AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

Again, there's a warning for the mention (not terribly detailed) of period sex since it squicks some people out.

I wrote three chapters yesterday, so if you missed them, please read them first. Also, don't forget to drop me a little love on those chapters if you enjoyed them!

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Daryl woke first and noticed the light in the bedroom. They'd slept in, and it was later than a typical morning for either of them. There wouldn't be this much sunlight on a typical morning.

Daryl smiled to himself at the thought of a typical morning.

There was a certain comfort behind that thought—a profound sense of belonging. He was beginning to find something "typical" in waking up next to the woman who was still lost in sleep at his side. He was beginning to piece together the mundane—what time she woke up for work, what time they normally woke on the weekends, what kind of coffee she preferred, and how she liked to drink her coffee. Even the sound of her light snoring warmed Daryl's chest.

Next to him, in the bed and lost to him for just a little while longer to the dream world, was the woman that he loved.

The woman that he loved. The only woman he had ever loved. The woman he dared to think would be the only woman that he ever would love. The love of his life.

Daryl had known that he loved Carol for days—weeks, even—and for far more time than felt admissible given the shortness of their relationship. He didn't really believe in love at first sight. He dismissed it as another one of those things that happened on his movies and was never really true for actual people. He'd always believed that love was something you had to work for—not just to keep, but to achieve.

It hadn't been that way with Carol at all. He'd simply realized that he loved her—completely.

Finally, he'd been able to give voice to those words—to the thoughts that had been haunting him. He loved her.

If she'd asked him not to say it because the words frightened her, he would have stopped saying it, but he wouldn't have stopped feeling it. He would have kept the words inside, though, and simply let the feeling run out of him and flow over them, if that's what she'd wanted.

But it wasn't what she wanted. And she'd told him she loved him, too.

Her voice saying those words echoed in Daryl's skull like a heartbeat during a hangover. They repeated and reverberated. Unlike the nagging pounding of a hangover headache, though, the words echoing in Daryl's mind were beautiful.

She loved him.

She loved him because she wanted to. She loved him because, like him, she couldn't help it. She loved him because there was something about him that she felt drawn to love. She didn't love him just because she was family and obligated to do so. She loved him entirely out of choice.

Daryl had never been loved like that before, and he'd almost convinced himself that nobody could ever love him that way, so it was especially incredible to him that someone as beautiful and as wonderful as Carol could love him.

But she did.

And she'd told him so several times. She'd repeated the words, like he had—as though she needed to taste them, roll them around on her tongue, and experience them in a variety of different ways to be sure that she got all the good off of them.

As two people who loved each other and dared to say the words, they'd made love for the first time. Daryl had kept his eyes closed most of the time, drinking in every sensation like it was the first time that he'd ever been invited to partake of Carol's body—of any woman's body. It was the first time that he was making love with the woman that he loved, and the woman who actually said she loved him back. He'd opened his eyes only to look into hers, from time to time, and to check to make sure that she was enjoying it as much as he was.

For the first time, he'd allowed himself to mutter "I love you," in her ear as he'd held her, her whole body trembling as pleasure overtook her and nature made her clamp hard and tight around him, inviting him to come following after her into a temporary sexual oblivion.

And when he'd come and collapsed beside her, she'd come curling next to him, practically bathing his face in kisses, and she'd repeated the words that were precious to him, just in case he might have forgotten them. Those kisses hadn't stopped passing between them even as they both retreated, together this time, to the bathroom to wash up and returned, clean and dressed for bed, to lie down together and sleep.

She was still sleeping, and Daryl eased out of the bed as gently as he could to keep from waking her. Daryl took careful inventory of everything—the typical, the mundane, the usual that they were just beginning to build together. Usually, she slept naked with him, but with her period ending, she preferred to wear underwear to bed. He gently pulled the blankets up over her, shielding her from the cold while she finished her sleep. The towel they'd used to protect the sheets was balled up on the floor—discarded when they came back to bed. Daryl felt responsible—a contributing member of the household, even—when he picked it up and, as he went to the bathroom, dropped it in the hamper to be washed. He relieved himself, washed his hands, and then he washed his face and looked at himself in the mirror.

If he didn't know that it wasn't some foolish trick of his mind, he would have sworn that he looked different.

Being in love—and knowing that the woman he loved actually loved him back—made him look different. It made everything look different. The bathroom, lit only by the sunlight coming in through the window looked different. The cool water felt different on his hands and face. He turned the tap back on, scooped up some water in his hand, and swallowed it down. Against his sleep-parched throat, it felt and tasted different.

Everything was crisper. Brighter. More alive.

Daryl felt more alive. More than that, he felt more like his life had a purpose. He had a reason to keep on living other than simply riding the big spinning ball as it rotated around the sun.

Daryl eased back through the bedroom, avoiding anything that might disturb Carol, and slipped into the main part of the house. In the kitchen, he started coffee. He took inventory of the fridge and cabinets. He wouldn't cook breakfast until later, when Carol was awake, but he liked thinking about what he might make for her.

She didn't wake until he was on the porch, in his jeans, drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. She came out with her nightgown and socks on, carrying her own cup of coffee, probably enjoying the cool air on her bare skin the same way that he was.

She was beautiful, and the sun shone around her like it was made just to frame her beauty in the morning.

"Feel OK?" Daryl asked.

"Fine," Carol said. "Thank you for making coffee. You didn't have to do that."

"Weren't nothin' but a thing, and I drink it, too."

"You should have woken me."

"To make me coffee? I'd rather let you sleep. Stomach feelin' OK?"

Daryl knew that she'd told him that she had cramps with her period and that, sometimes, it just made her feel bad. She didn't really complain about it, though, and he imagined that she'd been taught not to complain about anything. She reddened a little at the question.

"Better," she said. "Honestly—I think—it helps. When we…you help."

Daryl kind of liked the idea that he could help alleviate any discomfort that Carol might have.

"Any time I can help, count me in," he said. He sat there a moment, enjoying the silence of the morning with her. Finally, to help his own stomach, which had begun knotting, he broke the silence. "You—haven't changed your mind about anything, have you?"

Carol looked at him, brow-furrowed.

"What?" She asked.

"I mean—I could understand if you changed your mind," Daryl said. "Or maybe you realized that you said shit that you didn't mean because of the heat of the moment or whatever. Shit happens like that. Did it—happen to you? Did you change your mind about…how you feel?"

Carol smiled to herself. She still looked sleepy around her eyes.

"Are you asking me if I still love you, Daryl? Because—I do. That didn't change. At least, not for me. Did it change for you?"

Hearing her say it again—so sincerely, and so very matter-of-factly—made Daryl's heart pound in his chest.

"I couldn't change my mind if I wanted," he said. "But I don't want to."

"Good," Carol said. She offered a hand over from her chair to his, and he put his coffee mug down to free a hand to hold hers. She rubbed her thumb over his fingers lazily.

"You still scared?" He asked.

"I'm afraid that I'm going to be scared for a while," Carol said.

Daryl accepted that. He was more than willing to accept that. He'd been prepared for it. As long as she was simply saying that she was scared, and she was going to need him to help her through her fear, he could handle that. He could hold her hand as often as she needed, for as long as she wanted. She was scared, but she was facing her fear. She wasn't turning him away, and he wouldn't shame her for her feelings—someone had done that enough.

"You wanna talk about it? About—anything that makes you scared?"

She squeezed his hand in hers and dropped her hand.

"Can I—have a cigarette?" She asked.

"Have the whole pack, if you want," he said, picking it up from the little table between them and passing it over. She took one from the pack and thanked him when he flicked the lighter and held it out so that she could lean into it and light the cigarette.

"I guess—part of me just remembers that I loved Ed. I thought he loved me. It was in the name of love that I married him. And things weren't terrible in the beginning. It was a progressive movement toward what he became. What our relationship became. Everything I allowed, and everything I excused, I did in the name of love."

"He hurt you in the name of love," Daryl offered. "In a lot of different ways."

"I'm afraid so," Carol admitted.

Daryl hummed and nodded.

"I understand that," he said. "I get—how it's gotta be scary and all. But, Carol—that was Ed. It ain't me."

"I know that," Carol said. "And—I don't mean to say that it is you, or that you've done anything wrong. You haven't, Daryl. You've done nothing wrong, I'm just…"

Daryl could hear how her words changed. They got higher and faster. They became coated with something like panic. Her body entered into an almost automatic response—one she'd been very well trained to have—where she had to be profusely and rapidly apologetic to avoid whatever might be coming next. Giving offense, after all, would probably not end well with someone else.

"Hey," Daryl said, loudly and sharply enough to interrupt her words. She stopped sudden. "It's OK. OK? I'm not—pissed off. I'm not even inconvenienced. That's your truth. You loved him. He told you he loved you. He hurt you an' you ain't to blame for what you suffered, OK? What the hell he done to you? That's on him, it ain't on you. And I'm not pissed that you're rememberin' what the hell happened to you the last time you fell in love."

Her hand shook as she brought the cigarette to her mouth and drew off of it. Her chin quivered. Daryl's chest constricted and his throat tightened.

"I love you," he said again. The words sounded no less wonderful than they had the first time he'd said them. "And all I'm going to do is keep reminding you that—I'm not him. I've never hurt you. And I won't hurt you. At least, not on purpose."

"You're wonderful," Carol said. "And—I think that part of me feels like…you can't possibly be real."

Daryl felt a strange sort of twisting in his gut.

"You think I don't feel the same way about you?" He asked. "I've waited a whole damn lifetime to find you. Watched a thousand of them movies to just imagine what the hell it might be like to find you. And now I find you and, honestly? You're so much better than I ever thought you even could be. It doesn't seem real. Seems impossible. Like somebody like me don't get an honest to goodness angel."

Carol laughed to herself and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand.

"I'm just a normal woman," she said. "Not even a very—impressive one."

"You say that," Daryl said. "But you're every damn thing I ever wanted and more. So—I don't know. You do with that what the hell you gotta."

"I love you," Carol said sincerely.

"That's all I need," Daryl said.

"It's so fast," Carol said.

"We can take it as slow as you want," Daryl said. "I got nowhere to be."

"I don't even know—what do we do next?" Carol asked.

She was wide-eyed. Her blue eyes were damp and shining. Daryl stood up. He reached for the hand that she had empty, now that she'd snubbed out her cigarette. She took his hand and he pulled her to her feet. He hugged her against him. She was warm against the coolness of the air around him.

"I love you, and the rest don't matter," he said. "We'll—play it by ear. Figure it out. But for now, what if we just do breakfast next?"