When Daryl got home from work, he found that Carol's truck was gone. She was apparently out, so he let himself into his apartment and looked around. Merle wasn't home from work yet and Andrea was gone, either already at the Watering Hole or out doing whatever it was that Andrea did when she wasn't in the apartment.

Daryl opened up the refrigerator more out of boredom than any genuine interest in the shanty contents and plucked the container of orange juice out. He drank down about the half the contents of the carton, put it back in the refrigerator and went to take a shower, hoping that Carol would be home by the time he got out.

When Daryl got out of the shower and got dressed, he noticed that Merle had at least been there temporarily, which meant either someone had dropped him off or Andrea had gone to pick him up, because he'd left his shoes in the hallway almost in front of the bathroom door. Daryl kicked them out of the way and shook his head at the comparison of their apartment and Carol's.

Carol's apartment was clean. Everything in there smelled nice and there wasn't much on the floor other than the toys from the day before that they'd bought for Lincoln, and that was only really owing to the fact, Daryl reasoned, that the puppy was short and lacked the thumbs necessary to neatly put away his things.

All three of them had thumbs, though, and their apartment looked like a disaster area. Once or twice he'd caught Andrea making a few attempts at cleaning, but she'd given it up almost as suddenly as she'd begun. Daryl wasn't really sure if it was owing to the fact that she didn't like to clean, or if it was one of those things where she thought that trying to clean their apartment would be about as useless as drying off in the rain.

Daryl opened the door to the apartment and crossed the hall. He knocked at the door and waited, hoping that Carol had made it home in his absence. He entertained himself, for a moment, by peeling some of the paint off of the door frame where it had started to stand up, and then he jumped when the door swung open and Carol was standing there.

Daryl knew immediately that something was wrong, but he had no idea what it was. Carol was puffy eyed, and she only got that way when she was crying about something. These days it seemed that she had a lot of random fits of crying, though, and most of the time she was never very good at identifying exactly why she was crying. Lincoln, however, was supposed to put a stop to that as far as Daryl understood it.

"What's wrong with ya?" Daryl asked.

Carol didn't respond. She slung the door open the rest of the way and turned around, heading into the kitchen. Daryl followed her inside and watched her as she fiddled with a tea kettle that was on the stove. Daryl looked around the room for the puppy, deciding to offer the thing up as some sort of sacrifice to whatever woman god it was that made the sobbing stop.

"Where's Lincoln?" He asked, confused that the puppy didn't seem to be bounding around anywhere.

"They kept him," Carol said, her voice low and shaky.

"Who kept him?" Daryl asked, a little annoyed. He didn't know who had kept Carol's puppy, but he could solve this shit. He could go and get her puppy back. It was hers and no one had any right to keep it.

"The vet," Carol said. "They said they could fix him this evening, but they're keeping him overnight. They said I could pick him up in the morning."

Daryl thought about it for a moment and it seemed reasonable.

"So ya go an' get him in the mornin' then. I ain't gotta work tomorrow, I'll go with ya," he said. "Why ya cryin' 'bout it?"

"I miss him," she said.

Daryl chuckled a little, watching her making a cup of tea.

"Ya ain't had him not two days, Carol, how much can ya miss him?" Daryl asked.

Carol turned around to look at him, the mug in her hands. Her eyes brimming with tears. Apparently less than two days was plenty of time to miss Lincoln.

Daryl walked over and took the mug out of her hand so that she couldn't scald him with the liquid. He put it on the counter and wrapped his arm around, her pulling her to him.

"It's one night, Carol," Daryl said. "Dog's gonna live like ten years or somethin' like that. Ya gonna have plenty of nights with him."

"Ten years?" Carol asked, pulling away from him.

"I try ta be fuckin' inspirational an' that's the shit ya latch onto," Daryl said with a sigh.

"I'm sorry," Carol said, wiping at her eyes. "I just really don't like leaving him there. He's going to be lonely tonight."

"Are ya upset that he's gonna be lonely or ya upset that you gon' miss him? 'Cause I reckon they knock him out ta cut his jewels off if they got any decency at all so he prob'ly ain't gonna know no different," Daryl said.

"OK," Carol said. She picked up her mug and dropped the tea bag in the sink. "Maybe I'm a little sadder for me."

Daryl chuckled a little.

"What time does the fuckin' place open tomorrow?" Daryl asked.

"Eight," Carol said.

"Then we'll be there at a quarter 'til," Daryl said. "Ya can have ya dog back. 'Til then, though, ya gotta stop snottin' on yaself, deal?"

Carol nodded.

"What do you want to do?" She asked. "I don't want to just sit here or I'm going to be thinking about him all alone in some cage."

Daryl smiled. He was pretty sure, judging by Carol's current demeanor, that what he wanted to do wasn't the appropriate answer to this question, so he decided not to say it.

"Don't care," he said. "What can we do in this town when we ain't got nothin' else ta keep us busy?"

Carol sipped at her tea and obviously thought about it. There really wasn't much to do in town and Daryl knew that by now. The place was just a heartbeat above dead, and that was putting it nicely.

"I don't know," Carol said finally. "I don't really feel like doing anything."

Daryl shook his head.

"Ya just said ya wanted ta do somethin' an' now ya don't wanna do nothin'," Daryl said. "How am I s'posed ta win that one?"

Carol chuckled a little at him.

"Come on," Daryl said. "I'm goin' ta get my shoes. When I get back ya better be ready, we goin' ridin'."

"Where are we going?" Carol asked.

"The hell do it matter?" Daryl asked. "We just goin' an' we gon' see where the hell we end up!"

He turned and quickly walked out of the apartment, crossing the hall in search of his shoes.

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Daryl slipped his arm around Carol's shoulder and teased her right shoulder with his fingertips. In response she slid closer to him and he wrapped his arm tighter around her. He couldn't help but smile and she was in a little better spirits just for being out of the apartment.

They were driving on some back road and Daryl honestly didn't have a clue where they were or how they were going to get back, but he figured those were just the details that could be worked out later. For now they were just burning gas and killing a little time riding through the Georgia countryside just before sunset started.

"Do you even know where we are?" Carol asked after a bit. Daryl shook his head and squeezed her tighter to him so she rested her head on his chest.

"Not a damn clue," he said. "Wouldn't be half surprised if we drove all the fuckin' way to a whole nother state!"

Carol giggled.

"We've got to get home by a quarter to seven, though," Carol said.

"We'll get there," Daryl said, "don't'cha worry 'bout that."

Finally, after a good while of driving, just as the sun was really beginning to set and the surroundings were starting to go dark, Daryl figured it was time for them to turn around. He hadn't made a very complicated trip out of it, so he was fairly certain that he could find his way back by simply going straight until things started to look familiar, at least to one of them.

He pulled the truck roughly off the road and into a field to turn around Carol squealed at the way the truck bounced. Daryl laughed and turned the truck quickly, stopping it a moment before he pulled back on the road.

"Guess this is the end a' the road," he said. "We'll turn back an' head for civilization."

He looked at Carol and she was smiling at him, her excitement over the jarring motion of the truck still evident on her face. She leaned in and kissed him. He returned the kiss, turning his body a little so that he had better access to her and so that she could lean in deeper.

Carol pulled away after teasing him with her tongue for a few minutes and tugged her shirt over her head. Daryl grinned at her.

"The hell ya doin'?" He asked.

"Did you ever go parking, Daryl?" Carol asked.

Daryl narrowed his eyes at her. She knew he'd never been parking. Who the fuck was he going parking with? Most of the time he spent in the damn truck was with Merle.

Carol smiled at him, then, the real kind where she bit the end of her tongue. He smiled in response.

"Ya know I never fuckin' been parkin'," Daryl said.

He watched as Carol got up on her knees on the seat, flicking her shoes off quickly and dropping them in the foot.

"Me either," she said.

Daryl didn't want to admit it, but her sitting there on her knees with just her shoes and her shirt off, smiling like she'd just thought of something that was either the best plan in the world or possibly the most evil plan in the whole world was possibly the hottest thing that Daryl could imagine. He'd already gone hard, and he thought he might be a little embarrassed if she knew how uncomfortable his pants were while he was sitting there.

"Well," Carol said after a minute, "aren't you going to take your clothes off, or am I going to be the only one?"

She leaned up on her knees and unbuttoned her pants. Daryl chuckled at her and quickly shed his shirt, shifting his weight around so that he could come up and kiss her again, pushing her down. She squealed and almost banged her head on the window.

"There ain't much room in here," Daryl said. He knew his erection was digging into her now through his pants.

"There's enough," she said. "We'll make it work."

Daryl chuckled and leaned off of her enough to wrestle out of his own pants. She took the opportunity to get hers as far off as she could, taking her panties with them so as to save them a later wrestling problem. Daryl helped her wrestle hers the rest of the way off and decided just to move his boxers down for practicality purposes.

"Don't know how good I'm gonna be at this," Daryl said with a snicker. He dipped his head and sucked at her breasts, realizing immediately how cramped they really were. Carol was already breathing heavy, though, and Daryl wondered how much of the work she was doing in her own head.

"Look at it this way," she panted, "you're going to be the best I've had."

Daryl kissed her neck and gently nibbled at it and she threw her head back to give him access. He wrestled his arm between them, her legs already wrapped around him mostly due to lack of space, and searched for the button he'd found before. Finding it he rubbed it, teasing her.

Carol moaned and he rubbed his hand down, slipping a finger into her and teasing her more, bringing out more of the moaning.

"I hope we don't get caught," he teased. "We ain't gon' be able ta cover this shit up."

Carol laughed, her head still thrown back and then she came up, kissing him in the darkness that was settling around them.

"Go ahead, Daryl," she said. He teased her again with his hand, distracting her for a second and she bit her lip. "I'm ready, go ahead," she panted.

Daryl slipped his hand out of her and did his best to support his weight on the seat with other one, guiding himself into her. He thrust into her and she wiggled under him, finally meeting his movements with her own. He worried, as he felt himself building up, that he was going to leave her disappointed. She wasn't making the sounds she'd made before and that was all he had to go on at this point. Finally, though, and just before he'd given up hope, she cried out and he felt her fingernails rake across his back as she pulsed around him. Less than a moment later he spilled inside of her and then fell against her, quickly trying to lift himself off her for fear or squishing her.

Carol panted and tangled one hand into her hair. Daryl leaned in and kissed her, both of them panting into each other's mouths as they tried to steady their breathing and still enjoy the kiss between them. Finally, Daryl pulled himself up onto his knees and Carol moved back, sitting with her back against the passenger side door, still panting.

"Was that alright?" Daryl asked, starting to get dressed and noticing it was much easier to dress while sitting up than it had been to undress in the position they had chosen earlier.

"Mmm…hmmm," Carol hummed. She dressed herself and ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at some of her curls. "I'd say it was pretty much as good as I can imagine."

Daryl chuckled a little and cranked the truck.

"Best parkin' I've ever done too," he said.

Carol snickered a little and set about tying her shoes.

"Hold on," Daryl said, pulling the truck back onto the road. She laughed again at the bump when they made contact with the asphalt.

Daryl started back in the direction that they'd come and waited patiently for Carol to finish tying her shoes and to slide back against him.

"Hope ya was payin' attention," he said. "Otherwise we might not make it back 'til about quarter ta eight."

Carol giggled and snuggled into him rubbing her face against his chest. She yawned.

"That'll be fine," she said. "We can just go directly to the vet's office, then, and sleep when we get home."

"You think that dog's sleepin' in the bed again, don't'cha?" Daryl asked.

"Just for a little while," Carol said, rubbing her hand over his chest and teasing his nipples through his shirt, making him jump. "He's having surgery, Daryl. And he's spending the night away from home. He's going to need a little extra attention tomorrow."

Daryl chucked and squeezed her against him. He knew he wasn't going to win this fight. The only hope he really had was that he could convince her that the dog, since it was clearly going to get the lion's share of the bed, had to at least be willing to get on the floor from time to time or else they were going to end up filling the truck up with gas a whole lot more than he'd ever intended before.