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shimmershaewrites · 6 years

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Merry and Bright *9* (a Walking Dead One Shot, Caryl AU).

Title: Merry and Bright *9*

Rating: T.

Warnings: mild language, sexual situations.

Characters/Pairings: Carol Peletier/Daryl Dixon, background Lori Grimes/Rick Grimes, Eric Raleigh/Aaron, Michonne/Andrea Harrison, Sophia Peletier, mention of past Carol Peletier/Ed Peletier, Glenn Rhee/Maggie Rhee, Theodore ‘T-Dog’ Douglas, Rosita Espinosa, Bob Stookey, Lilly Chambler, Meghan Chambler, Denise Cloyd, Merle Dixon, Jerry, Carl Grimes.

Merry and Bright *9*

His stubble rasps against the nape of her neck in the most delicious way and she shivers, from her head down to her toes, melts into the warm, protective circle of his arms for the briefest of moments before reluctantly pulling away and putting some needed distance between them. It’s the only way she’s going to manage to walk out that door and be a productive adult today and they both know it. The pleased smirk she glimpses on his handsome, unshaven face tells her as much, but she can’t find it in herself to be angry or even offended. If she hadn’t promised, what feels like a lifetime ago now, to help out Lori when the time come and it apparently has, they might still be in that bedroom now with the whole wide world locked out and their bedsheets tangled at their feet. “Don’t,” she warns him.

His smirk only grows wider, making his teeth gleam in the soft light of the nearby Christmas tree. “Didn’t say nothing.”

Her own smile twitches at her lips, but she hides it well, tucking the ends of her red and white scarf around her neck. She pulls her jacket up over her shoulders and winces when the simple motion makes heat flood to her cheeks and brings memories that are barely a few hours old to the forefront. He’d certainly given it his best shot, convincing her to call in. With his beautiful mouth and his gentle hands, he’d touched her and loved her until she’d been reduced to a great, quivering sea of overwhelming need. Even now, she feels the phantom ache of him between her thighs, everywhere else. “Daryl,” she chastises softly when his fingers catch the drawstring to her scrub pants and tug. His calloused thumb dips into the well of her navel and she whines. “I really need to go.”

“Ain’t stopping you.” Her brow arches in disbelief and he grunts out a laugh, feathers a semi-penitent kiss across the furrowed lines of frustration in her forehead. “M’sorry. S’just…you really have to go?”

Carol sighs. “I wish I didn’t. You don’t know how much. But Dr. Carson put Lori on bedrest, and we’re short already as it is. I can’t leave Lilly to shoulder the work load alone.”

He matches her sigh with one of his own, long and drawn out for effect. “Just something ‘bout the holidays, huh? Merry Christmas.”

She fists the soft gray material of the shirt stretched snug across his broad shoulders and leans up on her toes to press her mouth to his grumbling one. “Bah humbug to you too, Pookie,” she teases. “At least it’s not the evening shift.” A deep, wordless rumble of agreement is the only response she receives before he pulls her into a hug that steals the breath from her very lungs. She nuzzles her nose in that inviting crease between his neck and his shoulder and inhales deeply, willing her fluttering heart to calm. She’s not sure who she’s trying to reassure more, him or herself, when she murmurs a quiet reminder. “It’s just twelve hours. Maybe less if things are slow. I’ll be home before you know it and you, me, and Sophia? We’ll have plenty of time to make it to the party.”

“Shit,” he swears, rocking back on his bare feet and raking a hand roughly through his hair, upending it every which way. “That’s tonight?”

He looks impossibly boyish to her in that moment, even if the gray-blond scruff on his cheeks proves otherwise, and she nods. This year, Glenn and Maggie are hosting and she doesn’t want to disappoint the young couple no matter how tired she can already tell she’s going to be thanks to their earlier amorous activities. “It’s a cookie swap, remember? Sophia and I had plans to bake cookies today but little Miss Grimes had other ideas.”

“Yeah, well. I’d expect nothing less knowing her mama,” he mutters.

He puts on a good show, but Carol’s not fooled by the act. He’s been just as solicitous toward their friend during her difficult pregnancy as Rick has, maybe even more so in his own gruff way, and it’s endeared him even more to her, something she hadn’t previously thought possible considering the origin of their life together. In the grand scheme of things, they’re still new to this marriage thing. She doesn’t count her whole relationship with Ed because her daughter had been the only thing of value the man had ever gifted her with, however reluctantly, and they were only a family in the loosest sense of the word, bound by biology but not the heart. With Daryl it’s different. It has been since he’d done the impossible and brought her lost little girl back to her. So she feels free to make a suggestion that never would have crossed her mind with Ed. “Maybe you and Sophia could make them? Store bought ones are fine. Glenn and Maggie aren’t going to say anything.”

He quirks a half-smile at her, his blue eyes twinkling and bright. “You saying you trust me not to burn the house down?”

“More than that,” she laughs as she shoulders her purse and scoops up her lunch bag. “Think about it, okay?”

“Come back to me, Woman.”

The promise doesn’t take any thought. “Always.”

The kid comes padding out of her room before the sun’s all the way up, rubbing her small fists at her eyes and yawning so big he can hear her jaw pop clear across the living room. Draining the last dregs of his coffee, he reaches out to set his mug on a nearby coaster and scratches at the back of his neck as he watches her linger in front of the tree that’s been the focal point of the house since the weekend after Thanksgiving. He still remembers the way she and her mama had batted them big pretty eyes at him before dragging him all over King County looking for the perfect tree. It’d been a good day. He’s had a lot of those since he found ‘Phia and found love as a result. He hopes today can be one of those, even if he hasn’t been able to think of much else but how much he misses her mama since she left through the front door. Clearing his throat to get her attention, he asks, “What you doin’ up so early?”

“Didn’t sleep so good,” Sophia mumbles, her mouth all cottony still with sleep and her nose wrinkled as she joins him on the sofa, slumping back against the pillows and tucking her growing, gangly legs beneath her.

“Didn’t?” Daryl ventures, though he has a sneaking suspicion why, more than a sneaking suspicion actually. He still don’t know what had come over him, taking his wife so thoroughly apart with their girl sleeping just a few feet away. He just remembers watching her sleep in the waning moonlight and the way she wore the freckles on her skin like stardust and wanting to know the taste of something so wondrous and sweet. He can still picture the way she’d arched beneath his touch, like the building of an oncoming wave, and how she’d reached behind herself to find purchase as he’d framed her hips with his rough hands and nuzzled deep, her mouth open on a silent scream as she’d pulsed around him and flooded his mouth. He’d barely given her time to recover before he was covering her body with his own and working his narrow hips between her trembling legs, working toward his own release and taking her with him. That time, they hadn’t been quite as quiet. He was sure of it and he feels the heat of embarrassment color his cheeks and crawl all the way up to the tips of his ears. Working around the mortified lump rising up in his throat, he volunteers, “Bad dream?”

“No,” Sophia says. “Maybe,” she amends. “I don’t remember,” she finally admits. Turning her sleep-rumpled head to the side, she studies him through a veil of strawberry hair. “You look tired, too.”

“Yeah, well. You’d be tired, too. If your girls forced you to watch hours of cheesy Christmas movies. Ask me, Hallmark needs to stick to cards and shit,” he grumbles half-heartedly. “Ain’t nobody out there got an original idea no more. What you smilin’ so big for?”

The kid just smiles bigger and shrugs, burrows deeper into the pile of pillows at her skinny back and fumbles for the television remote. When she doesn’t find it, she looks over at him again. “Where’s Mama?”

“Somebody call X-Ray?”

Carol looks up from the chart she’s perusing and breaks out into a smile, walking toward the big man with an even bigger smile and stepping right into the bear hug he engulfs her in. “T.” Tucked safely beneath his chin, she returns the embrace wholeheartedly. “It’s been so long.”

“Too long,” T-Dog agrees. “Let me look at you.” Holding her at arms’ length, he studies her with astute eyes, from the top of her silver head to the tips of her Dansko-clad toes. “Dixon looks good on you.” When she blushes in response to his particular phrasing, he chuckles. “Dixon looks real good on you. Damn, Girl. You’re glowing.”

Much to her chagrin, the moment doesn’t go unnoticed by the young medic packing up her gear nearby and she’s quick to hush her friend because T’s teasing is one thing, but Rosita’s? Well, it’s another animal altogether. Her partner Bob just takes it even further, and Carol’s pretty sure she’s not equipped to withstand the onslaught today of all days. “Stop.”

T-Dog can’t resist making one more good-natured jibe. “Man’s really rubbing off on you.”

“I called X-Ray. Not a wannabe comedian.”

T-Dog grabs his chest in feigned shock, winks at her. “Ouch. That hurts.”

“You deserved it,” Carol quips as she leads him to a curtained cubicle. Drawing the curtain back, she smiles gently at her patient, a pale man with ginger hair and sweat beading on his upper lip. “Mr. Raleigh, X-Ray’s here.”

“Theodore Douglas at your service,” T-Dog introduces himself, immediately setting up shop. “Man, you ain’t looking so good.”

“Eric,” Mr. Raleigh is quick to correct them both. “You mean the broken ankle doesn’t do much for my fair complexion? Darn.” Turning to Carol, he fixes overly bright eyes on her face. “Any word from my husband?”

“He’s on his way,” she reassures him with a gentle hand upon his shoulder. “Last anybody talked to him, he was about 15 minutes out.”

“Knowing Aaron, that means he’s really only 7 or 8 minutes out.” He tells them both with exasperated fondness. “Unless he got stopped by the police. Oh, I hope he’s being safe.”

“Want me to go check on him again?” Carol offers.

“Oh, please. Would you?”

Giving his narrow shoulder a comforting squeeze, she nods. “Of course, I will. You try to relax, okay? You’re in good hands with T.”

They’re both still in their pajamas when they embark on their most challenging endeavor yet as new daddy and daughter, and it’s a good thing, too, because they ain’t even got started good and from Daryl’s standpoint, they’re making an unholy mess. Might be they should have followed Carol’s suggestion, but it’s too late now. It only gets worse when his brother makes an unannounced visit.

“The hell y’all two doin’?” Merle demands in a whiskey-rough drawl, one hand on his hip and the other rubbing the whiskers on his chin.

Daryl knows what it looks like. It looks like they’ve detonated a flour bomb inside the kitchen because it’s spread far and wide. It smells like an elf threw up in the place, too. At least that’s what ‘Phia claims. He ain’t so sure. “What’s it look like we’re doin’? Makin’ our own snow?” he snaps with a roll of his eyes that makes the kid giggle. Of course, it could be those absurd antlers Merle’s sporting on his fat head. “You high?” he blurts before he has a chance to censor himself.

“Think I should be askin’ you that question, Baby Brother.” Merle pulls up a barstool and plants his lazy behind on it, winks at Sophia and pokes a blunt finger in the bowl nearest to him. When he sticks it in his mouth, his lips purse for a split second before he smiles. “Not too bad. Nothin’ a little booze can’t fix.”

He can’t help himself. He growls. “Ain’t makin’ drunk gingerbread men.”

Merle shrugs his big shoulders. “Suit yourself.”

Ignoring him, Daryl goes back to studying the directions and he frowns. “Says here we’re ‘sposed to divide it up, wrap it, and put it in the fridge for at least 3 hours.” Glancing at the digital clock on the microwave, he mentally calculates how much time they have until the party and shakes his head. “Gonna have to cut it in half. At least. Probably more.” Fixing his gaze on the kid, he presses, “What’s your mama do?”

“I don’t know,” Sophia admits with a helpless shrug. “I just help decorate them.”

“Girl after my own heart, skipping to the good part like that.”

“Merle,” Daryl warns.

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong in what I said, Darylina. Some of us just like to be a bit more…” He pauses for effect, eventually finishing with an obnoxious leering grin twisting his lips. “Direct. Go right in for the kill. Then there are some of us love to build up the anticipation until they forget the whole point. Am I right?”

Feeling his ears flame when he glimpses the tiniest glimmer of understanding spark in Sophia’s innocent hazel eyes, Daryl’s quick to change the subject, kind of. “Think Andrea might have a difference of opinion. Heard she really hit it off with somebody at some work party of hers. You might have seen her around a time or two. Name’s Michonne.”

The smile freezes on Merle’s face and he flips him off as soon as the kid’s otherwise distracted.

Behind ‘Phia’s back, Daryl does it right back.

Lilly’s got her phone out, FaceTiming her daughter when Carol sneaks a few moments of peace in the break room. Peeking over her coworker’s shoulder, she greets the giggling little girl with a wave and a smile. “Hi, Meghan.”

“Ms. Carol, hi!”

Her freckles and her bright eyes put her in mind of Sophia and she excuses herself, holes up in the tiny single stall bathroom and takes out her own phone. Typing out a few words, she presses send and almost immediately, her baby girl answers her back on Daryl’s phone with half a dozen emojis. She laughs softly and sends back a response that earns her a bunch of acronyms she’s still isn’t completely up to speed on. “What even…” she wonders underneath her breath. The back and forth lasts for quite a while, and when she emerges from the bathroom again, she’s all alone in the break room with nothing but her thoughts to occupy her. At least she starts out that way. She looks up from picking absently at her salad when she hears a throat clear quietly.

“Mind if I join you?” Dr. Denise Cloyd offers her a brief shy flicker of a smile and waits for her nod before claiming the seat at the opposite end of the rectangular table and opening up a plain brown paper bag. “I can’t hear myself think in the doctor’s lounge.” She withdraws a plastic wrapped sandwich and sighs, letting her shoulders drop. “I need to hear myself think sometimes.”

“We all do,” Carol agrees amiably. Unscrewing the cap from her bottle of water, she takes a careful drink. She looks up, startled, when she realizes the young psychiatrist is talking again, mostly to herself.

“There’s a man out there convinced he’s Santa Claus, and I mean absolutely convinced. He’s even got a couple of patients’ kids fooled. What do I even do with that? I mean, how do I approach treating him without becoming the Grinch in their eyes? Sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything to you.”

“Sounds like you have yourself a real dilemma,” she muses kindly.

“I really shouldn’t have said anything. HIPAA,” she elaborates needlessly after a pause. “How could I have ever thought psychiatry would be less complicated and stressful than surgery?” Shaking her head, she murmurs an apology. “I’m sorry. I’m ruining your lunch, aren’t I?”

“Not at all,” Carol reassures her, repacking her salad and zipping it back up in her lunch bag. “My husband’s always telling me rabbit food isn’t very appetizing. Today, I’m inclined to agree.” Propping her chin in her palm, she glances up at the muted television and smiles at the little blond boy outwitting two bumbling would-be thieves. Sophia had always harbored a particular fondness for Home Alone. Every time it plays on television during the Christmas holidays she just has to watch it and somehow, she knows she’s doing exactly that right now across town, Daryl by her side. Paying the soft rustle of plastic no mind, she continues to watch the movie, at least until the smell of tuna reaches her nose. Then it feels like all the blood drains from her face and her stomach rebels. She barely has time to excuse herself before she’s up and dashing to the tiny bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her and dry heaving like she hasn’t in weeks.

The soft, anxious cadence of Dr. Cloyd’s voice almost doesn’t penetrate the barrier of the door when she leans against it from the other side. “Should I offer an apology or congratulations first?”

Merle’s long gone and the last batch of cookies are cooling in the kitchen. They’ve got another couple hours before the shift Carol’s working for Lori is over and Home Alone is playing for the second time that day. The kid’s barely paying any attention, though. It seems to Daryl there are other things weighing on her young mind. “Hey. What you thinkin’ ‘bout? Lookin’ awful serious over there.”

Sophia sighs.

It’s a long-suffering sound, a sound that sets his nerves on edge. “You happy, Kid? With me and your mama, with me and you and her being a family?” It ain’t ‘til he looks down that he notices his hands are clenched into fists and it takes several seconds and some deep, calming breaths for him to relax enough to let them go.

“I am,” the girl insists earnestly. “The happiest I ever been.”

“You are?” He can’t quite believe it, most especially because the look on her youthful face seems anything but happy to him. He knows worry when he sees it. He’s lived a lifetime in its stranglehold. That was ‘fore he met ‘Phia and her mama, though. “Really?”

“Really,” she tells him.

Still, she’s wearing that same furrow between her brows her mama gets and he feels concern start to eat at his gut. “You’d tell me if you weren’t?”

She curls those skinny arms around her legs and murmurs into the shield of her knees. “I would.”

“Know I’d do whatever it takes to make sure you and your mama get all the happiness you deserve?”

“I know. I do. It’s just…”

“S’just what, Kid? Ain’t got to keep it all bottled up. Not from me.” She’s got a smudge of flour on her crinkled nose, dots of the stuff peppering her freckled cheeks, too, and his fingers itch to brush it away. They ache to cradle her little face in the palm of his hand and promise her whatever he needs to so the worry will go away, but first she has to talk to him. He knows how hard that is sometimes, too. “’Phia. Got to talk to me, Sweetheart.”

“Sometimes, I’m afraid it’s not real. Like a dream. Like magic. Like…”

“Santa?” he offers, knowing instantly by her guilty expression that he ain’t telling her nothing she don’t already know, even if she tries to convince her mama otherwise. Girl ain’t snowin’ her mama either. She just ain’t realized it yet. “You afraid it’s all pretend? Something that only lasts ‘til you grow up and know better?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re stuck with me forever, Kid,” he promises her. “Shitty cookies and all.” That surprises a giggle out of her, and her arms fall to her sides, fidget there for a moment before they’re reaching for him and she’s curling herself around him like she did when he found her in them woods.

“They really are pretty bad.”

He hides his tremulous smile in the softness of her hair. “Can’t be any worse than Lori’s.”

She’s got her scrub pants loose and low around her hips, her hand covering her trembling lips when the curtain is pulled back and Jerry’s big, friendly body backs into the small cubicle.

“Somebody page for an…Ms. Carol. I mean, Mrs. Dixon.” Jerry’s beside himself, his dark eyes glittering with a healthy mixture of affection and worry when he takes in her pale face, her exposed abdomen. “Are you…do you need a…I need to get you a doctor.”

Her hand shoots out then, fingers curling around his forearm. “Jerry, wait. Don’t.”

Frowning, he shakes his head. “But somebody paged for an ultrasound and you’re…you’re…what’s going on?”

Sitting up, she sighs. “Close the curtain, Jerry. Please.”

He does as she asks and crowds necessarily close, lowers his normally jovial voice. “I don’t understand.”

Taking a deep breath, she lays it out for him. “I’m pregnant.”

Comprehension dawns on his face and his happy grin splits wide, making his eyes twinkle and shine. “Dude, congratulations. That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.” He smile dims when he realizes her expression doesn’t quite match his own. “Wait a minute. This is happy news, is it not?”

Feeling tears warm her eyes, Carol nods wordlessly. It is happy news, her longstanding reluctance to open her eyes to the reality notwithstanding. Yeah, she’s been watching her diet. She’s even upped her vitamins just in case. It’s just, there’d been others besides Sophia. Babies she’d never held in her arms. Babies whose hearts she’d never heard beat. Hope, before Daryl, hadn’t been a possibility. It hadn’t even been a viable option and now, when it’s so real she can almost touch it, so real she can see it in the gentle curve of her belly, the rich fullness of her breasts? She’s been so terrified if she gives voice to it that it will somehow vanish, and she wants to spare her husband that hurt at least. He’s borne enough pain to last several lifetimes. They both have. But that’s the thing about hope. Once it’s earned possibility, it gains the ability to grow into reality, and God, does she want this to be real. She wants it so bad she can almost taste it, Daryl holding their baby in his arms. She wants to give Sophia a baby brother or a baby sister. She wants to give them all the promise of a lasting forever. “It’s happy news,” she finally manages. “I just…I…”

Jerry takes her cool hands in his own and gives them a reassuring squeeze. “Let me make it real for you. You’ll see.”

Giving him a tearful smile, she can only nod again, murmur a soft, “Okay.”

“Why don’t you lie back? Make yourself comfortable while I boot up the machine, okay?”

“Thank you, Jerry.”

“No worries, Mrs. D. No worries at all.”

The kid’s all dressed up, pretty green ribbons in her hair, a matching scarf looped around her neck. She’s practically bursting at the seams in the back seat, but Daryl’s got his mind on other things. He’s got his mind on other people, namely the woman sitting in the passenger seat beside him. She’s got her eyes closed and a soft, serene smile on her face, one that’s been there since she walked through their front door in a happy daze, and he’d be lying if he pretended he wasn’t itching to ask her what it was all about. He’d be lying kind of like he had about all them cookies boxed up in the back seat. There’d be time ‘nough for those revelations later, though, because Glenn and Maggie’s house is just ahead and shit if the whole place didn’t look like Candyland in lights.

“Mama, look!”

Carol’s eyes flutter open and her lips part in awe. “It’s magical.”

Daryl grunts out a laugh at them both. “Magical? Place is tacky as all hell. Looks like the Griswolds decorated it.”

Sophia’s nose scrunches with confusion. “The who?”

Watching Home Alone on endless loop gives her little time to discover the joys of other holiday classics. He’s gonna have to rectify that. Eventually, he will. Maybe by next Christmas, he thinks. “Never you mind ‘bout that right now. You got everything back there ready?”

Carol’s blue eyes search his face and the barest of smiles tugs at her pretty mouth. “Just how many cookies did you two make?”

“Too damn many,” Daryl smirks, easing the car in the driveway behind Rick’s cruiser. He can barely make out Lori’s heavily pregnant silhouette behind the drawn curtains. Bed rest, his ass. As if he’d heard him, the swaying Frosty that guards the stone pathway gives him a knowing smile and bows before him.

“Uncle Merle helped,” Sophia pipes up behind his shoulder.

“Daryl didn’t tell me that.”

Course, he didn’t. “Yeah. Helped eat some of them.”

“Decorated them, too.”

Carol’s eyes widen at that little tidbit of information, and he panics, just a little bit. Clearing his throat, he jabs a finger toward the front of the Rhee house and the shaggy haired boy scampering through it. “Better go catch up with your boyfriend.”

Aghast, ‘Phia’s mouth drops open in horror. “Carl’s not…he’s ain’t…I don’t…hey.”

Daryl winks at her. “Better hurry. Get inside ‘fore he gets all his gross boy cooties all over ya.” He chuckles when the car door slams behind the kid and she puts at least two good feet between her and the Grimes boy all the way back up to the house.

“Gross boy cooties, Pookie?”

Put on the spot, he grumbles uncomfortably. “Yeah, well. You seen the way that kid looks at her?”

“They’re babies.”

There’s something about the way she says babies that twists his insides up into soft, squirmy knots. Warmth creeps past his collar and makes its way up his neck as she fiddles absently with the buttons there, undoes a couple of them. She leans into him, softly kisses his lips, warms them with her own and lingers there, gentle and achingly sweet until he almost forgets his name, much less his train of thought. “Won’t be for long,” he reminds her.

“Maybe not,” she concedes. “But tonight? They’re babies.”

He swallows hard and loses himself, for the moment, in her glittering eyes. “Seem to like that word an awful lot tonight, Sweetheart.” When she just gives him an enigmatic smile in response, those soft, squirmy knots grow wings that flutter fast and furious against his ribs as a faint glimmer of suspicion starts to form at the back of his mind. “Something you…fuck.” He almost hits his head on the steering wheel when a horn blares behind them and his brother climbs out from behind the wheel of his old truck, crashing the party with a bottle of cheap wine in one hand and some quality bourbon in the other. “Dammit, Merle!”

“I’ll get the cookies,” Carol offers, pushing open the passenger door and climbing out.

“Wait. I’ll…”

“Oh.”

“…get them,” Daryl sputters.

“You made gingerbread zombies?”

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