AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!

111

The night was full of sounds and Daryl knew every one of them. As he sat, knees somewhat drawn up to his chest for comfort so that he could rest his chin on a knee and not commit entirely to being awake, and watched the low burning flames flicker in the tiny little fire he'd started for himself from the not-quite-cold ashes of their earlier fire, he practiced using his ears.

He imagined that he could pull small sounds out of all the other sounds that ran together. He imagined that he could pick one among all of them—because, even when it might seem silent, it was never silent—and he could listen to just that one and none of the others. He imagined that he could identify just that sound, and put it back among the others, before selecting another for the same careful identification.

The practice, really, didn't do a thing for Daryl. He liked to think that it sharpened his skills and helped him when he needed them most, but he was willing to admit that it probably didn't do anything more than simply help him pay attention to what he was doing at the time. It made him feel still when he didn't feel still.

Right now, he was only listening, watching the little handful of flickering flames, and thinking. He felt still, and he felt happy.

There were new sounds tonight—sounds that he knew, but hadn't heard for nearly as long as he'd heard some of the others.

Tonight, Daryl could hear the sound of the water. A whole big lot of it ran right through the land he'd chosen. It was a healthy river, though it didn't have a name and wasn't called a river, as far as anyone knew. It gurgled, and bubbled, and popped with the sounds of movement and the animals that lived in it. Daryl had heard a great deal of water in his life before, but none of that water had run right through something he had intentions to call his own—something he intended to turn into something worth having and offering to a pretty little mate like the one he'd snagged for himself off the asshole that never had no business with her in the first place.

Daryl could hear the occasional sound of mules nickering or blowing out their breath. He could hear the sound of their heavy bodies shifting weight. There were two mules now—Daryl hadn't ever owned a mule before, but he'd bought them with the rig. Having such a thing was necessary, he figured. The trip into town was long and there was a man just outside of town that cut and smoothed boards for a fair price. The price for the wood was worth the work it would save Daryl trying to do the same task by hand out on the land, but he couldn't move the wood such long distances without a rig, and he couldn't move the rig without the mules.

The mules were a male and a female, though the male had been gelded to gentle him and they couldn't mate anyway. Daryl knew that much, and the man who'd sold him the animals had told him, anyway, what he might not know. The mules he'd acquired had grown up together and, though they weren't brother and sister, they most likely thought they were. Molly was the female, and she was about as gentle as an animal could come. Bastard was the male, but Carol had already taken to calling him Basco because she said it kept enough of his name that he'd answer to it, but it alleviated the need to have him spending his whole life questioning his parentage.

Bastard, for the most part, already lived up to his name, but he'd follow Molly damn near anywhere, so Daryl figured they were a decent pair for the price he'd paid. Daryl didn't count himself among the greatest of mule skinners—not by any means—but he'd managed to drive the rig back from town without too much trouble.

Beyond the sounds of Molly and Basco getting settled into their new home, Daryl could identify his favorite sound of all.

He closed his eyes, selected it out of the rest of the sounds around him, and focused on it.

He could hear her breathing. He could hear her moving the blankets as her body moved in her sleep. He could hear her living, and that was the sweetest sound of all, perhaps, in the whole world.

The whole idea of possessions had always been a bit tricky with a life spent constantly wandering from one place to another. There were things that Daryl valued, but there was nothing, not a single thing, that could compare to how he felt about the woman who was his mate.

He had taken her, surely. He'd stole her right off the man who had no right to have her because he didn't know how to care for the things he wanted to keep. In not caring for her, he outright said, without saying it, really, that he didn't care to have her for a long, long time. Daryl had relieved him of his burden, since that's what he'd treated her as, and, in doing that, he'd gotten himself the thing which most he'd ever coveted in the whole world.

Daryl didn't ever think about staying still for a long time—not since Merle told him to run. He hadn't thought about having anyone to really call his own in the world—not since he'd lost Merle. The thought of being close to a town, and of staying there beyond the time when he first noticed the town was starting to grow and, in its growing, was starting to see the signs of roughness that came when too many animals were gathered in the same place and started killing each other over alpha roles, was a thought that damn near turned Daryl's stomach inside out sometimes.

But he'd do it to give her a nest like she ought to have. He'd do it all—whatever it was that she needed. And, in doing so, she would continue to give him all good things and keep him warm at night. She'd make him eggs and biscuits in the brand-new little cast iron oven for their fire he'd bought her while stocking up their rig with goods they told him, in town, that a woman liked to have to make a good and proper home for her mate.

Daryl was well and fully mated now to the prettiest little mate he could have. He had someone to call his own. Admittedly, a fierceness that almost scared Daryl grew in his breast if he thought, even while calmly watching the little flame flicker in front of him, that anyone might try to take her away from him. He had no interest in brawling in the streets over the yellow rocks that so many people were fond of, and he didn't care about puffing out his chest and being seen as anything much at all in a crowd of people. If someone wanted his pretty little mate, though…

"What are you doing awake?"

Daryl nearly crawled out of his own skin as her voice pierced the sounds of the night and the loudness of his own mind working.

"Daryl? You oughta be sleeping. You gotta be tired."

She stirred, rising up out of the blankets that covered their pallet. The little flickering light of the fire could've made her seem like a bear—though a tiny one—as much as a person. Daryl took a handful of the kindling he'd brought and tossed it on the little flames to feed them enough to provide a little more light.

She curled her arms around his neck and pressed her body to his back—skin on skin—Daryl shivered at the feel of her.

"You cold?" She asked.

"Not now that you here," Daryl said. He closed his eyes. He felt her press her lips, gently, in a little line across his back and shoulders. She nuzzled him, swiping her face upward against his skin like Molly nuzzled him when he came near. Then, she rested her face against him.

"Why are you up?" Carol asked.

"Could ask you the same," Daryl offered.

"You gotta be tired," Carol said.

"Could say the same," Daryl offered with a laugh. "You helped me build that there shelter. Did as much as I did today."

The shelter in question was a shelter for Molly and Basco. It was just about as simple and plain as any a shelter did get, but it was a roof over the mules' heads. Though Carol and Daryl were content to sleep out until they built a decent house for themselves, the mules needed a place to seek refuge from the elements. They couldn't pull a slicker over their blankets to keep out rain at night, and they couldn't lay out up under the rig to cool off from the sun. They'd spent the day building the little shelter from wood that Daryl hauled from town in their rig, and they could break it down when they were ready to move the mules to something a little more permanent on the land.

Daryl intended to do the work himself—all of it—because he figured that it wasn't proper for Carol to have her hands in cooking their food and tending their things, while also being expected to haul wood and drive nails, but Carol insisted that if Daryl could keep food in their bellies, spend some time looking for the yellow they coveted so much in the town, and building up a nest for her, then she could do her part as good as he could.

She hadn't complained not a single peep about the work, and she'd washed her sweat off, the same as him, in the cold water that ran through their land, laughing with him and splashing when they'd finished the work of washing clean for the evening. They'd warmed each other up, even before eating their meal, under their blankets, as mates ought to do when both of them felt cold.

"It's my home," Carol offered. He could damn near hear her smile.

"Ain't nothin' yet but empty land," Daryl said. "A half-ass shelter for the mules. All our supplies kept dry under a tarp coverin' the rig. That's what it is."

"But it's our home, Daryl," Carol said. She sighed contentedly. "And it's gonna be the finest home that anyone ever had. You'll see, Daryl. I'ma make it the best home you ever had."

Daryl found himself laughing quietly, his chest feeling warm and his stomach feeling pleasantly gurgly like the water he could hear.

"Won't be too hard. I never really had a home to speak of. You sure is cheerful for one that's hardly slept," he said. He found his tobacco in the semi-dark and lit a smoke for himself.

"You came back for me today," Carol said definitively, as though that was some kind of real answer.

"You ever really doubted I would?" He asked.

"You don't never know," Carol said.

"With me you do," Daryl said. "I ain't never had nothin' as nice as you."

Carol kissed his shoulder again. She squeezed him.

"I never had nothing as nice as you, either," she said, a little giggle making her voice sound a bit like a song. "You wanna mate me again, so you can sleep a little spell more?"

Daryl reached his hand up. He found her arm as it looped around him, curling about his neck. If it had been anyone else, their arm wrapped around him like that, so near his throat—but it was Carol. Daryl patted her arm. He squeezed it, gently, marveling at how small it felt in his hand—how cruel it was that someone had once yanked that arm and twisted it, hurting her on purpose.

"When you was upstairs in town, I had a drink with some jaw-jacker at the bar who was runnin' his mouth loud about all that was happenin' in the town."

"You learn anything you wanted to know?" Carol asked.

Daryl hummed in the negative.

"He was sayin' how he come to see the whores because he was married. Was jawin' about how it's only the whores what bed you 'cause the wives don't want no part of it. Never do, he said. Said they refuse you every chance they get."

Carol pulled away from him and crawled around his side. She sat on her knees next to him, naked in the flickering fire light. Immediately, something stirred within him that had been dormant for the last little bit of the night. The animal part of him, it seemed, tried to reach out for the animal part of her.

"You think I'm a whore?" Carol asked.

"Is that what I said?" Daryl asked. "Weren't my intent, if it was…"

"What was your intent?" Carol asked.

Her eyes glittered in the fire. Daryl hummed and shrugged his shoulders.

"Guess I was wonderin' why it is that—you don't never refuse me matin' you," Daryl said.

Carol smiled at him.

"Because I like it," she said. "Simple as that, Daryl. I don't think mating is as complicated as you sometimes let people get you to thinking it is—all those bullwhackers and trappers you used to know, and the drunks in town. They get you to thinking that mating is some kinda big secret. Hard and complicated. But it isn't. Not as I see it. Just natural, right? Everything does it. It feels good to you when you mate me, right?" Daryl hummed and nodded to answer her question. "It feels good to me when you mate me," Carol said.

"You make sounds like it hurts you sometimes," Daryl said. "Like you surprised. Like you got caught in somethin' you weren't expectin' or somethin'."

"I guess…even if something sometimes hurts in some kinda way," Carol offered, "it can feel good, too. I like you mating me, Daryl. But if you'd rather just keep me for making your food and…and mate some whore in town like that man, and like Ed…"

"Don't sit right with me," Daryl said. "I don't wanna mate nobody but you. Ain't that how it is? You my mate—so—that means for life, right? We just mate for life."

"Not everybody does it, though," Carol said.

"But we do," Daryl said.

"We do," Carol agreed.

"And—that whore said we was doin' it right, and she should know because it's her job to know."

Carol crawled the little distance toward him that was necessary for her to nuzzle up against him. He dropped an arm over her, hugged her in close to him, and kissed her head. She hummed pleasantly at him.

"She said we were doing everything right," Carol said. "Said, as much as she knows, there's mating for pleasure and there's mating for procreating and proliferating—making more people. She said it all counts as mating if that's what you're wanting it to be, on account of there's tastes of all kinds, but as long as your prick is coming into contact with my pussy—well, that's as correct as the mating can be. As long as we're mated, though, there's nothing that can undo it, so we can do whatever it is that feels the best to us both."

"I guess we've done it right, then," Daryl said.

Carol laughed. He could hear the tired sound in her voice.

"We've done it right a lot of times, Daryl," she assured him.

"You're tired," he said. "You ought to sleep."

"We both ought to sleep," Carol said. "We're gonna start on the house tomorrow, right?"

Daryl hummed.

"It's my job to build you a house for a nest," Daryl said.

"I don't think that's right," Carol said. "I figure—it says right in the Bible, Daryl, that I'm to be your helpmate. So—that means mating and helping are my duties, really."

"It don't say that," Daryl said.

"It does," Carol insisted. "Just in the part that maybe you ain't read yet. So—if I'm to help you start building our house tomorrow, Daryl, then we oughta both sleep. And I know the fastest way you get to sleep is mating me, Daryl. And—besides you sleeping—if you got no real objections, I do really want you to mate me."

Daryl laughed to himself. He pushed her off enough to see her smiling at him, the faint light still flickering in her eyes like she had the power to hold the flame there if she wanted such a thing.

"You think you always get what you want with me?" Daryl asked.

Carol hummed.

"I'm working on it," she said, laughing low in her throat.

"You damn sure is," he said, pushing her back toward the pile of blankets from which she'd only recently emerged.