Daryl had finished refilling all the car gas tanks and had moved on to checking the oil when it neared sunset. It's a shame that they never ran into a skilled mechanic on any of their runs. They could definitely use one. Their cars ended up getting pretty beat up. Daryl didn't think he fit the profile for this sort of stuff but he was the one who knew most about cars. Of course, Axel had offered to help out, saying something about a couple of old friends of his who owned a repair shop a while back. Daryl being Daryl declined the help since he liked to do things by himself. Alone.

Daryl headed over to the last car he needed to check. He opened the hood of green Hyundai Tucson and started messing with the oil cap when he saw Carol coming towards him.

"I heard about what happened last night," Carol declared when she was by his side.

Daryl's eyes snapped up to hers, stilling his movements. "What?"

"About your brother," she clarified. "Rick told me."

Daryl let out a breath that he just came to realize he was holding in. "Oh, right. That."

For a second there he thought that she had meant how he kissed Beth outside the prison. It had been so late that he was sure that no one had seen it. That was something strictly between him and Beth and he wanted to keep it that way. At least until he figured out what he was supposed to do about it.

"You alright? You seem on edge."

Daryl went back to messing with the car engine, avoiding having to look at Carol. "Fine."

Carol stood there quietly for a moment. "Should we be expecting Merle here anytime soon?"

"No clue."

"Well, you're his brother. Don't you think that he'll turn up eventually? Because I do. No matter what you said to him out there. I don't want—I don't want him to mess up any of the progress you've made."

Daryl took his hands out of the engine and wiped the grease onto his pants. With a sigh, he turned to Carol, who was looking concerned about what had gone on between him and his brother in the woods and at the potential for Merle coming to the prison. He couldn't blame her for that.

"Progress?" he questioned, crossing his arms.

"We both know that you're not the same man that I first met when Merle was still with you," Carol explained matter-of-factly. "I don't want him to weasel his way back into your life and try to mess the good things you got goin' for you."

That last part made him immediately think of Beth. She was a good thing in his life. A great thing. The best of them all.

Daryl sighed as his inner thoughts started to take over again. His mind had raced all last night and he barely got any sleep after he left Beth in the courtyard. He ran away, not actually in a run, but figuratively speaking, yes, he made a run for it last night after he tore himself away from their kiss. He had mumbled something about having to be somewhere else and left her standing there, never turning around to check on her.

Stupid of him.

Really, really stupid of him.

He should have stayed. But there was nothing that he could do about that now, was there? By this point Beth probably regretted everything that transpired between them the previous night.

Don't be so assuming, her voice said. Told yourself you weren't gonna do that.

"He ain't gonna mess shit up," he explained to Carol, focusing himself on the current conversation. She wasn't going to believe him entirely but he thought that if he said it out loud then the both of them might see some form of truth in it. "Why would ya think I'd got back to that anyways? It ain't like I actually liked the person I was then."

Daryl knew he was getting defensive about this. He hated that Carol seemed to be so worried about Merle changing Daryl back into his own personal lap dog.

It wouldn't happen.

Carol nodded her head and dropped her gaze to the dirt. "Alright. If you say so." She pointed back to the prison. "I trust your judgment. I'm gonna go get Judith from Beth. I'll see you later."

Well, for a second there he had stopped thinking about Beth. But now he was alone again and the image of her popped back up, as he suspected it would. He remembered how good the sensation of her lips on his had felt and how nothing else had mattered in that moment except for Beth. He reminisced about how right the world had seemed to him in that moment they shared. Surely he couldn't be the only one who had felt that way.

Or could he?

Beth had kissed him back so logically she wouldn't have done that if she hadn't been enjoying herself.

He sounded like a twelve year old girl now.

He needed to stop.

Daryl slammed the hood of the car shut and headed inside to shower off a day's worth, sweat, oil from the engines, and walker blood. The only thing that really bothered him out of the three was the blood. He couldn't bring himself to ever sleep in his sheets with that shit all over him. It kind of creeped him out—the blood of a walker kill on him as he tried to soundly fall asleep, getting the sheets stained with red rotten blood. No thanks. Not many things disturbed Daryl but that was one of them. At the end of the day, he had to get a majority of that blood off.

—

The ideas about Beth persisted in his head as he walked through the prison. Should he or shouldn't he, that was the question. And he would really like a answer. He decided to wave the white flag to the battle that was going on inside his mind.

He should do what felt right. And that was being around Beth

He was tired of beating himself up about the way he felt. He felt the way that he did, end of story. It's not like he had a whole lot of control over that sort of thing.

This whole time Beth had been breaking down the walls that he had built up around him. Walls that he thought were indestructible. He couldn't have been more wrong about that. How she had taken the walls down layer by layer in such a short period of time when it had taken him years to build them up and solidify them, he had no idea.

He didn't let people in, didn't let them get too close.

Beth was different. She was the first person who he let his guard down with. The first person he let see inside his world. Let her see into a part of his past.

Beth.

She was his safe harbor. A place where he was safe and secure. She didn't judge him or want him to be different. She liked him just as he was.

That right there was more than he could ever ask for.

The lines were blurred now. Indefinitely blurred. There was no returning to the way that things were before last night.

Among all of this, Daryl should have been watching where he was going. He smacked right into someone smaller than him as he turned the corner into the where the showers were.

"Oh!"

Wait. He knew that voice.

And there she was. Beth Greene stood before him, adjusting the light blue towel that was wrapped around her body. He saw her relax when she realized that it was him.

"Hi," she greeted with a shy smile.

"Hi," he said back, hoping that the nervousness wasn't as obvious in his voice as he had perceived it to be.

Beth must have just gotten done with a shower because her skin emitted the lightest shade of pink from the warm water that they were lucky enough to have. Water droplets were still on her skin, collecting around her collarbone. Beth's hair was draped over both shoulders and he didn't realize it was as long as it was since he was used to seeing her hair up in a ponytail.

She was beautiful, in every sense of the word.

"What?" she questioned, tucking a strand of wet hair behind her ear, and suddenly self-conscious due to his prolonged gawking.

"Nothin'," he replied. "Just never saw ya with your hair down, is all."

He saw the light blush that crept up onto her cheeks. He enjoyed that. A lot.

Beth played with the ends of her hair with the hand that was free from keeping her towel around her, hugging at her small waist. "I rarely see myself with my hair down. It got so long over the summer. I swear to you it's like a weed. I should trim it."

The suggestion that Beth had made to him about keeping his own hair longer came to mind. "Don't," he told her, about to repeat the words that she had said to him in his cell a while back. "Looks good this way. I like it."

The blush on her cheeks persisted and Beth dropped her gaze to the floor, then back up at him. She hugged her towel tighter. "Okay. I won't cut it."

"Should wear it down more often," he suggested, acting more fidgety because he is avoiding bringing up the kiss they shared. That and because Beth was only in a towel before him—which is the overriding reason why he was twitchy.

Beth ran her fingers through her wet hair again. "Maybe I will."

There is a short silence between them. Whatever he was supposed to say in a situation like this was beyond him. Eluded him completely. He had never dealt with this kind of awkward run in before.

One thing he knew was that he should apologize for running off last night, for being cowardly and chickening out. He could naturally be brave in any situation except one that involved his feelings or Beth Greene. The combination of the two left him painfully timid.

He should really work on that.

"So," Beth slurred. "I should go change. Maggie said she was going to bring me clean clothes but she hasn't yet so she must have forgot. Looks like I have to make a mad dash to my room."

He didn't like the idea of Beth walking from here to her cell in only a towel. So he would risk the following embarrassingly clumsy way he put words together to ensure that she was comfortable.

"Are you sure?" he hesitantly asked. "I could—could go get them for you…if you want."

"Oh," she expressed. "You would do that?"

Daryl nodded, turning to exit out of the showers before Beth changed her mind. "From Maggie?"

"You can just get them from my cell. It's closer. There's a few things folded on the table in the corner of my cell. Pick whatever, it doesn't matter. But are you sure it's not a lot of trouble?"

Daryl was already headed out, signifying that he was going get her clothes. "No trouble."

He noticed how his heart was beating faster as he went down the hallway and around the corner until her found himself at Beth's cell. She had a way of elevating his heart rate like no other.

There were clothes on the table like she had said. He hoped that he was going to pick something that matched because he had never picked out an outfit for a girl before. He went simple with it to avoid any mishaps with the colors, going with a pair of jeans and a gray short sleeved cotton shirt for her to wear.

His hand hovered over the black bra and panties when he went to grab them. He couldn't ignore the sense that touching them was like touching some kind of sacred ground since Beth wore this overtop of the most intimate places that existed on her body. He could only imagine what she must look like in only these pair of items.

The images floated into his brain, not that they hadn't been there before. Believe him, they have been. Many times over.

He let his fingers lightly brush over the satiny material. Shit. He needed to focus at the task at hand. He scooped them up quickly and hid them underneath the folded shirt that was collected in his hands so he wouldn't be tempted to touch them again.

Daryl quickly made his way back to the showers and saw that Beth was in the same place she stood when he had first come in. He walked over and extended out his hand to let her grab the clothes.

"Thanks," she expressed with her usual grin, taking the clothes into her hand and then holding them in against her chest. She stood there in her place for a moment before she added, "You saved me from a possible embarrassing run in with someone in the hall."

Beth began to walk back over to the shower she must have come out of and stepped in, pulling the curtain across so she could change. Daryl lingered because the curtain does not exactly offer the most amount of privacy. It was white and a bit see through so anyone would be able to make out the shape of someone's body from the other side.

"Right. Okay. I'm gonna shower."

Daryl yanked one of the clean towels off of the rack that was installed into the wall, throwing if over his shoulder so he could reach down and remove his boots. He also went to the far side of the room to where there was the line of showers all in a row, each separated by a thin wall with a curtain in the front. There was no way he could have halted his eyes from peeking over at the shower that Beth had gone into.

He shouldn't have.

He did.

He caught a glimpse of the outline of her silhouette without the towel on her body. Gorgeous. He could tell that much.

Fuck. Why did he do that to himself?

He made a brisk movement to get into the shower that he had chosen, one that was at the end of the row which was three away from Beth. He swiftly turned the water on and the cold temperature of the water came spurting out from above. He removed all of his clothes and threw them into the corner so they wouldn't get wet.

"Thanks again, Daryl," he heard Beth's voice say, closer to him but not right in front of the shower.

It then occurred to him that she would be able to somewhat see through this curtain as well, as much as he could when it was her behind the shower curtain.

He cleared his throat. "Sure," was what he was able to get out.

"It's early but I'm going to get some sleep. Can you come by tomorrow? I want to talk to you about somethin'."

And there it was. She requested that they talk about what happened the previous night. She wasn't specific about it but what else could it be? Nothing. It was quite obvious about what she wanted to discuss. A nervous edge made its way through every part of his body and then settled in the pit of his stomach.

"Yeah. That's fine."

"Okay. Great," she replied, her voice sounding light and airy in its normal tone. "Goodnight."

"G'night," he whispered, though he is sure that it was not loud enough for her to hear above the noise that the shower was making, the water hitting the white tiled floor powerfully.

Daryl ducked under the waterfall that came down from the showerhead once he was sure that Beth had left. He kept it at a cooler temperature because his entire body felt like it was on fire. His sneaky glimpse over at Beth before he got into the shower was front and center in his mind. All that combined with actually having kissed her a little less than twenty four hours ago spelled trouble for him.

He was very much aware of how his body was desperate for a release with all of this bouncing around in his head. He was rock hard from that already but he really didn't want to give into desire.

That didn't work out for him.

Turning the water to warm, he gave up fighting it away. Cold water wasn't going to do shit for him, not when Beth had infiltrated his brain. So why bother?

Daryl let the warmer water run over his body and wash away the blood and sweat of the day's heavy work. His hand traveled from his side to his dick and he slowly began to stroke himself, allowing the images of Beth to be exactly where he wanted them to be.

His breathing became heavier as he continued, his hand going faster. He lifted his head up so the water could drench his face. His movements became more shaky and jerky, not much rhythm to them as he got closer. Daryl didn't care. He was doing this as fast as possible while he had the time alone. Daryl ducked his head back down to close his eyes, biting onto his bottom lip to hold back a moan as he climaxed.

He hadn't done something like that in a while. It felt good to get the release, even if he knew that what his body really wanted was for it to happen inside of Beth.

This would have to suffice for now.

He swiftly rinsed off the rest of his body with the bottle of soap that was resting in the shower. Daryl turned off the water and dried himself off, picking his clothes off the floor and putting them back on so he could exit.

Beth Greene. That girl was going to be the end of him.