p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Beth Green caught his eye the very first time he ever saw her./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"When she was younger, when she far too young to be emallowed /emto turn his head the way she did./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Strictly speaking, it wasn't her fault./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"It was within his control to look away from temptation, knowing she was a teenager, knowing there was no way that she was eighteen or even anywhere fucking close to that legal number. Truthfully, at first, it didn't bother him. He wasn't one for relationships or kissing or even fucking. Before the world went to hell he didn't have any tolerance for that kind of shit, didn't have tolerance for people, pronto and when the world ended, he felt that as keenly as ever before, because there were far bigger things now than getting his dick wet, especially when he had never particularly wanted to before./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Plus, things were different then./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Merle was gone, not for the first time in his life but seemingly for the last time and Merle was a pain in the ass and sometimes he thought he knew what was best for Daryl, regardless whether his decisions on his younger brother's life made Daryl uncomfortable, but when it came right down to it, Merle was his brother and when he was gone suddenly the Dixon name fell on Daryl's shoulders like a dead weight for him to bare alone./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Point being, Merle was emgone/em and he didn't have to deal with his older brother's taunts and jibes, even if he heard them every goddamn time he looked over at the farmers youngest daughter and pictured her doe eyes looking up at him and her pretty pink mouth wrapped around his cock. Pictured her bent over in the barn, the door rattling as he pounded her against it. Whatever, he could look, he could do that, he just couldn't touch. He couldn't ever, ever touch./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Case solved./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"It was, for a while. He forgot about her, as much as you can forget about the object of your depraved fantasies while you fist your hands at your side and leave your aching cock alone. He forgot about her and he tried to survive, as the last Dixon, as a man without his brother and as a dirty, redneck hillbilly in a group of people he wouldn't have even spared a glance in his old life, people who didn't trust him because they met Merle first and his brother always had a knack of living up to the Dixon's bad name. An old guy, a cop, an Asian and a dickhead who only had to breathe in his direction to piss Daryl the fuck off./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Carol got him through it, in the end, became his friend even when he treated her like shit and spoke to her like her husband spoke to her, like she emexpected/em men to speak to her and even when he let her down and didn't bring her little girl back. In those days on the farm, with Carol so persistently being nice to him, trying to engage him in group plans and encourage him to come up to the house rather than sleep in his one man tent, he tried to like her. Really like her. She was his age, if not a bit older than him, certainly a hell of a lot more acceptable than the sixteen-year-old emgirl/em he was lusting after up in the house./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He really tried, but it wasn't happening. Carol wasn't ugly, in fact, he thought she was quite stunning, simply because he had a developing respect for her that at the time he didn't have for anyone in the world, because he'd been her, once. Cowering under a man's fists and biting remarks and pointed looks that said he was about to be beaten within an inch of his life and he had never been as brave as her, not once./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He admired her and he tried to shape that admiration into something, emanything/em because the thoughts he was having for Beth Greene, a girl he was never, ever going to get his hands on for a million reasons he couldn't be bothered to list, was turning him into a scowling, angry mess. Daryl's only saving grace was that whilst he was internally dying, he was doing it quite silently./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Often, he blamed her, like that could make it easier and it did, when she would walk around in the blazing sun in tiny little denim shorts that just about covered the curves of her ass, Daryl would stumble somewhere he couldn't be seen, duck around a wall and bite down on his knuckle, tip his head back and bang it once or twice and cuss the ever living shit out of her, hope that one day he would either knock some sense into himself or knock her out of his head altogether./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Ignoring her stopped working./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"The more involved the group became with Hershel and his family, the more he saw her and the more she saw him. He couldn't say what expression she wore when they were in the same room, other than he couldn't determine if he frightened her or fascinated her. Being in the house brought its own problems, biggest being that he was in there at all different hours, at the dawn before hunting or well into the night after patrolling. The mornings were the worst, when she had just woken, coming downstairs in goddamn pyjamas like the world even allowed for such things anymore, eyes hazed and skin flushed./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Flushed like she'd just cum. Like emhe'd /emjust made her cum. He had to shut that shit down, hard before emhe/em got hard and so he tried being around at night instead. It wasn't any better and he was driving himself crazy with it, how bad he wanted this girl even though he'd never said one fucking word to her or her him, unless it was a polite greeting or to hesitantly whisper, 'emMr Dixon? Mr Grimes is lookin' for you/em.' Sometimes he just wanted to groan and shake her, shake her hard and say, 'emyou know what you're doin', don't you? You /emknow.'/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Instead, he bared his teeth and fucking dealt with it because it was goddamn stupid. What did he even emsee/em in her? What was so alluring? She was a emkid./em Gawky limbs and awkward grace and he'd never really categorised women, never had a empreference /embut she had barely any curves or tits or anything to look at unless she was wearing those damn shorts. He didn't emget it/em and it was ruining his fucking life and it was all emher/em fault. It wasn't though because it was his decision, his conscious decision to keep on looking at her baby blues and watch out the corner of his eye for the sun to catch her hair emjust right/em so that she was a vision of gold./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Whatever, didn't matter./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He'd be over it soon, when she was dead because girls like that didn't survive shit like they was living. Thing is though, flighty little thing she is, she did survive. She made it and it took all of his willpower not to smile at the sight of her when the group met up again because he was Daryl fucking Dixon and he didn't emsmile /emand he kind of hated her still because she was temptation like nothing he'd ever experienced in his whole sorry life. Soon it became a part of his life, a point. In surviving and trying to feed them all and make plans and stop himself from looking at Lori's swollen belly so he didn't run the risk of having a panic attack, it was just a fact./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Like his name and his eye colour, he just dealt with it and hoped it left him, hoped he stopped being such a fucking idiot and just got emover it/em. Of course, that didn't happen because now he's here and she's started talking to him. Not straight away, not rushing in with it, but casually, little by little. When everyone is asleep and he's on watch because sleep is something he doesn't actively participate in anymore, she lies within the mass of bodies for exactly ten minutes before she gets up and joins him./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"The first time, she didn't talk but for a 'emg'night' /emwhen dawn wasn't far off from approaching, at which point she would be shaken awake to keep going, less than three hours of sleep under her belt. The second time is pretty much the same and she doesn't sit close but they're closer than they ever have been and there's nothing at all suspicious about them but he watches the lump that is her father and hopes to whatever is left behind that he won't wake up and just emknow /emwhat Daryl wants to do to his 'emdoodlebug/em.'/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"By the third time, he snaps. "The fuck you keep comin' over here for? Go to sleep."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Thinking that being rude will send her running back to bed is the first time she firmly puts him in his place. "I like sittin' here and you ain't tellin' me otherwise. emOutside/em don't belong to you, y'know."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"No reply from him because there's none to give./p
hr style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;" noshade="noshade" size="1" /
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"The fifth night rolls around and like clockwork, she gets up from the sleeping pit and sits beside him. She hasn't tried to interact with him since she told him off, but tonight she does. "You like bein' alone?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Why? You don't listen when I send you away."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""You only tried once."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""You didn't listen."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""I don't do that often."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Daryl wants to call her on her shit and say, 'emyes you absolutely fuckin' do, everythin' your daddy tells you like a good little girl,' /embut the words die on his tongue when he looks over at her and she's already looking. Staring, like she's trying to convey a message, a meaning and he doesn't really know how to flirt but he thinks she might be trying and there's something in her eyes that's emwicked. /emThen he's picturing it, telling her to do something, anything, something simple and pointless but she emdoesn't/em./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"She doesn't and she has to learn, she has to be punished so he bends her and tears her pants down and lands blow after blow on the creamy curves of her ass until the skin flares with a vicious crimson hand print and when he's done he looks at her face and in every other fantasy she looks so innocent, so man handled but now he sees that emlook/em, that wickedness and it destroys his lungs. He snaps his head away from her, struggling to contain his breathing, to not give away his hardening cock or his clenched teeth. This is ridiculous, fucking pathetic. She's a emgirl./em/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Go to damn bed, Greene."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"This time, she goes./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"It gets worse. It always does. Because he starts emcounting/em. The minute the last person's breath evens out into sleep, he starts counting ten goddamn minutes in his head and the very second he hears her shifting to stand, his gut twists in a way that it hasn't since his dad used to meet him at the door with the belt. He doesn't think that's right, that he should have the same feelings for her coming towards him as he did knowing the pain that was coming for him, the sheer terror that clamped his bones, but it is right because she terrifies him./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Not because her daddy would have his balls and Maggie would juggle them for him to watch but because he just can't emtrust /emhimself. Beth's so soft and small, tiny in his shadow let alone his hands and it's possible he could get so lost in the way she makes him feel, in the touch of her skin, that he would lose himself and take her in ways she's not ready for. Rough and quick fucks the likes of all he's ever known over stained armchairs and in dingy bar bathrooms. Daryl hasn't got the first fucking clue how to be gentle, how to stroke and kiss and go slow./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He knows how to pound so it's over as soon as possible and she doesn't look like the kind of girl to appreciate that and that's the biggest confirmation of all, that'll he'll never see his hands on her flesh in his lifetime. Even if they were alone, if there was no one to pass judgement, the simple fact is, they're not compatible. He's old and rough and too worn in, the old ways and the new ways beaten in to him. She's young and pliant, ready to be moulded and crafted into the kind, sweet woman one day she will be, but not if she ever shares a bed with him./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"She draws closer and he grips his bow and grits his teeth and thinks, 'emjust fuckin' deal with it, you /emmoron' when she sits down beside him, a little closer than usual. "Hey."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""What'd you want, Greene?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Company."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""I ain't no good."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""S'okay."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He sighs because he's so fucking fed up of feeling like her chew toy. "Look, just go to sleep. I need to keep watch."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Are you really pissed off all the time or is it just me you hate?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Daryl's jaw clenches but he doesn't look at her. "I don't hate you."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Could'a fooled me."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""I don't like people, you ain't special," he snaps./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Yeah?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""emYeah./em"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Why'd you never sleep then? Why you always lookin' over us?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He rolls his neck of his shoulders because it aches but also because it feels like she's trying to peel his skin from his bones. "You got somethin' you wanna say, Greene?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Her eyes narrow and that wickedness is back and he tries to act normal but he thinks he blinks one eye after the other and not at the same time and that isn't particularly normal. "My name's Beth, you could call me it y'know."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""My name's Daryl, you call me Mr Dixon."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Call me Beth an' I'll call you Daryl."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Nah, I'm good."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""No, you're difficult."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"His patience is running so thin he may clock her over the head with the crossbow just so she'll shut the fuck up. Damn woman is always in his fantasies, in his dreams and with him throughout the whole fucking day and now she's trying to be part of the few hours of sanity he gets in her presence. He swears she knows what she's doing, he emswears./em/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Probably I'll just call you emprincess/em 'cause you're a spoilt fuckin' brat," he hisses./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"She scowls. "I ain't no princess, I grew up on a farm."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Daryl rolls his eyes. "Ain't the point. I'm gonna just call you brat 'stead, then."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""I ain't a little girl!" She whisper-shouts./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""You ain't little but you're a girl, ain't a woman yet so listen to your elders an' go the fuck to sleep, emgirl./em"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"She huffs and gets to her feet, turning on him with an anger he's never seen in her before, not for anyone. "You're the most infuriating person I ever damn met, emMr Dixon/em."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Watch your mouth."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Beth gives a petulant emugh/em and he doesn't even need the spoilt ass bitch foot stamp to see it and as she picks over the bodies to find her place to lie down and go to sleep, he has to turn his back right to her because for the first time in as long as he came remember, he breaks out in a shit eating grin./p
hr style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;" noshade="noshade" size="1" /
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"She doesn't come back to him on watch and he takes them less after that because he really does need some sleep but also because he's so sick of counting. For a couple of days that goes on and then they find the prison. They spend a gruelling day clearing it out and then on the night time, when he walks towards the fire with Carol at his side, Beth sings. Daryl's heard her sing before but in short, one liners or a hum under her breath as they travel. He's never heard a full song come out of her mouth and it entrances him, though he tries not to show it, tries not to really feel it./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"For a while after that it seems like he really does forget about her, sets her on a back burner of aching while he tries to adjust to this new life they've created. It goes well, too well and really when the Governor shows up he shouldn't be so fucking surprised, shouldn't have been such a fucking emidiot /emand just shot him when he had the chance./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He didn't, like a good little bitch, listening to a fucking kid, he didn't and his world went to hell and he was being tested, he really fucking was when he stumbled upon her. A choice, to be alone with her for however long until they found the family again, to not lay his hands upon her or look at her when she was undressed, or he could have just left her. Could have just left her to die and never have to deal with it again, the ache he had in his gut every time he looked at her. He couldn't leave her, for a number of reasons far too jumbled to contemplate and they ran, together./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Things changed when they were running. He stopped looking at her mouth and picturing his dick sliding between her lips. He stopped looking at her ass and picturing his hands there. He stopped hating her company, started relishing her voice in the silence and her smiles and her eyes looking up at her, emtrusting /emhim. Truth be told, it didn't go completely away./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Daryl still thought about what it would be like to lay her down, to taste her skin, to touch her between her legs but even his fantasies wasn't as rough now. He could be gentle, if he tried. She was making him gentle, altering his perceptions, teaching him to be good. Singing it to him as he lay in a dead mans bed and listened to her promises, 'emwe'll be good' /emand he thought about Beth growing up with him, her face smoothing out and her eyes wiser, her limbs less gawky and her body more graceful. He thought about where they would end up, where they could end up together./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Daryl Dixon lay in the dead mans bed and he wondered when he stopped looking at her as a fuck and fell in love with Beth Greene./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Revelation as it was, he was still too chicken shit to do anything about it. To sit close at the fire, even when there was no one around to judge him for it. The thought of trying to kiss her or even just hug her made his brow damp with sweat and his gut roll with dread. He wasn't good enough for her and he never would be./p
hr style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;" noshade="noshade" size="1" /
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He lost her before he could try./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Watched the bullet tear through her skull and tasted her blood on his lips and watched her die right before his eyes, all that light and good and soul bleeding out of her, leaving the world, leaving emhim/em. What a fucking idiot he had been, all those chances he had, all those time he was alone with her to just emtell/em her. To kiss her and hold her close and stroke her hair. Nothing else, not anymore./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"And when they keep going and leave her behind and Rick says, 'emI know you lost somethin' back there' /emit makes something in his heart wither and die because that's so fucking accurate he could scream. He lost something he didn't even try for, didn't even bother trying for because he was such a fucking coward./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"An old, tired man./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He lies in bed at night and he thinks about all the times Beth Greene turned his head, caught his attention, captivated him for one reason or another and it by far isn't the last time she does it, but his head turns so hard and so fast when she walks through the gates of Alexandria./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"When she was younger, when she far too young to be emallowed /emto turn his head the way she did./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Strictly speaking, it wasn't her fault./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"It was within his control to look away from temptation, knowing she was a teenager, knowing there was no way that she was eighteen or even anywhere fucking close to that legal number. Truthfully, at first, it didn't bother him. He wasn't one for relationships or kissing or even fucking. Before the world went to hell he didn't have any tolerance for that kind of shit, didn't have tolerance for people, pronto and when the world ended, he felt that as keenly as ever before, because there were far bigger things now than getting his dick wet, especially when he had never particularly wanted to before./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Plus, things were different then./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Merle was gone, not for the first time in his life but seemingly for the last time and Merle was a pain in the ass and sometimes he thought he knew what was best for Daryl, regardless whether his decisions on his younger brother's life made Daryl uncomfortable, but when it came right down to it, Merle was his brother and when he was gone suddenly the Dixon name fell on Daryl's shoulders like a dead weight for him to bare alone./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Point being, Merle was emgone/em and he didn't have to deal with his older brother's taunts and jibes, even if he heard them every goddamn time he looked over at the farmers youngest daughter and pictured her doe eyes looking up at him and her pretty pink mouth wrapped around his cock. Pictured her bent over in the barn, the door rattling as he pounded her against it. Whatever, he could look, he could do that, he just couldn't touch. He couldn't ever, ever touch./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Case solved./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"It was, for a while. He forgot about her, as much as you can forget about the object of your depraved fantasies while you fist your hands at your side and leave your aching cock alone. He forgot about her and he tried to survive, as the last Dixon, as a man without his brother and as a dirty, redneck hillbilly in a group of people he wouldn't have even spared a glance in his old life, people who didn't trust him because they met Merle first and his brother always had a knack of living up to the Dixon's bad name. An old guy, a cop, an Asian and a dickhead who only had to breathe in his direction to piss Daryl the fuck off./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Carol got him through it, in the end, became his friend even when he treated her like shit and spoke to her like her husband spoke to her, like she emexpected/em men to speak to her and even when he let her down and didn't bring her little girl back. In those days on the farm, with Carol so persistently being nice to him, trying to engage him in group plans and encourage him to come up to the house rather than sleep in his one man tent, he tried to like her. Really like her. She was his age, if not a bit older than him, certainly a hell of a lot more acceptable than the sixteen-year-old emgirl/em he was lusting after up in the house./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He really tried, but it wasn't happening. Carol wasn't ugly, in fact, he thought she was quite stunning, simply because he had a developing respect for her that at the time he didn't have for anyone in the world, because he'd been her, once. Cowering under a man's fists and biting remarks and pointed looks that said he was about to be beaten within an inch of his life and he had never been as brave as her, not once./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He admired her and he tried to shape that admiration into something, emanything/em because the thoughts he was having for Beth Greene, a girl he was never, ever going to get his hands on for a million reasons he couldn't be bothered to list, was turning him into a scowling, angry mess. Daryl's only saving grace was that whilst he was internally dying, he was doing it quite silently./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Often, he blamed her, like that could make it easier and it did, when she would walk around in the blazing sun in tiny little denim shorts that just about covered the curves of her ass, Daryl would stumble somewhere he couldn't be seen, duck around a wall and bite down on his knuckle, tip his head back and bang it once or twice and cuss the ever living shit out of her, hope that one day he would either knock some sense into himself or knock her out of his head altogether./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Ignoring her stopped working./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"The more involved the group became with Hershel and his family, the more he saw her and the more she saw him. He couldn't say what expression she wore when they were in the same room, other than he couldn't determine if he frightened her or fascinated her. Being in the house brought its own problems, biggest being that he was in there at all different hours, at the dawn before hunting or well into the night after patrolling. The mornings were the worst, when she had just woken, coming downstairs in goddamn pyjamas like the world even allowed for such things anymore, eyes hazed and skin flushed./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Flushed like she'd just cum. Like emhe'd /emjust made her cum. He had to shut that shit down, hard before emhe/em got hard and so he tried being around at night instead. It wasn't any better and he was driving himself crazy with it, how bad he wanted this girl even though he'd never said one fucking word to her or her him, unless it was a polite greeting or to hesitantly whisper, 'emMr Dixon? Mr Grimes is lookin' for you/em.' Sometimes he just wanted to groan and shake her, shake her hard and say, 'emyou know what you're doin', don't you? You /emknow.'/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Instead, he bared his teeth and fucking dealt with it because it was goddamn stupid. What did he even emsee/em in her? What was so alluring? She was a emkid./em Gawky limbs and awkward grace and he'd never really categorised women, never had a empreference /embut she had barely any curves or tits or anything to look at unless she was wearing those damn shorts. He didn't emget it/em and it was ruining his fucking life and it was all emher/em fault. It wasn't though because it was his decision, his conscious decision to keep on looking at her baby blues and watch out the corner of his eye for the sun to catch her hair emjust right/em so that she was a vision of gold./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Whatever, didn't matter./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He'd be over it soon, when she was dead because girls like that didn't survive shit like they was living. Thing is though, flighty little thing she is, she did survive. She made it and it took all of his willpower not to smile at the sight of her when the group met up again because he was Daryl fucking Dixon and he didn't emsmile /emand he kind of hated her still because she was temptation like nothing he'd ever experienced in his whole sorry life. Soon it became a part of his life, a point. In surviving and trying to feed them all and make plans and stop himself from looking at Lori's swollen belly so he didn't run the risk of having a panic attack, it was just a fact./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Like his name and his eye colour, he just dealt with it and hoped it left him, hoped he stopped being such a fucking idiot and just got emover it/em. Of course, that didn't happen because now he's here and she's started talking to him. Not straight away, not rushing in with it, but casually, little by little. When everyone is asleep and he's on watch because sleep is something he doesn't actively participate in anymore, she lies within the mass of bodies for exactly ten minutes before she gets up and joins him./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"The first time, she didn't talk but for a 'emg'night' /emwhen dawn wasn't far off from approaching, at which point she would be shaken awake to keep going, less than three hours of sleep under her belt. The second time is pretty much the same and she doesn't sit close but they're closer than they ever have been and there's nothing at all suspicious about them but he watches the lump that is her father and hopes to whatever is left behind that he won't wake up and just emknow /emwhat Daryl wants to do to his 'emdoodlebug/em.'/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"By the third time, he snaps. "The fuck you keep comin' over here for? Go to sleep."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Thinking that being rude will send her running back to bed is the first time she firmly puts him in his place. "I like sittin' here and you ain't tellin' me otherwise. emOutside/em don't belong to you, y'know."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"No reply from him because there's none to give./p
hr style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;" noshade="noshade" size="1" /
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"The fifth night rolls around and like clockwork, she gets up from the sleeping pit and sits beside him. She hasn't tried to interact with him since she told him off, but tonight she does. "You like bein' alone?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Why? You don't listen when I send you away."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""You only tried once."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""You didn't listen."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""I don't do that often."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Daryl wants to call her on her shit and say, 'emyes you absolutely fuckin' do, everythin' your daddy tells you like a good little girl,' /embut the words die on his tongue when he looks over at her and she's already looking. Staring, like she's trying to convey a message, a meaning and he doesn't really know how to flirt but he thinks she might be trying and there's something in her eyes that's emwicked. /emThen he's picturing it, telling her to do something, anything, something simple and pointless but she emdoesn't/em./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"She doesn't and she has to learn, she has to be punished so he bends her and tears her pants down and lands blow after blow on the creamy curves of her ass until the skin flares with a vicious crimson hand print and when he's done he looks at her face and in every other fantasy she looks so innocent, so man handled but now he sees that emlook/em, that wickedness and it destroys his lungs. He snaps his head away from her, struggling to contain his breathing, to not give away his hardening cock or his clenched teeth. This is ridiculous, fucking pathetic. She's a emgirl./em/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Go to damn bed, Greene."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"This time, she goes./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"It gets worse. It always does. Because he starts emcounting/em. The minute the last person's breath evens out into sleep, he starts counting ten goddamn minutes in his head and the very second he hears her shifting to stand, his gut twists in a way that it hasn't since his dad used to meet him at the door with the belt. He doesn't think that's right, that he should have the same feelings for her coming towards him as he did knowing the pain that was coming for him, the sheer terror that clamped his bones, but it is right because she terrifies him./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Not because her daddy would have his balls and Maggie would juggle them for him to watch but because he just can't emtrust /emhimself. Beth's so soft and small, tiny in his shadow let alone his hands and it's possible he could get so lost in the way she makes him feel, in the touch of her skin, that he would lose himself and take her in ways she's not ready for. Rough and quick fucks the likes of all he's ever known over stained armchairs and in dingy bar bathrooms. Daryl hasn't got the first fucking clue how to be gentle, how to stroke and kiss and go slow./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He knows how to pound so it's over as soon as possible and she doesn't look like the kind of girl to appreciate that and that's the biggest confirmation of all, that'll he'll never see his hands on her flesh in his lifetime. Even if they were alone, if there was no one to pass judgement, the simple fact is, they're not compatible. He's old and rough and too worn in, the old ways and the new ways beaten in to him. She's young and pliant, ready to be moulded and crafted into the kind, sweet woman one day she will be, but not if she ever shares a bed with him./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"She draws closer and he grips his bow and grits his teeth and thinks, 'emjust fuckin' deal with it, you /emmoron' when she sits down beside him, a little closer than usual. "Hey."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""What'd you want, Greene?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Company."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""I ain't no good."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""S'okay."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He sighs because he's so fucking fed up of feeling like her chew toy. "Look, just go to sleep. I need to keep watch."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Are you really pissed off all the time or is it just me you hate?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Daryl's jaw clenches but he doesn't look at her. "I don't hate you."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Could'a fooled me."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""I don't like people, you ain't special," he snaps./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Yeah?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""emYeah./em"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Why'd you never sleep then? Why you always lookin' over us?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He rolls his neck of his shoulders because it aches but also because it feels like she's trying to peel his skin from his bones. "You got somethin' you wanna say, Greene?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Her eyes narrow and that wickedness is back and he tries to act normal but he thinks he blinks one eye after the other and not at the same time and that isn't particularly normal. "My name's Beth, you could call me it y'know."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""My name's Daryl, you call me Mr Dixon."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Call me Beth an' I'll call you Daryl."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Nah, I'm good."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""No, you're difficult."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"His patience is running so thin he may clock her over the head with the crossbow just so she'll shut the fuck up. Damn woman is always in his fantasies, in his dreams and with him throughout the whole fucking day and now she's trying to be part of the few hours of sanity he gets in her presence. He swears she knows what she's doing, he emswears./em/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Probably I'll just call you emprincess/em 'cause you're a spoilt fuckin' brat," he hisses./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"She scowls. "I ain't no princess, I grew up on a farm."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Daryl rolls his eyes. "Ain't the point. I'm gonna just call you brat 'stead, then."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""I ain't a little girl!" She whisper-shouts./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""You ain't little but you're a girl, ain't a woman yet so listen to your elders an' go the fuck to sleep, emgirl./em"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"She huffs and gets to her feet, turning on him with an anger he's never seen in her before, not for anyone. "You're the most infuriating person I ever damn met, emMr Dixon/em."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Watch your mouth."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Beth gives a petulant emugh/em and he doesn't even need the spoilt ass bitch foot stamp to see it and as she picks over the bodies to find her place to lie down and go to sleep, he has to turn his back right to her because for the first time in as long as he came remember, he breaks out in a shit eating grin./p
hr style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;" noshade="noshade" size="1" /
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"She doesn't come back to him on watch and he takes them less after that because he really does need some sleep but also because he's so sick of counting. For a couple of days that goes on and then they find the prison. They spend a gruelling day clearing it out and then on the night time, when he walks towards the fire with Carol at his side, Beth sings. Daryl's heard her sing before but in short, one liners or a hum under her breath as they travel. He's never heard a full song come out of her mouth and it entrances him, though he tries not to show it, tries not to really feel it./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"For a while after that it seems like he really does forget about her, sets her on a back burner of aching while he tries to adjust to this new life they've created. It goes well, too well and really when the Governor shows up he shouldn't be so fucking surprised, shouldn't have been such a fucking emidiot /emand just shot him when he had the chance./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He didn't, like a good little bitch, listening to a fucking kid, he didn't and his world went to hell and he was being tested, he really fucking was when he stumbled upon her. A choice, to be alone with her for however long until they found the family again, to not lay his hands upon her or look at her when she was undressed, or he could have just left her. Could have just left her to die and never have to deal with it again, the ache he had in his gut every time he looked at her. He couldn't leave her, for a number of reasons far too jumbled to contemplate and they ran, together./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Things changed when they were running. He stopped looking at her mouth and picturing his dick sliding between her lips. He stopped looking at her ass and picturing his hands there. He stopped hating her company, started relishing her voice in the silence and her smiles and her eyes looking up at her, emtrusting /emhim. Truth be told, it didn't go completely away./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Daryl still thought about what it would be like to lay her down, to taste her skin, to touch her between her legs but even his fantasies wasn't as rough now. He could be gentle, if he tried. She was making him gentle, altering his perceptions, teaching him to be good. Singing it to him as he lay in a dead mans bed and listened to her promises, 'emwe'll be good' /emand he thought about Beth growing up with him, her face smoothing out and her eyes wiser, her limbs less gawky and her body more graceful. He thought about where they would end up, where they could end up together./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Daryl Dixon lay in the dead mans bed and he wondered when he stopped looking at her as a fuck and fell in love with Beth Greene./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Revelation as it was, he was still too chicken shit to do anything about it. To sit close at the fire, even when there was no one around to judge him for it. The thought of trying to kiss her or even just hug her made his brow damp with sweat and his gut roll with dread. He wasn't good enough for her and he never would be./p
hr style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;" noshade="noshade" size="1" /
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He lost her before he could try./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Watched the bullet tear through her skull and tasted her blood on his lips and watched her die right before his eyes, all that light and good and soul bleeding out of her, leaving the world, leaving emhim/em. What a fucking idiot he had been, all those chances he had, all those time he was alone with her to just emtell/em her. To kiss her and hold her close and stroke her hair. Nothing else, not anymore./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"And when they keep going and leave her behind and Rick says, 'emI know you lost somethin' back there' /emit makes something in his heart wither and die because that's so fucking accurate he could scream. He lost something he didn't even try for, didn't even bother trying for because he was such a fucking coward./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"An old, tired man./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He lies in bed at night and he thinks about all the times Beth Greene turned his head, caught his attention, captivated him for one reason or another and it by far isn't the last time she does it, but his head turns so hard and so fast when she walks through the gates of Alexandria./p