AN: This is just a one shot that I wanted to do. It's partially based on a dialogue prompt that I saw on Tumblr (except I actually changed the dialogue) and it's partially based on the idea for the "biker family" fic that I'm considering eventually doing for Caryl. This is just for entertainment, so don't take it too seriously.
I own nothing from the Walking Dead.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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They wouldn't make the five hours back to Union tonight, not even if Daryl wanted to. It really wasn't worth the risk and Daryl knew that. They just wouldn't make the last leg of the trip. There was no way. The rain had been coming down by the bucketful for hours and the highways were just plain getting dangerous. Before they made it home, they were going to have to pass through some winding roads and the darkness already lowered visibility. The rain would just make it worse. They'd make Union tomorrow, probably, but they wouldn't make it tonight.
Some of the other guys might've been up for it. Some of the other guys might say that a little rain didn't scare them and nothing kept them off the highway—not when they had a mind to cover ground. Daryl might have said that, himself, once upon a time. But that was another night. That was another life.
Daryl had his reasons, now, for not taking such a stupid chance.
Life had a way of changing entirely, even if some things never changed.
The bar they'd found was actually pretty nice in comparison to some that Daryl had been in before. Before the place had been cleaned up, it was nicer than The Chambers had been. Coming out of the bathroom, Daryl sniffed his fingertips. Beyond the smell of cigarette smoke—something that he felt never entirely washed off of his hands—he could smell a faint scent of cherry. It was good smelling soap.
The bar was doing pretty well for itself as far as Daryl could tell. It drew a decent crowd for a Tuesday night when the rain was coming down in sheets. At the bar there were about three regulars that Daryl could just tell were there so often that the seats were worn to fit their asses perfectly. Also at the bar were two of Daryl's "brothers". Their cuts identified them immediately.
Their cuts, in fact, made them stand out pretty well in the bar. Daryl scanned the bar and found the rest of his brothers in a matter of seconds. The only one missing—his actual biological brother, Merle—was probably outside fucking around on the porch or was maybe doing the responsible thing and calling around to see about motel rooms that could house all of them for the night.
That was Merle's job. He was the President. He handled the business end of things—even if it was something as boring as booking motel rooms in a small town that caught tourist traffic that was headed anywhere but where the hell they currently were.
Glancing around the bar, Daryl made accidental eye contact with a few people that were out for a drink. They were watching him. They were watching all his brothers carefully. One wrong step and the cops would be there—small town police with nothing better to do than harass out of towners that they assumed to be trouble just because of the cuts they wore. This town wasn't used to the likes of them. This town wasn't accustomed to seeing the Judges ride through.
And they were absolutely fascinated.
Dropping his eyes to avoid further eye contact and any more awkward moments, Daryl worked his way through the crowd and toward the bar.
Beau—one of their newly-made-members who had, just three days before, still been a wet-behind-the-ears prospect—was already hugged up on a girl at the bar. The girl looked thrilled with the prospect of hooking up with a badass biker that would piss her parents off worse than anyone she could dig up in the town. Beau looked terrified. Daryl laughed to himself. If he played his cards right, the dirty blonde boy could get his first piece of ass, on a rainy night, out of a clean bar stuck right off the interstate.
Watching Beau and perhaps reliving the glory days of his youth a little, Mac sat two stools down the bar from Beau and worked on whisky. They'd have to cut him off before long because it looked like he was doing some damage on the bottle and, though the old man could hold his liquor better than most folks, Daryl didn't know how far they'd have to ride to a motel. From the looks of the three older women holding down a booth not far from the bar, Mac could have his choice if he'd just give up on coveting what Beau had found and shop for something a little more his speed—and his age—but so far he hadn't so much as turned around on his stool to notice them and they seemed a little too intimidated to come over.
When Daryl chose a bar stool, three stools down from Mac and just a short distance from the long-term regulars, Mac raised his shot glass in Daryl's direction and smirked at him. He tipped his head in the direction of Beau and Daryl nodded his head. Then he tipped his head in the direction of the three ladies that were hoping for Mac's attention.
Daryl had only settled on his stool, facing forward, to consider what he might want to drink when a lyrical voice posed the question to him from out of nowhere.
"Can I buy you a drink?"
Daryl looked around, taking a moment to locate the source of the voice, and finally his eyes landed on a blonde who looked to be at least two decades Daryl's junior. She was dressed in a sort of western get-up, but she appeared to be the kind of woman who had never even been on a horse and chose the outfit for the look of it more than the practicality.
She also appeared to be the kind of woman who was better barking up Beau's tree than Daryl's.
But Daryl wasn't entirely sure she wasn't working at the bar. After all, he'd given her no indication that he wanted her attention. He had even less of a lustful look in his eye than the old man did and he'd been dreaming of riding something other than his bike for at least two days—but it just wasn't the blonde.
"You servin'?" Daryl asked.
"I'm buyin'," she responded.
"I buy my own drinks," Daryl said. "And I don't drink on credit."
"You're not from around here," the blonde responded quickly. "A welcome to town drink."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"Hospitable," he said. "You offer that to everyone that comes in the door?"
"Just the thirsty lookin' ones," she said. "What'll it be?"
Daryl had no intention of letting the blonde actually buy him a drink. However, he'd learned by now that it was easier to just let a woman in a bar think she was getting her way until it was time to really let her in on the secret that you weren't interested in the slightest.
"Beer," Daryl said. "Light."
The blonde pulled up a stool next to Daryl. She didn't work for the bar, but she seemed to command a certain amount of respect there because the moment she sat the bartender came over. She repeated Daryl's order and then placed her own, choosing to match his drink.
"Not what I expected," she said, "from a man like you?"
"No?" Daryl asked, amused. "What'd you expect?"
The blonde shrugged her shoulders.
"Whisky?" She said. "Bourbon. No—not bourbon. Whisky. Maybe? Jim Beam. Jack Daniels."
"That what you thought I'd drink?" Daryl asked. "A man like me? Or that what you was hopin' I'd drink?"
"Is there a difference?" The blonde asked.
Daryl relaxed a little on his stool. There was no harm in the woman's company and he wasn't entirely against having someone to talk to for a couple of hours whose face he hadn't seen for the last eight days straight. She'd lose interest in him soon enough. In an hour, he figured, if they were still there she'd get up and move on. The next time he'd see her, it would probably be morning and she'd probably be doing the walk of shame out of one of his brother's rooms with her boots in her hand.
"You see the cut, you decide I drink whisky," Daryl said. "Decide you know what kind of man I am. Goes with your preconceived notion of me." The blonde raised her eyebrows at him and Daryl reached across the bar in front of her to drag an ashtray closer to him. He laughed to himself. "Same kinda stereotype that makes you surprised I know words like 'preconceived' and know where the hell they go in a sentence."
"I'm sorry," the blonde offered, a little sheepishly.
Daryl shook his head.
"Forget it," he said. "I ain't offended. I do drink whisky. When the occasion calls for it. Tonight? I'm havin' a beer. Light."
"I'm Lizzie," the blonde said. She offered him a hand, sort of, that Daryl didn't take. She moved it quickly to pick up her beer.
The blonde wasn't named Lizzie. Daryl could tell. He was almost an expert in reading people, and the way that the woman turned the name around on her tongue told him that she was used to using it, but she wasn't that used to it. It was probably the name she preferred to use when she felt the need to keep her real name a secret, but it wasn't the name that her Mama had given her fresh out the womb.
Still, Daryl didn't care enough to call her out.
"Daryl," Daryl said. He tasted his beer. It was so cold there were ice chips in it and that was exactly how he wanted his drink to be. The beer and his cigarette made him happy enough, for the time being, that he couldn't find any complaints about the bar. Even Faux-Lizzie wasn't enough to put him off.
Tomorrow they'd make Union.
"So what's with the jackets, Daryl?" Lizzie asked, leaning on the bar flirtatiously. "You're in some kinda club?"
Daryl took a drag on his cigarette. Mac had left the bar, whisky bottle in hand, and was chatting up the table of three women. If he was feeling particularly spunky, he might try to take all three of them to the motel and get them to ride bitch with some of his brothers to get there. Beau was still on his stool, the red in his face making his cornhusk hair look all that much whiter, while the young little piece rubbed up on him. Without looking, Daryl already knew that behind him, somewhere in the bar, the rest of his brothers were entertaining themselves in the best ways they saw fit.
Lizzie, as she called herself, had the balls to ask about the "jackets". Some people did. Others didn't. Some people just knew about them already because they were accustomed to having the Judges around. If Daryl had a dollar for every person that had a question about their brotherhood—asked or not—he'd have retired a rich man a long time ago.
But Lizzie wasn't interesting enough for him to explain things to her in great detail and they weren't going to be in town long enough for it to matter.
"Somethin' like that," Daryl said.
"A gang?" Lizzie asked, her eyebrows raising up.
Daryl laughed to himself.
"Somethin' like that, too, I suppose," he responded.
"You ever killed anyone?" Lizzie asked.
Her youth was showing—or her stupidity. Daryl just laughed to himself and shook his head. He glanced back over his shoulder. Merle was coming in the door and shaking off the water like a dog who'd just freed himself from a bath. His brother had done whatever he needed to do. He'd found them a place to stay for the night, Daryl was sure of that. Now he'd need a little time to visit the bar, have three drinks or so, and then he'd bullshit for a few minutes with the bartender. They'd be ready to head out before too long, all of them waiting on Merle's word on things.
Daryl turned his attention back to the blonde that was watching him like he might do some kind of magic trick.
"If I told you that," Daryl said, "then I'd have to kill you too."
She looked at him like she didn't know if it was a joke or not. Daryl liked that. It was always better to keep people guessing—especially people outside of the family.
"You got a girlfriend?" Lizzie asked.
There it was—exactly what she was interested in knowing. Daryl bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. She'd held out longer than he'd expected. He shook his head and she looked hopeful. He crushed the hopes, though, after he took a final drag on the cigarette he'd been working on and spoke.
"More'n that," Daryl said. "Got an ol' lady."
"Women marry men in biker gangs?" Lizzie asked.
Daryl hummed at her. He lit another cigarette. He didn't like to smoke too much while he was riding—he'd never found it that easy to do—so he felt short on nicotine. It felt like he was making up for lost time.
"Only the ones that can handle it," Daryl said. He gnawed his lip to hide the fact that he was considering fucking with the woman—who appeared younger and younger as time went on—for his own simple amusement. "She's gotta be somethin' though. To marry in. To get the stamp of approval."
"Is she like—is she like a badass or somethin'?" Lizzie asked. Her tone changed a little. It was as though she suddenly went from interested in Daryl as a man she might want to fuck to interested in Daryl as a man who might tell her a good bedtime story. Daryl mentally knocked ten years off the age he'd assigned her before.
He nodded his head.
"More badass than you can imagine," Daryl said. "You can't imagine half the shit she's seen and lived through."
It wasn't a lie, but Daryl didn't choose to elaborate any further. It was more entertaining to let Lizzie's mind run wild than it was to tell her the details of Carol's life.
"Has she ever killed anyone?" Lizzie asked.
"You ever get a direct answer to that question," Daryl said, "then you best run. You don't live through knowing some shit like that—just for the record. Better you don't go around askin' it."
"So she has?" Lizzie asked. Daryl wondered if he ought to knock another five years off her age, but he was starting to wonder how she'd gotten into the bar. She had to be at least twenty one or the bartender wouldn't have served her. This wasn't that kind of establishment. After all, they had the good soap and pretty clean bathrooms. Even the regulars here didn't look to be the kind of bar-dwelling souls that Daryl knew from the really rough bars.
Daryl laughed and shook his head.
"She ain't," Daryl said, "but she'd be just as likely to kill someone as anybody else, I'd say. If they really needed the killin'."
Lizzie laid into asking Daryl a string of questions about himself and his wife. Daryl sat, answering each one as carefully as the one before, and thought about how the young woman saw him. He thought about the image she was painting for herself of Carol and of the life that they led.
She'd never know that Carol was everything she imagined and everything she assumed she wouldn't be. Carol was equal parts sugar and gunpowder. She could give loving good enough to heal even the worst wounds and she could damn near kill someone dead with just a look. She was soft spoken and sweet with the vocabulary of a sailor if a conversation called for it. She was soft and innocent enough that Daryl sometimes felt guilty for the fact that he was pretty sure he'd corrupted her just before she was doing tricks that could probably make seasoned streetwalkers blush with shame.
Carol was everything. She was everything that Lizzie, more than likely, would never be. She just didn't have the right mettle.
Lizzie—young and blonde and fake-western cowgirl that she was—wasn't old enough or experienced enough to understand all that Carol was. She was a little too simple to understand the scope of the woman that Daryl loved or the fact that she could play house in a motel room with a Judge for the night, but she wasn't made of the stuff it took to be even half the woman that one of their old ladies had to be.
And Daryl didn't have the desire to explain things to her. He didn't have the time either. Merle got up and, looking around just long enough to catch the eye of everyone, headed for the door. Without a word, he told them it was time to move out. If someone had a mind to bring a piece with them, they better snatch it up. They better settle their tabs and make their way out front. It was time to head to the motel so they could make Union the next day.
Daryl pulled money out of his pocket to cover his beer, the one that Lizzie drank, and a tip for the bartender. He put it on the bar and stood up. Lizzie grabbed hold of his arm and stopped him.
"You're going?" She asked.
"Weren't never doing no different," Daryl said.
"You—want a little company?" Lizzie asked.
Daryl laughed to himself.
"Didn't you hear me tell you I'm married?" Daryl asked.
Lizzie cocked an eyebrow at him. Carol might've gutted her for that look alone.
"Isn't that what men like you do?" Lizzie asked.
Daryl smirked and shook his head. Around him, his brothers were leaving. Mac had a chosen piece for the night, a few others had chosen someone too. Beau seemed to have shaken off the young girl that had a taste for him. She was coming on a bit strong, perhaps, for the likes of Beau.
Daryl looked back at the blonde that was hanging on his arm, looking at him like she expected something. What she expected, she wasn't ever going to get, but she certainly wasn't the first to try. Daryl would give her credit, though, where credit was due. She certainly tried her best.
"I don't know what kind of man you think I am," Daryl said. "Or what kind of man you was hopin' I was gonna be, but—I ain't what you thinkin'. I'm just a man with a wife and a Harley." He couldn't resist himself. As he shucked the blonde off, and started to walk away, she looked at him like he'd delivered the greatest blow to her self-esteem that she'd ever suffered. Maybe it was cruelty, or maybe it was just the Dixon in him, but he couldn't hold himself back from his parting words to the blonde. "Thanks for the hospitality," he said. "But them are the only two things I'm dreamin' about ridin' tonight, darlin'."