1. Somethin' Blue
Cicadas hum and the air acts more like water, rippling and wet from heat. Sweet grass stretches yellow towards the sun as the sun cooks the asphalt till it cracks like a beaten windshield. Rotten fingers poke through the holes in a chain link fence and, somehow, the rattling and the wailing sounds less like the end, and more like Sunday afternoon. Hell, the magnolia trees almost make the death smell sweet. Their thick white petals flake off in the sunlight to get crushed under the weight of the walking dead.
It's a summer wedding, just like any other.
"Y'know you don't have to do this," Maggie had said that morning, checkered by the shadow of the cell block's barred window.
With a crooked smile, Glenn took the hand that brushed the hair from his face and pressed it to his mouth. "'Have to'? Are you kidding? I want to."
Denim and leather breezed past them, wielding a crossbow in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.
Glenn gestured after him with an open hand, "And Daryl already got the drinks."
Daryl grunted over his shoulder, "And I'm 'on drink 'em, weddin' or not," then disappeared beyond the heavy metal door into a square of daylight.
"I just don't want you to feel like you gotta prove nothin'. I know what we are."
Glenn furrowed his brow as a smile crept up his cheeks. "Are you…nervous?"
"That's just cold feet talkin'," Rick clapped him on the shoulder on his way out, drawing both of their attention. He lingered in the doorway a spell, looking back at them. "S'normal."
"Was it like that with you n' Lori?"
He laughed then, but the taste was bitter. Hooked a finger through his belt loop and slid his weight off to one side. "Called it off four times 'fore we even set foot in the chapel."
"So what made it happen?"
Rick hung his head and followed the corridor of iron bars with his eyes. Like a stick across a chain link fence, pinging metal after metal after metal til it sounded like a song.
"Carl did," he softly said.
Then shoved past the door and into the light.
Now he's watching chunks of bone and brain explode into the air like flower petals in spring. His calluses scream as he jams back the bolt and feeds another bullet into the chamber. Metal scrapes metal. Crosshairs settle right between the eyes. His finger teases the trigger as sweat bleeds down his brow. He exhales, pulls tight, and relishes the pop that washes the field like floodwater.
The door shrieks open behind him, its jagged, broken edge wounding the concrete floor beneath it. He leans the rifle against the half wall and turns to meet his uninvited guest.
"Michonne, what the hell're you doin' up here?"
Brows raised, it's all he can do just to look at her. She's got her back to the door to press it shut against the heat and the neck of a green glass bottle in her hands. Her shoulders sit tall and proud like always – the strap of her tank top drapes over one of them like a willow branch – but the look on her face says something else.
"I could ask you the same." The corner of her lips pull at a half smile and she shifts her weight to one hip, "It's your best friend's wedding down there."
"Is Glenn my best friend…?" He'd never caught his breath between here and being crushed between asphalt and metal long enough to ask.
Dull boot heels beat the ground as she walks the perimeter, looking out over the yard and all the living being done inside its high fences. "Isn't he?"
He hauls the rifle into his lap and shrugs. "Guess I never thought about it before."
She leans against the window pane and looks at him over her naked shoulder. "Better figure it out fast. I think they're expecting a speech."
His gaze falls to the bottle in her hand. "Gon' be hard to make a speech without somethin' to toast with." Then to her lips as they curl like the corner of a page of a well loved book. Her smile – a real one this time. He finds himself smiling, too. "Daryl give that to you?"
"He would've," she looks sly into the summer sunset, holding a secret only she knows behind that grin of hers. "If I asked him."
And she laughs.
Took so long to hear it the first time that now it just sounds like music. Something soft and sweet like horsehair over the strings of a fiddle. The kind of sound that lingers long after it's gone.
The ghost of that laugh stirs the air inside the watchtower like a finger in a cup of coffee cooled dull by hours, but still just as good. He hears it well up in her chest when she hands him the bottle. And again when he hangs his head with a laugh of his own.
"You took a whole bottle of wine," he drags his fingers cross his lips, "But nothin' to open it with."
"Listen. It wasn't premeditated," she rolls her eyes and presses her shoulder into the warm, pockmarked window. "I saw a Riesling sitting all by itself and, next thing I knew, I was climbing up here to drink it. Now I'm getting made fun of by a guy who'd rather play sniper than sing karaoke and get drunk with his friends – and I'm nice enough to share it with you."
Shaking his head, he unclips the knife from his belt and punctures the cork with it. He steadies the bottle in one hand and pries it open with the other. Steam rises off the bottle's busted lip.
"Don't s'pose you grabbed any glasses, either."
She tips her head, lifts her brows, and lowers those dark eyelashes down at him. "You're holding 'em."
He cuts a laugh between his teeth and turns his head. The bottle meets his lips and the drink spills in, sharp and sweet and not quite as hot as the day itself. It sloshes with a satisfying little echo as he lowers the bottle into her hands. He wipes what's left of it from his lips onto his forearm as Michonne takes a pull.
"You like this stuff?"
"Oh, yeah. I'll drink a beer if I have to, but, usually? I like it so sweet you can't taste the booze at all." She smirks as a drop – gold as a wedding ring – chases the curve of her lip.
Daylight's gone pale blue outside the watchtower window, and the last of the sky's colors play on her skin. Blue on her bare shoulders. Soft pink traces the shape of her fingers around the bottle's neck, and races up her wrist. Sunset petals of light streak across her cheeks like war paint. It coasts the swell of her cheekbones, the soft bridge of her nose. Dying sunlight falls thin and pretty in her eyes, and they glow like honey.
"Why?" She grins. "You like it?"
"Nah," He shakes his head, laughing. Brings his hand to hers and lets the bottle pass between them. He tips his head back for another drink, then, out the corner of a sour smile, says, "I hate it. Too sweet."
Someplace in the prison yard, Beth is singing a song he used to know. None of the words survive the trip from ground to tower, but the melody is familiar. Something old.
"So what are you doing up here?" She heaves the rifle onto the window sill and peers down its scope. "Besides wasting ammo."
"Eh, y'all are goin' on a run tomorrow. We'll survive." He chuckles into the bottle as it breaks from his lips. "And it ain't wastin' if you don't miss. But you wouldn't know nothin' about that."
She looks at him over that bare shoulder, appalled. "What?"
"You heard me." A nod toward the field of wandering corpses and a raise of his brows, he folds his arms and leans back in his chair. His mouth fits into an easy smirk. Wine warms his fingertips. Burns his cheeks.
"Rick. I can't belie-" her mouth falls open for a laugh. She hugs the stock to her chest and turns back to the window. Finger on the trigger. "You know what? Pick one."
He laughs, clapping a hand to his knee. "Pick one?"
"Yes, asshole. My accuracy's been challenged, so now I get to show you how wrong you are." The words are more song than sound, the way she says them.
Blue eyes study the field with its waist high grass and dead swaying together, bittering the breeze with the smell of hay and decay.
He settles on one, "Purple plaid. East side."
The air sits a little stiller when she sucks in a breath. She rolls the barrel away from the setting sun. Arcs her back.
A bullet punches a clean circle through the walker's cheek and rains blood behind it. The shot tears through the clearing like thunder, pulling more rotten hands through the links in the fence, as the body falls into a heap amidst the crowd.
She's got that damn look on her face. He doesn't have to look at her – he knows. Full lips in a smug line, brows raised, and big brown eyes waiting – expecting praise.
"Alright," he sighs. "That's one."
"Oh, I can take more." He can hear the smile in her voice. "Nice, by the way, picking the shortest one."
"C'mon. Height don't matter if you're a good enough shot," he steals a glance at her, just to watch that smile turn. Back to the glass, he says, "Nose ring. Dead center."
She wrinkles her brow with a laugh. "How good is your eyesight? 'Nose ring'?"
He takes another pull from the bottle. "When you see it, you'll know what I-"
"Jesus."
"Told you."
Another shot, another down. This one, with a crater where the bridge of the nose used to be.
"Pretty good, Michonne," he admits, tilting the bottle towards her with warm, tipsy hands. "Pretty good."
She sets the gun down and her fingers brush his. Warm glass, the color of the ocean, slides from the inside of his palm into hers. Her nails graze his knuckles and leave his skin burning. Unhurt, but raw.
He swallows. His hands sit dull and stupid in the absence of her touch.
Her back is to the window now. The bottle in her hands. She sits on the sill with her legs long, boots crossed one over the other at the ankles. One hand rests just over the edge beside her as the other brings the bottle to her lips.
"You never answered me," she hums, looking down at him under curled, dark lashes.
"Mm?"
"Why are you up here?"
"S'posed to be Glenn's shift. Figured I'd give 'im the day off, considerin'."
"Sasha could've done it. I could've."
He smirks. "Well, I know that now."
She looks at him like a bible verse. Small print, thin as rice paper. Unclear, but important, somehow. "You okay?"
His smile dies. Has to turn his head to keep from looking at her. "I'm fine."
The splash of wine against its glass is the only sound this side of the watchtower walls. He lifts his gaze to see it offered back to him. Soft, thin fingers round its neck. He closes his hand over hers, half expecting her to pull away and let the bottle break wherever it fell.
But it's there in his hand, and so is she.
"The wedding stuff is hard for me too," she softly says. "I'm happy for them – really happy. If anyone could make it work in this world, it's them." Her shoulders drop. She sighs. The strap of her tank top glides further down her skin. "But I can't help it if it hurts. Only thing I can do is smile, and get away when I can't. They deserve a good day."
And, in this moment, his attention is hers. All hers. He couldn't name the color of the sky at her back or the last thought he had or whatever fool thing he said to keep from being honest. But he knows her eyes turn gold wherever the sun hits them. Knows that her skin is as soft as it looks. Knows the way the shadows play on her naked shoulder.
"You should come with us on the run, tomorrow."
"Yeah, okay." He says. Anything – anything – she wants is hers.
She raises a brow. "Really?"
He nods, cheeks numb from drink. "Yeah."
Fingers unbind like hair through a comb's teeth, like thread around a thorn as the shirt's hem unravels into nothing but cobwebs in the cold. Her hand is hers again, and he's left holding the bottle.
His wedding ring clinks against it like a church bell as he leaves it on the floor beside his chair. He rises. Watches her shadow paint his clothes as he closes the distance between them. Watches her eyes follow him. Watches the soft shape her lips make.
"...Can I?" He rasps. His hand lingers there, just over her shoulder with the slipping strap. Caught in her orbit. A little chuckle. Slightest of smiles. "It's drivin' me crazy."
"Yeah," she breathes, eyes falling to his fingers under fabric.
And he really meant to slip that strap up her arm and let it live in the last light of the sun on her collarbone. He really thought the touch of that glossy elastic, still warm from her skin, would be enough. Really believed he could do the neighborly thing, then step away like he'd done so many times before.
But then she kissed him.
And whatever he meant to do died somewhere between his lips and hers.
Author's Note: This work is up to date in its entirety (thus far up to chapter 5) over on Archive of Our Own. I was requested to migrate the work over to for accessibility reasons, so here I am, and here it is. I'll be uploading every week or so until this iteration is all caught up.