AN: Third update of the day…let's keep going, shall we?
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Daryl woke up the next day and got out of bed. The night before had been a good night, and he'd enjoyed the fact that Carol had seemed even more interested in sleeping with him than she normally did, but he still felt a little out of place in the house and his mind was swimming now with everything that was going on around him.
His surroundings were different and now Carol was divorced from Ed. He didn't really know what difference it made, since she hadn't been with Ed in a while, but there was something about knowing she was divorced that seemed strange to adjust to on top of everything else. She had called herself a free woman. She was free. She was free from Ed, she was free from marriage, but she was really free from everything. She didn't owe anything to anyone.
It had always been that way, but now it seemed even more obvious to Daryl that Carol was free. She could do what she pleased, when she pleased, however she wanted to do it. She was free from him as well. She really didn't owe anything to him and she was free to do what she wanted. She could, just as Merle had said, easily change him out for something that fit her better than he did.
She was taking classes and she and Andrea talked about what they were going to do in the future. They were going to open some kind of place to do hair and things. They were going to become upstanding citizens of Sweet Junction and they were going to do hair for all the women that didn't talk to them much and looked at them funny in the A and P. They were going to change.
And maybe Merle had been right. If they changed and got new jobs, and started talking to different kinds of people, then maybe it would be obvious to them that they didn't need to keep going with the relationships they had. Maybe Daryl wasn't going to be good enough for that Carol. He didn't want her to change, but she was already changing. She was already different than she had been just a few days ago. Maybe the change was just something that couldn't be avoided. He didn't even think she knew it was coming, or that it was already happening.
Daryl went straight to the bathroom and tried to focus on his business there, trying to put all the thoughts of change out of his mind. Carol was asleep still, in the bed with Lincoln. She was the same Carol that she had been and the surrounding was all that was different. At least that's what he kept trying to tell himself. He went to the sink and washed his hands. The soap on the side of the sink was carved into the shape of a flower. He looked around for the normal, white, melting bar that had always been on the sink in the apartment, but it wasn't there.
Daryl picked up the little flower and sniffed at it. It didn't smell bad, and it did smell like soap, but it didn't look like soap. Finally he determined that he had no other option and he lathered the little flower in his hands and dried his hands off on the hand towel.
When he came out of the bathroom, he noticed that Carol was gone, but Lincoln was still snoring in the bed and Carol had tucked the covers around the damn dog like he needed any help sleeping. The damn dog was comfortable anywhere he went. He didn't give a damn where he lived.
Daryl got dressed and came through the house. Carol was at the stove, cooking, and she looked at him and smiled.
"Good morning," she said. "Breakfast will be ready in a minute."
Daryl felt his stomach churn and thought he almost didn't want to eat anything, but he knew his stomach would be gnawing at him if he didn't. He sat down at the table and chewed at his cuticle, thinking over everything. Carol brought him breakfast and sat it down in front of him. Then she returned a few minutes later with her plate and sat there picking at her food while she watched him.
"Daryl, are you sure there's nothing you want to talk to me about?" Carol asked.
Daryl noticed she wasn't eating, so he sped up with his own food, thinking it might make her decide to go ahead and put a dent in breakfast instead of picking at it with her fingers like that. He shook his head.
Carol sighed and continued picking at her food.
"Where's the soap?" Daryl asked finally.
Carol looked at him like he was crazy and then looked at the table. Daryl realized she was trying to figure out how soap related to breakfast. She wasn't as good at hearing what was going on in his head as he was.
"There's some kinda weird lil' flower in the bathroom," Daryl said. "Where's the soap?"
"The flowers are soap, Daryl," Carol said.
"Don't look like soap," he replied.
Carol chuckled a little.
"They're just carved soaps," she said. "Someone gave me a box full of them at the party that Michonne threw. I figured as long as they're there, we might as well use them. They're just soap, though, nothing special."
Daryl didn't point out that he didn't think that soap ought to look like flowers and that to him it was strange having flowers around the sink where soap should be. To Carol, apparently, the flowers were normal. He didn't like them, though. He wished the soap was just the normal soap that she used to have instead of some special soap that someone had thought the house needed…some soap that she said was nothing special, but there had to be something special about it if someone had bothered to carve it into flowers.
Daryl finished his breakfast, anxious to get to work. He needed a cigarette, and he hoped that being outside and getting some fresh air, even if it was laced with the smell of manure, might help him to clear his thoughts.
He carried his plate to the sink and Carol brought hers after him, sitting it on the counter.
"Ya didn't eat ya food," Daryl said. Carol looked at the plate and then looked back at him. She shook her head.
"I'm just not really hungry," she said. "I've got to work at Lula's today, so I'll probably just get dressed and eat it before I leave or get something there."
Daryl nodded a little. Carol wrapped her arms around him and leaned up on her toes and he dipped down, kissing her. He wrapped his arms around her too, after the kiss broke, and stood there for a moment, holding her against him in the kitchen. At least that was the only thing that seemed even halfway familiar right now. Carol felt the same against him and she smelled the same. Daryl smelled her hair for a moment and let his hand rub up and down the soft material of her t shirt. She rooted her face into him and squeezed him.
"Reckon I oughta get ta work," Daryl said, pulling away.
Carol smiled at him. She went to the refrigerator and pulled out a paper bag.
"I made you a sandwich," she said, offering it to him. "It's turkey and cheese. I didn't have time yesterday to make chicken salad, but I'm going to make some after work."
Daryl looked in the bag and thanked her for the sandwich. She didn't normally make him sandwiches, and apparently she didn't know that he ate at least two sandwiches and sometimes three if he was hungry enough. He decided not to point it out, though. She might not like it if he told her that one sandwich was just going to be enough to make him see what Hershel was having for lunch.
"You want anything special for dinner?" Carol asked.
Daryl shook his head. He couldn't think of anything. Carol smiled at him and nodded a little.
"OK, then. I'll figure something out. I'll see you when you get home?" She said. Daryl wasn't sure if it was a question or a statement so he just nodded his head and slipped out the door, lighting a cigarette on the way to his truck.
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Carol wasn't sure what was getting to Daryl, but she was determined that one way or the other she was going to figure out how to get him to talk to her and figure out what she could do to make him feel better about it. She was trying everything that she could think of to make him feel like he was part of this, but she didn't know if it was working or not.
She went to work, though, and tried to tell herself that Daryl was just adjusting to the change. She knew that Daryl had, at times, his own way of processing things and that's probably all this was. It was something new to him. He was in a new house, and she wondered if it might bother him that it was her house and not his, and he was away from his brother possibly more than he ever had been before.
Although Carol didn't think Merle was an award winning human being at times, and she wasn't sure that he was always good for Daryl, he was Daryl's brother, and from what she understood, they'd always lived together. Maybe Daryl was just having a hard time adjusting to the fact that Merle wasn't as readily available as he had been when there had only been a hall separating them.
When she got off work, Carol went directly to the A and P. She bought probably more groceries than she had in one stop for a long time. She was going to bake an apple pie, and she also thought that she'd bake cookies so she could pack those in Daryl's lunch bag with his sandwich as just a little something extra.
She bought enough to make chicken salad that would feed the National Guard, and she loaded up on things to make breakfast. At least if she couldn't make Merle appear when Daryl wanted him there, she could make sure that he had things to eat that he liked. Maybe that would be enough to help him settle in and get over whatever was bugging him.
Carol thought about dinner, but she couldn't come up with anything special. Daryl didn't make a lot of requests and that meant that she had to be creative. She wandered around the store for a bit, trying to think of what he might like. Finally, she smiled to herself and remembered the day that she'd ran into him in the store trying to buy the ingredients for a meatloaf that Andrea never made because the meat spoiled in the back of the truck.
Carol didn't know if Daryl had ever gotten his meatloaf after that, but she decided that he'd have it tonight for dinner, and maybe he'd remember that day too. Perhaps a little trip down memory lane would make him feel better and remind him that nothing major had changed.
Just as she was getting ready to check out, she stopped in aisle of the store dedicated to everything you might need around your house from shaving lotion to toilet paper. She plucked a pack of soap off the shelf. Daryl had seemed awful concerned about the flower soaps this morning and if that was going to be something that bothered him, she could get rid of that. She wasn't that fond of them anyway. She could just box up the extra ones and give them to Andrea the next night when they went to one of their classes. Andrea would make Merle use them…she was fine with pushing him around. Carol certainly wasn't going to make Daryl use them if they bothered him enough to bring them up while he was distracted by pancakes and sausage.
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By the time that Daryl got off of work, he'd almost made himself sick. He was glad that he only had one sandwich at lunch because he hadn't really even wanted to eat that one. He'd choked it down, though, and washed it down with a jar of sweet tea, all the while worrying about everything.
He wasn't even happy to see Miss Jo today and when she asked him what was wrong and felt his forehead, he almost wanted to tell her to leave him alone. He was fine. He wasn't really sick. He didn't need people asking him every few minutes what was wrong when there wasn't a damn thing that any of them could do about it.
What was he supposed to say? He wished Carol had never moved out of her apartment? He wished that things were just like they were because they were just like he liked them? When she'd been in the apartment, everything had been comfortable. Nothing changed and she didn't change. She was just the same every single day as she'd been the day before. Everything was always exactly the same. Hell, even Lincoln walked the same damn circles around the same damn trees every morning. Daryl knew how things were going to go when they lived at the apartment.
There weren't surprises at the apartment. Daryl knew that there were such a thing as good surprises, and he liked the outfit that Carol had worn as a surprise for him the night before, but he also knew that there were bad surprises, and in his life most all of the surprises were bad surprises and even if they were good ones, they typically turned into bad things pretty quickly.
The more he thought about it, the more he wasn't even sure if he liked the outfit. Carol had been pretty in it and he'd wanted to be with her, but it wasn't something he was used to with her. Carol didn't dress up and put things on for him to be with her. Usually all he needed was to see her standing there in the holy gray sweatpants she had and one of the oversized t shirts with her hair in a ponytail and he was ready to go. That was comfortable and normal. Carol had looked good the night before, but Carol in that outfit with her hair all done up and her face all painted, that wasn't the Carol that he was used to seeing after work.
It had seemed like a good surprise, but now Daryl was worrying that it was just a good surprise that had the potential to lead to bad surprises and things he didn't want.
Daryl drove directly to the apartment after work. When he got there, he found Andrea on the couch reading some kind of book. She didn't look up immediately when he walked in the door, but she glanced up when he was taking off his shoes.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Andrea asked.
"Nice ta see ya too, sunshine," Daryl snapped.
"Sorry, I just wasn't expecting you here," Andrea said.
Daryl looked at her.
"When the fuck did'ja get glasses?" He asked.
"They're reading glasses," Andrea said. "I've been wearing them for years."
"I ain't never seen ya fuckin' wearin' 'em," Daryl said.
Andrea chuckled.
"You haven't seen me read much, either. I'm studying for class tomorrow, though. What are you doing here?" Andrea repeated.
"I'm gettin' ready ta take a fuckin' shower, that's what I'm doin'," Daryl said.
Andrea looked at him and Daryl decided he didn't like her with glasses no right now either. She could say that she'd worn them for years but he'd never noticed in the time that he knew her.
"Did something happen to give you this piss poor attitude?" Andrea called as Daryl walked toward the bathroom. "Or is it just my pretty face that inspires it?"
"Fuck you! I don't wanna talk right now so read ya stupid book with ya stupid ass glasses," Daryl responded, closing the bathroom door.
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Daryl lie on the bed looking up at the ceiling in what they liked to call his room. This wasn't his room, though. He had no ties whatsoever to this room. This room didn't mean a single damn thing to him. Daryl didn't really feel like he had a room right now. He had some space. He had a space here in what was Carol's apartment that Andrea and Merle were living in. He had some space at Carol's new house for the time being. That was really it all it was. He had space at places where he didn't really belong.
Daryl was distracted when Andrea knocked on the door and walked into the room. She stood over him for a moment.
"Ya s'posed ta fuckin' wait 'til someone says come in," Daryl said.
"Well, you're being an ass, so I figured we could make it a family affair," Andrea said. She sat down on the edge of the bed. "So what the hell's going on?"
"Ain't nothin' goin' on so why don't'cha go worry 'bout ya own damn shit," Daryl said.
"Believe it or not, Daryl, your shit is my shit," Andrea said. "Because if you've got shit…then your shit just trickles out and runs all over my shit. So why don't you tell me what the hell is going on and then we can both have a nice, shit free existence."
"Fuck you," Daryl said.
Andrea smiled.
"That's not your job," she said. "Let's start this the easy way. Carol called about a half hour ago to see if I'd heard from you because you were supposed to be there and not here. So let's start with the fucking obvious question, Daryl, why are you here and not there and why wouldn't you talk to Carol when I told you she was on the phone?"
"That's two fuckin' questions," Daryl responded.
Andrea chuckled.
"Well we know who got the brains in the family," she replied. "Humor me and answer both of them."
"I ain't gotta fuckin' be there if I don't wanna be there," Daryl said.
"Fair enough," Andrea said. "Would you rather be here than there?"
Daryl didn't respond.
"Why wouldn't you talk to her? Did something happen?" Andrea asked.
"A whole damn lotta shit's happened, or ain't'cha been fuckin' payin' attention?" Daryl said.
"See, I know when something is eating you because you turn into mini Merle," Andrea said. "You don't act like Merle unless something is on your mind. And I'm going to tell you something, Daryl, it doesn't look good on you. It doesn't look good on Merle and it certainly doesn't look good on you."
Daryl rolled his eyes.
"What happened?" Andrea asked. "I want specifics because I got Carol's side already so tell me what the hell is your side."
"I ain't got no damn side," Daryl said. "Carol's bein' who the hell she wants ta be an' I'm bein' who the hell I wanna be. Ain't no damn side ta that."
"So you're just here, hanging out in this room, being who the hell you want to be, am I right?" Andrea asked.
Daryl grunted at her.
"I thought you wanted to be Hershel Greene," Andrea said. "Or at least that you wanted to be like Hershel Greene."
"Yeah, well I ain't like him," Daryl responded.
Andrea sat there a moment and then shook her head.
"No, Daryl, you're not like him. I don't think Hershel Greene would tell Miss Jo he was coming home and then not show up. I don't think he wouldn't answer the phone when she called because she worried that he might have run off the road somewhere, and I don't think Hershel Greene would turn down some of Miss Jo's homemade meat loaf in favor of eating pizza with an asshole like Merle Dixon," Andrea said. "So, no, Daryl, you're not like Hershel Greene at all."
Daryl rolled his eyes at her.
"Talk to me," Andrea said. "We made this deal already. You got to call me a whore and in exchange you have to talk to me."
"I'd like ta call ya a whole damn lot more'n a whore," Daryl said.
"I'll wait," Andrea said.
"Everythin's changin'," Daryl said. "Ain't nothin' like it was an' it's just gonna keep right on changin'. I ain't Hershel Greene an' Carol ain't Miss Jo, an' if she is she ain't mine 'cause she's just gonna find some other damn person ta be her fuckin' Hershel Greene, so I ain't waitin' 'round for her ta tell me ta hit the bricks."
Andrea sat there quietly a minute.
"Have you been talking to Merle?" Andrea asked.
Daryl didn't respond.
"I told you, Daryl, the number one rule in life is don't take advice from Merle," Andrea continued. "So what? So things are changing? Big fuckin' deal! They change all the fucking time! Didn't shit change when I moved in?"
"Yeah but I don't give a damn about you," Daryl said.
Andrea chuckled.
"Thank you, and I promise I'm looking into having that put on a Christmas card…" She responded. "Point is, Daryl, that things change but that doesn't mean that it's a bad thing. Didn't things change when you met Carol? That wasn't a bad change, was it?"
"Seems like a pretty bad thing ta me," Daryl said.
"You don't mean that," Andrea said. "You've been breaking the rules and listening to Merle, but you don't mean that. If you're scared of change, fine, everyone is scared of change, but you don't run from it. It's ridiculous to think that you're here right now because of what? Because you think Carol might want someone else in her life? So what the hell does that mean, Daryl? She might want someone else and it pisses you off bad enough that you come over here trying to act like Merle? You ran away because you're scared you're going to be asked to leave?"
"Ya don't fuckin' get it, so stop tryin' ta pretend ya understand me. Go read ya fuckin' hair book," Daryl said.
Andrea chuckled.
"Daryl, it's honesty time. What do you want to happen with Carol?" Andrea asked.
Daryl chewed at his cuticle. He shrugged a little.
"I know what she wants," Andrea said. "She wants to be Hershel and Josephine Greene. She wants to be Dale and Irma Horvath. She wants every cheesy, ridiculous fucking Hallmark movie she's ever seen in her life. So what do you want?"
"She don't want it with me," Daryl said.
Andrea chuckled again.
"So tell me, Merle Junior, how did you arrive at that conclusion? Did she tell you that?" Andrea asked.
"Don't gotta," Daryl said.
Andrea growled.
"Daryl, I'm trying really hard right this minute to keep from hitting you in the head with that lamp over there. You don't know what she wants or doesn't want if you don't talk to her. I'm going to be real honest with you right now…you need to find your fucking balls and you need to tell her what you want, because if you don't, she might not wait around forever. You might end up being right, and she might find someone else for her dream, but it's going to be your damn fault if you just sit back and let it happen. Now you can listen to me or not, but I'm telling the truth," Andrea said, speaking mostly through clenched teeth.
Daryl looked at her, but didn't respond.
Andrea sighed and pinched at her nose.
"You know what? Fine…you want to fuck shit up and throw away your chance to have what you want out of life, who am I to stand in your fucking way? Go ahead, throw it all away. Make a new dream for yourself, though, Daryl. One where you're all by your fucking self, right the fuck there with your brother. And when you're both fucking alone and your both crying to each other about it, I want you to both know you did it your fucking selves and it happened just the way you wanted it to," Andrea said, standing up.
"Ya done?" Daryl asked.
"Yeah," Andrea said, somewhat defeated. "Yeah, Daryl, I think I'm pretty much done. If you change your mind, though, do me a favor, do you think you could do that?"
"Fuck ya want?" Daryl asked.
"Well, you seem to want advice, but you keep taking it from Merle and you won't listen to me…" Andrea said. "So how about, if you think you might want some real advice…talk to Hershel Greene. If anyone could tell you how to be Hershel Greene, and how to keep from fucking up things with Miss Jo…maybe he's the best one to ask. I bet he'd be willing to listen."
Andrea didn't say anything else. She turned and left the room with a sigh, closing the door behind her.