oOo
You should run, boy, run.
Daryl had never been in a proper relationship before. It was something he never really cared for – it didn't help that his role model in life was Merle, and he didn't really act like the best guardian to Daryl. Spending time away in the juvenile institutions meant that Daryl spent a lot of his time alone, and when Merle was back at home, all he learned about women was that you fuck 'em and chuck 'em.
"You don't need a chick comin' in your life and telling you what to do, little brother," Merle had told him one Saturday evening when Daryl was only fifteen. Merle had drunk nearly a whole crate of White Lightening and was beginning to sway a little in his seat while he spoke. "Bitches; they ain't shit worth you," he had drawled. That very night he had already had a girl round at their house, a tall, skinny woman with matted hair and heavy lidded eyes, Daryl knew she was a junkie from the puncture marks and bruises on her inner arms, her pasty complexion, and the huge bags under her eyes. He had listened to her fucking Merle for at least an hour, before an argument had erupted in the upstairs bedroom, and she had been promptly thrown out.
The way that Merle treated women had such an impact on Daryl's life that he never really found it possible to settle down with a woman. He didn't know if he really wanted to – he found that Merle had been right about pretty much everything he had told Daryl about women. They were neurotic and borderline crazy. They always wanted something, be it big or small. They got in his damn way. There was always some underlying and unnecessary emotion that he simply couldn't understand, and didn't really want to waste air trying to work out. So Daryl usually reacted the same way Merle always had; by losing his rag with any of the women in his life, and throwing them out of the house straight away.
Of course, things all changed when the dead rose up and started trying to eat the living. I guess everyone wants some comfort in their lives, even the ones who have grown to pretty much detest women in all of their aspects.
Which leads Daryl to wondering just how he had ended up lying in a camp bed in a derelict farmhouse, with his arms around someone's slender body, listening to her breathing softly near his ear.
It wasn't the first time Beth had crawled into bed with him. Life on the road was becoming lonely; she was used to having all of her sisters and her father around, and Daryl knew she was finding it hard, especially after that boy died, what was he called? Jimmy. She had been very adept at hiding her emotions, since Daryl had blown up at her that day that they got drunk, and accused her of cutting herself for attention. Now, several days later, Daryl knew he was starting to feel bad for what he had said to her.
She was quiet through the day, and as soon as night fell and Daryl climbed into the bed he was occupying; she would soon cross the room and join him. He never questioned her.
He didn't really understand it, but he guess he didn't need to. The truth was, he kind of liked it. Beth was young and fragrant, innocent and naïve – something Daryl never got the chance to be. She had grown up in a life of luxury, the baby of the family, whereas Daryl was born straight into a world of misery, left to fend for himself. Here in the dark, Daryl could bury his face into Beth's blonde head, and breathe in her innocence and virginity, and pretend that he could really be a part of it, too.
At least until morning. When they would wake up once again, and act like they had never spent the night in each other's company.
oOo