Disclaimer :The Walking Dead, Daryl and Merle Dixon (and the other characters) are the property of Robert Kirkman and AMC. Sadly, I do not own these characters. This writing is for pleasure only. No profit is intended.

AN: Here is a little more progress. Thanks to Pisces Dancer for the great game idea! It fit right in.

Dixon Demolition

Dirty Scrabble

2010

"Tell you what," Doc Green offered while she set up the IV line in Daryl's arm. "I'll give you one of those green suckers you like so much if you let me give you a shot of morphine."

All around them, Kurt and Merle directed the excavation efforts to get Daryl free from the rubble. Daryl worried, from his spot on the 'floor' that there were too many people in the small space. A collapsing building was too unstable for so much shifting weight. He had to get them all out of here and fast.

"No drugs," he rasped, pushing the oxygen mask aside. "You need to leave. All of them need to leave," Daryl paused to hack up some blood, groaning with pain. "Ain't safe," he panted.

"Merle has it under control," Doc Green soothed, trying to replace the mask. "You just need to stay calm and breathe."

"Merle makes up his own damn rules. He ain't got nothing under control! Get the hell out!" Daryl spat out with as much vehemence as he could muster. It was all he had left.

Doc Green just forced the mask onto his face and held his hand down under the pretense of checking his pulse.

Daryl felt the world start to spin at the lack of oxygen in his lungs. At least the mask helped with that. He ignored Doc Green's chatter and studied the 'roof' of the area just above the wall on his legs. As Merle and Kurt shifted the rubble, Daryl could see the impact on the structure above. It wasn't good.

Ripping the mask from his face, Daryl braced himself and barked out as loud as he could. The effort cost him dearly.

"Stop!" he ordered. "Goddammit Merle, the roof's cavin' in," he finished weakly. "Get everyone out."

1987

Daryl rubbed plaster dust from his pasty white arm while Merle chatted up Doc Green. The cast came off fairly easily. For some reason, Doc Green cut it off in such a way as to not disturb the 'artwork' which she thought he might keep. Then she handed him the two pencils he had lost inside the cast along with a tube of ointment.

It weren't his fault the damn thing itched so much. He tried to use the rubber end to scratch, but it just didn't feel as good as the lead points did. As a result, Daryl had scratched the underside of his arm with the pencils until they bled.

"Is it hot in here, or is it just you?" Merle said, in what Merle considered to be his sexy voice. Daryl rolled his eyes to hear Doc Green actually laugh at the lame pickup line.

"You are a laugh a minute, Mr. Dixon," Doc Green said. "But I'm more interested in your brother here."

That got his attention. Daryl looked up from playing with the cast. "Me?" he asked.

"Yes you," Doc Green smiled. "I want you to hop up on the scale. I swear you look taller than you did just six weeks ago." She moved over to the tall doctor's scale and extended the height boom. "Come on now."

Daryl jumped down off the exam table and got up on the scale. Merle snorted while Doc Green weighed and measured Daryl standing there.

"Just like I thought," she said, ruffling his hair. "You are up fifteen pounds and you are half an inch taller. Something must be agreeing with you."

He was taller? The way Aunt Maybelle had been feeding him, the extra pounds made sense. But taller?

"Told ya he was just a late bloomer. Why, I grew three inches after I left home," Merle drawled. "Five inches if you add the extra two I got below the belt, not that I needed help there," he smirked.

"Tempting, but I'll pass," Doc Green winked. "I want to keep an eye on Daryl's growth. Bring him back in three months and I'll give you another shot at flirting." Doc Green whipped out a green lollipop from her pocket and handed it to Daryl, but smiled at Merle.

"What? None for me?" Merle said. "I got a powerful oral fixation."

Doc Green just laughed.

Merle dropped Daryl off at the adult education center to meet his new tutor, old Mrs. Horvath's daughter-in-law, Erma. Said he would be back in three hours to pick him up. He had some errands to run for Uncle Joe.

The adult education center always had something going on. Daryl pushed through the front double doors, up the stairs and right to room 222, just like he had been told. The door there was closed and he could hear voices inside. Before he could knock, the door pulled open revealing a teenage girl with red ringlets that spilled to her waist.

"Oh, I'm sorry," the red-haired girl said. She flashed an apologetic smile and brushed right past Daryl. Without looking back, she headed down the stairs. Daryl couldn't help but watch her go.

Never had he seen hair like that. It reminded him of a campfire. Wildfire, he thought instead. That much curly red hair was like wildfire.

"Daryl Dixon, I presume. Any relation to Pete Dixon?"

Daryl turned and caught his first glance at his new tutor. She looked nothing like old Mrs. Horvath. "Ma'am?" he replied, confused.

"You know, Pete Dixon? On Room 222?" she asked Daryl with eyes bright with mischief. "We're in room 222," she finished, like Daryl was supposed to know what that meant. All he could do was shrug.

Erma Horvath looked to be in her early 30s and dressed like it was still the seventies, or maybe the late sixties. She was a hippie through and through, from her leather thong sandals peaking out from a printed cotton skirt to her macramé vest and flowers in her hair. She smelled of sandalwood incense. Daryl couldn't help but notice that she was braless. He took special care not to stare.

"Well, never mind. Pete Dixon was just a character on the tv show, Room 222. Since your name was Dixon, I thought you might find it funny."

"No, ma'am," was all Daryl could say. "I ain't never seen it."

Within the first hour, Daryl learned that Erma had married a car salesman that worked all the time. She loved him to distraction, and had to fill her time while he worked. They had been married ten years and had never been blessed with children. Erma was still hopeful on that front. She was secretly afraid of her mother-in-law and liked to call her 'that old battle ax'. And no, she didn't mind teaching Daryl at all.

And she didn't like being called ma'am. He should call her Erma. Daryl just shrugged, noncommittally. There was no way he was gonna call Mrs. Horvaths daughter-in-law anything but ma'am. He didn't want to risk the broom coming his way from the old lady next time he went home. Besides, it didn't sit right with him. She was gonna be his teacher and deserved the respect.

On his part, Daryl shared nothing but the fact he couldn't read well. He figured that Miss Horvath probably knew all about his shitty family. The less he volunteered on that, the better. He nodded his head at all the right places and attempted to read the various passages from different books she had prepared. Then he struggled to write a paragraph on what he ate for lunch yesterday.

It was all a disaster.

By the end of the second hour, Erma called for a break. She led Daryl down the hall and let him pick out a soda from the machine. She even treated him to a candy bar. They sat back in Room 222 and ate their snacks in silence. Daryl was careful not to slurp, or burp. When they were finished, he gathered up the trash and disposed of it himself.

Erma watched the young man, a kid really, clear up their mess. When her mother-in-law had called, Erma had been irritated at the request. Yes, she was on her summer break, but she had plans to write on her book, not tutor some charity project. But for once, her mother-in-law had been sincere.

Daryl was the youngest son of a very bad man. Unlike his drunken and criminal family, Daryl was honest and hardworking. Life had dealt that boy a bad hand and he deserved a chance. The part that hooked her in was how Daryl had been living in a shack in the woods for a couple of years, all to avoid the beatings that the whole town knew was happening, but did nothing about. It was a tale of abuse and woe.

Erma agreed to give the boy one session. She would decide after that.

"It's pretty obvious that you have a learning disability," she told Daryl once he settled down. "Some type of processing problem coupled with dyslexia."

"Ma'am?" None of that made any sense to Daryl.

"Well, dyslexia is a processing problem, but I think there is something more. I just can't put my finger on it, but I can see it in your writing," Erma mused.

"I figured I was just stupid," Daryl muttered, a little worried. "Didn't know I had some kind of disease. Is it catching?"

It was Erma's turn to be confused. "Disease?"

"Dislexa," Daryl replied carefully, wrapping his lips around the foreign word.

With a tinkling laugh, Erma explained how dyslexia described how Daryl's brain confused letters and grammar, often flipping their placement, so that reading was difficult. It was the most common of processing problems and completely treatable.

"It's not like you can catch it by sitting on a toilet seat in a public restroom," she exclaimed to Daryl's amusement. "It's just something that happens. And more often than not, it is associated with someone of higher intelligence."

"Figured I was just a moron. Even Merle can read," Daryl said with a little hope. Maybe, just maybe this hippie lady might help his idiot self.

"Nope, no morons here," Erma grinned. She had to admit that she liked the scruffy young man.

When Merle picked him up an hour late, Daryl was waiting on the front steps of the education center with a Scrabble box under his arm. His homework for the week was to find a book that interested him and read one half hour every evening. He was to write about his day before going to bed. And he was supposed to play Scrabble.

Merle ordered pizza for the first time since they got to Atlanta while Daryl set up the Scrabble board. After Daryl had given up on reading the instructions, Merle explained the rules as best he could without reading the instructions himself.

"Whatcha do his build up words on the board. You hafta play off the letters already down. Scoring is based on the itty numbers on the bottom," Merle said, popping open a beer. "We both start with seven tiles. You go first."

Daryl looked at his tiles and couldn't come up with a word to save his life. "I can't," he finally said. "I don't know any."

Merle sighed and laid down four tiles and wrote down is score. He was gonna need a lot of beer to get through this.

WORD

After a moment, Daryl nodded. That word he could read. He stared at his letters but couldn't come up with something. "I don't know," he said again. "Don't know where to start."

"What ya need is a dictionary," Merle suggested as he rose to answer the door. He paid the delivery guy and brought a piping hot pepperoni pizza into the tiny kitchen. It smelled wonderful. Daryl was missing.

"Yo, bro! Pizza's here," he hollared, helping himself to the first slice. Merle figured this game of Scrabble was gonna last maybe ten more minutes before Daryl got frustrated and flung the board across the room. That would suit him just fine. It was a stupid game anyway.

Daryl came back into the room with a Playboy in his hand. He snagged a piece of pizza while he studied one of the pages. Carefully, he added the tiles while he completely covered his slice of pizza in crushed red pepper.

T

WORD

A

T

"Twat!," Merle choked on his pizza. Daryl looked smug. "Ya didn't tell me we was playing dirty Scrabble." Merle made his move.

T

WORD

A

TITTY

"That one was a double word score," Merle made note on the paper. "Fuckin' A!"

T

WORD

A

TITTY

...H

...R

...O

...B

Daryl added his word and looked at the paper. "Ya cheating!" he accused. "There ain't no way you already have 300 points."

"I get extra every time you put a word down and don't read it out loud," Merle explained, beginning to enjoy himself. "And, if ya use less than four letters, I get half ya score each time."

"That ain't in the rules. You makin' that shit up," Daryl yelled.

Merle flung the rules back at his brother nabbing another slice of pizza. "You think I'm wrong? Go ahead and read 'em yourself."

"Asshole," Daryl said and gave Merle a dirty look. He glance at the rules but sighed. Until he could read better, it was Merle's rules or no rules. Daryl grudgingly complied, with a little help with the sounding out from Merle.

The game quickly progressed. O became ORGASIM, which branched to SEMEN, which led to NAKED.

"This is fun," Daryl laughed while sounding out CLITORIS. That one was really hard to get. Daryl said so, while laughing through a mouth of pizza.

"And don't I know it," Merle banged on the table and howled.

The two brothers played dirty Scrabble half the night.

2010

Merle paused at his brother's sharp command.

"Stop! Goddammit Merle, the roof's cavin' in!"

Merle looked up and saw what Daryl was talking about. The displaced walls they were moving were undermining the sketchy support on the roof above. One wrong move and the whole thing was going to come crashing down.

"Get those lift's in here," Kurt roared, seeing the same thing himself. "We're almost home free," he told Merle. "Just a little more and I can jack that beam up and pull Daryl out. Then we can all get the hell out of here."

Merle studied the ceiling. He was no engineer like Kurt and he didn't have a quarter of the instinct that his brother did, but to him that roof looked ready to fall right on top of them all. He had to lay his bets on Kurt, because all he knew was that he had to get Daryl out. Merle nodded and moved out of the way as Kurt directed where to place the lifts.

Merle crouched next to his brother and gave Doc Green a searching look. All these years, and all that flirting between them, he had never used her first name. In fact, he wasn't even sure what it was.

"How's he doin', Doc?"

"Stubborn jackass, like always," Doc Green tried to smile and failed. "Won't let me give him anything for the pain."

"That right, Darlina?" Merle asked his brother. The flecks of blood on the inside of the mask were driving nails into his gut. This was all his fault. "You got a thing for pain?"

Daryl grabbed Merle's arm and pulled him down to his level. He pushed the mask aside. "Ya gotta get the Doc out, Merle. Got a bad feeling." Daryl pulled himself up on one elbow, trying to get leverage on Merle's arm. "I ain't worth her dyin;"

"Don't getcha panties in a wad," Merle pushed Daryl flat. He could feel his brother gasping for air through the muscles in his chest. "I got this."

"I'm not leaving. He needs to be monitored all the way to the hospital," Doc Green said, stubbornly.

"I have to agree with Daryl," Merle declared, checking out Kurt's progress. The taller man had sent away the other workers and was extending the lifts himself.

Merle looked at Doc Green and saw a syringe ready in her hand. He took it from her and stood up. "Time for you to leave."

"I can't," she faltered. "I just can't!" She burst into tears as Merle pulled her roughly to her feet and hauled her toward the hole.

"You got to trust me," Merle growled. "I been taking care of Daryl his whole life. I got this."

He shoved Doc Green through the hole into the waiting arms of Roscoe. "We'll be out shortly."

Merle ignored Doc Green's pleadings and headed back to Daryl. He brother was completely gray except for the sprayed blood. He looked mostly dead already.

Daryl cracked his eyes and saw his brother's grim face. He pushed as Merle and whispered, "Go."

Merle shook his head. "You and me, bro. It's just you and me." With that, Merle uncapped the syringe and shot the morphine into the IV line against Daryl's protests. It took only seconds for Daryl to go completely still.

Tbc...

AN: I'm starting to get worried for Daryl myself, and I'm the one writing this!

I hope you enjoyed the chapter with all the flirting and quirky Erma Horvath.

I'd love to hear for all of you. And I really love ideas! Please drop me a line.

Thanks for reading!

Surplus Imagination