The Fox and the Hound

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Daryl had just turned on the upstairs shower when he heard the knock at the door, sharp and insistent. He ignored it at first, going about his business. Merle knew where the spare key was, after all, and it weren't his job to always do the babysitting for the (usually) drunken dumbass anyway. He pulled his tee shirt over his broad shoulders and lifted it to his nose, giving it an experimental sniff while he waited for the aging pipes to put out some hot water (experience told him it'd be a while). The gray cotton was a little on the ripe side, reeking of sweat and motor oil, and Daryl reckoned he didn't smell much better. Having spent the majority of his day off beneath the hood of Merle's old clunker out back, he was bone tired. The rusted out Ford had been a lost cause in the end, good for maybe a few more miles if that, and he'd called it quits 'round about the time the sun had started to sink behind the trees and that high dollar car in the driveway next door had disappeared. He was weary of putting up with other people's shit, his brother's especially, and he balled up the shirt in disgust, tossing it on top of the overflowing hamper in the corner. Swearing when the knock sounded again, even louder and more impatient than the last time, Daryl snatched a pair of ratty sweats from the floor and pulled them over his narrow hips. He practically flew down the stairs, more than a few choice words on the tip of his tongue as he flung the door wide open. He let out a loud curse when a small fist promptly connected with the side of his nose and Merle's mutt darted between his legs a split second later, nearly bowling Daryl over in its excitement and bringing the woman holding firmly to its collar with it. "What the hell, Lady!"

Blue eyes, big and round, stared up at him from a pale, pretty face framed by a messy tangle of curls. The offending fist hastily uncurled, flattening and scrambling to find purchase with its twin against his naked chest. Her cheeks were almost as red as her hair by the time she succeeded in righting herself, and she held those small hands of hers up to her mouth in something akin to horror. "Are you okay?"

Daryl was normally a man of spare, reasonably polite words, but it'd been a long day, a long, trying day, and he couldn't say with 100% certainty that his nose wasn't bleeding. It sure as hell hurt, and she packed quite a wallop for such a slight woman. No one was more surprised than he when the words just flew out of his mouth, in something resembling a disgruntled growl. "What do you think, Rocky? Do I look like I'm okay to you?" It was the wrong thing to say, obviously, because her eyes narrowed to slits and her shoulders straightened proudly as her hands dropped to her sides, any concern she might have felt for him melting away in the face of her anger. In his fatigued state, well, it didn't immediately occur to Daryl to wonder why she was angry with him. Weren't like he was the one doing the punching, now was it? More than a few things escaped his notice, at least in that moment. He'd known her all of five minutes, and she had him completely off-balance, even more so than the damned dog. He scowled when the clumsy Lab bumped into him from behind, crowding him right back into her personal space, and those eyes of hers glittered as she huffed at him and stumbled backward in the most awkward imitation of dancing he'd ever been involved in, and if you asked Daryl, he had two of the biggest left feet around these parts.

"It was an accident, Mr. Daniels."

Daryl found himself distracted by the freckles that kissed her collar bones, disappearing into the low-cut vee of her shirt, and his throat ran dry as he felt the first faint stirrings of interest below the belt, so to say. Shit. She was deep into an indignant rant, her cheeks flushed an enticing shade of pink and her eyes heated and bright, before his higher brain caught up to the trailing threads of conversation. Merle had a way of doing that to him. The fog in his head started to clear as he watched his brother emerge from an unfamiliar car a few feet away and start to stumble down the cracked sidewalk. "Whoa. Hold on. Did you say Mr. Daniels? Afraid you got the wrong house, Lady." She stooped to grab the dog's collar in her hands, earning Daryl and Merle both quite a view down the front of her shirt. The lucky mutt's tongue lolled from its drooling mouth, licking a stripe across the top of her cleavage, and Daryl barely managed to tear his gaze away before he got caught staring. Instead, he focused on the moths flying straight toward the single bald bulb that illuminated their ramshackle porch. Poor bastards. He knew exactly how they felt.

Merle didn't even bother with the pretense of things like good manners and shit, greeting them both with a leering grin. "Evening, Little Brother. Evening, Ma'am. I don't think I've had the pleasure."

Thankfully, their unexpected guest didn't seem to notice such things. She was too busy trying to fend off the Lab's ardent affections in order to get a second, better look at the name tag around his quivering neck. "Is this not your dog?" The pooch's nails scrabbled against the weathered wood beneath their feet as it nosed further into the circle of her arms, and eventually she just wrapped her arms around the dog and allowed its exuberant kisses to her face with a resigned sigh. "His tag read Daniels."

Merle's lascivious expression morphed into something a touch more genuine, but the twinkle in his eyes remained. "Depends on why you're asking."

Daryl watched the pair of them carefully, feeling a bothersome, too familiar twinge in the pit of his gut; Charlie wasn't the only dog that lived at this house, after all. He knew that look on his brother's face, knew it like the back of his hand. Merle liked her (even though something told Daryl she was too prim and too proper, ultimately too real world pretty for his tastes), and that never bode well for anybody involved because, blood or not, Merle Dixon was, and always had been, a monumental screw-up, a real love 'em and leave 'em type. Finally, he rediscovered his voice. "Name's Dixon. Daryl. And this here's Merle."

"What's your name, Sugar?" Merle drawled.

The dog slumped over on its side, offering up its belly for rubbing, and their pretty little neighbor obliged, albeit distractedly. Her main focus was on his brother, and Daryl sent up a little prayer of thanks that Merle hadn't tacked on the ever present Tits to the end of one of his favorite endearments.

"I'll tell you what it's not."

A slow grin crawled across Merle's blunt features. "C'mon, now. I didn't mean nothing by it. Just bein' friendly is all. Neighborly."

She climbed to her feet, and Daryl felt a strange sort of kinship with the mutt when it whined in protest. Unconsciously, his thumb gravitated toward his mouth. He quickly lowered it and hooked it into the slouching waistband of his sweats when he found those big blue eyes on him again. His gaze narrowed when, inexplicably, her cheeks flushed once more, and she hastily looked away, the curls of her hair more than a little bit out of control in the heavy humidity that seemed, to Daryl, to press in on them from all sides, making the porch seem smaller and smaller.

"You never answered my question."

"You never answered mine," Merle smirked.

"Dog's Merle's," Daryl blurted.

"Won him in a poker match," Merle said. "Why you so interested, Red?" He lowered himself to the glider that took up most of their porch and braced both arms along its back. "Or would you prefer Freckles?"

"Merle, knock it off," Daryl hissed. "Just ignore him," he found himself saying. "Dog's Merle's," he repeated, feeling his throat grow dry when he had her undivided attention again. "It ain't much of a hunter. Dumb ole thing ain't got a mean bone in its body, but if it's been bothering you…"

"Carol," she answered softly. "My name's Carol, and he hasn't been bothering me. At least not in the way you think."

"You not know how to read a mailbox, Carol?" Merle interjected, forcing his way right back into the conversation.

"What mailbox, Mr. Dixon? I don't see one. Do you?" she shot back, with no small amount of sass.

A tiny smile quirked the corner of Daryl's mouth before shame started to creep in, and suddenly, he saw their little piece of home through her eyes. The mailbox was all but lost in a veritable sea of overgrown grass, the sidewalk was cracked and crumbling, and the porch they were standing on was a few rotten boards short of being condemned. In that moment, he knew the rest of his weekend off would be anything but restful. Neither would his brother's, if he could help it. "Merle," he tried again. But it was no use, and Daryl knew it. The dog seemed to sense his agitation, lumbering lazily toward him and flopping at his bare feet, its cold, wet nose nuzzling his toes before its tongue lolled out of his mouth. Daryl grimaced and bodily nudged the mutt away.

"Guess you got a point," Merle conceded with a smirk of his own. "Tell me. What sort of trouble has my boy got himself into this time?"

Turned out, Merle's mutt was just as much of a horn dog as he was, and Carol's dog was pregnant.

Merle's reaction had been so cringe-worthy, Daryl had wanted to retreat behind closed doors ("Mmm, mmm. Charlie Daniels's got some nice hip action. Don't you worry none, Darlin'. I'm sure your pretty princess took it like a lady."). As it was, he'd welcomed the shock of the cold water once he'd finally made it back upstairs to his forgotten shower and closed the door up tight. The exhausted sleep he'd hoped for hadn't come, and when morning dawned, he found himself tucking his wallet in the back pocket of his jeans and clattering down the front porch steps while Merle snored off his hangover.

Naturally, the unrepentant papa to be followed in Daryl's footsteps, tail wagging hopefully. As soon as the passenger side door was opened, the slobbering canine happily hopped inside.

Daryl eased the old Ford out of the driveway, and soon, it was chugging down the main highway, the breeze blowing inside its open windows blessedly cool in comparison to the previous night's sticky veil. Before long, he was carefully maneuvering the heap of metal between two cars parked outside the oldest strip mall in town and cutting the engine. His traveling companion whined and Daryl shook his head. "Stay."

Horvath's Hardware was a misnomer. The place was really more of junk store that offered a little bit of everything.

The kid behind the counter had his baseball cap pulled low over his nose and his chin tucked tight to his chest when Daryl walked in, but the owner was just as bright eyed and bushy browed as ever. Daryl's muttered Morning made the old man smile.

"What brings you in this fine Saturday morning, Daryl? I'm not accustomed to seeing you out and about this time of day."

In lieu of giving him the answer he was seeking, Daryl nodded to the snoozing clerk. "The matter with him?"

Dale Horvath smiled fondly as he straightened up a display of magazines. "Glenn tells me pizza's in high demand on Friday nights. I wouldn't know." Turning around, he moved to pick up a large cardboard box, but Daryl beat him to it. "You don't have to do that, Son."

It was a token protest at best, but Daryl really didn't mind. Horvath had never looked at him with an ounce of judgment in his eyes, had always given him the benefit of a doubt, and for that, he would always be thankful. Didn't mean he was no saint, though. He grunted under the weight of the shipment and widened his stance. "This shit's heavy. Where you want it?"

"In the back, if you're sure you don't mind."

"M'sure," Daryl replied. "Be right back." By the time he returned, the Rhee kid was blinking himself awake, hugging a cup of black coffee to his scrawny chest, and the old man was holding another one out in offering to Daryl.

"Take it," Horvath insisted. "Otherwise, I'll drink the whole pot, and Irma will be fit to be tied." Sighing, he pushed the steaming mug into Daryl's chest. "Humor me."

Daryl took the coffee, glaring at the kid when he smirked sleepily at him. "Shut it, China Man."

"I told you…"

"You're Korean," Daryl cut him off. "I know. I know." He followed Horvath to a display of patio furniture out front, its cushions big and soft and patterned with white roses, and mimicked the old man, pulling back a chair. They left the kid to man the counter while they enjoyed the morning sunshine. The mutt barked from its perch inside the faithful old rust bucket but quietened down when Daryl held up a warning hand.

"You look troubled. Is it Merle?"

"Merle's Merle," Daryl shrugged. "He drinks too much, but he ain't done none of the hard stuff since he got out this time. I'd know. S'not Merle. Not really. Not much of anything really."

The old man didn't look convinced.

"S'not Merle," Daryl reiterated. "It's not him. Guess I'm just tired."

They'd had this talk before, more than once, and Horvath lifted his mug of coffee to his lips to refrain from comment. Well, almost. "There's a reason they call it the graveyard shift. Do you not understand the concept of rest, Son?"

Daryl's lips twitched with the beginnings of a humorless smile. "It's my weekend off."

"And you're spending your Saturday morning drinking coffee with me? I feel honored."

"Nah," Daryl snorted into his cup. "I need a part for the push mower. Figured you'd have it."

Horvath winced. "You're cutting grass? In this heat?"

"Place is a jungle. Neighbor lady accused Merle and me of burying bodies in it."

The old man chortled. "Did she now?"

"Should have seen her face when Merle told her we had Willie and Waylon buried out back with Conway." Daryl grinned just remembering her priceless expression. A few hours removed from everything, it was easier to see the humor in the whole situation. He rubbed an absent finger against his nose, and his smile widened. "Surprised I didn't wake up to Grimes's or Walsh's ugly mugs beating down the door."

"You like her."

"What?" Daryl frowned. "No. Ain't nothing like that."

Horvath wouldn't be convinced. He beamed behind his coffee cup. "You like her. You were smiling just thinking about her."

"Don't matter if I do," Daryl grumped, jerking a finger in Charlie Daniels's direction and causing the dog to whimper pathetically on cue. "That little shit over there? Made sure she don't like me none."

Daryl grabbed himself (and Charlie Daniels) a bite to eat from the little diner on the corner while he waited on Zeke's to open. Coffee spilled over his fingers, and he dropped the rest of his biscuit in the floor of the truck (only to have the dog gobble it up in seconds) when a familiar face appeared in the passenger window without warning.

"Hey, Asshole." The pigtailed teen's grin made her Doe eyes crinkle around the edges, and she wiggled her fingers in invitation to the dog, which instantly scooted across the cab of the truck, panting and whining with pleasure.

"Watch your mouth, Chambler," Daryl warned with a light growl, pushing his door open at the same time that she pulled the passenger door open, and the mutt seized the opportunity to scamper free, nuzzling its head beneath her free hand in a quest for the affection it knew she wouldn't deny.

She rolled her eyes at him, digging into the pockets of her work smock to withdraw a set of keys. "You sound like Principal Blake. That's not a good thing."

The antsy Lab disappeared into a row of low lying shrubs and hiked up a leg to relieve itself, causing Daryl to scowl. "Your boss man better not bill me if dumbass over there kills the plants."

"Is that even possible?" Tara muttered, heaving the heavy glass door open and turning on the lights. The harsh florescent brightness made them both squint as they stepped inside, and she matched Dixon's groan. "It's Zeke's kingdom. I just shovel the shit." Yeah, it was a crude way of saying it, but that was basically her job description in not so many words. She changed and cleaned the cages and the kennels, and her eccentric boss paid her what amounted to peanuts. But she got all the furry snuggles she could want, and the clientele that Zeke's served was a little more eclectic than the local chain store. It wasn't the American dream or anything, but her allowance alone wasn't going to buy her the brand new car she wanted. She moved behind the counter and promptly squealed, causing Dixon to look up sharply and his canine companion to trot around the corner.

Charlie Daniels barked, and the fluffy brown and white blob at Tara's feet shrieked in response.

"The hell is that?" Dixon asked, rounding the corner. His blue eyes widened when Tara plucked the rodent from the floor and placed it in his protesting hands.

"His name is Henry the 8th, and he's a guinea pig," Tara replied. "I need you to hold him while I go check on Anne Boleyn and Catherine. They're not the most accommodating roomies. Catherine will have Anne's neck."

"No." Daryl tried to hand the now vibrating animal right back to her. "You're not as funny as you think you are."

"You're not the dumb hick you pretend to be," Tara retorted. "We don't want to give Charlie Daniels a chance to see if he tastes like bacon, do we? You'll be okay, Dixon. He likes you. He's purring." She smirked at him. "Besides, I'm not trying to be funny." The smile on her face slowly faded under Daryl's unrelenting glare. "Relax. I won't be long."

Long turned out to be a relative term in Chambler speak, and Daryl found himself wandering the pet store's aisles, peering into cages and kennels alike, the curious mutt sticking close to his side. He lingered in front of a kennel full of squirming, happy puppies, and the warm little bundle in his hands pressed flat against his chest. Unconsciously, he started to stroke the soft fur, and the rodent calmed. He jerked his gaze away from the little mongrels when he heard the squeak of Tara's sneakers against the linoleum. "Guess who knocked up the neighbor's dog?"

Helpless amusement made the girl's big brown eyes dance, and she bit back a smile. "Well, I sure hope it's not Merle."

Daryl huffed out a laugh and pushed the dozing guinea pig into her hands. "Stop."

"You?"

Daryl shook his head, watching her croon to the startled animal in the cradle of her arms. "Does Rhee know how twisted you are, Chambler?"

She giggled. "He's my best friend. What do you think?"

Daryl merely shook his head again.

The grin on Tara's face softened. "Well…what kind of dog is she?"

"She's a…" Daryl's features twisted into a frown when he realized he didn't have a clue. "She's yellow."

Tara rolled her eyes. "Gee. That narrows it down a lot. Could you be more specific?"

Daryl ignored the sarcastic underpinnings of her tone and considered her question. He'd only seen the dog once or twice, barely more times than he'd glimpsed her pretty owner. Hell, if he knew what to say. But he tried. "Really more of a pretty gold color."

The teen sighed. "That's progress. I guess." The storefront door chimed, alerting them both to the presence of another customer, and she stretched on tiptoe to crane her head over his shoulder, yelling, "Be right there!"

"Jesus. I kind of like my hearing."

"Crybaby," Tara teased, bouncing on the soles of her feet. "I need to put Henry back in his cage and help out this customer. You need any help?"

Daryl shrugged.

"She's going to need some of that high quality shit. Oh, and a whelping box."

"A whelping what?"

It was Tara's turn to shake her head as she backed away, a smirk on her lips. "Aisle 6, Dixon. It'll save your life. I really have to go now."

Daryl glared down at the hapless mutt, staring up at him with its most innocent expression. "This is all your fault, you know." He groaned when Tara's head appeared again without warning, this time around the aisle corner.

"I almost forgot."

"The hell…"

"Congrats, Charlie Daniels!"

Well...I hope this was at least a little enjoyable and not too riddled with typos and mistakes. I've been so blocked for so long, I simply cannot tell anymore.

Feedback is love.

Thanks so much for reading!