After Judith's check-up, Rick makes the drive to his office in the city. Judith has been sated with McDonald's to make her more agreeable to their detour, as well as keep her from getting too hungry.
Inside the newly-expanded office, Rick shakes hands with Daryl and Merle, officially welcoming them on board as associates. "Good to have you here," Rick says.
"Where's your better half?" Merle asks. Did Daryl tell his brother about Negan and Rick's relationship, or did their argument at the park ranger station remove all doubt that they're a couple?
"Negan's at home," says Rick.
"Well, ain't that sweet?"
Rick's kind of regretting this decision, at least until Daryl elbows Merle in the side and sneers, "Shut up." It's then that Daryl notices Judith, and he crouches down to her level. "Hey there. What's your name?"
"Judith," she answers, still possessing no fear of strangers.
"I'm Daryl. This here's my brother Merle. We're gonna be workin' with your dads, helpin' 'em get rid of monsters."
Maybe Daryl's not so bad, Rick thinks.
Rick shows them around the new addition that serves as Daryl and Merle's personal consultation office. It's rather bare-bones for now, since Rick figured the brothers would want to add their own sense of decor. There's a desk, an empty bookshelf, and three chairs, mirroring much of Rick's own setup.
"You find a nice place to call home?" Rick asks them later.
Daryl gives a half-shrug. "Had a lot worse."
Merle makes a sound of agreement. "Thank God we don't live together anymore. I was this close to tearin' his stupid ass apart."
Daryl rolls his eyes.
"I know this is all a big change from what you're used to," Rick says, "but now that the word's out about these things, we'll be seein' a lot more business."
"Did Carol tell you what happened?" Daryl asks.
Dread grips Rick, and his mind is filled with horrifying possibilities. "No. What?"
"She's the one who took that photo," Daryl explains. "Sent it to the media. Said she did it to keep more kids like Sophia from disappearin'."
Rick blinks and lets that one sink in. He'd been wondering who snapped the picture of the extradimensional monster and how that story had leaked to the press. "I figured you guys were behind that."
Merle laughs. "Hell no."
"So she was with you when you went after that creature," Rick says.
Daryl nods. "Sent her husband home with the kid. She's a tough lady. Didn't think she had it in her."
Rick wonders if Carol might cross that internal threshold and become a hunter. If she showed up here looking for a job, would he reject her? Rick thinks that he might, and for the same reasons Daryl cited during their last conversation at the park: You got him, you got kids. You choose this life, the people around you get hurt.
Rick is well aware of his own hypocracy, but at least he knows Daryl wouldn't want Carol coming on board for those same reasons. Merle may be a wild card, but Negan will back whatever Rick agrees to.
Since Negan made Thanksgiving a grand spectacle, Rick suggested they dial back the scale of Christmas, so the gifts underneath the tree aren't particularly grandiose this year. But even without a spending limit, it might have been near impossible for Negan to top last Christmas, in which he'd gifted Rick the Mazda, fulfilling a cliché Rick believed only happened in holiday-themed car commercials. Real people don't do that, he'd assumed; gifting someone an expensive new Mercedes or Audi tied with a big red ribbon was a marketing ploy as manufactured as the car itself. But of course Negan lives to challenge Rick's perceptions of how the world works.
So this year's hundred-dollar spending cap per recipient scaled things back a bit, as evidenced by the gifts unwrapped from those colorful packages under the Christmas tree. Carl is the laziest gift-giver for the second consecutive year, resorting to gift cards and t-shirts, though he goes above and beyond for Judith, giving her a stack of coloring books and a box containing over a hundred crayons; Rick didn't even know that many colors existed. Negan spoils the kids—toys and books for Judith, pop culture and band t-shirts for Carl—and gifts Rick an assortment of coffee-related items: a new mug, Keurig pods, and two small bags of special blend roasts. Rick does about the same as Negan did for the kids but withholds his present for Negan until tonight.
"Ew," Carl says with great offense.
"It's not like that," Rick protests, because, really, it isn't a sex thing.
"Well, I am intrigued," Negan says with a grin. "Unless you're lyin' to the kid."
"No, total honesty."
Later that evening, Judith falls asleep on her own, exhausted by the exciting day. Carl's in his room, so Rick takes Negan upstairs for his present.
"Gotta say, it's startin' to look like a sex thing," Negan says, following Rick into the bedroom. "Not that I'm complaining at all."
Rick opens one of his dresser drawers and digs around, finding the cigar box filled with knick-knacks. He opens one of the flaps and takes out a small, soft package lazily wrapped in green tissue paper. Rick places the gift in Negan's eager hands, says, "Simon helped, but the idea was all me."
Negan discovers a hefty bag of weed inside the tissue paper. "Well, hot damn, honey! You are just full of surprises!" His awed smile is another present for Rick; Rick hasn't seen Negan smile like that very often since the Philip Blake incident. "Any chance you wanna light up with me?"
"Odds are pretty high," Rick says, earning a laugh from Negan.
They sit on the bed, and Negan rolls their joints with practiced precision. "Watch and learn, Pretty Ricky," Negan says. "There's gonna be a test later."
"Oh, I'm watchin'." Rick can't take his eyes off Negan's fingers or the way his tongue seals the ends of the rolling papers. "Is it gonna be an oral exam?"
Negan snickers, perhaps appreciating Rick's lousy attempt at Negan's own brand of humor. "Goddamn, your flirt game is gettin' too strong."
All Rick really did was make a joke Negan himself would have made. "The student surpasses the master."
"Don't get cocky. You will never usurp me as reigning dick-joke master."
"'Usurp' is a pretty high-dollar word for you."
"I'm a high-dollar guy." Negan finishes rolling one of the joints and hands it to Rick. "Now let's get fuckin' baked."
So they do. The smoke is thin and cloying. Rick tries to keep up with the way Negan's sucking on the blunt, but Negan has decades of practice going for him, as evidenced by the fancy smoke rings puffing out from between his lips.
"Show-off," Rick grumbles. He takes another hit and holds the smoke in his lungs. The world feels fuzzy and unreal, similar to slipping through that portal.
"It's not hard. You can do this same shit with regular ol' cigarettes." Negan cocks an eyebrow at him. "Or are you too milquetoast for that?"
Rick sucks in a deep hit. Smoke crawls over his eyeballs, and his lungs feel like they're being scraped with a shovel, but milquetoast? That shit will not stand. Rick swallows a cough. His eyes and nose burn. "Lori's parents smoked, so she hated the smell." He doesn't mention that he never had much of an interest in the little cancer sticks, that he hates the smell too. Not that pot is any more aromatic.
"This is the hardest shit you've done, huh? Baby's first blunt." Negan grins, wide and teasing; Rick is torn between arousal and irritation.
"It's not my first," Rick says, indignant. "And I've smoked with you before. You were there. Unless all the pot made your brain spring a leak."
Negan laughs, smoke pouring from his mouth and nose as he does it. "Nah, that was the coke. Pot just makes me feel all cozy." He settles against the pillows to demonstrate the point.
There's a skull-shaped ashtray between them on the bed, and Rick taps his skeleton of ash into it. He joins Negan, reclining, and gazes at the ceiling. He's close enough that he can hear the crinkle of paper as Negan takes another deep drag. Briefly, Rick wonders if Carl knows his parents smoke bud, if he's smelled it on their clothes or in the bedroom. Carl's no dummy; hell, he's probably smoked a joint or two himself, unbeknownst to Rick. Though if pot is the worst thing Carl ever gets into, Rick will be grateful.
"You think I'm a hypocrite?" Rick wonders aloud.
"You're gonna have to explain that one, honey," Negan says after waiting for Rick to elaborate.
Rick takes a second or two to gather his thoughts amongst the ganja cloud hovering over them. "Carol's the one who took the picture of that thing. She went with Daryl and Merle to go after it." It's the only creature Rick and Negan have never been able to identify, and it bothers Rick they don't have a name for it; Negan's taken to calling it Dickless. "Seems like she's got what it takes to be a hunter. But she's got a daughter and a husband. It feels… wrong to let her go down that road."
Negan makes a contemplative noise, taps the ash growing off his joint into the tray. When he settles back, he says, "Well, one, you don't let her do anything. She's not a little girl, and you're not her daddy. That's a title you give only to me." A lazy smirk curls on Negan's lips.
Rick really regrets the one time he indulged Negan's weird kink.
"Second, has she mentioned wanting to hunt?"
"No, but… seems like she's headed that way." Rick takes another pull. "Daryl said she leaked the photo 'cause she wanted to protect kids like Sophia from gettin' taken."
Negan gives a one-shoulder shrug. "Alright, but here's a newsflash for you: what we do—or did, now that you got redneck Beavis and Butt-head doin' the dirty work—isn't any more dangerous than you bein' a goddamn cop-slash-sheriff. If that ain't a job with risk written all over it, I don't know what is. But you did it. And so do millions of other people. And let's add firefighters and anyone who enlists in the military. Even those dudes who clean the windows of skyscrapers risk their lives for a living. Did Lori ever give you shit while you were one of Bumblefuck County's finest?"
"It was somethin' she worried about, but not enough that she'd force me to quit."
Negan offers up a hand as if to say, See? "Now that the lid's blown off this whole monster thing, it'll be a couple years max 'til we get the same kind of respect as any other job with an element of danger." Negan takes a hit. "But what the fuck ever. If Carol comes to you wantin' to gank monsters, her Yoda you will be."
Rick knows he shouldn't encourage Negan's bad jokes, but being high makes everything ten times funnier, so he chortles despite his better judgment. "Just feels like a lot for her to risk, is all."
"And it's not for you? Yeah, yeah, training, experience, blah, blah. You're still risking your life. But you're saving people. That's a damn good reason, don't you think?"
Rick peels his gaze from the ceiling and looks at Negan. Negan's hair is pillow-mussed, his eyes glazed from the pot. But he looks far more relaxed and himself than Rick has seen in a while. "When'd you get so well-adjusted?"
"It's the weed, man," Negan says with a laugh before taking the final pull off the spliff.
January 2016
Negan can't sleep. In fact, insomnia has plagued him since the beginning of the new year, which strikes him as oddly appropriate. New year, new me, as the saying goes, and Negan has found this new version of himself to be restless and overall a mopey pain in the ass. But Rick isn't complaining, though every now and then Negan wishes he would.
Lying in bed at 3 a.m with Rick sleeping beside him, Negan is wide awake, inspiration scratching under his skin, like the pins-and-needles tingle of a limb that has gone numb. He's been hearing a song in his head, a whistling melody that won't leave. Snippets of lyrics have begun to bloom like flowers in the garden of his mind. Oh, how he would love to write them down, to create again. Negan doesn't know who he is if he isn't creating something; it's a process he's partaken in for a great deal of his life. How does a person cut something like that out of their inner tapestry without going a little mad?
You don't, Negan thinks in that nasty, insolent voice belonging to the worst sum of his parts. How much longer do you think you can push it away? Music is what you do, and you're not cut out for anything else. You can't hit a curve-ball, you can't write novels or short stories, and you can't perform a triple-bypass or a root canal. But you can write some damn catchy songs. Own that shit.
Maybe the worst part of him has a point. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Or maybe it's not his worst self after all. Maybe this voice belongs to that true self trapped in that stone gorge, the one that empowered him during the Philip ordeal: You're a bad-ass. You aren't scared of shit.
And isn't that truer now than ever? Negan has survived an abusive father, an abusive spouse, the deaths of Lucille and Emily, and now he has survived and outlasted an obsessive douchebag with an axe to grind. Negan ought to feel invincible, unstoppable, instead of this strange sense of fragility that has overshadowed him since the Philip Blake incident.
You're afraid, he thinks, and there's that nasty little voice proper. You think that fear is only for your family's wellbeing, and maybe there's some truth to that, but mostly you're afraid of what might come from that haunted head of yours after this.
Yes, Negan supposes that's right. All of his best material has come in the wake of some personal injustice: "Fake Love," "Fool in the Rain," "Drunk," "Out of My Life," and even "No Man's Land" encompassed and harnessed Negan's anger, either at another person or at himself. His catchy, radio-friendly singles hit the top of the charts, but his strongest songs are the ones with teeth.
Negan rolls onto his back so he doesn't have to see the blaring red numbers on the bedside clock.
I don't think you want to quit. I don't think you can. It's who you are.
Carl had said that, and Negan sees the truth in it now. He's still surprised the kid had him figured out that easily. Their jam session in the basement drove the point home, because Negan just could not resist picking up a guitar and joining in.
And maybe Negan could get by simply writing music for his own enjoyment, but he knows he's not wired that way. The act of recording and releasing a song to the public is a kind of bloodletting ritual for Negan. Without sacrificing the piece to the proverbial gods, he doesn't much see the point in making the thing in the first place. That's probably his father talking ("The world don't turn on fun, you little bastard"), but it seems too late to start deprogramming now.
Negan slips out of bed, careful not to wake Rick as he does so. Rick has become accustomed to Negan's midnight trips to the booze cabinet, so he doesn't awaken, merely makes a soft grunt in his sleep and turns over.
But Negan doesn't go downstairs to pluck a bottle of Jack from the cabinet and pour himself a glass. Instead, he heads for the basement.
He finds his things just as he'd left them. Carl has been down here on occasion to experiment with Negan's guitars and various sound equipment, though he returns them to their proper places when he's finished. Negan pulls out the drawer of the side table beside the futon. Inside are his lyrics journals and pens, along with assorted small junk usually found in old drawers: trading cards of athletes, spare pairs of earbuds, rubber bands, paper-clips, tubes of medicated lip balm, strips of band-aids.
He removes a pen and the journal lying on top of the stack. He flips through, glancing at chunks of songs in varying states of completion. Negan finds the lyrics he'd written so soon after Philip Blake's intrusion into his life, scans over them momentarily before turning to a blank page.
Scratch the itch. Feed the monkey.
His pulse beats in his throat. Negan grasps the pen and begins to write. When he fills one page, he turns it over and fills the other side. By the time he scribbles out some loose chords, his face is wet with tears.
"To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing."
- Unknown