Chapter Text
From the second his knees hit the ground, Rick knows he’s fucked. He doesn’t hear more than half of the grandstanding from the man in the leather jacket; he can’t focus on anything but how to get away, get his people safe. Then, the man is dangling a barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat in his face, and when he tells Rick it’s time to pay up, his brain shorts out completely.
Rick watches as Glenn jumps out of the line toward Maggie, sees the crossbow pointed at his head before he’s dragged back. Rick hears—loud and clear—the order not to move, the promise that they’ll get no second chances. But Rick can’t process any of it. His brain just won’t accept it. If he could think, Rick would pray that his people will listen, that someone—anyone—will stop this. If he could think, Rick would wish that he’d died when he got shot at the beginning of it all—if he was only ever going to make it this far. If he could think, Rick would be begging God to let him wake up in the hospital and have this all have been the worst nightmare of his life.
But Rick can’t think, can’t pray, can’t beg. He can only watch in horror as the man in front of him sings a nursery rhyme to decide which of them to bludgeon to death. The only thing Rick knows is that he can’t stop it; if he tries, they might all die. Rick wants to scream at the man to stop this. Maybe he even does. He’s not sure of anything right now, least of all how anyone else is keeping still. A terror unlike anything he’s ever known—even after all the horrible shit he’s seen—is what keeps Rick on his knees. An icy paralysis tenses every muscle in his body tighter than they’re meant to go, like his bones are trying to fuse together, while his brain shrieks at him to keep still: stay still, obey, and stay alive. Like a weak fucking coward. But Rick knows his people are strong. Stronger than he is. Any second now one of them might try to put up a fight even as outgunned and outmanned as they are.
Then, in a flash, Abraham is dead. It takes too many hits. Rick feels each one like a blow to his own skull. He wretches, he wails, he nearly pisses himself. Rick doesn’t hear another word out of the man in leather’s mouth. It’s like the whole world has stopped spinning. He keeps bringing the bat down until there’s nothing left at all between it and the ground but slick, dark blood. Rick wants to fucking die. How could he let this happen?
The man is advancing on Rosita now, and Rick should get up. He should unbend his knees and throw himself at this motherfucker and let his people try to run for it. One of them might make it. One might get a weapon. But it’s like his body is made of stone, like his knees have become part of the earth, like his mind isn’t in control anymore. Rick doesn’t do a damn thing. Instead, it’s Daryl who finally does something. And it’s Glenn who pays the price. Maggie’s screams pierce Rick like bullets. Rick’s heart has stopped, shattered, or exploded. He’s breathing in short, painful gasps. Like Lori had during labor. Which is not a helpful thought to have now, but Rick’s brain seems to be jumping from one unhelpful thought to another. From Lori to Abraham, to Glenn. From the Carl’s first steps to brain and blood and bone splattering against his eyepatch. Maybe Rick has been hit in the head. Maybe the man had picked him, and this is all his dying, confused brain’s final gasp.
Rick is in shock. Intellectually, he should know that. Once, he’d been trained in identifying the symptoms, and he’s lived through enough of this new nightmare world to become intimately familiar with them. He doesn’t remember how to treat it. Even if he did remember, Rick deserves this. He hopes it kills him.
Rick can’t see through his tears, can’t hear over his and everyone else’s sobbing, but he feels the earth shake as the man in leather prances right over to him and comes to a stop. Rick isn’t sure where the bat went, but somehow, it’s gone. The man crouches down to Rick’s level, like he’s talking to toddler.
“I thought you were the leader, honey. Why is it no one’s following your example and sitting nice and quiet, huh?” The man coos at Rick. In another world, in another life, on any other night, Rick would have kicked the shit out of anyone who tried talking to him like that. Right now, he mind swims with fear, with anguish.
Distantly, internally some tiny part of Rick is seething, burning, coiling with rage. He will kill this man. One day. No matter what it takes. It isn’t a thought or threat so much as a fact. As much as a part of Rick as his bones are. He’d like to say as much, but on the surface, all Rick can do is tremble and cry and wish he were dead.
The man cocks his head to the side and grins. “C’mere.”
He grabs Rick by the armpits and hoists him to his feet. Rick gags as blood-stained fingers make contact with his face; the man tilts Rick’s chin up, turns him from one side to the other. He hums thoughtfully. Rick doesn’t know what to make of it. If his mind was functioning instead of fracturing, Rick would be able to tell that the way the man appraises him is less an enemy assessing how dangerous he is and much more in line with the way a certain type of man looks at women walking alone on the street at night. The man’s grin grows, so whatever it is he sees, he seems to like it. He examines Rick’s hands closely; he taps the tip of each of Rick’s fingers. Like he’s counting that they’re all there, Rick thinks, although he can’t imagine why. The man turns his attention lower, to Rick’s nervously bouncing feet.
“You got all ten toes in there?” he asks, confirming Rick’s suspicion and then pressing his heel down sharply on the toes in question. Bringing fresh tears to Rick’s eyes.
Rick hisses out a breath of pain and mumbles, “Yessir.”
The “sir” pleases him, his sharklike smile sharpening somehow, and Rick curses his upbringing.
“Shit, honey, you can just call me Negan.” He winks.
Rick’s stomach roils.
“I said, you can call me Negan…” He trails off meaningfully.
It takes a minute for the unspoken question to register. “Rick.”
“Rick…hm.” Negan tests the name out, like he’s never heard it before. Like Negan is the normal name. “Well, Rick, you ever take it up the ass?”
“What?”
Negan seems delighted by Rick’s surprise. “That a no, beautiful?”
“I—what?” Rick splutters. What Rick heard can’t possibly be what was asked. Rick must be dead and in hell. And apparently his own personal hell is this: being propositioned by a psychopath.
“Have you ever had a dick inside of your ass, Rick?”
“No…?”
“Well, fuck don’t ask me!” Negan cackles. His hands dip suddenly lower, and he takes a generous, painful squeeze.
“Don’t!”
His son voices the demand Rick can’t bring himself to, but Carl can’t see Negan’s scowl, doesn’t know what he’s doing.
“Carl, shush!”
Negan keeps his hands firmly planted on Rick’s ass—sliding into his back pockets and cupping—as he turns to face Carl.
“Whatsamatter, short stack? Jealous? He’s a bit old for you.”
Carl makes a disgusted face.
“Oh, you some kind of church group?” Negan sounds excited at the prospect.
“No, that’s my dad, you asshole!”
Rick could almost laugh. His son survives the first round of senseless violence meted out by an unpredictable madman only to try his luck again. Risking it all for what? Rick’s dignity? What fucking dignity does he have left? At least, it seems that Negan is done punishing backtalk with death by bat. Rick would be grateful if he weren’t also being groped by a murderer in front of his son while their whole family is being held at gunpoint, kneeling in the bloody carnage of two of its members, during the fucking apocalypse.
Looking down at Glenn’s body—where his shoulders meet nothing—Rick can’t laugh. He can’t be grateful. He can’t do anything. He stands there and waits for Negan to stop laughing at his son. Not knowing what comes next. Struggling to care, to focus on what matters: Carl. Carl is alive. Rick shakes himself. His stubborn, brave, beautiful son is alive. He needs Rick alive. He needs Rick thinking.
“You don’t want me to touch your daddy?” Negan taunts.
Rick wills his son to stay quiet, and he seems to finally get the message. But Negan isn’t satisfied. There’s a dangerous gleam in his eyes. He drags Rick over closer to Carl—to give the boy a better view, Rick thinks, his stomach churning. God, what hell had Rick dragged his people into? Negan has one hand down the back of Rick’s pants. With an almost comical slowness, he draws the other down Rick’s side—ticklishly light—to the hem of Rick’s shirt. He reaches underneath and up, then scores his nails across Rick’s chest painfully. He draws blood. It beads against Rick’s already viscera splattered shirt. Rick doesn’t make a noise. He doesn’t look at Carl, afraid of what his son might see in his eyes just then.
“Carl, was it?” Negan asks as he takes Rick’s chin between his fingers and thumb.
Carl’s lip curls, but he says nothing. Negan takes half a step forward, eliciting a flinch that makes him snicker.
“He’s just a kid,” Rick mumbles, reluctant to draw the man’s attention back to himself but determined to keep it off of his son.
“Hm.”
Negan keeps his eyes on Carl as he squeezes Rick’s chin. For a terrifying second, Rick thinks Negan’s going to kiss him. Then he’s stepping behind Rick and digging his hands into his shoulders. Fingers dig into Rick’s flesh, kneading. The least relaxing massage of Rick’s life, not that he’d had many.
“Pretty big for a kid,” Negan comments almost idly, his lips brushing Rick’s ear. Rick jerks away from his mouth. Negan tightens his grip.
“Where’s mama?” Keeping one hand firmly clasped around the nape of Rick’s neck, Negan steps up beside Rick to scan the group, considering features and searching for jealousy. Rick thanks God for Michonne’s steady poker face and Carl’s ghostlike paleness.
“Dead,” Rick says flatly. He’s not willing to think of Lori now.
“Shit, I’m sorry to hear that, Rick.” Against all logic, he sounds genuinely contrite.
Rick shrugs as much as he can with Negan’s hands on him. Lori’s loss is a wound that would never heal. Not in this world or the old one. But why this psychopath felt the need to sympathize after what he’d just done didn’t make any fucking sense.
“Of course, it makes my life easier,” Negan says, his voice bright and cocky once more. Performing for the captive audience.
Rick blinks. What the fuck does that mean?
“I’m a competitive son of a bitch. And as you may have noticed, I don’t like other people touching what’s mine.”
Rick doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he simply doesn’t. He sneaks a glance at Carl, and his son is glowering at Negan again, eye boring into the back of the other man’s head with a frightening intensity. Negan taps his thumb menacingly against the button of Rick’s pants. Rick swallows nervously.
“Stop fucking touching him!”
Negan whips around, dragging Rick with him, lifting him fully off the ground in the process. Rick gasps as the world spins. He loses sight of Carl, and his mind bellows in protest. But Rick can’t turn around; Negan’s pulled Rick into an embrace, his face mashed painfully into leather and zippers.
“I’ve got a low fucking tolerance for people telling me what to do,” Negan says over Rick’s head. The tone of his voice—the “aren’t I reasonable guy” one he’d used while deciding who to kill—makes Rick quiver.
“Carl…be quiet, son.” Rick’s voice is muffled by Negan’s ridiculous scarf.
“Best listen to your daddy, hm? He doesn’t seem to mind.”
“Fuck you,” Carl spits out.
Negan shoves Rick aside; unprepared and unaware of just how much the other man had been holding him up, Rick tumbles to the ground. His mind screams at him to get up and do something, and this time, he does.
“Hope you’re not too attached to that eye, boy. Otherwise, this might fucking hurt.”
“No, no, please!” Negan turns back Rick, a raised eyebrow directed toward the trembling hand Rick has wrapped around his wrist.
“He’s just a kid. Please.”
Negan tugs his wrist away like it takes no effort at all to shake Rick off. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe Rick just lets him do it, like he let him kill Abraham and Glenn. Like he let him molest him in front of his son.
“Yeah, and what if I kill your kid, Rick? Spread his brains out on the ground like your friends here? What’re you gonna do about it, honey? You gonna stop me?”
He’s smirking like he was before—when his hands were copping a feel. It’s a test, but there’s no right answer. Rick is shaking. The fear is so thick in his mind that he can’t think. He just reaches out uselessly for Negan. He puts himself back between the danger and his child. Rick shuts off the part of his brain that says he has any pride at all, gets back on his knees, and begs.
“Please.”
Negan looks mollified. Delighted, even. “Please what?”
Rick’s mind goes blank and staticky. What the fuck does he mean what?
“…sir?”
Negan laughs—so do a few of the men around them—and Rick feels a drop of embarrassment join the ocean of fear he’s drowning in.
“That’s sweet, baby, but no. I mean what are you asking me so nicely for?”
Rick tries valiantly to think. Luckily, Negan seems amused by his hesitation rather than annoyed.
“Don’t hurt anyone else. Please.”
“Hmm. I dunno, Rick. You killed a lot more of my guys than I have of yours. Not exactly square, are we?”
“I—I’m—we’re sorry.”
“Ah, shit, guys, d’you hear that? Rick says they’re fucking sorry!”
The surrounding men laugh angrily. Rick’s people cower closer together.
“Just how sorry are you, sweetheart?”
“I…very.”
“Oh, very. Well, that’s a relief to hear because as you may have noticed I don’t exactly love it when people show up and kill my folks.”
“So why don’t we make a deal, Ricky?”
Rick nods. “Anything.”
“‘Anything’? You don’t even want to hear what it’ll cost you?”
“Just don’t hurt anyone else. Let them go.”
“Oh, I don’t think you get it yet. You—all of you—belong to me.” Negan turns away, makes a sweeping gesture that includes the circle of people on their knees, those guarding them, and the land in all directions. “Welcome to the Saviors! We’re one big happy family.”
Negan turns back to Rick. “But I’m amenable to a bigger, happier family. One with more smiling faces than…” He gestures to the remains of Glenn and Abraham. “But only if Rick here can make it up to me.”
Rick is already nodding. There’s nothing he won’t do if it means saving his people, his son.
“Anything.”
Negan’s smile is all teeth and scorn and danger. He takes hold of Rick’s hands, intertwines their fingers. Rick flinches initially when he leans down but holds still and lets Negan plant a lingering but chaste kiss on his lips.
“Well, by the power vested in me—by me—we’re married.”
Jesus Christ, what the actual fuck?