AN: Here we go, another chapter here.
This one is a long one, but I didn't have a place I wanted to break it so it all came together.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Rick might have once believed that he was an expert on reading Carol, but now he wasn't so sure. He'd correctly read the shift in her behavior following the discovery of what happened to Karen and David, but he realized now that he'd only partially read it correctly. Now he knew that what he was taking as "nervous upset over the thought that she might be caught for doing something that she knew was wrong" was really more that she was "upset over the fact that she'd felt driven to do something that she never wanted to have to do".
Carol wasn't bothered by the possibility of being caught. She probably wouldn't have been bothered by the thought of any punishment she might be given because of her actions. Carol was bothered because she'd hated the idea of people around her dying from a disease, possibly infecting others, and that, because of that, she'd had to do something that was terrible.
And, it seemed, that she still hadn't overcome that. There was an excess of sadness in her eyes and there was a heaviness in her movements that wasn't customary to the Carol that he'd first known at the rock quarry—even with all the weight she'd had to bear there.
But what Rick had learned, or at least one of the things that he'd learned, from the whole experience, was that he wasn't as able to read Carol as he might have thought he was. She wasn't the open book that he'd imagined her to be.
And now he was almost afraid to try to read into anything about her.
They'd left with the sunrise to go into the town just a half mile away from the hotel. Their group had been comprised of Abraham, Daryl, Michonne, Carol, Glenn, and Rick himself. They were mostly going for must-have supplies since they, and everyone else in the group, would be required to carry all that they scavenged while they walked the road, but they'd taken more people than a simple run required simply to avoid any sticky situations with Walkers.
And really, they'd managed to do just that. There hadn't been happenings that were really remarkable in any way. The most Walkers they'd even seen at any given time had been a small "bunch" of fifteen or so that they'd "released" from the largest store they visited. No one, it seemed, had been in there since the fall had happened and everyone that had been in there, at the time, was trapped inside—at least, that's what they assumed.
They'd gathered most of what they needed from just the one store and Glenn and Michonne had found a wagon and wheelbarrow so that they could carry it back to the hotel with ease.
And the whole time that they'd been out, handling the Walkers and gathering the supplies, Rick had been trying to get a read on Carol.
He'd been asking himself if she was thinking about the kiss the night before as much as he was. He'd been asking himself what she was thinking about the kiss.
But he wasn't as good at reading her as he might have once thought he was. And he was almost afraid to think that he was imagining every single thing that he saw there, good and bad.
Was she looking at him that way because she was thinking about it? Was it because she enjoyed it and wanted more? Or was it because she felt disturbed or threatened by the boundaries that he'd no doubt pushed? Was her distance from him during the run strategic to keep them covering both sides of any location at one time? Or was it because she felt the need to have distance between them to avoid him coming into contact with her?
Did she feel the way about him that he felt about her? Or had he only succeeded in scaring her more?
The questions, however, went unanswered because Rick didn't put his voice to them and he didn't feel like he could read her.
Rick made himself almost feel paranoid as the evening rolled on.
He was watching her, but he was hyper-aware of the fact that he was watching her. He was hyper-aware of whether or not people were noticing where his eyes kept falling, even when he tried to make sure to direct them elsewhere—even when he told himself to focus on Judith, to focus on what others were talking about, to focus on discussions about how far it might be before they reached any sort of real destination and on what they might find there—his eyes still drifted back to Carol, taking in everything about her from the way she looked to the way that she held her shoulders when she was sitting and listening to everyone talk.
And more than once, he saw her eyes flick in his direction. And when he looked away from her and then brought his eyes back? He thought he saw hers dart quickly away from him.
But he told himself that he was just imagining things. He had to tell himself that because, if he read into her expressions and body language what he thought he saw there, then he'd just be disappointed if he found out later that it was a matter of him simply seeing what he wanted to see.
When night fell on them, though, and Abraham and Rosita took watch by the entrance of the hotel with Tyreese set to relieve them halfway through the night, and everyone began to retire to their rooms, Rick was left to seek out some kind of answer to the questions that ran through his mind. Judith put down to sleep and Carl resting with the command that he needed his sleep in case they moved on—since they hadn't fully decided if one more night to dine on rations they couldn't carry with them would do them good—Rick made several excuses to pass up and down the hallway.
He checked, that night, more things than he'd probably ever felt the need to check. One pass. Two. Three. But four surely would be a charm.
Yet just when he'd decided that he had his answer, that he knew what she'd thought of the kiss simply because she'd said nothing to him at all about it, and he'd finally started his last trip down the hall to return to his room and try to sleep, he finally got a response.
And even though he had no idea what he'd been waiting for exactly, or what he'd been expecting, he was pretty sure that he hadn't been expecting what he got.
Just as he passed her room, glancing at what he was sure would be the closed door once last time, Rick noticed that the door was ajar.
And beyond that, Carol was leaning, barely visible in the darkness—the only light being that which flowed out of the room from the lamp inside—in the doorway.
Rick stopped and stood before her, not quite sure what her presence there meant, but knowing it meant something. He realized, suddenly, that he could barely swallow for his nerves. Her face, though, looked oddly serene at the moment.
She looked almost young enough that he should have turned and gone elsewhere—it wasn't proper to look at her the way he'd been looking at her all day.
"I wondered if you would come tonight," Carol said.
"I was waiting," Rick said. "For…for permission, I guess. For…a sign. That you wanted me to come."
Carol nodded her head slightly, he heard something like a grunt from her—perhaps she was thinking about what he'd said and the sound had escaped her lips without her even knowing it. And then she stepped out of the shadow of the slightly ajar door and padded to him in two small steps. She looked at him a moment, furrowing her brow and, even in the darkness, taking back the appearance of the woman whom he'd forced to eat chocolate the night before—the woman that had been there, almost constantly, since his world, and the world of everyone else, had been turned upside down. Carol reached, catching him behind the neck, her hand cool on his skin, and she closed the distance between them, kissing him back and repaying him for the night before in full because he hadn't been expecting it.
But expecting it or not, he'd been thinking about it for some time, so he responded instinctively and dropped his arms around her, pulling her into him like he had the night before. And time time? She didn't immediately pull back. She allowed him to drag her against his body and to deepen the kiss. She allowed him to pull away only long enough to bite at her lips as though he were starving.
And then, panting, she finally pushed him away only to gesture that he could come with her, out of the hallway and potentially out of the sight of anyone who bothered to look, and come into the privacy of her room.
It was just a hotel room left abandoned since the fall of the world. But, at the moment, it felt like some kind of heaven because, even if he was afraid to let himself try to read her, he felt that even the most illiterate man on the planet could read exactly what was going on here.
It might not be love. It might not be anything, really, except lust. It might be the same animal hunger that he felt when he bit her lips—hard enough that now he felt he should apologize for his absentminded roughness—but it didn't matter.
For just this moment? It absolutely didn't matter.
When the door was closed and Carol had come back, swooping in to steal another quick kiss but not allowing it to linger like the other had before she swooped back away from him and toward the bed, Rick stood watching her.
And she watched him.
But he wasn't going to try to read her expectations.
He cleared his throat from the feeling of choking on how bad he wanted this—how bad he feared that he was going to ruin it if he wasn't careful.
"What do you want?" He asked.
She simply continued to stare at him a moment. He shifted his weight slightly from the feelings that the intensity of her gaze caused him.
"I want to give you what you want," Rick said.
But it was suddenly as though she were struck deaf and couldn't hear him. Or maybe she'd lost her voice or even turned to marble. She stood there, unmoving, in front of the bed, staring at him as though he hadn't said a thing to her.
"Carol…" he said, suddenly feeling a little concerned about the whole situation.
"I don't know," she said.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and lifted her arms in defeat before dropping them back down.
"I don't. I just don't know. I—nobody's ever asked me that before and I don't know," she said.
Rick stood and considered his options for a moment.
Knowing just what he knew about Ed, it wouldn't be hard to imagine that he had ruled the bedroom like he'd ruled the rest of his home—like he'd ruled his tent in camp those first few days before they bid the asshole farewell on his trip to the pits of hell where he most likely resided now.
And if Ed had been the only man for her? A question that he wasn't going to ask her because he didn't want to, and it didn't matter, and he didn't want to admit that Lori had really been the only one for him—if Ed had been the only one? Then it was more than likely that she was telling the truth. No one had ever asked her that.
And he couldn't force her to answer a question that she didn't know the answer to, even if he the answer to that question was of great importance to him.
He would just have to do the best he could. He would simply have to give her the best that he had to offer—and hope that it was, if not exactly what she wanted, something at least satisfying.
Rick took off the shirt he was wearing and toed out of his boots at the same time. Carol stood up from her position on the side of the bed. He unfastened his belt and noticed that, once again, she was watching him with the same intensity as before.
"Do you want this?" He asked.
She nodded.
"Yeah," she said. And, as if to show her dedication to the moment, she peeled off the tank top that she was wearing, revealing that she had let her bra go by the wayside some time ago.
She was already more beautiful than he'd imagined.
He pushed his jeans down and stepped out of them and immediately she matched him, but she upped the ante. All at once, and with a face more like she was ripping off a band aid, she pushed down her cargo pants and underwear at once, revealing herself to him entirely in the lamplight.
He might have said that she was unashamed, but her facial expression said otherwise. She looked more like she was presenting herself to be judged. And, if her expression was anything to go on, it looked like she was expecting a low score.
Yet Rick could barely breathe and already he was worrying that he was going to embarrass himself far too quickly because it had been longer than he might have liked, and she was even more amazing than he'd ever thought she could be.
"You're…beautiful," he said. "Incredible…so…amazing…"
And he stammered out the compliments. Those and any others that came to mind, in a steady stream while he rid himself of his underwear and came to her, kissing her and catching her around the waist. She weighed even less than he thought she would and, in a move that he'd thought would end up being a nice romantic lifting of her to the bed, he felt as though he almost threw her on there—much more roughly than intended.
But if she noticed, she didn't say anything.
He grabbed her legs, and pulled her toward him, lifting her slightly and pulling her legs apart.
And he didn't want to try to read her, but he couldn't help it. Because the face she made was an intriguing expression of something akin to fear and something akin to desire melting into one.
And it struck him.
She knew what she wanted. She knew very well what she wanted. But she was afraid. And whether she was afraid of her own desires or afraid to ask him for what she wanted, he couldn't be sure, but he could be sure that she did know what she wanted.
So he tried to give her what she wanted. And in focusing as hard as he could on what she wanted—on how she responded to each lick, each nip, each gentle suck—he bought some relief for himself because his mind was so fully focused on her desires. He enjoyed, very much, the way that she responded to him. She was quiet, possibly afraid to let too much of her voice be heard at the moment, but she offered him quiet moans, breathy sighs, gasps and groans—all of which felt rewarding.
And she moved her body to silently request more—more of this, more of that, more this way—and Rick did his best to respond.
He stayed that way, his hands alternating from holding her hips to moving her legs from one location to another until he knew that she'd reached her climax at least twice and she was starting, from being a little overwhelmed, to pull away from him.
It was too sweet. It was too sweet, too much, too soon.
So he finally moved to join her on the bed. And while his body reveled in what it knew was coming, he returned to kissing her. He enjoyed the feelings of her hands, very tentatively, searching out his body as he was trailing his over hers. He enjoyed the light scratching on his back and the way she licked his collarbones and sucked his chest before offering hers, pushed toward him—a silent request he happily filled, for him to return the gesture.
And when he'd had all the play that he could stand, Rick asked her once more:
Are you sure you want this?
And she did.
So he brought them together slowly at first, trying to gauge her reactions. And when she moved her body, just as she had before, to make her silent requests—more of this, more of that—he understood that he was free to do what he pleased because, at the moment, everything he did was pleasing to her.
And he felt rewarded when she reached her peak—one he was able to see in her changing expression this time—just before he reached his, his previous attention making her not even seem to notice that he was nowhere near holding the record at the moment for the longest lasting man in the world.
When they both came down, sweaty and with the soft blanket trying to cling to their skin in places, he lie beside her a few moments.
But he didn't know, at the moment, quite what to say.
Because thank you didn't seem to fit. And words of love were too far away.
This was territory that was new to Rick. And, judging from her response, new to Carol. The words, somehow, just didn't seem to be there.
So Rick asked the only thing that he could think to ask. The age old question asked by men since the beginning of time—possibly painted into cave paintings somewhere depicting things such as this.
"OK?" Rick asked.
"Mmm…good," Carol panted back at him.
And he almost laughed. Because neither of them, it appeared, was a master of language for the moment.
"Yeah," he agreed. "Good."
After a moment more had passed, and breathing wasn't quite the activity it had been before, Rick asked the only other thing that he knew to ask.
"What do you want me to do?" Rick asked. "Now?"
Carol rolled toward him, the expression she'd been wearing in the doorway back on her face for a second before there was the slight glimmer of a smile.
"I want you to stay," she said softly.