Title: Got Blues
Pairing: Daryl Dixon & Glenn (No last name given)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Racial Slurrs. Violence. Character Death. Drug use. Crime. Child Abuse. Homosexual and Heterosexual relationships. Man on man kissing. OoC-ness. AU.
Author's Note: Daryl and Glenn's actual ages haven't been given yet so I can only guess that in the series that Glenn is about twenty-three so he was born say 1987 or so and Daryl is forty so he was born in 1967 or so. Merl is seven or eight years older than his brother which will put him at forty-eight.
Songs Used and Mentioned: "Trouble in Mind" and "Devil is Watching You" by Lightnin Hopkins. "Well, Well" by John Lee Hooker
Enjoy
Daryl Dixon was born in 1967 in rural Georgia. His father farmed peanuts and peaches, and had been given the land by his father. Daryl's mother gotten pregnant with Daryl's older brother Merle still in high school eight years before. They never had much money, Daryl didn't always have clean clothes to wear, or money for lunch.
His father drank a lot, and he would yell and storm around the house slamming doors. He'd often grab Daryl, call him a scrawny fuck while shaking him. Daryl had watched several times as Merle and his father had gotten in to physical fights when Merle had been only thirteen. His mother would try to break them apart, and end up getting hurt in the process.
Merle was a trouble maker at school already, and the teachers automatically treated Daryl as a bad student, the older kids would try to fight him, to get back at Merle, so Daryl had to learn to defend himself from an early age. When Daryl was seven, his mother committed suicide in the barn. She hadn't come home one night, then next morning Merle found her hanging from the barn rafters. Neither Merle or their father were the same after that day. Merle started hanging out with the wrong kids, older ones and getting in to trouble with the local cops.
Their pops started drinking more, and he got a lot angrier. Merle was old enough after their mother died to take care of himself pretty well, and at thirteen he was already spending days at a time out of the house, showing up when he ran out of clean packed close and for the rare Sunday dinner their father was actually sober enough to cook.
Most of the time, Daryl took care of himself. Got himself up and ready for school in the mornings, feed the mules and the chickens. Made his lunch out of whatever they might have laying around, or he just went without that day. He made sure there was coffee in the pot for his father, if he decided to get up before noon to actually do work around the farm.
When Daryl would come home to find his father's pick up truck missing, and himself locked out of the house. He would ride his bike in to town, and find his father at the local bar. The bartender was a jack ass too, never told Daryl's father he had had to much, and needed to go home and take care of his son. The owner would always kick the ten year old out, because he didn't brats messing with his shit.
By the time Daryl turned eight, he'd taken to riding his bike up to the bar and sitting in the back of his dad's pick up truck, reading comic books or doing his homework and waiting for his dad. To make sure he didn't fall asleep behind the wheel, or crash in a ditch somewhere. On occasion, at closing, the owner had thrown his father in to the back of his truck, intent on letting the man sleep in the bed of his truck and get eaten alive by mosquitos for getting so pissed.
Daryl had been nine, and driven his father's stick shift pick-up truck the five miles back to the farm, and managed to get his pops in to the house and flopped on the couch with the help of a wheelbarrow and the fact that his father was so drunk he didn't notice when Daryl dropped him down the stairs, or pushed him from the truck bed and on to the ground.
After that, Daryl's father had taken to making him designated driver. He'd pick Daryl up from school some times, already buzzed and drive straight to the bar, and at the end of the night, Daryl would drive him home and made sure he'd passed out on his side so he didn't choke on his own vomit on the rare chance he was that drunk. Merle started coming home even less. He'd show up at home about once a month, to make sure their father hadn't beaten Daryl to badly, or to see if the old man had kicked the bucket yet. Their father had a life insurance policy that was worth fifty-thousand dollars that was to be shared between the two boys when he died. Daryl was little, but he knew his older brother owed someone a lot of money.
Ten year old Daryl Dixon hopped down from the passenger seat of his papa's rusty Ford pick-up. His skin was tanned and dirty from spending all his time outside. His jeans were tattered hand me downs from his older brother Merle, the local trouble maker. John Dixon walked around the front of the truck, tossing his truck keys against his son's chest, heaving the ten year old scrambling to grab them. The ten year old had a black eye, and bruises down his arms. He limped slightly on his left leg, but still managed to sneer at the other people on the street that were murmuring about him and his father. Daryl hated them, all they did was talk shit about everyone, never even crossed their minds to offer help to the ten year old driving his drunk father home at midnight.
"Stay here ya lil' shit and don't get in to no trouble." John growled, then spit out chew blackened spit at his son's feet. Daryl took a disgusted step back from the black glob and watched as his father stormed towards the biker bar across the street.
Daryl sighed and shoved his father's keys in to the pocket of his jeans, then lifted his ragged t-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face. It was just after noon on a Saturday, Daryl was going to spend from noon until after one in the morning, waiting for his father to get out of the bar. He hadn't had time to pack his bike in to the back of the truck, so he couldn't go to far, in case his father decided he wanted to leave early. He'd been lucky to not have homework this weekend.
He kicked rocks on the sidewalk back and forth in front of the truck, when he heard the music the first time. He turned to see three old colored men sitting under a huge pecan tree in the middle of the town center, basically a city block of grass, with trees and flowers, a few picnic tables and a fountain. Two of the men sat on one bench, the third on another. The man in the middle slapped spoons rhythmically against his knee and hand. The one on the left sang and played the harmonica, and the one of the right had a beat up guitar and a metal cylinder on his index finger on the neck of the guitar.
Pops always used to tell Daryl to stay away from the niggers. That's the first reason Daryl had decided to go over and see what they were doing. He'd nothing better to do, his ol' man would be drinking for hours before he forced Daryl to drive him home. Daryl had no money, and his dad had burned the last of his comic books he'd managed to steal from the red headed punk at school. The ten year old did what any ten year old would do; in order to piss his father off, he decided to do the one thing his father told him not to do.
The three men were; Charlie, Muddy and Jedediah. They'd served in World War Two together, where Muddy lost his right leg and Charlie his right eye.
Muddy played on the harmonica and would sing. Jedediah sang, and played bass sometimes. Charlie also played the guitar, and was the best Daryl had ever heard to his day.
And so Daryl found himself sitting on the ground in front of the two benches the men occupied nearly every day, under the shade of a huge pecan tree. They'd give Daryl a dollar a each for him to collect and shell pecans when they fell from the branches when they were in season. They told him war stories, and stories about how they grew up. They were all around sixty in 1976, when Daryl was ten. Muddy was the oldest, and he was born in 1913. Jedediah was the youngest, born in 1919.
When Daryl turned twelve, Muddy taught him how to play. Jedediah had died of a heart attack only four months ago, and Muddy said that he felt it in his bones that the rest of them were going to follow soon. The first song Muddy taught Daryl was "Well Well" by John Lee Hooker, and Daryl practice playing it until his fingers bled and he could play it in his sleep. From there, Muddy taught Daryl how to play what felt like music, what felt right. Jedediah left his bass to Muddy. When Charlie died, Daryl was fifteen, he left Muddy his beat up guitar and a World War Two era .9MM Browning that he'd kept after the war.
Daryl, still driving his father to and from the bar continue to play the guitar with Muddy. When Daryl turned sixteen, Muddy gave him Jedediah's silver spoons, Charlie's beat up guitar, and metal slider. Muddy's was completely blind when Daryl saw him last, two days before he turned seventeen.
"You've got blues in your soul, Daryl Dixon." Muddy told him, his voice hoarse and tired. His blind eyes stared off in to space and he nodded to himself.
"Yer crazy ol' man, fuckin' crazy." Daryl sneered and Muddy laughed, which turned in to a hacking cough. Daryl pounded lightly on the old man's frail back.
"So says you." Muddy said, then patted Daryl's hand with his withered one. "Take care of yourself son."
"Alrigh', I will." Daryl said and Muddy smiled, his wrinkled face forever burned in to Daryl's memory.
Muddy died while Daryl was at school the next day. By the time he'd gotten to the hospital, the doctors had already sent him to the morgue. He was buried at the back of the cemetery, in the section still cornered off for colored people a few days later. The town was still so fucked up and backwards like that. The pastor from Muddy's church said a few words. Muddy's only son had died in Vietnam and his wife had died twenty years before, from phenomia. So it was just him standing awkwardly with the few colored people that had come to say their final good byes.
Daryl was the one to pick up his personal affects from the morgue. Muddy's dented harmonica, which sounded better than any other harmonica around. Muddy said it was blessed by a Voodoo priest in New Orleans, where he grew up as a child. Daryl thought it was a bunch of bullshit, but let the old man have his stories. The .9MM from World War Two, an old bible and the clothes he'd been wearing when he'd been admitted to the hospital for the last time.
Merle got sent to jail for the first time when Daryl had turned nineteen, and spent the next three years locked up for drug charges and possession of stolen property, and got out early for 'good behavior'. While he was locked up, Daryl was left to deal with the farm and their alcoholic father who still liked to try to beat the crap out of him, even though Daryl was bigger and stronger than him now.
Daryl started tending at the same bar his father used to drink at when he turned twenty-one. Merle got arrested, on his birthday with a half a kilo of cocaine and spent the next seven years in prison. His father died of liver failure when Daryl turned twenty-eight. Merle joined a biker gang that same year.
Daryl took to playing guitar at the bar for extra cash when he'd sold the farm. He knew he'd been ripped off but he didn't give a fuck because he'd nothing but bad memories at the place. He could still remember Merle screaming and threatening him through the plexiglass window when Daryl visited him and prison and told him what he'd done. Merle'd been carried off by C.O.s and Daryl didn't see him until he picked him up after he'd been released over two years later
Daryl joined the same biker gang as Merle when he turned twenty-nine. He'd seen Merle and two other guys beat a man to death, and he decided to join rather than run and be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life or end up drowning in cement somewhere. He hate the life style. More often then not, his nights ended in loud drunken brawls in parking lots out side of bikers bars. Usually Merle or one of his "friends" looked at someone's girl wrong, or tried to pinch from their stash. Daryl had grown up a brawler so always gave more damage than he got.
Three years in to the gang, and some of the higher ups had realized he was Merle's silent enforcer, they liked that he was quite, and that he thought first, and could still end a fight before it really started. They made him and Merle collect debts; be it drugs, money, guns or favors. Merle was loud, scary right up front, and Daryl was the one that usually ended up breaking knees with baseball bats. He strayed during the next five years; got sucked in to drugs because of Merle, and his own personal shit, a fucking chick, Sally. She was beautiful as fucking hell, but she had so many fucking daddy issues it wasn't even funny. She used to shoot heroin and drug out around him, then began begging him to get high with her. For some stupid reason, he listened to her. After he started using, he started acting more like Merle, more like his father and he spiraled hard.
He got arrested twice; once for assault with a deadly weapon, but since it was a first offense, he only served ten months of a three year sentence. The second time, he'd gotten busted for drug possession with Sally. He took the fall, did six years while she got a slap on the wrist and a hundred hours of community service. She was murdered by her drug dealer while Daryl was in prison.
Daryl straightened out his act after that. He gave up drugs, though he still smoked pot on occasion. Fuck off he wasn't perfect and he hadn't touched a drink after he'd realized he was just like his ol' man when he was drunk. He moved just outside of Atlanta, started working at a shitty roadhouse, tending bar. He started fucking the owner and his wife who ran the place and he lived in the apartment above the bar. He played guitar or harmonica on the weekends for extra tips, and did his best to only see Merle in between his frequent trips in and out of prison.
Then the shit hit the fan when the zombie apocalypse started, thirty-some odd years since the day Muddy told him he had music in his soul. Daryl had forgotten his guitar during the panic, to worried about survival and making sure his fuck up of an older brother wasn't dead in a ditch somewhere.
Daryl found Glenn's guitar in their tent while searching for clean socks one night. It'd been over six months now, since the apocalypse had started. He'd finally had a moment of peace, and found the slightly battered guitar.
Daryl hadn't been able to sleep. He hadn't slept since four nights ago, when he learned Sophia was a walker, and he'd failed. He almost died, trying to find a girl who'd already been dead and right in front of his fucking face the entire time.
He'd taken the guitar from the tent he shared with Glenn, having started some half assed crazy relationship with the Korean. They were both the odd men out in this rag-tag group of theirs. Glenn had offered to watch Daryl's back if Daryl would return the favor. Which Daryl silently agreed to. Glenn was the only fucking person in this group that Daryl honestly gave two fucks about besides Carol, who he saw more as a sister than anything. He respected Rick, but the sheriff's stupid emotional wife and unbalanced son were going to get the man killed sooner than he deserved. Either than or his cop partner was going to Hulk out and take Rick and half the group out in the process. Glenn had then asked Daryl be the one to put him out of his misery should he ever be infected. Again, Daryl agreed, although the idea made him sick.
Now, sitting in front of the fire of his and Glenn's almost separate campsite, Daryl strummed over the strings of the guitar, to hear how it sounded. He plucked a few notes against the strings, staring blankly in to the flames. Absently he began to play a song that Muddy used to play and sing all those years ago.
The melody roused the others who weren't all asleep yet, and they all listened to the sounds waft through camp. They sat up from their cots, and Glenn, from his spot atop the RV on guard duty could see several people turn on the oil lamps in their tents, so they glowed softly and Glenn could see their shadows moving around. Glenn glanced to where Daryl was sitting against his motorcycle and played the guitar.
Glenn turned away from his lover with a smile and returned to watch, the full moon giving him a great view of the farm.
At four in the morning, when T-Dog relieved him from watch, Glenn made his way over to his and Daryl's tent, where Daryl was still playing guitar. The melody had changed, slowed down and it seemed sorrowful. Daryl was humming the words in his deep rough voice as Glenn slowly sank down in front of him. His fingers moved over and plucked the strings of the guitar with practiced familiarity. Daryl's eyes were closed and his head slowly nodded in time with the music.
Glenn recognized the type of music from going to way to many of Atlanta's Blues clubs during college because that's what his friends though was all the rage. Before, Glenn had just thought the music not his style, but now listening to Daryl make that guitar sing, Glenn decided he liked Blues, most of all when Daryl played it.
"What's the song called?" Glenn asked, and Daryl looked up at him, halting his playing. Glenn blushed as Daryl's light eyes examined him through the darkness.
"Trouble in Mind." Daryl said.
Glenn smiled as Daryl started to play the song again. Glenn moved to sit next to the hunter, leaning back against the tree that Daryl had moved to sit under half way through Glenn's watch shift. "Can you sing it?" He asked.
"Hell naw." Daryl said. "I ain't singin' shit. Now shut up kid... just listen." Daryl added when Glenn opened his mouth to ask another question. Glenn sighed and rested his head against Daryl's shoulder and closed his eyes.
Glenn fell asleep to Daryl playing guitar and humming roughly, and he slept better than he had since the world ended.
Daryl was gone when Glenn woke up, but he usually was, so Glenn went about his day, until Daryl came back to the farm around five thirty when it was time for dinner.
"So, who taught you how to play?" Glenn asked, watching with a wrinkled nose as Daryl gutted a rabbit, tossing the guts right in to the fire.
"Group of ol' men who sat across from the bar my pops drank in when I was younger." Daryl answered. "Muddy, Charlie, and Jedediah, fuckin' ol' as could be. Started talkin' to 'em because it pissed off my dad. Nothin' worse than hangin' round niggers."
Glenn's eyes went wide for a minute. "How old were you?"
"Eleven when I first met 'em. Twelve when I started playin'. Muddy and the others taught me everything, left me their favorite instruments when they died. Crazy ol' men just liked that someone was talkin' to 'em. Even if it was a dirty redneck's son." Daryl spat the descriptive words out with a sneer. Glenn frowned.
"I'm sorry."
"Don' be stupid Glenn." Daryl said, pulling the rabbit out of its fur like he was undressing a doll or something. "Ain' yer fault. You wasn' even born then."
"Still, I can be sorry, right?" Glenn asked.
"Don' need yer pity. I tol' ya I didn' want it." Daryle growled and Glenn sighed.
"That's not what I meant, sorry." Glenn murmured and they sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes.
"Ya ain't half bad at playin' yerself. Ya haven't had no one ta teach ya." Daryl said, not looking up from the squirrel who'd found itself at the wrong end of one of Daryl's arrows.
"Really?" Glenn asked, perking up. Daryl snorted and shook his head.
"Yeah, I mean ya hold the guitar like its about to catch fire in ya lap, and yer fingers aren' tough enough to really pull the strings, but tha comes with time." Daryl said and looked up at Glenn, who grinned, looking down at his fingers. He had a few bruises across the pads of a few of his fingers, and a wire burn on both of his index fingers from sliding them up and down the strings and using them the most to strum.
"You should teach me." Glenn said and Daryl actually stopped his skinning since Glenn had come over to him. He had the look on his face that Glenn had come to know as his pensive face, his brows furrowed, blue eyes staring intensely, jaw clenched slightly. His broad shoulders would tense up, and Glenn had a hard time not noticing how attractive Daryl was, how hot and intense of a person he was. They were qualities that had drawn Glenn to the redneck in the first place. He was strong, a survivor, like Glenn, though their tactics were different. Glenn had learned to be quick, move fast in front of the walkers, or even faster behind them before the next group wandered by. He hadn't really stayed in one spot for very long before meeting up with the group. He slept in whatever small space was safest inside buildings, in the back of an SUV on occasion.
Daryl however didn't give a fuck who knew where he was. Once he found a place he wanted, he said he was going to stake his claim and live there until he grew old and died. Or so he'd drunkenly and highly said after sharing a bottle of Jack Daniels and some of Merle's pot stash with Glenn one night. They'd gotten the cab of Daryl's pick-up truck so filled with smoke that they hadn't been able to see out the front windshield. Andrea had laughed at them for a good twenty minutes when they stumbled from the truck in a billow of smoke the next morning with the worst case of cotton mouth and nothing to cure their munchies.
Glenn decided Daryl's idea of settling down somewhere and calling it home after all this shit would be nice. He also decided sharing that place with Daryl would be amazing. If the others joined, Glenn couldn't really care less about.
"Yer serious about this aren't ya?" Daryl asked and Glenn shrugged. Daryl tisked, tossing the squirrel guts in to the fire then prepping the rabbit and squirrel to be smoked for the rest of the night. " 'm no good at teachin'. I ain't got the patients." He said with a shake of his head, setting the spit rod on the forks that held it over the fire.
"Well, if I turn out to be a horrible student, I'll let you stop teaching me," Glenn said. "Without getting mad." He added when he saw the look in Daryl's eyes.
"Fine, but no fuckin' complain about the way I fuckin' teach." Daryl said, he sounded a bit flustered, and it made Glenn smile. Sometimes Daryl was a bit of a softy, then he would do something uber manly and ruin the moment. So, before he could ruin the moment, Glenn leaned over and kissed him on the corner of his mouth, then pulled away.
"Its a deal." Glenn said.
"Yer fuckin' crazy." Daryl grumbled, then stalked away to wash his hands from a spigot on the side of the Greene farm house.
Glenn smiled to himself as he watched Daryl stalk off, the decided to have the guitar out and ready, so Daryl wouldn't go back on their deal, not that he thought the other man actually would.
End
I've been wanting to write a Walking Dead fan fiction since Season one... no I haven't read the comics, I know I'm a horrible person please forgive me. But anyways. Right away I feel in love with Daryl, and in Season 2 his character just totally blew me away. It was pretty much the same with Glenn's character, plus he's cute. I think that Daryl and Glenn's personalities blend very well together, and they compliment each other as well.
Please give favorites and leave me reviews and comments. I'll go in to more detail, have specific memories of things that were mentioned in Daryl's life. So if you have unanswered questions, or want to know more, giving me feed back is how you get those answers. Plus maybe even sex, fluff, angst and all the other good stuff.