A/N: Bear with me through this chapter about "Laura" lol... It'll pay off later. I promise.
To refresh your memory: Way back in chapter 13, on their first date, Rick told Michonne that Lori lied to get him to marry her. She told him she was pregnant, but she wasn't. Instead of divorcing her, he stayed with her to make her life miserable. Then she actually did get pregnant with Carl, after telling Rick she was on birth control. Soon after that they got divorced. This taught him a big life lesson and helped make him the man he is today.
~comewithnattah
There was a time, when they were younger, that Daryl was as close to Lori as a brother. He had checked on her as much as her sister when she told everyone she'd had a miscarriage with her first "pregnancy". He tried to pick up the slack left by what he understood to be Rick's helpless anger over losing their baby.
Daryl read the anger correctly, but it wasn't helpless, it was hateful, and it was fresh from the news that Lori had never been pregnant with his baby. Daryl thought his best friend was on his way to a nervous breakdown and he decided that while Rick and Lori dealt with their loss, he'd be there for them both.
He noticed that everything seemed to change drastically between them after that. Whenever he visited them, Lori made herself scarce. She had the guiltiest manner whenever she met Rick's eyes. And Daryl felt for her, assuming it was the irrational guilt some women feel when their bodies betray them that way.
Like a good friend he would offer a shoulder to cry on since Rick wouldn't talk about it, not even with him. Lori could only offer tears whenever he tried to get to the bottom of his best friend's distant behavior. Daryl had no idea what was going on between them, he only knew it was bad.
Then Rick's dad passed away.
When Lori didn't go with him back to their home town for the funeral, that was when Daryl knew his friends' marriage was irrevocably broken.
Rick was only supposed to be gone for a week. But he was at a crossroads. He was trying to decide if he could forgive his foolish young wife.
He was trying to decide if he should forgive his cold-hearted mother for pulling the plug on his father without exploring every option.
He was trying to decide whether he could forgive his father for giving into his depression and swallowing a bottle of his prescription pills.
He was trying to decide if he could forgive himself for staying away and leaving his dad with his tragic mother to go build a life with Lori. A life that was shaping up to be no more than a variant of the kind his father had lived.
He decided on retribution for everyone, including himself.
It took him 24 days to decide on the route from that crossroad.
When he stayed away so long without contacting Lori, she called Daryl. She still loved her husband desperately, despite his cold treatment of her. At first, she held to the hope that he still loved her since he didn't dissolve the marriage as soon as she came clean about her lie. But she'd become terrified that a breather from the stale air and murky aura of their home had sent him running.
She was shaken by the thought that his final revenge would be to leave her stranded and humiliated in the world.
Nothing had changed from then to now.
From then to now, she was still terrified she'd be left alone. And now, on top of it all, she feared losing Carl too. When Shane divulged Rick's intention to marry Michonne at their sister's baby shower, it worried her, but she figured nothing was settled until everything was done. Lori clutched to the notion that Rick had loved her when they got married. If that was true, how could he love a woman like Michonne?
Lori took one look at the beautiful dusky queen standing before her on the staircase in Sasha's home and sized her up. Her hair, her features, her figure- all so different from hers.
She stayed up at night charting the possible outcomes of this new relationship he was in. She knew Rick loved a chase. This thing with Michonne had to be one and she was sure that even if he caught her they wouldn't have enough between them to make it stick.
Even then, at the first sight of Michonne, she was standing in front of Rick and Carl like Lori's personal obstacle, even chasing Shane down to pull him away from her and back to Andrea.
Now she'd walked into Michonne's baby announcement game and experienced the face-melting truth of her pregnancy.
This would keep Rick. Lori knew it.
It kept him tethered to her all this time and he didn't even feel for her what he felt for Michonne. She was beginning to recognize that.
This was the cruelest pain he'd inflicted, bar none. He was making a family. The one she wanted. She had tried to make one with him and like most things she did, it was a whirlpool of disaster -pulling Rick further away into the sea outside of her reach and pulling her down into the deep dark cold.
She tried to steal a family from him. She tried to kidnap and hold him hostage for a family. She tried to force it and it broke.
From then to now, she still loved Rick desperately. She loved him even more than she had back then for all the same reasons why she'd ruined it for herself in the first place: He was a man like no other.
From then to now, she knew who to call for help to bring him back. She only hoped his best friend would help her this time. Things were different between them, now, as well.
"Hi Daryl." Lori greeted her former friend through a nervous attempt at casualness.
"You can't be serious..." Daryl couldn't believe she had the nerve to call him after the lies and the scene at the Ford's house.
Her voice was pitiful and weak and this time she wasn't faking her pain and all the wine in her kitchen hadn't dulled it. "I need your help Daryl. Remember I used to be your friend too, not just Rick." she sought to bend him to her will with the words.
"I don't think you can be anybody's friend, Lori. A snake is a lonely animal.
A snake? What makes me a snake?
"You're low as one ain't ya? Keepin' Carl from his family on Thanksgivin'."
Lori scoffed, "His family? I'm his family. Not those ... people." She spat, remembering the faces of everyone at the baby shower looking at her like she didn't belong. "And I was in an accident. Rick didn't tell you that?"
"You are the accident, Lori."
"And you're the mistake, remember?"
Those words slid into Daryl's belly like a blade.
"It was a mistake."
That's what he'd said that morning years ago.
He woke up at his best friend's house with his wife naked on the couch beside him.
The memory of that day had sat like a yoke on his neck, heavy in its burdensome link to Lori.
Everett Grimes was dead and buried but he still couldn't get in touch with Rick for days after his funeral. Daryl had wanted to go with him for support, but Rick asked him to stay and keep an eye on things. Their fledgling business was a good reason for Daryl to stay. They didn't have a "Carol" yet to keep everything going in their absence.
It was true when Rick said his mother would understand and his dad would've been proud of the work they were doing. The grieving son suggested Daryl could pay his respects by making sure their venture was a success.
Rick just wanted to be alone. He wanted to try and figure out his life. He wanted to lay his father to rest and sit in silence to figure a way he could avoid becoming the man in the coffin.
Daryl of course did what he was asked. And when Lori called him crying, thinking that Rick was gone for good, he came over in innocence to assuage her fears.
She plied him with drinks and came onto him.
She was lonely, and she always operated under the assumption that everyone was just like her. That if presented with an opportunity, anybody would get what they could out of a situation regardless of who it hurt.
As his friend, she knew Daryl was having a dry spell, without a girlfriend for nearly a year, busy trying to get their company grounded. The cause of her dry spell was less respectable, but she figured they could work up a little summer rain. The kind where the asphalt looks dry again minutes after the downpour.
So, she presented Daryl with an opportunity, he kissed her back, initially, but even through the dark liquor ripples circling his head, he remembered his brother, Rick Grimes, and loyalty won.
Lori was embarrassed, but more than that she was angry. She apologized meekly and insisted he stay on the couch as he was too drunk to drive home. Unfortunately for him, she was right about him being too drunk and he crashed on her couch.
Would Daryl's loyalty see him come clean and tell Rick what she'd done? She knew he would eventually...
Unless she could make him feel like he'd been just as responsible for heaping more pain on his already unbalanced friend.
She thought all night about what to do and settled on creeping back into the living room and wrapping her naked body around his, leading him to believe a lie.
Things seemed off to Daryl as he drove back home on his cruiser that morning. The brisk air of that late March morning slapped him in the face, drove his tears back into his helmet and sobered him more than he wanted to be.
The contradiction of trying to peel the image of his best friend, brother and business partner's naked wife out of his mind while still trying to pull up a second's worth of memory of their supposed affair was taking its toll.
When he finally talked to Rick he could tell any more bad news would send him over the edge. Daryl knew Rick was a lot like his father. He wouldn't risk pushing him to the same end. So he begged, him to come back for the sake of their business. Daryl joked through the painful truth that it was unfair he was stuck with Lori and Rick had to come save him. Rick did, but still Lori held that morning over Daryl's head a long time.
She was trying to keep one ally she could use as a conduit to Rick. But with Michonne in their world Lori had lost her power not just with Rick it seemed, but with almost everyone who had the chance to compare the two.
Lori continued on the phone with Daryl, "With him getting married, I'm sure he's gonna need his best man to stand for him again. How's that gonna feel when you're standing up there at his back while he says his vows to the new wife when you fucked the ex-wife? That doesn't sound like anything a best man would do."
"So, what're you plannin' to do with that? You're such a cunt. How do you think callin' me with this bullshit is gonna help you? I'm really curious."
Lori was speechless for a moment at the acrid response. Over the years, the mention of that leverage brought Daryl to heel, but he seemed unfazed. "Look, Daryl, I..."
"Nah, you look. I been worried about losin' my friend over this for a long time, but some thangs about that night ain't never added up to me."
Honestly, some things about that night never added up to Carol, who had gotten the full story from Daryl a while ago when they had called a meeting of their two-member Life Sucks club. Instead of fucking like they should have, they got wasted, Carol rolled a few fat ones and they both told the saddest tales they had.
Carol never liked Lori much, but she had to give it to that nerve-racking bitch: She played Daryl like a fiddle. The older woman saw it immediately and laid it all out for him that night through puffs of purple haze and the sweet sting of whiskey.
Daryl's lady-friend had agreed with him that telling Rick about that night would've been useless back then. At that point, even from a second-hand account, Carol could tell Rick didn't love his wife.
Daryl felt like a weight had been lifted and he opted to let bygones be bygones rather than kick up any dust with a broad deranged enough to pretend to sleep with her husband's best friend... for what, only the rabid hamster running the wheel in her mind could say.
But since the hamster was running the wheel back in his direction now, he decided to call Lori out on all her bull,
"Last thing I remember is tellin' you I would never do that to Rick. When I wake up nuthin's out of the ordinary with me 'cept an unbuckled belt, but you're buck naked?"
Lori was quiet for a few beats.
"But what gives it away more than anythang is: there wudn't a wet spot or cum stain nowhere. So, either your pussy is full of Martian dust or we never..."
'Well, maybe we'll just let Rick decide who to believe. It'll be my word against yours."
"Yeah. I don't know what world you're stuck in Lori, but your word is worth 'bout as much as a canoe on a frozen lake."
Carol happened to be at Daryl's house when Lori's call came in.
She was in her bra and jeans with her bare feet resting in his lap. They were playing records with her bong blazing an Afghan kush called Berry White. Daryl was just about to taste her when his phone rang. He'd turned down the funky twang of The Bee Gees guitar blaming it all on 'The Nights on Broadway'. That song took Carol out of her hardened dreariness and back to her saucy 16-year-old self, back to her heyday.
Lori was making a critical mistake trying to take advantage of Daryl. Unlike before, Dixon/Grimes had a Carol now. While she tried to stay out of the conflicts between Lori, Rick and their ex-husband/ex-wife drama, nobody was going to fuck with Daryl. Nobody. After Carl missed Thanksgiving she decided she was going to give Lori a good talking to at her next opportunity. After Rick called her thinking Michonne might be pregnant, Carol figured Lori's antics would escalate and she'd have to make an opportunity rather than wait for one. Now, with Lori calling Daryl, taking and making opportunities had morphed into all-out war.
Carol wouldn't drag it out. With the mood broken, she relieved her, as yet, untitled nighttime companion of his phone. As a disciple of the teaching: 'Nip it in the Bud', she took the liberty of sermonizing that particular gospel to Lori,
"Hello, Lori. This is Carol." She blew out a nebula of berry skunk the same color as her hair.
"Hello..." Lori answered with a tinge of wariness at the sudden introduction of the inhospitable tone of Carol's voice. She knew Carol's manner to be barbed and vague. And though she'd worked for her ex-husband's outfit for over a decade, Lori wasn't really sure where she stood with the dictator of Dixon/Grimes. Most of the time Carol regarded her as a busy parent might look on a disobedient stepchild.
"Lori, you have the wrong number." Carol informed the addled instigator dismissively, her eyes closed and her toes still swinging to the undercurrent of the music bumping through the fog of the room.
"I'm sorry?"
Carol gave a Cheshire smile to Daryl as he took another sip of his tumbler. "Don't be sorry, dear. Be on your way."
"Uh, Carol..."
"No, no. Bitch." Carol cut her off with a mellow and controlled timbre that somehow felt venomous as the words snaked from her tongue. Trigger came and offered her a kiss and Carol obliged her and scratched behind the big mutt's ear lovingly. "You're blowing my high. So, listen. You don't ever call this number again." She said calmly through a kissy face for Trigger. "The day you do, I will put you out of your misery as surely as night follows day."
Lori held her breath, speechless.
"If your goal is to complicate Rick's life using his best friend, I will complicate your vitals. If your goal is to sabotage Michonne's happiness, I will sabotage your windpipe." Carol began to wiggle out of her pants, uncovering her black satin panties. Pushing her feet into his couch cushions to lift herself, she held Daryl's phone between her ear and shoulder. "And if your goal is to manipulate Carl in any way, you will be lost ... sadly lost forever ... but never missed. Do you understand me?"
Lori didn't know why but she felt a shudder in her bowels at Carol's purposed itinerary for Judgement Day. She sounded nothing like a woman who shopped the clearance rack for Anne Klein slacks and every bit like the unstable lone-wolf with the launch codes next to her morning coffee.
"Yes." A whisper came across the line. "I'm sorry." Lori eked out an apology through a fainthearted stutter.
"Now, say thank you, Carol." the dragon-like woman with the hair of a silver fairy commanded Lori.
Bored with the call, she didn't hear the shaky 'thank you' as she tossed his phone on the floor at Trigger's feet, leaving the call un-ended to pick up the sounds in the room. She raised the volume of the antique record player and pulled Daryl on top of her by the collar of his t-shirt while Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibbs caterwauled a rhythmic falsetto in Lori's ear.
Blamin' it all (I'm blamin' it all)
On the nights on Broadway (blame it on the nights on Broadway)
Singin' them love songs (yeah, yeah)
Singin' them "straight to the heart" songs
Blamin' it all (I'm blamin' it all)
On the nights on Broadway (blame it on the nights on Broadway)
Singin' them sweet sounds (oh yeah yeah)
To that crazy, crazy town (yeah)
After Carol's menacing words, Lori called her sister. She told her all the things she would have liked to say to the woman who hijacked her call to Daryl. The things she would have liked to say burned at the forefront of her shaken mind... but Lori was no fool. She did foolish, aggravating things, but she wasn't an actual fool. And that's why after venting to her sister, Leslie, she decided to lay low for the weekend. She left Carl unpestered while he spent the weekend with Rick, in case her son was somewhere Carol might be, for fear of finding herself back on the radar of the steely threat-maker.
She occupied her time with Negan like she did whenever her son was away now. He had the reckless fun-loving personality of Shane, the clear-headed protective instinct of Rick and the good looks and southern charm of them both. He was the perfect distraction and after a bottle of wine she could almost forget Rick, Carl, Michonne- all of it- laughing at his antics.
They zipped around all weekend, tearing through traffic in his Aston Martin. He got pulled over three times in two days, but he was too smooth to get a ticket, even though Lori spied the speedometer go over 100 mph.
But now that the weekend was over and Carl was back home giving her the cold shoulder, she called Negan to whine about her huffy teenager and her exasperation with her life.
He suggested a brief change of scenery,
"Mama you know I got you. You need a break? You got a break. Pack your bags. A pretty little thing like you needs to be on the beach in an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini. With a pina-colada in one hand and my johnson in the other."
"Negan! You're the worst." Lori chortled.
"You said I was the best last night... you screamed it, to be exact. Come on, baby. You can meet my family. I'd love to show you off... let them meet the goddess I'm fallin' for."
"I don't know." Lori hesitated on accepting his offer, "It's so dangerous these days."
"Lori-Love," He called her by his pet name for her and she reveled in the sweet newness of it, "Do you really think Poppa Bear would take you somewhere unsafe?" He spoke tenderly, his voice an erotic hush through the phone, "Do you?"
"No..." She believed he'd do everything in his power to keep her safe. But terrorist attacks, governmental unrest- those things were out of his control. "But you can't stop a bomb from going off, no matter how much you want to protect me."
Negan scoffed incredulously, "Come on, Love. You can't believe everything you see on TV. Where have you been? American news is so fake... Trump knows his shit. If I could'a voted for him I would've." But Negan loved his Saudi citizenship too much to jump ship.
He was born Neekan Al Lithi and when his family sent him to school in America, people pronounced his name wrong enough to make him change it to Negan Louis. He stayed with his wealthy uncle here in the states, but he spent school breaks back home in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He found that the accolades of southern hospitality were exaggerated compared to the openness and generosity in the KSA.
He was completely Americanized, but his heart was in his homeland. Lori thought he was so charming and she liked that he was different. It fascinated her that he could speak Arabic, Spanish and a little French. She liked that he wasn't too different, though. He wasn't a devout adherent to Islam. He respected it as the religion of his forefathers, but he didn't go to mosque. He didn't seem devoted to much... other than Negan and, now, his Lori-Love.
She liked that he didn't wear the traditional headdress, thawb or anything that would make him stand out- that would make her uncomfortable if they happened to run into people she knew. He didn't look like a "foreigner" and she never told anybody that he was, not even her sister. He normally donned jeans, a pair of boots and a black leather jacket over a ribbed wool turtleneck. He gave her a 90210 Dylan McKay vibe that she used to cream for when she was younger, and she felt like the popular girl on his arm.
But there was no mistaking his love for the nation of his birth and he was working hard to make every inch of it as upscale and luxurious as Manhattan, L.A. or Miami with his engineering degree from Virginia Tech. He had big plans. Lori was flattered and wide-eyed that he shared all his plans and dreams with her. He talked to her a lot. He wanted to bring her in. The more he did the more she found to admire. And she recalled that Rick never did that, not even when they were dating.
Lori had Negan and by all accounts, she should be happy. But she still wanted Rick. Sometimes she got a distinct tightness in her chest whenever she thought about him and Michonne and her happiness would stall out like a stick shift.
"Nobody wanted an old uppity bitch runnin' the country... especially not other old uppity bitches." Negan surmised about the last election, "That's why a man won."
"Yeah, we'll I'm sorry I voted for him." Lori lamented having gotten caught up in the novelty of the millionaire moron and now avoided the news as her president did one asinine thing after another.
"No, he's got the right idea. Shut up all these cry baby news organizations, nuke whoever gets in the way, close the borders..."
"Close the borders?" Lori asked surprised. "Then how could you get in?"
"Sugar, those kinds of rules don't apply to men with bank accounts like mine. But America's gotta keep the riffraff out."
Lori giggled at his use of the word riffraff and perked at the mention of a bank account big enough to bend rules in his favor. Shane had a lot to say about the BMW Negan was driving when she bumped him. He'd said it was a cherry of a car. A mint condition M6 Gran Coupe that her pre-Thanksgiving Day boyfriend speculated her post-Thanksgiving Day boyfriend paid at least $100,000 for.
"It does look beautiful there." she thought about the pictures and videos he'd shown her of the coastal city where he lived. It was a stunning metropolis with resorts crowding the shoreline, sunsets over the sea and sunrises in the mountains. Vibrant colors on the streets, mouthwatering seafood dishes and the kind smiles of the Saudi people filled his Instagram account. He called every one of them a friend and had a side-splitting story to go with each face. Photography was a hobby of his and he painted a detailed picture of all the grandeur of his middle eastern country.
"The beauty of that place is disgustin'. It's like god was showin' off when he made the Kingdom."
"The picture of the view from your terrace is my favorite. I've never seen the water go red like that reflecting the sky. It's really breathtaking."
"Now, hold that thought: On my terrace at sunset. The breeze comin' off the Red Sea. On our way to Prince Asaad's party... I told you, you've never partied, til you party Saudi." he repeated one of his many catchphrases. "Filthy rich has a whole new meanin' over there." Lori giggled, imagining the opulence Negan was always describing about his country. He was one of the biggest car collectors in the states but, he admitted, in the KSA, his vintage fleet was considered modest at best. "I want to take you to see the pyramids... I could have us in Cairo in a couple hours on a private jet. We could make love under the stars in the desert."
Once, Lori's parents took her and Leslie on a month-long tour of eastern European cities when they were small, but since then she never had the occasion to travel. Her best- and only- friend was her sister but she had a bunch of kids and health conditions that grounded her.
As Rick's business had grown more successful, he hopped flights more and more frequently, leaving her behind like a forgotten toothbrush. Sometimes he'd take Carl along on business trips when Carol and Daryl went too. Lori envied her son when he came back with tales and pictures of adventures with his dad and their friends.
Maybe I do need a change of scenery, Lori thought. "Oh, you make it hard to say no."
"Then say yes, Love. I gotta go get this buildin' contract up and runnin' and it kills me thinkin' about bein' without you for weeks. So, say yes... like you do when I'm up to my ears in that sweet twat of yours."
"But, Carl..." Lori sat behind the closed door of her bedroom as she came back to reality, hearing her son's rumbling march down the stairs. She smiled knowing he was going down there for a late-night snack. Wistful thoughts about how she knew his every movement and how they'd been inseparable when he was little turned her mouth to a disconcerted pout. She used to be his favorite parent. Now he barely acknowledged her in the home she made for him.
"Look, Carl's a sweet kid." Negan assured her, though he still hadn't met her son and had no real interest in doing so, "He loves his momma almost as much as I do." He casually threw in the L word unattached to any nickname. Something she hadn't heard from the opposite sex in a long while. "He wants to go stay with your ex and his little hip-hop honey? Let him." He suggested with conviction. Like he had all the answers. "He'll see the difference between momma's love and crackin' jokes with some chick he's only known a few months." Lori smiled at the sense that made as Negan continued, "Then when you get back from havin' the time of your life with me in KSA, Carl will be dyin' to get back home."
He was so hard to argue with and honestly, she didn't want to say anything but yes.
"Let me think about it. I'll decide by the weekend."