Chapter Text
To say it’s been a rough fucking day until Rick Grimes walks in is a goddamn understatement.
The A/C’s still broken in the gym because Merle’s an unreliable piece of shit, the vending machine is out of Swedish Fish, and the whole “it’s September but it's still as hot as Satan's armpit so showers aren’t optional” lectures have been ignored in favor of even more Axe and Love Spell fumes permeating Negan’s office. Hell, at least it’s Friday and after this meeting, she can take a detour home and ride Lucille around the lake.
A crack of lighting sounds, followed by a biblical volume of rain.
Negan groans, tossing the confiscated vape she’d been examining to the floor. She’d been considering taking a hit even though she’s pretty sure Dwight went home to Sherry and cried last weekend after she got the whole bar in on the fact he’d replaced his Camels with blue raspberry bullshit like he’s not a grown-ass man.
A firm knock on the wall. Wait, the door’s been open this whole time?
“Coach Negan?”
Porcelain doll blue, half-lidded eyes catch against Negan’s, and immediately none of that stupid bullshit matters.
“Hey,” Negan grins, doing her best not to follow the trail of Rick’s hand in its arc over her swollen belly. “That’s me, alright.”
Of course, Negan had gotten the briefing three weeks ago from Deanna alongside Michonne, Daryl, Eugene, and Spencer that the new kid in their classes has one eye, a dead dad, and a pregnant mom, so don’t be a dick to him or your ass is on the line (again) this year, Negan. Real subtle.
Principal Monroe and the lounge gossip had, however, forgotten to mention that said mom was a total fucking knockout.
“Coach Negan,” That drawl, combined with her firm, unwavering gaze once she’s closed the door would’ve turned Negan into a Slip 'N Slide even if the speaker wasn’t, you know, drop-dead gorgeous. She watches as Rick (Officer? Mrs. Grimes?) plants her sensible little slip-ons right in front of her desk. “I’m here to talk about Carl. My boy,” she adds, taking in a breath of air growing more humid by the second. Negan tries (and fails) not to look as her breasts rise over the swell of her belly, lifting her dress above her knees before falling softly back down towards the curve of her stomach.
“Hey, you should sit,” Negan manages. On my face. Or at least tug that camisole down a few inches, Jesus. Negan grabs a folding metal chair from the stack behind her, doing the snap trick that gets at least one “cool!” a week.
Rick, however, isn't amused, even as Negan walks around to place it behind that delightful little Georgia peach.
“I’m pregnant, not sick.”
Negan steps back, widening her eyes and raising her hands. “Well, excuse me for havin’ manners, Ricky,” she says before she plops back down in her own chair, unzipping her track jacket and tossing it towards her motorcycle helmet and leathers. She leans backwards, making a show of crossing her muscled arms beneath the weight of her tits, which are doing a fantastic job of filling out her white t-shirt.
Rick still doesn’t take the cue to thank her (or look at Negan’s pebbled nipples). Instead, she sits down in the chair, her hands securing her belly to her as if it might spring forward and bounce towards the kickballs behind them. Jesus, is she afraid her baby’s going to catch the gay or something? Instead of her usual frustration, Negan feels genuinely sick at the thought.
“Tell me about Carl,” she says, eyes intent on Negan’s. “Everything.”
Shit. Negan would’ve thought this out beforehand if she knew his mom was hot. She’s silent for a moment, racking her brain for Carl Grimes, who blended into the groaning, shuffling mob of his peers so well that she’d never been able to take him aside after class and properly introduce herself and her (one hundred percent effective) anti-bullying techniques. Bonus points: he’d actually heeded her shower lecture.
“Well, he gets through warm-ups and games, even if he’s obviously desperate to be anywhere else. Doesn’t play grab-ass or roughhouse with his fellow testosterone demons—not that I’d put up with that shit, of course.”
Rick’s jaw tightens.
Negan closes her eyes, trying to think of anything else Carl-related. She’s not going to make this easy, is she?
Rick pulls out a tissue, softly clearing her throat.
Car accident. Deanna had said that it’s how he lost his eye and his dad. She’s seen him walking around with Michonne once or twice outside, like Ron Anderson used to after his dad went all family annihilator a few years ago. Negan’s stomach drops, and her eyes prickle with tears at the memory.
“Uh, I’ve seen him with Michonne—Ms. Hawthorne, the art teacher,” she says, clearing her own throat, smiling away the tiny coffin at Jessie and Sam’s funeral, the scar on Ron’s forehead, the absence of Jessie's kindness immediately replaced by Spencer's pompous ass in meetings. “She’s a class act, big into nature and all that. Has a kid of her own in elementary school.”
Rick is silent.
Christ, does she expect me to stalk her kid? “Carl’s not, you know, one of the ones we talk about in the teacher’s lounge, if you get my drift,” Negan says, irritation dampening her grief. “Plus, he showers, which I’m sure is thanks to his lovely mama’s—“
Negan’s cut off by a long roar of thunder. Rick shifts instead of offering up any verbal cues that she’d, you know, been listening to the pretty fucking picture Negan’s painted of Carl (and her parenting). Her jaw clenches, those blue eyes growing red as she presses her lips into an unforgiving line.
“Look,” Negan sighs after a minute, seeing as Rick’s not exactly forthcoming, “he’s a good kid. I know he’s been through a lot, but I don’t sense it in him. That meanness. He’ll turn out okay.”
Rick is still silent, her lip curling as she tucks her hair back into its clip. The twist of her forearm reveals a cross tattoo in the crook of her elbow.
So it really is that. That sick feeling bubbles up into Negan's throat to join everything else, and she swallows it down, twists it into anger. “Least you don’t gotta worry,” Negan adds, her mouth curling into a slick smile as the thunder rumbles, then lulls. “That Spencer kid—Mr. Monroe, excuse me—he only looks at the girls. From what I can tell, at least—and they all worship him, you know, because he looks like that guy from that show. The one with the demons and the Impala? Fuck, I’d love to drive that thing.”
Blatant disgust colors Rick’s face. Her grip on her giant leather tote bag intensifies.
Negan chuckles, low and throaty. “Anyways, I still think Principal Mommy’s hiding his rap sheet and just letting him verbally jerk himself off five days a week in front of your kid. Male English teachers, am I right?”
Rick’s upright more quickly than Negan would think anatomically possible. “I’ll be leavin,” she hisses, her face damp with sweat, red with exertion. “And I’ll be mentioning this talk to Deanna Monroe.”
Shit. Negan’s too fired up to really care, but some small, logical part of her knows that if she loses her job, she’s worn out her welcome here and had better look at moving truck prices. The thought of leaving Alexandria—the town Lucille had loved, had died in—makes something ugly crawl out of her mouth.
“Woman of few words, huh?” Negan tosses to Rick’s back, her embarrassment fueling her anger, “bet the menfolk just love that, don’t they? Righteous little Ricky, all tragedy and no hate for the dickbag upstairs.”
Lightning cracks. Rick’s nostrils flare, her breaths growing shallow as she storms back to Negan’s desk. “I don’t give a damn what you think about me. But if you take any of this out on my boy, I’ll kill you. I’ll make you disappear.”
Negan would admire that if she wasn’t so pissed off. Instead, she leans forward, smiling, giving Rick a playful tap on the nose.
“Now, that ain’t very Godly of you, Mama.”
Another flash of lightning, killing the power and whatever Rick was going to say. Merle (who else?) curses before the thunder cracks, cocking a gun and shooting it towards some unfortunate woodland creature (or the sky, Negan figures he’s dumb enough to).
Muffled sobbing. One of the kids? Why the hell do they always hang around on Fridays? Concern snuffs out Negan's fury as she heads towards the door, almost knocking her foot into Rick’s heaving belly.
“Rick?”
In the next flash of lightning, Negan can see that Rick is on her elbows and knees, taking in deep gasps as she clings to the cool metal of the chair.
“Uh—Mrs. Grimes?” Negan tries again, feeling her own sweat drip down into Rick’s hair as she leans down, ghosting a touch along her arm.
No response.
“Fuck,” Negan hisses, pulling out her phone just as the lights flicker back on. 4:11 PM.
“Rick,” the trembling woman says, a thread of saliva dripping from her chattering teeth as the air conditioning begins to cycle. “Call me Rick.”
Fuck, Negan’s never wanted to get away from someone more and drive aimlessly until Lucille, Jessie, Sam, Carl’s dad, and all the other people dead for no goddamn higher purpose fade back into something she can ignore.
“Yeah,” Negan mutters. “I’m calling 911.”
“No,” Rick says, the whites in her eyes flaring like a spooked horse’s. Her body tenses, and for an absurd second, Negan’s sure that Rick’s going to lurch forward and attack her before she falls motionless again.
Negan really, really wants to call 911. Instead, she sits down on the floor beside Rick, watching as she slowly releases her grip on the chair, breathing even, the sweat evaporating and staining her armpits. When Negan checks her phone again, it’s 5:06.
Rick’s staring at her again, her gaze firm, direct. “The gun. Two bullets through the shoulder,” she says, detached in the way someone is when they’re relating painful information by rote. “Last thing I heard for five weeks.”
Negan curses under her breath. “Shot on the job,” she’d heard Michonne say before clamming up, leaving her with Daryl and a stack of grease-stained car diagram projects. How she managed to regularly interpret his grunts into conversation is nothing short of a divine gift, like how her art’s actually good.
“How long ago?” Negan wants to ask, because the thought of this tiny woman surviving a bullet, a coma, the loss of her husband, and a pregnancy right after is nothing short of miraculous. And she still believes there’s something looking out for her? Some higher purpose, any logic in it all?
As though she’s heard Negan’s thoughts, Rick’s whole body tenses up again. She murmurs something, over and over. It’s said like a rosary, though Georgia’s a bit far south for Catholicism. A syllable, a pause, another syllable.
Shot on duty. In a coma for five weeks. Husband dead a few months later, and then she finds out she’s pregnant, probably off-duty forever, has to move herself and her teenage son three states up while the kid’s still recovering from losing his eye.
Negan inches away, resting her back against the wall. Fuck, she’s gone through hell itself. If the whole Santa Claus-for-adults shtick keeps her going for her son and that baby, why the hell would Negan bother to rub her misery in her face?
Carl, Negan realizes, jolting out of her thoughts. She’s not praying, she’s just saying her son’s name. Carl, Carl, Carl.
Negan sighs, moving forward and resting a hand between Rick’s shoulder blades before she can stop herself. Rick makes no move to dislodge it, shuddering into the touch.
“Damn,” Negan breathes, rubbing gentle circles and testing her luck. “Look, whatever gets you through. That’s the last thing I’ll blab about before I get you back up on your feet and blow this popsicle stand."
Rick frowns, staring directly at Negan. “Looks like you don’t just tell all those stories, you make ‘em up too.” She sighs, moving a hand to rub circles of her own over her belly. “You don’t know me—what I believe, what I don’t. What I’ve seen happen when you don’t go to church in a small town every Sunday.” She reaches up to ghost a delicate hand over Negan’s bicep, up the length of the cross she always forgets she had wanted or had gotten done. Christ, I miss Four Loko.
“Hell, I could’ve made the same judgement about you.”
Negan grins. Either the woman’s sharp as a knife, or she’s making fun of her. Either way, at least her fight’s coming back.
Rick’s face falls into profile, revealing the soft curve of her nose and the scent of those sweaty, delicious curls. Negan wonders how eyes even get that blue. She’s heard all the songs and the crappy bar monologues but man, she gets it now. She really does.
“What?” Rick adds with a tiny smile, “that make you a woman of few words, too?”
Negan throws back her head, laughing. She resists the urge to pull Rick into her lap, to kiss away the tears and sweat and snot clinging to her face. Is it possible to fall in love within five seconds of realizing someone doesn’t think you’re some predator salivating at the thought of recruiting her kid into the Cult of Queers? Fuck it. Negan’s ready to hedge her bets.
“Holy hell, you’re funny,” Negan says, instead of something insane like, “does that baby of yours need a daddy?” “You’ve got a smart mouth, Ricky. You know that?”
Rick’s face seems to close in on itself, to pull away. “You don’t know me,” she says again.
“Baby, you’re doing nothing but making me want to.”
Rick’s eyes are skeptical, but she allows Negan to help her to her feet and shoulder her purse for her, which must hold at least ten romance novels or one pimped-out gaming console.
Negan stretches her arms over her head again, slow and easy in the now-dim light even though the bag digs into muscles she forgot she had. She’s looking this time, holy shit. “I think we got off on the wrong foot, Rick,” she says, grabbing her own bag once she’s tied her track jacket around her waist.
Rick hums, noncommittal.
“Let’s get you to your car, huh?” Negan tries again, her voice lowering to a croon as she locks the office door behind her.
“Startled me is all. That gun,” Rick says a few steps down the hall, walking alongside Negan, tiles squeaking. “I can carry my own bag. Don’t need you to do it."
“What if I wanted to?” Negan chuckles, brushing their hands together, trying to get another whiff of Rick’s scent beneath the sweat. Cedar, cocoa butter, and warm powder. Fucking drool-worthy.
“I ain’t forcing you to,” Rick tries, and look—those cheeks are finally pink again! “I won’t be a burden.”
You deserve foot rubs on demand and to get eaten out twice a day, kissed any time Carl’s slunk out of the room. Could even help you if those pretty tits are swollen, too…
“You can’t be,” Negan finally huffs, shifting the tote bag. Jesus, what’s in this thing? A third kid? "I know you said you’re independent and all that, but damn, I’d be a hell of a lot worse than Merle if I didn’t freak the fuck out at a pregnant woman keeling over in my shitbox office. At least let me carry your bag.”
“I don’t scare easy,” Rick says as a shadow slinks along the outside of the gym. Not big on thank yous, is she?
“I’m sure you don’t, ” Negan assures her. “That was just ol’ Merle takin’ the opportunity,” she yells towards the scrawny figure, “to be a trashy piece of shit scarin’ the nice ladies because his dick’s the size of my thumbnail!”
A hiss, followed by a cigarette butt stomped into the wet grass.
“He’s cheaper than a landscaping company.”
Negan swears there’s another flicker of a smile. “I’d sure hope so.”
Once they arrive at the main doors, Negan uses her extra height to leg it and open the door for Rick, the bag groaning against her shoulder. Was Rick carrying this on the shoulder she was shot through? No damn wonder she came in looking like someone smashed her pumpkin.
“I don’t mean to be nosy, Rick,” Negan pants as they cross the parking lot, “but what in the hell is in this thing?”
“Carl’s books,” Rick says after a moment. “He hates going to his locker. Figured since I was already here, I’d pick them up for him for the weekend.”
Protective rage flares in Negan’s chest. “They better not be giving him shit there.”
“Kids are—well, you know how they are,” Rick sighs, stopping in front of a RAV4 that’s going to be in desperate need of snow tires in a few months. “No mercy, some of ‘em.”
Negan bites back a growl. Rick (and Carl) don’t need to know about the legendary ass-kicking that’s now scheduled for Monday. She can practically feel Carl’s adrenaline high when he realizes it’s twenty unprepared classmates versus him and Negan on the dodgeball court for the next hour. Maybe that’s why Negan unties her track jacket from around her waist, wrapping it around Rick’s shoulders as her trembling starts up again—a pump of the same hormone cocktail that makes her students forget how dumb they look.
To her complete delight, Rick tucks her arms into the sleeves and zips it up, burrowing into it. Negan’s too bewitched by the way the collar brushes Rick’s no to mourn the loss of the meridian of cleavage that had finally started poking out of her dress.
A distant rumble of thunder sounds. Rick crosses her arms over her belly, the red fabric of Negan’s jacket darkening as soft rain begins to fall onto it.
“You have a motorcycle,” she says, leaning down to toss the bag into the backseat before Negan even has a chance to reach for it.
“Yeah,” Negan chuckles. “Hell yeah, I do.”
Rick sniffs, shutting the door and walking to the other side of the car. “Figured,” she says. “The helmet and the leather jacket, back in the office.” The sigh she lets out as she settles into the driver’s seat is nothing short of lascivious. “Now get in. I’ll take you home.”
Holy fuck, Negan might actually be in love.
“Get in,” Rick says, more firmly this time as hail stones enter the mix, bouncing like ping-pong balls off of Negan’s hair, “Unless you’d rather hydroplane and see for yourself if there’s anything looking down on us.”
And who’s Negan to refuse a ride from a pretty lady? She’d be no better than Merle.