Daryl woke up thinking about that unexpected kiss, and all his reeling mind could determine was that Carol had been teasing him.

He went about his day as usual, following the pattern that had become his predictable routine: hunting in the nearby woods in the morning, snacking on berries and bugs as he did so, Council Meeting and helping to fortify the fence in the afternoon, communal dinner and compliments to the chef in the evening, and then a quiet trip to the prison library.

He liked the routine, the settled order to a life that had, long before the apocalypse, been without order. He liked always having something to do and always knowing what needed to be done next. He liked the predictability, and perhaps that's what unsettled him most about Carol - he never knew what to do next, and he never knew what she was going to do next. And worst of all, like a complicated poem, he never knew what any of it meant.

[*]

Daryl slid a volume of Coleridge onto the library shelf. He'd let himself read the volume of Romantic poetry after he realized that capital-R romantic didn't mean the same thing as lowercase-r romantic. Daryl sure as hell wasn't reading any romantic poetry. Romance was for whipped, dumb ass guys. He wasn't the type of man to bring a girl flowers or rub her back or cook dinner with her. Well…if you didn't count that Cherokee rose he'd once given Carol. Or that time he'd helped her with her sore shoulder after all that firing practice. Or when he'd first showed her the best way to tenderize venison.

Coleridge had turned out to be an okay read. Daryl had liked the poem about the ancient mariner. The man had a crossbow after all. Daryl didn't know what the ballad meant, but he felt it on some level. He'd been like a man lost at sea himself since Merle died, feeling the weight of some albatross around his neck.

He was looking for another book when Sasha strolled into the library. She had a relaxed yet semi-cocky way about her. In that sense, she reminded him a bit of Merle. Daryl didn't know her well, but he had to know her a little, because they were both on the Council.

Daryl moved quickly to the non-fiction section one row over, so he wouldn't be caught looking at poetry. Sasha strolled up to him, a knife strapped to her lower leg and a handgun on her waist. "Good evening," she said.

"Evenin'." He looked at the shelf before him and flushed red when he realized he was in the biology section, specifically sex education and reproduction.

Sasha's eyes followed his eyes, and she smiled. "Your parents never taught you about the birds and the bees?"

"I's just uh…lookin' for….uh…" He grabbed a book on animal breeding and held it toward her. "We got pigs, so."

"We have a pig."

"Might could get another."

Sasha chuckled. "I can't figure you out, Daryl. I wish you'd stay in some kind of box."

"Hell would I get in a box for?"

She shook her head and strolled farther down the non-fiction section. Daryl put the animal breeding book back. She pulled out a book on household repair and carpentry. "Tyreese and I are thinking of building up a barricade, a second line within the fence."

"Better to reinforce the fence. So's we can still clean."

"It's really Tyrese's idea. I promised I'd at least propose it. Got to help a brother out, you know."

Daryl rested a hand on one of the shelves. "Ya ain't got to do everythin' your brother asks ya too. Took me awhile to figure that out."

"Well, trust me, I don't." She slowly slid the carpentry book back and tilted her head toward him with a sympathetic look. "Sorry about Merle, by the way. I may not have been a fan of the man, but I know he went out fighting for us. And I don't know what I'd do if I lost my own brother."

"Ya'd do what ya gotta do."

Sasha nodded. "I suppose I would." She stepped back from the shelf. "I wonder if they have the Bobbsey twins in here! Did you ever read those as a kid?"

"No."

"They're about these two sets of twins, brother and sister, around nine or ten or so. They went on little adventures and solved mysteries."

"Kind of adventures?" Daryl asked.

"Pretty tame ones, really, though they didn't seem so tame to me at the time. But that was before all this. I wish our adventures were more like theirs. Or like the ones Tyreese and I used to have. We got stuck in a storm sewer once when it started to rain. We thought that was a big deal."

Daryl leaned back against a bookcase and picked under his thumbnail. "Me and Merle used to throw cherry bombs down the storm sewer. Makes an awesome sound."

"Once we were crawling on top of the jungle gym," she said. "That was back when they just had blacktops under them. We fell off. I broke my ankle. He broke his wrist. We thought that was a big deal too, at the time. But all we had to do was go to a modern hospital."

"Merle pushed me out a tree once, when I's little. Didn't break nothin', though. Just got bruised up."

"Did he get in trouble for it?"

"Hell no," Daryl said. "Ain't like I'd tell on 'em. My daddy would hide me for being a tattle tale and a pansy."

"My father always took my side in all our fights. Maybe because I was the girl. Did your dad play favorites?"

Daddy had a favorite one to beat, anyhow, whichever one was between the age of seven and thirteen. So Merle first, and then him. Will Dixon thought six was too young for a good, solid beating, and by fourteen, well….they could beat back. "Don't matter. He's probably dead."

"Probably? You don't know?"

"Ain't like I went to go check on him when all this shit started. But he was a dumb ass, and he was drunk half the time. Ain't no way he's survived this long."

"And I imagine he must have been pretty old, too," Sasha said.

"Yeah. I don't know. Sixty something."

"What? Merle had to be at least fifty!"

"Yeah, well, my daddy was fifteen when he knocked my mama up."

Sasha's mouth fell open slightly, and he wished he hadn't said it. She probably saw him as white trash. They all probably did, or had, at one time or another. Everyone except Carol, maybe, because she'd married white trash. Of course, her white trash husband had been a step up from Daryl, at least on the educational and economic scale. Daryl had been poor; Ed had been lower-middle-class. Ed had at least finished high school, and Daryl had barely made it out of junior high. Still, Carol knew that culture, better than any of the others did, and she knew there was good and bad in it. She'd decided, for some reason, that Daryl was part of the good in it, and she'd decided that long ago, on Hershel's farm.

"How old was your mother?"

"Dunno. Seventeen maybe."

"Did they get married?"

"Hell yeah, they got married! He knocked her up."

Sasha laughed. "Well, where I come from, that doesn't necessarily mean you get married."

"Well, where you come from, I reckon girls don't get knocked up at seventeen."

Sasha leaned back against the bookcase and crossed her arms over her chest. "Where do you imagine I come from?"

"Some middle-class suburb. With an in-ground pool and a white picket fence."

She shook her head while smiling. "I grew up in the projects. In public housing in Jacksonville, Florida."

"Huh." Daryl considered this. "Projects must be different in Jacksonville."

"Why, you spend a lot of time in the projects in Atlanta?"

"Spent a year in 'em doin' maintenance when I's nineteen." He shrugged. "Some ways, they's a lot like the trailer park where we lived after my mama burned our cabin down. Just black people instead of white people. Apartments instead of double-wides. Blues instead of bluegrass. Crack instead of meth. Food was the same."

"Collard greens."

"Mhmhm. Love me some collard greens. Bet Carol could cook the shit out of some collard greens."

"We should grow them," Sasha suggested.

"Rick's planting some fancy ass lettuce or kale or some shit like that."

"Well that sounds like something we need to bring up at the council meeting tonight."

Daryl chuckled. He looked down at the library floor. He was always uncomfortable having friendly conversations. It was strange and strangely pleasant. So he made an effort. "If you grew up in the projects, why do ya sound so…"

"So what?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Dunno. Educated."

"I went to college on an academic scholarship. I grew up poor, and the neighborhood was a bit rough, but my dad was a war vet, and he was strict as hell. With my mom's cancer, though…he burned through all their savings and then some. That's why we ended up in public housing. She died when I was seven."

"That sucks."

"Sympathy from Daryl Dixon? Once again, I can't keep you in your box."

"Just I know it sucks 'cause I's nine when my mama died."

"Was she sick?"

He shook his head. "That cabin I said burned down? She's in it. Passed out. Didn't wake up. I's out ridin' my bike with some of the neighbor kids. Came back and it was half ashes already. Police had to keep me at the station overnight."

"Why?"

"My daddy was out with some woman. Didn't come for two days after they put the fire out. He was pissed as hell when he saw it. Merle was in juvie."

"Damn," Sasha muttered. "And I used to think I had it bad. I hated my father, because of all his demands and standards. We didn't part on good terms. Sometimes I wish I could go back and tell him thank you, tell him I know I wouldn't have made it through college, let alone through an apocalypse, if he hadn't raised me the way he had."

"Ain't shit I want to thank my daddy for."

"What about your mother?"

He shook his head. "She mostly checked out 'bout the time I's four. Drank a lot. Hardly noticed I's there. Don't 'member what she was like 'fore then. Merle said she was the best mama ever. I wouldn't know."

"But you turned out okay," Sasha observed. "Do you have anyone to thank for that?"

He thought about it. "Carol, maybe."

Sasha raised an eyebrow. "Carol? You grew up together?"

"Nah. I just mean…I dunno what I mean." What did he mean? Why had he said it? It was just that Carol was the first person who had ever told him he was good. Not just good, but every bit as good as Rick. She was also the first person who had ever expected more of him when he was acting like an ass. Everyone else just expected him to act like one. And she was the first person he'd ever wanted to apologize to when he did act like an ass. "Ya didn't know me when this shit started. I ain't the same I was then."

"Were you more like Merle?"

"Nah, I weren't like Merle. But I weren't the same neither. And what's wrong with Merle?"

Sasha didn't reply.

"Never mind. I know. He weren't no Ghandi. But neither am I."

"None of us are," she said. "Except maybe Hershel."

"Hershel can shoot up some shit with a shotgun though, when he's got a mind to."

Sasha nodded.

There was an awkward silence. Daryl figured that must mean it was his turn to speak, but he had no idea what to say. "I got to…uh…go now..'cause...uh...Carol needs me for something."

"I bet she does." Sasha was pressing her lips together tightly, like she was holding in a laugh.

Daryl flushed red and scurried out of the library.

It turned out Carol did need him for something. The rod she'd used to put up the privacy curtain on the cell they were now sort of sharing had fallen down. She needed him to hold up one side while she secured is other. Through his unruly bangs he peered over her as she stretched up on tip toes, arms above her head, to click it in place. Her shirt pulled even more tightly than usual over her breasts when she did that, and he cursed himself for the place his mind went.

"Your end," she told him, and he blinked and turned quickly away and clicked it in place, too, before screwing the bracket tight again. While he was turning the screwdriver and tightening it that last bit, Carol drew up beside him and said, "You're good at the screwing. You do it nice and hard, but still slow, to make sure you get the job done just right."

The heat rushed to his face. "Stop."

She giggled.

He finished the last twist of the screwdriver and then lowered it to his side. Feeling flustered and irritated, he blurted, "Why ya always makin' fun of me?"

"I'm not," she said softly. "How is a little affectionate teasing making fun of you?"

"'Cause ya don't mean it!" he muttered. "Like them girls in the halls in junior high, used to ask if I wanted to take 'em to the eighth grade dance, and then when I froze and stuttered, they just laughed at me. Just wanted to see how I'd react. Damn mean is what it was."

The privacy curtain now down inside the cell, Carol wrapped a hand around one bar, pushing the cloth around it, and looked at him with her soft blue eyes. "I…I didn't mean to be mean," she said softly.

"Then cut it out."

"Okay," she said quietly. Her eyes flitting down. They came back up hesitantly. "But what if I do mean it?"

Daryl swallowed. "Hell ya mean, mean it? Mean it how?"

She shrugged. "I'd love for you to take me to the dance."

He growled.

"I'm serious. I mean, if there was a dance. If we had a dance. I'd want you to be my date."

"Can't dance worth shit," he said. "Hell would ya do with me at a dance?"

She hooked a finger through his belt loop and inched closer until their bodies were almost touching. His breath caught and he felt like he had this great lump in his throat he couldn't quite swallow. She raised her eyes to his, and her head, so that her lips were an inch from his. He could smell the sweet scent of honeysuckle on her breath. He'd plucked her a handful from the forest today, while hunting. "You don't really have to dance," she said. "Not in junior high. You just, come together…" Now her body was pressed against his and he felt a jolt rip through him. "Sway a little, back and forth…"

She began to urge him to move, and he was moving all right, but it wasn't his hips that were moving. He was stirring to hardness against her. He jerked away. "Cut it out," he muttered.

Carol was the one to turn bright red this time. She turned immediately away. "Sorry," she said, and her voice cracked a little, like she was really hurt, and she began frantically clawing at the privacy curtain to get to the cell door. "I thought maybe you actually liked me. I'm sorry. I was an idiot. I'll stop." She got the curtain open and began to jerk the door open, but, his arm over her left shoulder, he slammed it shut again with a clang.

The curtain fell closed over it.

Carol lay her forehead against the rough cloth coating the rigid bars, her back to him.

Daryl's body covered hers against the door. "Ya ain't teasin'?" he breathed in her ear.

"No," she managed, in a small whisper.

"Ya…ya want to…?"

"Yes."

"Damn," he breathed. "Hell didn't ya just tell me?"

"I did," she turned beneath him. He grasped a cloth coated bar with either hand, so that she was pinned between him and the cell door. "I did. A hundred times I did."

He pressed his forehead to hers, licked his lips, and closed his eyes as her lips pressed against his. He savored the taste of her. He'd never kissed a woman like this, this tenderly, this long. He dropped his hands from the bars and let them roam her back while he explored her mouth. His tongue danced with hers.

Carol was breathing hard when she pulled away. She buried a hand in his hair. "I'm not teasing," she assured him. "But…I'm…it's been…" She looked down. "It was never good with Ed. I don't know how to…I…"

He stepped back from her, and she winced, looking scared and vulnerable and beautiful. "Ain't in a hurry," he reassured her. "Just glad to…turn the page."

She smiled. "We've spent a long time on that page, haven't we?"

"Yeah." He smiled. "Too long."

"Daryl?" came Rick's voice from the hallway. "Hey, Daryl! You were suppose to relieve Glenn on watch ten minutes ago. Where the hell are you?"

"Comin'!" Daryl yelled. "Be there in a minute!"

"Well hurry up!" Rick's footsteps faded down the hall.

Carol inched forward and kissed him again, once, softly. "Let's start a new chapter," she said, "but let's not rush straight to the ending."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Sounds 'bout right."

She smiled, stepped away, and let him turn and slip from the cell.

THE END