**A/N: I post a lot of ficlets and drabbles on my tumblr that never get posted here, mostly because they're not really long enough to be posted as full stories. I've decided that since I really like a lot of them and would like to share them with you all, I'll be collecting them all here and posting them sporadically in between other updates of my fics. I'll make notes at the beginning of each for the general info for each ficlet and if it's set in any specific verse, etc.

Title: I'm Sorry
Word Count: 2656
Universe: Non-Zombie AU.
Rating: Mature. (Sex mentioned but not really detailed.)
Brief Summary: After Beth and Daryl have their first fight, Daryl struggles to find a way to apologize to her.
Notes: This was inspired by the recent Norman Reedus photoshoot. It doesn't have much back-story to their relationship, but it's my attempt at a real-world parallel to their fight/argument scene at the moonshine shack in "Still". Enjoy!

Daryl hadn't planned to fight with Beth. Then again he'd never planned to fall for her in the first place so maybe the fact that it had gone all wrong wasn't so much a surprise, all things considered. The argument- their first big one and a fight, really- had come in the midst of a movie night at Beth's apartment. He wasn't even sure what had started it. Probably something to do with the movie Beth had them watching, something sappy and romantic and totally not 'him'. Only he'd been just as into it as she had been, all caught up in the story and pressing kisses occasionally to her cheek and temple, until she'd said… What had it been? Oh, right. Something like: This was how I always imagined love would be like.

And then he, like an idiot, had mumbled without thinking: "I ain't never believed in love."

And it was true, he didn't.

Or he hadn't, anyway.

(Until her.)

But he couldn't admit that, just like he couldn't take back the words that had spilled from his lips and the argument that had followed. Just like he couldn't take back the sight of those tears in her eyes, shimmering against the blue and spilling down the soft apples of her cheeks that just a half hour before he'd been pressing kisses to.

He didn't even remember half of what had been said except that he'd shouted and she'd shouted and he'd stood his ground despite the fact that his once-shriveled heart was aching in his chest and threatening to break. Yeah he was a fucking coward but he'd stood his ground and shot right back at her: "I ain't never believed in love, ain't never got no love from anyone, okay? Love ain't ever got me shit, it ain't good for shit."

And then she'd had her finger in his face, tears streaming down her cheeks as she'd cried out, "That's bullshit, and you know it!"

"Is that what you think?" His face was inches from hers and he was glaring right down at her, but she didn't back down even though he could see she was choking on her words and her sorrow.

"That's what I know," she breathed right back at him.

His heart had throbbed to the beat of stop, stop, stop, but all he'd been able to do was spit back: "You don't know nothing."

"Screw you," she bit out, fire in her eyes as she got right up in his space like no one ever had before, "I know you feel somethin' for me, Daryl Dixon, I know it. And you don't get to treat me like crap just because you're afraid of that. You just don't!"

He drew back from the wild thing in front of him, from the fierce angel with a storm in her eyes and words too close to the truth, cutting him like swords. His arms crossed in front of his chest like defensive armor, though they did nothing to protect the ache in his chest as he growled in a broken voice, "I ain't afraid of nothing."

"I remember," Beth breathed back, her eyes searching his as her expression suddenly softened just enough to make him ache a little bit more to stop this and be close to her. "I remember the way you looked at me the first night you stayed here. When you stripped off your shirt and let me see. You were like me, when I showed you my own scars, when I told you about losing my Mama. I know what you've been through, Daryl, but I know you, too. I know the way you look at me, the way you hold me, the way you kiss me." She'd wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand and whispered hoarsely, "But god forbid you let anyone get too close, right?"

"Don't." He'd tensed up the moment she brought up his back, his scars, that night. Not because it brought back bad memories but because it had brought back good ones; the lack of pity in her eyes and the softness of her lips over each of his scars and later with her beneath him and arching up into him, her hands clawing against his back and leaving her own marks behind. The only marks he'd ever wanted and god, somewhere deep down inside he knew she was right. He knew what he felt for her.

But she was right about something else, too. He was scared. Daryl Dixon was fucking terrified; not of the blonde in front of him but of the things he felt for her and the voices that whispered in the back of his mind: not worthy, not worthy, not worthy.

And knowing what he felt only scared him more, and that was why he'd growled out angrily, "You don't know shit about me and what I've been through, okay? You don't know shit."

She had flung open the door, choking back sobs as she'd ordered him to leave… and he'd left. He'd left because he didn't know what else to do. He'd left because if he was unworthy of loving her, then he was certainly unworthy of standing there and begging for her forgiveness, begging her to not hate him for the way he'd hurt her just then.

He knew, he knew that he was unworthy of a girl like Beth Greene.

But that hadn't stopped him from missing her. It had been two days now and he was pretty sure he'd missed her for every minute of each of them. He'd missed her so much it fucking ached. Like there was something missing inside of him, some goddamn hole that was shaped like the way she fit up against him, a hole that echoed with the sound her laugh or her sweet soft singing, an absence scented with a whiff of apples and a hint of honey. But he didn't know how to even reach out to her, let alone how to apologize. Dixons didn't apologize. At least he'd never learned how to; his father didn't apologize to anyone who the violence he left in his wake and Merle had certainly never done so either.

But that afternoon, sitting in his empty two-room cabin on the outskirts of town, Daryl knew he couldn't keep this up. Knew he couldn't keep going without her, knew he had to make it right. He didn't know how, he just knew he had to. Maybe he was terrified of what he felt, but he was even more afraid of the thought of spending the rest of his life like this, missing her like his lungs might miss air. That and the memory of her tear-strained face was enough to get him off his ass, into his leather jacket, and out to his car. Not even the snow falling unexpectedly from the sky could stop him, rare as it was in Georgia.

Once back in high school, Beth had thought her heart was broken when she and Jimmy broke up. It had been a mutual decision and yet she'd still cried at the loss, mostly because it felt like the end of some kind of era. The end of something comfortable if not anything with an actual spark.

She'd learned what true heartbreak was after the loss of her mother to cancer. True heartbreak had kept her in bed for weeks, except for the day she'd dragged herself up and sliced her wrist in the bathroom only to be stopped by her older sister… and her own desire to live, in the end.

Her heart felt like that all over again, except this time Beth didn't give into it. She didn't give in to the urge to curl up in bed and never leave, just hide under the sheets until she forgot all about Daryl Fucking Dixon and his harsh words and the broken look in his eyes and the fact that despite it all some part of her wanted to find and comfort him.

Beth wanted to forget so she could stop aching, but it was impossible. And she couldn't give in. So she dragged herself out of bed each morning and into work at the music center where she currently taught Monday thru Friday. In the mornings it was the ones too young for school, and in the afternoons the older kids, their buses dropping them off after their classes were over for the day. She trudged through it all, strumming her guitar and playing the piano and singing as best she could, despite her heart not being in it; because she was pretty sure her heart was still back at her apartment lying on the floor, smashed into pieces since it had fallen from her chest two nights ago.

By the time the last of the kids left for home, it was six pm. According to Lori, the woman who ran the music center, it had been snowing since almost noon, and Beth really wasn't looking forward to walking the few blocks back to her place. But she didn't have a car, and it seemed silly to wait for the bus, and besides, the snow was kinda pretty; or it would have been, if she'd been in a better mood. (The truth was the snow just made her think about Daryl, and some conversation they'd had a few weeks ago about how neither of them had ever gotten to build a snowman.) Shoving aside yet another memory of him, she stepped out of the building and tugged her knit cap down over her hair with a resigned sigh.

And then she looked up and there he was. Daryl, leaning against a snow-covered car right across from the music center. He was wearing a leather jacket that she instantly had mixed feelings about; half of her thinking it was entirely inappropriate for the weather (then again if his was, so was hers) and half of her thinking it was still the sexiest thing she'd ever seen him wear, except for that vest of his. (God, she loved that damn vest.) There was an unlit cigarette perched between his lips and snowflakes clinging to his hair and he was hunched in on himself against the cold as he leaned there, peering up at her hesitantly from under his hair.

For a few moments she just stood there drinking him in, trying to ignore the way her traitorous heard thumped out a beat of Daryl, Daryl, Daryl. Trying to ignore how she wanted to run down these steps and fly right into his arms. Trying to ignore the ache, the longing, the need, the…

He cleared his throat and looked slightly to his left, and Beth's gaze instinctively shifted with his and finally, she saw it. Written on the snow-covered window by what she could only assume was his own hand were the words: I'm sorry.

Beth's feet were moving before she realized it, carrying her down the steps and across the walkway towards him steadily, though not running. (Even if a part of her still wanted to.)

She stopped a foot or two from him still drinking him in, drawing in a deep breath that she exhaled in a little cloud in the cold air before she asked, "Sorry for what?"

He blinked at her and for a moment she thought he'd do something Daryl Dixon-ish, like shrug or grunt at her. It was what he usually did, after all. But after a moment he scuffed his foot on the ground and said instead, "For everythin'. For makin' you cry." He looked down at the ground for a long moment, and then added lowly, "For lyin'."

Hope took up root in her chest with a flutter of wings that she couldn't seem to bind no matter how hard she tried. Beth swallowed hard in a failed attempt to push that fluttering away and asked softly, "Lying about what?"

His mouth opened and closed, reminding her- of all things!- of that silly mounted bass they'd seen in a pawn shop once. (She'd thought it was hysterical, the way it opened it's mouth and wiggled and sang, and Daryl had tried to act like he found it offensive or something as a hunter or a fishermen, but he'd ended up laughing too and she'd seen the smile on his lips when she joked about buying it for him for Christmas.)

But when Daryl opened his mouth, he didn't sing. What he did do was even better. He just shrugged simply and casually replied, "About love not bein' good for shit. 'Bout it not gettin' me shit. I lied, cause… it got me you. An' you… Beth…" He looked up at her from under the fringe of his dark hair and she saw his adam's apple bob in his throat right before he finished roughly, "You're the best damn thing I've ever had in my life, alright?"

And then she gave in. Then she closed the gap between them and flung her arms around him and the chill in the air was forgotten at the first press of her warm body to his. When his arms wrapped around her in return, Beth leaned up on her toes so her lips could find his ear and murmured in a whisper, "Alright." And then, with a kiss to the soft spot just beneath his ear lobe, she added, "I love you too, Daryl Dixon."

They kissed in the snow for what had to have been a good 20 mins, until both of them had it clinging to their hair and their eyelashes and, in Daryl's case anyway, his beard as well. Only then did he usher her into the car and make the longer drive back to his place instead of hers. (Neither of them spoke about the choice, but Beth was glad it had been made. She didn't want to go back to her place just yet, filled as it was with the memory of why they'd had to make up like this in the first place.) Despite the care he took on the slick roads, they always managed to be touching each other; her hand on his thigh, his hand laced in hers, her cheek on his shoulder as she tucked herself close.

Back at his place, they were even closer. He had a fire lit to keep the place warm, but when they were naked and tangled in the sheets they didn't really need the flickering flames. They had each other and the slide of warm skin against warm skin and the heat of their lips pressing together as their bodies moved in perfect unison. They had the warmth of pleasure and tension coiling in their bodies as her legs wrapped around him and their moans mingled in the air. They had the fire that burned through their veins as her hands splayed against his back to dig her nails in deep and his hands gripped her hips hard enough to leave faint bruises behind.

And when they came just a few moments apart, crying out each other's names into the warm air, Beth was so lost in a haze of pleasure that she thought she was imagining the whispered words against her temple: Love you, Beth.

She didn't dare open her eyes as if doing so might make it clear that she was hallucinating it somehow. But then he pressed his lips to her temple and smoothed his hand down her side as he gave a shuddering sigh and she knew. She knew she had heard it. She knew it was real.

Daryl Dixon loved her. And if he was still afraid, that was okay, because he had her and she wasn't going anywhere. Because she loved him, too.

And love was good for so many things. It wasn't shit at all.