AN: Here we go, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"What's wrong?" Carol asked.
She was standing there, one arm crossed across her chest now and the other hanging low in the greatest state of being "dressed" for bed as any of them really achieved these days.
For the most part, everywhere they went they were forced to all sleep communally. They were, essentially, almost always sleeping one next to the other until most of them considered it "getting ready for bed" to simply take their boots off—and many of them didn't even indulge in that much comfort.
Even in the hotel, Rick had only gone so far as to take off his shirt, his boots would wait.
Carol had come out of her extra layers and had already peeled off her boots. She stood before him in cargo pants and a tank top—nothing more. Now he wondered, actually, if that might have been what took her so long. She might not have even been wearing that before he'd interrupted her.
He closed his eyes a moment and tried to explain to himself that he really had no right to even think about that—and he certainly didn't have a right to call to mind the mental image that he had.
He shook his head to shake the image out, but also to respond to her concern.
"Nothing's wrong, Carol," he said.
He reached in his pocket, not sure what else to do in the moment, and pulled out the candy bar that he'd been carrying around. It was likely broken now, perhaps a little melted. It was certainly no better for the wear, but it had been the only way he'd known to guarantee that no one, when they'd descended on the broken into snack machine like wolves, had gotten it.
He looked it and then offered it to her. She furrowed her brow in response.
"What?" She asked. "A candy bar?"
"For you," Rick said, laughing to himself as he realized how ridiculous the offering was. "You wanted the candy bar."
He couldn't stand to stand still in front of her any longer, so he walked a few steps toward what was a small table and chairs in the room, one of those little "sitting spaces" that hotel rooms offered that just seemed out of place when the room was small enough to make it ludicrous—as ridiculous, even, as giving someone a candy bar as a genuine gift.
"Carol—the candy bar? It's just like you. It's like you've…always been. And I actually thought…I actually worried…that part of you had gone somewhere…but it's still there. You wanted it, but you'd rather someone else have it because they…might want it more."
Carol walked around him, searching out his face again. She tossed the candy bar at the very table that he was finding its twin in ridiculousness.
"It's not that I don't want it," Carol said. "It's that I don't need it."
She pulled out one of the chairs that Rick was just thinking that nobody ever used and sat in it, staring at the candy bar she'd put on the table.
"It's not about wanting things these days," Carol said. "It's about what you need. What you have to have. It's about survival. Not—not about candy bars."
Rick pulled out the other chair and sat in it so that they were more comfortably at face level. He moved it close to her, under the pretext of having a conversation, until their knees were barely brushing one another.
"If it wasn't about candy bars," Rick said, fully understanding that though they were, in theory, talking about candy bars, the idea of the candy bar in this context really stood for a good number of things not mentioned, "then why does it even matter if anyone has it? If Michonne does…Carl? Judith? If those things don't matter, then what does it even matter, Carol?"
She looked at him and her expression was almost pained. But then she dropped her eyes and she shook her head at him once more.
Rick reached and picked up the candy bar in question off the table and peeled open the wrapper. Like most of the treats that they found, the chocolate was slightly discolored from having melted and hardened probably more than once—but it would still taste relatively the same.
He removed one of the "bars" of the Twix and offered it to her.
"I want you to eat this," Rick said, almost amused at the situation. "Just—eat it. It's open now. By morning? There'll be ants and it won't be good. There's no one else to eat it. You have to or else you know that you let it go to waste. You wasted a good thing because you were—too busy trying to prove something to eat it."
She opened her mouth like she might protest, but she took the piece of chocolate from him.
"You have to eat the other," she said. "Because…really? I don't want it. It's too sweet. It's too much. All at once? I haven't—I haven't eaten anything like this in ages. It's too much. You have to eat the other half."
Rick hummed to himself and looked at the candy bar that he had, before she'd put the stipulation on it, intended to make her eat alone.
"When's the last time that you ate a candy bar?" Carol asked. "That you didn't hand it over to Carl? Or Michonne? Or even to Lori?"
Rick swallowed.
It was true. He couldn't remember the last time that he'd actually found something like this—some treat stuck here or there—and he'd decided that he would have it for himself. He would, typically, tuck it somewhere to hand to Carl the first time that he saw him. And he knew that Carl shared with Michonne, because Michonne shared with Carl, but Rick didn't keep these things for himself.
His family was more important. It mattered more to him that they got what they needed, and what they wanted fell into that, than it mattered to him if he treated himself in this hell.
"You haven't," Carol said. "But you should. If I should eat this? If I deserve it, whatever that means. Then you should eat it too. So eat the other half."
Rick removed it from the wrapper and put the empty wrapper on the table. He laughed to himself over the whole situation. He felt like this was just another of those times that he didn't even know what was happening, he wasn't in control of it, but that just made it par for the course these days.
"Cheers," he offered, bringing the candy bar to his mouth and biting into it. In response, Carol did the same.
And the minute her face screwed up in the expression that it took on, he knew that she felt the same way that he did.
This Twix bar tasted nothing like he remembered the candy bars tasting. The chocolate was hard and crumbly. The whole thing was disgusting a point that he couldn't even, for the moment, choke it down and he couldn't imagine for the life of him why it was that some of the people in the group were almost ready to fight each other over things like this.
Now? He wouldn't feel at all like he was depriving himself of a thing when he handed them over.
And Carol's face said she felt the same way about it. It was screwed up, not in the ecstasy that he'd thought the first treat after such a long time might bring, but in absolute disgust. Still, she chewed through it and swallowed it down, forcing the second half of the candy bar into her mouth all at once and chewing it with the same determination as she had the first.
So Rick had nothing else to do but follow suit.
And he was thankful when she got up and, taking a swallow from her water bottle to wash the disgusting flavor out of her mouth, offered him the bottle to do the same.
"I'm sorry," he said once he'd washed the flavor out of his mouth. "I am. I'm…I'm so sorry for that."
Carol laughed from where she was now sitting on the edge of the bed. It was a warm, sincere, heartfelt laugh. It sounded good. It sounded like one of the nicest things that Rick had heard in some time.
"That's one apology from you that I don't mind hearing so much," Carol offered.
Rick got up and wiped his fingers on his pants, though he doubted sincerely the old chocolate had really left much of anything behind. He came over to her.
"I'm sorry about everything—I really am," Rick said. "And I don't know…Carol? I can't even begin to really make that sound like I mean it. Because…"
"Words fall short of so many things," Carol said. "Wasn't that what Dale said? Something like that. Rick, I don't need you to apologize to me anymore. I don't. The words don't say what you want them to say and…really? They don't mean anything."
Rick nodded.
His fingertips still felt soiled and his tongue still bore the terrible memory of the candy. He wiped his fingers once more and chuckled at himself.
"I wanted to do something nice for you," he said. "I wanted…just to give you something you wanted."
Carol chuckled at that.
"It was nice," she said. "The gesture? It was a nice gesture, Rick. Even if the candy was bad. The thought behind it? Thank you for that."
The thanks was sincere. It was almost always sincere when she thanked him for anything. She was one of the few people that he'd known that, no matter how small the service or gift, had always seemed to truly appreciate what she was given. It was like she expected nothing, so anything was something great to her.
And it made him wonder, honestly, how little she'd actually been given in her life to learn to be so thankful for things that were so…paltry.
Rick scratched at his beard, more out of nervousness than out of genuine itch, and stared at her. She looked at him like she expected him to say something more. She was, very likely, waiting for him to say whatever else he had to say so that she could go to bed.
"Carol—wherever we go from here? If we find something safe? If we don't? I…want you on my side. I want you on my family's side. You're part of my family and…even if I haven't always been the best at letting you know that…I want you to know it now. I need your help."
She dropped her eyes a moment and then she looked back at him. She shook her head slightly at him and he nodded in return.
"I want your help," Rick said. "Nothing else matters. The past? All of it? Everything? Let's leave it there. But in the future? I want you to be there."
She looked a little softened by the words.
"You're important to me," Rick said. "You're important to everyone here."
She looked like she might cry, just for a moment, but then she seemed to change the emotion with the same control that she'd used to choke down the second half of the candy bar without flinching when it had made Rick want to vomit and had made her look, to begin with, like she shared his sentiment.
He had doubted her mental state once—but in just those two moments he could tell, from something so simple, that she was fully in control of her mind. And she had some amazing mental control. Perhaps, there was even more there than he could imagine.
"Fine," she said softly. She nodded her head to confirm the words. "Fine," she repeated. "If you want me there? I'll be there."
Rick nodded his thanks and mouthed the words quietly. Then, Carol started toward the door and Rick realized he was being dismissed.
As always, he was being asked to leave, and the conversation was over, when he felt it had barely begun. Still, boiling inside him, was so much that he had left to say. But it was time to say goodnight.
That's how it always seemed to go. With everyone—but especially with Carol—there was so much still left to say when the conversation seemed to have ended.
He stopped by the door, put his hand on it as if to say that he wasn't ready to be excused from her presence yet, and she furrowed her brow at him again as if to ask if there was something more—something that she hadn't anticipated.
And there was.
"Carol," Rick started, realizing he was going to have to speak, at some point, if he ever wanted the chance to say anything that he hadn't managed to say thus far, "what do you want?"
She stared at him a moment and then shook her head.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't think I have an answer to that anymore. I think one day I did, but now? I don't know. Do you know, Rick? Can you answer that?"
Rick swallowed. Yes, he could answer that. He could answer that a million different ways at any given moment of the day. But, at this moment, what he wanted was contingent upon what she wanted. And she didn't even know what she wanted.
And he thought, maybe, that was fair enough. But he wasn't going to ever get a chance at even knowing if he could have all that he wanted if she never got around to even thinking about what she wanted. So he decided that the only thing that he could do in that moment—good or bad decision, be damned—was to plant to question for her to ponder.
And without responding to her question and without giving warning, he screwed up as much courage as he might, and touched her face.
She flinched away from him for a second, but he let his hand follow her, keeping the light touch on her cheek.
And when she didn't flinch again, when, instead, she stood there looking at him, he leaned forward and brought their lips together—like he'd imagined doing more than once.
She opened her lips to him and he took the opportunity to deepen the kiss. She followed suit, sharing with him the taste of the chocolate that was a bad and lingering memory for them both. The kiss, in all fairness, was far sweeter than the chocolate had ever been—even before it had spent so much time in locked in a vending machine.
But when Rick dropped his other hand, not really even thinking about the action, around her and pulled her into him—pulled her tight against his body like he wanted her to be—she pulled away from him quickly, wide eyed and panting slightly.
"I'm sorry," he said quickly, realizing that he'd taken her acceptance of the kiss too far and he'd rushed her too much.
It was too sweet—too fast, and too sweet, and too much at once.
"No," she said, "no…don't be…"
Rick stood there a moment longer, his stomach churning and his face burning hot both over the kiss but also over the fear that there wouldn't be another.
"You asked me what I wanted," Rick said. He paused a momet and nodded at her. "I want you to—think about it? I want you to tell me what you want."
And without waiting for her to say anything else, mostly because he feared what she might say, he pulled the door to the hotel room open and let himself out, tossing back a half-whispered goodnight to her. And if she responded to him? He didn't hear it. The pounding of his heart was, at the moment, drowning out all other sound.