Daryl's head is throbbing. His nose stopped bleeding a while back, but that only helped the pain inside his head a little and limited the stains his clothes would have.
He also can't stop himself from thinkin' about Merle's stupid ass. Daryl's so distracted by the annoying pain and the battle with his overpowering spurt of self hatred, a hatred of everything really, that he almost doesn't see the car stopped in the middle of the road.
The truck screeches to a stop as Daryl slams on his breaks at the last possible second, skidding to a stop mere inches from the car.
Daryl sits perfectly still with his eyes wide with shock, while taking a few seconds to compose himself, then feels the anger start to well up inside him. He hits the caution lights and throws the door open, and shuts it with an angry slam.
Daryl stalks around the vacant car to find its driver and give them hell. He hears running behind him so he turns to its source. He's greeted with a, from what he could make out in the dark, very worried girl emerging from the woods.
Daryl he stalks over angrily, "Why in the hell... is ya car parked in the middle of the FUCKIN' road?!" he barks at the figure. He grimaces at that feeling of his voice vibrating through his sinus cavity. When he stops two feet from the figure he sees that it's Satin standing there, meeting for the second time that day. He glances back at the car, "with no lights on," he adds.
She doesn't respond. Instead, she just stares at him with a weird look spread across her face.
"Well?" he asks impatiently, still no response.
Daryl scoffs, "what, ya stupid or sum'm?"
"Why should I answer your question when you never answered mine?" she asks defensively crossing her arms.
Daryl scrutinizes her irritably, "Are you fuckin' serious?!" Daryl raises his arms frustrated. "I could have just KILLED myself because your stupid ass left ya car in the middle of the fuckin' road, with no emergency lights on, for anybody to come along and crash themselves into!" Daryl's hands come down to his sides with a slap, after speaking with ferocious hand gestures.
"The least ya could do, is tell my why." She just continues to stare at him, making Daryl start to think that she's a little dense.
Daryl shakes his head. "Man, I ain't got time for this shit." He turns around and starts walking back to his truck. He doesn't feel like wasting his time, and he wants to get home, take some ibuprofen, a much needed shower, and go to bed; it's been a long day. Hopefully Merle won't come back tonight. He didn't feel like dealing with his drunk, probably stoned, ass when he came back.
He was three feet from his truck when she spoke up.
"I don't know. It just died while I was driving."
Daryl stops walking and turns toward her. He looks at her looking at him. "What were ya doin' in the woods... in the dark?"
"It doesn't matter." Daryl looks at her harder, thinking about pressing the subject but decides to just leave it alone.
"Uh... was it acting up er anything before it quit?"
She shook her head. "I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary." She bites her full lip. "Do you think you could look at it?"
Daryl doesn't really want to. All he wants is his bed, to rest his aching muscles. But looking at this girl, it also won't sit right with him to just leave this girl on the road. He sighs in defeat. "Fine, but just a look, if ya need parts though, ya shit out a luck 'cause I ain't got nothin' to help ya."
She smiles at him. "Thank you."
She watches as he gets a flash light from his truck. He walks around to the front of her car and gestures for her to pop the hood. He lifts up the hood and sets it on the stand and props himself up with his free hand on the car as he's at work searching for the problem.
After a few minutes of searching he can't see any obvious problems that would cause the car to die on her.
"Keys," Daryl asks, walking towards her and extending his hand.
"Why?" Satin asks and Daryl cocks an eyebrow, still holding his hand out.
"So I can help figure out the problem." She continues looking at him, so he snaps his fingers, "come on," ordering her.
She relinquishes and drops the keys into his ruff palm looking away. "See?" He raises his brows. "Not so hard." He gives her a crooked, mocking smirk.
Daryl sits down in the driver's seat and puts the key in the ignition and turns it.
The car starts up immediately with no stalling or any other problems. Turning the car off Daryl looks up at the girl, miffed. "Thought you said there was a problem," Daryl growls out.
"It did, I swear. I don't know why it wouldn't start back up... Maybe just by you just lookin' at it, it came back to life," she offers lamely.
Daryl just glowers at her, unamused. "Riiight..." He stands up slowly. "Whelp, I think I'm done here." He walks away from her a little faster than he stood.
"Thank you," she calls out.
"Yeah, whatever," he mutters to her before getting in his truck and driving away.
Walking through the front door of his home, he breathes out a huge sigh of relief, "fuckin' finally."
The first thing he does is go to the cabinet in his bathroom and take out some ibuprofen and dry swallow a couple pills. He looks over at the mirror as he screws the cap back on and puts the bottle back in the cabinet. He knows he should clean his cuts, but doesn't want to look at himself.
He walks over to it and is shocked at how horrible he looks right now. 'No wonder that girl kept starin' at me. I'm fuckin' hideous.' Blood is smeared down the side of his head. There's a pink smudgy film under his nose mixed into his goatee, which is remnants of the blood that was wiped away haphazardly. Both of his eyes are black, but his left one is by far the worst. That eye is swollen with a bleeding tear underneath where that tattooed asshole punched him in his eye and hit his metal eye socket. The two opposing forces caused his skin to rip open, producing half of the blood that's on his face. And he doesn't even know what his back looks like. He knows he probably has blood running down his back. He probably put blood all on the backrest of his truck's bench seat. But out of everything, his nose wins the award for ugliest deformities. It's blue, fuckin' blue! And it's two times the size it should be. There's no doubt that his nose is broken, but luckily, it doesn't look like it changed positions or that it was bent, so he won't have to set it.
Daryl goes to work washing the blood off of his face, careful to avoid his nose, wincing every now and then when he rubs a particularly tender spot. Looking back up at his reflection, he still grimaces; even though he looks considerably better he still looks like shit.
He wonders if he looked this bad when he was talking to Jon. Probably not because he would have protested more against him going to work tomorrow. He ponders if he should consider Jon's offer. Daryl rubs his face in thought and absent-mindedly bumps his nose. "Ah... Fuck!" he hisses out. 'This is going to be a long healing process.'
After Daryl fixes up his back the best he can and takes a shower, that's when he realizes that he was fucking starving. Daryl hasn't been this neglectful to his body's needs in quite some time.
Rubbing his face tiredly, mindful of his nose this time, he walks to the kitchen in just his t-shirt and boxers, hair still dripping. He gets out a couple cans of raviolis and heats that up for himself.
He's sitting in his recliner enjoying his quick meal while watching the television when the front door slams open with a bang. Daryl unintentionally throws his bowl across the room while almost simultaneously pissing his boxers.
Now standing, breathing hard from shock, he faces the door to see Merle standing there leaning against the door frame giving Daryl the evil eye. He didn't even hear anyone drive up.
"What?" Daryl asks crisply.
Merle approaches Daryl swiftly. "Ya gonna just leave me like that, Baby Brother?" He points at his chest with his thumb. He knows he shouldn't try pushing him too hard because of his current hostile behavior, but he can't stop his voice as it comes out of his mouth.
Daryl scoffs, "I'm surprised ya even noticed. Ya so fucked up most..." Merle grabs Daryl by the collar of his shirt, causing Daryl to wince at the quick movement.
"Don't fuckin' go there!" Daryl roughly pushes Merle's hands away.
"I left ya because you're a pretentious fucker that cares for nobody except yaself." Daryl barely gets the last words out before he's slammed into the wall, Merle's forearm pressed heavily against his throat. The two eye each other heatedly. Daryl can tell Merle is on something by the way his eyes are shifting around.
"Don't fuckin' say that shit! Ya know I was the only one there for ya when we was kids, and it's the same now," Merle hisses in his face. "You was just a pathetic piece a shit back then. You only a little bit better now."
Daryl chokes and tries to gulp in air past the arm constricting his throat. "Ge' the fuck off me," he manages to grit out, but Merle doesn't relent and presses harder. Merle continues flapping his gums, but Daryl doesn't hear because his lungs are burning. He scrambles trying to move Merle's arm but it doesn't help. He's leaning all his weight into it, and Daryl is dead-tired. His vision starts to go black, so he starts franticly pushing Merle's chest with as much vigor as he can muster up.
Merle stumbles back, but before he goes he succeeds in grabbing Daryl's shirt and pulling him down on top of him to the floor.
Merle lands on the floor with a loud thwack and Daryl lands on top of him with a thud, muffling a yelp as he hits his nose on Merle's shoulder.
Merle recovers momentarily and forcibly pushes Daryl away with an angry grunt. Daryl flies over and hits his head on the coffee table.
Merle gets up and slowly and looks down at Daryl, scoffing. He walks over and settles himself in Daryl's recliner while Daryl's still curled up on the floor clutching his head. "I remember when you's just a little kid shittin' in ya britches. Barely could walk. I was the one who looked after ya sorry ass. Ma never cared. Dad... well... you know. I taught ya everything I know. Yep, it's always just been you 'n' me. And it ain't gotta change."
"That's what you think," Daryl mutters from his downed position.
"Excuse me?" Merle asks, looking down and leaning forward in the chair.
Daryl sits up, squinting his eyes at Merle. "You think things ain't gotta change, but they do," he says with purpose.
Merle just chuckles. "Is that right?" he asks mockingly, enunciating each word carefully.
"You better fuckin' believe it because this thing you got goin' on... I ain't fuckin' puttin' up with it anymore!" Daryl says without losing eye contact. "You're the one who's a fuckin' waste a space! Not me! At least I have a fuckin' job... and don't sit around all day drinking beer, shootin' the shit, bangin' whores, and usin' all my money! But... but you! All you fuckin' care about is your drugs! You don't fuckin' care about me!" he screams, shaking with weakly controlled anger. "If ya cared about me even a fraction of what you say you do," he explicates gratingly, " You wouldn't be willin' ta trade my life for one a ya scores." At this point, Daryl's leaning over the armrest of his chair pointing a shaky finger in Merle's face. "And get out'a mah fuckin' chair!" he hisses.
"Your chair?" Merle scoffs in his face. "Boy I think you are mistaken. This chair is mine." He pats the armrest.
"You didn't fuckin' buy it. 'An I'm tellin' ya now," Daryl warns. "Get. Out. Of. My. Fuckin' chair!" Daryl's eyes are on fire, his face red.
"Oh?" Merle mocks, eyes darkening. "Make me."
Those are the words that make Daryl snap. Violently shaking, with red filtered vision, he grabs the back of his chair and thrusts it forward, causing Merle to tumble to the floor with the chair landing on top of him.
Daryl vigorously kicks his chair over to the side, too caught up in his rage to care about damaging his furniture. He crouches forward and grabs Merle roughly by his vest, bringing his face an inch from his own, Merle looking at him with surprise.
"Ya know I coulda died today 'cause a you?" Daryl spits out.
"How's tha'?"
"Ya drug buddies paid me a visit in Chitlin," Daryl adds, knowing it would kick in sooner or later.
Merle stares at him blankly. "I don't know what ya talkin' 'bout," he lied.
"No, you do. Ya knew what you was doin' when ya did it, too! Ya drug buddies showed up tonight. They was gonna kill me if I didn't give 'em their money, the money that you owe them. I'm fuckin' sick of your shit. I want you out of my house," he says standing up. Merle just gapes at him. "I'm fuckin serious Merle. I've tried to get you ta stop, but you don't ever listen. You've been moochin' off me fer too damn long."
"You can't do that," Merle says doubtfully, with a hint of worry.
"Yes I can. Watch me." Daryl marches to Merle's room. Merle follows closely, trying to intervene by grabbing Daryl's arms holding him in place while they're in the hallway.
"You don't fuckin' need to go in there!" Daryl turns around and punches Merle in his adam's apple. Merle lets go, coughing and grabbing his throat. He looks up and sees Daryl a foot from his door. Merle rushes forward and tackles Daryl to the floor and they roll around, cussing each other trading punches. Daryl manages to get the upper hand flips Merle underneath him. He grabs Merle by his head and starts banging it on the floor while he was getting pelted with punches. Merle punches Daryl in his nose, which stops his ministration of trying to beat Merle's brain out. Merle flips around and gets Daryl in a choke hold, trapping him. Daryl starts to panic, having flashback of his childhood come back to him. He starts flailing his arms, losing oxygen quickly; he does the only thing he can think of and starts aiming for Merle's nuts, hitting them as hard as he can. Merle lets go of his choke hold, favoring holding his aching balls to holding Daryl's throat.
Daryl gets up quickly and enters Merle's room and grabs piles of the first thing he sees, random clothes, which are lying all over the room in piles. He briskly walks past a disquieted Merle, throws the front door open, and dumps the clothes in the front yard. He rushes back in and into Merle's room and grabs more of his clothes and when he gets to the door of the bedroom he hesitates. "Fuck it." He turns around and opens the bedroom window and starts shoving more of Merle's shit out the window.
"Hey! Hey! What are ya doin'? No. You can' do that!"
"I'm getting'rid of ya stuff, Merle. Ya'd want to take this shit with ya, right?" Daryl says raspily. Merle just disappears and Daryl continues to carelessly throw Merle's worthless junk out of the window.
When Merle comes back he has the clothes Daryl rushes towards Merle and snatches the clothes from his grip, "I tol' you! Ya not fuckin' stayin' 'ere!"
Merle and Daryl start tousling over the clothes, fumbling, and Daryl ends up falling to the floor landing beside the bed. Daryl turns swiftly, ready to spring forward and tackle Merle, but freezes when he sees the items stashed under the bed.
He drags the bag of vials and smaller bags filled with white powder out from underneath the bed with a yank, clothes completely forgotten. "What the fuck is this!?" Daryl demands, standing quickly.
"Don' fuckin' touch that!" Merle warns darkly.
Daryl crosses his arms with disdain, "what ya gonna do... Kill me?" asking derisively.
Merle springs forward for the drugs, but Daryl throws it out of Merles reach and furiously pushes Merle away from him and gets in his face, Merle's eyes occasionally darting to the bag out of reach.
"I told you ta fuckin' keep ya drugs out a mah house!" He growls. "What ya got some stashed in my room too?" Merle's face goes blank. Daryl growls a curse under his breath. "Ya seem ta always forget something... This is MY HOUSE! Not yours! I let you live here! It's not a right, it's a fuckin' priviledge!-" Merle pushes Daryl backwards rushing for the bag of drug, but he's stopped by rough hands grabbing onto his throat propelling him backwards.
"Out! Get out of mah house!" Daryl yells, violently pushing Merle out of the bedroom and to the front door.
"No! Daryl! Ya can' do this! You don't have the fuckin' balls.... I'm just gonna come back!" Merle exclaims.
They reach the front door and Daryl rips it open and pushes Merle out. "I'm fuckin' tired a ya shit 'an I'm fuckin' tired a you!" Daryl screams. "Don't even try comin' back till ya get ya shit together." He screams before slamming the door.
________________________
Merle stares at the door in dismay. He can't believe the little shit had the balls to kick him out like that.
Suddenly the door swings open again and a hard plastic objects hits him in the chest then clatters to the ground. Looking down at the object he sees that it's a cellphone.
"There's ya fuckin' cell phone. Fuckin' use it!" Daryl yells while hanging out the door before slamming it closed the finale time.
Merle looks back down at the cellphone at his feet and picks it up bitterly before muttering to himself. "Fuck this. Fuck 'im, I don't need 'im."
"You're gonna regret this Daryl! Ya fuckin' hear me!
________________________
Daryl leans against the door after he shuts it the finale time with a scowl marring his face, listening to Merle screaming on the other side. He hadn't intended on kicking Merle out immediately after he came back. He was going to give him an ultimatum, but as soon as he saw Merle's face when he came how all of his earlier emotions came rushing back to him full swing.
He can't say he regrets what he did because he doesn't, but he can't get the look on Merle's face out of his head. But it's too late to go back now, asshole had it coming.
Daryl looks around at the jostled furniture and then woefully over at his ruined supper on the floor by the TV. Sighing, he walks over putting his chair back in place. He mops up his raviolis and throws it away. He knows he probably looks ten times as worse than before. He can feel the blood running down his face. His nose is definitely fucked up this time around. He goes to the bathroom and looks at it. The middle of the bridge of his nose is bowed towards the right side of his face. He's definitely not going to leave it that way; it'd sure enough make him look like a freak. He exhales and places his finger tips on the afflicted area and presses in and pushes the bridge over to the left side of his face, he muffles the guttural moan escaping his throat by biting hard on his bottom lip.
When he gets his nose to look as straight as he can, at least as much as he can tell through the swelling, he grabs the hand towel hanging beside the sink and holds it to his nose in an attempt to control the blood flowing out. Unfortunately this isn't the only time he's had to realign his broken nose. Between all the injuries he's received from his job, fights in the bar, and times when he got the shit beat out of him by his father, he's had a lot of practice doing it himself.
He walks to kitchen in search for a sandwich bag to fill with ice. He sits down in his chair in the dim room waiting for the bleeding to stop. He wonders if Merle's still out there, just standing there staring at the front door like it would explain to him why his brother kicked him out regardless of him already knowing, but the rumble of a motorcycle being kick started answers his question. Daryl sighs to himself leaning back and placing the bag of ice on his nose. He hates that he had to do kick him out. He hates the way Merle is. He hates that he hates Merle right now. To sum it all up, he pretty much hates everything at the moment.
He gets up to go to bed, being to tire to do anything else. He turns everything off and he settles into bed. He's about to drift off when something occurs to him. 'Fuck! I'm gonna have ta get new locks for the door.'