Chapter Text
Malcolm wakes with Edrisa draped over him like a living, breathing, too-warm blanket. Carefully, so as not to wake her, he turns his head to find Dani still in the truck with them, watching him in the weak light of dawn. She’s already dressed and seated with her back propped against the bench that lines the wall of the truck. Her arms rest atop her bent knees.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
“You okay?” he asks, noting the way she fiddles with the laces dangling from her boots.
The light catches her lashes as she blinks slowly. “You probably think it was a long time coming.”
“That’s not really my place to say.”
She tips her head as her face scrunches up. “‘Not my place…’ Fuck you, Bright, I know you profile all of us,” she says, mood shifting to straddle the line between exasperated and wry amusement.
Wincing, he starts to ease himself out from under his personal furnace. “Fine, okay, so I may have made some internal wagers about how the various relationship dynamics between our group would progress, but—”
“It was nice,” Dani says, interrupting. As she prepares to nudge open the back door with the heel of her boot and exit the vehicle, she gives him another lingering look. The morning light haloes through her curls. “I felt… safe.”
Malcolm scrapes his teeth over his lip and offers her a smile as Edrisa stirs and tries to pull him back into the nest of blankets. “Good,” he says. “Just, um, if he acts like nothing happened last night, give him some time.”
“Noted,” Dani says and passes him a fresh bundle of clothes before she exits with a murmured, “I’m really glad you’re okay, Bright.”
By now, Edrisa has actually woken up, and he spends a little time cozied up with her before rolling out of the makeshift bed. Of all of them, she’s the least prone to jealousy and the quickest to say what’s on her mind, but sometimes she comes at things from an angle he fails to anticipate. This morning, her mind is mostly along the same track as his: wondering what they’re going to find awaiting them at Hilltop.
“Do you think they’ll let us stay?” Edrisa asks. Once dressed, they work in tandem to stow the bedding.
“Maybe.” Malcolm passes her another folded blanket to slip into one of the storage compartments beneath the floor. He rests on his heels, thumb rubbing against his forefinger as he considers how it might go. “If they need fighters, we certainly have the skills and the training. I think we need to decide if they’re the kind of people we want to stay with.”
“Jesus seemed nice.”
“Did he?”
“JT thought so, too.”
In Malcolm’s experience, nice isn’t always a good indicator of character. His father, of course, being the prime example of how easy it is to put on a friendly face. And willingly letting himself be known as “Jesus,” even if it may have started as a joke based on the way he wears his beard and his hair... Hopefully, he’ll have a chance to actually talk to the man or observe his interactions with Daryl to get a better read on him, but even if they’re only welcome at Hilltop for a day, it should still be plenty of time for him to gauge how that community compares to the Saviors’ Sanctuary.
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
*
Malcolm rides in the back of the armored truck with Edrisa, eyes closed as the vehicle sways nauseatingly when they opt to cross upstream instead of risking the bridge. From there, it’s another hour with only a rare walker spotted in a field and nothing else on the road to slow them.
“That’s a proper wall,” JT says, easing off the gas to slow their approach once they hit an incline.
Dani lets out a low whistle, and Malcolm and Edrisa clamber towards the front of the vehicle to take in the view of the most well-fortified community they’ve ever seen. Aside from Sanctuary, since leaving New York and avoiding the teeming masses of urban streets, they’ve only come across small pockets of people—groups no larger than twenty and not able or interested in sharing anything else but a bit of news about road conditions or herd patterns.
“That’s the Barrington House,” Malcolm says, recognizing the colonial building peeking out over fort-like wooden walls. “It was bought in the mid 1800s by an abolitionist and eventually turned into a historical site. I only know because my mother was involved in some sort of fundraiser for living history museums.” He points out where acres of gardens have gone semi-wild, and the obvious places where it’s been tended back to thriving. “Subsistence and trade, that’s a lot of seeds and cuttings. If they get all of that going again, that’s enough to feed five hundred people easily.”
“Well, let’s hope they’re not batshit insane like your hubby,” JT says, stopping the vehicle a good fifty feet beyond the perimeter.
They file out, leaving most of their weapons stowed in the truck. The few standard sidearms and bladed weapons they keep on their persons they remove in sight of the guards standing watch atop the walls.
Malcolm steps forward when the gates open, holding his arms wide to invite a pat down.
“You must be Malcolm,” says the woman striding out to greet them.
He’s about to ask how she knows, but of course, it’s the face. “And you are?”
“Maggie,” she says and skims a critical eye over the group. “You’ll have to leave your truck and your weapons out here. You can lock ‘em up or have someone stand guard, if it makes you feel better.”
“I’ll stay with the truck,” JT says. “They okay to go inside with a short-range walkie?”
Maggie nods, and JT unclips one of a pair of receivers off his belt to toss it to Dani. “In case anything goes sideways,” he says, not bothering to keep his voice from carrying.
“I thought Gregory was in charge of this place,” Malcolm says, following Maggie in through the gates. His eyes dart around the grounds, taking note of the rows of FEMA trailers, additional beds of closely-tended crops, some livestock, and even a working blacksmith forge. It’s impressive.
Her response to Malcolm implying she holds a position of authority is telling. “He is the democratically elected leader,” Maggie says with the same sort of diplomacy of a well-timed ‘bless your heart.’ She nods towards Barrington House. “Your friend is meeting with him right now along with Jesus and Daryl. Thank you, by the way, for helping Daryl get out of that place and away from that maniac.”
There’s a wound in her at the way she refers to Negan, and Malcolm’s chest pangs in empathy.
“Of course,” he says in all sincerity. He considers trying to tease out more about the bad blood between her and Negan, but now that he knows where Gil is, his gaze keeps straying to the manor house. “You say they’re meeting now? I take it Gregory isn’t a night owl if he didn’t want to entertain guests late yesterday.”
“He most certainly is not. I, on the other hand, had a nice long chat with your friend Gil, and based on what Jesus and Daryl have told me, if Gregory doesn’t want you here, Alexandria will take you.”
“You’re from Alexandria?”
She nods.
“Would it be all right if I…?” he gestures towards the entrance to Barrington House.
“Y’all want to go inside?” Maggie asks.
“I’d rather get a full tour, if that’s okay,” Edrisa says. “Jesus said you had some medical facilities? I have some training.”
“We do. I can introduce you to the doctor, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. How about you?” Maggie asks, turning to Dani who looks torn.
It isn’t that she doesn’t trust Malcolm to behave himself in there, but more likely that no matter how warm the welcome, she doesn’t like the idea of them splitting up when they’re so vastly outnumbered.
“Dani, why don’t you get to know a little more about Alexandria,” Malcolm suggests. “That is, if Maggie doesn’t mind?”
“That’d be great,” Dani says, the cloud of indecision gone. She knows as well as Malcolm does that if things don’t work out here, they could very well work out with this other community. Or they both might uncover more about the Saviors’ influence that will make the decision to move on that much easier.
“We can talk,” Maggie says. She calls over another woman to escort Malcolm to Gregory’s office, and Malcolm gives Dani and Edrisa a parting smile before he turns to follow the woman across the yard and into the pristinely preserved interior of Barrington House.
Besides a remote hunting cabin they’d stumbled upon a few years back and Negan’s bedroom, this is the first place he’s been inside since the start of the outbreak that feels like what normal used to be. The layout might be classic colonial and a great deal older, but it also reminds him of home.
Outside the door to Gregory’s office, he can hear Gil’s muffled voice relaying some of what they’d observed on the road.
“Excuse me,” Malcolm says, knocking as he opens the door and slips inside. He takes quick stock of Gregory who is leaning back behind a stately desk in a suit jacket. His pinched expression says he’s not really listening to a word Gil is saying. “Hello.”
Jesus, who stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Daryl at the bookshelves built into the back of the room, straightens and says, “This is Malcolm. The man Negan was hoping to use to spy for him.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Malcolm says, remaining close to the door.
Gregory gives him a dismissive scan. “I don’t see the resemblance.”
Well, that’s a first, Malcolm thinks. Although anyone who hasn’t seen him with a beard would definitely have a harder time of it, he’s sure, that’s definitely not what’s driving Gregory’s rebuff. The man oozes the sort of backhanded, self-serving cowardice that Malcolm had seen far too much of growing up amongst the New York elite.
“If you want to know more about what Malcolm saw inside Sanctuary, I’m sure he’d be happy to relay that to you directly,” Gil says.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Gregory says. “Before you all leave.”
“You can’t kick them out,” Jesus protests. He doesn’t quite raise his voice, but Malcolm can hear the strain as he keeps himself in check. “If Negan’s men come here, we need more fighters and they have guns. They’re trained.”
“I don’t care what kind of training they’ve got. If Negan’s men come here, we don’t want them finding us harboring his wayward bride,” Gregory retorts. He shifts in his seat, scoffing at the very idea of putting up anything even resembling a fight. “We’ve got what, thirty people we need to protect?”
“Forty-eight,” Jesus says, flatly.
“A man like Negan isn’t going to stop taking from you until you have nothing left to give,” Gil says.
Gregory waves a hand. “You don’t know that.”
He might be in denial, but Jesus isn’t. From the corner of his eye, Malcolm watches the microexpressions play out across his features in a way that makes him wonder if he, too, is displaying the same subtle frustration. He’s holding back, and Malcolm can’t quite understand why. If Gregory doesn’t even know how many people live within Hilltop’s walls, he’s nothing more than a useless figurehead. And if his only regard is for himself, he’s a dangerous figurehead, at that.
“Look, I can do this for you,” Gregory says, spreading his hands across his desk in a gesture of benevolence. “After today, you can have two days to rest and resupply, and you can share stories or whatever else it is you want with Jesus, here. But if we even get a whiff of Negan’s men coming up the road, you are to get your asses out of here and leave your weapons and your vehicle behind.”
Gil looks ready to argue the point, to take the idea of leaving anything behind off the table, but with two days and the undercurrent of dissatisfaction in the room, Malcolm’s pretty sure he can unravel the whole pyramid Gregory sits atop. “Deal,” Malcolm says, ignoring Gil’s incredulous stare in favor of the sharp inquisitiveness of Jesus’s.
“Finally, someone reasonable,” Gregory says. “Thank you. Martin, was it?”
“It’s Malcolm,” he says, lacing his fingers together behind his back to hide the sudden trembling of his hand.
“Well, Malcolm, enjoy your stay.”
With that obvious dismissal, Malcolm swallows down the ugly, unexpected reminder of his father and opens the door to return to the hall. From there, he can see Daryl kick away from his spot against the wall, and the brief pause when he seems to expect Jesus to head out with him, but Jesus lingers at Gregory’s desk.
“We’ll talk later,” Malcolm assures Gil, staving off any questions as he strains his ears to try and overhear the exchange. He fails to catch any of it, and Daryl gives them both a glance as he passes by to head for the stairs. Giving up, Malcolm shifts his full attention to Gil. “In case you’re wondering, Dani and Edrisa are getting the tour from the woman you met last night, Maggie.”
Gil nods. “Smart woman. I like her. Since it looks like we aren’t staying, hopefully they’ll still get something useful out of it.”
They both turn as Jesus exits Gregory’s office. He shuts the door behind him and offers a small shrug. “Well, that went about as well as expected,” he says softly, nodding down the hall towards the other end of the building. “Let me show you to some rooms. I hope you don’t mind doubling up for the next few nights.”
“Not at all,” Malcolm replies.
“Kid, we’ll pack in like sardines for a real bed,” Gil says.
“We can do slightly better than that,” Jesus says, breathing out a quiet laugh before leading the way.
*
It’s nearing midday by the time they have the truck parked inside Hilltop’s walls and their essential gear moved into the suite inside Barrington House. Dani’s chat with Maggie went seemingly as well as Gil’s had the night before, gaining them a much better picture of the dynamics in the region and confirming that the woman is savvy and ready to stand up against the Saviors, if given the support.
The more Malcolm hears from the community members who come to talk to them, the more certain he is that this is a fight he can’t simply walk away from. Gil and Dani seem to feel much the same. JT had at first seemed a bit more mercenary about the idea, but towards the end of their conversations with others and then amongst themselves, he’s not ready to abandon these people, either. That leaves only Edrisa to weigh in, but Malcolm is certain that, while she might not care to be anywhere near the front lines of a fight, she’s not going to shy away from helping.
By evening, with two full meals in them and all of them having enjoyed the luxury of running water, the mood settling over everyone as they reconvene in the suite is mixed. Malcolm can feel it between each breath, how much they all want to stay and build a life again.
“The problem is at the top,” he says, nodding in the direction of Gregory’s office, “and unlike the Saviors, this problem rests on a very shaky foundation.”
“We’re here less than a day, and you want to stage a coup?” JT hisses.
Malcolm shrugs. “Do you have a better idea? With Gregory in charge, these people are going to get slaughtered,” he replies, keeping his voice as hushed as possible.
“What are you thinking, kid?”
“I’m thinking there are two people here that could easily challenge Gregory in a new election.”
“Ooh, it’s Jesus and Maggie, isn’t it?” Edrisa says.
He nods. “She’s somewhat of an outsider, and he’s definitely reluctant, but they have deeper ties within the community than Gregory does.”
“How are you going to force a vote?” Dani asks. Seated cross-legged on the bed, she hugs the pillow in her lap a little tighter to her chest.
Malcolm isn’t quite sure yet, but he still says, “Leave that to me.”
“Something here needs to change,” Gil says, not sounding thrilled about stirring up trouble but seeing the need.
“Step one is convincing the two of them not to balk at the idea of a vote,” Malcolm says, thinking his plan aloud. He starts to pace, making a tight circuit in the confines of the room. “Gil, do you think you could talk to Maggie again?”
“I can do that.”
“Great. Now, JT, you spent a lot of time with Jesus yesterday, do you—”
“I don’t think I’m the right man for the job,” JT says hastily. “That guy might not be subtle about checking another dude out, but he is all kinds of shifty. He’s a layer cake made of secrets.”
“Really?” Malcolm’s brow furrows. Now that he’s seen a bit more of Jesus, he’s far more inclined to trust the man. “He seems cautious to me, but not ‘shifty.’”
“Maybe it’s best if you talk to him,” Gil says, rising and clapping Malcolm on the shoulder. “Unless it’s a little too uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable isn’t the right word…” Malcolm pauses as he searches around for the right one.
“Bizarre?” Edrisa supplies helpfully.
He can’t argue with that. “I suppose I also have a good excuse to want to talk privately with him, so pulling him aside shouldn’t raise any eyebrows. Any more eyebrows, anyway.”
“C’mon, if he’s not outside socializing, I can show you where his trailer is,” Gil says.
*
With Gil going up on the wall to talk to Maggie, Malcolm finds himself standing outside Jesus’s trailer wondering what to say.
A dozen unhelpful starters run through his head including, Hi, I know we just met, but I think we should talk about overthrowing your leader, and, So, it’s super weird that we look practically like twins, now why don’t you take over this place?
Before he can stall any longer or overthink the conversation, he steels himself and raps his knuckles on the door.
“One minute!” Jesus calls out, and it takes a moment, but when the door swings inward, Malcolm stumbles over his planned greeting. Earlier in the day, he’d been clad in essentially the same outfit as the day before: long leather coat, padded vest, ripstop bdus strapped down with knives. Now, he’s in a loose, wide-necked linen shirt tucked into a pair of slouchy cargo pants riding low on his hips. The sun bleached strands of his hair cling together, damp and darkened where it hasn’t yet dried. A lingering artificial fragrance wafts off his skin. The scent isn’t unpleasant, but like the look itself, it’s a lot to process.
“Hi, uh, it’s Malcolm, but you knew that. Can I—Fuck.” He squeezes his eyes shut and draws in a cleansing breath. “Can we talk?”
Jesus says nothing for a heartbeat, then steps graciously aside, nodding to invite Malcolm in. “Place is a bit of a mess, I wasn’t expecting company.”
“You consider this a mess?”
“The group home I grew up in had strict rules about tidiness,” Jesus says, scooping up a pile of half-folded laundry and setting it back in the basket. He carries it over to deposit it on the table of a small dinette set made of laminate wood and stands beside it with his hip cocked. The casual stance is completely at odds with the shrewd way he tracks Malcolm in his space. “I guess old habits die hard.”
With such a blatantly deliberate decision to divulge a bit of background information, Malcolm wonders if Jesus expects him to share something in exchange, or if he’s simply trying to display a bit of trust.
“My mother also had rules about tidiness, but they mostly applied to the help,” Malcolm says. He folds his hands together loosely in front of him, which, speaking of habits, is one that he’s fairly certain he picked up from Gil. If Jesus has an opinion about Malcolm having enjoyed a very different childhood, it’s difficult to read. In fact, without another party to watch him interact with, he’s much harder to profile than Malcolm anticipated.
A sudden noise from the other room—the bedroom?—makes Malcolm start, his hand drifting to his hip out of habit.
“It’s just Daryl,” Jesus says.
“He’s staying with you?”
“Better than sleeping inside that fuckin’ house with that useless piece of shit,” Daryl says, appearing. He snaps his shirt to tug it on and does up the buttons as he stamps his feet into a pair of boots. “Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna stick around and listen to you two yapping. I’m going up on the wall.”
“You don’t have to,” Jesus says. “We have plenty of guards on duty.”
“I’m sick of being inside,” he says, grabbing up a crossbow from beside the door. He gives both Jesus and Malcolm a look and snorts derisively as he exits.
“He’s been through a lot,” Malcolm says.
“More than you know,” Jesus says, and Malcolm considers whether he and Daryl are friends or fuck buddies or something else. Jesus crosses his arms over his chest, a gesture that is somewhat defensive yet also quietly confident. Malcolm wonders if they’re going to just end up solely sizing each other up like a pair of circling wolves when Jesus dips his head and says, “I’m sorry about earlier. Gregory can be a bit… difficult. But if you’re here because you want me to talk to him again in the morning, I’m already planning on it.”
“I have a request, actually.”
“Oh?”
“I know I’ve only been here for about twelve hours, but between what I saw at Sanctuary and what I’ve seen here, that’s enough to know that a lot of people are going to die unless someone around here is willing to do something other than offer tribute to Negan. It might work for a while, probably a good long time if it were up to Negan himself, but to maintain control within his ranks, he needs to make examples, and Gregory is the type of man who will offer you up like lambs to slaughter.”
“You want to call a vote,” Jesus guesses. “And you want my help to do it.”
“More than that,” Malcolm says, taking a half-step forward. “I want you to put your name in against Gregory. People like you and trust you, and from what I can tell, Maggie’s a good choice, too, but you’ve lived here longer. You know every single person in this place.”
That aura of confidence crumbles. “I can’t,” Jesus says, backing away. It’s an unconscious move to put his back against the wall, to eliminate angles of approach. His arms at his chest hug to his body more closely, fingers indenting into his own flesh. “I’m not the right person for that. I’m really not.”
“Would you do anything to protect this community?” Malcolm asks.
“Not anything—”
“Anything within reason?”
“Yes, but—”
Malcolm’s ready to push it, to lay out why he believes Jesus is the right choice. It’s so obvious. And maybe he and Jesus aren’t so similar that they think the same way, but the man is clever and compassionate...
“I’ll help you with the vote,” Jesus declares, forcibly relaxing his stance. He props his hands on the countertop behind him, knuckles white as they curl over the lip. He stares at a point on the floor, brows drawing together. “But not for me. It needs to be Maggie. The way she—look, trust me when I say she’s the right person to lead Hilltop, and besides, if we start a war, we’re going to need as many fighters as we can get.”
Malcolm can’t really argue with that.
“Gil’s talking to her right now. What if she says no? Will you do it, then?”
Jesus lifts his gaze to catch Malcolm’s. “I’d rather make sure she doesn’t say no.”
In the moment, the man reminds him of Dani, perfectly direct at times and then at others, taking a roundabout path at a subject to come at it from a sideways angle. Malcolm feels like, for the first time since they’d met, since trying to profile him from the clothes he wears to the way he holds himself, he’s truly begun to see the man that Jesus is.
He’s damaged in ways that Malcolm can probably sympathize with but never quite understand, burdened by the same sort of trust issues that plague himself and Dani. The sort that means he knows everyone here by name but which still keeps him apart. That means he seeks comfort with a man from a different community who seems closed off to the world and yet recognizes like-for-like. Stray dogs with pack loyalty.
Malcolm feels the tumblers shifting, the lock opening, a whole host of truths visible to him now in a face that seems newly and vastly different.
Jesus doesn’t seem to mind the scrutiny. Maybe he’d been expecting it. “It’s eerie, isn’t it,” he says, finally. The softness of his tone breaks Malcolm out of the spell.
He blinks and thinks of the infinite monkey. “It is. And highly improbable.”
“With the way the world is, I’m not sure I believe anything is outside of the realm of possibility anymore,” Jesus says, arching an eyebrow. “This is a far more pleasant surprise, all things considered.”
“How did you…?” Malcolm gestures at his own lip, to the scar that’s a near mirror image.
“Baseball bat to the face when I was eleven. You?” The way he says it without blinking makes it more likely to be an accident than intentional, but Malcolm can’t be sure.
“Took a tumble playing squash in boarding school.”
“May I?” Jesus says, lifting a hand and extending it slightly towards Malcolm.
Malcolm dips his head in a slow nod and steps within range. It’s surreal to have someone who looks so much like him—who even sounds like him—reach to touch him. It’s like facing an insomnia-driven psychosis of himself, a hallucination sprung from the most tormented days in his past. He’d never purposefully grown a beard because it reminded him too much of his father, but the fascination on Jesus’s face isn’t sharp and clinical like his own might be. It’s pure wonderment.
The pads of Jesus’s fingers lightly trace the edge of Malcolm’s lip towards the shallow divot of the scar that sits under the bristle of his whiskers. “This is really weird,” Jesus says, his gaze lingering on Malcolm’s mouth even as his fingers trail towards the rise of Malcolm’s cheek.
For all their surface similarities, Jesus’s hands are definitely rougher. Even with years of fighting behind him now, Malcolm’s calluses weren’t born in his youth, not the way Jesus’s are. He turns his head slightly, towards where Jesus is fingering the lock of hair that’s fallen loose beside his ear to gauge its texture, and with the sudden lift of Jesus’s eyes comes a faint blossoming of pink under the tan of his skin.
Oh.
Malcolm bites his lip and stays turned towards the touch as he holds Jesus’s gaze. People have always commented about his eyes, and maybe now, he finally understands why. Jesus’s eyes are maybe a touch more towards green where his own are a touch more towards blue, but right now, all he really notices is the glimmer of a question beneath the upward quirk of Jesus’s brow.
“Are we really doing this?” Malcolm says. He spares a thought for his lovers and whether this is a decision that he should even be making on his own, but of all of them it’s Dani who he hadn’t had to already talk through whether or not they were okay with him sleeping with others. Based on what she’d said last night, she had, in theory, given him permission. It’s maybe a little soon, but...
Jesus’s knuckles slide along the raise of his cheek and then the man is cupping his face, the rough edge of his thumb flirting below Malcolm’s bottom lip. “Haven’t you always wondered what it’d be like?” he asks.
Malcolm’s brows collide together and a laugh rides his exhale. “Not really.”
“Does that make me a narcissist?” Jesus asks, mouth quirking.
“Hardly, and I’m, uh, somewhat of an expert. If you looked up narcissism in the dictionary, there’d be a photo of my father,” Malcolm replies wryly. How vastly different their lives must have been for all the surface similarities. He shivers and licks his lips when Jesus’s other hand finds his hip. A tingle spreads along his skin beneath the fabric of his shirt, anticipation lighting up his nervous system like firecrackers. “It might make you a bit of a pervert, though.”
“Not really a fan of how that sounds. How about sexually adventurous?”
Malcolm purses his lips, an expression he knows he’s picked up from Dani. “If it makes you feel better,” he says teasingly cynical, and finally makes a move of his own, sliding his hand along Jesus’s ribs to his waist. The heat of his body soaks through his clothing and into Malcolm’s palms.
The hand on his cheek shifts, and Malcolm feels the steady thud of Jesus’s heart rate kick up as the man’s fingers curl under his chin to tip his face. He drags his teeth over his lip before parting his mouth, another soft laugh falling into the air between them at the absurdity of things as Jesus leans in to kiss him. It takes a few tries before either of them fully commits to it, before the nudge of their mouths together becomes anything more than a fumbling brush of lips.
They certainly don’t kiss alike, Malcolm thinks as he opens to the soft flick of Jesus’s tongue. If anything Jesus kisses a lot like JT, all fluttering licks between gently sucking at his lip. He’s a bit more assertive and handsy from the get-go though, his palm rubbing along Malcolm’s neck and his other hand untucking Malcolm’s shirt to slide greedily beneath.
“Let’s get naked,” Jesus murmurs into his mouth.
The guy doesn’t need to ask twice. Malcolm responds by yanking Jesus’s shirt loose and helping haul it up, chasing the kiss after Jesus has tugged it off overhead and is busy shaking it free of his arms. Another wave of body heat greets his hands, enough that Malcolm’s fingers must feel cold as ice as he explores acres of newly-bared skin.
“Well?” Jesus asks, glancing down at his chest as he starts working the buttons of Malcolm’s shirt open. “Are we still twins?”
“Close enough,” Malcolm says, brow cocked as he assesses their musculature. Jesus is slightly more lean—probably because he doesn’t travel with several competitive people who like to use bodyweight exercises as bonding time—and his chest is scattered with a bit more hair. The trail down the centerline of his body starts at his xiphoid process, slightly curled and shades darker than the length of his hair. Malcolm traces it with the backs of his fingers. “So, have you thought about how this is going to go?”
“You mean who tops if we have sex?”
“That, and what you really want out of this,” Malcolm says. He slips out of his shirt and tosses it to hang over the back of a chair. It might not be narcissism, might simply be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but while Malcolm is blessed with both a casual attitude towards sex and steady companionship, Jesus, he suspects, only has one of those. “Is it just the sex?”
“I’m versatile, so speak up if you have a preference,” Jesus says. His hair cascades into his face as he looks down to start undoing his belts and his pants. He seems amused as he glances up between divesting himself of a few well-hidden knives. “And I’m not looking for a boyfriend, but if it’s good, and Gregory—or Maggie—lets your group stick around, I wouldn’t mind a long-term hookup.”
“Oh, it’ll be good,” Malcolm promises with a smirk as he undoes his boots and starts to shuck his own pants. Once he’s stripped to his underwear, he finds himself hit with a sudden bout of nerves and a sort of shyness he hasn’t experienced since he’d left his teens. After boarding school, he’d never been particularly self-conscious about the size of his cock, but this is a special circumstance, and his fingers tremble as he pushes down his shorts. He’s not hard yet, but Jesus is, and well, there is certainly no comparison there. He stares. “And I, uh, I’m more of a bottom. Which I think is going to work in my favor.”
It’s not like Jesus is hung like a porn star, or even as big as his lovers, but being comparatively average himself and with how little he and Jesus vary in frame, it’s a sight.
“I take it you’re not a grower,” Jesus says, an expression that somehow manages to be both faintly smug and somewhat apologetic at the same time.
“Not really,” Malcolm says. He runs his fingers through his hair for lack of anything better to do with his hands as he and Jesus simply stare at one another. He does thicken up further under the scrutiny—his skin prickling from the lustful heat underlying Jesus’s gaze as he surveys the whole of Malcolm shamelessly.
“Let me just…” Jesus says and sinks down to his knees before Malcolm has a chance to react. He moves with remarkable grace and control, the motion fluid as he settles in place. He flips his hair over his shoulder and grins up at Malcolm before taking hold of Malcolm’s dick, angling it to the side to drag a long, wet lick all the way to the tip.
Malcolm rocks up on his toes, his hand immediately falling atop the crown of Jesus’s head.
“You can pull my hair, if you want; lots of people like to, and I don’t mind,” Jesus says, matter-of-factly. He tilts his head and flashes a quick smile before flicking his tongue out to tease the head of Malcolm’s cock. He looks as if he’s about to say something else before discarding the thought in favor of wetting his lips and taking Malcolm in his mouth.
Jesus hums a moan as his lips slide down Malcolm’s length. His belly goes taut with anticipation and his extremities go weak. The wet sucking heat is so firm around him it feels like he’s filling to expand the whole of Jesus’s mouth. Malcolm echoes the moan, the sound reverberating between them in the thick evening air until Jesus starts to pump his fist and his mouth in time, and then—
Malcolm forgets how to breathe as he watches Jesus staring back up at him, cheeks hollowed, a smug deviousness in his pale gaze as his head bobs.
Is this how he looks when JT is staring down at him? When he’s showing off and not just kneeling there mouth open and tongue out, begging to get his face fucked.
Maybe Jesus recognizes that he’s feeling a little shell-shocked, because the man pulls off and sits back on his heels.
“You good?” he asks. One brow arches upward inquisitively.
Malcolm smiles softly. It’s usually him doing the checking in with his partners. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m good.”
Jesus licks his teeth before diving back in, his gaze going heavy-lidded this time with the same sort of pleasure, Malcolm suspects, that he himself gets from having a cock in his mouth. Malcolm closes his eyes briefly, sinking into the pure sensation of being worshipped by a warm mouth, fingers slipping into the soft strands of Jesus’s hair.
He doesn’t tighten his hold, even though when he’s sucking dick, he loves the feeling of a hand fisted in his hair, knuckles curled close to the roots and guiding him towards the right rhythm. He luxuriates in the texture, instead, the way it slips through his fingers like silk.
Would his hair feel like this if Dani would let him grow it out? Would it fade similarly in the sun and go from deep chestnut to that same tawny brown?
He’s still got his fingers threaded in Jesus’s hair when the man slows and stops. When he rises and presses his body against Malcolm’s in a long line. Their hips align perfectly, mouths slotting together again without a whisper of hesitation. With a wordless nudge, Malcolm moves backward, breaking the kiss only long enough to eye the table that wobbles on thin metal legs when he bumps against it.
“Don’t worry,” Jesus says into Malcolm's mouth, his lips stretching into a smile between licks, “if it can hold Daryl, it can hold you.”
So, the pair are definitely fucking, Malcolm thinks dimly as Jesus shoves the laundry basket aside to make room. The laminate wood is cold under his ass as he scoots himself up on it, guided into place by Jesus’s sure hands on his thighs.
He feels weirdly exposed when Jesus steps away and skims a look over him head to toe. For a moment, he hears Negan’s sly whisper echo in his skull: Him, I’d put face down, but you, darlin’, you’re twice as pretty…
Jesus pushes his hair back, and Malcolm wrestles with the uncomfortable feeling of thinking that no, he’s not twice as pretty as this man who looks so very much like him. He knows objectively that people find him very attractive and has certainly used it to his advantage many, many times, but he’s never been able to honestly see it in the mirror. All he’s ever seen in his reflection are the things beneath his skin: the flesh and blood borne of a killer, the failures and faults in his memory.
But if this gets anywhere close to how others see him? A hot flush of embarrassment stains his skin as Jesus tosses an easy smile at him and flips open a cabinet to reach in to grab a can of Crisco. “Not allergic are you?” he asks, and when Malcolm shakes his head, he peels off the lid and flicks it into the sink. He dips his fingers in and drops the can on the table as he returns, wasting no time in finding Malcolm’s hole with a firm but gentle touch as he takes another kiss.
They never quite close their eyes, reading each other’s expressions as their mouths meet and part, as Jesus’s fingers slip inside Malcolm and they both shiver when it makes his thighs shake and his belly tighten.
“So, maybe this is a little narcissistic, in the classical sense,” Malcolm admits, falling back as Jesus works him open and his body begs for more. The table shakes under his weight and his stomach drops out, but the swooping sensation flees in the wake of the clever stroke of Jesus’s fingers inside him. “Fuck, but that feels good.”
“It’s about to feel a whole lot better,” Jesus tells him, lining up between his spread thighs.
Malcolm’s jaw falls open as Jesus pushes into him, overwhelmed by the stretch of that first endless thrust that makes the switch flip in his head, entirely. The one that sweeps his attention away from the throbbing need in his cock to that deeper, more satisfying pleasure that wells up inside him. Jesus’s palms stroke up and down Malcolm’s thighs, rubbing heat into quivering muscles as he eases into a slow rhythm. When he’s sure that everything is smooth and easy, he hooks his arms under Malcolm’s knees and folds over him, hair sliding off his shoulders to curtain around them.
“How do you like it?” he asks.
“This is perfect,” Malcolm says dreamily. He lets the whole of his body relax, going soft and pliant as he slips his arms around Jesus. His hands flatten against the flex of muscles along the man’s spine, feeling the echo of each thrust into him rippling along the column of Jesus’s back. He grins and stops worrying about the shake of the table beneath him. “It’s perfect.”
Jesus briefly extracts one arm in order to flip his hair all to one side and dip down to put his mouth to Malcolm’s neck. “Good,” he murmurs, teeth dragging up the column of Malcolm’s neck before nipping lightly at his ear.
A shiver cascades through Malcolm at the warm gust of breath and a quiet moan, and he can feel the man’s smile when he echoes it and drops his head back to expose his neck for more.
Other things he hasn’t experienced in a long time: a partner who understands that, sometimes, being fucked isn’t about chasing an orgasm. That the pleasure itself is more than enough.
For JT and Gil both, it’s always so important for them to see him come, to know they’ve gotten him off, too. It’s not rooted in prideful power the way it is in Negan; it’s partly being so focused on their dicks they can’t imagine any other kind of pleasure.
JT, he thinks, is also the sort of lover who likes to know he’s making his partner feel good and might someday ask what it feels like—to want to know enough that he’ll get over the last of his macho bullshit and try bottoming, at least once. And Malcolm suspects that Gil’s insistence is also entwined with a bit of guilt he hasn’t fully worked through yet, a deep-seated and unspoken worry that he’s taking advantage of Malcolm, no matter the assurances passed to him in the dark.
But this… the soft brush of lips on his neck and the steady rhythm of Jesus’s cock plunging into him asks nothing of him, at all.
Malcolm pants lightly, his breath naturally falling into a counterpoint to the sound their bodies make and the faint squeak of the table legs. The flickering, tingling pleasure spreads to consume him, radiating through the whole of his body, turning the sensation of being filled into pure bliss. He groans, biting back some of the sound when he wants to just let it pour unbidden from his throat, shameless like he’d been in Sanctuary.
As if reading his mind, Jesus says, “You don’t have to be so quiet,” his mouth skimming across Malcolm’s cheek, the feather brush of his beard light and tickling. “I rarely am when I’m getting fucked.”
“Maybe next time,” Malcolm says, letting Jesus swallow the soft, needy moan that tumbles between them.
Jesus grins and gives Malcolm one last sucking kiss before he stops and straightens. “I’ll hold you to that,” he says. He gathers up his hair, working it into a quick loose braid simply to get it out of the way before he catches Malcolm’s knees again. He doesn’t drop back down over Malcolm when he starts to move again, just skids his legs apart slightly and pulls Malcolm towards him, easily carrying Malcolm’s weight as he hangs off the edge of the table.
“Five minutes like this maybe, or I’ll need a breather,” Jesus tells him, fucking into him harder this way.
“Come whenever you want, it’s good, so good. It’s perfect,” Malcolm murmurs, dazed and babbling. He stares up at Jesus, his limbs electric, his whole body thrumming. He reaches a hand out to let his knuckles drift down Jesus’s front, settling low on Jesus’s belly as the man’s hips snap and drive his cock deep inside Malcolm’s body. “I just want to feel it.”
The hands curled beneath his knees and around his thighs tighten their grip, and Malcolm drops his own hands to catch at the edge of the table and hold there as Jesus fucks into him. The pleasure radiating through his body ebbs and flows like a tide, sometimes blissful and sometimes thrilling, but it’s the connection between them right now that makes Malcolm feel like he never actually wants this to end.
It verges on the same wonderful sort of bond he shares with each of his partners, the way they can enjoy one another’s pleasure so fully when one of them tips over the edge. Malcolm shudders when it happens, when Jesus’s eyes screw shut and he curls forward, when the familiar shape of his own face twists towards pleasure and Malcolm finds himself gasping and grinning and succumbing to the reverent echo of it.
For a time, they simply stare at one another, no words exchanged and only a few shaky, sated smiles. When they pull apart, Jesus carefully lowers Malcolm’s legs down and makes sure he has his balance before stepping away. He grabs a small hand towel out of the laundry basket to wipe off his dick and tosses it to Malcolm. “If you’ve changed your mind about wanting to come,” he says, and flicks his eyes meaningfully at Malcolm’s cock. “Happy to get you hard again and finish you off.”
Swaying on weak legs, Malcolm declines graciously as he cleans the precome off his belly, then stoops to retrieve his clothes. “I enjoyed that more than I expected to,” he says.
Jesus pulls his underwear back on and leans a hip against the counter. He untangles his hair from its makeshift braid as he watches Malcolm dress. “If your friend Gil has a hard time convincing Maggie, I know who can convince her.”
“Do you think tomorrow is too soon to force a vote?”
“No. It needs to happen, and the sooner it happens, the sooner we can prepare for what’s to come.”
Malcolm glances at the door. Since this impromptu hookup isn’t the sort that invited cuddling after, he’d intended to gracefully duck out, but on the other hand it’s possible that the shared intimacy might make Jesus a little more willing to open up to him. “Actually, do you mind telling me a little bit more about what’s going on between Hilltop, Alexandria, and Negan’s group? I’ve gotten a general sense of things from Maggie and some of the others, but I’d love to hear your take.”
As expected, he senses Jesus’s wariness for the sake of caution. With how restrained he’d been in Gregory’s office, it's likely he prefers to either filter information through someone else or to not divulge things until it becomes necessary. Malcolm can relate. He and Dani both often hold things a little too close to the vest, as well.
“We can always do this after the vote,” Malcolm suggests instead.
“No, you’re right. If you’re going to stay and help us, you should know what we’re up against. Have a seat.”
They talk for hours, and when finally Malcolm is slipping back into Barrington House to rejoin the others, he is both somber and hopeful.
“Gil got Maggie to say yes. How’d it go with Jesus?” Dani murmurs, curling close to him when he slips into bed beside her.
“Very different than I anticipated. We can talk in the morning.”
“Okay,” she says, though the glitter of her eyes in the low light says she has questions and is awake enough to want to know more now.
“Go back to sleep,” he urges, although he stays awake himself until her breathing evens out again and deepens. Until he’s lulled into dark dreamlessness by the hushed sounds of all of the people he loves, safe and surrounding him.
*
Unlike Gregory, most of Hilltop is up with the sun, quick to get to the work of the day. So, when there’s enough of a consensus and the lockbox and chits are set up for the vote, he’s several hours behind any chance he might have had to talk folks out of holding a new election.
“This is preposterous,” he mutters from his seat on the porch. He keeps shifting, crossing and uncrossing his legs and glowering at the residents who line up to receive their tokens and cast their vote.
Seated in a chair a few feet away from him, Maggie remains unruffled and doesn’t respond to any of Gregory’s increasingly frustrated protests about the democratic system that he himself talked into place. Every so often, between marking the hands of people exiting the makeshift voting booth, Jesus casts a glance towards the porch as if he expects trouble to break out.
“How badly do you think he’ll lose?” JT asks.
Standing beside him, Malcolm clasps his hands together. From their vantage point on the sidelines, with the number of residents who have avoided eye contact with their current leader it’s already clear that it’s going to be a landslide victory for Maggie. “By enough of a margin that we’re going to need to keep a close eye on Gregory afterwards.”
JT raises a brow. “You think he’s the type?”
“I think he’s grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and that’s about to be taken away from him.”
“Maybe after you got out of that Sanctuary place, we should’ve taken the chance to move on. Still could, you know,” JT says. He slides his sunglasses on and folds his arms over his chest. “Wouldn’t be the first wife to skip town and never look back.”
Malcolm leans fondly against him. Despite the grumbling, he’s in it for the long-haul, just as the rest of them. He turns his attention away from the vote to where Gil, Dani, and Edrisa are helping staff the guard posts atop the wall. “You’re never going to let me forget that I ‘married’ that man, are you?”
“Hell no. You shack up with some fascist psycho for a week, and he gets to see you prance around in booty shorts while the rest of us, who’d be willing to make an honest man out of you, only get a revolution? Where’s the love?”
The surprised burst of Malcolm’s laughter turns heads, but as the smile is fading from his face, he turns his face up at JT. “Wait a minute, did you just ask me to marry you?”
“If you’ll have us. We discussed it last night while you were off boning your evil twin, which, you know, Edrisa was right. It’s kinda hot.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
JT’s brow quirks. “Yes, hopefully. ‘Cause this place has a blacksmith, and it turns out, he knows how to make rings.”
Stunned, Malcolm slips his hand into JT’s elbow. There might be a war brewing, but the idea of settling down here... of making space for a real life again full of joy and community and hope for the future?
“Yes,” Malcolm says. “Of course, yes.”