Chapter 5: fools in the rain if the sun gets through

Merle is waiting for him when he gets back. Merle is sporting a black eye. Merle is sitting on the couch, pupils extremely dilated, watching Pawn Stars with the sound off. Merle seems sort of oblivious to the black eye, and the look he gives Daryl when Daryl walks in suggests that Merle isn't entirely sure what time of day it is.

It's almost six and it's still raining.

Merle jerks his head in Daryl's direction and looks vaguely disgusted. "You're drippin' all over the fuckin' floor, brother. Jesus, whatcha been doin'?"

That Merle cares about the ratty yellowed carpet and also cares about where he's been strikes Daryl as just the slightest bit funny. He heads past Merle without a word and goes into the bathroom, gets a towel, stands in front of the dirty mirror and rubs at himself.

His clothes... They're a lost cause. He strips them off-

And pauses, staring at himself.

He doesn't look at himself all that much. As far as he's concerned there isn't much to look at. Guy in his late thirties, nothing especially remarkable, but he knows in a kind of distant way that he's in good shape, strong, guesses that's better than not being. Faded tattoos. Hair that some people might think needs cutting. Always needs cutting. He always lets it go, because he doesn't care, because he has no reason to do so.

Scars. Lots and lots of scars.

He shakes his head and goes into the bedroom to rummage through the dresser they share - when they bother to put stuff away at all, which of course Daryl does way more than Merle anyway - and finds some stuff that's mostly clean.

"You didn't answer my question," Merle calls from the other room. "The hell were you? Thought you got off at four."

So Merle does know what time it is. That's pretty good.

"I was-" And then he realizes that - just like he hadn't wanted to tell Beth about Merle - there is no way in hell that he's telling Merle about Beth, and there are any number of reasons for that, not least of which is that Merle would give him a metric ton of shit for it. He would say things about why his baby brother was driving this little teenage dream around, and he would make some pretty crass suggestions about it all, and - worst of all, and Daryl doesn't completely understand why - Merle would say stuff about Beth, about who she is and what she's like and why she wants to spend any time with Daryl at all, and if Merle starts down that particular road he thinks he might end up making Merle's black eye into a matched pair.

It's not even about defending her honor. He doesn't have any reason to give a shit about that, and anyway he doesn't think Beth would feel the need to have anyone defend her honor. It's just...

He just doesn't want to hear that shit about her. He likes her. She's nice. It would piss him off. That's all the reason he needs.

"How the fuck you get the shiner?" he asks instead, because if he comes back with a question of his own there's every chance - Merle being in the state he seems to be - that it'll be a distraction and Merle will let the whole thing go. And Merle should maybe feel defensive too.

"Went out to try to make us a little money, little brother. Some guy got fresh, that's all." Pause. "He's lookin' a lot worse'n me, tell you that much for sure."

Daryl stops, leans both hands on the dresser's top, closes his eyes in a sudden ecstasy of exasperation. He's going to have to keep talking about this, he understands. This is something he's going to have to keep talking about, because his big brother doesn't get it, even though his big brother is the one who should get it, because his big brother is the one who got picked up outside a state penitentiary and his big brother is the one who had the brilliant idea to break parole.

His big brother makes bad decisions. Bad decision after bad decision.

And not for the first time Daryl thinks, in a voice that isn't his own, He's gonna go down and he's gonna drag you down with him. He's already sliding.

He goes to the kitchen and gets a beer out of the fridge, goes back into what passes for the living room, lights a cigarette and sinks down into the threadbare easy chair across from the couch. "Bro, you can't get picked up or nothin', you know that."

Trying to be gentle. It doesn't really matter. Merle gives him a blearily irritated look and throws an empty beer can at him. "Why dontcha mind your own business, man? You gonna start readin' me some kinda riot act? You get to be Dad when I wasn't lookin'?" Sudden flash of meanness, there and quickly gone again, and Daryl doesn't think Merle really meant to go there but Merle has an arsenal and when pushed, Merle employs it.

Merle notices, notes, files away. Merle has an excellent memory for detail.

Daryl knows they have that in common.

He pops the top on the beer can. "Just sayin'."

"Yeah, well, you ain't just sayin' nothin' I don't already know." Merle sounds surly now, but at least he's recognizing the sense in what Daryl said, and that's also encouraging. "Anyway, don't we gotta get cash from somewhere?"

"I'm workin'. Get paid Friday."

"You're makin' shit, little brother. Ain't nothin' in an honest day's work, you know that."

Daryl shrugs. The truth is that he doesn't really have any good argument for that. Not for the money side. There are other sides. "Got the truck. He let us have this place, ain't chargin' much rent. Cheaper'n a motel. You complainin'?"

I'm the one doing the work, you piece of shit.

I'm taking care of you.

"Man, whatever." Merle sighs, and for a moment or two he actually looks both sober and melancholy, and it's times like this when Daryl feels a surge of what he's feeling less and less these days, which is a desire to make this man happy. Make this man not look like that. When he got Merle back he thought things might be good again - before the parole-breakage, before the wandering in ever-widening Georgian circles - but the more time he spent with Merle, the clearer it became that something was Wrong with Merle, and it wasn't the drinking and it wasn't the drugs. The drinking and the drugs were like a blanket over what was really actually for real Wrong, and that thing - whatever it was - was something Daryl couldn't reach. Couldn't fix. God knows Merle would never have talked about it.

But Daryl thinks he might have some idea.

Because they had the same father. Didn't they?

He'd like to reach it. He'd like to fix it. He'd like to try. Maybe if he could things would be good the way he hoped. He sure as hell can't just walk away.

But there was the drive from the farm, and there was the drive back to the farm. Little spots of brightness. Little good things in the last few days, and he wants to keep them for himself. He thinks he deserves that.

First time in a long time he's thought he deserved anything.

"I'm gettin' sick of this shithole," Merle says, and Daryl starts. He glances down, realizes the cigarette has burned down a good bit and it's ashing onto the floor. Not that it's doing the floor any real harm. He reaches down for the empty can Merle tossed at him, intending to use it for an ash repository - and then processes what Merle said, and its implications.

He grunts, trying to keep the degree to which he cares about this from showing. "Ain't so bad."

Merle shoots him a look. "Fuck you talkin' 'bout? It's a shithole, man. Ain't nothin' goin on here. Figure we could move on in a few days."

Daryl looks at him, cigarette forgotten again, and feels something clutch slightly at his middle. "I told you, bro, I get paid Friday."

"So?"

"So it's Tuesday now."

"So we wait till Friday, then we cut out. That's a few days, ain't it? You can even give notice, really do this right. That make you happy?"

Daryl frowns and looks back down at his hands, lifts the cigarette to his mouth and inhales deeply. He doesn't like this. He doesn't like any of it. He doesn't like being here. He hadn't been lying to Beth about that, though he hadn't really articulated it that way even to himself until he said it. It's true. He looks around the room, thinks about it, and although he can't really think of any reason why he should care what the hell she thinks, he imagines her walking in and seeing it and he feels a hot flush of shame.

Somehow, he wants her to think better of him than that.

"I guess," he says softly, and it's really just because he can't think of anything else to say. Can't think of any argument, any excuse that would keep them here for a little longer.

But he's already trying. He's already thinking about it.

By Friday it's possible that he might come up with something.

"Alright, then," Merle says, apparently satisfied with the conversation, and he cranks the sound up on the TV. Big Hoss is getting skeptical about a Gibson whose owner swears to heaven and back belonged to and was personally used by Jimi Hendrix.

Daryl gets slowly and quietly drunk and passes out to the dulcet tones of the theme song to Deadliest Catch.

The next afternoon the rain has stopped and he has off from work, and around one - as he's wandering back from the cafe after wolfing down a roast beef sandwich - his cell rings. He's confused by that, because it's not Merle and it's one of those prepaid things and no one else has the number - except that's not true, because he remembers the day before, and he remembers what he did.

He gave Beth his number. Right before he dropped her off at home.

"Hi!" She sounds cheerful. Very. He stops and takes a breath and wonders why he feels so weird about this.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, nice to hear from you too. Look, you wanna come by the farm?"

Um. "Why?"

"No reason." Still very cheerful, but more than that. She sounds, he realizes, like she's Up To Something. Like she's got something planned. And while ordinarily - with anyone else - he can see himself getting impatient with this, now it actually...

It makes him want to say yes and be there. A lot.

"Yeah, I dunno."

"C'mon. I got somethin' I wanna show you. You won't be sorry."

He remembers how convincing she can be. Remembering it is no defense whatsoever. He sighs and looks around the street as if it could provide him with some guidance, thinks about that pickup and her riding in it and the Gin Blossoms on the radio, and he decides he can make his own damn decisions without the aid of his surroundings.

"Alright, look, gimme... I'll be there in half an hour."

"Great." He can hear her smile through the phone. "See you."

Half an hour later he's pulling up her drive to the sound of Robin Wilson singing about Allison Road, and she's coming down the porch steps to meet him, smiling, giving him that wave.

He waves back.

He's already not sorry.