Work Text:
Negan is asleep over his stomach when a strange tug wakes him up. His first reflex is to sit up, upset. His second step, getting up and jumping out of bed in search for Lucille.
He looks for bed's edge, but he only finds sheets. He begins to desperately remove them from where they have accumulated around his waist like a thick, motionless mass, trying to detach himself from the oppressive panic and sensation of being hunted in the middle of darkness crawling through his spine to paralyzes him.
He doesn't know if it's that feeling, uncontrolled panic, the mere hint that all his inhibitions have been broken; or the nerves of not knowing what's happening that make his body tremble. But, upset as he’s, blinded by darkness and sticky sheets tangled between his legs, takes him a good minute to recognize that he's not alone.
There's a body curled up a few inches from him. Something, rather, someone who definitely shouldn't be there.
As his eyes adjust to darkness, and the panic of surprise is replaced by red rage, Negan pushes himself off the bed, furious. Once he's on his feets, he notices that the ground, instead of cold, is hot.
The warm sensation disorients him.
Almost instantly, he feel something pulling him toward the floor, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He didn't find Lucille where she should be, at an extension of his fingers, easy to get easy to use, because this isn't his room, and he shouldn't be there.
He turns his head trying to figure out where he's, why he's out of his cell, If it's a about a fucking joke or if it's someone else kill him (If it's a joke, he'll come back just to bite whoever did that shit right in the ass), when the bump wrapped over sheets, moves.
It's barely an imperceptible movement, but Negan, with his nerves on edge in this strange landscape, feels like it’s moving at breakneck speed. He almost expects something horrible to unwrap from the bed to kill him.
But that doesn’t happen.
The lack of familiarity he has with this room, product of his dreams or not, which resembles the mouth of a cave, makes him feel useless and disoriented. He doesn't even know where to start get his shit together.
If it’s a dream, is nothing like any of the nightmares Negan has had before. It's not a random mass of sordid images of faceless people that usually creeps him as soon he reaches unconsciousness, nor is it the cacophony of pleas that drowned him and normally keeps him awake. This, whatever it’s, is real . He can feel it in the tips of his fingers and the marrow of his tense bones, pressed against his body like a rope close to breaking.
Putting one foot in front of other on the smooth, warm, clean floor, Negan feigns to approach the body still asleep on bed.
When he’s already leaning on one knee in the corner of the mattress, he hesitates: a strange feeling of claustrophobia overcomes him. At one point, he clenches his teeth to keep from drowning and closes his eyes for a minute, thinking that he has to make one last attempt to wake up... However, that pull of languor after sleep, prior to consciousness, doesn't come. There's just him, filled with anxious tension like he's never felt it before, trying to lift a corner of the linen sheet to see who's the other person with him.
The sight he discover under fabric is nothing what he might expect.
He swallows his confusion and lets it sink to the bottom of his stomach. He feels it settled down in his gut, much heavier than any feeling of panic and disorientation previously clinging to his bones. He opens his mouth, stunned beyond belief, but he chokes up.
Words, not even air, manage to circulate out of him.
Carl.
Alive Carl, covered in darkness, with his long curls blurred by the pillow sheets.
Carl resting in the center of this bed, curled up, with his face pressed into the pillow (the pillow Negan had previously been sleeping on).
Carl snuggled up with one arm under the right side of his face... still intact. A face with flesh, tender soft flesh of an eyelid, still covering his eye, and a soft row of thick eyelashes kissing the socket of his freckled cheek.
A warm feeling of ease, familiarity, slowly seeps through Negan's chest at the sight; warm, like the waning rays of the winter sun that appear like a tickle in the helpless cold.
Negan flexes a hand at his side, enraptured. Suddenly speechless, frozen, like a deer in the headlights, by the gentle rise and fall of Carl's chest... Suddenly needing to touch, needing to know that some of this, shining in front of his eyes like a fantasy, is real. That this sight in front of him is more than a delirium, a dream—because this child, identical to Carl, is different from his Carl.
Even if he looks like him, breathes like him, and has the same harmonious face as his Carl... The lack of the jagged scar on the right side of his eye is not the only thing this not-Carl and his Carl don't look like. The lines of calm etched on this child's face, relaxed, unflappable, are wrong . The lack of nerve, minimum reaction, in this child's body, as soon Negan woke up says a lot...
That this not-Carl sleeping next to him. Still, Negan can't find the will or voice to walk away, to speak… to wake up.
Instead, he just stares at him.
Looking at not-Carl it's like looking at an unfamiliar painting with only a vague feeling that something is wrong, incorrect . Wrong elements, out of harmony, but not entirely identifiable.
It's like looking at the ghost of a memory never made.
A terrible urge settles in the pit of Negan's stomach.
It's not a desire, but an imperative need. One that makes Negan want to press his mouth against the hollow of Not-Carl's exposed collarbone. One that makes him want to trace every detail of not-Carl’s body to align him with the ones he has in his memory.
This is not his Carl, although he sleeps peacefully in this bed like his Carl could do.
Does this kid dream same things as his Carl? or Will he be everything Carl never was?
The desire to bite, perhaps even leave a long, prolonged kiss on the seductive cupid's bow of this child's mouth, multiplies, expands like a wild fire in his chest. Negan wants to brush his nose against the line of Not-Carl's throat, along his jaw, to feel the regular pattern of boy's heartbeat, that he feels like he might die if he doesn't.
At the same time, Negan doesn't want to leave him, not without saying what he always wanted. Without doing what he should have done from the beginning… He doesn't want to lose him again .
A watery sob, a salty half-inhale and gulp of deep anxiety, leaves his lips before he can stop himself. The sound, loud enough in the middle of dead silence of the dark night, makes Not-Carl whimper and squirm in the sheets like a kitten.
Bracing one hand against bed, Negan isn't prepared for Not-Carl to look at him, but the boy turns, curled up in the nest of blankets, his hair wildly tousled with sleep and his eyes soft: filled with a fondness that Negan can't begin to describe.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” is all he says, and Negan is already enthralled. From the murmur of his voice, and the way that sleepy cerulean blue Not-Carl's eyes burns with completely love…
Negan's voice shakes when he speaks, the hoarse tone of he sobbing turning into a gurgle. “I just had a nightmare.”
There's a pause, as Not-Carl stretches and gathers the sheets over his chest—before snuggling down close to where Negan lies half-sitting, half-heart naked.
“uhmm… but it looks like you've seen a ghost, husband ,” Not-Carl says, his voice thick with exhaustion.
Fire crackles inside Negan's chest at the title; fierce, devouring. Husband . It’s as if he's telling him that the sky is blue and that the world has not ended. The need to stay throbs and licks the flesh of Negan's veins, writhing inside his body like an infection right to his belly, where it swirls into a hot pool… Needy.
Negan’s not sure of anything more than the fact that's his opportunity, the one he never had, nor he will ever have. A too-small hand rises to caress his bare chest. Negan doesn't shy away from it.
He lets Not-Carl cuddle him on the bed. Then, wrapped back in the sheet with Not-Carl's arm draped over his chest and his face hidden in his collarbone, Negan feels the panic dissipate but the need expand. He can taste the hint of blood and lime under his tongue, swirling in his throat, like a promise.
“Was it very ugly?” Not-Carl asks, after a while, under his chin.
No, Negan says no.
But it actually says Yeah.
“You weren't … You―” You were dead Negan doesn't say, instead he just babbles “You weren't there”
Not-Carl hums. And Negan's throat goes dry when he runs his hands wherever he can. He touch miles of intact, unscarred skin. This Carl… He hasn't experienced the savage of his life. He can't begin to imagine what Negan had done. Everything he has lost...
“Uhmm- Was that dream again? The one you told me before” Not-Carl says after a brief silence. He sits up softly, tiredly, and blinks sleepily from his arms crossed on Negan's chest. When Negan doesn't answer, something grows in the delicate expression on his face. “Do you—” He stop, pressing a delicate palm against Negan's chin. The tingle Negan experiences, thirsting for his touch, is warm enough to set his heart on fire and the air in his lungs. "Do you want to talk about it?"
From what dream, his actual reality? Negan's mouth opens and closes. A terrible hum builds up inside him, bubbling, ready to explode.
“Carl…Honey,” he says, testing the pet name in his mouth, tasting nothing but bitter bile because he's taking something that's not his, “I feel like something bad is happening to me...it's strange ”.
Not-Carl pauses, searches his tormented eyes, and pretends to reflect without fully understanding what's going on in Negan's mind. He runs a solitary finger through Negan's stubble, reveling in the tingle it causes. He kisses him on the corner of his mouth.
“It was just a nightmare, honey…” He says seconds later, “You're okay, right? You're at home. Today is Wednesday, February 21. 2024. We've been married for 4 years, can you remember that? Nothing…nothing of what you dreamed of is real. This is real .”
Negan tilts his neck to look at Not-Carl.
Carl doesn't seem truly scared, or even at all disturbed. Was this mental distance something common with the Negan of his reality?
Negan nods, but whatever brewing behind his eyes must persist. Maybe the pursed curve of his lips, the dark tension behind his eyes. Because Carl looks at him with bewilderment. A touch of uncertainty that gives his eyes an attractive shine, much like his Carl.
Negan doesn't need to be able to see his face in a mirror to know that it must look strange to Carl's eyes, just as Not-Carl had seemed to himself.
When boy's starts to sit up, leaning over Negan's body to turn on the light on the night table, making that unease even more real, Negan raises one of his hands to grab him by waist.
“It's okay,” Negan says, his voice like he has never heard before; small, strangled. Feels like he has also lost what makes him who he’s, his strength, his tenacity. He wants to joke about how he's being a sensitive bitch, but he revokes the idea, instead sighing, swallowing his anguish, and snuggles Carl to his chest, hoping the mirage of his difference will seem like just that, a mirage. "It's ok babe. Just- Just let me hug you, right? It’s okay, I just- I just need this.”
Not-Carl shakes, barely, sending a strange look that Negan doesn't recognize, but lets himself be hugged. He lies delicately over Negan's broad body. Just a touch away, so Negan can see it, feel it, and breathe it. They stay there for a while, or for hours, Negan couldn't tell: drowned under sheets, holding each other as if one would disappear at any moment.
Negan's completely focused on memorizing all the parts of Not-Carl that aren't the same as his own: his hands working on autopilot, roaming over his back, waist, arms, hips, and neck.
When Carl's breathing stabilizes, half drowsy, half drugged by the tickling sensation in the tension of his muscles; the pressure of Negan’s soft fingers sinking into his flecked flesh, Negan kiss him. The corner of the boy's mouth, his chin, the place where his jaw and neck meets.
“Ugh, Neeg”
Not-Carl… smells divine. Like sweet lemon, something warm and everything sweet. Not-Carl stirs, letting out an exasperated huff as Negan strokes swell of his ass. “You cannot wait?”
Negan hums, gently stroking the soft, slightly cool skin with the knuckles of his fingers.
He briefly looks around. Everything is dark, blackness clings to the room as if it lived there. There’s still a long way before waning rays of morning invade this space.
They have time, but not enough.
“I've waited... long enough,” Negan says, resolutely. As if the words didn't actually hurt him, didn't awaken something horrible inside his chest: a feeling of heaviness.
He can't waste time. Not again.
“Yeah, sure,” Not-Carl snorts weakly. “Just-… lemme sleep.” By the time he tries to finish his sentence, Negan has rolled him onto the bed, sniffing under his collarbone.
Not-Carl makes an exasperated sound, try to rolls himself up on sheets and pillow. Negan is almost sure that Not-Carl will soon try to throw him over bed's edge, just to spite him. But then boy just deflates, curled up on the pillow. “Uff, well, it doesn't matter,” he says, after a while. “Just hurry up”
Negan hears him snort, again. He totally misses the way Not-Carl roll his eyes in amusement.
The desperation with which Negan undresses himself is embarrassing, almost pathetic. However, not even that gesture can spoil what results.
His Carl or not, asleep or wake up, is beautiful, dazzling. Negan catches a glimpse of his slim, freckled waist, his pale, slender thighs wrapped around his pillow, the perky curve of his pale ass. Miles of attractive flesh for his ungodly eyes. Negan wants to bite them, he wants to mark everything. He wants to make this his own that’s not yet his. His eyelids, his small wrists, sharp collarbones, the curve of his hip, the well behind his knees, the flesh of his calf…
He feels Carl murmur something, but Negan silences him with a kiss behind the neck. “Just let me have you…” he says there, with a smile.
“I take it back,” Carl groans, wincing slightly at Negan's nose running down his spine. He rolls on his side, trying to escape away: failing miserably. “Your invitation has been revoked.” Try.
“I'm afraid it's too late for that,” Negan says, mapping the soft spread of freckles across Carl's right thigh.
Carl simply lets out a deep, long sigh into his pillow. “Dammit. Why you can’t just-like, rub your dick, huh?” he grumbles.
“I'll make it worth it, okay?” Negan says, leaning over Carl's waist, hair messily disheveled, lips bitten, eyes bulging. He slowly pushes Carl's knee onto the pillow.
No more is needed. Words are few, but enough in the silence between them. Negan joins him, sliding onto bed next to him from behind, and wraps a loose curl of Carl's hair around one finger, waiting.
He presses a light kiss to the warm skin behind Carl's ear and rubs his nose along the back of his neck. He feels child shudders. "Can I?" he asks quietly, after a while, like an afterthought. In case, Carl was falling into dreams.
“m'kay” He says, “Do it.”
Negan pulls him even closer, a hand on this Carl’s abdomen and a breath on his chest. “I love you” he says and Carl melts.
«God, how much I wanted to say that .»
Negan secretly prays to whatever god there to make Carl doesn't realize how much it breaks his heart to say that.
He breathes against Carl, brushing his knuckles against the warm skin of his belly. Carl extends his own hand, his fingers wrapping around Negan's ring finger. He lightly touches the gold ring that rests there… without Negan noticing.
They both moan at that.
—
Carl is still shaking and babbling when Negan releases all of his fingers from him.
Negan places a hand under Carl’s jaw, turns the boy’s head, and brings their mouths together in a slow, unbearably tender kiss. When they break they’re breathless, weak, and Carl's lips curl into a smug smile.
Then crawls himself up, to press tightly around Negan, leans down, this time to slowly brush his nose against Negan’s cheek. Negan's cock twitches treacherously.
He's not sure how long it’s when they finally calm down, coming down from their cloud, but their whistling is the only thing that can be heard in the room. Negan rests his forehead against Carl's, breathing heavily. He gives him another soft kiss before sleep.
—
When wakes up again, he’s in the cell.
Carl is still dead.