Strangers on the Street

Part 1: A Favor

Summary: Inspired by Maggie's speech in the season finale, I intend this to be a collection of one shots exploring ways the family's paths may have crossed before the world ended. In our first installment, a rebellious teenage Maggie Greene tries to flirt some booze out of a younger, awkward Daryl Dixon. Inspired by Maggie's line to Hershel in 2x07, "All I wanted to do was smoke and shoplift."

25 minutes. It had been 25 minutes since his brother had sauntered through the automatic doors of the BigSpot with a confidence that was surely misplaced but one Daryl Dixon envied all the none. He rocked back and forth awkwardly on the heels of his work boots, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans. He should've been at work, should've been opening the shop right about now. Daryl let his head thump against the concrete wall of the super store, wasn't a single chance he still had a job after disappearing with his brother two days ago. It wasn't the first-time Merle had cost him an honest day's work and Daryl knew it was far from the last.

A middle-aged mother, her hair teased to the Gods and shellacked into place with White Rain and a sticky looking little boy with a rat tail mullet in her shopping cart nearly clipped his toe as she navigated into the store. Daryl grimaced and retrieved the half-smoked cigarette behind his ear, fumbling for the lighter in the pocket of the black denim jacket he wore over the same ragged t-shirt he'd thrown on the morning before. The buzz he'd been riding since the previous day's noon was starting to fade and with it was coming a headache and churning stomach.

Where the fuck was Merle?

His brother had seemed so sure of the shit plan which had started with them scouring the parking lot of a different BigSpot in Piedmont, two towns over. Merle had been so satisfied with himself when he found the crumpled receipt for men's razors and an array of other odd items that added up to 44 dollars in total.

"More than enough for a case and lunch little brother."

The third and final part of the plan required a twenty-minute drive, in Daryl's truck with Daryl's gas of course, to the next closest BigSpot in Senoia. Which is how Daryl found himself hovering outside the entrance, waiting for his brother to emerge with a shit eating grin and a very small windfall. Entirely too much time had passed and Daryl bitched to himself. He certainly wasn't about to go marching into the store only to find his brother in security hold, waiting for the real police. And he definitely wasn't about to go stand next to Merle in the customer service line like some kid who'd lost his mamma shopping.

Merle hadn't even made him come inside when he went to pocket the items or even now as he attempted to return them at the second store, but the disappointed grumble in his voice wasn't lost on his little brother "ya look guilty even when ya ain't done nothin', best stay here and not give us away. Gonna hafta toughen ya up Darylina."

Disappointed and maybe a little disgusted at the way Daryl couldn't quite walk the walk or even really talk the talk, not how Merle could. Not how their old man used to. Too soft, that was what his pop used to say before he took the belt to Daryl's back as if it might make him stronger, turn him to the leather that broke his skin.

He paced awkwardly; stubbed and relit the cigarette more times than he could count. He was pulling it away from his lips in a long drag when he caught sight of his reflection in a mirrored panel on the door. His hair was buzzed, shorter than he'd worn it since he was a kid but whatever girl Merle was banging had offered them both free haircuts.

"Workin' on her beauty license, old Merle got himself a workin' woman this time."

The haircut was shitty at best but he was glad for it because he already looked like hell and the last thing he needed to add to the mix of bloodshot blue eyes and chapped lips was greasy bangs hanging in his face. His load was really winding down now into sobriety and Daryl was certain he must stink to the high heavens, up all night drinking Bud's and ripping from a joint on the porch of some stoner's mother's boyfriend's house in the hot Georgia night. It had seemed like such a great idea to keep drinking a few hours ago, now sleep and the urge to shower were calling to him.

"Heya."

The voice started him and Daryl tried desperately to play off the fact that he'd nearly jumped out of his skin with half drunk shakes, running a hand through his non-existent hair and scowling at the sight before him. The brunette couldn't have been more than 14 but it was obvious she was dead set on appearing older. She had a sweet little girl face but it was overly made up with cakey patches over adolescent acne, heavy eyeliner and a thick gloss painted on her lips. Daryl turned away, immediately uncomfortable in the presence of the minor girl who had a hand on her hip, too short shorts and was jutting her chest out in his direction in a painfully desperate kind of way.

"I'm Maggie." Daryl scowled and Merle would have cackled at the way he crossed his arms over his chest, feeling oddly exposed at the way the girl was looking him over. "Ya deaf?" she goaded, trying to sound teasing.

"What?" he finally managed, taking a calculated side step to make more room between them.

She smiled and he almost laughed at the sight of braces lining her teeth.

"Wanna do me a favor?"

"Nope," he answered immediately and pressed his face to the glass of the doors, shielding a glare with his eyes and trying to catch sight of his brother's form somewhere in the store. He wasn't unfamiliar with girls like the one before him, had known plenty of them back growing up. Trailer girls who were angry at their daddy's or lack thereof, girls who lets boys undress them just to have someone pay them any attention. The kind of girls who'd all had pregnant bellies by high school.

"Come on," she hissed to his back, "I just need someone to buy me a bottle."

Daryl felt his brows meet at an annoyed peak and turned to face the girl. She was trying damn hard to look like one thing but he was certain she wasn't quite like the girls he'd known as a kid either. Her sneakers were expensive, name brand and he could tell the silver cross around her neck was real white gold.

"Ask someone else, I ain't old enough either."

"That ain't true," she exclaimed at his lie, "you're like 28, come on, I got cash. We can split it."

Just for adding four extra years onto his age he was half inclined to take the teenagers cash and dart, just as he knew Merle would have. The thought of taking anything from her was smothered by the way she wiggled her eyebrows at the last part of the statement. The girl genuinely seemed frustrated at his silence, letting her hands slap against her thighs in an exasperated hint at child's tantrum.

"Can I least have a smoke?"

"Naw," he grunted and inhaled deeply on the menthol between his lips, almost protectively as if she might reach out and take it from him.

"You suck," she groaned and then more to the sky than him sighed, "this all sucks."

Daryl dropped the cigarette to the concrete and made a show of crushing it under his heel.

"Can ya scram kid? Ain't in the business of chatting up little girls in parking lots."

He almost felt bad at the way her confidence crumbled the second he called her a kid, as if she had some great secret that had been found out.

Daryl took several steps away from her, finding a new spot to settle near a gathering of shopping cars, putting a barrier between himself and brazen girl. For all her insistence, she seemed to back down, turned away from him and set her attention towards the next poor sap pulling into the lot.

Relieved for the silence Daryl let himself lean against the building and slid his eyes shut, reminding himself it was highly likely Merle was just stuck in a long return line behind a dozen mothers, probably chatting up an unsuspecting woman with his false charm and already running a con on her.

He could have fallen asleep like that until a high-pitched voice pulled him back to the conscious world. Daryl squinted in the sun.

The pushy girl suddenly looked less than sure of herself, pulling self-consciously at the legs of her shorts as a man leered from the window of a Buick at her.

"Booze?" the man laughed, "sure thing babe, just hop on in, we'll go somewhere and get a real drink."

She had her arms crossed across her chest but she didn't seem entirely dead set against the offer, glancing around the lot in contemplation, bouncing on the toes of her sneakers like she might be jumping into something exciting. Her eyes fell on Daryl and she lifted her chin as if she was defying him in some way.

"Sounds great," she giggled and reached for the handle of the car.

Daryl groaned involuntarily and pushed himself off the wall.

"Hey," he called out, "hey kid."

She hesitated at his voice which gave Daryl just enough time to put himself between her and the car, sticking his head through the passenger window and glaring at the man inside. He was pushing 40, overweight and laughable all decked out in biker's leather.

"Fuck off pervert," he growled simply before leaning back out of the car and holding his position until it pulled off, the man inside releasing a long string of curses as he peeled away.

"Does that mean your gonna buy me a bottle?" she asked impatiently. Daryl scowled down at the girl.

"What the fuck's your problem? Go home kid, ya think a guy like that was gonna take ya for a joy ride? Ain't got no business out here doing what you're doing. Go home to your mamma."

Her jaw squared and for a second he thought she might slug him with her boney, balled up fist.

"You don't know shit about my mamma."

He couldn't fight the roll of his eyes.

"I don' know what poor me teenager shit you got going on but get the hell over it, ya' look ridiculous. Gonna get yourself dead doing this shit."

He stalked back towards his previously occupied spot and didn't spare a glance back in her direction. He could vaguely make out the sound of her crying through a half-sided conversation he assumed was into a cellphone.

"I'm in there doing all the hard work and you're out here nappin?" Merle's harsh voice sounded exasperated as he appeared through the doors.

"Bout' fuckin' time," Daryl groaned, all thoughts of sobriety and maybe calling his boss to grovel forgotten when he saw the case of Bud Heavy's in one of Merle's hands and a bottle of Jack in the other. His brother looked swollen with pride as he pressed the bottle into Daryl's chest.

"Shoulda saw me charming the panties off the cashier," he chuckled, "bitch probably woulda let me do her right there if I asked right."

Daryl tried to drown the words out, tested the weight of the bottle in his palm. He didn't even wait until they were to the truck before he twisted off the cap and took a long, burning swig.

"Well look at you Darylina," Merle whistled, "might put some hair on yer chest yet."

As he brought the bottle back down from his lips Daryl's eyes met those of a man navigating his powder blue pickup truck thru the lot towards the front of the store. He saw disapproval there, judgement. Daryl raised his middle finger towards the old man and took another swig.

He and Merle each cracked a Bud before he put the truck in drive and Daryl managed one last look towards the building. He watched the little girl collapse into the arms of the man who had just exited the pickup, sobbing into his chest as he shushed her and wiped at the makeup on her face with his shirt sleeve.

"Let's get this shit show on the road," Merle hooted, "I'm finna be lit by noon brother."

"Yea," Daryl grunted out and let the girl and her father disappear in the rearview, "me too."