It's three in the morning when Michonne comes to relieve Rick from his shift in the watchtower. She pauses when she reaches the landing- observes Rick as he gazes out the aperture, rifle in hand and earbuds in. He's bobbing his head gently and the sight makes her grin.
She raps on the wall and he whips around to face her, quickly pulling his earbuds out, the sound spilling out into the quiet night air.
"Shift's up," Michonne announces.
He looks at her intensely, eyes illuminated by moonlight. "Mind if I keep you company for a while?"
"Not at all."
She takes a seat beside him, staring down from the belltower at a sleepy Alexandria. The world is so much darker now than it was before- no longer polluted by light and noise. Just moonlit houses and the buzz of cicadas. It's peaceful, in spite of everything.
Alexandria itself has been falling into a peaceful rhythm in the past two weeks. In the wake of Spencer's death, Deanna's leadership has been all but nonexistent. It's forced Maggie to step tentatively into the role, and she's been doing a great job. She's been a stunning diplomat to bridge the divide between Rick's people and the Alexandrians and, after some tense town meetings, they've forged a solid path for Alexandria moving forward. With Maggie delegating and Michonne and Rick enforcing, things have felt secure.
Secure is the word Michonne would use to describe her and Rick's relationship as well. The talk they'd had a few nights ago had settled a lot between them. They're on steady ground now, they're comfortable. It's a marked improvement from how it was when he first got here- where every interaction felt like standing halfway off a ledge.
Things are good. Maybe they're not great, maybe they're not how they used to be. But maybe good is all you can ask for these days.
"Spot anything?" Michonne asks quietly.
He shakes his head, casts a sidelong glance her way. "Nothin.' Not much activity these last couple days."
"You seem thrilled about that," Michonne remarks sarcastically, meeting his owlish eyes.
Rick scoffs and looks back out past the walls. "Yeah, well. I'm worried there's a reason."
"You think something's drawing them away? Like a herd?"
"Or people," Rick posits, looking at her grimly. "I wanna send a couple patrols out. See if something's up."
"That's smart," Michonne agrees. "Maggie can help us get some volunteers."
"Pickings are slim until we start training more people," he mutters, his accent especially pronounced in the hushed tone. Rick's always been a realist and, in this new world, that often translates to pessimist. But it's a good quality to have- it keeps people safe. The hard part is not getting lost in that instinct, swinging immediately to the defensive, as Rick has been known to do.
"Rosita's working on it," Michonne reminds him. "She told me she's convinced Sasha to do firearm training."
"That's good," Rick nods. "She's good at it. She'd be up in this tower all day if we didn't stop her."
"I was the same way when I first got here," Michonne muses, Rick's eyes stuck on the side of her head as she looks out over Alexandria. "I'd leave on solo runs for days at a time. Deanna hated it- I think everyone here was expecting me to leave for good."
"Why didn't you?"
"Enid," she answers simply, surprised by how easily it comes to her. "I thought about leaving. Constantly. Almost as much as you." She nudges him with her elbow as he huffs a laugh. "But Enid, she started staying with me. And then I stopped wanting to be gone."
It's a loaded word choice and Michonne can tell that Rick hears it- in his lowered brows and taut jaw. "Having something to protect changes things," he whispers. "You told me that."
"I meant it."
They drift into a heavy silence. Michonne tries not to think about who she was when she got to Alexandria, the void of a person she'd become, how hesitant she'd been to start caring for Enid. It feels like lifetimes ago- she's come back to life a million times since then.
After a long pause, she tries to redirect the conversation. "What were you listening to?"
It catches Rick off guard, gaze snapping quickly to Michonne and then down to the iPod in his lap. He smiles, hands over an earbud. "Don't laugh."
Michonne furrows her brow, already amused as she puts in the earbud. Rick presses play and a familiar tune starts playing- Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers' "Islands In the Stream." Michonne immediately laughs.
"What did I just say?" Rick complains through a grin.
Michonne shakes her head, a nostalgic smile breaking out over her face. "No, it's-" The minute she goes to explain it, a rush of grief clenches her heart. She sobers, smile turning sad. "Mike used to play this. Just to annoy me. God, I must have heard it a thousand times."
Rick seems to freeze, obviously trying to think of anything to say and coming up woefully short. Michonne realizes it's the first time she's really mentioned Mike in front of Rick ever. It might be the only time she's said his name to someone else since he died.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't-"
"No," Rick hurries to assure her, pausing the music. "No, you can… I'd like you to tell me about him. If you want to."
She can't tell if he means it or if it's just something he thinks he should say. Whatever the case, it feels nice that he's trying. She looks over at him, finds a stoic understanding in her eyes. It gives her the confidence to continue.
"It was always while I was my most stressed- about work or Andre. He'd stop and turn it on. And it used to piss me off so badly- 'cause sometimes I just needed to vent, y'know? But Mike was… Mike wasn't wired like that. He was optimistic- probably to a fault, to be honest. He thought it was better to try to make me laugh than let me be negative."
"And what did you think?"
Michonne leans her head back as she chuckles. "I thought I'd like to throw his speaker off the balcony. But he was usually right."
Rick laughs too, eyes lingering on her. "He sounds good."
Good. The word confuses her. Good as in just fine? Good as in a decent person? Good as in good for Michonne? Whatever the case, her reply is the same. "He was. He was… a lot of things."
Her thoughts drift predictably, horrifically, to Mike's end and the events leading up to it. The end of the world broke him, it was incomprehensible to him. It wouldn't be so unforgivable if it hadn't cost Michonne her son- a fact she's tortured herself with every day since.
"What was he like?" Rick asks, pulling Michonne roughly back into the present.
The question catches her off guard and she looks over at Rick incredulously. "You don't want to hear all this, Rick."
He sighs deeply, turns to stare back out the aperture. "There's a whole part of your life I'm missing, Michonne. I don't like that."
She almost wants to be petty, take a cheap shot about how it didn't have to be that way. But things were complicated then- it's taken them six years and an apocalypse to unravel it all. Moving on and being better is a choice they have to make now.
"Well," Michonne starts slowly, figuring out how to explain the man that Mike was to her. "Mike was the first date I went on in Atlanta- the only date, and it wasn't even good. Really, it was so bad I gave up on dating entirely… But then I was pregnant." She stops and tries to gauge Rick's reaction. She knows it must have hurt him when she found out she was expecting only six months after leaving for Atlanta. He doesn't show that hurt now and Michonne's grateful for it. "I didn't tell him until I'd decided for myself what I wanted to do, I didn't want him to be able to argue it. I think I was… resentful? Disappointed, maybe? That I had to include him in it at all- it felt like it was happening to me alone. But I told him and he was just… he was there, whether or not I wanted him to be." The memory of it all makes her laugh. "I mostly didn't want him to be. He wanted us to move in together and I told him to fuck right off. I wasn't ready for it then. But he was good to me, and I started to care about him too. He wasn't…" Michonne stops, sighs, blinks away the tears that have forced their way to the surface. "He wasn't everything but he was more than enough. And I definitely made him work for it."
"I'm sure you did," Rick grins.
"Fuck off," she mutters, rolling her watery eyes. "We didn't move in together until a while after Andre was born. You know, I think it was seeing him with Andre that made me love him."
The words sink painfully in her gut and she's reminded once again of those last moments- when she'd left for that run, entrusting her son to a man she'd been so certain she could trust.
"Do you want to talk about him?" Rick asks, voice hushed and right next to her ear. Michonne realizes belatedly that she's been staring blankly out the aperture and almost flinches at the sound of Rick's voice.
Before she's even fully considered the question, her body reacts with an immediate shake of her head. "No, I- I can't-"
"That's fine," Rick assures her softly as his hand comes to rest on her knee, giving it a quick squeeze. "That's fine, Michonne."
"Not yet," she adds after a moment, when the racing of her heart fades and she can bear to look Rick in the eye.
It's a promise and he hears it, grins sadly at it. "Whenever you're ready."
It sits heavily between them for a moment. Rick keeps a steady hand on her knee and Michonne brings her own hand up to cover his.
"You don't have to stay, Rick," she reminds him. "You should go get some sleep."
"Eh, doubt I could," he mutters, reclining further in his chair, his hand inching up her thigh as he does so.
"Still an insomniac?"
"Worse now, if you can imagine."
"I can't," Michonne scoffs, remembering Rick's chronic sleeplessness. "You used to read my case files to bore yourself to sleep."
Rick makes a sound of offense. "I don't know what you're talking about- those were pageturners."
"They were, huh?"
"I stayed up just to read 'em."
Michonne rolls her eyes. "It used to drive me crazy. And then you started going on those pre-dawn runs, remember? I hated waking up without you." As soon as she says it, Michonne feels caught. But Rick smiles tenderly at her and squeezes her leg.
"I remember," Rick drawls. "You would make those 'sleep smoothies,' you called 'em. Must've tried every home remedy out there."
"There was one thing that always worked," Michonne rolls her neck to gaze at him lazily.
He smirks as he asks, "Sex?"
"Sex," Michonne confirms, then after a beat adds, "That's not an offer, by the way."
"Oh, I know."
Michonne chuckles and plucks the iPod out of his lap, putting in one earbud and handing the other to Rick. She presses play and Dolly Parton's "Here You Come Again" fills their ears.
Here you come again, just when I've begun to get myself together.
You waltz right in the door, just like you've done before, and wrap my heart 'round your little finger.
"We were good together, weren't we?" Rick asks suddenly, looking at Michonne with true uncertainty. It's that word again, good.
All you gotta do is smile that smile, and there go all my defenses.
Just leave it up to you and in a little while, you're messin' up my mind and fillin' up my senses.
"I think so," she nods softly. He's looking at her, and she's looking back at a pair of eyes she's memorized. He's different in a million ways, but those eyes are the same. "What we had was special."
Here you come again, lookin' better than a body has a right to.
And shaking me up so that I really know is here you come again, and here I go.
"You don't get that again, huh?"
"We did."
They're close, thighs and shoulders brushing. She's searching his face for something, anything to tell her that this is a bad idea, but she doesn't find it. It's that inevitable a-ha moment, the snapping-into-place feeling.
"What was it you were gonna say the other night?" Rick whispers, gaze flicking down to her lips. "Before we were interrupted, you were saying somethin.'"
Michonne hums under her breath, trying to recall. Rick's hand leaves her thigh, reaches up to push a couple dreads over her shoulder and brush his knuckles across her cheek. "I don't think I was gonna say anything," she confesses, leaning into his touch.
"That's it?" Rick grins. "I've been thinking about it for days."
Michonne shrugs. "I was probably just gonna do this."
She leans in and her meets her eagerly, instantly. It's not like the last time they kissed- it's not frantic or angry. It's slow and reverent, a tenderness to it that they both lean into. He sets aside his gun, allowing the two of them to weave together. Rick wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her all the way against him, all but placing her in his lap. Michonne goes to thread her hands through his hair but finds herself getting tangled in the earbuds between them. She pulls away from him, leaning her forehead to his shoulder as she chuckles. Rick huffs and curses under his breath, roughly pulling out the earbuds and tossing the whole iPod across the room before turning back to Michonne and catching her smiling lips in a kiss once again. There's a steady current of buzzing passion between them, charging every small movement. It's more than good, it's infinitely better than that.
The need for closeness is overwhelming but woefully inhibited by the folding chairs they're sitting on. He's kissing her greedily, one hand cradling her jaw and the other on her side, his thumb kneading against her breast. Michonne moans into his mouth, hips pushing into him instinctively. She pulls away gasping for breath, his lips trying to chase hers but she stops him.
"We can't do this here," she mutters huskily, to which Rick shakes his head.
"Of course we can."
"I mean this chair," Michonne says, attempting to pull back to look him in the eyes. "I'm pretty sure we're going to break-"
In one swift movement, he's lowered them both to the floor and braced himself on top of her. She hooks her knees around his hips and leans into his kiss, only pulling away to say, "This is a terrible idea."
"Who's got the next shift?" Rick asks through panting breaths. Michonne is making quick work of his button up, easing it off of his shoulders and smoothing her palms over his chest as Rick trails kisses down her jaw.
"Rosita, I think."
"I'll be gone before she gets here."
"You fucking better," she mutters.
Rick finishes wrestling off her top and pauses to smile at her cheekily. "Trust me, 'Chonne, I don't think anyone will be surprised by this."