had seemed that the two of them might be together. It had seemed like they might be in a relationship that was far more than casual friendship.
But that was just on the one hand.
On the other?
On the other it seemed that there was nothing there beyond mutual respect and love. Maybe there was an understanding between them that was unique to just the two of them. Maybe it was nothing more than a familial love that sometimes took on a slightly blurry appearance to eyes that saw it from the outside—like those friends that have found a love for one another that's so deep that people often mistake them for lovers, even if they never have been and never would be.
Rick didn't want to step on any toes, though, and without explicit clarification from Daryl, he might not ever know what the man intended toward Carol. Yet, he didn't quite know how to find out without having to come out and directly ask about it—knowing full well that no matter what was there it would be unlikely that it was something Daryl wanted to discuss with him—and he wasn't sure what to say at any rate. Because if he assumed that Carol might have even once thought about him the way that he'd let himself thing about her from time to time, then he was being more than a little presumptuous.
And if she refused him?
His pride didn't exactly want Daryl as a witness to that either.
It wasn't the first time that Rick had struggled with whether or not to mention anything to Daryl. However, for some time he'd managed to push it out of his mind. It was only now, with the feeling of the candy bar in his pocket and the thoughts that had been circling around his mind fresh, that he was reminded of it. It was brought back to the surface.
He found, though, that just like before he couldn't bring himself to say anything, so he didn't.
"Goodnight, Daryl," Rick said. "I'll…see you in a couple of hours."
"If you don't, that's fine too," Daryl commented without looking at him.
Rick nodded to himself. Maybe that was the response he could expect for anything. Nonchalance. It wasn't important. It didn't matter. Daryl wasn't strong inclined one way or another about it.
Maybe that's how he felt about Carol.
Regardless, Rick left him at that point and assumed that, if anything were to happen and he were to follow through with the plan he'd never followed through with before of confessing some of his feelings to Carol, she would let him know what he needed to know about her relationship with Daryl.
After all—she didn't seem the kind of woman who would cheat in a relationship with her significant other's best friend. That wasn't Carol. And even if Rick sometimes felt that he didn't know Carol, or that he didn't fully know her, he knew that much about her.
He had a strange sensation, knocking gently at the door of the room that he knew she'd chosen, like he was a doing something wrong—something he might get caught for. It was the irrational feeling that if someone caught him, they'd be catching him in the middle of some terrible act. But the mind wasn't always rational in choosing the feelings that it offered the body, and Rick knew that very well.
After a moment passed and she didn't come to the door, Rick hesitated.
Perhaps she'd already gone to bed. Maybe she'd done what he'd suggested—even if he'd doubted she'd do it when he'd made the suggestion—and she'd actually gone to bed and gone to sleep. Maybe, ironically, he was knocking now to wake her when he'd been the very one that suggested she sleep in the first place.
And what was he waking her for exactly? He didn't have a clear plan of action. He was proceeding forward with something that was based on adrenaline and a little something else that even he couldn't put his finger on securely.
He didn't even know exactly what he was going to say, but he was waking her in the middle of the night to say it. Suddenly, he had the creeping sensation that had become quite normal to him lately—the sensation that he might have entirely lost his mind.
Yet he couldn't bring himself to leave his post at the door. Even if he had no idea at all what he was going to say if she were to open the door, or even if he really wanted her to open it, he couldn't make himself leave. It was as though his feet were planted in place. The thing he most wanted at the moment was to leave and go back to his room—to pretend he'd never worked up to this moment. But that was also the thing that he most dreaded doing.
He knocked again lightly at the door. If she heard him, she should open it. Walkers didn't knock on doors.
He knocked a little louder, hoping the sound didn't carry to any other room beyond the one that he was calling at.
He already determined that he wasn't going to say her name. He wasn't going to call out to her. If it came to than then he would simply accept that she was asleep and abandon entirely this whole ill thought out plan.
He knocked once more and had already, somewhat reluctantly, turned his feet to head in the direction of the room where he was supposed to be sleeping in anticipation of his upcoming watch, when he heard the sound of the clicking doorknob.
Rick turned back and found Carol standing there, brow furrowed. She clearly hadn't been sleeping. Beyond her, in the room, a lamp was burning.
"Rick?" She asked. "What is it? Is something wrong?"
Rick felt his pulse kick up a notch.
Now he didn't have the chance to go running in the other direction, not even if he decided he wanted to. He had to simply, as he'd done with everything else, go forward—face his fears.
He cleared his throat and, not sure exactly what else to say or do in the moment, shook his head to dismiss her question.
"Everything's fine," he said, keeping his voice low enough that it wouldn't carry beyond the two of them. "Can I—Carol…do you mind if I come in? Speak with you for a moment?"
She looked no less concerned, and he hoped that soon he could remedy the worry that was putting such an expression on her face, but she nodded her head slightly and pulled the door open, leaving space for him to come into the room.
He stepped inside, offering a quiet thanks as he did. And, as she closed the door behind him and fully welcomed him into her, although temporary, private space, he hoped he hadn't made a mistake that was going to take them well into the land of one step forward and two steps back.