Hello!
So it's not quite been two weeks but I had this floating around in my head so just wanted to get it written and then published on here. Not much happens in it but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
It was thankfully peaceful out at the barn where Beth busied herself by brushing over the hair of Nellie's mane, singing songs underneath her breath to fill the silence as she worked away. The young woman had probably been out at the barn for at least a good forty five minutes before she heard the sound of heavy footsteps approaching over the grass.
Although it seemed as though it had been forever and ever since all three of the Greene children had been together on the farm all at once, Beth just knew it was Shawn who was coming to see her.
Well, it was only between her brother and her sister, after all, since her mama and daddy had gone into town not long before and they weren't expecting to be back until later on that evening. And since it was only one of her two siblings that would be approaching her at the barn, Beth knew that there was absolutely no possible way that the person who was coming to see her would be Maggie Greene.
The older of the two Greene girls had actually listened to the advice that had been offered to her by Hershel and Annette (apparantly there was a first time for everything) and the brunette had stayed well away from Beth over the last few days; leaving her completely alone and barely even looking up in her direction, never mind actually acknowledging her presence.
It hurt to know that there was - once again - a rift between the two of them, especially when it was over something so silly and when it seemed as though everything had been completely taken out of hand. Still, none of the Greene's - including Beth - were naive enough to believe that all of the fuss that Maggie had created with her sister was genuinely just about Daryl Dixon.
In all honesty, the whole thing most likely had absolutely nothing to do with the older man whom Beth had started up a relationship with and was instead everything else to do with Maggie's incapability to acknowledge the fact that her little sister was actually happy and healthy.
No; it seemed as though it would be impossible for Maggie to ever fully accept the fact that Beth was actually doing absolutely fine nowadays and that there was absolutely nothing at all to worry about when it came to both her mental health and her general mindset.
Bitter as it may have seemed to anybody else outside of the situation, Beth couldn't help herself but to feel at least a tiny bit of resentment towards her older sister for causing such an uproar on her twenty-first birthday of all days. Not only that, but Beth thought to herself that perhaps if Maggie would have bothered to stick around at the farm with her family for a little bit longer than she did, or at least just visited - goodness, she could have even just called her younger sibling every once in a while to check in - then it wouldn't have been so much of a surprise to her to see that Beth was genuinely alright.
Maybe Maggie didn't realise that people could recover from depression, though - perhaps she thought that Beth would always be stuck in the same negative place, and perhaps it was strange for Maggie to see that Beth was different now.
Even so, Beth was anything but interested in making excuses for her sister in the same way that she was anything but interested in accepting any excuses from her sister about it. At the end of the day, it had been Maggie who had ran when things actually started to get tough; at a time when Annette had been incredibly sick and her daddy had almost returned to the bottle and when at seventeen years old, Beth had struggled to cope with the pressure of trying to run the farm for her parents. Shawn was already gone at that point - working in the city - and Maggie knew that Beth was too young to be dealing with everything, knew that it was only a matter of time before her youngest sibling crumbled.
But she left anyway.
"If you've come out here to judge me too, then you can just... You can just go," Beth said as she attempted to keep her voice strong, never once bothering to turn her attention away from Nellie as the footsteps stilled somewhere behind her in their motions.
Although Beth was standing with her back facing towards the entrance to the barn so she wasn't able to see what her brother was doing behind her, she had a feeling that Shawn would have paused in the doorway before he made a move to approach any further.
There was a brief moment of silence that lasted for a few long seconds before Shawn eventually cleared his throat and spoke up. "Nah," he said, his tone soft as he stepped slowly - but loudly - into the barn towards where Beth was finishing off grooming her mare. "I wouldn't. That's not my style."
The comment wasn't even at all funny or even witty, but it was just so like him, and Beth had missed her older brother much more than even she had realised over these last few years. Unlike Maggie, he had come to visit every once in a while and had invited her to visit him too and had actually kept in touch - texting and face timing from time to time - but she had still missed him all the same.
At his words, Beth's lips naturally curled upwards into a small smile and she couldn't help but think about how her older brother had always had quite the knack for lightening the mood wherever he went, and she knew that this situation would be no different.
Just a few more steps and then Shawn was standing beside her, towering above her just like he had done for as long as she could remember, but for some reason it seemed as though he was even taller than he had ever been despite the fact that it had only been a couple of months since his last visit. Beth continued on with brushing Nellie's mane for a minute or two more before she finally placed the brush down on the stall and glanced up at her older brother, her large blue eyes dancing over his face as she took all of his features in.
"I'm goin' home soon," Shawn told her, looking at her straight in the eyes as he spoke. "Two days, actually. An' I wanna go for dinner with my little sister before I do." Before Beth could open her mouth to say anything else, Shawn was speaking again. "I wanna meet him, too," he said, smirking a little as he did so.
Not knowing what on earth to say back to her brother's request, Beth's half-open mouth quickly snapped shut.
.
.
.
When her brother had first mentioned the fact that he wanted to meet Daryl before he left to return to city life, Beth had been absolutely adamant that it would very much be a struggle to convince Daryl that having brunch with her and Shawn would be a good idea. Apparantly, she had been wrong about that, though. The only problem that she encountered was a "what the hell is 'brunch'?" comment, but otherwise it seemed as though Daryl was happy enough meeting her older brother.
That wasn't to say that the older man was excitedly jumping for joy about the prospect of it all, of course. If anything, he seemed to be completely nonchalant about the whole thing, shrugging his shoulders and grunting out a "sure" at her before he went back to hammering away at the shelf he was putting up on one of the walls of her cabin.
It was after their brief conversation about it that Beth realised that it was more convincing herself that this meeting was a good idea that was mostly the problem.
.
.
.
Being quiet and reserved was hardly a crime, but Beth couldn't help but think that Shawn might take everything the wrong way when it came to meeting Daryl Dixon. After all, the man was older than the pair of them and not that Beth meant to cause any offence to Shawn, but her boyfriend was a lot more masculine than her brother. Whilst Daryl was all muscle and grunts and general simplicity, Shawn was all tall and lanky, wearing skinny jeans that were deathly tight and drinking cocktails as opposed to beer.
They were polar opposites in all sorts of ways, and as much Beth absolutely adored Daryl, she also knew that he was gruff and could be particularly surly when he wanted to be, and he also wasn't necessarily the easiest person in the world to talk to, either. After all, she had danced around him long enough - for practically months and months on end - before he had even spoken to her properly, and even then it had mostly been her who initiated any real conversation between the two of them.
Meanwhile, her older brother was loud. That wasn't to necessarily say that Shawn was obnoxious or overly-annoying or necessarily rude; but his laugh was literally loud enough to make a lot of people turn around and give him curious glances, and he certainly was not shy - even when it came to meeting new people. In a way that was probably quite similar to herself, Shawn had a habit of talking to people (even one's that he had just met) like he had been best friends with them all of his life.
It usually meant that he over-shared on a lot of things.
When the three Greene children had been a little bit younger, there had been lots and lots of questions - usually fuelled by conversations with Shawn's high school teacher's - about whether or not he was just hyper-active or if it was something much more problematic and potentially serious. Over time, Shawn had calmed down a lot and had matured an awful lot too, but that didn't necessarily make him anywhere near as quiet or as reserved as men like Daryl Dixon.
The word that sprang to mind was confident (perhaps even over-confident, if Beth thought about it in all fairness), and whilst the young blonde didn't want to think to herself that Daryl and her brother wouldn't get along, she also didn't think that the two of them would necessarily hit it off, either.
Apparantly she had been wrong about that, too.
"Thank you for today," Beth said, her voice soft as ever as she rested her head against the padding of his shoulder. The two of them had returned from an early lunch with her older brother, Shawn - Daryl refused to call it 'brunch', whatever the hell that was even supposed to mean, anyway - and now despite the fact that it was still quite early on in the afternoon, the pair of them had retired to his cabin.
It had been instinct for him to move towards the couch but Beth had led the way into his bedroom, throwing back the covers and tucking herself underneath them as quickly as she could. The girl was always cold, even when he felt like it was far too warm, and she had pulled the duvet up right underneath her chin in an attempt to warm herself up. Although he thought it was a little bit weird that Beth wanted to get straight into bed so early in the day, he definitely wasn't going to complain about it or even question it out loud.
Especially not after he joined her in bed only to have her practically wrap herself around his body, her arms around his waist and one of her legs hoisted up around both of his, her head nestled onto his shoulder. Despite the fact that Beth was a lot smaller than he was - not just in height, but in her physical frame, too - she fit around him perfectly, like she just belonged there.
Or something like that, anyway.
"Ain't nothin'," Daryl commented with a shrug of his shoulders. One of his arms was loosely hanging around her own shoulders whilst the other rested by his side, and the older man was lay flat on his back staring up at the ceiling.
Taking his shirt off around Beth was still completely out of the question for him; not unless it was dark and he knew for certain that she wouldn't be able to see anything, at least. Whenever she had caught him without a shirt, it had usually been by accident - she had surprised him or he hadn't been expecting her to come in - but so far, Beth had still not even caught a slight glimpse of the marks on his back.
He had a feeling that the longer he could keep it that way - keep her in the dark about it, keep her thinking that there wasn't any issue there - then maybe it would be for the better. After all, Beth was a lot younger than he was and as far as he was aware, her parents had never so much as spanked her, never mind beat on her the way his own daddy had done to him.
The pair of them most definitely had different upbringings, that was for sure, and the last thing Daryl wanted to do was make her anything close to upset.
Girls like Beth Greene - all soft and sweet, constantly smiling and laughing and just being generally good - were something else, and even though Daryl knew he didn't really deserve anyone like her in his life, he knew that he would do as much as he could to try and make her stay. Even if her finding out about his marred back didn't push Beth away, it would expose her to a type of darkness that she had never really had to ever acknowledge in her life before.
The last thing that Daryl needed was to taint the girl, for fucks sake.
"Well, it means a lot to me, anyway," Beth said, interrupting him from his thoughts as she snuggled impossibly closer towards him. He felt her tilt her chin upwards slightly from where she had been resting against his broad shoulder and even though he wasn't looking at her, Daryl could sense her light eyes blinking up at him. "It means a lot to my brother, too. I know he wanted to meet you before he left again."
Unable to help himself, Daryl snorted at that. "Wha's he wanna meet me for?" the older man asked, a smirk on his face despite the fact that he didn't really find anything about this amusing. He was genuinely unsure as to why anyone would want to meet him; surely they just assumed that this thing between them was some sort of thing, something that was never going to last.
Hell, even his own brother had told him that it was only a matter of time before Beth opened her eyes and wised up to the fact that he wasn't worth shit.
Still, Beth was all bright and happy and god damn, she was good, so instead of laughing along with his sarcastic question too, Beth pushed herself up so that she was leaning on her elbows and looking straight down at him. Her light eyebrows had drawn together in a frown and she looked almost annoyed, her eyes staying strongly on his.
"Why wouldn't he?" she asked, not even blinking as she spoke. "Shawn's my brother and he knows that we're together, so..."
Not sure what to say to that, Daryl visibly swallowed as he looked straight up at where Beth was hovering over him, her hair fanning around her face and falling around him, too. After a few seconds of his dark eyes being locked on hers, he nodded his head once to signal to her that he understood what it was that she was saying.
And he did, of course.
Sometimes it took him a few seconds to remember that her family was a lot different from his own; that even though her sister had been a brat these last few days, they all still loved each other, all still supported each other and cared about each other. It was a lot more than any of his family had done for him, even Merle had struggled to ever really be supportive of him or anything he did.
The feeling of her palm brushing against his cheek had Daryl snapping back out of his thoughts once again, and before he could even blink Beth was pressing her lips against his own.
After a second or two, he found himself returning the kiss, pulling her closer and wrapping both of his arms around the back of her neck.
Thanks for reading & please review!