Sorry this is up so late in the day. What happened was I had a very different kind of chapter planned originally but what I ended up writing took a turn and I just kind of had to roll with it pls don't hate me.
"You fuck her yet?"
Merle had been smoking some pot while Daryl was outside. The room smelled like shit, even worse than before, but it'd helped him chill out some. A tinfoil bowl was putting up smoke on the table, ashes leaving marks on the wood.
"Can't you do that in the shower?" Daryl asked, rubbing his cheek. It was still raw from where Merle had managed to get a punch in earlier. "At least I won't have to smell it, then."
Merle took a long hit, his eyes rolling back a little, his body falling languid. "Bet she's a virgin. Girls like that always are."
"Like you'd know," Daryl said. He was still swimming a little from the day's events. Wasn't even fucking noon yet and he'd already been punched and made a girl cry. It didn't help that he knew what had happened with Beth was bad. Very bad. Maybe even worse than Merle.
"Oh, I know, brother. Tight little things, lookin' all wide at ya," he said, and made some lewd noise before breaking into a long laugh. "So? You fuck her?"
"Haven't touched her," he said, and it was true enough for what he was talking about. He watched the smoke as it flooded towards the ceiling, considering getting up to open a window.
"Yeah, right. She just drove up here 'cause she likes you," he said, crooning the word before looking at him more seriously. "You didn't used to lie to me, boy. We're kin."
"Didn't fuckin' lie to you. Just tried to dry you out a bit." Also true enough. From what he'd gathered of Merle screaming at him that morning, Merle had chosen last night to hit Ray up for himself considering the lack of Daryl's success. Ray, little piece of sunshine he was, had decided to tell him that Daryl had paid him to cut Merle off. Which went over about as well as he would've expected. But at least Merle's anger was short lived. Like a flame, burning hot but quickly extinguished. He couldn't say the same for Beth.
"Shoulda just done like you was told." Another hit. He was staring at the TV as if something was on.
Maybe he should've done what he was told. Making his own decisions hasn't gotten him very far.
But he still had one more he needed to make.
He sat up, checking to make sure the keys to the bike were still in his pocket.
"The fuck you fixin' off to?" Merle asked as Daryl stood up, his eyes following him as he moved to the door.
"I'm takin' the bike," he said, and didn't wait for a response before he was gone. He didn't want to answer questions, and he had a good feeling Merle wouldn't care enough to ask anyways. And, even if he did, he had some bigger fish to fry.
The trailer looked a lot bigger than it had the first time Daryl'd come here. He even stared at it for a while, trying to gauge if it had somehow grown. And if looking at it was hard, knocking on the door was impossible. He briefly considered texting her, but he was already here, and the idea that she could just as easily reject him as agree to see him was too big a gamble to take.
So he forced himself to go up the porch, forced himself to knock. Forced himself to wait for her to answer the door.
Brief footsteps, and then the door opened. But it wasn't Beth. This girl looked about the same age, but olive skinned, dark hair instead of blonde. She blinked when she saw him, keeping the screen door closed.
The mom. Sarah, he thought he remembered Beth saying.
Fuck. He stood in the door while she stared at him suspiciously through the screen. He'd been so busy trying to grow some emergency balls to come here at all that he hadn't even fucking thought on her not being here in the first place. He turned sideways to look for her car in the drive, but sure enough it was gone. How the hell had he missed that?
"Can I help you?" she asked, her eyes flicking up and down his form, hand on the door ready to slam it shut.
"Was lookin' for Beth," he mumbled, the words coming so sloppily that he wasn't even sure he was making any sense.
"Did you say Beth?" she asked, and looked slightly mollified at hearing her name, letting the door open more so he could actually see inside. "Beth Greene?"
"Yeah," he confirmed lamely, looking past her at the couch still covered in sheets that looked freshly rumpled. Wherever Beth was, she hadn't been there long.
She nodded her head while she waited for him to explain more, lips pressed in a tight line. "She isn't here."
"Yeah," he repeated, still looking at the couch. He wanted to ask when she would be back, or where she was, but he wasn't her keeper and it wasn't really his business to care about either of those things. He stepped back from the door, wondering if leaving without saying goodbye would be too out of the question, but then she spoke.
"You're the guy from the bar," she said like it was a revelation, nodding again but this time with satisfied understanding. "Yeah. I can see it now."
He didn't answer, partially because he wasn't too keen on being Guy from Bar and partially because if he tried to parse through that question he might figure out there was some other Guy filling that role.
She frowned at his silence. "Sorry. Just nice to put a face to it."
Now she was looking at him curiously, the screen door like a cage at the zoo. "I got somewhere to be," he said, again too quiet, and he wasn't sure if a single word he'd spoken on this trainwreck of a mission had been intelligible.
She held up her hands in apologetic surrender, then went to shut the door. She stopped about halfway, looking at him. "Want me to tell her you were here?"
He was shaking his head no before he could even think about it. "Nah."
She half shrugged. "Suit yourself," she said, and finally the door was shut and he was free to go.
But free to go where? He had Merle's bike, so he was at least seventy five percent sure he'd still be in their apartment, and he wasn't about to go back just to smell like weed for the next three days. So that was the apartment gone. He was hungry, kinda. Or, more accurately, there was a hole in his stomach that he felt like he could fill.
But not with food. And suddenly the decision of where to go felt much simpler.
Daryl spent that day drinking.
Drinking to burn away the shitty taste in his mouth leftover from the last twelve hours, to burn away the fact that Beth hadn't even been there to hear whatever bullshit he could make come out of his mouth. Didn't even have a chance to explain. Explain what, he wasn't sure. Wasn't like he could do anything but own up to it. But he'd been doing a semi okay job of keeping her and the rest of his shit life separate since he'd met her, and she had to understand that having the two meet - and in front of fucking Merle, no less - was the opposite of what he'd wanted. He wasn't even sure what she'd seen of the apartment room, what she'd thought of Merle. The fucking vivid reality of it all. And seeing her react that way just served to reinforce everything he already knew: that this fucking blew, and it blew hard.
Besides, t was only liquor. If Merle was fine punching him for holding back some ecstasy, he could rationalize drinking a little bit. Who fucking cared if he started before noon? Who even really gave a shit?
Beth. She would care. But he'd fucked that up, and all damn day she'd been popping up in his head in one form or another - her eyes, her smile, and then her ass, or maybe the way she laughed - all swirling together in one giant middle finger. It had driven him up a fucking wall, and finally when the sky turned to dusk and he hadn't managed to drink her away he'd found it infuriating enough to bring him back to Earl's.
So that was where he was. He'd been sitting in the parking lot for at least an hour, waiting to see her. He was still a little drunk, because he'd only stopped drinking when he realized he wanted - needed - to come here. To come to this goddamn bar for the goddamn girl. He wasn't even sure how he'd made it without killing himself, if he was honest. Shitty luck should've had him dead on the road, because even he was able to admit that he shouldn't've been driving. But he'd made it, and actually remembered to check to see if her car was here, and when he saw that it was he'd decided that he would wait.
He did wait. He waited while the burn of drinking turned dull, while he slowly regained at least majority control of his limbs, while the moon centered overhead and the bar emptied out. He watched through the window as she stacked chairs on top of tables, and finally, he watched as she and a couple other workers came out and said their goodbyes.
He wasn't even sure she would see him, or what he would do if she didn't. Go to her car? Stand at the exit to stop her from leaving?
But she did see him, stopping short when she did, doing a double take before a weary expression came on her face, even more pronounced on her eyes that seemed a little smaller with exhaustion. She hesitated, and he could see her thoughts as they formed, the tight frown of irritation on her mouth followed by a pursing of reluctant curiosity. She looked towards her car, then at him, and finally the curiosity seemed to win because she walked over to him, hitching her purse higher on her shoulder.
She stopped when she was a couple feet in front of him, looking at him expectantly. "What are you doin' here?"
He was beginning to regret not thinking this through. She was finally standing right in front of him, but all he could see was her face from when he'd verbally beat her down. But maybe she'd gotten over it. Maybe it hadn't been as bad as it seemed.
"You just come here to stare?" she asked, and the words were so sharp and cutting that it was like knives being thrown back at his face.
He looked down, nodding his head. He deserved that. "S'fair," he said, but couldn't come up with anything else. Not a single goddamn word. He could feel her frustration mounting, coming off her in waves, and it only edged his own. Why had he come here? What was the point? What was he even trying to fix anymore? He'd been trying to fix things for days and all he had was the broken leftovers hanging all over his shoulders, the same shoulders he could feel falling now. He could turn around, and maybe go back home, or some other bar, and drink until the world fuzzed out again and he couldn't see straight. But looking at her, he felt that same question that came popping up around her: go home to what?
"Well?" she asked, and he could see it in her stance when the anger started to fade a little, her hands fiddling, and when he chanced a look at her face her eyes had turned sad, lines of worry on her forehead. "Are you okay?" She stepped closer, and he watched as on her next breath her nose wrinkled and she looked down at his shaking hands. Another step, close enough so that when she reached out her hand she almost touched him.
He recoiled. If she touched him here when everything was sharp and raw he was fairly certain that would be the end. She didn't react well, drawing back and making herself smaller with feet locked together and shoulders turned away from him defensively. "You're drunk. Or you were. I can smell it on you."
There was no point in lying. He felt defensive of it anyways, because she seemed so openly disappointed all over again.
She didn't try to touch him again, and it was a couple more seconds that felt like they dragged into minutes before she spoke. "What do you want from me, Daryl?" she asked, sounding completely exasperated and tired and a dozen other things that he hadn't noticed on her before he'd dragged her down.
A lift of his shoulders, and finally he looked at her. She really was pretty, even as distraught as she was, blue eyes darker in the night and hair made silver. "Nothin'." That wasn't exactly true. But it was the closest approximation he could come up with.
She stared at him for a beat, then shrugged. "Great. G'night, then," she said, and turned around to walk to her car.
"Don't take it so damn personal. Shit," he said, and it wasn't exactly what he'd wanted to say but it got her to at least stop walking away. "It don't mean anythin'."
She whirled, and finally she sounded as cut up as he felt. "'Don't take it personal'? That's what you got for me?"
She was angrier than before, the opposite of what he'd wanted when he'd come here, but the words came out of him with no effort or thought. "Dunno what you were expectin'. Didn't tell you to come to my place." He hadn't planned on this, on just splashing up the already turbulent water to make more of a mess, but it wasn't something he felt he had a ton of control over. "You did that by yourself."
"Yeah. Cause I cared," she said, matching his volume, her words hot with anger. She took a deep breath, her arms crossing. "You could start with sorry."
"Didn't do nothin' wrong." He didn't even know where the words were coming from. He hadn't come here to egg her on or dig his own grave deeper. He didn't know why the fuck he'd come here at all.
"You actually believe that?" she said, studying him before shaking her head. "You don't. You're lyin'."
He said nothing, waiting for whatever conclusion she seemed about to come to, but for once she was the one who left him hanging in silence. Staring him down and standing him off. Not even giving him some words he could use to climb out of the hole he'd created for himself.
But her patience only wore for what felt like a few seconds. "You won't even tell me what you're doing here. Why come here? Why wait if you don't even think you have something to say?" She sighed, putting a hand at her temple to rub it with two fingers. "Look. I know you were at the house earlier. Sarah told me. I thought that-"
"You weren't there," he said. Because it felt like an excuse. Maybe if she'd been there this could've been fixed earlier. Maybe he wouldn't have put enough scotch in his blood to drown someone in.
"I know," she said softly. "I was at home. I can't even go there anymore because my dad drank on his feelings and lied about it, too."
Too much. That was too much, and she'd just slapped him across the face with it like it was nothing. Honesty to the brim, overflowing onto him. "Beth-"
"You were right. I gotta worry about my own family."
This had all gone so pisspoor, so horribly fucking wrong that he even he was having a hard time keeping up with exactly where he'd fucked up so badly. This wasn't even rolling with the punches anymore. This was face first in the dirt with his ass still getting kicked. He didn't say anything, and then she was gone, walking away, and how was she not looking back to see him melting onto the concrete?
He still hadn't moved when he realized the parking lot was empty, reaching into his pocket for a smoke before remembering he didn't even have any on him, all smoked while he was waiting for her. He didn't have shit. Not a brother, at least not one that was there. Not money. And least of all, he didn't have this, or her.
There was nothing, and he fell into it hard.
I knooooooow this was dark and things seem kind of hopeless now but I just kind of felt like things need to get kind of shitty for both of them. I'm also sorry if the quality of this one isn't quite right - I wanted to keep my promise and that required some faster writing than I normally do, and my beta is currently out of commission. I do believe next chapter will have happier times. Wink wink. To preview: An explanation, and an apology in the form of a gesture.
