A/N: Negan's section isn't horrible, but could be a little ick if you keep in mind the nature of Honey and Eugene's open relationship.

June 1, 2017

- Eugene -

When the trucks pull into the old resort, now turned into a makeshift compound, Eugene observes all he can. He's careful to keep his expression blandly curious, as he's not entirely sure what Honey wants him to do yet. Years of being at her side grants him an eye for strategy on a larger scale than just protecting himself or her.

The people are a mixture of healthy and not, and something twists inside him. Even Woodbury didn't starve anyone. He can understand why Honey needs to infiltrate here, especially when it's the weakest who move forward to unload the food and supplies.

Honey's hand closes around his elbow. "Stay with me. We've got some projects to tour that I need you to put on your thinking cap for."

Nodding, he keeps up the curious innocence, avoiding the soldiers for the workers. If nothing else, making this sort of thing more efficient is always a good start. Projects mean that maybe she's improving things, but why? He can't imagine these people wanting to stay in a place that treats them this way. The Woodbury folks certainly refused to rebuild.

At least he finally knows the man's name. Watching the downtrodden kneel with chants of his name? At least the lazing soldiers had to do that, too. So far, no one's ordered him to kneel. Until Honey requires it, he won't.

Finally, Negan gets bored with the activity and Honey's supervisor duties. He drops a big hand on her shoulder. "I did promise you the drudges if you came through, princess."

Honey smiles, looking pleased. "You did."

Negan bangs on the hood of a truck, causing everyone to halt and some to shudder. "New chain of command. If you ain't a soldier? Your worthless ass belongs to our lieutenant here. Whatever she says, goes. When you eat, when you sleep, when you take a damn shit, that's hers to decide. She says lick her goddamned boots, only question you're allowed is can you have salt with that. You fucking understand?"

A chorus of agreement rings out from the workers, all falling to their knees. The soldiers look confused and worried, darting glances between Negan's shit eating grin, Honey's serene expression, and a balding man nearby.

The third man studies the scene before laughing. "Good luck with those stupid bastards. They're a full time job to get an ounce of work out of."

Honey just quirks the smallest of smiles at the man. "Perhaps you didn't understand how to apply the right incentive, Simon." She steps forward and tips the chin upward of a woman in her forties who looks fearful. "Come meet with me in an hour, Brooke. I have some changes I'll be making."

"Yes, ma'am. Soon as all the food is put away, I'll be there." Surprisingly, she darts a glance at Eugene before getting to her feet and herding the others back to work.

Hours later, Eugene is exhausted in a way he hasn't been in years. A community this far in disrepair? Normally, it would be abandoned, the people absorbed into the others as they chose. Instead, he's been led all over, inspecting systems and the wall as a sweating and somewhat inept man they call an engineer attempts to explain what he's cobbled together here.

Honey started the tour, before being called away to deal with a mechanical issue on a truck needed for a raid tomorrow. The man's excessive sweating probably leads back to her creative threats of what would befall the man if Eugene was the least bit distressed upon his return to her. He's in too good a shape to be one of the workers Honey took over, but soldier or not, the man she called Fat Joey is petrified of Honey.

After making sure he had a meal in the kitchens, Joey leads him to an upper level of the largest resort building, up four flights of stairs. "Elevator takes too much juice," he mumbles, looking like he's a few steps off a heart attack by the third floor landing.

"That's fixable," Eugene replies quietly. "Everything is fixable with the right comprehension and tools."

That gets him a wheezing laugh. "Man, I can tell you're new here. Nothing is fucking fixable here."

Eugene stares at him until he squirms, even as he holds open the fourth floor landing. Once he's got his escort that uneasy, he smiles at the man. "You haven't learned the new rules yet, then."

Joey keeps gaping at him all the way to a set of doors he backs away from after leaving Eugene standing there. "What're those?" he asks hoarsely.

"Mechanics always fix things." Staring at the man, he runs a finger along the notebook he was given for his inspection.

"And you're a mechanic?"

Eugene shakes his head. "I'm an engineer. I design. She's the one who builds and fixes."

Joey looks toward the suite doors. "She can't fix this place."

Tapping his watch, Eugene smiles a little vapidly. "She always fixes things. It's who she is." He turns the handle and steps into the sunlit room beyond. There's no one here, and his smile widens as he completes the thought. Sometimes you just have to tear something completely apart to fix it.

Placing his notebook on the table, he inspects the suite. There's the main area, with a couch, chairs, and a small dining table. No kitchenette like some places, so it was meant more for luxury than utility during a stay. He's seen the kitchens here. Once? This place was as swanky as they came.

There are two bedrooms, and he can tell which of the two is Honey's without any clues other than the painfully tidy corner room contrasting with the second room having laundry not yet put away and sewing projects scattered around. Honey's got her own quirks, and everything being neat and tidy? That's her.

Using the bathroom, he sits at the desk near the couch in the alcove of the main bedroom, finding her own sketchbook and notes easily and sets down to work. Honey was too careful about her instructions to Joey, so he has no wish to wander. Not yet.

- Negan -

Leaving his princess to her duties was a test of his own willpower for Negan. He doesn't have anything particularly pressing to do, but the everyday clutter of work bores the fucking hell out of him. His suite overlooks the courtyards, not the river, because he gets a thrill out of watching them scurry from above.

On the balcony, he reclines in a chair with a bottle of the homebrew sent as part of the tribute. Below, he sees Honey leading her defective little engineer by the elbow, his own idiot trailing them as they inspect what she deems necessary. It doesn't take long before someone needs her attention. He wonders if Fat Joey pissed himself at being left in charge of Honey's pet.

Her willingness to leave the engineer to another settles something within him. Admitting an unease about the awkward man isn't something he would ever fucking do, but after a day of watching her tiptoe around her old life, his skin crawls with the need to have her close. It's a weakness, though, so he resists.

Even a leisurely fuck with each of his remaining wives doesn't remove that addictive sense of wondering where exactly Honey is. Summoning food for her room, he makes his way down the hall to her suite. Amber's in the main area, but scurries away into her room quickly. It's fucking funny how much the woman thinks he'll change his mind.

Not a goddamn chance. This afternoon is proof to him that he's let his head get all fucked up since Honey came here. As boring as his wives were before now, all he can imagine now is fucking blow up dolls. He used to harass the hell out of that kind of man, back when the world had sex shops.

Honey's bedroom door isn't shut, so he can hear her voice. There's a rhythm to it, as if she's reading instead of speaking normally. Nudging it the rest of the way open, he sees her curled against the arm of the couch in the alcove.

Beside her, sitting on the floor with a mass of sketches and notebooks around him, is the little engineer she hasn't called anything but Pet around him. She's even carding her fingers through the goddamn man's hair as she reads from a novel he hates to admit he knows is a fucking Robert Heinlein novel.

When she looks up at him, she grins and shuts the book with a thump that doesn't startle the other man in the least. "C'mere, Negan. I told you Eugene is a damned genius."

Leaning Lucille against the dresser on his way by, Negan crosses the room and takes the spot she vacates by swinging her bare legs down to either side of her pet. Leaning down, she plucks a set of sketches from the seeming chaos and passes it to him. Although her legs stay tucked around Eugene, she turns all her attention on Negan as he studies the sketches, watching him with the same intensity she has in bed.

Once upon a time, Negan had to sit through fucking mind numbing meetings to review additions to the high school, so he actually comprehends about half of the plans he's looking at. For a man making do with artist sketch pads instead of a drafting table, this actually looks good. Even as he looks up, Eugene's muttering to himself, dragging a book from a pile to check a reference.

"Is this a fucking electrical substation?" Negan asks, frowning. He may have been a gym coach, but he's not an uneducated moron. "What's the fuel?"

"The river." Honey's blue eyes are sparkling. "Eugene's wanted to design one for a while, but there wasn't a suitable water source close by. Here? It's right behind the building."

"And he can build this?" Actual damn electricity not dependent on biofuel? It's something he's never found anyone capable of doing. It changes just about everything.

"Alone? No. I'll help, and maybe that sweaty idiot who wets himself a little everytime I ask questions about the functions we need running here." Honey shifts position so that she's kneeling on the couch and facing him, looking animated and too goddamned excited about greasy mechanical projects.

"I need those back." The distracted voice interrupts Negan's study between Honey and the generator plans. She plucks them away and passes them to the hand waving up above the other man's shoulder.

"No more fuel conservation because we need it for the vehicles over the generators. He's got stacks of other plans, but we start there. It's perfect."

Negan really fucking likes her excitement. "Yeah, gorgeous, it is perfect. Deserves a perfect fucking award, too." Hauling her astride his lap is easy enough, and she laughs as she straddles him, leaning in for a kiss that crosses into filthy faster than he expected with their guest.

"I get more than a kiss as a reward, right? Today I solved a lot of problems." Honey's voice is low and husky, making his body react even faster.

Negan looks toward where Eugene is still scribbling in a notebook. "Thought an audience pissed you off, princess."

She slides off his lap, dragging him to his feet. "I don't like being the audience."

Frowning, Negan allows himself to be led away toward the bed. "Seems… damned weird even for me. He's missing his marbles. Be like having a kid in the room."

She actually looks pissed, letting go of his hand and stalking away. "Eugene isn't a child. His brain works differently than mine or yours, but he's a grown man with all the normal things that entails."

Negan looks between her and Eugene, who exchanges the notebook for a sketchbook and ruler even as he watches. Honey's posture is giving away something he doesn't like. "You've fucked him."

Honey shrugs. "When the mood strikes, if he's interested. All that attention and focus can be appealing."

"Why the hell are you trying to fuck me then?" Negan's angry now, raising his voice. "You got your engineer back." And he fucking let her, thinking the man no rival at all. She isn't one of his wives. There's no expectation of her only fucking him, especially when he gave her a damned wife of her own.

Honey closing the gap to snatch at the fabric of his shirt isn't what he expects. "Men are always such dumbasses. I was trying to fuck you because I damn well want to. You don't own me. He doesn't own me. No one fucking owns me."

Negan honestly expects to be punched, not kissed and shoved backward onto the bed. Angry sex isn't something he's had since his wife got sick, but he forgets about their potential audience fast enough it's stupid of him. If Honey doesn't care, why the hell should he?

- Jazz -

The joys of the Kingdom is that like Hilltop and Homestead, the place has tunnels. The usual worry that someone might be spotted and trailed is mostly eliminated by this fact. Now that Honey's been found, the search can be ended and people return home, but for now, until they get more information, they've got to stay off the radar. Ezekiel comes with them, saying he needs to speak to Carol and Merle himself.

No one complains about the five mile hike out beyond the tunnels to where Homesteaders wait. Half escort the Hilltop militia home, and half take Jazz and Paul to Alexandria. Jazz isn't surprised when Shane gets out of the truck's passenger seat to climb in the back, letting him sit up front with Scout.

He's seen Scout interrogate people before, and the trip to Alexandria is close enough to that experience he would be offended if it were anyone except Honey she was questioning him about. In the rearview mirror, Shane looks torn between sympathy and launching his own interrogation. When they pull through the gates at Alexandria, they don't even get out of the vehicle before Jazz's parents are there.

His mother can't stop hugging him, and his father? Merle's been understandably on edge since he arrived in Virginia. Now, he's pacing, damn near non-verbal in his anger and agitation, and even Carol's soothing voice doesn't work. All of the Alexandrians are staying as far away as they can, leaving the matter to the Homesteaders for now.

Paul's experiencing Scout's interrogation now, giving her all the details of his own brief encounter with Honey and the man who's responsible for Danny's death and Logan's life altering injuries. As soon as they're done, Ezekiel doesn't even wait for Scout to ask a question.

"Woodbury? Jesus fucking Christ. We don't need another of those," Merle grumbles, finally stopping his pacing to gently pry Carol away from Jazz so he can collect his husband close instead.

"Specifically mentioning Daniel, that's concerning," Scout muses, her own pacing less frenetic than their father's. "It's a clue that this leader is unstable. We know what he was capable of."

Jazz remembers not only Daniel the spy, but also that woman found in the hidden basement. Martina never recovered from her trauma, taking her own life within a year. He shivers, and Paul leans heavily against him. Jazz wants this over, for his sister to not be so gung ho about saving people that she walks into that kind of danger.

Scout stops short, looking at everyone but not seeing them. Jazz feels like she's a million miles away. "There's no reason to think he's the same type of psychopath as the Governor. She's not hiding that she's an outsider. It's an advantage, hiding the lies within the truth. And she isn't alone."

"You claimed it was a Black Widow attempt. How can they pull that off with him there?" Carol sounds horrified, and Jazz can't begin to imagine what her background with her ex-husband makes his mother think. "They're as good as married."

Paul clears his throat, drawing everyone's attention. "They aren't exactly monogamous. If it's possible for anyone to go undercover as a couple, it's them." Jazz nods in agreement. He doesn't entirely understand his sister and Eugene's relationship, but it's theirs and makes them happy.

Scout sighs, rubbing at her scarred shoulder. "He's right. She's capable of separating sex and emotional attachment. Always has been. Is Eugene? Probably."

Abraham makes a sound that should be laughter but sounds half strangled. "Eugene? We all know that damn man would be her second command in hell itself if that's what she decided made her happy."

"So what do we do?" It's Sophia who asks, standing wide eyed with her hands over her distended belly. Carl's got an arm around her, but Jazz isn't sure who is supporting who.

Jazz takes a deep breath. "We maintain their cover, give them what they need to save these people, and then when they come home to us? They're ours like they always were."

No one argues his pronouncement, not that he expected them to. It's just what their family does. Weather the storm and figure out the rest as they need to. In the end, all that counts is family.

A/N: Again, more thrown out chapters and nearly a two week time jump to just ignore these scenes... But it finally happened.

It may be a jump to the next one, depending on when I want to start the unrest at Hilltop.

Future warning: Negan may seem to tip sympathetic in character at times. This still will not be a story where he lives happily after for years.