AN: OK I wanted to get this out to keep things progressing. I have had a lot of distraction, etc. going on today, so I'm not thrilled with this chapter at all, but it needed to be written to get me over the hump and moving more in directions that I want to go. So forgive the imperfections and the fact that it's not liable to be anyone's favorite chapter. LOL I'll try to make it up to you somewhere down the line.
I hope you enjoy…at least somewhat. LOL
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As time passed, Carol began to feel like she was the happiest that she'd been in her entire life. She was back to work now and she was beginning not to worry about Ed. She still worried about him some, and from time to time she would catch herself seeing someone at a glance that resembled him in stature or had a similar profile and she would jump a little or her breath would catch, but for the most part she wasn't actively worried about him like she had been.
She didn't understand all that went on with the legal system, but she'd given testimonies and talked to individuals that Michonne took her to have appointments with. Michonne handled everything, really, though, so that all Carol had to do was ask for time off from work when Michonne told her it was necessary and go along with her to sign things or make statements.
It was finally becoming official, though, that Ed would be out of her life, at least physically. The most troubling thing now was that she had no idea how to get him out of her head. So much of him still haunted her.
It was especially bad at night, when her subconscious mind took over. She couldn't stop the nightmares from coming, and it seemed that the more comfortable her waking mind grew with his absence, the more worried her subconscious mind grew and it offered her more and more nightmares of how he would spring back into her life and destroy everything.
Daryl didn't ask her about the nightmares, ever. She woke from them, wrapped in his arms, usually with him calling her name or shaking her, but he wouldn't ask what they were about. Typically he'd just switch on the light and lie there, holding her and telling her that everything was fine, until she drifted back off. She'd wake up the next morning and everything would be normal and he'd go about his day without mentioning them at all.
Her relationship with Daryl was something that made her happy as well, though she often did her best to try to hide some of her feelings about it. She still felt, somewhat, that Daryl didn't really think about their relationship too much. For him it was just a routine that they'd fallen into and it was something comfortable. It didn't have labels and it didn't need explanations. He was fine with it just happening and that being that. Carol was afraid that if it got more complicated or if people started making demands to know what was going on between them or what they felt about each other, then Daryl might panic simply from not knowing how to respond or how to react.
She almost shuddered sometimes when someone at Lula's would ask her about Daryl. The whole town knew about them, clearly something like that wasn't going to stay quiet in Sweet Junction, and with her very public divorce from Ed taking place, people were beginning to talk a little louder now than they had before about the Dixons and about her relationship status with Daryl.
Carol didn't mind the questions, really. She tried to keep things as calm as she could. She said she was "seeing" Daryl or she was "talking" to him. She said he was a very nice man, a good man, he treated her well. She tried her best to keep her responses to anything they asked as gray as possible, but she worried about some nosy person pressuring Daryl somewhere and causing some kind of possible meltdown in whatever system it was that they had developed.
She was comfortable with Daryl, and she didn't want to lose that. It was a comfort that she couldn't explain. She felt safe around him, but not just in the sense that she felt he would protect her, that she wasn't going to come to physical harm around him. No. It was something more. She felt comfortable with herself when she was around Daryl, and that was something that she'd thought she'd never feel. It was something that Ed had worked so hard to take from her, and he'd been so good at it that he had stripped it from her, but now Daryl was giving it back, piece by piece.
Daryl made her feel like she was fine. Simply that. She was just fine as she was. He didn't criticize anything about her. When she started cosmetology classes with Andrea, he didn't tell her that she'd never make it, that she was only destined to fail. He simply nodded, accepted that she was taking classes, and that had been all the discussion about it that was necessary. When she was proud of some little trick or another that she'd taught Lincoln, she could show it to Daryl and he'd simply smile at the fact that the dog had learned something. There was no need to beat her down for it and tell her that she was stupid for working with him or that she'd failed as a dog parent because she hadn't taught him a different trick.
Daryl made her feel like she was attractive too. Whether she was dressed in something that she hoped would catch his attention or wearing old sweatpants around the apartment, he acted like she was the prettiest woman he'd ever seen. She found his fascination with her, his fascination with having sex with her, exciting, even if she couldn't fully understand it.
Her life was becoming something she'd never even imagined before. It was slowly becoming even better than the dream that she'd made for herself.
And now, today, there was even more excitement in her life. Michonne had come by earlier, dropping off the first check that she'd be getting from Ed. The very first of what Michonne declared would be quite a few. She'd also brought by a notebook full of tile designs, wood designs, paint splotches and the like for Carol to look at. Tomorrow they were going together, as soon as Carol got off work at Lula's to pick out the little house that would soon be her home. She had a week to decide on the details for it so that when they put the little house together it would be done to her specifications.
Carol sat at the table, flipping through the book, going back and forth between the decisions that she thought she'd already made. She wanted everything to be perfect. It had to be perfect. Daryl had come in, briefly, and without more than a quick peck on the lips hello, he'd taken Lincoln out for a walk. She couldn't wait for him to get back inside so she could tell him the good news about the check and the house. He wouldn't be as excited as her, but at least it was someone else to tell and Andrea hadn't made it home yet from her part time job at the Korean restaurant in town.
When Daryl came through the door, finally, he let Lincoln off his lease and went directly to the refrigerator to get something to drink.
"Andrea's bringin' us supper," he said, cracking open the top on a can of soda and taking a swig, leaning back against the counter.
"Did Lincoln go like a good boy?" Carol asked, leaning over to scratch the head of the puppy who came to greet her as though he hadn't seen a year or two instead of only the maybe fifteen minutes that they'd been gone.
"Yeah," Daryl said, sipping at the soda again.
"He gets a treat, then," Carol said.
Daryl chuckled a little and dug around in the cookie jar on the counter where Carol had started keeping Lincoln's treats.
"Why the hell does he get a treat just for doin' what nature's gonna make him do any damn way," Daryl said, leaning down to give the milkbone to the dog that already reacted when he heard the lid on the cookie jar rattle.
"Because," Carol explained, flipping through the book absently, "he does it outside and not on the floor, so he gets a treat."
"He does it on the floor too," Daryl said. "Taught me how to hop all the way to the damn bathroom this mornin'."
Carol chuckled.
"Well he doesn't get a treat for that, only when he does it outside," she said.
Daryl took another drink out of the can and put it on the counter.
"What'cha lookin' at? One a' them hair books ya got?" Daryl asked.
Carol looked up at him and grinned.
"No, come here. Sit down. I want to show you," she said, trying to contain her excitement.
Daryl walked over to the table and sat down and she pushed the book in front of him. He flipped through a couple of the pages before looking at her like she'd lost her mind.
"What the hell is it?" He asked.
"It's samples," Carol said. She showed him the notebook she'd been writing down numbers in of the samples she liked the best so far. "I got some money from Ed for the house. I'm going tomorrow to pick it out and Tyreese sent the samples by with Michonne so that I can pick out all the details."
She was right, Daryl didn't look nearly as excited as she was.
"Details?" He asked.
Carol nodded.
"Yes, like the book has wood, but the wood is standard in all the houses, but I can pick out the countertops and the floors. And Michonne brought over some paint samples so I can pick out what color their painting the shutters," Carol explained, flipping through some of the pages and showing him what she'd been looking at since Michonne left.
Daryl shrugged a little.
"What's it matter?" He asked.
Carol frowned.
"It matters a lot, Daryl! This is going to be my house! I'm not renting this house like I am the apartment. I'm going to own this house. It's going to be exactly what I want it to be," she said.
Part of her wanted to know if Daryl wanted to go with her to look at the house and to pick it out, but she felt like it wouldn't interest him and if Merle caught wind of her asking him to go with her to pick out a house then he'd likely launch into one of his long winded Merle speeches.
Merle had gotten a little better lately. He'd quit drinking at the urging of Daryl and Andrea, though no one drew attention to the change simply for fear that Merle would respond negatively to the praise and think that he'd done something to comply with someone's wishes, and Merle didn't like to comply with anyone's wishes but Merle's. It worked out much better to notice the change silently and pretend that you had seen nothing.
He was still the same old Merle, though, when it came to giving lengthy and often vulgar explanations of how he perceived committed relationships and how he believed that women would trap men into these horrendous things that would clearly lead to something akin to sudden and terrible death.
Andrea joked with Carol that by the time she'd lived fifty or so years with Merle, perhaps he'd be ready to admit that there was some form of commitment between them and perhaps he'd also be able to admit that he hadn't suffered any great malady because of it, but it would take time.
Carol worried that Daryl soaked up some of his brother's comments from time to time, so she tried to avoid anything that made it look like they were in some kind of evil committed relationship, though in all honesty she had no other way to explain what was going on with them. Most everything that Daryl owned still resided at the apartment across the hall, but Daryl only went over there to get things he needed. He slept at her apartment, ate most all of his meals there, and spent his free time there. She avoided, though, suggesting that they lived together, and now she would avoid asking about whether or not he'd move to the new house with her in order to keep him from running into some of Merle's hogwash. If he wanted to move with her, she'd just let it happen as naturally as everything else had seemed to happen so far instead of drawing attention to the event.
Daryl shrugged off her excitement about the house, though, and she forgave him. She would be excited about it and that's all that really mattered. He didn't have to share the same enthusiasm. For Daryl, apparently, the house was just a place to live, and she could accept that. She didn't need her dream to be his dream if the pieces just didn't fit. She hoped that all the ones that really mattered would work and that would be the end of it.
"Do you want to see what I picked out?" She offered, just to test how far his disinterest went.
Daryl shrugged.
"I reckon ya can show me," he said. She smiled. She was fully aware that he was just humoring her at the moment, but she'd take it.
She flipped through the book, showing him the samples that she'd narrowed things down to and he sat with his head resting on his hand while he looked at it with the same general interest that she'd had every time someone had tried to force her to watch a football game. Finally she closed the book and slid it out of the way, deciding not to torture him any farther.
"It doesn't matter," she said, smiling. "You'll see it when it's done."
Daryl looked at her like he was waking up from a nap. He blinked a few times.
"Looks good," he said. "I like it."
She couldn't help but chuckle. She appreciated the lie for what it was worth.
"What is Andrea bringing for dinner?" She asked. She'd intended to make him a casserole for dinner, but if Andrea was delivering food she could save it for another night.
Daryl shrugged again.
"Don't know, some a' that Korean shit," Daryl said. He liked eating it, but he didn't care to learn the name of anything that he ate.
"Fine," Carol said. "I think I'm going to take a shower while we wait."
Daryl looked at her like she'd just suggested they douse him in gasoline and light him on fire while they waited for dinner.
"I was thinkin' we had enough time ta talk," Daryl said.
Carol had long since discovered that Daryl thought "talk" was synonymous with "have sex." The error had accidentally begun one evening when she'd suggested they spend some time just talking on the couch and they'd ended up spending the whole trying out new positions instead. Since then, she could pretty much tell that when Daryl suggested they "just talk," especially if it involved an evening at home and time on the couch, talking was one of the last things he had on his mind.
Carol smiled at him.
"Why don't we talk after dinner?" Carol asked. Daryl looked like he didn't like that suggestion. She rested her face on her hand, trying to quickly hide her smile. He'd probably already spent his whole walk with Lincoln thinking about their "talk" and he thought that looking at her boring sample book would buy him guaranteed talking privileges. "Daryl," she said, "I need a shower. I haven't been to work in two days, and I realized today that I haven't showered since I got ready for work last. I'm gross. Also, since the weather's been changing and I've gotten away with wearing long jeans to both jobs, I haven't shaved my legs or anything else in two weeks, and you didn't say anything. Haven't you even noticed?"
Carol had to admit that she'd been a little horrified that morning when she'd realized how long it had been since she'd even considered it might be a good idea to shave. The change in uniforms was, according to Andrea, standard at the Watering Hole with the changing weather, but Carol had gotten it instituted at Lula's, insisting that she could still wear the apron and look just as wholesome in jeans as she could in a skirt. Jacqui and Donna had both backed her up, jumping at the chance to part company with the horrible uniforms they had.
Daryl grinned at her.
"Hell yeah I noticed," he said. "I was pettin' ya leg the other night for five minutes in bed 'fore I realized Lincoln was sleepin' on the floor."
Carol swatted at him.
"I didn't pay it any attention! Why didn't you say something?" Carol asked.
Daryl grinned again and shrugged.
"Don't know," he said. "Weren't that big a deal."
Carol stood up.
"Well it's a big deal now and I'm going to shower before dinner. You'll just have to wait to talk later when I don't smell and I don't look like a fur baring mammal," she said.
"Can I come with ya?" Daryl asked.
"No, you cannot come with me," she said. "You know that when you come with me it takes three times as long to get anything done and Andrea will be here before we get done."
Daryl chuckled.
"She's got a key," he said. "We can just tape a note ta the door sayin' leave the food."
Carol rolled her eyes at him but she couldn't help but laugh at his enthusiasm.
"I'm going to shower, Daryl," she said. "You do whatever it is that you do when I'm not entertaining you and wait for Andrea to get here with the food, please?"
"Fine," Daryl said, looking a little wounded.
Carol smiled and leaned in to kiss him. He grabbed her waist and pulled her into his lap and she pressed against him, deepening the kiss for a moment. She felt his hands gliding over her back and immediately knew he was trying to distract her. She broke the kiss for a moment.
"I'm still going to shower," she growled at him.
He snickered a little and popped her with the band on her bra.
"Ow!" She protested, swatting him on the chest. He didn't really hurt her, but she knew he was trying to get a rise out of her. "You do that again and I'm not going to make the shower up to you after dinner!"
"Fine!" Daryl said, pushing at her like he was going to push her out of his lap. "Go take ya damn shower, but it better be worth it."
Carol giggled at him.
"Oh, it'll be worth it," she teased.
Carol left Daryl to do whatever it was that Daryl did to entertain himself, though she wasn't sure what that was since it seemed like he spent very little time entertaining himself when they were both off work, and she slipped into the bathroom to take her shower and freshen up.
She was so excited about the house that she could hardly contain herself, and even though Daryl didn't share her excitement about it, she was going to share hers with him right after they finished whatever it was that Andrea surprised them with. He might not be excited about the house, but she could at least make him excited about how getting it made her feel.