Chapter Text
Daryl was cold and covered in grease, he made his way out the back of the garage his brother owned to get on his bike to go home. He put in the effort to look the part even though he wasn't a mechanic or anything he ended up covered in grease and oil being his brothers whipping boy. He pulled his jacket around him tighter, he looked across the carpark and could see Carol the waitress from the little dinner across the road trying to start her car. He'd been in town two months watching and working getting in with everyone. He went to the dinner everyday for lunch not only for lunch but to see the waitress that caught his eye.
Fuck it he thought, he was supposed to be laying low, being a redneck arsehole, doing his best to be redneck trash not a knight in shinning armour, but the man in him couldn't let the pretty waitress sit in the dark hoping someone would help her. He wandered across the carpark tapping on her window, she cracked it a little. She looked worried and stressed that her car wouldn't start, it was getting dark and he wanted to check to see if he could fiddle under the hood to see if he could help her a little.
'Pop it,' he grunted at her, she nodded and popped the hood. He tinkered around looking to see what he could do. He shook his head. 'Can't do nothing, needs to go in the shop,'
She nodded and looked flustered at what to do next she looked at him and passed him the keys. She didn't need to say anything he could feel her nerves coming off her, she was worried about what to do next or how she was going to get home. She looked at him all hopeful, he turned his back on her and headed back to the work shop, she could call that arse hole she dated that he'd seen show up at her work being a prick, she could do better than him he didn't even understand how a guy like that even ended up with a girl like her.
'Ya better call ya boyfriend,' he called over his shoulder, and used his keys to unlock the garage to go bring a tow truck around to drag her sorry excuse for a car into the workshop. He was hooking it up and she was on the phone talking. She just seemed to give up and nodded saying ok. She looked across to Daryl. He could tell she was trying hard not to cry at all and he was trying hard not to let it bother him pretending it didn't bother him. He couldn't get involved he had to let her walk home so people knew he was a dick.
'Ummmm thanks, see you tomorrow,' She pulled her jacket around her and started to walk out of the car park to the street, it was already dark. He couldn't do it he knew he was supposed to be a dick but he couldn't let her walk home in the dark. Not to mention he was freezing his balls off and she had a light jacket on over her waitress uniform. She held her head proud and her back stiff, she looked frightened and cold. He knew her arsehole boyfriend wasn't coming to get her.
'Wait,' he called and indicated for her to come back, he took off his leather jacket and passed it too her, 'Give you a ride,'
She nodded following him pulling on his jacket and going with him while he moved her car into a bay in the garage, he mucked around in the office coming out with another leather jacket and helmet. He passed it to her and she followed him meekly while he set the alarms. He looked at her and she seemed nervous. She kept looking at her phone and looking around the streets.
'What's wrong with ya?' he asked her.
'Just I shouldn't really let you drive me home, Ed won't like it,' Carol whispered looking around making sure no one was watching her go out into the dark following Daryl into the dark. 'He told me to walk, I should walk home,'
'Fuck Ed!' Daryl muttered doing up his helmet indicating she should do the same.
'He will be mad,' Carol stood by the bike. She chewed on her thumb looking at him and at the bike. Her bangles on her wrist slipped up and even in the dark he could see the bruising around her wrists, he knew the signs no one wore that many bangles and leather wrist bands just because. It wasn't his first time he seen someone covering the signs of abuse and it wasn't going to be his last, but he couldn't get involved he could give her a ride home and leave it at that, that was the best he could do for her.
'And where is Ed now?' Daryl was getting pissed, 'Get on the bike or don't get on the bike,' he fiddled with it and it roared to life, Carol scrambled to get on the back of it and she wrapped her arms around him to hold on. He took off down the street, she pointed from over his shoulders to give him directions to her house. He tried not to look down at her tiny arms wrapped around his waist, or the head tucked into his back to stop getting cold, or the fact she was wearing a dress on the back of the bike.
He killed his bike pulling up to where she pointed she lived and he waited for her to get off, she took the helmet off and passed it to him, he took some time to clip it to the back of his bike, she dug in her pockets for her keys to let herself into her small apartment, he looked up at the dingy block of apartments, then looked across the road at the dingy block of appartments that he was living in with Merle. He didn't realize that he was living so close to her.
She had her phone in her hands looking at the time. He held out his hand for it and to his surprise she handed it over and he fiddled with it and handed it back, he gave her a nodded and said nothing indicating she should go into her building. She whispered thank you and left. He waited till she was inside and pushed his bike across the road sitting on it still and pushing it using his feet into the tiny parking lot beside his building to lock it up tight for the night.
Carol walked slowly up the stairs to her flat looking to see what he did with her phone looking through the address book seeing nothing under his name. She was confused until she hit new contacts and his number was under the words 'Just Call Me'. She gave a half smile knowing her boyfriend sometimes looked through her phone, she didn't want to delete it in case he found it. He wouldn't know who it was he wouldn't be bothered unless he saw a mans name there. In that moment she knew that he knew and he was giving her his number just in case, she had seen him look at her wrists.
She went into her apartment locking the doors behind her, pulling her curtains and moving about to get ready for a shower when she realized she was still wearing his jacket. She pulled it off looking at it then looked around her apartment in a panic, she had to hide it, Ed would be here soon. She knew he would be drinking, she run around with it in her hands, she pulled open the curtains looking out to see if she could see Ed anywhere. Her hands started to shake knowing there would be another big fight if he saw the jacket even though it was innocent.
She looked across the street at the apartments Daryl had gone into and saw a light go on and Daryl walking around in a pair of jean's picking up a towel off his bed, almost as if he knew she was watching him he looked across, she held up his jacket and he nodded, pulling on his shirt. She tracked his movements and saw him coming out the building. She could see Ed coming into hers. She opened the window and waved it to him, he nodded and stepped back waiting for her to drop it. She let it fall to the ground just as she heard a knock at her door.
Carol pulled the window shut quietly as she could and inched the curtains across and run to turn the shower on, then kicked off her shoes and met Ed at the door in bare feet looking at him. Trying to give him a smile.
'Ya get your car sorted?' He asked her.
'Ummmm no, it needs to go to the garage,' she told him. He nodded, she run for the shower without saying another word, he was drunk and she slipped into the shower trying to get her thoughts together. Why had having a leather jacket here just about send her into a spin. She showered and was in the bathroom so long that as she had hoped Ed was asleep on the couch. She crept off to bed knowing you don't poke the bear while he slept.
He was a jealous man, Carol could no longer think why she was with him but had been with him so long she didn't know how to leave him. She looked across the road seeing Daryl wrapped in a towel walking around his room in the lamp light talking on the phone. She pulled her curtains not before giving him a little wave when he looked across at the movement. He gave her a nod and pulled his own curtains.
Daryl pulled his curtain across before he talked into the piece of shit phone he was holding, he missed his normal phone but picked this one up at the service station. He'd been buying and tossing phones for the past month, crushing them in a machine at work once a week, it was being used solely for ringing the agency, his normal phone was just decoration right now, cleaned up, files deleted so if someone took it they would get nothing out of it. 'Federal Agent Dixon, number 197424............................' He waited, he turned off the bedroom light and tipped his fingers through the curtains to look across the road into her apartment, 'Yeah, look, going good, Garcia give me everything you have got on Ed Peletier?'
'I can do that my brooding latte............... coming to you now, now how's my Morgan?' Penny Garcia asked over the phone.
He moved around the apartment of his brother, and waited for the fax to go, he sat in the dark reading by a lamp everything he wanted to know about Carol's boyfriend, including his clumsy girls friend who had been to the doctors and hospital for tripping and falling more times than he could count. He was undercover, top secret mission to bust one of the biggest drug rings run by an old timer who was a stand up pillar of the church but who also would have no problem shooting you in the back and giving you a pair of concrete shoes to sink to the bottom of the lake with.
He was supposed to be up playing his redneck arsehole routine while his partner Derek Morgan was working as a bartender in town. He filed the information away in his brain. and put most of it through the shredder going into the bathroom and starting himself a small bomb fire in the bottom of the bath. All the time discussing some stuff he'd found out about the case over the phone.
'Dixon tell me how my Morgan is,' she said again.
'He's fine, I haven't seen him today,' Daryl told her. 'Ok thanks, I'm going to have to go talk later,'
'Give my chocolate moca a big hug for me,' She told him.
'Fuck!,' Daryl said into the phone, 'No,' and he hung up. He looked around his brothers dingy place, he felt like he was going to get flea's or something, he cleaned it up the best he could. His brother was asleep in bed, he knew he was FBI but he didn't know what he was doing. Merle had the standard, ask no questions get told no lies, he'd only been in town a few years. He also didn't want to know anything in case someone asked him why Daryl was here, he didn't have to lie. He just told them he was helping him get his business off the ground.
Daryl found himself taking a quick shower and pulling on some clothes to head down to the dive where Derek was working and living. He would order a beer and hang in the bar watching what was happening. Even his brother didn't know he was working with him. The local cop did who called in the FBI for the big drug ring but they didn't know Daryl was there as a plant either. The fact was they had taken the opportunity to put Daryl in when it was clear Daryl had a family connection to the town. He pulled on his jacket and looked around making sure he didn't leave any evidence of who he was. His badge and everything was hidden. He had challenged Merle to find it and he was still looking for it. If Merle couldn't find it no one else could.
He took one last look up into the apartment building across the road and made his way down to the bar where he would end up playing pool pretending to get drunk with his brother.