Chapter Text
Even with the gates, the guards, and the fence lined with the dead, the former-factory-turned-compound is a great deal larger than Malcolm had first estimated. Inside, it’s a hub of activity, conversations echoing with the bustle of a marketplace erected upon what must’ve once been the factory floor. The men who’d caught him in the woods hadn’t bothered to hood or blindfold him after they pulled the pashmina off his head, and this place is too well-run for that to mean anything good. Malcolm wagers there’s little to no chance he’ll be able to talk them into releasing him.
He’s brought to a conference room where a man—presumably the one in charge—sits at the head of the table. If he’s not at the very top of the food chain, he’s certainly close. He’s probably in his late forties or early fifties. About a week’s worth of salt-and-pepper beard growth clings to his face. He has the air of a leader about him, with a mix of keen attention and casual arrogance in his expression. A bat wrapped in barbed wire rests ominously on the table in front of him; by the wear on the handle and the nicks in the barrel, the weapon has presumably seen plenty of use.
One of the goons keeps a hard grip on Malcolm’s arm as the other goes to report in, leaning down subserviently to speak into the man’s ear. With a combination of lip reading and keeping his ears pricked, Malcolm catches a good half of the words spoken in a low whisper, including what’s probably the man’s name.
Negan—if Malcolm’s gotten it right—waves the others away. He kicks back the chair, teetering on its two rear legs as the door closes and Malcolm’s left alone with him. He studies Malcolm for a long moment, his tongue tracing the edge of his teeth.
“You trimmed your hair,” he says, voice rough at the edges, eyes shrewd. “And shaved the beard. I almost didn’t recognize you. If not for those big baby blues.”
Interesting. Mistaken identity certainly explains the reactions of the men who had surrounded him in the woods. Malcolm considers whether or not this could work in his favor when Negan drops his chair back down with a loud bang and stands. He grasps the handle of the bat and lazily circles the table, dragging it along behind him, the metal-on-metal making an awful, grating sound. When it slips off the table, Negan swings it up onto his shoulder with practiced ease.
“You know, I thought we made a real connection that night at Hilltop. Out of all the fine folks kissing the dirt, I thought that you and I understood one another, and how, exactly, this arrangement was going to work.”
Warily, Malcolm keeps his eyes on Negan’s. That’s the second time Hilltop has been mentioned. It could be an outpost, or a community, perhaps.
Coming within arm’s reach, Negan pauses, his weight rocking back on one heel. His eyes narrow as he looks Malcolm up and down. “You and I both know you could’ve just come right up to the door and knocked like a good neighbor. If you’re looking for a cup of sugar, darling, you know I would’ve given it to you. So, I have to ask myself, why the secrecy? Why all the sneaking around,” he makes a little walking gesture with his forefingers, “Gregory—that’s his name right?—he wouldn't send you to spy on Sanctuary and risk making me grumpy. He’d eat a handful of his own turds to stay safe and cozy in that big house of his.”
Negan’s thumb on the handle of the bat shifts restlessly.
Lying is risky. The truth is also risky. It’s a toss of the coin either way.
“I think you have me confused with someone else,” Malcolm says. He closes his fingers into a fist to still their trembling.
Negan’s brow furrows. He scrapes his teeth over his lip and looks down his nose at Malcolm. “Do I, now.”
“Apparently, I have a twin, sir.”
“Wheee-ew,” Negan says, air whistling between his teeth. He rolls his neck and slides his gaze away from Malcolm to eye the wood of the bat. “Did you hear that, Lucille? ‘Sir,’ he says. Goddamn, but that’s some R-E-S-P-E-C-T level of respect, isn’t it?”
Malcolm risks gesturing, waving a hand towards the direction of the compound’s main floor. “Given the size of this place and its defenses, you’ve clearly earned it.”
“Oh, I’ve earned a lot of things,” Negan says. His fingers realign ominously on the handle of the bat. “But if you’re not who I think you are, Jeezy Creezy, boy, who the fuck are you?”
“My name is Malcolm Bright. I’m originally from New York—although that doesn’t really matter much these days, does it?” Malcolm says, going all in on the truth. “My friends and I are traveling south, and we were separated three days ago by a herd. I saw smoke, and thought it might’ve been them making camp, but as it turns out, it was this place. Sanctuary, you called it?”
When Negan moves, he strikes with the speed of a snake. Malcolm attempts to duck and move with it, but it’s not an attack—it’s an arm thrown around his shoulders. He flinches and freezes when Negan drags him close and presses a vicious grin against his temple. This close to ‘Lucille,’ he can see the dark stains of blood left between the wires and smell the lingering stink of the dead clinging to the wood.
“You are a smart fucking cookie, aren’t you, little Malcolm?”
“So I’ve been told,” Malcolm replies, carefully neutral. He tries not to think about what he’d done to the last man who’d called him ‘little Malcolm,’ the intruder he’d found in his mother’s house after she and Ainsley had fled the city, but he can still hear the man’s muffled sobbing in the back of his mind.
“Cookie, you don’t need to try and play coy with me. You have, indeed, found Sanctuary, and we are always looking for new recruits for the Saviors. Now, I’ll tell you what I told your pretty boy lookalike over at Hilltop,” Negan says, falling silent for a moment, his breath warm against Malcolm’s skin. He huffs a soft laugh that is anything but reassuring before he whispers, “Normally, I’m a tits and pussy kind of guy, but damn if I wouldn't make an exception for you.”
A shiver halfway borne of relief ripples through Malcolm. Negan isn’t suddenly any less dangerous in his eyes, but he can understand this dynamic without context. He can work with it. He lets his muscles relax a touch, slowly leans a little more—not eager, but willing—against Negan’s frame.
Negan’s cheeks pull tight into a grin again, and his hand skims down Malcolm’s back to cup the seat of his pants. Long fingers tease the seam disappearing between his legs.
“Mmmm mmm mmm! You’ve got a sweet little ass. Him, I’d put face down, but you, darling, you’re twice as pretty without all that hair on your face.”
Malcolm tips his chin up, catching Negan’s gaze at the corner of his eye. He lets his mouth fall slack and parts his legs slightly. The thud of the man’s heartbeat echoes into his arm, steady but rising. It mirrors his own. How many steps would there be from seduction to escape, he wonders. Or, perhaps he’s dreaming too small. Well-armed and defensible, if it’s not rotten to the core, this could be the sort of community that’d be worth trying to take the reins.
“Down, boy,” Negan chides and gives his ass a pat. He swings Lucille around and points her at the door. “Let’s give you a tour of the place first, shall we?”
*
Sanctuary is impressive. It’s a veritable small town with a sizable number of family units and a system of commerce.
“You grow your own food?” Malcolm asks as Negan leads him through a series of processing stations. A half-dozen people work on a loose assembly line cleaning and canning root vegetables.
“We’re trying, but the soil’s not ideal. We trade for it.”
“In exchange for security, I imagine,” Malcolm guesses, speaking euphemistically. It would explain the apparent mafia-style power structure. With the rules he’s put in place, Negan sits at the top of a very large pyramid ruled both by fear and the illusion of safety. No one’s clearly happy about the conditions, but no one has a better idea.
“Sanctuary means sanctuary,” Negan says. His hand finds the small of Malcolm’s back again as he steers them off the factory floor towards what appear to be living quarters. Some of the doors are decorated with small tokens like any apartment building. “You think you wanna stay?”
“Absolutely. My friends are still out there somewhere, though,” Malcolm replies. He pauses for a beat before aiming a demure look Negan’s way. “But if they see the same signs of civilization that I did, they’ll find their way here.”
“Tell me, cookie, you ever wanted to get married?”
Malcolm hides his confusion at the non sequitur. “Once upon a time.”
“Marriage is a fine institution, but I’ve made a few improvements,” Negan says. He hooks a thumb into the pocket of his jeans as they turn and stroll down a long, faceless hallway. His tongue licks at the corner of his mouth, and it doesn’t take a profiler to know what he’s thinking about.
In truth, he’s not exactly far from Malcolm’s type, physically; it’s the rest of him that’s a touch objectionable.
“Improvements? How so?”
“Why have one ball and chain, when you can have half a dozen ready-and-willing wives? I am a man with a strong libido and a varied appetite.”
“Polygamy is a hardly novel improvement,” Malcolm points out, the words tumbling out of him before he can catch them. He winces inwardly and tries to soften them by adding: “Historically speaking.”
“Hardly novel...” Negan repeats. His teeth dig into his lip as he spins around to eyeball Malcolm all over again. “Oh, you’re not just smarter than the average bear, son, you are motherfucking educated. You said New York, now let me guess: Columbia.”
Malcolm cocks an eyebrow. “Close.”
“Oh, I love a good guessing game,” Negan purrs. He steps in, backs Malcolm up against the wall until there’s hardly any space left between them. “Close, huh? Ivy League, maybe? Were you a rich boy once upon a time?”
“Once.”
“Family money?” Negan flips Lucille around, hooking the base of the handle into the waist of Malcolm’s pants. He gives it a tug, peering down with lewd curiosity, though there’s nothing to be seen with the length of Malcolm’s tee still clinging to the flat of his stomach “... old money?”
“Yes, and… yes,” Malcolm says, a bit of surprise leaking into his tone. Is it that Negan is remarkably perceptive or just good at guessing?
He settles a hand on Malcolm’s hip and leans down to whisper right in his ear. “Were you a ‘took it between the thighs at boarding school’ kind of old money rich boy?”
An electric sizzle races up Malcolm’s spine. “Boarding school, yes,” he says, staying carefully still. “But I wasn’t exactly a popular enough kid to get laid. College was a different story. Did you still want to make that guess?”
Negan pulls back to stare directly into Malcolm’s eyes. “Yale.”
Malcolm smirks. “Harvard.”
“Damn!” Negan says, stomping his heel as he peels away, shockingly good-natured in losing the mental coin toss. He resumes leading Malcolm through the warren of hallways. “A Harvard man. Here I was hoping my bride-to-be would spill all the juicy shit about those Skull and Bones secret society conspiracy theories.”
“Sorry, no secret societies in my past.” Just plenty of secrets, Malcolm thinks, following along and still working overtime to try and profile Negan. “So, you don’t want me to work for you, or simply have a bit of, uh, fun… you want me to marry you?”
“Well, all three makes for a super sweet package deal. But it’s a choice I’m giving you, not an ultimatum, cookie. No rape in Sanctuary is a hard and fast rule for every single one of my people. My soldiers obey me, and my wives, well, they don’t obey me so much as they make themselves available, if you get my drift. They get the best food, the best beds, and the best damn entertainment that Sanctuary has to offer, and all they have to do is promise not to engage in any hanky-panky behind my back.”
“Sounds like a good deal.”
“Oh, it is. And if you’ll have me, Malcolm Bright,” Negan says, and opens the door to what is obviously a harem, “let me show you to your new quarters.”
*
In the interest of self-preservation and a soft bed, Malcolm finds himself the newest of Negan’s wives. Negan introduces him to the women and ends the tour by giving him a slow, lingering kiss that is as much a demonstration as it is a test.
“Remember, wife is a state of mind,” Negan says, murmuring the words straight against his mouth. “Be good and show the new boy the ropes, girls,” he adds, smacking Malcolm on the ass before leaving him in their care.
“I’ve been told I resemble someone,” Malcolm says, unsure if the stunned gawking is another case of mistaken identity or if he’s the first man Negan’s shown interest in. He gnaws on his lip knowing he’s encroaching on what is, in many ways, a safe space for these women. One look at them and he can tell that nearly all of them aren’t truly here because they want to be. Like him, most of them have obviously made the only choice available to them to save their own skin.
After a moment of sizing him up, one of them waves him over and tells him to follow her.
“Sherry, right?” he says, having done his best to fix names to faces as Negan had rattled them off spitfire. Just as with Negan, she has an air about her. If there’s a leader amongst the women, it’s her.
“Good memory,” she says. She takes him out of the main lounging room to yet another hallway, taking him, first, to what will be his quarters before showing him where the shared bathroom and showers are. “We can send your clothes to the wash while you get cleaned up, and in the meantime, welcome to the Wardrobe.”
Malcolm looks around an entire room full of scavenged clothes sorted by size, color, and type. Amongst the racks and piles are a few mannequins modeling evening wear, stacks of lingerie, boxes of jewelry overflowing like treasure chests.
“Not sure we have much in here that’s suitable for you, or how Negan wants you to dress, but you should be able to find something that’ll fit until we can get a seamstress to make something to his specifications.”
“Any suggestions?” Malcolm asks. Most of the piles appear to be various dresses or flimsy blouses. “If these have all been chosen to his taste, it seems to run towards elegant and extremely feminine.”
Sherry digs through a box and comes up with a couple pairs of booty shorts. “Maybe one of these? Unless you’d rather try on a dress….”
“I was never into the drag scene,” Malcolm murmurs, accepting the pair of black cutoffs and holding them up to his waist. They’ll fit well enough. He snags a halter top with a ruched front off a hanger to go with it. “And I’m betting Negan isn’t, either.”
“Negan is full of surprises,” Sherry says. There’s a bitter undertone to her words.
Malcolm takes his time browsing to let that sink in before casting a thoughtful look at Sherry. “Does he treat you well? The wives, I mean. Us, I guess.”
“Mostly, but not always. He has moods like any man.”
“Any advice?”
Sherry’s eyes are flat and dangerous. “Don’t ever cross him.”