Blood Bourbon

Petty Hearts and Small Minds

The week in Austin passed in varying ebbs and flows of absolute pure bliss and growing discontent. Nothing Daryl couldn't reasonably deal with but he had never felt so much aversion to going to work in his memory.

The day after dinner with his brother and company, he was grinning to himself for most of the morning, until he realized that a fair bit of people were avoiding him. Nothing overtly hateful but enough that when he walked into the break room, he received rather non-committal greetings and watched as everyone seemed to end their break at the same time and empty out of the room.

He would have chalked it up to coincidence if Oscar hadn't stepped into the room and grimaced when he saw him. Daryl supposed he should be grateful that the man, his room mate, didn't turn and walk straight out again.

"Hey Daryl." Oscar moved to grab himself a coffee, giving him a curious look.

"What's going on Oscar?" Daryl frowned, watching the man flush and look away from him, glaring at the wall. "Oz?"

"Aw fuck it. Fuck those assholes." Oscar shook his head and glanced to him, "Chase has been telling everyone you're into dudes. Says he's seen you out and about a couple times. Now everyone has been asking me if I'm into dudes, cause we're friends and we live together. And when I say no, they're asking me if you've ever tried to... or like look at me weird."

Daryl frowned and looked down at his coffee, shrugging, "I..."

Oscar put his coffee cup down hard, giving him a blunt look, "Look, I don't fucking care, Daryl. I've seen you with women. But if you're with men too, whatever. And most people here don't give a flying fuck, but Chase has been saying that you tried to get with him and got really violent when he turned you down."

"Fuck that." Daryl snapped his gaze to Oscar, his words dripping with a resurgence of anger, "only time I ever saw him out... yeah. I beat his ass... but cause he was being an asshole to a couple nice ladies... and then started spouting off like a bigot to a guy who was gay."

Oscar met his gaze for a long moment, before flashing him a relieved grin, "I figured it was something like that. People will stop being a-"

"Martin!" Stanfield stalked into the break room, scattering a group of stage hands who had gathered just inside the doorway to listen to the conversation and glaring at Oscar until the man picked up his coffee and left.

"Sir."

"Look. Whatever's in your personal life, you keep it the hell out of work, you hear me?" The man glared hard at him, though Stanfield stood a fair distance away from him, as if he needed a safety buffer zone.

Daryl pondered defending himself.

Pondered asking for a chance to at least ask for some form of mediation, but he just shrugged, looked down at his coffee and sighed. "Of course, Sir."

Stanfield, watched him for a long moment, before shaking his head and turning to stalk out of the room. Leaving Daryl to wallow in confusion for a few minutes before pulling himself out of it and walking back to work. He had never been particularly close with a lot of people in the circuit but he had always thought of the group as relatively friendly with him. He hadn't even considered the ramifications of his choices, hadn't thought it would be an issue.

That night he had finally opened up his briefcase and his ancient, beleaguered laptop and got to work on whatever harebrained presentation he probably wasn't going to even follow through with. He distracted himself with drawing and designing until Ryker returned to the hotel room and distracted him a little bit more thoroughly.

Day two, someone had grabbed his hat and boots from his trailer and thrown them into the holding pens for the steers. By the time he had found them, they were trampled into enough shit and piss that he was pretty certain he was never getting them clean. Day three, someone had slashed his chaps and pissed on his bed.