Chapter 10: now I'm blazing the same old trail back to you again

So after that some things have to happen pretty goddamn quickly.

For about ten minutes Daryl doesn't move. He sits where he is, the phone an oddly grounding little weight in his palm, and he looks at nothing much at all and he thinks. About time. About money. About the fine art of talking to people, which has never exactly been his forte. About the finer art of convincing them, which is... Well. Yeah. About how many balls he can afford to keep in the air at once, about how to keep a roof over his and Merle's head if he does indeed dump Elmer like a shitty boyfriend. About how to keep the truck if the man who lent it to him isn't paying him for the stuff he had it for.

He needs the truck. He needs a ride. He needs a way to get to her.

Also the farm.

He rakes a hand into his hair again and shoves it up and away from his face. It was already longish, already hanging in his eyes, but it's getting longer and he supposes sooner or later it's going to start bugging him, and this is a thing on which he focuses so the rest of his brain can keep working without being disturbed by the rest of him.

Cars pass. He's never really noticed it before, because it's always what's been all around him for literally his entire life, but all the cars here are American cars. Like... All of them. Nary a Toyota or a Honda in sight.

Little tiny details. Yes, stay out there and shut up. We're busy in here.

He's going to see her again. This afternoon. At four.

And then something else, something that has the effect of focusing him very suddenly and very sharply and - in fact - the effect of getting him onto his feet and moving, because now some things need to happen.

He's going to be here tomorrow night. In this place in which he doesn't like being, and within which he was praying to a goddamn moonlit winged wolf god to be allowed to stay.

Nothing is making much sense at all anymore.

Elmer wouldn't be asking for rent for another week. Assuming he doesn't want to be an asshole, that will remain the case. The truck... Might be willing to wrangle an IOU there. Greene is known in town, known to be a good man, straight shooter, trustworthy, and if Daryl says the guy is paying him twelve dollars an hour to rebuild a silo, no one will question the veracity of that. In the right place, at the right time, it's as good as credit. Or it could be. Keep paying rent. Get the truck. Offer to keep doing odd jobs, maybe. He's already proved that while he might have a deadbeat redneck asshole brother, he himself is merely a redneck asshole who's also pretty reliable most of the time. It'll work. He'll make it work.

And Elmer is just the tiniest bit afraid of him. He hadn't considered that useful. He had considered it a problem. He might want to start being more creative about things like that from now on. A little more optimistic. Glass half full and such.

He is actually losing his mind.

But apparently Beth fucking Greene is willing to manipulate the universe to keep him here.

He slips the phone back into his pocket and heads into the feed and seed. He'll talk to Elmer and he'll make it work. Then he'll talk to Merle.

And that will be the interesting part.

Elmer makes faces at him. This is inconvenient. He could have given Elmer a little more warning. Puffs a bit, blows annoyance. Daryl stands there and lets him do it and thinks about hippos surfacing in a swamp, belching green water everywhere and peering around with their piggy little eyes.

All that three AM Discovery Channel.

Staying quiet and waiting until the man blows himself out seems like the smartest strategy, and in fact it turns out to be. Elmer satisfies his own honor and listens in grudging silence to Daryl's proposal, and gives in. Yes, okay; they can keep the place. Daryl can also hang onto the truck for now. Rent is going up by a couple hundred dollars to make things even. Daryl will be available for shit whenever he's not at the farm, and if he tries to get out of it he and Merle are out on their sorry asses - no truck, no roof, nothing.

That's going to mean Daryl doesn't spend a lot of time with Merle.

There is actually no problem with this. No downside to speak of. Not one he can see.

Deal. No, no shaking on it; Daryl doesn't offer and Elmer doesn't demand it. They do not like each other. That's fine; they don't have to. Business is concluded. Daryl has fifteen minutes to shower and get his shit together and then he's back down here until three-thirty.

Fine by him. It's Friday and there isn't a lot to be done. Elmer might well close up early and then he can knock off early as well. Maybe get out to the farm early too. It might look good to be early. There might be a number of advantages in that.

So he goes back upstairs.

Wonder of wonders, Merle is in the shower. So he can't use it anyway for the moment. Daryl makes an absolutely foul mug of instant coffee - thinks with a pathetic kind of longing about Beth and her delivery of the very strong and the very hot cup she brought him the day before - and waits, leaning back against the dirty counter, eying the pile of dishes in the sink neither of them have worked up the motivation to do, all that crusted canned chili and store brand mac-and-cheese. Yellowish and brownish.

If they're going to be staying here at least another week, he might actually take the initiative to get this place cleaned up. Some.

Merle comes out of the bathroom naked, rubbing at his head with their one extremely distasteful towel, and stops, looking blearily at him. Daryl looks back and takes a placid sip of coffee. It's a good idea to be placid here. A reed in Merle's gale. Bend, be standing at the end of it.

He knows how to weather ugly storms. He learned very early.

"Wassup, brother?"

Daryl considers briefly, then decides what the hell, dives right in.

"We're gonna be stickin' around a few more days."

Merle blinks at him, nonplussed. "We're gonna be..."

"Yeah."

Now Merle has processed, and he's no longer nonplussed. He's surprised and irritated, and his face twists into one of those ugly frowns that always seems poised to break into an equally ugly laugh, and possibly violence of some kind - usually verbal. Daryl doesn't actually expect Merle to hit him over this. Or to try; Daryl is pretty good at dodging him these days and, if necessary, taking him out of commission long enough to defuse things.

Merle's pupils aren't dilated, so he hasn't had his morning bump of crystal. That also helps.

"We already talked about this, Daryl."

"No, we didn't. You was talkin' 'bout it. I didn't wanna, I don't wanna now, and I picked up a job somewhere else and I'm gonna do that first. Then we can talk about goin'."

That's... That's actually the most bluntly he's stood up to his big brother in months. Not pushing, not weakly arguing for something, not trying to placate Merle into changing his mind. Just telling him. This is how things are going to go. Like he has the ability to essentially make this decision for the both of them, which he's only just truly realizing is the case... and which he now suspects Merle has known for a while.

And more than that.

I don't wanna.

What he doesn't want. What he wants. Like it matters.

And then - and this is creepy but it's exactly what happens and he's not going to pretend it doesn't - her voice. Her voice in his head, very clearly.

It does matter.

Merle's eyes narrow. "What fuckin' job?"

"Farmer outta town needs help doin' some construction. Asked, I said sure." Okay, a little placating. He really can't avoid it, not completely. "Payin' twelve an hour. That's almost twice what I was makin' before, man."

"We keepin' this place?"

Daryl nods. "I took care of it." He pushes ahead without giving Merle a chance to cut in - which he can tell Merle is prepping to do - and raises his voice a bit to block it even more solidly. "You suck it up, tough it out a little longer, we'll be in a lot better shape when we do leave. You know it."

For half a minute Merle looks like he still intends to argue. Then he harrumphs and rolls his eyes and heads into the bedroom to excavate some clothes. Daryl stays where he is, waiting for something further, and after another minute he gets it in the form of a sullen growl briefly muffled by a shirt being tugged on.

"Dick move, baby brother. Dick move makin' that decision, not talkin' to me. Oughta put you on your ass for it."

I'd like to see you try. A weary thought. No challenge in it, no satisfaction in knowing Merle almost certainly wouldn't be able to. He wouldn't like anything of the kind. It would be stupid and pointless and he has a lot of other things to do right now. He doesn't answer.

"But I guess-" Voice approaching again, Merle coming back into view dressed in a ratty gray tank and a pair of old camo pants. He stops in front of Daryl and grabs the mug from his hand, takes a huge swallow and grimaces. "I guess it don't matter either way. Just don't you pull that shit again, man. That decidedly ain't cool."

Merle needs to appear to be in charge. Merle needs to be one of those kings in England or wherever, doesn't actually mean anything anymore but people still act like he does. Daryl is happy to allow this. He's also happy to relinquish the wretched coffee, and he pushes past Merle and heads for the shower.

"Whatever you say, bro."

Whatever he says. As long as he doesn't say anything that means anything in the end. Which is how Daryl can see things being now. What just happened, when he said no, when he said I don't wanna... He's thinking as he strips off his clothes, as he turns on the weak lukewarm spray and slides under it, tilting his face up. He's thinking about what that shit really meant, and how it had just been this moment, just a sentence or two, but it hadn't been. It had been bigger.

Everything feels just a little bit different now. He's not sure he totally likes it. Because once he had this idea of how things might be if certain things changed, and that idea turned out to be wrong in every important respect, but he held onto it anyway. Held onto it like he needed it, because he kind of did.

Like a kid believing in magic and fairies.

Now that idea is dying. Decaying. Falling apart, like a dead thing walking around and rotting without the good sense to just lie down and be dead. This is never going to be okay. This is never going to be what he hoped for, what he wanted. What he hopes for, what he wants...

He's just going to have to look for that somewhere else.

So at three-thirty he's in the truck pulling out of town, and part of him is heavy, because he can't forget this. He can't forget what this means. What it is. What's happening here. At least, the part of it he understands.

Because there's that other part.

And when he pulls up the drive and parks, gets out, Greene and his son are standing in the yard next to a pile of boards, and she's sitting on the porch steps, his capricious little life-fucking-with goddess, her hair pulled back and braided, and when she waves at him the bangles on her wrist flash in the afternoon sun.

Girl.

The thing with Merle, the death of that dearly and desperately held fantasy... and this.

Even if he wanted to turn back now, he knows he couldn't.