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Funny how so much can change in such a short amount of time. Especially when time is a thing that’s so hard to track nowadays. It’s only ever what’s real quick, or real long, that anyone ever really notices. And the time between learning what was really going on inside the Commonwealth and construction beginning at Hilltop most definitely fit into the former catagory.
Most of the people helping with construction are from the Commonwealth, but there were some who gave up their asylum to make sure things at Hilltop were done right. Maggie being one of them, of course. Especially considering it was her job to make sure things were done right. Literally. The only people she had to answer to in all of it was those who controlled the budget and supplies. Other than that it was something all her own; building a more apocalypse-friendly Hilltop from the skeleton to the solar panels.
Everyone was greeted at the gate with a ‘thank you for helping us.’ Until Negan showed up.
“What are you doing here?” was his greeting.
He shrugs, in that way that’s almost insultingly casual. Though this is the very mindset she’s trying to move past. Awareness is the first step, supposedly. “Well,” he says, shifts his weight a little and takes a deep breath. He does that a lot while talking to her. “We were the first who started tearing the place down. And I’m the only lucky bastard still around to volunteers. So here I am.” He looks at her, and she expects him to start doing it smugly. She’s left hanging on that one. “If that’s alright.”
“It’s alright.”
It’s an easy decision to make. Most of the people there were living rose colored, government protected, lives, and if weapon weilding walkers showed up at their front door they’d all just be someone else added to the list of people she’d need to protect. Knowing there was one more person who would be able to take care of themselves, and Hershel God forbid he get separated from her, is an undeniable relief.
She laughs to herself a little later that night as she ponders this. That her son, her everything, is safe with that man. And that she’d trust him enough to do it again. She trusts her only reason for living with the same person who took away the only other one she had.
It’s hard not to wonder what Glenn would think. Though she knows deep in her gut he would have been a great father she can only wonder how he’d do it. Would he understand that, somehow, it’s possible for Maggie to both trust and despise Negan? Probably not. She still doesn’t quite understand it herself.
It helps that Hershel can handle himself around Negan, even knowing who he is. Lydia had told her once that Hershel had made negan cry when he found out. Maggie had been so proud, even if she couldn’t tell him why.
This is rooted in the same sort of thing that Negan had so much respect for Carl for. So she’s certain that Hershel is safe with him, since Negan has turned down prime opportunies to hurt both boys.
The safety of her son has got to be one of those things she decides with her head and not her heart. And her head is the part of her that’s trying so desperately to dispel the hold Negan has on her.
He’s helpful too, which she notices pretty quickly. Volunteering for almost anything. After Daryl leaves for his trip Lydia comes back to Hilltop, and it’s an undeniable shock when a big part of that reason was to be close to Negan. The two of them and Elijah share a trailer. Maggie’s heard he isn’t a bad roommate.
Plus he isn’t one of the people on the team who heads back to the Commonwealth to hunker down for a storm that’s clearly coming. So little people stay they all move into the first floor of the building, which is almost done anyway.
Maggie tries not to think too much about the decision to put his room next to hers and Hershel’s. When she can’t help it she insists it’s for Hershel’s benefit. Everything is, after all.
The building is warmer than the trailers, since most of the rooms have fireplaces, but the lack of roof is doing them no favors as far as protecting them from the wind. And once the snow starts to fall the question of whether or not there will be enough to have what they’ve built of the ceilings caving in on them. The fireplaces seem to be worth the risk to everyone.
Lydia and Hershel start playing a board game after dinner, and knowing them they’ll be at it all night, so Maggie climbs up to the little bit of the second floor that’s sturdy. The spot right at the top of the stairs, where the couch and two windows used to be. The air is sharp and cold in her lungs, and it’s the kind of cold that makes her feel alive. Like she could take on the world right then and there. Nature’s shot of adrenaline.
She sits on the edge, after brushing a bit of snow away, and watches the feather light flakes fall. It hardly ever snowed back in Georgia, and she still feels like a little kid sometimes when it does. Even when she worries her toes will fall off or Hershel will get hypothermia, there are still times when snowfall brings a smile to her face. Now is one of these times.
Even if she’s wondering how many Walkers between the trees she peers down on are starting to learn how to use their rotten brains again.
She hears the creaking sound of someone coming up the steps, and she recognizes the footsteps immediately. Back from the days where him simply approaching her set her into fight or flight. These little things, as well as little cues and mannerisms, about Negan she will never forget. Her mind won’t let her, always anticipating something from him.
“Mind some company?” is what he asks her. It isn’t lost on her how he’s a million times more considerate with her than he is with most people. Always tip toeing around her. Always on his best behavior.
Good. The bastard deserves it.
“No.” She doesn’t mind his company all that much in general. Not like it once had. It’s getting easier, and she wants it to get easier. Still, she’s glad he keeps his distance when he sits on the edge like her. “Growin’ up there wasn’t ever much snow. Whenever it did, whole town shut down. It felt like the early days of the end. That eerie silence. Only there was somethin’ nice about it back then. Somethin’ peaceful.”
“Well that’s just peachy, cause I just remember it being a pain in the ass, even back then. Gotta get up an hour early to dig out your car, everyone drives like an asshole, and a shitty heating system decides how well you’re gonna sleep.”
It’s a little funny to her, not in the literal comical way, that he hadn’t strayed far from home all these years after everything fell. Has he ever even left Virginia? Is it nostalgia or convenience keeping him here so long? She doesn’t either of these questions. “Which is harder to shovel; dirt or snow?”
He scoffs a little. “Snow, for sure. The second it starts to melt, gets heavy as shit. First job I ever had was shoveling driveways, and I didn’t get paid nearly enough.”
Maggie’s brows pull together a little. “People would pay other people for that?”
“Not people, kids . And mostly just old people and rich assholes. Every other regularly paid, able bodied asshole had to do it themselves. Last winter before everything went to shit we ended up getting the kid across the street to do it. Definitely worth the thirty bucks.”
“We?”
Maggie tears her eyes away from the view to look over at him just in time to watch his demeanor change into something she’s never seen on him. His hands come together and he looks down at them. He’s wearing that same sort of pitiful look he sometimes gives her when she can tell he’s feeling guilty about what he’s done to her and her family, both blood related and chosen.
But there’s something else mixed in there that she doesn’t recognize.
Everyone’s lost someone from before. Most people have lost everyone from before. But neither he nor anyone on his behalf has mentioned anyone from his life before. At least not to her. She can’t help but wonder, while he’s building up the wherewithal to answer her question, who the second half of we is. Parents? Siblings? Both?
“My wife.”
Oh .
Maggie turns her gaze back towards the treetops, since he looks so little like a husband she suddenly can’t look at him at all. Is this something about him most people know? Or is she as surprised to find out as everyone else who had was? There’s never been a ring on his finger, but there’s no way of telling if this is a conscious choice he had made or if it, like almost everything else, had gotten lost along the way.
She wants to know more but, again, doesn’t want to ask. Asking would mean divulging interest in him, which she ins’t ready to admit to herself much less to him directly. Plus those who were lost in the beginning of the end is a sore subject for almost anyone, so it’s not something she’d typically ask anyway.
“She had cancer, so she was too weak to do anything, really, at that point. And I was out a lot, looking for work, running errands and all that other bullshit that doesn’t matter anymore. Driving her to the doctor. Just… didn’t have the time for much after that.”
Maggie is uncertain of how to respond. And has been, in similar situations, for a while. She knows just what to say about someone who was killed or bitten. But she’s forgotten how to console people about a death that happened in a perfectly normal way.
Which isn’t to say she’s particularly keen on comforting him. But it’s an undeniably hard loss. And, though it isn’t easy for her to admit, he was probably just a regular guy at the time he’s talking about. She was a regular girl back then, after all. Most people were.
It’s easier for her to have sympathy for a Negan who hasn’t killed anyone. Probably.
“That must’ve been real hard,” she says. It’s the closest thing to condolence she can offer at the moment. “Was she still sick when…?”
“Yeah.” He falls quiet, but she doesn’t have to wonder long if this is all he’ll say. “We had all the treatments she needed, and I figured out how to give ‘em to her. But the power went out one day, and they had to be refrigerated, and…”
He doesn’t need to continue, she can read between the lines.
“Sometimes I like to think it was better that way, those that died early on. They never had to see how bad it can get. That normal life never felt so long ago,” Maggie says, in some kind of half hearted attempt at advice. “The farm I grew up on; we didn’t get a lot of Walkers. We were just about in the middle of nowhere. My momma, and my brother, they died before we had to leave. And maybe… maybe it’s better that way. If my momma was alive when my daddy died, it would’ve killed her. And a real close friend of the family, he died to save Carl’s life before we had to leave, too..”
In her peripheral vision she sees Negan look over at her. “Really? You were with Rick and them that long?”
She nods a little bit. “He was out hunting, shot a deer. Carl was standing right behind it, bullet went right through the damn buck. Next thing I know Otis is running up the yard screaming like somethin’ fierce, and there’s a man I never seen before carrying a boy behind him, lookin’ like he’s seen a ghost. Carl, he was so little. Couldn’t have been older than twelve. He almost didn’t make it, it was so damn scary . They had to go on a run for somethin’ to keep him going, Walkers caught up to them. Otis let them catch him so Shane could bring it back and save Carl.”
“That was a good call. Carl was one hell of a kid.”
Maggie lets out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “One of a kind, I’d say. I think he would have loved Hershel.”
“Course he would’ve,” Negan says. “Hershel reminds me a bit of him.”
She meets his gaze, finding that he seems to be completely serious. “Really?”
“He’s even less afraid of me than Carl was.”
Maggie can feel herself practically glowing with pride at this. So much so that she doesn’t even try to suppress the smile this brings to her face. To her surprise he returns it, and she thinks she can sense a pride of his own in it. Pride that, for once, doesn’t make her feel sick.
Herschel and Lydia and all the kids are having a sleepover party. Not that there are many kids. But they’re getting extra rations and are hogging all the board games and books, so it’s just about the closest thing they’ll be able to get to a sleepover party nowadays.
It shouldn’t be too cold for them to sleep, especially when each of them have about three extra blankets. But the chill is starting to sink into her bones, and if she gets under the blankets she’ll fall asleep, and she can never fall asleep before Hershel. No, she has to double check that everyone’s watch schedule is set in place and do one extra perimeter check to see how the walls are holding up before she can even think about lying down..
But she is allowing herself to relax a little. With the snow there’s not much they can do; no construction, no hunting, no farming. So, sitting on one folded blanket with another one draped around her shoulders on the floor in front of the burning fireplace, she’s reading a book the Commonwealth had let them borrow. Pirde and Prejudice , which she’d been told dozens of times growing up that she’d enjoy but never got around to reading. There was just always something higher on the list she got to first.
She only started it the day before, but she’s already made impressive progress. Especially considering how formal the language is and how long it had been since she had read anything more than a few lines.
Maggie knows now why everyone had recommended it to her so much. The main character, Elizabeth, is the kind of character Maggie’s always connected with. The kind of strong woman who, at the time, she could only ever dream of being.
The interactions between her and Mr. Darcy makes Maggie’s blood boil. The man is a complete pompous asshole, yet Jane Austen insists on setting him up as an obvious love interest. Every time she sees his name on the page Maggie hopes this will be the time Elizabeth finally convinces him to fuck off for good. Yet he always comes back.
A soft knock on the door startles her. It’s the first time she hasn’t heard Negan coming from a mile away, and the fact that she’d been so absorbed in the book that he managed to sneak up on her is both infuriating and embarrassing; both of which make her face feel hot.
“Got a light?” he asks as he walks over, once he’s close enough tossing a small matchbox at her that, upon further inspection, is empty.
“No, I used my last ones yesterday. I borrowed some from Aaron today,” she says, picking up the small cardboard and tossing it into the flames. No other use for it now.
“Well, seems like everyone else had the same idea, since he only has enough for himself and Gracie tonight.”
That’s not good. The storm is only just starting to roll in, and only God knows how long it’ll last. Maggie folds the corner of the page she’s on to keep her place before closing the book and setting it aside so she can rub her hands over her face. If the snow isn’t too bad in the morning they can go out and look for something, anything, that will spark. But if it’s much more than a flurry, then…
They’ll cross that bridge in the morning. Most of the construction supplies are still inside the walls, no one having bothered to bring them back to the Commonwealth. Maybe they’ll find something.
“You can stay, warm up a bit,” she says. She’s not completely sure why, but she does. It’s not like she wants him to get hypothermia. “Everyone else might be out, too.”
He mutters a thanks she doesn’t particularly need or want before coming over and sitting on the floor, closer to her than he usually does, but she knows this is to get close to the fire rather than to her. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that his knee is only two or so inches away from hers, and that she can hear her pulse in her ears while she looks at the minimal space between them.
He’s oblivious to this, picking up the book and inspecting the front and back cover. “You ever read this before?”
“No.” She looks at him, an eyebrow raised in a silent accusation. “Have you?”
“No,” he says it with a laugh, setting the book back down beside her. “But I had to hear about it for two months every year when the eighth graders started reading it.”
“What?”
“I used to be a teacher.”
She laughs. A loud bark of humorous disbelief. Now this might just be the most unbelievable thing she’s ever heard about him. “You’re joking, right?”
“Oh, I’m being totally serious.” He’s grinning at her, clearly amused by her shock. She can only imagine the look on her face. “Bachelor's degree in education and everything.”
It’s still so hard to believe. “What’d you teach?” she asks, like she’s trying to catch him in a lie. Like she knows what the truth is.
“Middle school gym.” Unfortunately this makes sense to her. “I thought you knew I liked kids.”
She does. Maggie knows Judith used to talk to him through the basement window and how he saved her during that year's snow storm. She knows he and Lydia are close, and that he’s seemed to take on almost a paternal role for her. Which she very much needs, since she’d lost one long before her mother died. And Maggie knows that, despite everything she’s told Hershel about the man who killed his father and that Negan is that very person, Herschel doesn’t mind him too much these days.
“He talks to me like an adult, like you do. No one else really does,” he had said the one time she had asked him about it.
“I suppose so,” she finally says to Negan. “Did you like it?”
“I loved it.” He says it so earnestly. He doesn’t have to say he misses it for her to tell that he does. The way he stares off into space a little bit, like he’s seeing his old students' faces in his unfocused gaze, she imagines it’s one of the things he misses so bad it haunts him. Everyone’s got some. “Meeting all the new kids at the start of every year, and seeing how much they changed by the time summer came around. How they’d get so dman happy over the stupidest shit. It’s pretty damn contagious. I mean, fifty kids screaming for joy cause you told them they didn’t have to run laps on a friday afternoon? It’s hard not to be a little excited, too.”
“I don’t know what to make of you sometimes. Every time I think I’ve got you figured out, you say something I never thought I’d hear.” It kind of slips out, the warmth of the fire and the way she’s devouring the book making her susceptible to speaking her mind, apparently. “I don’t know how to do it, I don’t know how to get a read on you.”
Negan raises one shoulder in an attempt at a shrug. “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you’re too busy reading into everything that you’re missing the bigger picture.”
“I know what your big picture is,” she says, and a bit of the venomous disdain she has for him starts to leak through her voice.
“No, I don’t think you do, Maggie. I don’t think you understand anything about who I am.” He doesn’t sound particularly angry. Honestly, he seems more tired than anything. Tired of having this same damn arguemnt with her, just in different ways, over and over again. “Look, I’m not trying to make excuses… I don’t have to tell you what it’s like to lose someone in a way that… well, ruins your fucking life. Those last moments, that last goodbye, I didn’t just not have it. She took it from me. And then I was alone. You, you have family. You have a whole army of people who care about you, a whole line of shoulders ready to be cried on. All I had was a leather jacket that still kind of smelled like her and my own thoughts. And you know what kind of thoughts you're left with after losing everything. With no one around to bring me out of them, they just started controlling me. Who I was when I met you all, I wasn’t always like that. And I’m not like that now.”
Maggie’s arms wrap around her legs and bring them close to her chest while he talks. Lectures her, more like. Yet she finds herself listening. Part of her is appalled that he’s implying she was lucky in any part of Glenn’s death. Another part knows he’s right. Glenn’s last words, last moments, last thoughts were loving Maggie. Knowing Negan’s wife was sick, and knowing she took away his goodbye, she can put the pieces together.
It makes her think of Beth. Her sweet Beth, who the world has long since not deserved. Her death had been dealt with based soley on the fact that Maggie knows her little girl didn’t just make it into Heaven, that Beth has been crowned an angel upon entry.
But she remembers when that almost happended to early. When she and Lori had busted the bathroom door down to keep Beth from killing herself. Even thinking about how much blood had been pouring from her writsts makes Maggie’s throat burn with tears. Thinking about finding her too late… she has to turn her head away from him a little bit and make sure the sniffle she does is extremely deliberate and quiet.
“You never told me about her. Never tried to make me understand before.”
“I didn’t think you’d care. Or that it would matter either way. I know you’re trying, I just didn’t know when you’d be ready to hear something like that.” He looks down at his hands and to her surprise he almost seems like he’s searching for a wedding ring he no longer has. “I think you two would have gotten along.”
Now this really catches her off guard. “Why’s that?”
Not only does he smile but Maggie swears he blushes a little bit. This conversation feels unreal. “She was the first one who never put up with my bullshit. The way she used to tell me off for being a prick, you would’ve gotten a kick out of it.”
Maggie manages a smile at this, even if the idea of some kind of alternate universe where she’s hanging out with Negan and his wife over dinner and a bottle of wine is a little too surreal. “You’re probably right, then. She sounds like she was special.” She had to be if he has the gall to compare the effect of her death to Glenn’s to Maggie’s face.
Negan smiles and nods, but doesn’t really say anything to answer this. They both stare into the fire rather than look at each other, listening to the crackling flames and the distant happy shouts of children.
“You and Lydia seem real close. How’d that happen?” This is something she doesn’t mind asking him, since it’s not just entirely about him. She wasn’t around when Lydia joined their people, yet Maggie feels close to the girl. Not only after learning where she had come from, but because she has proven to be helpful time and time again, as well as a very sweet and caring girl.
“She came a little before they decided to let me out. Turns out we had a lot in common. No one in Alexandria trusted either of us, or really wanted us around. People blamed her for the people her mom killed, and everyone never forgot what I did.” Negan lets out a breathy laugh. “And, hey; I get it. But not for her, she was just a kid. Trying so damn hard to fit in. But these two boys tried to jump her, I was just in the right place at the right time to help.”
Yet another person added to the list of people Negan has saved that Maggie is keeping meticulous track of. As if statistics will heal the wound in her heart. “She seems to look up to you.”
Negan turns and looks at her, wearing an expression she can’t quite make out other than the fact that he must have conflicting feelings towards this observation. “She looks up to you more.”
The lapses of silence between them are surprisingly comfortable. But, since she has time to analyze this, it starts to make sense. It’s easier than trying to talk, since everything they each say to the other is so calculated. And even now, when they’re both being a little more vulnerable than they usually have the time for, it’s hard. The more humanizing things she sees and hears from him, the more she feels like a fish out of water in his presence.
She can feel him working up to speak minutes before he does. Can practically hear the gears in his head turning. “You know, if you ever felt like it… talking about Glenn, what he was like… I would wanna listen.”
Maggie tenses the moment Glenn’s name falls from his tongue. She can feel the familiar fight or flight sensation trying to take over, but she sets her jaw and ressists its temptation. This is him trying, and she has to let him.
“Maybe. I’d like to try. Make you understand what kind of person you took. I just… don’t know when.”
“There’s no rush, Maggie.”
She can tell he means this.
Maggie ends up finishing the book that night, forcing her to reconcile with the fact that her first impression of two somewhat similar men had both been proven wrong in one night.
When she finishes the book she lays face down on her bed for a little bit, simply processing it all. The book and the conversation, which she had put off thinking about by finishing the book. Leaving herself in a state of complete emotional overdrive once she does.
Her stomach drops, plummeting through the earth, when the two get so mixed up in her mind that she starts imagining Mr. Darcy as Negan. He could certainly play the part, were he thrust into eighteenth century England. This is especially infuriating given how deeply she relates to the character of Elizabeth.
Once her imagination can no longer differentiate fact from fiction, and playing out scenarios that made her a little queasy, she decides to do the perimeter check early.
The temperature drops a lot more than they had anticipated. It’s well into the night, probably around four in the morning, and Maggie’s still awake. Curled up as small as she can make herself, blankets tucked in as tight as possible. Shivering. She’s not going to get sick from the chill, it isn’t that bad. But it’s keeping her up, and she can’t think straight when she isn’t well rested. And she can’t afford to not think straight right now.
Maggie forces herself out of bed, a shiver shooting through her at how cold the wood is against her bare feet. She wraps her arms around herself as she makes her way into the hallway, where she realizes she isn’t sure what she’s getting up for. More blankets? She doesn’t want to take any from someone else who needs them. To get Hershel so they can share body heat? She could, but she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to interrupt his much needed time with friends, a little taste of normalcy that he so desperately deserves.
She turns back to her room, but her gaze lands on the one next to hers. Negan’s door is cracked open, and just as silent as any other one. Is she the only one that can’t sleep? Is it only the cold keeping her awake?
Her silent footsteps feel loud as she walks over to the cracked door, her trembling worsening from anticipation rather than temperature. The door is open almost enough for her to stick her head through, but it’s still hard to make much out in the dark. None of the rooms have much furniture, which is about all she can see. Like the fact that his bed is pressed against the same wall in the same place that hers is.
The creak of the door is quiet when she pushes it open, yet it still sounds amplified from the natural soundproofing of snow on every surface outside. If he hears this he doesn’t react. She’s listening so intently she would have known.
The voice that screams at her every time she lets him in a little bit more has seemingly been left in her bedroom. Which is only further proved by how, while hugging herself tightly, Maggie’s feet carry her over to stand next to his bed.
He’s laying on his back, head falling to one side slightly. He’s asleep. She envies him for it. God , she needs to sleep. There’s not even a faint glow of heat in the fireplace across the room. The only warmth in the room is right in front of her.
Maggie’s in awe of herself, at what she’s doing, and what kind of chain of events she’s starting. But she’s so goddamn cold, and she remembers when the cement walls of the prison years ago created a chill that went down to her bones that no blanket could compare to the warmth of Glenn holding her.
It’s a warmth she misses so much she could cry just thinking about it. Misses it so much she’s willing to settle for a version of it that it might repulse her in the morning.
But it isn't morning. It's a dark, freezing night. And she knows it’ll be easier when she can’t see him.
There isn’t much room beside Negan, but she’s had a lot of practice making herself small. She peels the blankets back and climbs onto the bed as slow and deliberate as possible, hoping that she can get in, sleep, and get out without waking him and taking this night to her grave. But the mattress not only dips but creaks under her added weight, and she hears his breathing change. She winces and is even slower to lay her head down and bring the blankets up to her chin, holding her breath while she waits to see if he’ll move or not.
He does, after just long enough to think he might not. His breathing changes again, one long inhale while he stretches his arms out to his sides a little bit. One of them presses against Maggie’s arms curled in front of her. The long inhale is cut short and he quickly half turns towards her.
She can feel her eyes are as wide as saucers as she tries desperately to make out his expression while he’s backlit by moonlight, which is of course a futile attempt. Her heart is pounding so hard she wonders if he can hear it, since it’s already so damn quiet.
“Maggie?,” he asks, in nothing short of disbelief.
She wonders if the moon is bright enough for him to see her or if he’s just as in tune with the feel of her presence as she is his.
Either way she is silent.
“You okay?”
Not really. She’s pretty sure she’s having some kind of mental break.
“I’m cold.”
She sounds so weak and pathetic saying it, and feels more humiliated than she can ever recall. Her eyes squeeze shut while she half expects him to laugh at her or humiliate her further somehow. He’s always had a knack for that.
Instead he silently settles back down, turning on his side to face her. Probably too shocked to speak. She herself is close to it. Their arms are pressed together and she can feel his hands are close to hers. He’s trying to be respectful of her space, she can tell by how she can feel how stiff he is with concentration. Like she’ll bite him if he gets too close. And while she appreciates this, both humbly and smugly, it kind of goes against the whole reason why she’s here.
Unconsiously she holds her breath while she moves closer to him, arms wrapping around herself while she gets close enough to rest her forehead against his chest. While Negan hesitates, frozen in place, his warmth envelopes her in a second, and every complicated thing her brain is battling out falls silent.
He’s slow to do it, but his arms wrap around her while she feels his chin against the top of her head. She expected to feel trapped in his embrace but, quite the contrary, she feels safe. While he’s still doing anything and everything to get on her good side she knows nothing will happen to her if he’s there.
He’s warm, and he smells good, and it feels so nice to be close to someone in a world that’s made her feel so alone. And by the way he’s holding her, one hand sliding up her back while his face turns in towards hers, she can tell he feels the same.
It’s remarkable how little it matters who it is that’s holding her, it just feels good to be held. Or maybe at some point between when he’d left her bedroom and when she entered his she had made the breakthrough she’d been trying to have for months. All because he had a wife and she read a book.
“Better?” he asks after a few minutes. Long enough that she can start to feel her toes again and their breathing has started to sync up.
Maggie nods against his chest, her nose brushing against his collarbone. “If you ever tell anyone about this, I’ll gut you and feed you to the livestock in front of everyone.”
He laughs a little, the quiet breathy kind, and she can feel it in his chest against her cheek and blowing on the top of her hair. “Yes ma’am.”
They lay like this for a while, long enough for Maggie to warm up enough that she can actually start to relax. Her blinks are longer and she slowly, without realizing, starts to curl up closer to him. Their legs begin to tangle together a little bit and her arms start to return the embrace. Turns out it feels just as good to hold someone as it does to be held.
Eventually she picks her head up, looking at what she can make out of him. Close enough to share the pillow, she can see through the dark a bit more. “Don’t go thinkin’ everything’s fixed now,” she warns him, but she doesn’t sound nearly as threatening as she’d like.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” he answers. She can hear that he’s smiling. “I don’t mind being a dirty little secret.”
Maggie pushes him a little. “It ain’t like that.”
“I know. But that don’t mean it doesn’t seem like it.”
“You wish.”
“Maybe. Maybe you’re projecting.”
Maggie lets out a scoff, shaking her head against the pillow. Yet she doesn’t retract her arms, and she doesn’t move away from him. “You’re insane.”
“And yet here you are.”
She can feel his breath on her face, warm like the rest of him.
She doesn’t know who initiates it, but suddenly they’re kissing. Crashing together with the spontaneity of lightning. It isn’t soft and careful and uncertain, as first kisses tend to be. It’s rough and intense like everything else about them. His hand on her back gets moved to get tangled in her hair while his arm around her hips pulls her closer and holds her tighter. Tight enough that she doubts she’d be able to escape if she tried. But she doesn’t try. Her hands hold his face, his short beard rough against the soft palms of her hands, while she lets him put his tongue in her mouth.
In the back of her mind she knows she’ll be torn up about this for Lord knows how long. Probably until the day she dies. But whether it’s the blankets that shelter them or something about his presence, these worries don’t come. Not while one of his legs slides between hers and his breath is heavy in her mouth, and not while she’s trembling against him, having nothing to do with the cold.
His hand on her waist slips under the hem of her shirt, whether it be by accident or on purpose, and the slight chill of his touch makes her startle, only further sending her into his embrace. His fingers splay out on the small of her back and she can hear the small sigh she lets out into his lips that’s out of her control.
She still burns with hatred for him, but the hate is beginning to fade and leaves behind only the burn that’s left confused and begins to travel lower than the pit of her stomach. It’s confusing and scary, but she feels alive in a way she didn’t think she would ever again.
Negan’s pulling her on top of him, which makes her feel smug enough to smirk a little against his mouth. That in every single way she’s the one who ultimately has the control. He sits up while she settles into his lap, arms wrapped around her to ensure she’s as close as possible. His breath is hot and heavy and mixes with her own that’s in sucha similar state it’s hard to tell where his ends and hers begins.
It all feels a bit too similar to the altercations they’ve gotten into before, which became less and less frequent as time started to pass. She’s red hot with a passion that’s now started to change, so much so that it’s impossible to think clearly around him, leaving her only able to act on instinct. Only now instead of pushing him or pulling a knife on him Maggie’s instinct has her grabbing large fistfuls of his shirt, hard enough to turn her knuckles white. She wants to rip it off him, but she knows the moment they separate the spell will be broken, and while she’s still in it she never wants it to end.
He’s an exceptionally good kisser and he, not for the first time- though under very different circumstances, leaves her breathless trying to catch up. Her nerve endings are practically sparking; she's so lit up by the way he handles her. Despite the undeniable intensity of it he’s still somehow gentle with her.
It scares her when she can feel him getting hard underneath her, but the fear begins to fade when he doesn’t seem keen on expecting that from her. Or at least that if he does he doesn’t plan on being the one to initiate that. The spell he’s cast on her isn’t that strong.
It’s hard to breathe while they practically attack each other like this, but neither of them try to part. Instead they slow down, messy and hasty kisses turning gentle and drawn out. His hands move from resting suggestibly low on her hips to cradling her head and the back of her neck. He kisses her like someone who loves her would, and this will be a lot for her to unpack tomorrow, but for now she follows his lead and drapes her arms around his shoulders and lets him do as he pleases.
Hands wander still, but the curisoty becomes more innocent and inquisiticve rather than desperate and hungry. He memorizes the feeling of her curved sides, his fingers finding all the spots they fit into perfectly. Of which there are many. His touch leaves goosebumps behind and often makes her shiver against him. He clearly likes this since it makes him smirk in her mouth, but it all feels good enough that it keeps her from being infuriated by this.
She memorizes the feeling of him just as much. Her hands run across his shoulders and his chest dozens of times. To her satisfaction she isn’t the only one left shivering from simple touches.
Maggie always thought the sound of his voice enraged her, but she’s beginning to think that it’s what he says that bothers her so much since every little noise, no matter how quiet or quick, drives her a little bit crazy. A few times she swears he’s murmuring her name in her mouth, which leaves her aching with a type of need she’s sure only doesn’t get fulfilled since she knows her son is a short walk away and within earshot.
Suddenly they part, and everything is so fucking quiet . His breathing sounds loud enough to echo while hers is shaky with fear-ridden anticipation. Their hands remain where they are; his in her hair and on the small of her back, hers where his shoulders meet his chest. She can feel his heartbeat against the palm of her hand. Slamming .
Their foreheads press together, noses brushing in the process. It feels like such a fucking cliche she could puke, but something so wrong has never felt so right.
His hand in her hair plays with a strand between two fingers while she can feel him gearing up to speak. She doesn’t dream of rushing him. She wishes this moment, before either of them make their next move, could last forever.
The strand of hair still between those two fingers he holds her face, his thumb brushing the corner of her lips. “Don’t go, Maggie.”
It’s the most earnest request he’s ever asked of her. She can hear just how much he’s hoping she’ll agree. Can feel it in his calloused fingertips against her face. In how though their lips have separated nothing else has. Though this is something that she also is to blame for.
The spell is breaking, she can feel it. Can feel the ice cold chill Glenn’s death created in her heart starting to return, cooling the temperature down one notch at a time. It’s slow, and won’t fully return until morning. But she feels it enough that for a moment she can’t speak, and her throat hurts a little. She squeezes her eyes shut and nods, her nose brushing against his again, until she can muster up the ability to speak again. “I won’t.”
She sounds so broken, so defeated, and before she knows it her bottom lip is trembling and tears are welling in her eyes. But she keeps her promise, and instead of pulling away from him presses her face into his neck while her body shakes with sobs she forces herself to keep silent, lest Hershel hear her and worry. She takes the fabric of his shirt in two fists while her tears smear across his neck. He doesn’t seem to mind.
Not in the slightest. Negan changes his hold on her, something more soothing rather than sexual. He cradles her head in one hand while the other rubs circles on her back, his head resting on top of hers. He’s really good at this. Even though he’s the problem it feels a little easier to bear when she knows he’ll be bearing it with her.
“I'm sorry,” he whispers to her. Then again. And again. And she knows he isn’t apologizing for Glenn. Or anything he’s done to torture her since then. It’s an apology that lets her know these moments in his bed are the ones that are indicative of how he feels about her. An apology for what this revelation will do to her.
“Me too,” she whispers back. Sorry not for him, but for herself, since she no longer knows what’s indicative to how she feels about him. She doesn’t even know what she’s feeling right now, rather than raw .
At least crying herself to sleep isn’t so bad when she’s curled up in someone’s lap and they’re whispering in her ear that everything will be okay, even if she doesn’t really believe it.
And, hey, at least she isn’t cold anymore.