A/N/ Another short chapter I know, I'm sorry but it felt like a natural stopping point :) I hope you're all still enjoying the story and if you have any suggestions or feedback I'd love to hear it. Thanks again to WickedlyMinx for reviewing and sorry for confusing you :p Happy reading!

Chapter 21

It had been raining for two solid weeks. Alexandria and the surrounding areas had become sloppy mud baths and sickness was making a truimphant sweep through the settlement. It had been a long time coming that another illness would sweep through the surviours, but even so when it came no one was prepared for just how violently ill you became. The first to contract the bug was Tara, then like all epidemics it crept into a good ninety percent of the community.

"I don't think I can vomit again." Lexi groaned, her voice hoarse from the sheer volume of vomitting she'd been doing over the past forty-eight hours. "This is worse than heroin with drawals." The flannel on her forehead was saturated in sweat and realling needed rinsing and wringing out but her whole body felt like she'd been beaten with a sack of bricks so moving was being kept at a minimum.

"It'll pass, I promise-" Rick was inturpted by Lexi emptying her stomach into the nearby bucket, scooping her long hair into his hands he held it back while she threw up. Of all the people that had contracted the sickness Lexi seemed to be suffering the most, she couldn't even keep water down. Rick had intially put it down to the fact that the years of drug abuse had taken a toll on her immune system but now he wasn't so sure. "Alex, could you be pregnant?"

Once the vomitting had subsided Lexi lifted her head from the bucket and attempted to slap Rick's arm but was too exausted. "I can't have a baby, remember? Drugs." Rolling the sleeve of her top up she showed her track marks to him, a constant reminder of her past.

"I know that. But, hear me out, you're not on drugs anymore. Haven't been for a while now, you're body would be recovering and..." Rick trailed off, his mind suddenly fixing on his wife. She had been so beautiful when she'd been pregnant with Carl, positively glowed, even pregnant with Judith she'd never been more beautiful to him. "I'm going to see if I can find you a test on the next run."

Lexi gave him a half hearted salute before the next wave of vomitting hit. She didn't know how she could physically even still be vomitting, her stomach had been emptied so many times she'd lost count and it wasn't like she was eating or drinking anything. For the past three days her entire life had been the bed in her room, the chills and fever had set in a day before the vomitting had started. "Do you think I could have a bath?" She croaked.

"Of course, I'll start running one." Rick paused at the door. "You're...Alex you're going to need help. I don't know-"

"It's fine Rick, nothing you haven't seen before." Lexi cut in, weakily laying back into her pillows. "I just need to get the smell of puke off of me. Please."

With the bath ran, Rick went back to Lexi's room and scooped her up into his arm carrying her bridal style into the bathroom. Setting her down onto the toilet Rick started the awkward task of removing her clothing. "Alex, I can go find another woman to do this."

"Rick it's fine."

Nodding more to himself than Lexi, Rick continued pulling off her pyjama bottoms and then moved to her top. Lexi was slumped in only her bra and panties, her pale skin a sickly tone of grey. His eyes drifted to her stomach, if she was pregnant it would be likely to early for her to be showing but he couldn't stop a quick bump check. As he suspected her stomach was still flat. "Okay, here we go." Unhooking her bra and peeling her panties down her thin legs, Rick lifted Lexi back into his arms and set her down in the warm waters of the bath. She sighed instantly. "Feel better?"

"You have no idea." With one of her hands Lexi swirled the water in undefined patterns, god the water felt amazing on her aching body. "I want to stay here forever."

Drying his hands on the nearby towel Rick got to his feet. "I need to go check on something. Do not fall asleep in there."

"Mmhmm." Lexi replied her eyes drifting shut, it wouldn't hurt just to rest them as long as she didn't fall asleep. She couldn't remember the last time she'd actually slept properly since contracting the illness, with the unstopable vomiting and the aches and fever sleeping had slowly slipped away from her. Dreamily she traced her finger along the edge of the cool bath enjoying the sensation on her finger tip. The door crashing open shook Lexi from her dozing, Carl hunched over the toilet and retched loudly. "How you doing buddy?"

"I'm sorry Alex." Carl moaned covering his eyes with his hands so he couldn't see her naked body. "I thought I had missed the contagious period."

"Gets us all Carl. Move your hand you moron, its only tits." Lexi said flicking her wet hand at him successful spraying him lightly with water droplets. She watched as he cautiously removed the hand covering his eyes and glanced at her blushing deeply. "Carl are you blushing?" Lexi teased.

"Shut up." He laughed slumping down against the bathroom wall and wiped the sweat beads from his forehead with the back of his hand. "I didn't want to be sick infront of Enid."

Lexi hadn't spent much time with Enid but she knew that Carl had the biggest crush on her and from what she had seen Enid felt the same way. It was cute really, Lexi hadn't seen something so innocent in a long time. "Well cheers! It's okay to spew infront of me though, huh?" Again Lexi flicked him with her wet hand. "Help me out of this bath, it's getting cold." Gingerly, Lexi rose to her feet in the bath and stepping into the large towel Carl held out for her. The warmth of the towel was a welcome feeling on her goose-pimpled skin. "My advice get as much rest as you can, come to bed with me if you want? I have plenty of puke buckets." Both of them laughed and trapsed back to Lexi's room. As Lexi got redressed into her pyjamas, which unfortunately still had the pungent stench of sick, Carl crawled under the duvet. "So Enid, is she your girlfriend yet?"

"No...I don't know. We kissed." Carl hadn't told anyone about his and Enid's kiss yet but Lexi was his bestfriend. "I don't think she wants a boyfriend."

"She does, trust me I'm a girl and I've seen exactly how she acts around you. Friends don't look at each other like that."

"Is it the same way you look at Negan?" Carl asked.

Now there was a question. "I...I don't even know how I look at him." Lexi laughed weakly, she knew exactly how she looked at him and she hated herself for it.

"You look at him like he's the only other person in the world. Like outside him there's nothing."

"How Negan feels about me is completely different to how you both feel about each other. For one thing you're both fucking human."

"I'm talking about how you feel about him."

Lexi didn't want to deal with this right now, she knew what this led to. Hurt feelings. And she had managed successfully for years to block the receptors to her feelings, the middle of the damn apocolypse was no the place to unblock it all. "Negan and I fuck, that's all. All it's ever been. All it'll ever be. But you and Enid have a chance at a small slice of happiness and you'd be an idiot to let that slip through your fingers. Stop worrying about what if's and go for it." Snuggling into Carl's side she felt her eyes getting heavy with exhaustion. "We stop stuff like this once you get the balls to ask her out. It might mean nothing to us but it'd hurt her."
For the first time in three days Lexi fell into a deep sleep.