AN: I want to apologise for taking so long to get this one out. I hate to admit it but I was suffering a little performance anxiety, I think. Anyway, hope this one keeps you all on your toes, and thank you for sticking with me!
Chapter Seven
She wasn't sure how it happened, all she knew was the gentle fire that swept throughout her body as Daryl Dixon held her hand. She felt like a teenager again, walking home with her first boyfriend, their heated palms swinging gently between them while her heart thumped madly in her chest. Daryl looked a whole lot more comfortable with the move than Carol would have predicted, and this caused a smile to blossom on her lips. She was happier than she had any right to be in a world gone mad, and so of course that's when it all started to go horribly wrong.
Daryl led them out of the woods all of a sudden. By the way he stopped along the edge of the tree line to observe the worn building of another Motel, she could see he was startled. He hesitantly tugged her forward, keeping her behind him as he slipped his hand from hers and swung his crossbow off his shoulder and into his hands. Automatically he loaded it, the string drawn back and an arrow notched in place as the first walker tumbled out of the Motel's Office. The arrow struck true in the middle of its forehead, and the thud of its body hitting the wooden floor seemed to echo loudly in the silence. As Daryl took time to reload, other walkers stumbled from the building. He grabbed at her hand, jerking around to look when she wasn't there to placate him with her touch. She was too busy staring with horror behind them at the walkers that seemed to flow from the woods until they were surrounded.
"Oh God, where did they all come from? Have they been following us and we didn't hear them?" She was flustered, her knife out of its sheath and readied for attack when Daryl grabbed her around the waist and ran, her feet barely able to find purchase as he launched them at a car, yanked open the door and shoved her inside. He dived across the hood, kicking a walker away from the door with his heavy boot and just barely managed to scramble inside and shut the door as walkers slammed against the car from all sides, their putrid faces trying desperately to get to them through the glass.
"Shit," exploded from his lips and Carol tried not to hyperventilate. He flicked the visors frantically up and down, checked the glove box, under the car mat then, when he realised there were no keys going to suddenly drop down in his lap, slammed his palms down on the wheel hard, a string of curses intoxicating the air around them.
Carol reacted, terrified for her life, and Daryl's. She dived for the floor plate with her knife in her hand, her forehead bumping hard against Daryl's knee as he shot back in his seat so fast she swore he'd claim whiplash. She wasn't sure what he thought she was going to do, but when her hands went to pull the wires out from under the wheel and did some fancy paring and twisting until the car roared into life, he yanked her up with a look of complete awe on his face and then jammed his foot on the accelerator, barrelling walkers out of the way and squishing any that fell in front of the vehicle with careful aim with the tires. The way out was, consequently, bumpy.
She knew how queasy she felt, but Carol darted a look at Daryl and he looked positively white. She snorted, then slammed her hand across her mouth, then snorted again. They'd barely made it out onto the road when she was laughing hysterically with tears running down her cheeks, and then abruptly the laughter switched to sobs.
Daryl stopped the car in the middle of the road, put it in park and then he was watching her warily, like he had no idea what to do with hysterical women—hysterical women who knew random things like how to steal a car. Carol started laughing again when she realised that he probably didn't. She wasn't used to being one.
"Where the fuck did you learn how to hotwire a car?" His eyes were wide and his pupils so dilated Carol could feel herself falling right into them, completely lost in the dark pools, mesmerised by what she thought was a desire so wild it could have its own show on cable. "Shit, I think that has to be the hottest damn thing I've ever seen in my life."
Carol blushed. "Really? So, flashing my boobs would barely get your motor runnin'? What I really need to do to turn you on is steal a car?" She swiped away her tears and felt the tension start to ease finally. "If only I'd known that eight months ago," she sighed wistfully, like the waste of that time was a real burden on her heart.
"Don't think I can't tell you're side-steppin' the question," he said around a compulsive grin and Carol laughed in delight. God, it was so good to see Daryl like this. Still himself, but relaxed. They had the Governor out there intent on hunting them down like dogs and yet Carol thought she'd never spent a better time in her life as she had these few days on the run with Daryl.
"My daddy was a mechanic. He wanted me to know what to do if I ever got into a position where I needed to run."
"Man shoulda put you in Karate or some shit like that instead," Daryl drawled, a slight tinge of irritation dimming his smile at the indirect mention of her needing help. If ever there'd been a woman who'd needed to run, it was her.
"Why? You don't think my hotwiring skills came in handy?"
Daryl's large hand loomed in front of her face before it suddenly snaked around her head, dragging her closer so he could lay a hot, burning kiss on her lips. She felt all fuzzy and vague when he pulled away.
"You are a total mystery to me," he said, still grinning like a loon. Like they'd just got away from a herd of walkers and they were giddy with life. "I love it." He kissed her again and this time, when he sucked her bottom lip into his mouth and gently teased it with his teeth, she could have sworn her toes actually curled.
"You know, I think the Governor's probably given up on us by now," Carol whispered against his lips, sighing happily when he continued to deliver lingering kisses along her jaw and down her neck to her collarbone.
"Yeah, I figure even that asshole ain't stupid enough to think he can find us out there. Every tree'd look the same to 'im. Like looking for a needle in a haystack." His lips had found the gentle curve of her cleavage and, before she knew what was happening, he'd pulled the strap of her top and bra down her arm and had captured an aching nipple between his teeth. His tongue flicked it rapidly while his palm worked across her hip, fingering the hem of her shirt before his fingers bunched it up and his knuckles brushed against the bare skin of her stomach. Molten heat gushed between her legs and Carol moaned loudly in need, arching up into his touch like a wanton.
"D-Daryl? You think this is a good idea?"
"Hmmm. Best damn idea I ever had," he said confidently, his lips tickling her breast as he lazily formed the words around sucking on her nipple.
His touch diverted from her for a moment and as her fuzzy mind tried to work out where his hand had got to, her seat snapped back and he was climbing on top of her, pushing her back in the most uncomfortable way and yet she thought she might be flying with how excited she was. His grasp on her waist returned, and then rough fingers skimmed across her flesh and down, down past the loose waistband of her pants, drifting tantalisingly across the top elastic of her panties.
He took a breath from worshiping her breasts and Carol acted, desperate to taste his lips again. Even as bold as he'd been so far, he wasn't pushing any further, so in synch with his diving tongue, she snapped the button open on her own pants, drawing down the zipper and placing her hand on his, encouraging him without words that she wanted more. That more was essential.
Long, calloused fingers breached the top of her panties, sifting through her pubic hair until they slid through the wetness of her opening. The sensation of him touching her, there, completely blew the cobwebs from her mind. Carol moaned into his mouth, desperately clinging to his lips even as her knees drew up automatically and she shunted her hips against those digits. Without warning his touch was gone and Carol cried out at the loss, her attempt to recapture his attention derailed when he grabbed her pants at her hips and tried to tug them down. He tore his lips away from her, trying to concentrate on freeing up some more space so he could explore unhindered, when something suddenly threw itself at the windshield. The loud thump made them both jump, and they paused, twin sets of heated blue eyes slowly rising to meet each other, Daryl panting hard. His middle finger was poised right over her clit, one breast exposed to not only him but the hungry walker frantically climbing the front of the car, and his erection quite prominent as his knee, propped up on the passenger seat beside her thigh, pushed it right into Carol's line of sight. As she watched, as the walker banged on the glass separating it from them, Daryl blushed twenty shades of puce, letting his head drop and then bounce against her collarbone. Carol tried not to choke on a laugh even as her arms went around his shoulders and she held onto him tight.
"I'm gettin' the feelin' that it ain't never gonna rain," he said against her shoulder, his tone one of morose deprivation.
Carol giggled, letting her hand fall down his back, stroking past his hip so she could ghost her touch forward across the tenting of his pants.
"Poor baby," Carol cooed, running her fingers past his belt buckle and up under his shirt till she found the tight cords of muscle around his shoulder. "We should probably get out of here. I promise to let you cash in that raincheck as soon as we get home."
Home. The prison. Daryl groaned loudly against her shoulder. "All those pricks are gonna be in our business," he complained, words muffled against her neck and she shuddered as the heat of his cheek left its mark. She could tell he was reluctant to move—as was she—but things were starting to get a little frantic around the car.
"We should probably pack it up and go." Her whispered suggestion tickled his ear and she grinned as his shoulder shrugged instinctively, attempting to protect his ear from her warm breath as it trembled throughout his body.
"Yeah. Hard to stay in the mood with these dead bastards dry humpin' the hood." Suddenly he pushed himself off her and slid back into his seat, throwing her a cheeky grin as he put the car back in gear and she tried to cover herself back up.
They drove in companionable silence and Carol couldn't help but compare how different everything was with Daryl at her side in place of Ed. There'd never been a comfortable moment in her whole relationship with her husband. She'd made sure to know all about Ed before she'd married him: his high school dreams of a football scholarship, his reality as a used car salesman, she'd met his family and his friends and not once had she truly known him at all. Now, sitting beside Daryl at the end of the world, probably two of the few people that still survived in their part of Georgia, she knew so few of the little details that made up the man Daryl was and yet she knew him on a far deeper level than she ever had Ed. Not that Daryl was really the kind of person you could play twenty questions with. She knew; all winter she'd tried.
"You know how there are those big moments in our living history where you'll forever remember where you were and what you were doing when you first heard the news? Like, when JFK was assassinated?"
Daryl arched a brow as he stared across the car at her. "Nope. Weren't even born yet."
Carol rolled her eyes. That had been a dumb example. "Okay, what about when the Space shuttle exploded, or the Oklahoma City bombing?"
"What's your point?"
He didn't look at her this time, seeming nervous for reasons Carol couldn't even surmise, but she pushed on anyway, refusing to worry and back down over something like this, over finding out how he felt about the thing that had ultimately brought them together.
"I just wanted to know what you were doing when you found out about walkers. Found out about this new world we're livin' in."
He froze. Carol watched as his knuckles turned white around the bone as he clutched the wheel, his mouth set in a thin line. She didn't think he was going to answer, that their companionable silence was going to turn awkward in a flash, and as regret set in, she scrambled for a way to defuse the moment right up until he opened his mouth and left her in shock.
"Found out the second one of those fuckers took a chunk out of my Pa while we were out huntin'. His friend Buck was next. Uncle Jess helped me get out but he'd been bit, too."
"Oh." She didn't know what to say. He sounded so detached from it, like it had happened to someone else, not his own father, but then she wondered if maybe that was his moment—his first taste of freedom in his whole life, like hers when she put that axe through Ed's head, and she saw that really, they were never that different from each other. She gasped as another realisation hit her, turning her head almost fearfully. "You stayed?"
His gaze switched from the road to her, flickered over her like a scared rabbit before fleeting away and staring solidly out the windshield. "Yeah. Didn't see no point in leavin'."
Carol was an expert on evasive language. She'd created so much of it in her past that she could almost recite what was between the lines like her life depended on it. She knew what it meant to not see any other option but to just stay, even if staying wasn't the best place to be. Not even if staying left you open and vulnerable to more hatred, to more violence. She was also an expert on how to keep quiet and just accept what could never be changed. She reached for his hand and he gave it easily. Carol kissed his palm, feeling her heart thump wildly at such an intimacy, and then linked her fingers through his.
"We're not too far from the prison," Daryl said after a while, breaking her out of her preoccupied silence. They were approaching a crossroads, the woods on one side and fields on the other. It was peaceful, almost beautiful in the stark loneliness of it all. Carol sighed, happier and more content than she'd ever been and just knew that even if this was it, the end of everything, that with Daryl's warm hand in hers, the rough pad of his thumb stroking a fire within her just from the smooth swipe of it against her own, she'd be fine with it. She'd be ready.
He, of course, noticed the giddy smile on her face, his own lips quirking as he watched her with eyes full of wonder, happy enough just to witness the happiness spread across her face. There was nothing complicated between them anymore and Carol wondered why, whatever it was that had previously held them back from crossing into that final orbit around each other, had suddenly shifted.
"First thing I'm doing is takin' a shower. Don't care what Rick says."
Carol giggled, about to volunteer to join him and deliver up on some of those promises when she caught a flash of something big and dark approaching them faster than anything in this new world should. Her eyes widened with heart-jolting fear and Daryl turned to look out the window right as a black SUV ploughed into the back of their car. The clash of metal screamed at the impact, the car spinning across the tarmac. Tyres burned and tore at the road as they folded in on the axels, screeching as metal ripped open and glass popped and shattered, spraying out and peppering the road.
The grinning face of a man with an eye patch climbing out of the SUV was the last blurred image Carol saw before all there was was darkness.