AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Daryl picked up his phone and touched the button that woke it. He hated these stupid smart phones. He felt there was a point where equipment surpassed its user, and he often felt that the square of technological intelligence had surpassed him and was mocking him. He read the time. He read the day and the date. There was nothing else on the screen except the beach scene that Merle had figured out, one night, how to set as a background for the phone, but then he'd promptly forgotten how he'd done it, so Daryl would likely have the beach scene until the phone died.

It didn't matter. Daryl liked the beach. It was one of his favorite places. When they were kids, they really hadn't gone too many places on vacation. The Dixons had been the vacation kind of family, except for the few times when his old man sobered up—promising every damn thing was going to change—and hauled them off somewhere for a couple of days before it all went to shit again. When they did go somewhere, they often ended up going to the mountains because the orange-roofed economy motels made it easier and cheaper to spend a weekend there, without camping supplies or an RV, than it was to travel all the way to the beach for the same span of time. When Daryl had started making his own money, he and Merle had vowed that twice a year they'd take a vacation. One would take them to the beach, and one would take them to the mountains. They hadn't quite made both vacations annually, but they had at least spent a few weekends sleeping in cheap motels, some distance from the beach, while they spent their days with their asses in the sand.

At least the beach scene stuck to the display of Daryl's smarter-than-it-ought-to-be stupid phone was a reminder of things he wanted to do, intended to do, and looked forward to doing.

Right now, though, he had really hoped to see more than the tranquil scene and the limited information that his screen provided him. He dropped the phone back on the table and pulled a cigarette pack out of his pocket. He lit a cigarette and tossed the pack and lighter onto the picnic table.

The picnic tables out behind work were the best place to eat lunch. They had a little tin carport covering their tables so that most weather, short of a hurricane or the few days of bitter cold they got each year, couldn't stop them from eating out there. Nearly every day they went to pick up their choices for food, and they convened back at the tables.

"If you pick that phone up again, brother," Merle mused, still working on his big piggy sandwich—one of Merle's favorite meals, which he could now get it in take-out form to bring back to the table for lunch—then me an' Axel here's gonna think you don't care for our stimulatin' company."

Axel laughed. He was working on a cheeseburger from the same place where Daryl had grabbed lunch—a burger joint called The Shack. Daryl had chewed a few bites of his food, but the truth of the matter was that he was eating it out of habit. His stomach didn't really feel set to digest the grease-bomb burger.

"I think my phone's broke," Daryl muttered, taking a drag from his cigarette—the first of many that he could already feel like he'd end up smoking through lunch.

"You drop it?" Axel asked around his food.

"Prob'ly," Daryl said. "I mean—I drop it right regular."

"It cracked?" Axel asked.

"Talk once you swallowed that food," Daryl offered. "How about that? Nasty—don't no damn body wanna see your mouth full of food. You chew like a fuckin' goat." He growled and picked up the phone again, harassing the button on the front so that it cheerfully displayed the beach, time, day, and date again. "It ain't cracked."

"It ain't broke neither, brother, your piece just don't want no more of what you give her," Merle said with a laugh.

"Piece?" Axel asked.

Merle hummed.

"Daryl went down to Salty's on Friday an' picked him up a piece for a one-night stand," Merle said. "Left his damn number and all."

"And she ain't called?" Axel said. It was half question and half statement. Merle hummed and shook his head. Daryl sat back observing the two assholes in their natural habitat. "Lot of the time they don't," Axel mused. "One-night stand like that. They were in it for one night, like the name implies."

"Daryl never did put the name with the meaning," Merle offered.

"I know what the hell a one-night stand is," Daryl growled. "I left my number in case—you know—she ain't wanted that."

"And it's Tuesday now, lil' brother," Merle said. "And she ain't dialed that number you left for her. I know that shit hurts like hittin' your shin on a trailer hitch, but you gotta let it go. That piece weren't never yours. It was like—on loan. For one night only."

Daryl's stomach churned. He fiddled with is phone and smoked his cigarette down to the butt before he put it out in the black plastic ashtray on the table. He didn't want to admit that, since Friday night, he'd thought of little else except the woman when he wasn't too focused on work to allow his thoughts to drift.

He'd been drunk—too damn drunk—but not drunk enough to have been blind drunk. He believed that what he remembered of the woman was accurate. The hazy details of the night were both fading out with the passing of time, and in some cases, becoming a bit more coherent as his brain worked to stitch the fabric of his memories together without the influence of too much alcohol.

He remembered that the conversation had been nice—though he couldn't really recall what they talked about at all. He could remember the feeling that it had given him, mixing with the booze. He had a strong memory—a remarkably strong memory—of the woman's fingers. They were long and slender and he remembered her brushing them over his fingers as his hand rested on the bar. He couldn't recall when or why she'd done that—maybe she'd wanted a cigarette or it had simply been a way to get his attention, maybe it had been her invitation to ask him back to her house, since he felt, in his gut, that it had been her that had extended the invitation.

He remembered the whole woman like something of a Picasso painting. All the pieces were there, and he could pull them up in snatches in his mind, but they weren't in order. They weren't in clear locations. He could see the pieces, but he couldn't arrange them to see the whole woman as she was.

And he couldn't, for the life of him, remember if she'd told him her name. He supposed she must have, but it had, more than likely, come quickly at the start of their drinking together. It had been tossed out and forgotten as soon as it was heard. He couldn't even begin to pretend that he remembered her name. He couldn't confidently draw up even a syllable of it.

He had no business feeling so let down by the fact that the woman hadn't called. That was, as Merle had pointed out, what most people were looking for when they went home with someone, drunk, and fucked them.

Maybe the biggest problem was that Daryl had seen too many of the stupid ass movies that led him to believe that he would have some instant connection with a woman and, then, would be with her for the rest of his life, building some perfect little existence under the mistletoe, at some Italian countryside vineyard, or even, simply, in a little town like Living Springs where the local population looked for any excuse to have some kind of hometown-pride festival and show off to each other.

Daryl remembered feeling something with the woman—something that went beyond the drunken lust his brother would suggest was the only thing he'd felt. There had been something about her that had made him want to sit and talk to her. There had been something that made him stay drink after drink.

Daryl had not gone there to meet a woman. He'd gone there to have a couple drinks, on a Friday night, after finishing up an almost all-day plumbing job for a business downtown that had pipes in bad enough condition that Daryl might have been convinced that they had been there since the Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock.

Daryl didn't really go to Salty's to meet women. That was more Merle's thing. He tended to go for the drinks, the free salty snacks which were always handed out in abundance to keep people thirsty, and the pretty decent mix of beach music and classic rock that really meant that the place catered more to Daryl's age group and demographic than it did to a really younger crowd. There were other bars that catered more to the younger people.

Daryl wasn't a one-night stand kind of guy. Again, that was more Merle's scene. It wasn't Daryl that entertained the picnic table lunch crew with stories about his weekend dalliances. Daryl was actually likely to refuse a female's company for the evening, at Salty's, because he often found the chattering of the women that tried to talk to him annoying. It messed with the feeling that he got from the drinks and the music. It messed with the whole reason that he came to Salty's, in the first place, and so he was given to politely refusing most of the company that he was offered.

There had been something about the woman that had made Daryl approach her. Something that made him want to stay and drink with her. There had been something about that woman that had brought him back to her house—even though he really didn't do that kind of thing very much. He remembered, too, that neither of them had a condom between them and, given what Daryl knew about his brother's past adventures with venereal diseases, he was not a fan of fucking a stranger without a glove. But he hadn't hesitated—not once she'd said she was comfortable with the risk, even without knowing that he brought very little risk to the table.

There had been something about the woman that had made Daryl linger a bit. In his mind's eye, when he tried to piece together her appearance, and he was left with the Picasso construction of her face and body, he could remember the curve of her cheekbone, in particular—an odd thing to remember—and the curve of her nostrils—an even odder thing to recall—because he'd leaned close to her face, before he'd left her room, and he'd assured himself she was breathing well. She was resting. He'd impulsively brushed his lips against that cheekbone.

There had been something about that woman that had made Daryl stop, his hand on the doorknob, and turn back. Something that had made him hesitate—trying to decide if he might be welcome to stay the night, even. Something that had made him find the piece of paper, and the pen, and to hope that it was garbage and she wouldn't mind his scrawled note across her mail.

Daryl wasn't a man who really did one-night stands, but he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if he'd ever believed—for even a second and deep in his gut—that it was a one-night stand, he never would have left the note. He never would have left his number.

"If you're that sore about it," Axel offered, "we could go down to Salty's tonight. See what's down there."

Merle laughed.

"Hoo hoo," he howled. "Little brother ain't ready for the Tuesday night crowd. No. He wants him a sweet one—not some Tuesday night hun."

"Shut up," Daryl said, picking his phone up again and glancing at the screen.

"You gonna rub a hole in that phone with your thumb," Merle mused. "She ain't messaged you in the last—oh—thirty-seven seconds, has she?"

"Fuck off, Merle," Daryl offered, putting a hint of warning behind his words. Axel shrunk back a little. He heard it. Merle did, too. He hummed in response.

"Gonna eat that, brother?" Merle asked.

Daryl pushed the leftover burger and fries in his brother's direction. Most of it was there. Daryl had only managed to eat a few bites—even though he normally loved the burgers from The Shack. He almost regretted the few bites he'd eaten, though. He could practically feel them boiling in his stomach.

"I think it's broke," Daryl mused at his phone.

"Maybe it's tired of bein' fondled," Merle said.

"I'm serious," Daryl said. "I ain't got shit on it since this weekend. Like not a damned thing. Might be broke. I could be missin' calls from Ty, right now, about jobs."

"You got a job lined up for after lunch," Merle said. "That plumbin' bullshit replacin' them pipes. That job ain't goin' nowhere soon, and Ty ain't gonna give you another one until you finish that one."

"Just call it?" Daryl asked. "Axel—fuckin' call my phone. See if it's broke."

Axel shrugged, crammed a couple of his final cooling fries into his mouth, and wiped his hand on his shirt before reaching for his phone.

"Sure thing, man," he offered.

Daryl didn't expect the sound of the annoying mechanical jingle, and the sight of Axel's name popping up on the screen, to feel so much like a bullet to the chest. He moved his thumb over the button to hang up.

"Cheer up, Brother," Merle offered, leaning over to pat Daryl's shoulder roughly. "We'll go on Friday. Pick you out somethin' sweet. Hell—even make sure she knows you was lookin' for breakfast more'n any damn thing else." He laughed to himself. "Gotta be somebody in Salty's lookin' for some bacon and eggs with a man who holds down a job."

Daryl helped himself to another cigarette and tossed his phone at the table—that would be the reason, one of these days, that the damn thing finally broke.

"Forget it," Daryl said. "Ain't about that shit. I'm just glad—the phone fuckin' works. That's all."