I'll start with the thanks;
Thank you Jeanf all the new reviews – 6 in one night! You were busy :) It was nice to read what you thought as you went through each chapter.
When I updated last I did it in a rush and forgot to thank Celia Azul, AmethystSiri, and Zaii for the kind reviews!
Sevvus – I'm sorry your day wasn't going well. Glad the story made you a little happier.
Rasha007 – I'm glad the story made your morning a little better. I know what you mean about some slow burn stories, but this one won't be quite that slow, I hope :)
Damn, I had this all written out but the formatting all went weird... so, second attempt... It will happen. I haven't spent hours writing about two people who almost got together but don't, so be patient - it will all come together people! Merle's done a number on Daryl and he needs to get his head back together again.
As ever, I don't own a thing apart from my Ocs and this is all my make believe.
Thanks for reading!
"Isn't that your friend Merle?" Jamie asked as he and Aisling entered the bar on Sunday with Sarah, a new actress on the show, and Heather from the Wardrobe department. Sure enough, there was Merle, loud and ebullient and very drunk, swaying on a bar stool on the other side of the room.
"Yeah..." Aisling felt her heart start to beat a little faster as she saw Daryl sitting beside him, downing a bottle of beer and holding out the empty to the bar tender for another. Merle whispered something to him and he looked over towards Aisling. She raised her hand slightly to wave, but he looked away, his face expressionless. Her hand dropped slowly back to her side.
Heather chose a table not far from the bar and Jamie went to get their drinks as they sat down. Aisling was confused. Her stomach lurched. What had happened? Why did he ignore her? She thought they'd had a good time together, and she really thought he liked her...
It was when she looked up at Jamie as he made his way back to the table that she saw the blonde girl at Daryl's side, leaning in close with her elbow on the bar and one hand on the back of his chair.
Oh…
If anyone was ever looking for the polar opposite of Aisling, it would have been this girl, with her curly blonde hair piled high on top of her head, and her little button nose that wrinkled slightly as she giggled close to Daryl's ear. She tugged slightly at the hem of her pink vest, revealing another inch or so of golden skin and the black lace trim of a leopard print bra.
Looks like I'm not his type.
Aisling swallowed and looked down at her beer, wishing and praying that somehow the laws of physics would, in that instant, turn themselves inside out and allow her to have never come to this place tonight.
"I heard you took my little brother out on the town, Sweetheart." Merle's voice surprised her from right by her ear as he squatted unsteadily beside her chair. Aisling nodded, not sure what to say. Merle carried an air of menace about him that she hadn't seen before, and she felt nervous. She didn't think he was going to physically hurt her, but she sensed that he was up to no good. "Y'see my pretty lil' colleen, the thing is Darylina's just not made for the good things in life. It ain't what he's used to, so he ain't got no real appetite for it. He's happy here with ol' Merle and what he knows." He nodded his head towards the girl curling her tanned leg around the leg of Daryl's chair, her hand squeezing his thigh, her long neon pink and gold nails pressed against the denim, whispering in his ear.
Aisling tried so, so hard not to betray any emotion, but she knew her face had fallen and Merle had seen it. "Don't take it to heart, princess. Baby brother over there just ain't the high flying type."
She didn't know what to say, so she just looked into Merle's grinning face with as much composure as she could muster and just nodded, feeling like an idiot. "Ok" she said quietly, and smiled. Her face was on fire. Merle patted her on the shoulder and lurched back to the bar, where he said something quietly to Daryl, before slapping him on the back and letting out a loud, throaty laugh.
Aisling couldn't stay. She felt stupid, and embarrassed, and sick. How had she been so stupid, falling for someone so hard in such a short space of time? She made an excuse about having a headache and left, the blonde girl still draped around Daryl as he finished another beer.
Merle didn't really do sympathy, but as he watched Aisling leave, her face flushed and sad, he felt a flicker of something approaching it for a moment before he shrugged it off.
That girl's wormin' her way into you now too Merle. She's a damn actress! Don't be buyin' her fuckin' sad face, s'what she's paid for.
You're just bein' a good brother, lookin' out for Daryl, 'an stoppin' him from bein' hurt. Even if she is hot for his pansy ass she'll be gone soon enough, an' who'll have to pick up the pieces then? Ol' Merle, that's who. Hell have you got time for that shit.
Daryl's 'I Don't Give A Shit' front didn't penetrate any further than skin deep, watching Aisling in the mirror behind the bar as she got up from the table, spoke briefly to the people she was with, and left quickly. He felt like shit.
Getting drunk had seemed like a good way of taking his mind off things, but if anything it made him think about her even more. He knew Merle was right about one thing: If he felt like this about her now, how in the hell was he going to feel when she left. Because she was leaving, and it was going to feel ten times worse when she did.
A lifetime of self-preservation was Daryl's greatest defense, and his worst weakness.
He put his bottle down on the counter, his appetite for beer now gone, and looked down at the pressure on his thigh. For the third or fourth time that evening he pushed Cassie's hand off his thigh and shrugged her away from him.
"C'mon, Daryl. Why don't we go outside, baby, get a little-"
Daryl spun round in his chair to face her, his lip curled in a snarl "I told you I ain't interested! Been tellin' you all damn evening! Now fuck off an' leave me the hell alone!"
He grabbed his jacket and stormed out.
While the rest of their table was discussing Andy's abysmal performance on Friday, Heather paid attention to the scene unfolding at the bar. She was pretty sure that this was the man Aisling had gone to see the band with – he matched the description the younger woman had given her as she had laced her into her corset on Friday morning, right down to the broad shoulders and the scruffy beard.
She watched as the blonde shot a poisonous stare at Daryl's retreating back, smoothed her tiny denim skirt, and refocused her attentions on the skinny man sitting to the left of Daryl's empty chair. "Hey, Bobby! Wanna buy me a drink, sugar?"
Merle had also seen Daryl's exit and slammed his bottle down hard on the bar "What the hell's that fuckin' pussy doin' now?" he muttered, following him out.
"Hey. Hey! Where you goin?" Merle caught up with him in the parking lot.
"Goin' home!" Daryl barked over his shoulder as he started walking in the direction of their house. He wanted to get out of there, away from everyone, and seeing as how he was too drunk to drive he may as well leave his truck and walk the couple of miles.
"This about Aisling?" Merle yelled after him "'Cause it's better this way, baby brother. Trust me!"
Daryl ignored him, still walking. "C'mon back in. You know Cassie's been itchin' after you for years. She'll do a real good of takin' your mind off that stuck up Irish bitch!"
Merle's voice got quieter as Daryl quickened his pace along the darkening street, away from everyone and everything wasn't giving him space to think.
TWDTWDTWDTWD
Shaun and Daryl sat with their friend Chuck on Shaun's back porch late on Wednesday evening, smoking cigarettes and talking about work. Daryl didn't offer much to the conversation other than the occasional grunt, or "yeah", instead just staring out at the trees behind the house and chewing on his thumbnail.
"Meant to ask if you have a good time at that show on Friday, Daryl?"
"What show?" Chuck asked, confused. Daryl didn't go to see 'shows'. All he did was fix cars, hang out at Shaun's or his place, and go to the bar.
"Went into Atlanta with a girl to watch a band, didn't you Daryl?" Shaun shot Chuck a sideways glance, then looked back to Daryl who just shrugged.
"What girl?" Chuck wasn't sure if Shaun was joking or not. Daryl didn't do dates as much as he didn't do shows. Hell, Daryl didn't do girls full stop, unless you counted the couple of drunken fumbles he knew about. "Who is she? You seein' her again?"
"Jus' some girl, an' I ain't her type."
"How'd you know that, man? She tell you?" Shaun asked, quietly, concerned that his friend could have just been shot down before he'd even left the ground.
"She just ain't, alright!" Daryl exploded, surprising the two men sitting beside him. He stood up and paced to the end of the porch "I ain't wastin' my time chasin' after some chick who's into fucking musicians and artists and all that shit. I ain't kiddin' myself, and I don't want some pretentious bitch that ain't even gonna be here in a couple months usin' me as some kinda' distraction, messin' up my damn head!"
Shaun and Chuck glanced at each other, both recognizing Merle's words coming out of Daryl's mouth. It looked like Merle, for whatever reason he had this time, had knocked all the confidence out of him again. It happened less and less as the years went on, but every so often the older Dixon would take it upon himself to impart some of his own brutal brand of wisdom to his brother.
Shaun had got Daryl thinking about doing a course at the local school a couple of years back, so he could take charge of some of the ordering on the office computer. Daryl had filled in an application but Merle had found it, called him a 'fucking retard' who would fail it anyway, and that was the end of that. No matter how hard Shaun and Chuck had tried to persuade him otherwise, Daryl wasn't going to do the course and the matter was finished.
He knew that, on some level, Merle loved his brother and was acting out of some protective instinct to keep him from disappointment, but sometimes he honestly wished that Merle would disappear off on one of his blowouts some day and never come back.
"Hey," Shaun watched Daryl chest quickly rise and fall after his outburst "easy, man. Just relax, ok?"
Daryl lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs before exhaling a long, soothing stream.
"M'sorry. Shouldn't have gone off on you like that," Daryl muttered "ain't your fault."
Shaun laughed, quietly "I remember you guys havin' to put up with a hella lot of shoutin' from me when I met Corinne, remember?"
"Man, I still have the hole in my dry wall from that time she went back up to Richmond and you convinced your sorry ass she was gonna realize she was too damn good for you an' never come back." Chuck nudged Shaun's ribs, playfully.
"I was so sure," Shaun chuckled "I even stopped takin' her calls an' shit. Told myself I was doin' the right thing. Then you guys told me to get a hold 'a myself and I drove all the way to Virginia through the night to see her."
Daryl remembered that weekend well. Corinne had finished up from UWG and went back to her folks in Virginia after graduation. She was pretty, rich, clever… Shaun never thought he stood a chance with her, and never expected her to come back, even though they'd been dating for two years and were clearly both mad about each other. They'd talked sense into Shaun and he'd gone to get her, came back to Goat Rock with her and married less than a year later.
Daryl knew that would never happen with him and Aisling, though. She really wasn't going to be coming back.
"Would have been a damn shame to let go of a fine woman that seemed to like my ornery ass just because of what might have happened in the future." Shaun looked in through the window at his wife, asleep on the sofa with a book on her chest, and smiled. He never stopped thanking God for giving him the cajones to listen to reason and go after her.