Chapter Text
It normally doesn’t go this far. Normally, it’s just a shove here, some half-assed wrestling there. Sometimes Merle does it almost goofily, like when they were kids, noogies and wet willies and knuckle sandwiches as Daryl shoves at him, protesting as Merle cackles. Merle plays rough, always has done. Daryl remembers his ma telling Merle off once. You’re fifteen, he’s four, she’d scolded, shoving a wad of balled-up toilet paper into Daryl’s nose to stem a nosebleed. You can’t be so rough with him.
His ma had never told off his pa for being rough with Daryl, so Daryl’s not really sure why she’d gone after Merle for it. Merle had never meant to hurt him, after all. Merle was just bigger, older. He just played rough.
Merle’s still bigger. Always will be. Almost twelve years on Daryl. He hasn’t got much height on him anymore, maybe a few inches, but he’s at least thirty pounds heavier, and he knows how to use them. Merle likes to win - always has. He’s a sore loser at anything: cards, darts, pool. Barely hunts anymore, disgruntled from every time Daryl’d come back with something bigger, or something at all. And Merle’s never lost a fight, to hear him tell it. Ain’t no man ever started something with me he didn’t regret, Merle says, baring his teeth.
(Daryl wonders if their pa had ever regretted starting something with Merle. He certainly hadn't regretted anything with Daryl.)
Merle never loses fights. He can’t. He’s hardwired, from his time in the army, his years fucking around dealing to this group and that, hanging with his biker buddies. Hell, maybe since he was born. He can’t lose a fight. He won’t let himself. So if something starts between him and Daryl, Merle’s the one who’ll finish it.
And he’ll win. Whatever that looks like.
It normally doesn’t look like this, though. Daryl’s wrist pitched at an unnatural angle, a hot white pain twining around his arm. He prays for a sprain, but he knows, looking at it, that it’s worse than that. Not something he can manage himself the way he does with other shit, scrapes and bruises and busted noses. His head is throbbing from where Merle slammed it against the shitty trunk that serves as their coffee table, but that’s minimal - the wrist is what’s going to fuck him.
He tries not to remember what started this fight in the first place - Merle pissed Daryl’d asked him for his share of the rent. You’re the one with the fancy-ass job, Merle’d spat, grabbing at him. Never mind that the job was just some farm labor crap out in the county, under-the-table shit that isn’t so different from the other jobs they’ve done, except Daryl had got this one on his own. (Except the old man hadn’t wanted Merle, too.) The fuck you even get that job for if you’re still gonna hit me up for cash? Well, Merle may have gotten his wish. No way Hershel's gonna have any work for Daryl with his wrist all jacked up.
But Merle hadn’t meant to do it. Daryl knows that; he does. It’s the drugs - Merle’s never done anything like this without being high out of his mind, and meth makes him mean. He goes hard, yeah, he always has, but he’d never hurt Daryl. Not for real, not on purpose, not something like this. Merle wasn’t Pa. He’d never do that. He just forgets, that’s all. He forgets that he’s bigger. He gets too focused on winning.
Merle just plays rough. He’d never really hurt him. Never.
It’s awkward as shit bumping along the mountain road at night, steering with his left hand, trying to hold the wheel steady with some assistance from his right forearm, hissing over every rut and pothole. The place they’re staying isn’t far from town, but it isn’t exactly close either. Daryl’s liked this place better than anywhere they’ve stayed for years - sure, the house is a shitheap, more shack than anything, cheap peeling linoleum and gritty, grimy carpeting that smells like some old dog’s piss. But it backs onto the woods in a way that makes Daryl feel at home, makes his breath come easier, the air fresh and clear, no sounds except the wind through the trees. It’s maybe forty minutes drive to the nearest urgent care - probably would've been more like twenty if he had two working hands. But the roads are quiet after dark up here, no other cars to crash into, and he steers himself down mountain and into town good enough, even if his forehead is clammy with sweat by the time he parks.
It’s too bright in there, institutional fluorescents that feel almost blinding after the dark of the night. There’s someone behind the tall desk, short gray hair poking over the top. It takes him a second to register it’s a lady, a delicate head that looks up, a polite smile ready when the door chimes open.
“Hey there! Can I help you?”
Daryl’s holding his bad arm tight to his body, the weird warp to his wrist clearly visible. Yeah. Guess he looks like he needs help. Plus, who the fuck would just jaunt into urgent care after dark for no reason?
“Hurt my wrist,” he grunts, and the lady’s face twists into a wince as she sees his arm.
“Ooh, yeah, ouch,” she says. Which should piss Daryl off - he hates getting talked down to, hates weird-ass pity. But she just sounds sympathetic, and she’s clacking away at her keyboard with purpose, so he lets it slide. “Well, Dr. Carson is just finishing up with another patient, but once he’s done, we’ll get you looked at. I -“ She looks up from her screen then, her eyes blue and bright and looking at him calculatingly. “Is it your first time here?”
Daryl shrugs. It is, sort of - he certainly hasn’t been to this newly renovated building, with its bright lights and shiny new waiting room chairs, the iPads scattered around. But he thinks he might’ve been once or twice when he was younger. They’d lived further up mountain then, but he’d used to hop around between different urgent cares and ERs those last few years with his pa when he was old enough to drive himself and didn’t want any questions. He might’ve been here before.
“Well, if you’re a new patient, we’ll need a little information. What’s your name?”
“Uh. Daryl. Dixon,” he mutters, and her fingers flash over the keyboard.
“Yeah, doesn’t seem like we’ve got you in our system. We’ll just need a few things - name, date of birth, allergies, medications, all that. Do you think you could fill that out?” She gestures to the side of the desk where the sleek and shiny tablet is mounted. “It’s a touchpad, so it shouldn’t aggravate your wrist too badly. Or if you need help - “
“I got it,” Daryl mumbles, stepping over to the tablet before she offers to fill in his shit for him. He’s sure he can manage. Tablet’ll be easier than a pen and paper, anyway. In childhood, he’d taught himself to write with either hand, a skill he hadn’t had to use for years. It’s chicken scratch either way. At least typing shit into the tablet will be legible.
“Are you sure? There’s not much else that needs doing, so if you need a hand - “
Daryl just barely restrains himself from snapping at her. Fuck no, he’s not pouring out his medical history to this lady he hardly knows, for all she seems perfectly fine. (Not that he thinks he’ll need to write down much. What kind of history do they need to know to splint him up and send him on his way?)
But as he awkwardly pokes at the screen, Daryl sees the first section, and his stomach twists. Fuck. Insurance. He starts recalculating. Maybe he could splint the wrist himself, later, when the pain dies down. If Merle sobers up, he could -
But Merle’s not sober. That’s the whole reason he’s here.
Well. Too late now. He’s already down mountain, and he’s sure as shit not going to be able to wobble his way back up like this. Plus, He’s not a kid anymore. Can’t risk fucking up his wrist permanently - doesn’t have his GED or anything, no legitimate qualifications. All the work he gets is with his hands, handyman shit or construction, farm work up at the Greene place or tinkering with people’s cars and trucks when they’re too cheap for a certified mechanic. He can’t do any of that shit with a bum hand. Whatever. He’ll worry about how he’ll pay later. He jabs at the ‘none’ button with more force than necessary, jostling his upper body, and a wave of pain and nausea judders up his bad arm. Fuck.
Daryl’s scribbling his finger over the glossy screen, trying for some facsimile of a signature when the door opens. Some kid and his mama come out of the back room, the kid sniffling and scrubbing at his nose.
“Should be all right, Duane. Just don’t put anything else up there, all right, son? A popcorn kernel’s the least of your worries!” The doctor is way too cheerful, both for the kid and for Daryl. The mama gives the doctor a polite smile, hand on the kid’s shoulder as he sniffles again.
“Thanks so much, Dr. Carson. It won’t happen again, right, baby?”
The kid sniffles once more and nods. And then they’re gone into the night, the kid hooking an arm around his ma’s waist as she steers him to the car.
Daryl doesn’t realize the doc is watching him until the door closes.
“All right. Mr, uh -“
“Dixon,” the desk lady supplies. “Daryl Dixon.”
“Mr. Dixon, right. Well, I’m ready for you now, if you want to come back. Thanks, Carol.”
Daryl follows the doctor back, not sure what to do with the smile the desk lady shoots him as he goes.
The doctor doesn’t ask a lot of questions. Daryl doesn’t answer many either. He grunts once, sharply, when the doc straightens out his arm, worried that the doc is gonna send him on to the emergency room and Daryl’ll have to pay for two of these visits, but the man just feels around carefully, shoves Daryl’s hand into some x-ray machine (Daryl won’t let himself think about the cost of this) and tells him it’s pretty straightforward. “Lucky you,” the doc says. “There are so many bones in the wrist that it’s easy for things to get complicated, but seems like a pretty clean fracture. Nothing’s displaced. Shouldn’t need surgery or anything.”
Thank fuck.
He leaves with a bright blue splint, a scrip for some pain medication that he plans on tossing before he gets to the truck, and instructions to set up a follow-up appointment at the front desk to see if he’ll need a cast.
Daryl’s squinting at the doctor because - what? Hadn’t he just did all those X-rays to see if Daryl needed a cast? Why’s he got to come back and do more? But the doctor seems to read something else in his look.
“I know normally urgent care doesn’t do appointments,” Carson says earnestly. “And, well, you’re welcome to follow up with your personal doctor, or with an orthopedic doctor if you’d prefer. But we've started providing some limited non-urgent services during regular business hours if you don’t have another doctor lined up. Someone will need to check your wrist after the swelling goes down, at any rate, see if that splint’ll get the job done or not.”
Well, fine. He doesn’t have a personal doctor or an ortho-whatever. He’ll make another appointment if it means he can get the fuck out of here and go crawl away somewhere to lick his wounds.
The front desk lady- Carol? - smiles at him again when he staggers up. “All set?”
“Um - need a follow-up,” Daryl mumbles, and there go her lightning fingers again, clacking away on the keyboard. “In a couple days.”
“Right - well, I’ve got Thursday at 2:40 or Friday at 5:15? Sorry, we don’t have a lot of non-urgent slots. They fill up pretty quick.”
“Friday’s fine,” Daryl answers shortly. His head feels like it’s throbbing in time to his wrist, his whole body one sore thing. Friday’s better - maybe he can pick up some work on Thursday, though he can’t for the life of him imagine what.
“Great. I’ll set you up for then. Do you want a text or email reminder?”
“Naw,” Daryl mutters. The hell would he need that for? She just told him. And he’s got a cotton candy blue splint that’ll get in his way every day as a reminder. He doesn’t need more than that.
“All right. Anything else I can do for you?”
“Nah,” Daryl says. “Uh, thanks, or whatever. Know it’s late.”
“Well, we’re still open, so I guess it’s not that late,” the lady says back. “See you on Friday, Mr. Dixon.”
“Don’t - Daryl’s fine,” he says. Mr. Dixon always feels fake, like someone else’s name. Even his pa hadn’t gone by anything other than Will or Dix.
“Daryl,” the woman repeats. And smiles up at him again. “Take care.”
He jerks his head in a nod and heads for the door, the throbbing getting worse with each step. So close to being done, being able to get out of this place that smells like antiseptic and bad dreams. So -
“Oh, Mr. - Daryl! You forgot your prescription.”
He doesn’t turn back. “Nah, s’okay. Don’ need it.”
“Daryl -"
But he’s already at the door, and they must have some kinda rule about leaving the desk because she doesn’t chase after him. And then he’s gone, letting the blackness of the night outside swallow him up, wishing it could swallow up the pain in his head and his wrist and this whole damn evening until it never happened at all.