AN: So here we go. I have about four stories that will be wrapping up soon (at least as soon as I can get out the last chapters of them) so I thought I'd introduce to you some of the new stuff that I've been planning and wanting to work with. So far, I've got two Caryl and one McReedus I'm toying with, but this one is the one I'm brushing off and showing to the world first.

It's AU. It's very AU. That's pretty much all I'm going to say about that. It's going to be a mostly Caryl fic, but it will feature others too, sometimes heavily.

If you decide to read, I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Daryl lie in bed in the state just before sleep takes over where his whole body might have been floating on a raft at sea instead of lying firmly in his bed on the mattress that they hadn't changed for so many years that it was probably embarrassing. His house was quiet because it was too late for anything different. He'd been there for at least an hour and a half, having stayed up barely an hour after he'd forced Sophia, against her will, to go upstairs and get ready for bed.

When the silence in the house was broken by some thumping around and the sound of footsteps scuffling across the wooden floors, he perked a little, roused slightly from his slumber. He paused, almost holding his breath, and listened for evidence of what it was.

It could be anything. It could be a situation of "a drink of water" or it could be a situation of "Dad's asleep and won't know I'm watching television when he told me not to". He was trained, by now, to recognize the difference in all of these types of things within a few moments.

It was someone in the kitchen, he could hear that. And when he heard the tink of something metal against glass he had it rounded down to two possibilities. It was either the "snack monster" or it was Carol finally getting home and he'd simply missed the sound of her car in the driveway.

Daryl roused himself up enough to sit up in the bed and glance at the clock. She had to stop keeping the hours that she kept. He understood that her job was demanding and he understood that it required her to keep, sometimes, some terrible hours, but he also felt that she often got taken advantage of.

Carol worked at a law office for a very busy law firm. She had moved up in the office from being nothing more than a casual receptionist to being one of their "right hand ladies," and her salary reflected her efforts, even if her title didn't. As a result, she had a pretty erratic schedule. She could easily get days off when their life required it, and it did often, but she ended up making that time up plus some with the extra hours she had to work on days when they were working big cases sent down the line to them and she was around doing research and helping with sorting out tangled facts so that they were more clearly represented for the great minds actually handling the cases.

Tonight had been a late night for her. It was after ten.

Daryl kept his own share of late nights, from time to time. He and his brother owned a shop and that meant that he, whether he liked it or not, sometimes had to stay late to make sure that something got done when it somehow didn't get looked after during the regular working hours. It was those late nights, nights that Carol always made sure to make it home for the girls, that kept Daryl from complaining when the shoe was on the other foot.

Daryl sat in bed and listened to the shuffling about of his wife. Now that he knew it was her, he could mentally track her every move. She'd come in, fixed something of the leftovers that he'd left in the microwave for her, left those dishes for washing along with the breakfast dishes, and then she'd locked the door. From there she would be slowed down in her progress to their bedroom as she straightened things that caught her attention, things he had never managed to handle just right.

Then there was the creaking of the stairs. She always went up. He could hear the sound of the boards of the floor above him shifting and creaking slightly beneath her weight as she went from room to room, quietly, and checked on everyone there. He heard her voice, for the first time since he'd talked to her on the phone to verify that she'd miss dinner, coming over the monitor that they didn't really need but had never disconnected. She spoke quietly to Judith, who was likely still sleeping, and then progressed in her tour of making sure that sweet dreams found their way to everyone.

And then there was the descent down the stairs and finally she opened the bedroom door and appeared to him, a dark shadow against a dark background.

"You can turn on the light, if you need it," he offered.

"I thought you'd be asleep by now," Carol responded.

"Never quite asleep until you get here," Daryl said.

She didn't turn on the light. She passed through the darkness to their bathroom and turned on that light, bathing herself in the light for him to see through the contrasts. He watched her as she undid her day.

The clothes came off and she shed the restrictive layers of the business suit, the bra that she got rid of every day as soon as she felt it was "respectable" to do so, even the underwear that she had hated to sleep in since the first night he'd convinced her to leave them on the floor beside the bed instead of putting them back on to mark, definitively, the end of the love that they'd made.

He watched her, naked, wash her make up off, brush her teeth, and take her contacts out. He watched her slather on and smooth in the cream that she put on every night, already waging some war against time that she was convinced was going to rob her of her beauty.

Daryl didn't believe that time or anything else could rob her of her beauty. He'd met her when she was 20 years old. He'd been on two dates with her roommate, having been introduced to the idea of dating "college girls" by a buddy, and the woman hadn't interested him much at all. He remembered thinking she was pretty, she had a nice personality, but there just wasn't really anything there. And then he'd met her roommate and he'd immediately, and not without its own share of awkward feelings, known why he hadn't found the woman he'd gone out with enticing.

He believed in love, and though he'd never really believed in love at first sight, he realized immediately that he was in heavy like with the roommate of the girl he was trying to date.

And, luckily enough, since it was a situation that might have ended badly, the girl that he'd been dating had released him of any obligation that he might have to her, declaring that she really hadn't "felt" anything either. She was pleased, though, when he promised to introduce her to someone.

Daryl was probably one of the few men in the world that could say that he'd, for however short the period of time, dated his sister in law.

And though things hadn't worked out with him and Andrea, Daryl had married Carol when she was 22 years old had graduated college. And six months later? Six months later his brother had stood at the front of a church, one of the few times he'd ever been in one of the buildings, and thanked Daryl for not wanting to date his wife.

A year after the nuptials between the Dixon men and their now wives of almost twenty years, Merle and Andrea had proudly welcomed Merle Jr. into the world. Now he was a bouncing boy of 17 and hell on wheels on his best days, the spitting image of his father. Daryl and Carol had wanted the same for themselves, both craving a family, but they'd started to believe it would never happen for them. Years were long when you counted them with disappointment month after month.

But Sophia had come into the world, clearly opinionated and headstrong after it had taken them almost 30 hours to coax her out, just two years after her cousin.

And two years later? Merle and Andrea gladly welcomed Randy, who seemed to coax Lizzie to come on along a year later, matching their households two for two.

So they were pretty surprised when Mika followed her sister just a year later. And a year after that? Jacob joined his brothers.

And then the population of Dixon children, a large population per capita given that Merle and Andrea had bought the house next to Carol and Daryl's the moment it had hit the market, had reached its full capacity. Six Dixons between them, almost perfectly matched, and everything in the world was right.

That was, of course, until Judith and Hays came into the world two years ago, close enough together in age that they might as well have been running some kind of race to see who could arrive first. Judith had won the race, probably because she was always determined to beat Hays at everything, but only by a week and a half.

Through it all, though? Through everything that Daryl heard so many people say would make them pull their hair out or jump ship completely? Daryl had simply fallen a little more in love with his life.

Every child that others declared would bring them to madness, made Daryl just a little more sure that there was a God somewhere. His life just got better and better.

And the woman that he'd been with, from first date until the current date, for almost twenty two years?

Well, she was magical and he was convinced of it. He had teased her since their second date that she'd put some kind of potion in his drink to make him fall in love with her, and he was convinced that she brewed it up in secret and slipped it to him in his coffee every morning, because the spell of it had never faded. And if he had his way? It never would.

So she didn't need the cream, because she wasn't as beautiful now as she'd been when she was twenty…she was more beautiful. And "almost 42", as she referred to herself often, looked good on her. And even though Daryl told her that all those "lines" she said the cream would "fight" were lovely to him…because they reminded him of the year she tried to cook the Thanksgiving turkey in the microwave because of something she'd seen on television or the time that Sophia and Lizzie broke the banisters off the staircase and broke Mika's arm sending her down the stairs in their "homemade sleigh"…even though he loved those lines, he still bought her the cream. Because no matter what he thought of her, he wanted her to like what the hell she saw when she looked in the mirror, and he wanted her to see what he saw, and if the cream made that happen, it was worth the price.

Carol switched off the bathroom light and shuffled toward the bed in the darkness, clearly feeling her way as she came. Daryl felt when she sunk into the bed, both of them blinded momentarily by the change from light to dark, and he rolled into her, wrapping his arms around her before she could even get settled. She sunk into the bed, arranged herself the same way she did every night, and Daryl moved to fit his body tight against hers, resting with his chin near the crook of her neck.

He sighed at the feeling of having her there and at the relief his mind felt over the fact that it could finally give into the sleep that it had been holding just at arm's distance.

"Did you go?" She asked quietly.

"Yeah," he said. "Talked to Merle too. You can get off on Wednesday, right? That's what'cha said?"

She hummed at him in the affirmative and tangled her fingers in those of the hand he had wrapped around to the front of her body.

"You go?" He asked.

"At lunch," she said.

"And?" He asked.

She made a noise that was crossed between a groan and a moan.

"I hope you think five's a nice, even number," Carol responded, already sounding like she was dedicated to going to sleep.

Daryl smiled to himself and chuckled. He moved his head to kiss the back of her neck before he settled back into his place and squeezed her gently with the arm wrapped around her.

"I never was too good at math," he commented. "But I do know it'll all come out even. Love ya."

"Love you too," was the soft response he got, and the last words he heard before he closed his eyes and gave into the sleep he'd been aching for during the last couple of hours.