Rating: M
Pairings: Shane/boy!Lori, Girl!Rick/boy!Lori, usty/unconventional girl!Rick/Shane.
Disclaimer: Don't own
Summary: Genderbent Rick and Lori. The story of Lawrence and Richelle Grimes and how things with Shane stay the same. Or more simply: Rick is a girl, Lori is a boy, and Shane is Shane. Or not so simply: the time Shane never realized he was girl!Rick's gay friend.
Warnings: some homophobia and use of the word fag.
Written for gravi_girl123 over on livejournal
They're twenty-two the day Ricki and Laurence get married. Same church Ricki's momma and daddy got hitched in, Ricki decked out in white.
Shane sits in the twilight hours of the reception; everyone dancing into the night, thinking that if Ricki was his wife he'd never let her hang around with a guy like him. He's got a reputation and there will be whispers, guys taunting Lawrence about his wife and what she gets up to with Shane.
Unfounded insults, all of them. Not for any lack of trying on Shane's part.
Shane has this memory of him and Ricki, thirteen and too old to be wrestling, not that they had listened no matter how many times they'd been told. He'd gotten Ricki pinned, a feat that wasn't easy because she towered over him. Five foot four to his barely five feet. She was under him, kicking even though it was illegal and he wrapped his arms around her to hold her still. His hands right on her breasts, ones he hadn't really noticed had been there until that very moment. She didn't do anything about it, gave up and tapped out eventually, not associating anything he was doing with sex. No matter what Shane was thinking, or trying to, knowing what he shouldbe feeling and surprised he wasn't. Like he hadn't already touched himself a hundred times to the thought of whether Mrs. Davis or Miss Anderson had a nicer rack.
He'd tried that night after Ricki had gone home. Tried hard and couldn't. Unable to put Ricki who he'd fought with and shared beds with and pissed in front of into the category of girl. Felt mad about it. Cheated somehow that Ricki with her pretty face and dimples and shiny hair was nothing to his body except a friend.
But, Shane muses bitterly, so sloshed he's not sure he can stand, Ricki is Laurence's girl. And Laurence had been the offensive lineman to Shane's quarterback in high school and he seemed to think that made Shane okay. Good enough, anyways, not a threat enough, to have a place in Ricki's life.
Ricki's chest heaves under Shane's hands and she's so fragile. When he presses he feels like he's strong enough to break her bones. She's been smaller than him for years now, but he's never been as aware of it as he is in that moment, her ribcage seeming delicate as glass under the strength of his palms.
"Shh shh," he whispers as she opens her mouth at him. She keeps making these whimpers, little choking noises, and he wants her quiet, if only so he doesn't have to hear. "You're alright. Sweetheart you're right here with me." He hasn't called her that since back when they were teenagers and it was an insult—condescending. Sweetheart or darling for every time she called him Shaney, and god, he had hated that fucking name.
He's hoping for a reaction that doesn't come. No Shane get your hand off of my boob before I lay you out. See how sweet I am once I knee you in the dick. Just gasping. Ricki's blue eyes fluttering further and further shut. Blood that soaks straight through his gloves.
When Shane and Ricki were sophomores, everyone in school thought they were fucking. When it was obvious they weren't, rumors started. Rumors that one day after gym class finally came to a head.
He sat on a bench near one of the lockers, his hands working a towel through his damp hair. Tucker, skinny shit from his fourth period, taller than him by four inches but none of the bulk, came out from the showers with a towel wrapped around his waist. Nothing weird about that and Shane was preoccupied with getting to lunch on time to notice anything was off.
"Hey Walsh." Tucker whistled at him, fingers clutching onto his towel tighter. "Free peepshow's over. I ain't undressing in front of a fag."
Shane blinked, off guard for the first time ever, and it was so funny he'd wanted to laugh. It was ridiculous, really, that anyone would think he was a fag. Fifteen and he'd already fucked his first girl, fucked a few of them, and everyone knew it. He'd made sure.
"Man, like I'd want your skinny ass," he said, dipping down to lace up his boots. His smile burned his face, hot as a lighter, teeth like tips of condensed flame.
But Tucker pressed it, pressed him, back against the lockers, and he'd had just about enough of that.
Tucker was sneering at him, wearing only that dingy towel, and Shane shoved his fist into Tucker's face. Over and over. Enough to get his point across, broken nose and broken cheekbone and a tooth that pinged like glass when it dropped onto the floor.
Fifteen minutes later he found himself sitting outside the principal's office, old fucking friend, asshole through and through, and even then Shane was plotting, though it wasn't until senior year he started thinking seriously of chicken coops. Ricki walked by him; clustered together with a group of girls he supposed she called her friends, though they weren't the ones she spent her weekends with. It was her and Shane, always, shooting shit and skipping rocks near the river, riding their bikes in the dark.
She walked up and leaned on the wall next to him. She snapped a rubber band from around her wrist and used it to hold her long hair to the side.
"I heard you're gay now," she said, books balanced, watching him wipe his bruised knuckles clear of blood.
"Apparently." Words still sounded funny to him, because Shane Walsh, no fucking way. Except.
Just except.
"It does explain a lot," Ricki deadpanned, twitch of a grin in her pink lips. "Not that anyone would be able to tell. Not how you dress. Boots don't go with everything, Shane."
"Shut up," he said, but then they were both laughing, loud enough the principal stalked out of his office, gray eyes narrow, same color as his cheap suit.
"Shane," he growled, beckoning with a pudgy finger. "Get in here."
"Yessir." He nodded and caught the apple Ricki tossed him from her lunch bag as she waved goodbye.
They're in the woods the first time Lawrence lets Shane fuck him, face-down in the dirt. Their bodies pressed together, Shane's fingers curled into Lawrence's hips. Lawrence's hands scrabbling in the grass to find a grip.
Next time, three days later, two of them on patrol, Lawrence lays him on his back and kisses him. The beard he's started growing, beard Shane kinda likes, rugged, compliments the sharp angles of his face, scratches up the corners of Shane's mouth. Lawrence tugs Shane's thighs around his waist when he pushes in. It's no more gentle than before, heavy sound of the grunts they're making, Lawrence's face buried in Shane's neck. Shane holds him, palm pressed between his shoulders, and he keeps them steady while Lawrence loses control.
No one asks about it, after. Not Shane's stubble burn or the hickey on Lawrence's throat.
Carl's the one stable thing in all of it after Ricki comes charging back, whole like she was never dead in the first place. Like Shane had never put his ear to her chest and heard the silence of her heart. Carl keeps coming up to see him. And Shane feels so bad for him sometimes. This kid with a momma who's just returned and already leaving and a daddy that sometimes seems to care more about going out on patrol.
He pulls Carl impulsively to him, arm around Carl's shoulders, hand on his back. It's one of those awkward hugs he hasn't done since Carl turned eight and hugs from your wannabe-kind-of-uncle stopped being cool. He holds Carl tight and the top of Carl's head is still against his cheek.
"I'm always gonna be here for you little man," Shane says, and feels the tension go out of Carl. Carl's hand toying uncomfortably with the hem of his shirt, waiting to be released.
"Okay," Carl says, eyes scrunched like the whole thing wasn't needed. The white of his smile showing that it was. "Uh, thanks."
"Go on back to your dad, bud; I'm sure he's looking. We're gonna be having dinner soon."
Carl stares at him like Shane you're crazy, same fucking face Laurence gives him every day. But there's no malice when Carl does it. Just that childish sentiment of adults can be so weird.
"Kay." Carl steps from the light of the fire into the shadows, dark swallowing up the lines of his face.
He watches Carl shuffle back to his tent. He crawls through the flap, shoulders hunched, and Shane say something to Carl, exasperation anger, before the door zips shut.
Shane has liquor sloshing in him, bottle near empty as he clutches it in his hand. Should go to bed, knows it, can't though because there's Lawrence, slugging from a bottle of his own, tucked away in the game room where Ricki won't think to look. Too busy off being falsely pragmatic. Pretending that things aren't all disease and death.
"What?" Lawrence glares at him, florescent lighting making his dark hair seem oddly gold. Maybe Shane's more drunk than he realizes. He's just got so much in him. Things he has to say and wine hot in his gut. "What is it now, Shane?" Annoyance there, Lawrence acting as if Shane's some mosquito buzzing at him he wants to swat away.
"How can you do this to me?" He hears himself asking, voice that's his and isn't, words one long slur. "I don't think I deserve this." Doesn't because he did everything for them. Taught Lawrence how to shoot and protect himself. Watched Lawrence's back. Was there whenever Carl needed him. Did his best to help fill Ricki's place knowing he'd never be able.
"How can I do this? What about what youdid? Huh? You do this whole thing on purpose? Tell me my wife was dead 'cause you're a fag?" There it is, that word again, and Shane's fifteen suddenly, steam of the locker room fogging up his eyes.
He punches Lawrence. His coordination sloppy from the wine he drank and the blow catches Lawrence in the far edge of his jaw. Lawrence's head whips to the side and he spits saliva that's only tinged a little pink. Bit his tongue more than anything. Shane's punch barely enough to sting.
Then Lawrence is hitting him back. A left hook that collides full on with his nose. He feels the crunch before he even hears it. He's surprised by the blood that splatters hot down the front of his shirt.
Lawrence had never been able to throw much of a punch. To the point where everyone knew he wasn't joking the times he said his wife could kick his ass.
"Takes one to know one," Shane says, sounding like a child, head titled back to try and stop the flow of blood. He tastes it thick and runny in his throat, tang of metal. "Don't remember any of that begging being for me to stop."
Lawrence's eyes are so hard they could hurt him. But Shane thinks he sees fear there. Fear because Shane isn't lying when he says there's love. More love than he knows what to do with. Loves Lawrence even though he shouldn't and knows Lawrence loves him too. "You love me, man." It's pathetic the way he speaks it, practically sobs it through his mangled nose.
"I love my wife." Still that fear, though. And maybe Shane isn't the only one who hates that word fag for the wrong reasons.
Lawrence storms out of the rec room, door rattling behind him as he slams it angrily, leaving Shane alone there, hands slicked in his own blood.