(I'm starting another story. I plan on it being short, but then again I hadn't planned on both of my other stories reaching 50+ chapters. Read and review if you like. This will be AU. I just like to borrow my favorite characters and play puppet master with them. It's fun. Anyway, I'm rambling. Don't worry if you're still reading my other story. I'm still going to write on it, too.)
Twenty-year old Daryl Dixon was currently living in a house he rented in a small college town a few hours south of Atlanta. He'd met Rick Grimes three years ago when the college happened to make them dorm-mates. They'd hit it off pretty quickly, finding that they shared a love of guns, hunting, and occasionally getting shit faced drunk.
The next year, the two decided to get their own place off campus, along with Rick's best friend, Shane Walsh. They rented a decent size three bedroom house, which was more or less, within walking distance of the college that they attended. The living situation seemed ideal because of financials, although Daryl never really took to Shane the way Rick did. There was just something about the guy that he didn't trust. He had always had good instincts and was a very observant person. But Shane and Rick had been friends since grade school and if Rick liked him so damn much he was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and he'd put up with living with him the past year and somehow managed not to kill the cocky bastard.
Rick also had a girlfriend named Lori who had been a prominent presence around them the last two years. She was his high school sweetheart. His first love. She was a year younger than him, but followed him off to college after graduating last year, and as far as Rick was concerned, as soon as they both finished school they'd get married and start having babies.
Daryl didn't care for her much either. She always seemed kind of whiny and he thought she had a manipulative side to her. He dealt with that, too, though, because Rick was head over heels in love with the bitch and nothing he could have said would have changed his mind about her.
Unfortunately for Rick, Daryl's instincts regarding Shane had been right all along and it turns out he wasn't very trustworthy. One afternoon about two months ago, Rick got out of class a lot earlier than expected and decided to surprise Lori at her dorm-room. Too bad for Rick, he was the one who was surprised when he caught her and Shane in bed together.
He'd taken it pretty hard to say the least. The first week he'd skipped work and hadn't gone to any of his classes. He just laid around the damn house feeling sorry for himself and drinking. Daryl finally had enough and smacked him up-side the head one good time and told him to get off his ass and stop being a pussy. His tough words somehow sparked something in Rick's brain and he ended up going to work the next day and taking his ass to class.
It wasn't that Daryl didn't feel for his friend. He really did. The poor bastard got screwed over by the love of his life and his life-long best friend. It was a hell of a note, to say the least. He couldn't imagine the two people he trusted most in life fucking him over like that, although Daryl didn't exactly trust many people, either. He'd learned at a young age that people let you down and that family can't even always be trusted. He'd pretty much closed himself off to most people the majority of his life and had never really formed many close bonds. Rick and his older brother, Merle, were the two people closest to him, but he still sometimes felt guarded, even with them.
He'd never even begun to have any sort of decent relationship with a woman. In fact, the only connections he ever made with women were drunken one night stands he had with random women. He'd never been with the same woman twice, and as ashamed as he was to admit it, sometimes he didn't even remember their names. He'd always go to their place, he'd never bring them home with him, and he was always sure to leave before they woke up in the morning. Maybe it was a dick move, but the way he saw it was that any woman who was willing to go home with a random stranger they met in a bar wasn't exactly looking to settle down anyway.
It wasn't like he went out and led women on and lied to them to get what he wanted. He never made it seem like more than it was. In fact, he really didn't have a bit of damn game at all and could barely talk to women sober. Most times, women ended up coming onto him first and he didn't even have to make a move. That didn't help his reputation of getting around, though. He somehow found himself okay with it. They got what they wanted, he got what he wanted, and everyone involved was happy. He wasn't about to let himself get close enough for anyone to hurt him. He was smarter than that.
Overall, Daryl thought his life was currently going pretty damn well. He had a decent group of people he hung around with, he had a part time job as a vet tech, and he was a junior in college with a high B average. Considering the fact that his old man told him he was a dumbass who'd never be shit, he found himself pretty damn proud of that fact. Next year he would graduate with a degree in Biology and he really wanted to work with wildlife in some way after graduation. With the skills he'd learned as a vet tech, along with all of the classes he was currently taking, his advisor seemed to think he'd have no problem doing just that. As far as he was concerned, his life couldn't get any better right now.
()()()
"Rough day at work?" Rick asked Daryl with a smirk, as he saw his roommate enter their house with a blood-stained Greene Animal Clinic t-shirt and a pair of scrub bottoms on.
"Hell yeah." He grumbled, Maggie was draining a damn cat abcess and I was holding it. The damn abcess just busted completely open and got all over me. I think the shits in my hair. I'm gonna go get a shower real quick." He looked over at the coffee table in front of where Rick was sitting and noticed a box of pizza sitting on it. "Your fat ass save me any?"
Rick flipped Daryl off and let out a chuckle. "Yeah, there's about three slices left."
"Alright, thanks." Daryl replied, as he peeled his shirt off and headed towards the shower.
"Hey, Daryl?" Rick called out.
He stopped in the hall and turned back towards his friend. "Yeah."
Rick's voice grew serious. "We need to talk about something when you get out."
Daryl scowled. "This ain't about Lori is it? You ain't taking that bitch back are you?"
"Hell no! I was an idiot when I was crying for her back. This isn't about Lori. It isn't even about me, really. Just wash that nasty ass smell off you before I puke and then we'll talk."
Daryl just shook his head and walked in the bathroom.
()()()
When he got out of the shower he felt relieved not to smell like rotting asshole anymore. He had an early class tomorrow and didn't plan on getting out again tonight. He just slid on a pair of pajamas and plopped down in the recliner beside where Rick was sitting on the couch. He let the foot prop up and grabbed himself a piece of pizza. "The hell you wanna talk about?" He grumbled between bites.
Rick pinched his temples and sighed deeply. "You're probably gonne be mad and I know you live here too and I should have asked you first, but I couldn't say no. Okay?"
Daryl shifted in his seat. "Tell me Shane ain't moving back in. I'll kick the mother fucker's ass myself."
"Damn it, Daryl! This ain't about Lori or Shane. I'm just getting over all that. Why do you keep bringing them up tonight?"
Daryl threw a hand up in a defeat. He knew Rick was still sensitive about all of this and did feel bad for making him bring them up if they didn't have anything to do with this conversation. "Sorry. What is it then?"
"Well, you've heard me talk about my sister before?"
He nodded. "Yeah. The one that lives in New York or something?"
"Yeah. My sister, Carol, who moved to New York after she graduated high school about four years ago to go to college and then met that douche bag, Ed, and moved in with him and dropped out."
Daryl shrugged. He'd heard Rick talk about her a lot. She was almost two years older than him, but he still seemed extremely overprotective of her. Daryl hadn't met her in the going on three years he'd known Rick, but he knew she lived with some guy her family wasn't crazy about and Rick constantly talked about punching him in the face one day. "So, what about her?" He asked, unsure of where this was going.
"Shem uh, well, she kinda just broke up with that guy she was living with she's moving back to Georgia. Things with her and my parents are kinda not great right now and she needs a place to stay for a little while. She's talking about enrolling at the college here getting back started on her degree."
"And you told her she could stay here." Daryl finished for him.
"Kinda." Rick replied quietly. "Are you cool with that? It's just, she's my sister, man. I can't tell her no and she's pretty upset right now. She needs to be around family."
"Hey, ain't no big deal. I'd have done the same for my brother." He assured him.
"So, you don't mind if she takes dickwad's old room until she gets a job and gets on her feet?" He asked hopefully.
"Nah. Like I said, ain't no big deal." He grabbed another slice of pizza and bit into it. "I'm sure I'll like her a hell of a lot better than I liked Shane."
"Thanks, man. I'm glad you're cool with this." Rick stood up to get himself something to drink, but a realization crossed his mind suddenly that hadn't occurred to him before. "Hey, Daryl, one more thing?" He made sure to lock eyes with his friend as he told him this.
"Yeah?"
"I know how you are with girls. It isn't my thing to just hook up with them and never call again, and I don't judge you for doing it, but don't fucking touch my sister. I mean it." He added sternly. "She's not like those girls you normally screw around with. You'll hurt her."
Daryl got a genuinely offended look on his face. "I wouldn't do that, man."
Rick shot him a skeptical look.
"I'm serious. I wouldn't fucking do something like that to your sister."
