Chapter Text
They were back on the road again. Every time this happened, after yet another settlement was lost, there was a sense of failure. A cloud of grief hanging in the background, for all the friends who'd been lost along with the burned buildings. An aching, chiding void where that pesky sense of hope--maybe this will be the one that lasts--had started to grow in her like a weed.
But the road felt like a homecoming to Carol, too. More settled, in some ways, than a settlement because there was no precarious hope. They'd lost all there was to lose except for the few dirty, tattered people who walked at their sides. She wasn't sure when she'd started to feel more steady on the move than in a walled town. Not after the farm--back then she'd been timid and terrified. Even now, memories of that first winter were still more vivid than anything that had come after. Each image imprinted stark with the edge of adrenaline. That's the winter that made her who she was. When Daryl had put her trench knife in her hand, and then a rifle. When he'd kept putting them there every time she'd dropped them or cowered or tried to quit.
Maybe it was on the road to Alexandria. When Daryl was the one trying to quit and she was the one hauling him back onto his feet. When she realized it wasn't going to just be the farm, it wasn't going to just be the prison. The road wasn't just once. It was the space between each paragraph of her life. Maybe that's when that whisper came alive in her. This, you know how to do. You can survive anywhere. Most of the others won't, but you will.
She couldn't unhear the truth of that voice, even when she tried.
A small, guilty corner of her liked the simplicity of the road. Find food, water, camp, try to grab a little sleep. Find food again, then water, then camp. You killed whatever walker was in front of you and you didn't have to think too far past this afternoon.
She never told anyone she felt this way. She looked at their haggard, exhausted faces and she pretended she was suffering too. Nodded and soothed and acted like she couldn't wait to find the next place. But to Carol, the next place was just like the face of a child: so precious you didn't want to get attached. Better the ugliness of the road.
Still, it was winter, and after a few weeks of joint-gnawing cold, even Carol was excited when they found the hot spring. It was a natural springs, but a business had sprung up all around it with a pool for the kids and private rooms all around the edges, each with a dressing room and a private tub big enough for 4-6 friends. It had been rebuilt sometime after the fall--she could tell from the walker-proof fences and multiple exits. The repainted sign. Miracle Hot Spring, it said in now-faded blue letters and when she made it inside, she just about had to agree.
The water ran hot straight out of the ground, and after a little figuring they managed to figure out how to drain the smaller pools and refill them with clean water, adding a dash of cold with a siphon hose from the nearby creek.
Most everybody piled into the biggest two rooms, because the pool itself was too muddy to get clean. The laughter and joking faded behind her as Carol slipped down the hall.
Quiet was what she was after, and she didn't mind scrubbing down her own room to get it. When she waded into the pool, though, she caught her breath. It had been since Alexandria that she'd had a proper tub with hot water, and enough time to fill it. She'd forgotten how delicious it felt. It unwound muscles that had been tight with cold for weeks. Loosened her very bones within their sockets. Her skin rippled with pleasure, the sensation so unfamiliar she had to think back and back and back to figure when the last time was she'd been touched by a lover.
Carol sank into a seat on the wooden bench that encircled the room, then tipped her head against the wall and let out a half-guilty breath. She felt absolutely...unraveled. So much so that she was glad the others couldn't see her.
So of course that's when Daryl found her.
The door clicked open and he slipped inside, shoulders looking even bulkier than usual under layers of flannel and leather.
"Looking for privacy?" She opened one eye, the water stirring in a soft swish around her. She smiled. "Guess we're both out of luck."
He twitched, his head jerking around until he spotted her in the shadows. "Shit, sorry." A second later the corner of his lips tipped up as he registered how alike they'd been thinking. "You ready for a little quiet from all the bickering, too?" He nodded, already reaching for the door. "I'll go."
"This is the last room. Next one has a crack; won't hold water." She lifted a hand out of the water, waving a lazy wrist. "Stay. I don't mind."
He wouldn't, she could tell. He was already looking everywhere but at her beneath the clear mineral water, even though she'd left on her underwear. She was even wearing her best set: the deep blue made by Emily, who had figured the knack of sewing a bra better than anyone she'd met since the turn. Emily'd gone down under a small herd two days ago, so there'd be no more good bras, Carol realized with a flicker of grief so tired it almost felt like something else entirely. Bras. Just one more thing they'd taken for granted in the old days. They'd been so stupid, so spoiled. Like a whole world of children.
Daryl read the shift in her mood like the tracker he was. "Nah. I'll leave ya alone. I got the bike, but you just about never get a break from all the chatter."
"Yeah, that was my main worry," she said, bone-dry. "All your chatter."
He huffed a little almost-soundless laugh, peeking up at her from under his tangled hair.
"C'mon. I'm too tired to do the no-I-insist dance. Besides, we both know if you don't get in here, you won't get a bath at all, so this is basically a public service."
He gave her a scowl with no heat behind it. "Quit. I ain't that bad."
"The smell, you mean?" She snorted. "If you say so."
He didn't, honestly. He found a creek to splash off in more than most of them, and his sweat always smelled woodsy, like the open wind was just a part of his chemistry. But it was an old tease because no one ever saw him bathe. He didn't shower during the hours when everyone else did, never swam in the sun-dappled ponds in the summer. She wasn't sure why. He wasn't as shy of his new scars as he'd been of his old. It had been so many years, so many lifetimes since his rough childhood with Merle and his father, but some habits remained. One of them was that Daryl Dixon never took his clothes off in front of other people unless he had to get stitched up. She would know: it was her stitches that had pulled his skin back together on more than a few occasions.
He turned away from her to shuck off his pants, and she realized she was staring and turned her gaze back to the water.
He was staying. Even with her in her underwear. Well, this was new.
She busied her thoughts with mundane things: what did they have left that she could cook for dinner, could they risk washing maybe half the clothes here, so that even if they had to run before they were dry they wouldn't leave them all? She knew he'd detect it if she was anything other than casual about this, even in her innermost thoughts. He could read her in the shifts of the air, like she was a wild animal or something. Her heartrate was still a little too high, and she tried harder to focus on the laundry issue.
She was being silly. It was just Daryl. They were so many years and graves past stealing uncertain little looks at each other--maybe? Does he?-- like they had at the prison. Now, they were just old friends. Comfortable with each other. Solid.
That's why she didn't bother to open her eyes when she felt the water shift as he waded in. Because she was so very comfortable.
But when he grunted, a slight hiss of pain, her eyes flew open.
"What's wrong?"
He ticked his chin up. "Nothing. Water on this scrape, that's all. Used to it now."
She didn't even know where he'd gotten the scrape on his shoulder, or the cut over his left pec. There was a black and blue bruise climbing up his neck from his back and she felt the pinch of a scowl taking over her forehead before she realized she was doing it.
She'd forgotten that part of being on the road. How Daryl's body ended up taking a whole lot more abuse to shield the rest of the group. All those extra miles of scouting, hours of hunting when everyone else could rest in camp. At the front of every battle. His hands were nicked from stringing trip wire around camp with her every night.
"'S fine," he said again, which is when she realized she was still looking. She glanced away, glad the steam off the water would hide the heat of her skin.
He hadn't lost any muscle in the last few years. It'd layered on a bit thicker than the last time she'd seen him, if anything.
What was wrong with her today? It'd been easy between them for so long and here she was all conscious of him like a schoolgirl just because they had a few less clothes on than usual. It must just be winter, she decided firmly. All those stifling layers dragging at your every movement until your body was as frustrated and ready to howl.
"Hey."
She looked back, and his face had changed. Into one of his shy, almost boyish smiles.
"Got shampoo."
She gasped. "Don't you talk dirty to me now."
"Stop." There was no heat in the old rebuke. "Found it in the office." He leaned back, all those muscles flexing--dear god, did he still have a six-pack? At their age? Honestly, it wasn't even fair. Her eyes came up again when he waggled a pair of tiny bottles.
"God bless you," she said, with feeling, and he tossed her one of the bottles.
"Always wondered what it'd take for you to get religion."
"You don't even want to see what I'd do for deodorant."
He huff-laughed, and then it turned into a hiss of pain when he tried to lift his arms to his hair.
"Your shoulder bad still?" She was halfway across the small pool before she could think better of it. From here, she could see the small black boxer briefs that were all he was wearing. His meaty thighs spread wide as he perched on the cement stairs.
"Just needs another couple days, that's all."
"Let me see." He'd tweaked his shoulder in the same battle where they'd lost Emily, trying to haul her away from the walkers in that last instant before they bit down and it was too late.
Carol came closer, standing breast deep in the water as she prodded around the joint. It wasn't dislocated, and she already knew it wasn't broken. Probably pulled, given the tension in the muscle and the way he quit breathing when she touched it.
"Maybe more like a week," she told him. "And you should let somebody else do the hunting. The kickback on that crossbow of yours isn't doing it any favors."
He grunted, and in that she could hear the whole argument they would have had. Nobody else's bow had that kind of range--they still had a few guns--but shots would draw walkers, and maybe humans--better to risk his shoulder than the whole group. He'd win, but neither would like it, so she didn't even start the old exchange.
"Fucking figures," he muttered, looking down longingly at the shampoo.
"Here, I'll do it." She plucked the shampoo from his hand. "Move down a stair."
"Don't have to."
"Know I don't."
He moved down a stair, hesitantly, and she swung up to sit on the level above him. The tension in the air should be a little less, with her behind him and him not having to avert his eyes so hard. But this close, it ran like current between them. She ignored it and worked shampoo through his hair. It was thick, and tangled because the wind always licked through the strands an instant after he combed it. It reminded her of afternoons years past when he was camped alone down by the river, looking for Rick. How he'd always let her cut his hair when he wouldn't let anyone else.
She took her time, massaging in suds all the way to the roots, soothing apart tangles, because who knew when they'd see real shampoo again? In the old days, it sat in every shower. Those big, colorful plastic bottles you'd look right past, because in those days, they hadn't realized how precious they'd be.
A grunt huffed out of him and she paused. "Sore spot?" She hadn't felt a goose egg but it wasn't unlike him to have gotten a knock on the head and not mentioned it to anyone.
"Nah." He almost laughed. "Feels too good. Weird."
She smiled, a bittersweet edge to it. "I thought the same thing about this water. Forgot my body could feel this good."
He was sitting very still. "Uh-huh," he said, a beat late.
All the days of bitter cold, all the bumps and bruises of long days on the road and too many walker battles. Tweaked neck from using her backpack as a pillow. She couldn't feel a one of them now. Maybe hot springs really were magic.
She patted his shoulder. "Rinse."
He ducked down, his shoulders disappearing into the water between her knees. His long, drifting hair brushed the inside of one thigh and her toes curled. He stuffed long, blunt fingers back through his hair, scuffing roughly to get the soap out. When he came back up, the water shwooshed out and back in, rocking waves that broke against her waist, displaced by the sheer square footage of those shoulders. They popped the arm seams of any shirt that half-fit the rest of him, and Carol had understood after mending them a few dozen times, why the sleeves ended up ripped off all his shirts as soon as the snow disappeared for the season.
When he emerged, he slicked his good hand over his hair, pressing the water out of it, then caught her eye and spun a finger in the air, indicating they switch positions.
"Your shoulder..."
"Eh. Sit a couple steps down. Can use it fine if I don't try to reach over my head."
There was no particular reason she needed help to wash her hair, but they so rarely had shampoo. And they'd been stopped here for nearly an hour without any sign of walkers. Moments like these didn't last long, so Carol traded spots with him without protest. Why not? Where was the harm?
The water closed warm and silky around her shoulders as she sat on the lowest stair.
Water droplets flew as he flicked his hair back, careless as always. His eyes were brighter without that hair to screen them, like a summer sky scraped clean of clouds. He caught up what was left of the first tiny bottle and dumped it into his hand.
She didn't need to waste nearly that much, now that she was wearing her hair short again, but she caught back the protest before she spoke it and faced forward again. Live a little, she told herself. Waste a little. You deserve it, too.
Daryl's knees brushed her back as he leaned closer. He was more careful with her hair than he'd been with his own, his fingers moving clumsily like he didn't quite know the shape of a head from this angle.
She closed her eyes so no soap would drip into them, and that just made every brush of his fingers seem more vivid. When was the last time someone had played with her hair?
"Hey, earlier--somebody piss you off?"
She blinked. "No, why?"
"You had that tight 'I'm not mad' face when I came in."
"I have an 'I'm not mad' face?" She lifted her eyebrows, amused.
"Mm-hmm." He caught a drip of soap on her forehead, flicking it away with his thumb before it made it to her eyebrows. "But when you get that face, you definitely are, though."
She smiled without opening her eyes, charmed that he knew her "faces."
"I was just thinking, right before you came in. Can you believe in the old world, we had hot water like this every day?" She shook her head. "I thought Ed and I were poor, but I had a tub with hot running water any day I wanted it, and I'd remember to fill it up maybe once every six months? Stupid."
"Right? Hot showers, too..." Wistfulness had crept into his tone and she could tell he was turning it over in his head just like she had. "Every house had one. Hell, even trailers had 'em."
"Just seems crazy now," she mused. "That we had something that could feel this good and we didn't reach for it every single day."
He paused, and she almost looked back at him to see what was wrong. But then he just tapped her shoulder to rinse and she sank below the water. She held her breath under there a long time, letting it warm her eyelids, the skin of her chapped and permanently chilled face. Her lips.
When she came up, she gasped and the air tasted cleaner. She reeled a little, off-balance as she blinked water out of her eyes, and reached out for the railing. She caught Daryl's shoulder instead and when she opened her eyes he was right right there. His dark hair slicked back so that face he always kept half-hidden was fully exposed. The silver tracings of old scars white against his flushed skin. He was looking at her.
And suddenly, she was so, so tired of not saying it.
"Daryl, why didn't we ever...me and you, I mean."