Getting pinned down isn't exactly new, so it's no longer exactly frightening. It happens. Sometimes you go out on a run and it doesn't matter how careful you are, and it happens. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong turn and no way back and the way forward is suicide so you're stuck - same old shit.

After a while it gets a little tedious, once the immediate danger is passed.

Glenn and Aaron and Heath are somewhere across the street, and they're fine. Daryl trusts this, swinging his back away from the door and peering through the slats in the boards. He can't see anything but the sidewalk and glimpses of the street and further glimpses of a drug store and a hair salon across the way - both also, going by their barricaded windows, someone's base at one point. Between him and them - weirdly lit by garish summer sunlight - is the herd, a seething mass of stumbling, staggering, groaning death, sloughing bits of itself off as it passes and dropping spongy flesh and skin like discarded cloth into the pavement.

They're rotting more and more. It's slow, barely perceptible, but he's perceived it, and he knows he's not the only one. They're slowly going to pieces, which raises some interesting questions of both practical and metaphysical varieties.

Normally he would save them. But they're stuck here for now, him and Beth, so there might very well be some time for pondering.

They could be here a while.

He sighs, palms sweat out of his eyes, and turns away from the window. It's dim in here but it's sure as hell not cool, and the sweat he wiped away is clearly going to replenish itself in very short order. In addition to being dim, it's stuffy, the air stagnant, and the ever-present smell of decay has taken on a dry quality, something almost spicy in it, and while he's never seen one in his life, he finds himself thinking of Egyptian mummies.

And the place does feel - and even look - a bit like a tomb.

They saw enough of it as it took to clear it, which wasn't much - you experience a weird kind of myopia when the only thing you care about in a space is what might be about to kill you and what you might be able to do in order to keep that from happening. Now he sees all those other things he didn't have the luxury of paying any direct attention to.

The space he's in - the storefront, he guesses, when this was still a store - isn't large, but it feels even smaller than he can tell it truly is. One wall is lined with racks of some variety of shapeless material, some of it trailing across the floor in rags, but it's only when he focuses on the four mannequins against the other wall that he realizes where they actually are.

Dresses. Party dresses. Formal dresses. One of the mannequins - headless and missing an arm - is wearing something tight and short that might be red and shimmery under all the dust, the low scoop neckline edged with rhinestones. The one next to it is intact, and draped in a dark blue ball gown all in ruched silk. The other two are naked - or mostly naked. One is sporting the last scraggly traces of a garment long past the point of identification. Though what tore it up and why is a mystery.

He looks at these things for a while. Keeps a bit of a distance. They're not exactly freaking him out, what with the river of walkers flowing by outside, but they're still fucking creepy and he's not going to pretend it's not so.

Between him and them, the shattered remains of a crystal chandelier decorate the floor.

The store goes further back. Stock room, he noted on their way through, and what looked like a couple of fitting rooms. Scoped it out, moved on. But now Beth is nowhere in sight, and he hears something shifting around back there.

Not worried. If she was in trouble he'd know. But it's yet another slightly unsettling thing on top of a small pile, and while his bow is over his shoulder, he's ready to change that situation very rapidly as he starts forward.

They can't risk too much noise. Sotto voce: "Beth?"

Nothing. Then what sounds like fabric whispering across the floor. The scuffle of a boot.

The fuck is she doing?

The Beth Greene who walked through the gates two months ago, trailing Dr. Steven Edwards and a ragged, exhausted band of Grady refugees, was not the Beth Greene he lost. He knew that instantly. Knew it in her eyes, her scars, and knew it in everything else about her afterward. In so many ways she is still her - her memories, little turns of phrase, toss of her head when she's confident about something, the way she bites her bottom lip when she's not confident, the exasperated edge in her voice when someone is being ridiculous, the way she gets quiet when something's hurt her deep. The sharp steel in her eyes when she's pissed off.

Except that steel is a lot sharper now. A lot colder.

And he sees it a lot more.

He knew her when he saw her. Through his weak-kneed shock, his silence and all the struggling to understand that came after, he knew it. His blood stopped flowing in those first seconds but in every frozen cell, he knew. When a ghost has been riding you for almost a year, you couldn't not know it when you finally saw it in the flesh.

At the same time, afterward he had to learn her all over again.

It's still happening. He's not rushing it. The first week - as she was settling into the reality of everything else - was beyond surreal. They were sprinting toward each other. They were circling each other, unaccountably wary. He wanted to hide from her and he got the sense she felt the same. He wanted to hurl himself at her feet and sob, and somehow - if he had to carve them out of his own fucking flesh with her knife - find the words to tell her…

Whatever it is he wants to tell her.

Mostly they've been generally around each other and very quiet while they do it, and he's managed to hold his shit together, and there are Certain Things they aren't talking about because she won't bring it up and he has no idea how to ask her, and it's kind of mostly okay.

For a given value of okay.

He's not disappointed. It's not that he imagined their reunion would be this joyful, rapturous thing. It's just that he never imagined they would get one at all.

So really he went into this with no expectations whatsoever.

He's still learning her. But she's not unpredictable, not inclined toward dangerously weird behavior. She wouldn't come on runs if that was so. She wouldn't have survived. Whatever else has changed, he trusts her with everything. Back, body, life.

That doesn't change the fact that he has no idea what the fuck she's doing.

"Beth."

Not loud, but a little more forceful. More of a hiss. He steps through a door behind the long counter and into the slightly brighter space that contains the hall to the stockroom, and the fitting rooms - two of them, to the left, with one of those circular platform things at the very end, surrounded by a semicircle of mirrors. There's a gap in the ceiling here that admits light from the roof. It's not a wide gap and it doesn't look like it's been there long - possibly a casualty of winter - but already the rug just beneath it is stained with rain and mold. But right now the light is falling onto the platform.

Onto her.

She's standing on the platform, her back to him, and she's close enough and the mirrors are clean enough for him to see that she's staring into them, her head slightly cocked. But she's too far for him to read her expression clearly. What she's thinking right now, what she's feeling, is a total mystery.

Made stranger and more mysterious by the fact that she's holding a dress against her chest.

It's long, and there's enough light for him to see that it's a delicate, pale pink, a hue he associates with a kind of essential girlish sweetness that he might once, in another life, have attached to her. It's strapless, covered in softly glittering beads to the waist, where a thicker band of beads serves as a belt. Below it's all flowing gauzy material he doesn't know the proper name for, and the scuffed toes of her boots peep out beneath the hem. It looks, to his relatively untrained eye, as if it might be just about her size.

It's very pretty. He doesn't need a trained eye to see that.

He starts to call her name again, but something stops him as he slowly moves toward her. She doesn't turn, but now he's near enough to see her eyes flick up to his approaching reflection and back to herself.

Behind the dress her clothes are the same worn but sturdy things they all wear - her jeans, a gray tee, a belt thick enough to bear a knife and a handgun. Nothing soft. Nothing feminine. Even her pretty beaded bracelets were, at some point out there, replaced with a single brown leather cuff studded with copper. Her hair is shorter, and she wears it in a tight, plain ponytail. She doesn't braid it anymore.

It's not like it bothers him. Why the fuck should she show off for anyone? Except not; that's stupid. That's ridiculous. She was never showing off. She never cared what anyone else thought. It was always for her, and her alone.

So it does bother him, under everything. That it doesn't seem to be part of her anymore.

But now she has this fucking dress.

And when he's right behind her, he sees something else.

She's crying.

Not hard. Her face isn't screwed up, and her shoulders aren't shaking with sobs. It's silent weeping, tears streaming down her cheeks as she stares at herself, lip caught between her teeth and her eyes wide and shining.

Only her hands are trembling as they hold the dress against herself. And he wouldn't even have noticed that if he didn't know her body as well as he does. How she carries it, uses it. How she moves through the world.

He's almost afraid to do it. But he does. He reaches out a hesitant, careful hand and touches her shoulder.

"Beth?"

She doesn't start. Of course she doesn't; she was fully aware of his presence. But she releases a hard, shuddering sigh and appears to loosen under everything else, her eyes slipping closed.

He wonders if maybe she didn't want him to see this.

"Y'alright?"

Stupid fucking question but he has to ask it anyway. She's not all right, not at all. And he doesn't expect her to actually admit it, and he's ready to accept the brush-off. If she doesn't want to talk about it, whatever it is, he's the last person to try to drag it out of her. That's Maggie's deal. Glenn's. Maybe Rick's. Daryl keeps himself to his own fucking self.

But slowly she shakes her head, and he's struck wordless.

What's wrong seems like the next obvious step, but he can't seem to scrape together the words. But she doesn't make him try. She just talks.

"I never had a prom."

He blinks. He expected that even less than he expected her to say anything. He didn't expect that at all. It's the end of the fucking world. Proms? Really? She got shot in the head and left for dead. Why does she give a fuck about a prom?

Or lack thereof?

Doesn't matter. He doesn't get a chance to push for clarification there, either. She's talking again.

"I was gonna have one. Y'know? Two. There was already the Junior Formal, and then there was gonna be the one in my senior year. The real one." She smiles, and it's painful and a touch wry. "It was almost a whole year away but I was lookin' forward to it so much. Never had a party like that before. Never got to wear a dress like I was gonna wear, not even for the junior one. I wanted to look like a fuckin' princess. You believe that?"

He's heard her sound like this before.

That's how incredibly stupid I am.

"I wasn't even worried about a date, not like everyone else. I guess I could've gone with Jimmy, but I didn't care. I would've gone by myself. I just wanted that dress."

She's still crying, still that steady flow of tears, and he has no idea how to even begin to figure out what to say. So he stands there like a fucking idiot, and he says nothing, and he watches her cry and watches her hands tremble and he almost wishes she would turn around and punch him in the mouth for being this level of useless.

Because probably his least favorite thing in the entire miserable goddamn world is seeing Beth Greene cry.

Finally she shakes herself, ducks her head and scrubs one-handed at her face, and when she looks up her features are twisted into an expression of icy disgust. "Whatever. It's stupid. Doesn't matter now."

It comes out of him before he thinks about it, before he connects it to anything else. After she was gone, weeks later, he began to realize that her words hadn't left him; they echoed in his mind, in his fucking dreams, tugging and pulling and pushing and making him do things. For a while it infuriated him, because she was haunting him, and even if he was dragging her knife everywhere like a self-imposed shackle around his ankle, it didn't seem fair that she wouldn't shut the fuck up and stay dead.

Then, just as the crushing darkness eventually did, the fury left him. What took its place was something softer, almost gentle, and sad, but with a kind of determination that also didn't feel like his own. Arguing with Rick, about looking for people. How they were out there. How they were worth it. Wasn't Aaron himself proof? Wasn't Morgan? Wasn't proof everywhere, if they cared to see it?

There are still good people.

He didn't want her to shut up, to go away. Like the knife, he wanted to keep her close. Always.

Now she scowls and says Doesn't matter now and he shakes his head and her words come softly and freely out of his mouth.

"It does matter."

And they don't feel like they're only hers. Not anymore.

She freezes, silent, once more staring up at his reflection. Her scowl has vanished, and in its place is something he doesn't know how to interpret. It might not be only one thing. It might be several things at once.

"It does matter." Louder. Firmer. He gives her so much space, he does everything he can to navigate this in a way that makes her odd, uncomfortable transition easier, but he's not letting her get away with this.

She never would have let him.

He touches her shoulder again, and while he withdraws his hand when he feels her flinch very slightly, he doesn't withdraw himself.

"You should try it on."

Her mouth drops open. Not wide, but her jaw goes slack, and it's the closest thing thing to actual shock he can recall seeing on her face in… Christ, he can't remember when he ever has.

He feels bizarrely pleased about it. It's kind of nice to know he can do that.

She finally turns, still clutching the dress but it seems like only because she's forgotten to let it go. "What?"

"You heard me." He shrugs, his gaze sliding over the thing. It really is pretty, shimmering in light softened on its way down, the gauzy skirt swirling with her movement. "Try it on." He inclines his head in the direction of the fitting rooms. Outside the faint groans of the dead continue their low drone. "Ain't like we're goin' anywhere anytime soon."

She says nothing, looking at him. Her fingers are shifting against the fabric, tightening and loosening. There's something bright behind her eyes and he doesn't think it's more tears.

Once she would have simply done this. He's sure. Once he wouldn't have needed to push her at all, even so gently. She would have seen the dress and loved it, loved the way it was pretty simply for what it was, and maybe it would have made her sad, reminding her of what she lost, but she also would have taken joy in the mere fact of its existence.

And she very likely would have tried it on.

But that girl is gone now.

Except not all of her is.

"Please," he whispers, and marvels a little at himself.

And after another few seconds, her face still impassive, she nods.

It's very strange, waiting for her like this.

He could - and perhaps should - make another sweep through, make absolutely sure the place is secure. It's sealed up pretty tight and provided they don't make too much noise it shouldn't be an issue, should just be a matter of waiting out the herd's passage and it can't exactly go on forever, but he hasn't survived this long by cutting corners, and neither has she.

But instead he's standing here in the hall opposite the fitting room, crossbow leaning against the wall beside him, listening to the rustle of fabric and fiddling with his own hands and wondering why the fuck he would feel nervous like this.

Does he feel nervous? Is this vague squirming in his middle nervousness?

When did he last see her in a dress? An actual dress? Was it the farm? Had to have been the farm, if it was any time at all; she wore jeans every day after that. Couldn't afford the liability of a skirt. And it's not like he's ever really noticed what she wears, because that actually doesn't matter. But even so, waiting for her and trying to imagine her in anything but jeans, he's finding it an extraordinarily difficult task even for his robust imagination.

Beth does not equal dresses. That equation does not compute.

Then the fitting room door opens, and it does.

Later he'll genuinely consider the possibility that his heart stopped. Not for long, just for a few surreal seconds, but that it did. Froze in mid-beat as she emerged, lifting her skirt in her hands, not exactly looking at him but down and a bit to his left.

His supposition was correct. It does fit her.

It fits her perfectly.

Something about the glitter of the bodice is catching the skin above it and her upper arms, her collarbones and slender throat, making her shimmer like light reflecting off water and onto a stone. He's noticed before, in the most academic possible way, that her breasts are quite small as far as breasts go, but something about the cut fills them out and accentuates them in a way he can only call pleasing. The beads at her waist do something else to the line of her hips, and the skirt seems to both cling to her thighs and spread out in a way that makes her appear almost to hover above the ground. Ethereal.

Except her boots. Which should look laughably incongruous, and somehow they don't at all.

They also fit the whole thing, fit her, perfectly.

She doesn't say a word to him. She hesitates a moment, shifts from foot to foot, then turns and goes to the platform before the mirrors, steps onto it, and releases the skirt, which drifts into place like a soft pink mist.

She still doesn't say anything.

Somehow he gets his legs moving, and additionally somehow he closes the distance between himself and her and stands behind her where he was before, looking over her shoulder at her in the mirror, the light catching her and setting the beads into an even brighter sparkle. It's more than a sparkle; she's glowing, emitting her own barely perceptible light, and her cheeks are still blotchy and her eyes still puffy, her nose still red from crying, and she might be the most amazing thing he's ever seen.

Except now he remembers that he stood like this and watched her before.

Only once before.

He releases a long, slow breath, and she raises a hand and bites at her knuckle, lifting the skirt again and turning this way and that, watching it swirl. Finally she makes a full turn, a single graceful movement, and the skirt spins out around her and floats, following her in a lovely sweep of semi-transparent pink.

Just for those few seconds, she looks like a dancer.

"Like this," she murmurs, so low he nearly misses it. "I wanted one just like this."

He clears his throat, and it sounds ludicrous. A noise that crude doesn't belong in this setting. "It looks really good."

She actually smiles then, wide and amused and a little shaky, and turns to him. The platform puts her face close to level with his, and as the light catches her at a different angle, he sees her eyes are once more shining with tears.

But she doesn't look sad. Not like she was.

"Just really good?"

Normally at this point he would tease her. Lighten things. Try, anyway. Give her a tiny smirk and say… a thing. He has no idea what, but normally he would come up with something. Wouldn't even necessarily be clever - he's not all that clever, he doesn't think - but he'd say it and maybe she would give him a Look and everything would go back to normal. Which it already would be, because this would be normally.

This is not normal.

His lips are very dry, and he licks them, and he's abruptly hyper aware of how little air is between them and how easy it would be to lift his hands and settle them against that glittering belt of beads at her waist. Feel the texture. The shape of her.

Just really good?

"You're beautiful," he whispers, and she erases the last of that air between them with her mouth.

This time he doesn't have to wonder about his heart stopping. It's not in question.

He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know what the fuck to do. He's done this before, this is something he understands - even if he was never hugely fond of it - and he should be responding in a way that goes beyond just standing here as she arches her mouth over his and presses, her lips soft and warm and her hands light over his upper arms as she leans closer. She smells like sweat and a hint of soap and the apple she ate about an hour ago, and dizziness washes over him and wobbles the floor under his boots.

So he leans too. He leans, and then his hands do what he was thinking about doing with them, and curl around her waist, the beads pleasantly rough under his palms and the pads of his fingers.

They fit her. They fit her perfectly.

And all at once it hits him like the ceiling collapsing onto his fucking head. The porch and smiling at her when they decided to make it burn and running with her after and the better days that followed and carrying her and the funeral home, watching her play, listening, lifting her into his arms and he complained about her being heavy but she really wasn't, and looking at her in the candlelight and wanting to say something and he didn't know, he didn't fucking know, and then it was over and he lost her and lost everything and lost that chance, the chance to say it and do it and figure any of it out, make any of it work, except here she is and she's so alive and she's kissing him, and it's very simple and very easy to kiss her back.

To part his lips and trace the seam of hers with his tongue, and she opens to him and sighs like she was only waiting to do it and it's a relief.

She smells like that apple. She tastes like it, too - just a trace of sweetness on her tongue when he curls his against hers, but even that trace does something to him, makes him ravenous. Before he can process, understand any of what's suddenly surging through him, he's cupping her face with one hand as he hooks his arm around her waist and drags her closer, and he's kissing her deeper than he's ever kissed anyone, never done anything like this, growling to drown out her breathy moan.

He never.

Except he sort of always.

He loses time. Doesn't know how long it goes on. It's only her mouth, her mouth and her waist and - less vivid but still so there - the heat of her body all along his, but it's an entire universe into which he's swallowed, exploring her. Parsing the incredible complexity of her taste, her scent, the sounds she's making, the way it feels like this is an event with a gravity well and he's been circling it for so long, constantly falling toward it. And part of him is removed enough to see her from the outside, see them, her like someone arrived from another world, an Alice in a princess dress stepped out of the looking glass and tumbled against him. And him…

He has no fucking idea what he's doing here.

He might ask her. He pulls back enough to choke out her name, catch a glimpse of her huge eyes and her swollen, wet lips, and then she's hauling him back down - barely down at all - and practically forcing his mouth open and drawing a groan out of him that's almost loud enough to concern him.

No. It's not. He should be concerned, but this is insane, so he's free to be not concerned about anything.

Then she wriggles a hand between them and cups it over the bulge there at the same second he becomes aware of it, and he truly has lost his mind.

He twitches violently, jerks back, gapes at her. But he didn't jerk back hard enough or far enough to dislodge her, and she's gazing at him with blue fire flickering in her eyes, holding onto him with one strong little hand while the other one squeezes his erection.

Kneads.

He's about to attempt to demand to know what the fuck she thinks she's up to, and then it feels so goddamn good that all he can do is flutter his eyes most of the way closed and whimper.

He hasn't in so long. It's been years. Years since he wanted to - if he's ever fucking wanted to, which he's not sure about and hasn't ever really considered. It didn't matter. But here she is and she's doing this to him, working his cock through his pants like she's done it a hundred times before, and it's all he can do to keep from crumpling to the floor at her feet.

And she hasn't even gotten his fly open yet.

Yet.

Oh my Christ.

But he manages it. Should be impossible, but he does. "Beth," he gasps. "Beth, the fuck're you-"

"Please." Lips against the corner of his mouth, his jaw, clumsy kisses over his pulse. He's thinking about that skirt, how he can't do what she's doing but if he got that skirt up, because he knows without having to check that she took the jeans off too, and fucking hell. "Daryl. Please, I need it, I need…"

He only realizes what he's done when she stops and hitches in a shuddering breath, her head dropping back as she presses her tit harder into his palm.

He stares down at it. His hand, cupping her, the roughness of those beads and the small, wonderful curve they cover. He has no idea if he's ever cared for this kind of detail before, either - this feature of a woman's body - but in this very second it's all he gives a fuck about.

It fits. It's perfect.

Her hand is moving again, gentler and in a steadier rhythm, tracing the straining length of him and starting to tug at his zipper. "You said I was beautiful." She lays her free hand against his cheek, and the smile she gives him is the sweetest thing he's ever seen. It's radiant.

It's so sad.

"Make me feel beautiful, Daryl."

He backs her against the mirror.

It's very clumsy. She almost trips stepping backwards off the platform and he catches her, almost trips himself, they almost go down, and they're laughing into each other's mouths as she gets his zipper open and slips her hand inside, shuddering with him when she skates her fingertips over his shaft. Kissing him again, nipping at his jaw as he gets both her tits in his hands and kneads them like she was kneading his dick - and it's almost a shame to do it but he has to, he can't not: he pushes down that pretty glittering bodice and folds her hard little nipples into the creases of his palms, flicks his thumbs over them and hardens them even more. She whines and grips him, pulls him out, and by then he has her against the glass with a knee between her legs, giving her whatever pressure he can.

It's not enough.

None of it's enough. She's jerking him in rough, awkward twists of her wrist when she hauls up her skirt with her other hand and makes a way for him. Her panties are worn white cotton, discolored with washing after washing after washing, nothing pretty about them but as perfect as her boots, and he loves them, loves what he feels when he noses his fingers under the elastic and strokes over the slick, fat lips of her pussy.

Her head hits the mirror with a thud that would alarm him, except for the look on her face. Eyes half-lidded, mouth open in a single long moan, tight like she's in pain except it's nothing like that at all. Then he finds the nub of her clit with his fingertip, presses and circles experimentally, and when she hisses Daryl no one has ever said his name like that in his life.

And he knows what he wants to do with her.

She's burning under his hands as he takes her by the hips and spins her around, handling her more roughly than he meant to but only worrying for a fraction of a second, because it's idiocy to worry about it, idiocy to think he could damage her with only that. She's so strong, strong enough to survive a bullet to the fucking head, and her startled grunt breaks into a giddy laugh as she braces her hands against the mirror. It's like she already knows - she does, because as he's shoving his pants down his thighs, his aching cock bobbing, she's fumbling her skirt up to her waist and revealing the full curve of her ass, plump and luscious and sweet as her little tits.

If he had the bloodflow to spare for that level of mental processing, he would be mildly aghast that he's even thinking about her this way.

But she's broken something open in him, and it's roaring out, hot and hungry. She grips her skirt one-handed as he yanks down her panties so hard he hears them tear, and she laughs again, careless and wild, as she shimmies them to her ankles and kicks them away. He seizes her by the hip again, blunt nails digging into her skin as he takes himself in his other hand and strokes the head of his cock up and down her soaked lips, groaning thickly with his head sagging forward between his shoulders-

And his gaze meets hers in the mirror.

She catches him. Captures him. Holds him fast.

He saw fire in her eyes before. Now she's blazing. It's spread to the rest of her, her face flushed in a way that has nothing to do with her tears, her scars standing out darker than usual on her skin. Her throat, her chest, her tits capped with the hard peaks of her nipples, the glittering bodice loose just below them. Her hair is coming free from her ponytail, strands a mess around her face and neck. Her lips still swollen from kissing, wet and parted as her breath comes in rapid, shallow gasps.

And him behind her. Dark and looming, disheveled in a way she isn't and never has been, hair half obscuring his face. Ripped shirt he hasn't bothered to fix yet, muscles of his bare arms flexing with the sheer force of how much he fucking wants her.

Not exactly a prom date.

But he doesn't think that's what she wanted anyway.

"Fuck me," she breathes hoarsely. She keeps one spread hand on the glass and reaches back with the other, gropes for him. Again that smile, so brilliant and so gorgeously broken. "Fuck me, Daryl. Make me beautiful."

"You are," he manages, nothing more than a strangled croak, and he lines himself up and plunges into her.

She muffles her own cry through her teeth, head thrown back and both hands back on the mirror, arms quivering as he stills inside her. He can't move, he can't; she's so wet and hot and he knows she has to be ready for him but she still feels so tight, and as something like a snarl knots up in the back of his throat, it vaguely occurs to him that she might never have…

Some girls do plan for that. He knows that much. Prom night. So romantic. First time.

He almost laughs.

"Fuck me." She is laughing, more of that wild laughter, not loud enough to be a problem but loud enough that it's like music ringing into his ears, tuneful as her singing. "Fuck me, oh God, fuck me, fuck-"

So he does.

He could be gentle. He could start slow. He's not, and he doesn't, because just like she doesn't want a fucking prom date in a stupid tux with a rented limo, she doesn't want to be handled like some cliched idea of a virgin, whether or not she really is. He grasps her by the hips and fucks her, fast and deep and hard enough to push a grunt out of her with every thrust. He's fucking her into the mirror, their mingled reflections nothing more than a blur just as indistinct as the sounds they're making, his heavy panting, the squelch of her pussy and the smack of his skin on hers. He can't focus. It's too fucking good, it's incredible, pounding through his veins and between his ears as he pounds into her-

But it's still not enough.

He can't think. So he won't. He'll do, and he does, closing his hand around her shoulder, pulling her up and back against him - clumsy as anything they've done but she goes with him, lifts one hand off the mirror and hooks her arm around the back of his neck, her back arched and her tits standing out proud on her chest and quivering with every impact of his hips.

"Look," he hisses in her ear, gripping her by one of those lovely little handfuls and pinching at her nipple, delighting in the way her moan twists at the end. "Fuckin' look at that, look at you, Beth, look at how fuckin' beautiful you are, shit-"

The moan that bleeds out of her is ragged, helpless, and once again she might be in pain except for the smile spreading across her face like a sunrise.

"Tell me- Oh, Jesus, Daryl, aah- Tell me again, tell me…"

He does. In her ear, teeth bared, beginning to stutter in his rhythm because he's so close but not yet, not yet, not until she's had enough, and he tells her in harsh, jagged syllables that she's so beautiful, he can't fucking believe how beautiful she is, he's never seen anything like her, if she could just see herself…

See herself the way he sees her.

Her eyes are wide open as she releases his neck and drops her hand, shoving a flowing fold of her skirt aside and working frantically between her legs, watching herself and him and them and slamming back against him as her climax crashes through her, finally jerking her head to the side and muffling her sobs in the hollow of his throat.

She's still shaking when he allows himself to follow her, buried deep and pulsing in her as a strangled version of her name wrenches out of him, comes to pieces, drifts out of the air like settling dust.

Both of them drifting. Trembling, him somehow managing to hold onto her even as all he wants to do is collapse and take her with him.

So he does. Slowly, carefully as he can, folding himself to his knees and bringing her down, a soft sigh escaping her as he slides out of her.

He doesn't fall. He ends up sitting, awkward as hell with his pants partway down his thighs, his arms wrapped around her and her slumped back against him, and though her bare legs are splayed out in front of her, the insides of her thighs glistening with her juices and his come, the skirt is graceful in how it's fallen around her. In how it lies.

How all of her is. She's a wreck, and she's the most beautiful thing he'll ever see.

"Beth," he whispers, and in the mirror he sees her smile.

There's nothing sad in it at all.

She hums happily, eyes half closed and face relaxed, and she takes one of his hands and lifts it to her breast, covers it. "Tell me again."

"You're beautiful." It's easy. He'll tell her as many times as she wants. He'll tell her long after she's heard enough of it. It's not like he would ever have to lie, and it was true long before a pretty pink prom dress. "You're so fuckin' beautiful, Beth."

She breathes a laugh and turns her head, nuzzling at him. "This is better than a prom."

"How the hell would you know?" He sweeps her hair back from her face, returns his hand to her breast. "You ain't never had one."

"Don't need to. Don't want one." She pauses, then adds thoughtfully, "Think I do wanna keep the dress, though."

"Does look really good on you."

He touches her mouth, traces her smile with his fingertips when she speaks. "Just really good?"

"Yep."

She sighs again, another happy sound. Happier than he's heard her since she walked through the gates. "Good enough."

It is. He holds her tight and watches her in the mirror until all he wants to do is feel her, and he closes his eyes. He's still learning her. That's still happening.

And now he has a whole lot of new things to learn.