AN: So this is a little one shot that was inspired by a comment that SuperDeadYaz made. It's an AU one shot that's mostly Daryl/Alice (brOTP), but there's certainly some Caryl in there too. Just a little something for fun.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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The bar was a shithole and that was really ranking it too high. It was about the same as telling a hotel you had a four star stay when really your room might have ranked a half star on any scale.
But it was Alice's favorite bar. It was the one place in town that she was least likely to see anyone that she worked with and wasn't going to be forced, on her nights off, to talk about work or to diagnose some random problem that someone had…although it had happened once or twice.
Consequently it was Daryl's favorite bar because it was one of those places where you just didn't have to watch yourself. You didn't have to worry about what people would say about you being there and you didn't have to worry about the fact that you might have a little too much and have to stumble out of the place with less grace than you wanted to have.
Daryl had met Alice in that very same bar, sitting almost at the same table they were at tonight about four years before. He'd been a little intoxicated, tried to pick her up, and when she revealed to him that she was a lesbian…a big one…he'd laughed and apologized. She'd forgiven him immediately, offered to buy him a drink, and invited him to sit down and share the table with her, even if she wouldn't be agreeing to share his bed later.
And Daryl had a great night just hanging out with her and talking shit about the other people there. He'd very nearly choked the next day when, her number stored in his phone for future hangouts, he'd called the number and she…not recognizing his number…had answered and declared herself to be Dr. Alice Walker.
Daryl didn't consider himself to be the kind of man who hung around with doctors. He was simply a mechanic and he felt awkward around people with too much education in his opinion. But he'd gotten over that with Alice because, when he didn't know she was as doctor, he'd thought she was just "one of the boys" that probably worked some kind of blue collar job living from paycheck to paycheck…and she hadn't made him feel awkward in all the time that he'd known her.
Tonight was one of her nights off and they were out drinking. A guy he worked with had dropped them off and offered to pick them up later.
Alice had asked Daryl if he wanted to go out "picking up chicks" together. He'd laughed at her, but mostly it was simply because he was a failure at those kinds of things…he just wasn't good with women. It had taken him about six shots to work up to approaching Alice, and that hadn't turned out well for him, at least not in the dating world.
"So? What do you see, Dixon?" Alice asked, sucking down the third of the shots that she had lined up in front of her. She usually started with that before she considered her night of drinking even begun. Daryl figured it was good that she only did this about once a month or she might need a new liver before long.
Daryl looked around.
"How the hell are you going to find someone here, Al?" He asked, ignoring her question. "You're just going to go up and start asking people if they happen to be lesbians? Or do you have some kind of code?"
Alice snorted.
"My gaydar is spot on," she said. "It's just…something you have or you don't. And I have that shit!"
Daryl chuckled.
"Yeah, alright," he responded. "Well you go get you one and I'll sit back and watch your skills at reeling her in."
Alice stood up and pointed a finger at him.
"Don't doubt me," she said. "I promise you. I'll find someone. I'll have at least a phone number by the end of the night."
Daryl chuckled.
"OK, Al," he said. "I bet you will. Let me just sit back right here and learn from a real pro how to do this shit, because I bet you I leave here like I do most nights, empty handed."
"I'll buy you a bottle of lotion for your birthday," Alice said. "You don't get out there and try, you're not going to find anyone. You've got to be available…or at least look available."
Daryl shifted around in his booth.
"And how the hell do I go about looking available? Tell me sex guru," he said, laughing at his own words. "How does someone like my sorry ass aspire to be as all knowing as someone like yourself?"
"Smartass," Alice remarked.
But she smiled, so he knew that she was amused.
"First thing you do, if you're not going to work the floor, is take your ass up there to the bar," Alice said. "Look single. And smile for fuck's sake. Your teeth are in pretty good shape, you don't need your damn lips to hold them into place the whole time."
Daryl sucked his teeth in response to that, but he couldn't help but be amused by her lessons. He slid out of the booth, purposefully knocking her out of the way so that she smacked him in response, and headed toward the bar with her following close on his heels.
"And now? Dr. Love?" Daryl asked, sitting on one of the bar stools covered in cracked and faded fake leather.
"Well," Alice said, looking around, "do you see anything you like?"
Daryl glanced around. He saw a few women that he liked, but that didn't mean that he was going to go and "work the floor" as Alice said. He didn't respond and instead gave her a bored expression to let her know that she wasn't getting anything else from him.
"I hope the hell that to straight women your ass makes up in looks what you lack in personality," Alice commented.
"You're so damn good at this," Daryl commented, "who the hell you picked out?"
Alice nodded with her head and Daryl tried to follow the line of sight.
"You see the silver fox over there? The one in the silky looking blue shirt?" Alice asked.
Daryl spotted the woman. She was sitting at one of the small tables by herself and she had her chin resting on her hand while she fiddled with one of the brightly colored plastic straws that looked like pirate swords that was floating in her drink. He'd seen her already. She was attractive and hard to miss in a bar where a good many of the women looked like they should probably come equipped with their own bags, as his brother would say.
"Yeah, I seen her," he commented nonchalantly.
"That beautiful little lady is going to give me her phone number," Alice said.
Daryl chuckled to himself and shook his head.
"Keep dreamin' Al," he said. "I think you done bumped your fuckin' head when I weren't lookin'."
"How the hell you figure that one, Dixon?" Alice asked.
"That woman? She's straight," Daryl said.
Alice hummed and then smiled at him.
"Most women are, until they're not," she offered. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
He laughed at her confidence. He knew her well enough to know that a lot of it was false confidence, but it seemed to work for her…at least it worked for her more than his approach had ever worked for him.
"So how the hell are you going to pick up that woman?" Daryl asked. "She's too damn pretty for your ugly ass anyway. I bet you five bucks you end up with a drink in your face."
Alice laughed low in her throat at that and then she locked her eyes on his. She shook her head slightly at him.
"I treat ladies like ladies," Alice said. "Even if I'm wrong…I don't end up with drinks in my face. Watch and learn. If you feel froggy, you might find something you like too."
Daryl hummed at her.
"Or you can just sit here, force yourself to show off those pearly whites every now and again, and hope to hell that someone notices you," Alice said. "But for the love of getting laid before hell freezes over, look like you're not a grumpy asshole so that they'll notice you."
"Fine, Al," Daryl said, not able to hide his smile at her tone of voice and facial expression combined. "I'll sit here and look damn near irresistible while you show me how the hell to do it. I wanna learn from a damn expert."
Alice winked at him.
"And you will," she said.
She bumped the heel of her hand on the bar twice to get the bartender's attention and when he came over she pointed out the woman to him.
"What is that lovely lady drinking?" She asked. "And can you get me two of them, please?"
She flashed him a smile that was unnecessary. The bartender already had her credit card and nearly everyone that worked there knew that Alice could have whatever the hell she wanted because she was good for her tab and heavy tip for the tip jar that they all split between themselves.
When the man brought the two cocktails and put them on the bar in front of them, Alice rocked on her heels and smiled again.
"Thanks hot stuff," she declared. "And…can you get a little social lubrication for my pard-ner here? He could use it."
She winked at Daryl and then flashed another smile at the bar tender who chuckled in return. It was only a matter of time before he'd give into her and laugh. Daryl had learned that too. Truthfully, that might be one of the reasons that Alice didn't end up with drinks in her face. She could just about soften the pain of swallowing ground up glass if she wanted to.
The bar tender put another drink in front of Daryl and Alice nodded her head at both of them before she picked up the glasses.
"You're goin' now?" Daryl asked, tasting his drink.
"I'm going now," Alice said.
"You want me to say I hope you got some good luck or somethin'?" Daryl asked.
"I don't need good luck," Alice responded. "Watch and learn."
Daryl chuckled.
"You're too damn cocky," he commented.
She winked at him once more.
"And you're not cocky enough," she said. "But we're working on that. You pick someone out. I've got a phone number to get."
Daryl watched as his friend walked across the bar toward the table with the woman she'd picked out. She approached her, offered a drink, and got a smile from the woman.
And Daryl felt his stomach do something of a flip flop. The woman sitting at the table really was pretty. He hadn't noticed it quite as much when she was simply sitting there, her face on her hand, staring almost forlornly at her drink, but when she smiled there was something that flooded her face.
Maybe Alice was right and there was something to the whole smiling thing. Daryl tried to will himself to smile a little, and it wasn't that hard when he imagined that he'd been the one with the guts to approach someone who looked like her…when he imagined that he'd been the one that had offered her a drink that she'd accepted…when he imagined that he was the one that she'd smiled like that and offered a seat to Alice.
He almost felt a twinge of jealousy in the moment because Alice was the one that was sitting down now, talking to her, smiling and leaning toward her across the table.
The woman seemed to be responding warmly to Alice, though, so Daryl thought that probably her gaydar or whatever had been right and the woman was interested. They both looked around the bar as they chatted, but they ended up looking back at each other and smiling broader as they went along. Daryl watched as the conversation took place, trying not to look to creepy if anyone was looking at him, and he tried to look around and offer the smile he'd been practicing to any woman that he caught looking at him.
And he'd offered the smile at least twice to the woman that Alice was talking to when she'd glanced in his direction.
Daryl didn't know how long he sat there, nursing drinks on Alice's tab, or how long the two women talked, but he figured that it had certainly been long enough that the woman was interested in Alice. If she hadn't been, she wouldn't have let the conversation linger that long…and she wouldn't have let it last long enough for Alice to order them another round of the brightly colored drinks that they were sucking on that came complete with plastic straws.
Daryl laughed to himself. It was pretty bad when his best girlfriend was better at picking up women than he was…and when she picked up women that he knew he was going to have a hard time containing his jealousy over if he had to interact with her later while they were together.
When the conversation was obviously done, though, Alice stood up from the table. Daryl watched as she reached, nonchalantly, and squeezed the arm of the woman that she'd been talking to. The woman extended her arm and slid her hand down Alice's arm to squeeze her hand in hers…all the while smiling. Alice finally took her leave of the woman, turned with a broad smile still on her face and started back across the space toward Daryl.
Daryl saw the woman smiling in his direction, offered her one of his own, and then felt a little embarrassed because he realized she was likely still wearing the expression from her encounter with Alice and was simply watching her trip back toward the bar.
Alice walked up, leaned on her elbow on the bar, and requested another drink for herself and for Daryl when the bartender came over.
Drinks delivered and the bartender gone, she took a seat on the cracked stool beside Daryl and sipped at her drink, glancing around. The woman she'd left kept throwing glances in their direct from time to time too.
"Well?" Daryl asked.
"What?" Alice asked, looking like she had no idea what he might be curious about. He chuckled.
"Did you get her damn number or what?" He asked.
Alice smiled.
"Oh! Yeah," she said.
She reached in her shirt, digging around in her bra, and came up with one of the white paper matchbooks that the bar had everywhere. She held it out to him with a smile.
"She wants you to call her tomorrow," Alice said, putting the matchbook in his hand while he struggled to figure out what was going on. He looked at the woman and she smiled at him again. He looked at Alice and got another of her signature winks. "Or…you could go talk to her now, you know?"