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When Rick Grimes walks into the Sanctuary for the first time, boots heavy and hands stained red and a hundred pairs of wary eyes on him, when he sees Negan laid out in the center of the room like an offering, there is a moment ―a half-second, a skipped heartbeat, a window pried open― when he could’ve denied this, turned around and walked away.
He doesn’t.
“We got a deal, then?” a man says, inching forward with careful steps. His voice is rough, his expression guarded. Rick can’t tell if he’s a Savior or one of their workers, but it probably doesn’t matter any longer. Very few things do. “You said it’d be over, if you had him. You said we’d have peace.”
Behind Rick, the people from the allied communities are holding their guns raised and steady. In front of him―
Negan has a streak of dried blood across one cheek, and his wrists tied together with thick rope. Negan’s on his knees, shoulders slouched in something that could be defeat, or lazy arrogance. Negan’s looking at the dirty floor under him, until he isn’t.
His eyes snap up and find Rick’s through the crowd, sudden and dark and glinting, like there’s a secret and it is only his. He straightens his back, tilts his head.
And smiles that fucking smile.
Rick’s nails dig hard into his palm. People shift, anxious and unsure, fingers hovering on triggers, feet shuffling on concrete, and Rick takes a breath, feels it rattle in his chest, says, “we have a deal.”
“Kill him,” someone says.
It could be Daryl, or Rosita. It could be Michonne, or Maggie, or the dozen others in between. Those are the words falling from everyone’s lips these days, kill him, kill him. It started the second Rick’s people took that goddamned factory, when Rick declared he’d stay here for as long as it took for its residents to adjust to the new way of things, and it hasn’t stopped, hasn’t lost steam. It’s a broken record rising in pitch and anger, hammering inside Rick’s skull.
“Kill him,” they insist, all of them, a chorus of outraged voices, everyone who wants to see a head rolling, “kill him.”
“This is a better punishment,” Rick hears himself say, and he’s not at all sure he sounds convincing. “Let him rot in that cell. Let him see this place thrive without him.”
And they capitulate, for a while, because they see the tiredness that’s gripping Rick by the throat, the flatness in his eyes, the loss weighing him down like a physical thing.
Their short-lived war is over and the world moves on, because it always does, no matter how much blood and grief it leaves in its wake. Rick’s days are suddenly full; he has new people to govern, new trading deals to forge, new fights to break up. He has a void, numb and gaping, where Carl used to be, that he blindly tries to fill with work. He has a new place to call his, and all the responsibilities it carries with it.
And he has Negan, locked away, smug and smiling and waiting.
Kill him, the demanding, echoing beat that won’t give up. It’s an unrelenting voice in the back of his head, righteous, pragmatic. Kill him, kill him.
Rick ignores it, doesn’t quite know why.
“What are you trying to prove, sheriff?” Negan asks one day, a low, idle drawl like something molten.
It feels as though everything that comes out of his mouth is a challenge, even now, even after everything. There are days when Rick wants to shove him down on the cell’s dirty floor, punch the composure out of him, shake that slow grin off his face.
This, he knows with aching, disorienting clarity, shouldn’t be happening. Negan shouldn’t be able to crawl under Rick’s skin with nothing but a few choice words and a wicked curl of his mouth, not anymore. Kill him, Rick thinks, and still he can’t bring himself to do it.
“You need to learn how to talk less,” he says instead, sliding the tray of food over to Negan with more force than he meant.
Negan peels off the wall he was leaning against, out of the cloying shadows. In the dark his eyes are like black holes, drawing Rick in, pinning him there.
“And you, darlin’, need to figure out what the fuck it is you want from me,” he says, practiced smile still in place, dripping with self-satisfaction. “If you had any balls on you, you’d have bashed my head in as soon as you got your hands on me, Rick, but you wanna play the generous messiah, giving the enemy a second chance and all that shit. Unless it’s something else entirely.” An arched eyebrow, a calculated taunt. “Unless there’s something else you want me to give you.”
“Don’t call me darlin’,” Rick says through gritted teeth, because, of course, that’s what’s important out this whole mess he’s flung himself into. He feels ridiculous as soon as the words are out of his mouth, and he turns to leave, doesn’t look back. “Good night, Negan.”
He feels more than hears Negan’s answering laugh. It crawls up his spine, trickles up the back of his neck. Rick shivers, shakes his shoulders to dislodge it, but it stays.
A thing that scares him:
There are days when he kisses Michonne and it’s not enough.
He loves her, he knows this, he loves her with a blood-deep, immovable certainty, as pure and true as nothing he’s felt since the world started breaking. If he lost her he’d unravel, he’d tear apart at the seams. He loves her.
But it’s still there, in moments when he’s not paying attention, when he’s not guarding his memories well enough ―the phantom trail of Negan’s hand where he used to touch Rick, light and mean and demanding, during pickups, during empty conversations, during those endless, horrible intimidation routines.
His palm heavy and searing on Rick’s shoulder, a gloved thumb tracing his nape, fingers hooking with a quiet, possessive sort of violence around his elbow.
I could cut that fucking hand off you, now, he thinks, I could make it so that you can never touch me again, and it’s true.
He could do so damn much to Negan, now.
No one would try to stop him. No one would care.
And if he thinks those things ―unconsciously, unwillingly― in bed with Michonne’s sleep-warm body next to him, if his mind veers down that road when she has her mouth at his neck and her legs wrapped around his hips, what does that mean?
What does that make him?
“Trouble in paradise, darlin’?” Negan asks when Rick goes down to bring him breakfast. His eyes gleam, knowingly, goading, and something tight and vile settles in Rick’s throat. “Just curious, ‘cause you sure as shit don’t look like a guy who’s enjoying the mighty fine ass he’s getting. Now just how fucking ungrateful are you, Rick, I’m almost angry on your lady’s behalf, here.”
Rick swallows. He feels numb, muddled. He’s been wondering how it can be possible to hate someone so fucking much and still not bear the idea of murdering them.
“Shut up,” he says, but it’s flat, half-hearted, misses its mark.
There’s a beat of silence ―the silence before a carnage, the held breaths before the first shot ringing out― and Negan leans closer, looks Rick over like a hound sniffing for blood.
“Why, Rick,” he says, and it’s lilting, almost soft. He cocks his head, wicked grin tucked, always, always, in the corner of his mouth. “Is it ‘cause you got somebody else on your mind? A certain somebody you shouldn’t be thinking of like that?”
Another still, breathless moment, and Rick’s eyes fall to Negan’s mouth for exactly half a second before he bolts up and walks away.
This is how these visits always seem to end, with an almost, Rick turning to leave with a stiff spine and a sputtering heartbeat, and Negan laughing after him, the sound reverberating, chilling, a derisive thing that’ll burrow its way into Rick’s dreams.
“Don’t beat yourself up over it, darlin’,” Negan calls after Rick’s retreating back, laughter still rumbling in his voice, and Rick―
Rick stops, tries not to feel like the air’s been punched out of him, like the walls are closing in. He’s not the one kept in a cell. He’s not the one on his knees. He clenches his hands into fists and his bones feel brittle, ice-thin.
“You don’t want me,” Rick tells him, slow, “to stop beating myself up over it. You wouldn’t like what happens to you when I stop beating myself up over it.”
He chances one last look at Negan over his shoulder, at that, sees that feline smile slide off like wet paint, those laughing eyes darkening, narrowing, and the sight of it sends a jolt of satisfaction through him, warm and perfect and terrible.
It’s both easier and harder than he’d thought it’d be, running the Sanctuary.
He’s very certain no one here likes him much, but that’s not important. Rick has his own, a family forged by things stronger than blood. He doesn’t need more. He doesn’t have room left in his heart for anything ―anyone― else.
There haven’t been many complaints about his decisions, and the majority seems content enough to follow orders from a man who doesn’t threaten to burn their faces off with an iron for screwing up. There was, during the first days, a slew of confused moments with former workers who weren’t sure whether they were supposed to kneel for Rick as well; and the wildly uncomfortable first evening when a group of women asked him, rather miserably, if he was going to keep up the marriage arrangement for himself.
The people ―his people, now, and isn’t that something he won’t get used to, no matter how many times he repeats it in his head, like a tape stuck on loop― they fight, get along, and fight again. They make it work, and it’s slow and difficult, but it’s achievable. It has to be. Carl believed in this, so Rick must, too.
And yet―
“Kill him,” they keep saying, a litany of justified hatred that never ends. “Kill him.”
Rick walks through the halls and the crowd of unfamiliar faces parts for him and he thinks he can hear Negan’s laughter from three floors down. He gives them reasons why, says, “Better to keep him alive, to make an example out of him,” and if he says it enough then it’ll start sounding true, then he’ll believe it himself.
This isn’t about being sentimental. This isn’t personal.
Maybe one of these days, that’ll stop seeming so much like a lie.
Rick’s mornings are long and busy, but his nights are filled with things he can’t admit, nightmares that take the shape of grins like knife wounds, dreams that pulse with the sound of that voice, a whisper close in his ear, insufferable, mocking, almost a growl. Negan’s in a cell but he’s still in Rick’s head, curled up and hissing and refusing to budge, no matter how hard Rick tries to shove him away.
There’s a night when Rick wakes up hard and aching, shirt plastered to his body with the chill of sweat, tongue pressing against the back of his teeth like it’s trying to break them off.
He stares up at the ceiling, up at nothing. It was Negan in his dream again, Negan and every awful, vulgar thing he’s ever said to him and the way he swept his tongue across his lips every time he looked at Rick, and Rick shouldn’t, he can’t, he doesn’t―
His hand has started trailing down his stomach before he knows it, goosebumps rising in a traitorous, winding path under his trembling touch, fingers slipping without preamble under the waistband of his underwear, reaching lower. His breaths are coming out in desperate, punched-out hitches, his heart’s kicking like a wild, betrayed thing.
The thing is―
The fucking thing is, Rick’s tired, he’s tired and exhausted and angry, he’s been living with that simmering, desperate fury curled inside him for so damn long, ever since he was forced to kneel in the mud in that forest, but now it’s Negan on his knees, Negan in chains, Negan who can’t fight back, who can’t do anything but stay on his knees and take whatever Rick might do to him―
A quiet, wounded sigh falls from Rick’s lips as he wraps a hand around his cock, and he’s not thinking about Negan kneeling at his feet when he comes, less than two minutes later, and that, that’s a lie right there.
His victory was meant to feel better than this. It was all supposed to be so much simpler.
Sometimes, Rick wonders whose side he’s even on.
Negan’s become thinner, weaker.
In the dim light he looks brittle, blanched, skin stretched tight over receding muscle, wrinkles deepened, cheeks hollowed out. It’s the look of a man who’s not a threat, but it makes his smile glint sharper, and his eyes are still smug and bright when they slide over Rick, always burning with that maddening, unruffled pride.
“One of these days,” Rick says, “you’re gonna figure out that acting like you’re still calling the shots ain’t gonna do you any good. A little humility doesn’t hurt when you’re a prisoner.”
Negan’s stretched out in his cot, long and languid. A quiet chuckle rips from his throat. “Oh, fuck off, prick. You, of all fucking people, should know by now that if you’re looking for someone to lick your boots you’re barking up the wrong fucking tree here.” He shifts, mouth twisting mean and sordid. “Is that what you want, darlin’? You want me to lick your boots? Is there a secret kinky side to that sweet straight-laced southern―”
“Shut up,” Rick says, and he should probably know better than that. Simply telling Negan to stop talking has proven as useless as trying to hold back a tide with a broom. Rick’s fingers are itching, his mouth is dry. He’s lost count of how many times he’s said this, lately― shut up. Negan never seems to listen. He doesn’t seem to understand.
Kill him, he thinks, and yet―
And yet.
Negan sits up, makes a show of it, like he does out of everything. His shirt’s riding up, and it shouldn’t make Rick look but it does.
“You’re all bark, sheriff,” Negan says, unconcerned and arrogant, a pantomime of being unconcerned and arrogant. Rick swallows, remembers the first time Negan stood over him, a predator ready to pounce. He wills himself not to look away. “You keep coming down here, every single fucking day, you keep running back to me― and for what? Ain’t this place yours, now? Aren’t you finally King Shit for real? Maybe you’re not, after all, and that’s the thing, Rick. That’s the catch. Maybe you’re always in here, with me, with your tail between your legs ‘cause you know that, and―”
“Shut up,” Rick says again, quiet. It’s the voice he’s taught himself how to use, the one that’s made more than a few men flinch away. He takes a few measured steps forward, sharp, steady, like a gun being cocked. “It’s the last time I’m telling you, Negan. Shut up.”
Negan’s smile slants, becomes an open dare. “Yeah?” he says, and it’s little more than an honest-to-god purr. “Sweet baby Jesus, Rick, if you could see your face right now―”
Rick backhands him.
The sound echoes in the damp silence of the cell. Negan’s head snaps to the side, and Rick holds his breath.
He’s so angry his vision’s almost blurred with it, so desperate he feels like someone’s reached a hand inside him and carved up an empty space between his bones where something else should be, and for a moment there is nothing, just the harsh drumming of their breaths splitting the quiet, uneven exhales and uneven heartbeats, until Negan blinks, once, twice, shoulders stiffening.
He’s not smiling anymore, and Rick realizes, then, that Negan’s surprised. He was expecting to be hit, Rick’s sure of it, might’ve welcomed a punch, might’ve laughed through bloodied teeth and told Rick to fuck off, but it was the slap that disoriented him, the complete irreverence of it, and there’s that surge of satisfaction again, coursing sudden and scalding through Rick, trickling alarmingly low in his belly.
He’s ready to land a real hit, if he has to, but he knows he won’t. Negan’s in no state to start a fight; he couldn’t defend himself if it came to that, can’t defend himself, and it’s another thing Rick’s been pretending he doesn’t think of at night.
When Negan grins again it’s nasty, all teeth. “Motherfuck, Rick, and right when I was just talking about your maybe-hopefully-there secret kinky side―”
Rick slaps him again, harder, sharper.
It sends an electric current through his hand that travels fast and buzzing in every corner of his body.
“I could gag you,” he says, “if you think that’s the only thing that’ll keep you quiet,” because he can’t think of anything else to say, because he’s not sure just who the hell is winning here.
Negan clenches his jaw, and the look on his face almost makes Rick laugh, almost makes him want to walk away and never have to see it again ―a wide-eyed, incredulous, confused look, like Negan can’t quite reconcile this moment with the image he’s built up for himself, like he can’t believe this is happening to him.
A second passes, and another, Negan’s hands gripping at the thin sheets of his makeshift bed, bright red flush blooming across the side of his face, and there’s something cold and hard and dangerous in the center of his irises, a sudden animal thing that makes Rick’s fingers fly reflexive at his belt, where a gun is tightly secured.
“Don’t,” he says, “don’t you dare move,” and Negan somehow, somehow, doesn’t.
Rick realizes how fast his pulse’s been racing, hot and unruly, only when he walks out and slides the heavy cell door shut behind him, realizes he’s hard only when he closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the harsh, unforgiving metal of it.
He wakes up one morning, the bed cool and empty beside him, and thinks―
(It happened again, the night before, his hand frantic on his cock and a smile like a scalpel in his mind’s eye, chasing after a treacherous orgasm, until the fantasy shifted and became something else, worse, I just slid my dick down your throat, and you thanked me for it, only it was Rick doing it, Negan on the floor and Rick’s fingers pulling roughly at his hair, Negan with his hands tied behind his back and Rick’s cock in his mouth, Negan silent and kneeling and choking, and Rick came harder than he had in months, spilling over white-knuckled fingers, desperate moans muffled into the pillow, shaking and sweating and not nearly guilty enough.)
―I could do it, a single, dangerous thought. The sun glares through the blinds like an accusation.
It doesn’t end, and Negan doesn’t relent, because apparently he’s the kind of man who’ll push and shove and taunt just for the sake of it, a last-ditch attempt at preserving that self-made, idle superiority. Even when there’s an entire compound filled with people campaigning for his death, with nothing standing between him and them but Rick.
Rick, who’s been thinking about the sharp lines of Negan’s body more, and more. Rick, who knows this is wrong, knows he should stop it, and can’t.
Rick, who felt a stab of reckless, perverse want after slapping that arch smile off Negan’s face.
It’s another damp, sweltering evening and Negan’s lounging lazy and careless on that ratty bed, giving Rick his patent sneer. His fingers are drumming away an abstract, uneven rhythm on his knee.
“I’m sorry, prick, are you fucking off now?” he says flippantly, like he’s still the one in charge, like he has the right. Rick imagines pinning him against the wall, into the mold and coldness of it, putting a hand over his mouth so that he’ll stop making any sounds Rick won’t allow. “Not that you’re not making absolutely fucking thrilling conversation, but really, darlin’, I gotta tell you, this good old stink-eye of yours? It’s getting boring. I’m bored.”
And he’s so, so sure Rick won’t do anything about it. So sure he’s still in control of this, of himself, of―
Okay, Rick thinks.
“Okay,” he says out loud, and, before he’s thought it through, “get on your knees.”
Negan huffs out a laugh, a display of insolence he always thinks he’s intimidating enough to master, and that would be true, if intimidation had anything at all to do with it.
“Oh, come the fuck on, Rick,” he says, “this really ain’t your style,” and it’s not quite a provocation yet, but Negan’s intent on making it one, always is.
Rick takes a step, and another. Away from the door, towards Negan. He has to remind himself that he’s the threat in this room and not the other way around.
“That’s where your place is, now,” he says, and there’s a twisted kind of relish finding its way in his voice. He doesn’t want to dwell on what that might say about him. “So get on your knees.”
Negan’s smile falters, just the barest bit. “Right. Yeah. Sure.” His tongue darts across his teeth. “Hey, Rick, do you maybe want me to suck your dick, too, while I’m at it? Is that what this is about? Or are you more into―”
Rick kisses him only to make him shut the hell up.
At least, that’s what he’ll tell himself later.
Negan draws in a sharp breath, words evaporating into the violent press of Rick’s mouth against his. Rick allows himself a dizzying, mind-numbing second of savoring the way Negan flinches back, the genuine surprise in the sudden stiffness of his body.
He pushes himself closer, bites down on Negan’s lip hard and unrepentant enough to draw blood, a taste of copper blooming on his tongue, and Negan’s answering growl punches through him, shooting straight to his cock. Negan fists his hands in Rick’s shirt, and Rick lets him.
When he pulls away, breathless and high on a swelling wave of adrenaline, Negan laughs like he’d been expecting this all along. There’s something off about it, though, something far less sharp than usual, and Rick knows, in that moment, that he’s won.
“Fucking hell, sheriff,” Negan says, lips brushing warm and bloodied against Rick’s, “just how fucking long have you been gagging for this―”
He breaks off into a low, hitching groan when Rick grabs him by the hair, too harsh and too sudden, pulling back his head so that their eyes are level. Negan gives him a withering look, but there’s a hint of uncertainty in it, in the way his eyes dart quick and searching between Rick’s.
“Je-sus,” Negan whispers, strained. Rick realizes, sudden like a punch to the gut, how much he wants to hear that voice broken and ruined. “Who would’ve thought the perfect southern gentleman is such a kinky fucking shit. What’s the deal, Rick, playing Mr. Nice Guy, the lamest superhero ever, ain’t a hit with the ladies after all?”
He tightens his grip on Negan’s hair, and it draws a growl that makes his blood rush faster, hotter.
“I’m sorry,” Rick says, and it sounds dangerous only because he forgot to try and make it so, “were you expecting romance?”
Negan’s lips part on a word he does not get to speak, because Rick licks into his mouth again, tongue starved, demanding, holding Negan’s head in place with a savage sort of desperation, nails scratching against his scalp. Negan kisses back like it’s a fight, all teeth and belligerence, twisted grin outlined against Rick’s mouth, and that―
That just won’t do.
Rick breaks the kiss again, a snarl caught in the back of his throat.
His hand closes around Negan’s jaw with troubling ease, and it’s the same thing, the same fucking thing Negan did to him that first day, on the blood-soaked morning in that forest clearing, gloved fingers that had pressed tight and violent into Rick’s skin, had brought his face a breath away from Negan’s.
The memory’s enough to give him pause, just for a broken, panicked second before he regroups.
“Get,” he says, breathes the words low and rumbling into Negan’s mouth, “on your damn knees.”
He honestly can’t remember the last time Negan was so still, or went so long without saying a single word, and for half a moment he almost feels guilty, and hates that he does. There’s a part of him, cruel and vengeful, that was aching to see Negan like this; and the other part, weak and small and shoved forcefully in the back of his mind, that can’t stop thinking that Negan looked so much better when he was smiling some five minutes ago.
It’s like an eternity passes in horrible, airtight silence. Rick’s grip on Negan’s jaw slackens, loses its bite. Negan’s throat moves, like he’s swallowing down something acidic. He breaks away from the press of Rick’s body, deliberately slow.
“Fuck you, Rick,” he says, and shifts off the bed, slides to his knees on the floor.
Rick stands up to his full height, looking down at Negan looking up at him. His mouth is parched. “Negan,” he says. It comes out hoarse.
Negan’s mouth curves, characteristically, into a feral mockery of a smile. It doesn’t look nearly as genuine as before. “Well, here you fucking have me, Rick,” he says, and Rick half-expects him to spread his arms wide, to fall back to his pointless theatrics. “Take a fucking picture, it’ll last longer.”
“I might,” Rick says, closing what little space is left between them. And he wills himself to empty his head, because he can’t think too long and hard on what he’s about to say, lest he lose all the nerve for it― “You said something about sucking my dick while you’re at it.”
Negan’s face goes blank, grin disappearing like magician’s smoke. A frown creases his forehead, like he isn’t sure he heard right. And Rick can’t blame him. He, too, has lost track of what the hell this thing is turning into.
“What the shit,” Negan says, and something settles low inside Rick, an abrupt, precise pang of guilt. He’ll back away if Negan says no. He will. He wouldn’t do― that. He’s done things that make serial killers from before look innocent like choir boys in comparison, but he’d never do that. Not to Negan, not even him, no matter what he’s been pretending he doesn’t dream of at night, where no one can know.
Rick touches the handle of his gun, something for his hand to do, something to keep his fingers from shaking. Negan’s eyes dart to Rick’s hip, tracking the movement.
“You offered,” Rick says, even though Negan didn’t, not really.
“What the shit,” Negan repeats, but it comes out quieter, curious, like he hasn’t yet decided how to feel about this, like he’s not sure what he’s supposed to say.
He holds Rick’s gaze. He must read something in it, too, tiredness and dread and all the sheer, unbridled anger of the past few months piled up, because he wets his lips, puts on a slanted smile that seems fake only if you look at it under the right light.
Lets his eyes fall to Rick’s crotch, pointed and languid.
“Well. I can’t say no to you, can I, Rick,” he says, voice falling back to that low, overtly lascivious tone, as if on auto-pilot.
Yes, you can. Rick thinks he should say this. He can feel the blood thrumming behind his ears, tries to ignore how Negan’s voice sounds far too inviting to be the real thing, how there’s something in Rick that’s swelling with vicious complacence at these words.
“Besides,” Negan goes on, and there’s something harsher in his tone, now, bitter, drenched in sarcasm, “you’re in charge, right? You, oh, shit, how did you put it that time? You call the shots.”
Truthfully― Rick is almost fully hard by now. Some things, even he can’t deny. He has no idea what this makes him feel. He has no idea if what he’s about to do is a mistake of colossal, unprecedented proportions. But Negan’s here, at his feet. On his knees, for Rick.
And Rick’s too fucking tired of being the one backing down, too damn spent to keep hiding from what he wants.
“You know, Negan,” he says, starts sliding his belt out of its loops, and Negan’s gaze flickers, following Rick’s fingers, “it’s only sarcasm when what you’re saying ain’t true.”
“You don’t wanna keep him around,” one of the Saviors had said ―an aging, red-faced man that still, somehow, had kind eyes. None of them were supposed to have kind eyes. “He’ll find a way to turn the tables on you, Grimes. He always does.”
“He can try,” said Rick, and it was far too sharp, his teeth bared.
The look he got was almost a pitying one. “Get him out of your way while you still can. Before he gets into your head. That’s all the advice I can give you.”
Rick doesn’t know why he remembers this one fleeting conversation out of all conversations. It’s not as if it matters, because―
Because, that man whose name Rick can’t quite recall, he was wrong. Negan might be in his head, but he didn’t find his way there. Rick let him in, but only once he’d made sure Negan was in shackles.
Only when he was on his knees, like a man about to pray to a deity he doesn’t believe in.
And that, that is an image that’s become a reality, and it’s a wicked cocktail of alarm and exhilaration, raising the hairs on the back Rick’s neck, making a hidden, treacherous excitement unfurl in his belly. The sight of Negan with wild hair and a bruised mouth, Rick’s fingers closing tightly around his neck.
It feels like retribution. It feels, in truth, like justice.
And sometimes ―only sometimes, when Rick can’t sleep and the radio static in his head is too loud, when he thinks and thinks and can’t stop thinking― it feels like something else entirely, forbidden and intimate and―
No. Rick won’t go there.
He can’t afford going anywhere near there.
When Rick steps into the cell for the (insert number here, he’s given up on counting) time, just after sunset, Negan greets him with a smile that might’ve looked friendly from a distance.
He leaves the meager dinner on the floor, props a shoulder against one wall as casually as he can manage. And waits. He was going to say something, because it feels like he should; clear the air between them, maybe, but the words got stuck in his throat, trapped pointlessly there, without meaning.
So he waits.
Negan doesn’t reach for the food, doesn’t reach for Rick, either.
“You,” he drawls, “look like warmed-over dog shit, Rick. Didn’t get any shut-eye? What, was I that bad?” He chuckles, but it rings hollow, lacks any real bite. “Well, I sure as fuck never claimed I was any good at giving head, but there you were, Rick, looking at me with those pretty blue eyes and how could I deny―”
“You were fine,” Rick says, nonsensically, because he needs Negan to just― not say that. He doesn’t want to hear that sentence completed. He shifts, limbs feeling heavy as Negan laughs and tips off an imaginary hat towards Rick’s general direction. It makes a vague, inexplicable sort of anger abruptly bubble up inside Rick, so he cocks his head, says, “you could’ve been better.”
Negan watches him with shark eyes. His smile looks plastered on, today, like a forgery of what it used to be not too long ago, and that’s what Rick wanted all along, isn’t it? To chip away at that smugness, to shake all of Negan’s arrogance out of him.
“Shit, Rick, there just ain’t no fucking pleasing you,” Negan says, low, whisper-soft, not without a teasing lilt to it. “That why you’re here for, sheriff? You came knocking for round two?”
“You offering?” Rick says, juts an eyebrow, and wasn’t the entire point of this that he wasn’t meant to be asking for Negan’s submission?
He might as well have said that last part out loud, for all that Negan’s smile widens, falling back to its familiar scalpel edge. “You’re so fucking polite, it’s sweet,” he says, leaning back into the tiny bed in demanding invitation. “If you want it, Rick, just fucking say so. If you spent your lonely night dreaming about me sucking your dick again, might as well grow a pair and tell m―”
“I told you, you could’ve been better,” Rick snaps, and feels almost childish, too much like he’s lashing out. The hours he’s spent thinking about Negan in his bed were supposed to be a secret, and apparently they’re not.
Negan falls quiet, holds Rick’s gaze for a count of several seconds that draw on, and on.
And on. Rick refuses to budge even when the whole thing turns into a veritable staring contest. They have, after all, done this before.
It lasts for all of a minute, neither looking away, and in the end saying it again is easier than it should be, the now-familiar command slipping from his tongue like it was always meant to, quiet and sharp: “Get on your knees, then,” Rick says, a coil of anticipation tightening in his throat. “Show me you can do better.”
Negan tucks his tongue into his cheek, glances Rick up and down. “Good one,” he says, like he’s responding to a particularly uninspired joke.
“Do I look like I’m joking? I thought I showed you last time, how serious I am.”
Negan’s body stiffens, and it’s only for a single second but Rick sees it, the sudden coiled tension in his limbs, and it sends a small thrill shivering up his spine. Part of him wants Negan to push back, to keep denying him, because then Rick will have a reason to brush this all off and walk away, he’ll be able to trick himself into pretending this moment never existed at all. And the rest of him―
“Don’t make me say it again,” he whispers, tilting forward, closer, his shadow spilling over Negan on the bed. “And, if you know what’s best for you, you might wanna stop provoking me.”
Negan’s mouth twitches under Rick’s stare. “And just fucking where,” he bites out, “was this super scary, take-no-shit attitude of yours when you actually fucking needed it, Rick? Where was this big-balled guy hiding at when the prick I remember was crying like a goddamn kicked puppy at my feet―”
Rick’s hand flying out before he’s even decided it, everything a blur, fingers closing around Negan’s throat, shoving him backwards until the back of his head hits against the wall with a sickening thud; it’s moments like this, that Negan makes Rick uneasy with how easy he’s making it, how effortlessly he can draw this vicious, vengeful violence from him.
A muffled groan slips from Negan’s mouth, his face twisting up in pain, but still he’s looking up at Rick, unblinking, unyielding, and Rick thinks Negan’s a pretentious idiot who can’t tell the difference between pride and self-destruction, and Rick thinks Negan might shove him away and across the floor and fight and kick and bite so that there’ll be cuts torn into skin, bruises blooming across flesh, and that will be a perfect, cathartic moment: that single cut-out space in time where there’s a life on the line and things are simple, clear and defined like a bite from a walker is defined, you against an enemy, live or die, blood between your teeth and nothing complicated about the person writhing under you, nothing simpler than killing him.
But a second passes, and another, and Negan doesn’t struggle against Rick’s grip.
“Earth to Rick,” he says, muffled and gritty, all drawn-out vowels, his pulse drumming right under Rick’s fingertips. “I can’t actually get on my fucking knees here if you keep holding me up against the fucking wall, now can I?”
Rick licks his lips, thinks he can taste sweat and copper and adrenaline there. Negan’s mouth tips up into something that’s not quite a smile, and Rick lets go of him, takes half a step backwards and can’t tear his eyes away as Negan complies ―again, again― settling down on the cold floor, right by Rick’s feet.
Rick opens his mouth on a word he does not speak; before his brain has even registered it, Negan’s started working on his belt buckle, hands moving quick and harsh and angry, half out of spite, like putting together a gun, like pulling the trigger.
“Oh, are you shitting me, I gotta do everything myself,” he says, pulling at Rick’s underwear with barely controlled fury, and if the fabric tears in his hands that’ll be some sort of metaphor Rick really doesn’t want to look too closely at, “you ain’t even hard yet, Rick, do I really need to work at that, too? Fucking Jesus, and here I thought you―”
“Is this you being better than last time?” Rick grits out, tucking a hooked finger under Negan’s chin, nail digging in, forcing his head back.
The look he receives in return is a wild, mutinous dark thing. Negan swats Rick’s hand away, but it’s half-hearted, the insolence of it betrayed by the way he’s still on the ground, the way he steadies a palm on the curl of Rick’s hip and takes a long, uneven breath.
“Tough fucking crowd,” he mutters, and then he’s wrapping long, rough fingers around Rick’s cock, starts giving him slow, focused strokes that are far more careful than Rick anything had anticipated.
It’s not good at first, not really, and it’s the sight of Negan on his knees, more than anything, that sends a heady jolt of arousal coursing through Rick again, that makes his cock harden under Negan’s slow, controlled touch.
Negan’s eyes are still pinned to Rick’s, so hard and insistent it’s barely more than a glare. Rick’s breath stutters when he tightens his grip, without warning, giving a harsh, painful pull that tears a low growl from Rick’s throat.
“Your mouth,” he bites out, pushing a hand in Negan’s hair. “Use your damn mouth.”
Something slips visibly in Negan’s expression. In a way, this feels like a parody of a real encounter between the two of them ―unmoored, unreal, as if it’s not truly happening at all. Rick watches, breath held cracked and precarious in his lungs, as Negan leans down and licks a hot, wet stripe along the underside of his cock.
“Like that, darlin’?” he says, coarse and filthy. Rick’s cock twitches, and Negan lets out a quiet mockery of a laugh.
Rick’s fingers lock around a tangle of hair; a single violent tug, a warning. “I told you not to call me that.”
“Fuck off, you like it, darl―”
Rick slaps the end of that word off his mouth with a sudden vehemence that surprises even himself. Negan controls the flinch, but not well enough; he swallows, licks away the drop of blood that swells up on his lip. And that―
Well. That makes Rick harder still, cock throbbing in the scant space between his body and Negan’s face, because he’s too far gone now, he supposes, and some things don’t change.
“See, Rick,” Negan says, voice hitting just a little off, going for cruel but missing the landing somewhat, this has been happening lately, “if this is how you treat the ladies, no fucking wonder your sex life’s been as exciting as an especially riveting episode of Jeopardy―”
“When I said use your mouth,” Rick says, and it’s almost a snarl, “I didn’t mean for talking.”
He wasn’t meaning to do it, not at first, but he pulls Negan down by the hair, not stopping until the head of his cock slips past Negan’s lips ―there’s a graze of teeth that has Rick hissing, his hips stuttering, but Negan doesn’t pull back, doesn’t even look like he wants to bite down, so Rick shoves him further down, blood running hot and frenzied when he hears the wet, choking sound that rips from Negan.
Rick tangles both hands in Negan’s hair, grip twisting something vicious as he holds his head in place, thrusts deeper into the maddening heat of his mouth, not stopping until he feels himself hit the back of Negan’s throat. Negan tries to shift away, as if on instinct, and there’s a terrible, perfect growl reverberating around Rick’s cock, a thing that could be either pleasure or pain. When Negan’s eyes snap up to lock with Rick’s they’re watery, glazed over, a single tear caught on a long dark eyelash.
Fuck, Rick thinks, but his hands won’t let go, can’t let go, hips twitching just so that he can feel that tight, wet drag on his cock again, a sting of pleasure that’s nearly painful as Negan keeps trying to swallow around him, his nails digging crescent wounds down Rick’s thighs.
“I can stop,” Rick breathes out, and he knows it doesn’t sound like he could.
His breaths are harsh, rattling things, and it all feels too fucking good, and the sight of Negan’s face like this is too much ―there’s a muted hum of shame somewhere in the back of Rick’s mind, and a tug of desperate, aching lust everywhere else in his body, swelling up and tightening in his balls, an orgasm already threatening to build, pulsing in his cock to the tune of Negan’s own frenzied heartbeat.
Negan blinks and that goddamn tear does fall, tracing a thin, crooked line down one unshaven cheek; there’s a trickle of spit stuck between the corner of his mouth and the base of Rick’s cock, and he’s still making those low, wounded choking sounds that hammer straight into Rick’s brain.
“I can stop,” Rick says, doesn’t entirely know if he’s talking to Negan or himself.
Negan’s palms drag up the back of Rick’s legs, across the sharp slant of his hipbones, nails dragging across skin until they settle on Rick’s ass. For a moment Rick is sure those calloused hands will shove him away, but Negan burrows his fingers in, hard enough to leave marks in the morning, and pulls Rick’s hips forward, hard and messy, takes more of Rick, eyes swimming as he looks back up at him again.
Fuck, Rick thinks again. Fuck.
And that’s that.
He doesn’t actually plan to do it again, after that.
It just― happens.
(Again, and again, and again.)
“Fuck,” Negan growls, hand slipping where it’s braced against the wall, his entire body pushing back against Rick’s every thrust like it’s a fight, like he has a shot at winning, and maybe he does, “fuck, there, right fucking there, Rick―”
“Shut up,” Rick says, but he has said it a hundred times, and it doesn’t mean anything anymore.
He rolls his hips deeper, faster, letting himself lose time, lose thought. Nothing seems to matter in those broken, sweltering moments except Negan’s skin breaking and bruising under Rick’s touch, and his face when Rick keeps him right on the edge of coming and the hoarse moans torn from his throat when Rick slaps him ―and he does this lately, Negan, he grins up at Rick slow and daring and insufferable just to get Rick’s hand snaking around his throat and a sharp hit across the face, and he’s come more than a few times from it, and Rick didn’t know what to make of it at first, and, and.
“Fucking Christ, is that all you fucking got―”
Rick thrusts into him hard enough to make Negan’s entire body slide across the narrow bed, his brittle grip on the tiled wall breaking as Negan falls over and shouts into the crumpled sheets, a muffled, rattling thing caught between a laugh and a scream of pain.
Rick knows he’s hurting him. They barely had enough lube to make it work, and he hasn’t been gentle for a single second since the heel of his boot punctured the entrance of Negan’s cell. But still he’s getting those wide, knife-point grins in return, groans and sighs and Negan kissing him wet and hot and demanding more even as his face twists up in hurt, broken moans of harder, Rick, come on, harder, fucking harder―
(There is something that only happened once:
“Stop,” Negan said, and Rick didn’t.
Not at first.
They didn’t talk about it, after, and Rick had a smear of blood on his hand and a deep scratch down the side of his face that he doesn’t remember how he managed to explain to everyone else. He apologized the next day and the day after that, every time when he brought in Negan’s food like clockwork, but Negan shrugged, a bruised shoulder rising and falling indolently, and gave en empty, gleaming smile.
“Guess you thought I deserved it, it’s fine,” he said, smile stuck in place like stitches, and there was a new kind of hollowness in his voice that Rick couldn’t bear to look very closely at, but it went away soon enough.)
―like he’s doing now, hands fisted into the covers and angry pink lines gouged all across his back from Rick’s nails, shoving himself down on Rick’s cock with every thrust as harshly as Rick is fucking into him.
Rick isn’t sure how much of Negan’s reciprocation is him truly wanting this, and how much is him trying to maintain that hard-won facade of immovable arrogance; doesn’t want to think too much on it, can’t.
“Fuck, Rick, come on, just fucking― shit, I’m gonna come, Rick, fuck―”
Rick moans, can’t stop it, doesn’t try to. He trembles with force, his own orgasm already close, and he reaches down to grip Negan’s cock, jerking him off fast and uncoordinated. It's too tight, too violent, but it does the job, just like he knew it would.
“Rick,” Negan cries out when he comes, a broken litany that’s burrowed under Rick’s skin, made a place for itself in Rick’s every dream and nightmare, “fuck, Rick, Rick, Rick.”
He still smiles, after, as he watches Rick get dressed with hooded eyes and expansive limbs sprawled out. He smiles that fucking smile, because this is what Negan does.
Sometimes it’s bright and glinting, a challenge, an infuriating, daring thing like a matchstick thrown to gasoline, and others―
Rick hasn’t yet decided if he actually prefers the others.
“See you next time,” Negan says when Rick finishes buttoning up his shirt and turns to leave, voice sing-song and laughing, because today is one of those days when he says it and means it, too. Rick can’t quite decide if he prefers those, either.
See you next time, he almost says back, doesn't.