- Alright. So here's what I'm gonna do. Due to my recent bout of writer's block and the fact that I'm gonna get hella busier in the next few weeks, I'm gonna put out shorter updates to my fics.

I think the fact that I'm always aiming to write 3000-5000 word fics is one of the reasons that I'm so intimidated by actually getting my writing done. So I'll be writing shorter updates but, hopefully, more frequent ones. So with that said...Here's my latest update to Loss and Gain.

The poll for what fic I should update next is promptly going to be put up on my P atreon page, so if you're a patron and want to vote, go ahead and put in your vote. -

Chapter 21: Can't Go Back

Michonne was comforted by Rick's touch and his gentle whispers in her ear.

They were still nestled on the couch. The photo album containing pictures of Michonne's paintings lay open to the side of Rick. It was still open to the last painting – the painting she had created when she was pregnant with Andre. Michonne's eyes still rested on it while her head rested on Rick's chest. Rick stroked her arm, reassuring her physically when he couldn't do it verbally.

Michonne closed her heavy-lidded eyes. They were heavy from the tears she had just finished crying and Rick's shirt was soaked with their remains.

She breathed in the scent of him – a scent akin to sandalwood – and it contented her. But scared her at the same time.

She didn't like how right this felt. She didn't like how good it felt to be wrapped around him.

She suddenly shifted so that she could look him in the eyes. He stared back at her, his eyes full of care and concern. Michonne moved in to kiss his lips, meeting them just as they parted in a second of surprise.

"What are you doing?" Rick asked before she could deepen the kiss.

"We haven't had sex any this past week," Michonne said bluntly. She scooted in closer to Rick's body. "We should probably fix that."

She moved in and captured Rick's lips with her own again.

The menu screen of The Nightmare On Elm Street was still being projected from the television screen. Between Michonne telling Rick about Andre and her current move to straddle him, the movie they had been planning to watch had become a forgotten event.

Rick gripped Michonne's hips as she settled on top of him and she could feel his growing excitement beneath her. But he took a moment to pull away from her when they broke for air. "I can't," he breathed.

Michonne tried to hold back the sudden rush of frustration that filled her chest. "Why are you here then?" she asked.

The comfort she felt due to Rick's presence unsettled her. She didn't want to grow dependant on him being there and she didn't want either one of them to start to confuse what they had going on at the moment to be something more than it was.

Rick didn't respond, so she continued. "Sex is sex, remember? I thought that's what this was supposed to be about."

Early morning light began to stream through the windows of Michonne's apartment.

"Lori wants us to have another baby..." Rick confessed.

"Is that what you wanna do?" Michonne asked. "Because I won't stop you from leaving. I already have someone ready to fill in if you can't give me what I want."

Rick almost laughed at the way she spoke of having sex. "Oh yeah?" he asked. "Who?"

Michonne leaned over and twisted her body to grab her cell phone off of the coffee table. Rick held tightly to her sides to keep her anchored so that she wouldn't fall off of his lap. He tried to will himself not to feel even more turned on by her movement.

She straightened back up and faced Rick with the phone in her hand. "Tyreese," she said, showing him a picture of the man he had seen for only a few moments the week before.

Rick squinted and took the cell phone. "This the guy you went on a date with?" he asked.

"Yep," Michonne replied. "We've been talking."

Rick didn't hesitate to go to her messages. "About what?"

Michonne hurriedly snatched her phone back and shut it off. "None of your business. I'm just letting you know I don't need you."

Rick smiled softly. It surprised him how much he genuinely enjoyed being with Michonne. It surprised him even more how easy it was. They shared a natural, playful rapport that most other people wouldn't understand – especially due to their complicated and intertwined histories.

The small smile fell off of Rick's lips as he descended into his own thoughts. His hand unconsciously drifted up and down Michonne's clothed thigh.

Rick had never been a man to question himself. He always had a plan set for himself in life and he always followed that plan. From his first year of high school, he knew what he was going to grow up to be. He soon also knew who he was going to marry. And his plans never conflicted with his morals or his nature.

But that had all changed. He wasn't sure when...

He wasn't sure if it had been the night he had covered for Shane after Mike's death or whether it had been the moment Michonne had stepped into King County. But now what felt natural and right conflicted with everything he knew to be so.

All of his plans were out the window and with Michonne...right and wrong didn't seem so concrete.

He lifted her off of his lap and placed her onto her back on the couch. Settling in beside her, he propped himself up onto his elbow so that he was looking down into her face.

Michonne waited for his next move, almost holding her breath in anticipation.

He only looked at her, his blue-eyed gaze penetrating. He delved into her and got beneath her skin without a single touch. His gaze moved from her eyes, to her lips, to her collarbone.

Michonne breathed deeply, feeling heated underneath his stare. When his gaze reached her breasts, she shifted as a spark ignited between her thighs. She felt like he was already undressing her. That he was already trailing his rough fingers over her warm skin. Her anticipation built to the point that when he actually did touch her by lying his hand gently on her hip, she jumped a little.

He brought his eyes up to meet hers again. "I want to hear more about your paintings," he said, his voice a raspy whisper.

Michonne's brow furrowed slightly. She obviously hadn't been expecting him to broach this topic again. Or any topic for that matter. She had been expecting their bodies to do the talking for the next few minutes.

Rick picked up her photo album and flipped through the pages. "If I asked you to paint a picture of me, what would you paint?"

Michonne took the album away from him and put it on the coffee table. "I'm not going to talk about my paintings anymore," she said. "The agreement is that we just have sex. No feelings. No talking. Just sex."

"What agreement?" Rick asked. "I don't remember making any agreement."

Michonne mimicked Rick's pose and propped herself up onto her arm, facing him. "The non-verbal agreement we made when you came over and put me on the hall table."

"You were a lawyer," Rick said. "You know nothing's official unless you get it in writing."

Michonne picked her cell phone back up. "Should I call Tyreese then?"

Rick took the cell phone from her hand and deposited it on the arm of the couch. "Just tell me what you would paint," he prompted. "Would you paint me in dark colors or bright?"

Michonne sighed before deciding to humor him with what he wanted. "I would paint you as is," she replied.

"Why?"

'Because everything else disappears when I'm with you,' Michonne thought. 'The future. The past. Resentment...' But of course Michonne didn't say that. She wanted to pretend she didn't even think it. Instead she moved in to kiss Rick again, stopping when she was only inches from his lips. "There's only one thing I want from you, Rick Grimes," she said. "Either give it to me or get out."

Michonne was sure he would get up and leave. She almost hoped he would. But he gripped her waist and gently pushed her onto her back. He looked down at her, his eyes again piercing into her own.

00000000000000000000000000000000000

"Fine," Rick said. As he looked at her, his cares of anything else faded more and more into the background. As it did every time. "You don't want to talk."

He had wanted to somehow suss out her feelings for him. He wondered if she was still angry at him. If she hated him. All he knew was how he felt.

He was no longer angry at her for coming in and shaking up his life. His anger had dissipated at some unknown point in time between realizing her true intentions after coming to King County and getting to know her all over again. He didn't blame her for his marriage being at the troubled point it was at now. He and Lori had been having troubles long before Michonne came into the picture. They would have eventually reached a point when they had to face those troubles whether Michonne came along or not.

But if she still blamed him for ruining her life...even partially...He didn't know how he could continue being with her, knowing his presence caused her some kind of pain.

So he wanted to know how she felt.

"But I'll talk," he continued.

He pulled Michonne's long, brown sleeping shirt up past her hips – to her waist. So that he could see the band of her tights hugging her curves.

He placed his hand on Michonne's stomach. Even the rise and fall caused by her slow, deep breathing aroused him.

"I don't know what this is we have going on..." he said, his voice a low whisper and sounding foreign even to his own ears. "And I don't really know how you think of me. But I want to make you happy." His eyes stayed on hers, which became more hooded as he trailed his hand downward. "And even though I realize that if I give you what you want right now, that that will be the final nail in the coffin of my marriage – everything in me is telling me to do it." He lifted the band of her tights and Michonne held her breath. "Fourteen years of marriage down the drain just because I want to please a woman who probably still hates me – a woman who will probably want nothing to do with me in a couple of weeks..." Rick's fingers inched beneath her tights. "It would be stupid of me to keep going, wouldn't it?"

His voice was deep and full of desire. "Very stupid," Michonne responded. Her voice matched his.

Rick pushed his hand fully beneath the fabric of her tights until he was cupping the full, bare glory of her womanhood.

Michonne gasped – her back arched off of the couch and her legs involuntarily widened to welcome Rick's grasp of her.

Rick reveled in the brief flash of ecstasy that washed over her face at the pleasure of his first touch. Like a tidal wave, all other thoughts were drowned from his mind. All that mattered was her next gasp and moan.

He gently rolled the palm of his hand against her clitoris until he gradually felt her become more and more wet. His growing member pushed against the fabric of his pants as he watched her stomach rise and fall more quickly with each hastened breath and she began to roll her hips to meet the friction of his hand.

Michonne's mouth fell open and Rick's gaze became more intense as he looked down at her.

Her eyes were glazed over with pleasure.

Seeing – and feeling – that she was more than ready for him to take things to the next level, he paused only long enough to insert two of his fingers inside of her. His thumb continued to stimulate her clit.

A soft, gasping moan escaped Michonne's lips and she grasped Rick's arm. She could feel his forearm muscles flexing as he inserted his fingers in and out of her.

Feeling overwhelmed by his own building arousal, Rick leaned forward to place a sloppy kiss on her lips. They breathed together in frantic disharmony as Michonne felt herself getting closer and closer to satisfaction. She writhed underneath his skilled hand and her moaning grew louder and more frequent.

Rick placed kisses from her jawline to her ear. "Do you like that?" he whispered. He usually wasn't one to talk much during intimacy, but he was doing a lot of things he had never done before.

"Yes," Michonne gasped. "God, yes."

She clumsily reached out to palm the front of his pants, where she immediately felt his bulge. She grasped him, wanting him to give him some of the pleasure she was getting. But with a preoccupied mind, she wasn't sure if she was doing a good job.

"Oh my God," she moaned as she felt herself about to climax.

Rick increased the speed and pressure of his fingers until her muscles clenched and he felt his hand become coated with her essence. Rick kept his fingers inside of her until she released the grip on his arm and her body fell, lax, against the couch cushions.

Due to his heightened arousal, Rick's member was straining against his pants, but he carefully moved away from Michonne's hand. This wasn't about him.

He pulled himself free of Michonne's tights just as the sound of an alarm began to blare through the room.

It was coming from Michonne's cell phone. She grabbed it and shut it off while barely looking at it. "I'm supposed to meet Andrea for breakfast," she explained. She glanced over at Rick and then down at his bulging hard-on. "I'll take care of you next time," she said. "...If there's a next time."

Rick seemed to be deep in thought. "...There'll be a next time..." he said.

Recognizing something strange about his tone, Michonne kept her eyes on him. "Like I said," she said. "There doesn't have to be. If you leave right now and don't come back, I'll never contact you again. I'll never look for you. You don't have to leave your wife for me; this isn't a relationship."

All of her words sounded hurtful and threatening, even though Rick knew she meant them as comfort. "I know," Rick said. He realized he was making his ultimate decision. "There'll be a next time."

Michonne continued to watch him carefully, still unsure about what he was thinking. "Okay..." she finally said.

Deep inside, she felt a jolt of happiness knowing that she would be intimate with Rick again. But even more prevalent was the fear of that happiness.

000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Michonne entered the bakery and spotted Andrea sitting at a table by the window. Looking happy to see her, her blonde-haired friend waved her over.

'Here goes,' Michonne thought, ready to get bombarded by questions she wasn't sure she was prepared to answer yet.

000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Before Rick approached the women's shelter to speak to the woman he had spotted the night before on his stakeout, Rick decided to get a difficult situation out of the way.

He pulled up Lori's number on his cell phone and gave her a call. She answered on the third ring.

"Hello?"

"Lori, yeah. It's me, Rick."

"Yeah. Go ahead."

"We can talk about this more when we meet face-to-face. But I don't think having another child is right for us."