AN: Here we are, another little chapter here.

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

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"Do I finally get to see the masterpiece?" Carol teased, stepping into the kitchen. Daryl turned the pumpkin away from her a little more and she laughed.

The floor was covered with old towels, newspaper, and paper towels in the kitchen and the living room. They'd done it all. They'd cleaned the pumpkins themselves, and now they were carving the two masterpieces that would sit on the porch steps to, soon, welcome Trick-or-Treaters to their home for candy.

Daryl had never carved a pumpkin before, and he wanted the full holiday experience—everything he'd ever seen on every single one of his movies, shared between them. Carol had assumed he'd simply carve some triangle eyes into his pumpkin and a similarly simple rest of the face, but he'd been working on something that had required him to sit in the floor and chew on the logistics for a bit. He'd also been on his phone, googling things to help to make his vision come true.

And he was determined that Carol wasn't going to see his pumpkin until it was finished.

Carol, too, had done her own googling. She'd drawn out her pumpkin, but she was unsure about carving it, so she was saving it for Daryl to help her. Daryl, after all, always beamed at her declarations that he was good at things, and he loved helping her with anything and everything.

"You keep tryin' to cheat," Daryl offered with a crooked smile. He was happy, and that happiness was contagious. The whole house felt like it was practically brimming over with contentedness.

"What am I going to do? Copy your pumpkin?" Carol teased back. "I've already drawn mine out. I just need you to carve it out for me."

Immediately, pleasure at the approval of his carving skills registered in a soft smile on Daryl's face. Then, the smile morphed into the wicked, crooked grin that he got whenever he was thinking something that, maybe, he thought wasn't acceptable. Carol felt her face run warm in anticipation of his teasing.

"What?" She asked.

"Nothin'," Daryl dismissed, laughing to himself.

"Go ahead," Carol urged, picking up the laughter. "I want to hear it."

Daryl half snorted.

"I was just thinkin'—you give me time? There's a lot I'll carve out for you." He laughed when Carol laughed. "Shit—it sounded even worse comin' out than it did in my head."

Carol hummed at him.

"You finish carving the pumpkins and I'll let you have a go at something else," she teased. "How about the mulled cider, Daryl? Can I get it started?"

He smiled. He'd forgotten the treat—among many holiday treats they had planned for future days—that they'd prepared to have that night.

"You better get on it, woman! Done had me waitin' too long," Daryl responded. The same crooked grin followed Carol as he waited for her to give him some sort of response. She simply rolled her eyes at him and gave him a pretend warning glare before she stepped around him, noticing as he turned his pumpkin again and worked his way across the floor. She got to work getting the cider ready for sipping. She didn't know how real mulled cider worked, but theirs was nothing more than apple juice that, when she warmed it on the stove, would be mixed with the ingredients from the spice packages they'd bought.

The authenticity didn't really matter that much. Perfection didn't matter at all—something Carol was still struggling to adjust to, honestly, because she was still so accustomed to thinking that anything less than perfect would be viewed and treated as an absolute failure. Daryl was a man who was, for all intents and purposes, only interested in intention and the attempt to make things the best that they could be, since he rarely viewed perfection as anything even remotely achievable.

Merle and Andrea had left on an autumn themed retreat to the mountains that morning, and before lunch time it had Daryl concerned that maybe he hadn't done anything nice for Carol and, maybe, she might be feeling sad or cheated in some way.

Carol had figured out that, maybe, it was Daryl that was feeling a little sad and cheated. She'd texted Daryl throughout the day, called him on her lunch break, and by the time she'd left work, Carol had a short list of things to pick up at the store to create the perfect autumn stay-cation that they could have that weekend.

"Alright—I'm done," Daryl said. "But—just keep in mind it oughta look different when it's lit up."

Carol stepped away from the simmering apple juice and turned to admire Daryl's creation. She smiled to herself. It was a simple enough design, but it was clear that he'd taken painstaking care to make sure that it was as perfect as he could possibly make it.

"Can you tell what it is?" Daryl asked.

"I can," Carol assured him.

"It's OK?" He asked.

"I love it," Carol said. "And I think you're going to really like my idea when you see it. And now I'm certain you'll do better at it than I would."

Daryl's pumpkin wasn't traditional, perhaps, by any stretch of the imagination. He'd carefully carved the letters and design so that it would, when it was lit up, appear as he wanted it to appear instead of being, as Carol had feared some of her design might end up if she tried to carve it, like gaping holes where letters had been intended.

The simple design was a letter D, a heart, and a letter C.

"You sure it's alright that it ain't—like a face or something?" Daryl asked.

"Did you want it to be a face?" Carol asked. "And—your knife just slipped?"

Daryl laughed to himself and shook his head. He turned his pumpkin to admire it.

"Nah," he said. "This is what I wanted."

"Then it's perfect," Carol said. "And—I love it. Because—I don't know if it's true or not…I mean…I don't know if D loves C, but…C does love D."

Her face ached from trying to hold back the enormity of the smile that she felt inside her. Daryl's face ran a warm red, and he didn't try to hold back his smile.

"D does love C," he offered. "It's carved in a pumpkin now, so it's gotta be true."

"You're going to laugh when you see mine," Carol said.

"Is it C loves D?" Daryl asked with amusement.

"Not quite," Carol said. "Go get it? I don't want this to burn. I don't know if it can burn, really, but I feel like, if I leave it now, I'll probably find out."

Daryl got up, playfully making noises to illustrate how difficult it was to unfold himself and get up from his spot on the floor after he'd been there for so long, and went into the living room. He returned, grinning and carrying Carol's pumpkin with her desired design sketched lightly onto it.

"Dixon?"

"Mmmm hmmm," Carol hummed. "I couldn't figure out how in the world to make the D work, but now I know you can do it." The crooked grin appeared again and Carol laughed to herself. Never before did she think that a facial expression would be able to give her such a warm feeling in her belly—or just below it. "Go ahead. I want to hear it."

Daryl's smile spread.

"I ain't heard no complaints from you yet on how the hell I work the D," he offered with a wink.

"You better stop teasing unless you're prepared to deliver on all this," Carol said.

"Oh, don't you worry," Daryl said, settling back into his place with a groan and picking up the small knife he was using because he worried that the larger knives wouldn't handle his serious and detailed work on their pumpkins. "I'm not teasin'. I promise you. I'ma lay you down after all this is done and I'ma do you right."

"You always do," Carol assured him.

"This one is pretty easy to do now," Daryl said, focusing a moment on his carving. "Hell—now that I know what I'm doin', this ain't nothin' at all. That one was tough, though. I had to figure out how the hell to get it to show up like I wanted. This one moves quick."

Carol filled mugs with the hot cider and put the pot to the side. It could be warmed if he wanted more.

Daryl finished cutting out the "Dixon" on her pumpkin in record time. He was a quick study, from what Carol could tell, in almost everything and, once he'd gotten the hang of it, he worked quickly and well.

"What'cha think?" He asked, lifting the pumpkin up and presenting it to her once he was on his feet. "It suit you?"

"It's perfect," Carol said. "Do you like it?"

"I love it," Daryl assured her.

"I always wanted to—be that couple," Carol mused.

"The Dixons?" Daryl asked with a laugh, carefully returning the pumpkin to the floor with his to wait until they carried them outside. When he had straightened back up and stretched his back, Carol offered him a mug.

"I didn't know it, but yeah. I think I always wanted to be the Dixons," Carol said. "But mostly I was meaning—that couple that puts their name on everything because they love each other and they love that they share their name. Not like—not like it sometimes felt with Ed."

"How'd it feel?" Daryl asked, clearly genuinely curious.

Carol shrugged her shoulders and warmed her not-really-cold hands on her mug as a knee-jerk reaction to holding something hot.

"Like it was a stamp of ownership," Carol said. "Like Ed Peletier owned me and everything I was. Everything I'd ever been or—or would be. When his name went on things, it felt like he was saying—I own this, too. Even if it was only the mailbox or the wreath or…whatever."

"It don't feel that way to put Dixon on things?"

"Putting Dixon on things is still new for me, but…no," Carol said, shaking her head. "It feels like—I guess—it feels good. It feels happy. Right. Like we're just saying we're the Dixons and we love each other and we love being the Dixons." She laughed to herself. "That sounds terrible, doesn't it?"

"Sounds wonderful to me," Daryl offered.

"Corny."

Daryl shook his head.

"Good. Warm. I like it."

"The Dixons or the cider?" Carol asked. He'd already tasted his beverage.

"Both," Daryl said, nodding his head. "But havin' the cider as the Dixons is just about hittin' the sweetest spot there is."

Carol smiled at him and he leaned to kiss her. She accepted the kiss and deepened it, letting their tongues play together. She laughed at him when the kiss broke and he playfully tugged at her lip before dipping his head very quickly to kiss the crook of her neck and nip the skin there.

"The cider doesn't taste bad at all," Carol said. "Mine's too hot to drink, but it tastes pretty good on your tongue."

Daryl snorted.

"Let me get me another swallow and you can have another taste."

He drank another swallow of the cider and Carol accepted the kiss he offered. She loved the kisses, and she was more than happy for the levity of the moment and the playfulness of the kisses. Just a year before, she never would have imagined the possibility of loving someone this much and enjoying something as simple as playing with the man she loved so much that it made her stomach practically quivery to think about it.

But she did love Daryl, and she loved that he loved to have fun with her. She loved that he allowed her to have fun with him.

"You're sure you don't mind the Dixons pumpkin?" Carol asked when the kiss broke. "You didn't have something else in mind?"

"Love it. Love both of 'em," Daryl said. "What do you say we go light 'em up?"

Carol hummed at him and abandoned her mug on the kitchen counter so that she could wrap her arms around Daryl and fully hug him, rubbing her face against him.

"So, then you can stop just teasing me and actually make good on all these big promises you've been making all evening?" She asked. She pulled away long enough to give him her own smirk and to raise her eyebrows at him in challenge. He appreciated it, and he wrapped one arm around her and squeezed her with it.

"You got somethin' particular in mind you achin' to have?" He asked.

She mused on it, resting her head against him again.

"I'm not too picky," she said. "But—something good and hard." She put extra emphasis on her last word and Daryl's amusement rumbled in his chest.

"Now you teasin' me," Daryl said with a laugh.

"Oh—I wasn't teasing. Unless—you're not up to it," she said, emphasizing the word that would make the pun come off just as she'd planned.

"Come on, woman," Daryl said. "Let's go light these pumpkin's up—and then I'ma go light you up."

"Mmm," Carol said, making a face of pretend disapproval at him that she wasn't able to hold too long against the impeding smile. "That one was a bit of a stretch."

Daryl pulled away and, in response, half turned her and smacked her playfully on the ass cheek.

"Always ridin' my ass," Daryl teased.

"That's the plan," Carol responded, laughing when Daryl finally shook his head and laughed at her, pulling away to carry the pumpkins outside.

She was glad Merle and Andrea were having their little trip to celebrate the season, but she certainly wasn't hating staying at home with her husband.