AN: Here we are, another chapter to this one.
I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
"You're downright fuckin' surly today, boy," Merle commented.
"Shut up, Merle," Daryl said. Merle merely laughed in response. "You're an asshole, and I'm not fuckin' surly."
"You're just illustratin' my point, lil' brother," Merle said, rolling down the window and lighting a cigarette. Daryl was already smoking one while his brother drove them to work. "Keep goin'."
"I'm not surly," Daryl protested again, this time with less give-a-damn than before.
"You wanna stop by the Dollar General or some shit? Pick you up a box of tampons and a chocolate bar?" Merle egged. "Always seems to work for Andrea when she's on the rag."
"I wish to hell I weren't in this truck right now; you know that?" Daryl said. Unfortunately, his brother simply laughed. The problem with Merle—or at least one of the problems with Merle, because there were several for anyone who was counting—was that hardly a single damn thing ever actually bothered Merle. Instead, what might have bugged someone else only seemed to amuse Merle. The whole damn world was a joke, really, unless there was something so fucking catastrophic that nobody—not even Merle Dixon—would dare to make a joke about it.
"Open the door an' get out, if you got a mind to, lil' brother," Merle mused. "Just remember to tuck an' roll when you hit the ground." Merle smirked at Daryl, but he didn't tease him too much longer. Once the silence settled between them, he hummed. "I ain't shittin' you," he prefaced. "I really wanna know—somethin' goin' on with your lil' Mouse in the house next door?"
Daryl bristled slightly at the mention.
"She ain't my Mouse," Daryl said. "She ain't anything to me. I got no claim over her, Merle. Why can't you understand that shit?"
"See—now I can tell when I hit a sore spot," Merle said, dropping the harassing tone from earlier. "You two fight or somethin'?"
"We haven't fought, Merle," Daryl said. He resisted the inner urge to growl at his brother for being annoying.
"Well—then what the hell is your problem?" Merle asked.
"We've got no reason to fight, Merle," Daryl said, answering his brother through gritted teeth. "We ain't married, and we ain't in a relationship. What damn reason we got to fight? There ain't nothin' there but business."
"That weren't how it looked when your ass was leavin' her house the other mornin' and she was kissin' you goodbye on the damn step. That's all I'm sayin'," Merle said.
"That was all part of the makin' the baby," Daryl said. "She was doing that ovulatin', and we…well, you know what the hell we was doin'."
"I do know," Merle said. "That's why the hell I'm commentin' on that shit, brother. I seen you comin' outta her place, and you damn near skipped all the damn way to your place to get your shit. You coulda fuckin' skipped all the way to work. You bounced around the whole damn day like a goat on a trampoline. Now you're surly as shit, and she's mopin' around work puttin' on that fake-ass customer smile that don't hardly look real enough to get her a tip from people. I'm just askin' what the hell's goin' on. You can tell me, lil' brother."
Daryl frowned. He shrugged his shoulders.
"That's just it," he said. "There ain't nothin' goin' on. There weren't never nothin' goin' on, Merle. Just business…that's all it is. All it was. All it's gonna be."
Merle laughed to himself. If shit-eating grins had a laughing sibling, that was what Merle did. The sound of it grated on Daryl's nerves.
"I see what the hell it is, Darylina," Merle mused.
"You don't see shit," Daryl countered.
"Oh yeah I do," Merle said, far too pleased for Daryl's tastes. "Your big brother sees just what the hell it is."
"You don't see shit 'cause there ain't shit to see, Merle," Daryl said.
"The first piece gets everybody, boy," Merle said. "Although—I gotta say that a little Mouse tail seems to have you all tied up."
"Shut the fuck up, Merle," Daryl said.
"Alright…alright…truce, brother," Merle said, holding his hands, one at a time, in front of him like he was about to deal cards and wanted Daryl to know that he wasn't hiding anything up his sleeve. "I ain't bustin' your balls. I ain't givin' you hell. Just—talkin' to your ass. Can you handle that? Talkin' like civilized people?"
Daryl shrugged and lit another cigarette for himself.
"I don't know where the hell I'ma find one of them to talk to in this truck," Daryl said. "But I can handle it if you know of one."
"You an' that Mouse ain't seen each other since the other night?" Merle asked. Daryl shrugged. "Use your words, boy. You seen each other or not?"
"There ain't no reason," Daryl said quickly and loudly, bristling at Merle's insistence.
"What the hell you mean there ain't no reason?" Merle asked.
"We done the fertilizin' of the eggs, or whatever, Merle," Daryl said. "Now there's nothin' to do but wait until it's time to see if it took or not."
"And that's just it?" Merle asked.
"What do you mean is that just it?" Daryl asked. "Of course, that's it. We find out if it took or not—then it's just…knowin' do we gotta try again, or we move on with the whole whatever-comes-next part of it."
"And in the meantime, you just pretend like you don't live right there at each other, and you pretend like you didn't spend the damn night with her, and you pretend like you weren't walkin' around just bigger'n shit grinnin' like a damn mule eatin' briars after you did?"
"It's a business transaction, Merle," Daryl said. "Got a contract and all."
"Then file for a fuckin' amendment or whatever the hell it is you gotta do," Merle said. "Write in there that this ain't workin' out to the benefit of either of you when it comes to your moods, and Andrea'll notarize it or whatever."
"She don't want no more'n what we got," Daryl said.
"And if she did…you're sayin' you would?" Merle asked.
Daryl shrugged.
"The hell does it matter? That ain't what it is."
"All I'm sayin', brother, is she's actin' about as low as you are," Merle said. "You sure there ain't room in your contract for—just seein' how the others doin' in between things and all? Just a little neighborly bumpin' of uglies or…hell…Daryl…I don't fuckin' know…take her out for somethin' to eat?"
"Don't you think that would go against the whole business idea of the contract?" Daryl asked.
"You the one that wrote the contract, Daryl," Merle said. "Figure—you'd know all the loopholes better'n anybody. But if Mouse don't object…"
Daryl's stomach fluttered gently at the suggestion. He stared out the window of the truck and did his best to ignore his brother. Still—Merle did have something of a point. The contract did specify a lot of expectations, but there were some areas that were simply blank. After all, there wasn't a great deal of information about what happened in the "in-between" intervals—which was mostly owing to the fact that Daryl hadn't given them any thought before—and Daryl thought that, maybe, that was something that was at least up for discussion.
If, of course, that was something that Carol was interested in discussing.
111
Carol wasn't quite dry from her shower, and her pajamas were clinging to her. The sensation made her feel irritated and cranky. Then again, she wasn't sure she could blame the whole of her mood on damp skin and clingy pajamas. She sighed to herself as she opened the lid to the washing machine and moved the uniform pieces from the laundry basket into the machine.
She felt an overall sense of what she had once heard described as the doldrums, but it wasn't until she felt it, at the moment, that she was certain she knew what that really meant.
She felt simply sad and dissatisfied and, yet, she had more to be happy about, at this moment, than she'd ever really had to be happy about before.
Carol had a roof over her head. She had a home. The home was promised to her for as long as she wanted to stay there. It was a home located somewhere where her very-soon-to-be-ex-husband had never been. It was located in a place where he would never think to look for her. She had a divorce that was pending and, soon, would be final. She had another lawyer in communication with her previous lawyer, happy to take things over and further erase any trail that Ed might have to use to find her.
Carol's bills were being paid, and she could put the money she earned mostly into savings to build for a life—whatever kind of life she wanted. She wasn't cold, or hot, or even cut off from the rest of the world. She had internet and entertainment—things that she never would have splurged for on her own. Yet, she felt oddly overwhelmed with a kind of boredom that she would have been hard-pressed to explain. It wasn't that she didn't have anything to do, it was that everything she had to do didn't seem like what she wanted to do.
And she didn't even want to admit to herself what she wanted, because it made her angry with herself.
She'd promised herself that she'd never give a man power over her again, and here she was feeling sorry for herself because she wanted to spend time with a man who was respecting the boundaries that they'd set to keep the lines of their business transaction from getting blurred.
Carol had a kitchen full of groceries, and she vacillated between the desire to eat everything in the pantry to make herself feel better, and the feeling that she didn't want to eat any of it because none of it had the power to take away the overall blah feeling she was suffering at the moment. The food couldn't satisfy the craving that she felt inside of her—a craving she was desperately trying to ignore.
She poured a capful of laundry detergent into the washing machine—laundry detergent that she hadn't even had to buy herself—and closed the lid before starting the cycle.
Carol had forty thousand dollars coming her way, in cash, for an agreement she'd happily signed. She had a baby, too, on the horizon. She would be a mother—something she was growing more and more desirous to be as every day passed—and she would have her child with a man who, honestly, seemed too good to be true.
Of course, that too-good-to-be-true man would be the baby's father, but he would only be her partner on a technicality. They would share the child, and they would both be dedicated to doing everything possible and necessary to make sure that the child grew up well, but that was the extent of things.
She shouldn't want more than that, though, and she knew it. She shouldn't want more than exactly what Daryl had proposed—something clean cut and precise. Something that wasn't messy. Something with no feelings involved.
Except, Carol's case of the doldrums made her worried that she was such a failure at this that she'd managed to end up involving feelings from practically the word "go."
Carol huffed, annoyed with herself, and put the laundry basket on top of the washer for later. She wandered into the kitchen, started a pot of decaf coffee so she could have something do, but wouldn't keep herself up all night, and washed the dishes from her breakfast that she'd left in the sink while she went to work.
She was just about to try to figure out if she'd rather torture herself by reading a book she didn't want to read or by watching a show that she didn't want to watch, when there was a knock at the door. She jumped, not expecting it, and then somewhat crept in the direction of the door.
She had no reason to believe there was anyone outside except, probably, Andrea, but she still didn't like taking chances. She had recurring nightmares that Ed somehow got off for his crimes, got out, tracked her down, and showed up on her doorstep ready to kill her.
Carol peeked through the peephole and smiled. Her pulse kicked up and she turned the deadbolt before opening the door. She might have liked to pretend that she could hold back her smile and look entirely like his presence there made no real difference to her, but that wasn't the case at all.
"Are you lost?" She asked. She didn't know why she'd asked it. Immediately, she felt her face grow warm. She wondered if he might be offended. The comment was a bit of a dig at the fact that she hadn't seen Daryl since the morning she'd kissed him goodbye and sent him off to work, wondering already if they had somehow earned some small little miracle between them. She recognized, though, that she had no room to make such a dig, even in jest, and she hoped he wouldn't be too offended.
Luckily, he smiled, and he hefted the paper bag a little that he held in his arms.
"Got lost as shit," he said. "But—while I was wanderin' around and all, I stumbled upon this place that has some pretty damn good sub sandwiches, and I thought maybe you'd like…you know…to eat one of 'em. Maybe we could—watch a movie or somethin', you know? Unless—you don't want to or you…you know…you got other plans or…whatever it is that you got goin' on."
Carol held the door open for him and waved for him to come inside. He took the bag directly to the counter and started unpacking it. In addition to sandwiches, it appeared that he'd brought a variety of chips and drinks.
"I'm glad you came," Carol said.
Daryl stopped unpacking things for a half a second, but then he returned to his work.
"You were hungry and…didn't wanna cook?" He asked.
Carol smiled. She could tell that he was fishing. She found that she didn't mind it, and she wasn't feeling coy—no matter how much she might regret it later.
"No," she said. "I was…lonely. And…I didn't want to be that way."
Daryl turned around and looked at her. The corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. He nodded his head, gently.
"Is that alright, Daryl?" Carol asked, wondering if she'd overstepped their boundaries.
"Yeah," he said. "Turns out—I was kinda lonely, too. And…truth is? I don't really care for it."
Carol felt relief and something like the bubbling up of unexpected excitement.
"Me either," she offered softly. "I'll get you a glass."
