Okay, so… they're in a hotel.
It's not a very nice hotel, but it has a bed, and that's all that matters.
He's on his hands and knees, face down, ass up, one of the only positions that causes him to curl his toes and spit out the commonplace filth that gets him into trouble no matter the time of day. Rick slaps a hand over his mouth to quell him, but that only makes him howl even louder.
"The walls are thin," a set of lips press to his ear.
And he screws up his face, a quirk of his eyebrow and a snarl in his teeth, as he goes, "Well, fuck me harder."
Muffled by the sweaty palm, he lets his tongue graze across the life line before bowing his head and feeling the sharp sting as it knocks into the curve of his backside the same time as a pair of hips do.
He exhales everything in his lungs, a pathetic squeal.
"I don't know if you deserve that," the lips say into his ear again.
"Ricky Dicky," he whispers.
Sweaty palm now settled in between his shoulder blades, Rick's voice crawls inside him. "Shut up, Negan."
And Negan does. He shuts up for the most part. He can never keep quiet, but he can shut up.
Rick slides his hand down and sticks it underneath Negan's ribs, his arm wiggling the rest of the way to bump Negan onto his side, onto his back. Negan obliges, tongue out of his mouth and in the dip of Rick's collarbone without a second to contemplate his decision. Bent over him, a hand at the base of his cock to ease into Negan again, Rick tilts his head to the side, eyes closed, Negan now kissing his neck and the hollow beneath his earlobe.
When Negan bites, Rick wraps his hand around Negan's throat and shoves him onto the mattress.
Negan sees stars. "Oh, baby blue," he whispers, Rick's grip a vise, Rick's cock pushing into him with no resistance. Negan feels his lips part, almost involuntarily, and Rick kisses him. Rick kisses him, beard burn on patchy stubble.
The headboard bangs into the wall with each thrust. Negan curves his fingers around the backs of Rick's thighs, a pathetic grab.
Rick comes with his hand on Negan's throat. Negan comes with Rick's hand on his throat.
He can't complain about the creampie. He was always a dirty guy.
Sometimes Negan thinks he needs to turn to pills to feel better, to forget the pain that's lingering in the memories he's trying to repress. All he needs is a cigarette, though, and maybe a good dick who knows how to plug him and rattle his insides until he's well and churned.
He takes the cigarette now. Rick steals a few drags as he dresses.
"Hey, Rick," Negan says, "would you really kill me?" He asks this with an absent rub to his neck, the impressions of Rick's fingers pillow marks.
Rick says, "No."
And Rick leaves.
Negan finishes the cigarette.
At the hospital, Negan holds Lucille's hand and tells her stories she can't hear.
"I met this guy," he begins, speaking to the rolling veins in her arms. "Name's Rick. Met him a while ago, but he fucks me really good—you know, since you can't."
He smiles, like she can open her eyes and see.
"He's got a wife. A kid. I haven't met them. I don't want to meet them. This is just a thing we've got going on. It doesn't mean anything."
His thumb passes over an old burn scar on the web of her thumb. He can almost smell the chocolate chip pancakes. "He doesn't care about the pussy between my legs."
It's never the same hotel. Tonight, Rick makes Negan drive an hour to get laid. Negan says, "You're lucky my wife's not giving me any or else I wouldn't be here."
Rick just looks at him. He was always good at seeing past the façade.
As Negan's shrugging off his leather jacket, Rick asks, "Do you want to talk about it?"
Negan pretends he doesn't know what "it" means and continues undressing.
Rick continues staring. "She's getting worse, isn't she?"
"Rick," Negan says, and that's enough to get Rick to close his mouth and begin unbuttoning his uniform.
Another orgasm, another cigarette—another night in a hotel, he doesn't know what state he's in right now. Negan licks sweat from the side of Rick's face while Rick fiddles with his shitty flip phone. "Come on," Negan whispers, flicking his lighter, flicking his eyes toward Rick. "I think I've got another round in me."
Another night in a hotel, Rick plucks the cigarette from between Negan's lips and wraps his own around the filter. His baby blues are storm clouds, and Negan can already hear the thunder in this throat.
"She thinks I'm cheating on her. Why else would I be gone all the time?"
"You're a busy man, Sheriff." Negan pushes Rick down. In a single swooping motion, Negan sits on Rick's hips and rocks.
Rick shuts his eyes.
Negan takes the cigarette. "You are cheating on her," he points out, tapping the middle of Rick's chest with his index finger.
"It's just sex," Rick says.
"Yeah." Negan stubs the cigarette into the bottom of the nightstand drawer, staining the wood, hiding the evidence with a smack of his palm. "It's just sex. No one ever considers 'just sex' cheating. No, sir, there's gotta be something messy and gooey in there. What's that word again, Sheriff?"
Rick pauses for a beat. "Emotions," he tries, "feelings, love."
"We don't have to worry about that," Negan whispers, Rick's cock edging into him. Into Rick's neck, Negan breathes, Negan mumbles, "We don't have to worry about that at all." He remains stationary, Rick's hand on his waist, Rick's hand in his hair.
They arrive separately. They leave thirty minutes apart.
They come within seconds of each other.
Negan runs his hand over the crown of Lucille's head. If she had hair, he'd be knotting his fingers into it, holding it, securing it as if he were a hair tie. When she wipes her mouth of vomit, when she lies in bed, when she curls into him at night, he would always brush her hair from her face and press a kiss to the space between her eyebrows.
Today, he sits on her bed, all white, all stiff and stale, and he reaches over and touches the crown of her head. He sits there, and he watches her, and she watches him.
"I'm going to get out of here soon," she whispers.
He hands her a cup of water, cold to the touch.
"And then," she says, "we can go home."
Negan smiles.
"How's work?" she asks.
"Work's work," Negan answers. "Go back to sleep."
The kids think he's weird, but for once it's due to the words that fly from his mouth. They look at him with wide eyes and trembling limbs, and not one of them is the wiser. He busts some balls, and they attempt to bust his, and all in all, they take a liking to him, especially the older kids. Having a teacher cuss them out and then laugh at a dirty joke with them couldn't be better.
However, the parents are a different story.
They stare. They talk behind their hands.
Some of the women are baffled. Fingers pointing, lips pursing, and refusing to pretend they aren't scrutinizing, they are the worst. It's why Negan doesn't like talking to the parents before, during, or after baseball practice. It's always the moms who sit and watch their kids. It's always the moms who point, purse, and pretend.
He stands around the edge of the field, leather jacket zipped up, hands shoved into his pockets. From the sidelines, he yells at the kids. He doesn't like confronting them. He doesn't like touching them. The mothers will turn their heads to follow him, eyes running up his legs and up his back, and down again. He wants to yell at them. He doesn't want to lose his job.
This practice, he does sprint across the field. A kid fell down, some scrawny preteen with elbows for knees and vice versa. Some other kid, too tall for his age, swung his bat and sent a ball straight into the crying kid's forehead. Negan crouches, and he can feel the mothers watching, watching, watching as he brushes the hair off the kid's head to inspect the baseball-sized bruise already sprouting like a third eye.
"Hey, hey, hey," Negan says, the kid twisting in his arms and squeezing out tears. "You're gonna be okay."
It takes a moment, but he's surrounded. The mom's by his side, too, on her knees and clawing the kid from Negan to pull him into her own chest. She stares at Negan when she does this, her gaze icy.
Negan clenches his jaw.
"Mom, it hurts," the kid groans.
The mom says, "I'll call your dad, and we'll take you to the emergency room."
"We're done here today," Negan announces.
Because he's a nice fucking guy, Negan stays with the little family. He even pulls out a first-aid kit and patches up the kid's elbow, picking out the gravel, spreading on antibacterial cream, stroking on a bandage, and fighting the urge to top it all off with a kiss. He would have been a good father.
The mom's still staring at him. She says, "Thanks," without a hint of gratitude.
Negan says, "When's the kid's daddy coming?"
She says, "He's on his way. He's a busy man."
"That must suck."
"You're not good at small talk, are you?"
Negan just shrugs.
Daddy arrives in a police cruiser. Negan should have considered that the first sign of trouble, but no—no, it had to be when the dad is in front of them, familiar sheriff hat on his head, familiar uniform on his back, familiar name on his breast, and familiar baby blues in the sockets of his eyes.
Negan can't look away. He can't fucking speak.
Rick can't either.
The kid's mom, she stands and doesn't seem to notice the look Negan and her husband share—or don't share. "Rick," she says, "I think Carl has a concussion."
"Don't fall asleep," Negan tells the kid, Carl, Carl. He didn't want to meet Rick's kid. He didn't want to meet Rick's wife.
"I won't." Carl smiles.
Negan waves at the little family, and as he's leaving, he hears more whispers, mostly from her. "Butch," he hears. "They're very butch."
"He," Rick says, a chant. "He, he, he—"
Negan's too far away. He lights a cigarette and climbs into his car.
Rick hits him up that night.
Negan's on Lucille's bed, boots off his feet, the zipper of his leather jacket digging into his septum. He feels safe.
He turns his phone in his hands. On silent, he watches the screen alight with Rick's name, and then slowly dim.
Lucille's asleep. She hasn't woken all day.
Negan slides into his boots.
The venue is the one closest to Rick's house. Just a twenty-minute drive, Rick hadn't tried very hard to disguise his movements. Parking in the back of the motel could have helped that little bit, but as Negan pulls up in his car, he spots Rick's cruiser, and he has to grit his teeth to keep himself from nudging the bumper.
Their greetings are short. They're not here to exchange pleasantries.
Rick smells of antiseptic. Negan can hardly tell a difference between him and Lucille.
"How's the kid?" Negan asks, because he's concerned. Getting nailed in the forehead by a baseball, despite it being swung by a child, can hurt a hell of a lot. Negan's trying to be nice. He's trying to show Rick he has a paternal side, too, and yet Rick doesn't want to hear it. He's shoving Negan onto the bed and pulling down Negan's pants just enough to bury his face in Negan's cunt.
Negan would be lying if he said he wasn't into it. His hands fly to Rick's hair, and Negan yanks, talking too fast for his own good. "Whoa, doggie, wait a sec—R-Rick."
And Rick actually does. He stops, and he flicks his eyes up to Negan's eyes, and he stops. He pushes himself up, elbows on Negan's knees, and says, "My son's fine. He doesn't have a concussion. Just… needs to rest."
It's out before Negan can process what's leaving his mouth. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Thankfully, Rick doesn't take up the offer. He deflects, even, spins this onto Negan. "We don't come here to talk," he says, and helps undress Negan the rest of the way, Negan complying, Negan tugging off Rick's clothes, Negan spreading his legs.
Rick hides his face in Negan's neck, Negan immediately coming down to hold Rick in place, to curl his fingers and his toes and arch his back and dare not say the first thing that comes into his mind.
"I'm sorry about my wife," Rick grunts into the shell of Negan's ear. "She's nosy."
"Just tell her I had a boob job."
Rick laughs, and when Rick laughs, Negan laughs.
And when Negan laughs, he roars.
Rick hugs him and doesn't let go.
Rick doesn't leave straight away. He says, "I was supposed to go out and get softer hand towels."
He says, "Do you think she'll believe me if I tell her no store near us had towels soft enough?"
Negan says, "Maybe."
In the middle of the room, Rick stands there, socks still on his feet, and gestures with his hand, a stupid fucking come-hither motion. "Come 'ere."
"Why?"
"Dance with me."
Negan thinks he's in trouble.
Rick kisses him. Negan doesn't remember how it feels to be cared for in this way. He's selfish. He's an asshole.
"I'm an asshole," he says into Rick's mouth.
"Me, too," Rick says, and kisses him again.
If there isn't baseball practice, Negan heads to the hospital as soon as the final bell rings. He's free today. He sits with Lucille and holds her hand and tells her stories she may not remember upon waking.
They'll infect her dreams, Negan's sure. At least she'll have good dreams.
"I don't know how we met. It's been so long."
She doesn't move.
"Honey, I know you're not going to get any better. I think you know that, too. You're not fooling me. I see the way you look at me, like you're just begging me to fucking do something about this. Just say the word. Show me your thumb, give me the finger, let me know when you're fucking done with this hellhole of a world, and I'll… I'll take a pillow and… I'll…"
Negan closes his eyes.
"Babe, you're going to have a damn good time in those clouds. Every time the sun sets and the clouds turn that pink color, I'm gonna think about the way your tits flush when you're about to come."
She stirs, a phantom motion.
He squeezes her hand. "You deserve someone so much better. I'm a fucking idiot. I think I lo—"
And she stirs again. Her wrist turns, slow, maybe nothing, maybe something.
"Negan," she whispers, "doll baby."
He leans in, close, her lips to his cheek.
Her hand is cold against his shoulder, chilling him straight through his leather jacket.
"Stop fucking complaining."
Negan smiles.
He likes to believe she's getting better.
Color returns to her face.
She's still as bald as a bastard, but that only accentuates her features.
He's taken to singing to her now. She falls asleep every time. That must mean he's good.
Rick calls him more often. Negan is a fool to think he could ever put any sort of distance between them.
Just one look at the guy, and Negan's knees buckle and his heart maintains a mind of its own.
He hates Rick.
Negan says, "I hate you."
Rick stretches out his arm, high above his head. "You won't get your cigarette back then."
Negan sticks his fingers into Rick's armpit. "Fuck you."
There's music bumping through the walls of this cheap motel room. They're on the bed, their backs to the wall, knees serving as supports for their elbows. They bump fingers to pass the cigarette.
Rick's socks are up to his calves.
Negan inhales. Negan exhales.
"Hey, I think you're a special guy."
Rick just shakes his head.
He leaves five minutes later.
Negan gets off one last time before exiting the room with the bed unmade and his boots unlaced.
"Tell me what I should say. Tell me what I did that made you like me so much. I know I'm a fucking piece of work, but something must have stood out to you."
Lucille's weak. Lucille rolls her head around on her shoulders. "It was the way you laughed… the way you walked. One foot in front of the other… you were like a peacock."
Negan rubs her leg. "I had to act like I had a fat cock in my pants."
"Fake it 'til you make it." She reaches for Negan's hand. He takes her fingers.
She's getting colder.
Negan squeezes. "Lucille, give me strength."
Mustering enough strength to snort, Lucille rolls her eyes and turns away from Negan. "Shut up, you big lump."
He can't help but smile.
He texts Rick. He wants Rick. He says, I need you.
Rick says, Soon.
Negan says, Really soon. Tell me somewhere we can meet really soon.
Rick doesn't reply. Rick can't reply.
Later that night, as he's watching the evening news with Lucille, Negan finds out Rick, the fucking moron, got shot.
With the unshed tears on his face, Lucille raises her shaky hand and points her shaky finger. In her shaky voice, she whispers, "Him? It was him?"
He looks at his feet.
She laughs. It sounds wrong. "He has gorgeous eyes."
He wonders if Rick ever deleted his text messages.
Four weeks, maybe five weeks pass, Negan loses count. He's on autopilot.
Rick's wife glares at him.
Rick's kid stops showing up to baseball practice.
Rick's in a fucking coma.
And Lucille dies.
She dies, and yet, she doesn't die.
That's happening a lot now. He's been preoccupied.
Negan wants to touch her. He thinks touching her will make her better. He thinks she'll perk up if he sets his hand on the crown of her head, but her eyes are milky, and she gnashes her teeth, and he scrambles from the room.
"Down the hall," he says to the first person he sees, blood on his hands and his head throbbing. "There's… I can't…"
Everything hurts.
"I was always a bit of a loner," he says to anyone who asks.
"No, I didn't lose anybody."
He wonders how Rick's doing.
Sometimes he sits with strangers and listens to their stories.
He watches them die and feels no remorse.
They weren't strong enough, that's what he tells himself. He pokes at their shoes and digs inside their packs for whatever he considers vital.
The next group he finds, they loot a pharmacy and Negan shovels all the testosterone he can find into his bag.
No one asks questions.
A man, too thin and yet not thin at all given the situation, wearing a cheap flannel shirt that's better suited for a dishrag, stands too close to Negan. He's with a group of his friends—maybe not even friends, maybe they're just strangers who found each other and clutched hands and said, "'Til death do us part."
Negan acts tough. Negan is the leader. He says, "Follow me," and they follow him.
And the man, walking behind Negan, too close to Negan, he has a baseball bat in his fist. Negan tells him, "Nice bat," and the fucking guy's so into him he offers it to Negan, but Negan just shakes his head and goes, "Only pussies have those."
But it's the first thing he scavenges after a horde surrounds them at a campfire. Negan likes the weight, and it reminds him of when he used to coach for the kids in his neighborhood.
He wonders how much time has passed.
He wonders how Rick's doing.
People talk shit, and they get bit, and sometimes Negan swings his bat into the backs of their heads, and sometimes he screams at them to kill themselves. He's tired of losing people.
And then, he meets Simon. Simon doesn't fuck him like Rick used to fuck him, but it takes Negan's mind off how much he fucking misses sitting on Lucille's hospital bed as he texted Rick about the meeting place of their next tryst.
"I was going to tell him I fucking cared about him," Negan says, craving a cigarette.
Simon just sits and stares at him.
"I'm a fucking idiot," Negan says, and Simon pulls on his clothes.
Later on, he meets Dwight and his wife, Sherry. They have a group. They don't die as easily. Simon and he slip into form with no trouble at all.
Negan isn't the leader, but they follow him when he decides he wants to go back home. "I think I forgot something."
"Yeah, maybe your dick," a boy hisses under his breath.
Negan makes sure no one sees the true cause of death the next time a horde comes their way.
Back home, in the deserted house he used to love, Simon accompanies him to the bedroom. They step over furniture and debris and the dead body or two. Negan is in his own world. He's walking, and he's tripping, and Simon tries to touch him, but Negan doesn't want to be touched. He's in the bedroom, where Lucille used to sing him to sleep and laugh about the tears on his face, and he's rummaging in the closet and praising to whoever will listen that no one snatched the leather jacket she bought him for their anniversary.
He didn't wear it on the day she died, the day the world ended. He's glad he didn't. He thinks he would have lost it by now.
Simon still wants to touch him, but he places his hands on his hips and stands in the doorway, away from Negan, as a detachment. "So, what do we do now?" he asks Negan, watching Negan unravel a scarf from an inside pocket. Red, long, smelling of happier times past, Negan loops the scarf around his neck. He looks for his wrist wraps next.
"All we've fucking done is fucking survive," Negan says, "but, dammit, that's not enough. No, now? Fucking now"—Negan points at the window, eyes narrowing—"we're gonna be their fucking saviors."
He wonders how Rick's doing.
Negan's sat around another campfire and bashing in soft heads and making them softer. Negan has blood on his hands, and he tells himself he's not a murderer because it's impossible to kill someone when they're already fucking dead.
Simon touches his shoulder, and he shrugs off Simon's hand and pricks his thumbs in a patch of barbed wire. He hates the way his head works.
These people are looking to him for guidance. Here he is, kneeling, fingers red with his blood and tears in his eyes. Rick had blue eyes.
"I need to tell you about Lucille," Negan says, because Rick is a secret, because Rick is probably dead.
But Rick's here, and Rick's staring at him with wide eyes. He's shaking, frightened out of his mind. Negan can see this from where he steps from the RV his men took from the people who killed his people.
He can see Rick.
He can fucking see Rick.
And Negan crouches in front of Rick. Rick just stares at him. Rick just stares, and there's hate in those eyes. There's terror, there's recognition. Rick knows him, and he knows Rick. Negan can feel the marks Rick left on his neck all those years ago, a whisper on his lips as he asked Rick, "Would you really kill me?"
Rick had told him no, but there's no doubt in Negan's mind that Rick would kill him right now, given the chance. Rick will drag a blade across Negan's throat and scream.
Rick's kid is here, too, all grown up and damaged like the rest of them. No wife to be found, they have this in common. It's a comforting thought. Negan doesn't dwell on it.
He gazes at Rick, and Rick still stares at him, unable to take his eyes off him, and Negan has to laugh. He tightens his grip on his baseball bat and laughs. He laughs.
"Oh, baby blue," Negan murmurs, that familiar twist in his gut, "would you take a fucking look at you."