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Rick doesn’t tell anyone when it happens. He figures they all have enough to deal with as it is, between finals and last-minute projects and asshole professors.
I’ll move out, Negan says, over text, uncharacteristic. Dwight and Sherry have an extra room at their place.
You don’t have to.
It’s your apartment, Rick. So yeah, I’m not staying there.
Rick’s face is flaming even though he’s alone, curled up on the giant couch they bought not four months ago at the thrift store. Sagging in the middle and smelling like mothballs even with three scrubbings of Febreeze. Three nights ago Negan was sitting just there in that dip, Rick’s feet under his thigh as he read a worn copy of The Outsiders for class and tried not to stare at the line of his jaw. Three nights ago, Rick hadn’t fucked everything up.
Fine, he says, stabbing his phone with his thumbs. I’ll try not to be here when you come get your shit.
The gray bubble on Negan’s end shows three dots for a long time before, finally: I’ll come by tomorrow. Noonish.
Okay.
Afterwards, Rick puts the phone on do not disturb, slides it, screen down, onto the bedside table. He has two papers to finish by Friday and dues to pay for graduation, but right now all he can do is curl up into the cushions, face pressed into the pillow. His whole chest aches. He feels like he’s being drowned.
He shouldn’t have said anything.
~
Gone by the time Rick returns from his one o’clock class: leather jacket on hook by the door. Laptop, balanced on the edge of the sofa, more to drive Rick crazy with worry than because Negan ever actually used it there. The packs of cigarettes in the top drawer by the sink. The fluorescent pink lighter with Fuck Trump scratched into the side. The blue toothbrush. The giant Led Zeppelin poster that hung in the middle of the hallway. The miniature Bosch. The worn copies of The Great Gatsby, On the Road, Catcher in the Rye, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The Pink Floyd vinyl, too scratched for use, hanging over the couch. The boots in the hall closet. The old-fashioned Coca-Cola ad nailed over the stove. The entirety of the contents of the room behind the flat screen. The whole thing stripped clean, as though Rick’s always just lived alone here.
Left: one golden key, held down with a single strip of Scotch tape, to a notecard on the kitchen table. One check for half of next month’s rent. The ragged Polaroid from Negan’s wallet of the two of them at the Ringling Brothers’ circus in 2009. Six months after they’d first met in high school, freshman year.
Left, also: Rick, sinking to the floor, hand on his forehead, shaking, throat so tight he can’t breathe.
~
“You okay?” Maggie asks. Rubbing his shoulders while he slumps over the table. Feeling like he hasn’t stopped crying in hours, even though in reality he hasn’t shed a single tear.
On her other side Glenn drops his head onto his binder and makes a pathetic whining noise in his throat. “None of us are okay,” he says. “Fucking finals.”
Maggie raises her eyebrows at Rick. “Yeah?”
He wants to shake his head. To tell her the whole ugly truth, because she doesn’t know. None of them do, and he thinks maybe it isn’t fair to them. Certainly it wasn’t fair to Negan.
He could tell her. But she’s got her notes spread out too, animal husbandry and zoology, and her eyes are ringed with shadows, and anyway she never liked Negan all that much as it was. So he just shakes his head, shrugs. Takes a massive drink of coffee, lets it burn his throat.
“Yeah,” he says, and Maggie squeezes his shoulder, drops her hand.
“You’ll be okay, Grimes,” she says.
Rick offers her a tense smile; waits until she’s turned away before he closes his eyes. Pinches the bridge of his nose.
~
Rick doesn’t know what he was expecting, but when he walks into his American Lit seminar Tuesday afternoon Negan is sitting in his usual place in the back, sprawled out, one leg crooked out a little into the aisle. Scrolling through some page on his phone, earbud screwed in. Leather jacket slung over the back of the chair. He doesn’t look up when Rick walks past, when Rick takes a seat three up and one row over from where he usually sits, next to Negan so they can share music until class starts. He doesn’t look up but even so Rick is acutely aware of his presence back there, and of the slight pressure of his phone in his pocket.
He isn’t going to check. He isn’t going to check the screen to see if Negan’s texted him.
He puts it on his thigh all the same. Just in case. Steadily doesn’t turn around. Andrea sits in front of him, gives him an odd look.
“It’s almost December, Rick, why are you—”
“I don’t know,” Rick says, shorter than he meant, but she just shrugs. Turns back to face the front. Rick stares at his phone, silent, dark screened, until the lecture starts.
It’s a fifty-minute class and normally it goes by quickly, but by the end of it on this particular day Rick is gripping his own knee, palms clammy with sweat. He can’t get out of the room fast enough, everything on him burning. He doesn’t know if he wants to throw up or cry or maybe a combination of both. He doesn’t know why he did it. He should’ve kept his fucking mouth shut. He should’ve—
His phone buzzes. He can’t get it out fast enough. Fuckin’ weird seeing the back of your neck, it says, and Rick’s mouth twitches. There’s a soft ache in his throat which he attributes mostly to how fast his heart is beating. It’s his first text from Negan in three days; he should’ve known Negan couldn’t shut him out forever.
Good to hear from you too, asshole, he says, and waits, and waits, leaning against his junk car, shivering, staring. Waits until well past when he knows Negan would’ve gotten out of his last class of the day, until he knows Negan must be back at Dwight’s, but there’s nothing. Just Delivered, hovering like a condemnation under his text bubble.
He drives home feeling shaky. Tender. He orders Chinese even though that was always more Negan’s choice than his; pulls up his Christmas movie list on Redbox. Tonight it’s Home Alone. Negan’s favorite. Everything has a touch of him on it. Rick might’ve known that he got himself too far underneath his skin to ever be fully shaken free. Of course he should’ve at least guessed—he’d known, almost from the start, that Negan wasn’t going to be some transitory friend. And you don’t fall in love with impermanence.
He drops his head in his hands. He’s starting to feel very well acquainted with the thin veins on his wrists.
~
He texts Sherry later, curled up under his sheets, muffled noises coming through his neighbor’s wall. Sorry to inconvenience you. Really sorry.
She takes a while to reply; he knows he was never her favorite person. You’re good. I know it wasn’t your idea or whatever. Another gray bubble pops up; he waits, watching. He’s fine, by the way. He eats a lot of Pop-Tarts, mostly.
Rick breathes out. Okay, he says.
Don’t expect another text from him, she says, not for a while.
It hurts. It shouldn’t. Rick turns his phone off without responding, stares at his ceiling. When the tears come they roll into his hair and his ears and it feels disgusting. In the morning he has a stress headache, a snarling vicious knot of tension at the base of his neck.
There are no notifications on his phone. But Rick knows why. He knows why.
~
“I’m in love with you,” Rick had said, last week. Sitting on their couch at one in the morning, laughing about some stupid shit on Comedy Central that was probably not that funny in actuality but Negan’s always had a warped sense of humor and Rick’s always tended to find his laughter infectious. They were both a little buzzed; Rick thinks maybe that’s why he said it. He’s never been as direct as Negan, but there was something that night. The press of Negan’s thigh against his foot. The flush of his skin from the drink and from their close proximity to each other.
He wouldn’t have said it at all, normally, at least not like that. But something about Negan, or being in the room with Negan, or something, breeds confidence in him that runs like electric vines through his veins and makes him crazy, makes him want to say all the things he’s feeling, and just that. To lay himself open and bare because Negan, above all others, is actually worth it.
He’d watched the words register with his heart in his throat. Watched Negan’s brows come together, mouth tense a little at one corner.
“What?” he’d said, after a moment.
Rick reached over, hit the mute button. “I’m in love with you,” he’d said again. “I have been for a long time, and I just. I don’t know—I thought—” He swallowed, staring at the worn-through place on Negan’s sock. The television casting white shadows over his face. “I thought maybe you—”
Negan cleared his throat. Rick was watching him, but he was watching the show. Jaw tight. All the languid, dangerous lines of his body set in stone on his side of the couch. “Are you joking?” he asked, very quietly.
“No,” Rick whispered. Sick feeling of dread building up in the back of his throat.
Negan bit his lower lip. Hard. “You’re drunk,” he said, soft. “You just wanna fuck me ‘cause I’m a warm body and we’ve known each other for years. You aren’t gonna mean this in the morning—”
“No,” Rick said again. Trembling, though the heater was still on. “Negan, no, that’s not—” He drew a deep breath. “I’m just fucking in love with you, man. Okay? That’s all. I love you and I wanna be with you and I thought you—fuck. I thought.”
Negan reached over. Switched off the television. In the resulting dark the room seemed suddenly overlarge and very quiet. “Rick, I’m—I don’t—”
It was the first time in the nearly ten years they’d known each other that Negan was without words, and Rick couldn’t breathe. He reached up, pinched his eyes.
“It’s cool,” he said. “If that’s—I mean it’s okay, Negan, I’m just—” He couldn’t stop staring at the empty beer bottles. Wondering why he’d ever fucking opened his mouth at all. “Well, now you know,” he’d said, lamely. His voice shaking without his permission.
Negan just stared at him. Hand clenched around his knee. After a few seconds Rick jumped up. Walked into his own room, shut his door. Lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling, hands folded over his chest like he was already dead.
The last time he’d been as in love with another person as he is with Negan, he was with Lori. Senior year of high school. Negan had been there through the whole thing, how he’d asked her to prom, caught her under the bleachers with Shane Walsh, his hand in her skirt, mouth on her neck. It was Negan who had dragged Rick away before he could cause real damage to that fucking prick’s smug face. Negan who made sure Rick didn’t text Lori anything he’d regret. Negan who came over to Rick’s two days later after he broke up with her, Negan who made him bowls of ice-cream and rubbed his shoulders and played Call of Duty with him for hours as a distraction.
Negan’s the greatest goddamn thing in Rick’s life. He doesn’t know how the hell he expects to lose something so vital.
~
Finals week is shit. Rick drinks a lot of coffee, stays up until five in the morning staring at his computer. Tries desperately not to think about Negan, and finds it to be less and less possible the more nights he goes without sleep.
Maggie texts him a few times, just checking up. There are no texts from Negan, though Rick sees him once, in the library. Staring with dull eyes at a computer monitor. His hands clenched tight around the back of the chair.
He looks like he’s in pain. But Rick refuses to allow himself to believe it could be the same kind.
~
Two days after his last final he’s packing to go home when there’s a knock at his door. He glances through the peephole; doesn’t want to be as surprised as he is to find Negan standing on the other side. He looks about as drawn and unhappy as Rick feels, though perhaps that’s only the glass warping him.
“You gonna let me or what, Rick,” Negan calls, and Rick unlatches the chain, opens the door. Negan steps over the threshold, drags his hand through his hair.
“Forgot, uh—” He glances around. “Forgot some fuckin’ thing here. You seen my shit laying around?”
Rick crosses his arms. Stares up at Negan. His best friend. You haven’t called me in two weeks, he wants to say, like he’s fifteen. We’ve known each other for almost ten years. You can’t just cut me out like this.
Out loud: “No, I haven’t.” Something flat and hard in his voice he didn’t mean to put there, or maybe he did. Either way it gets Negan to turn around. Something broken on his face Rick wasn’t expecting.
“It’s Lucille,” he says, and Rick starts at that—Negan doesn’t talk about her. None of them talk about her. Haven’t for years. “I just. Holy fucking fuck, Rick. I haven’t fucking been serious about anyone since she—fuck. And now here you fucking are, Rick fucking Grimes, known you for goddamn ever and you think you can just sit on my couch and tell me you’re in love with me and expect me not to flip my shit over it?”
“Negan—”
“No. No, no, no.” He’s shaking his head, walking forward. “I loved her, Rick. You know how much I—and I never thought after her that there could be anyone else, and then you. You just come out of fucking nowhere and say you’re in love with me and it just. Fuck. It freaked me out.” He pushes his hand through his hair again. He’s close enough, now, that Rick can smell cigarettes on his clothes.
“It’s okay,” Rick says. He’s shaking again; when did that start up? “I don’t care, it’s okay. I want to be friends with you, I just wanna fucking text you again, dude, I don’t care—” He swallows. “Like you said. We’ve known each other forever. I can’t—I miss you, Negan. I just want you with me. Wherever. However. I don’t care. You don’t have to love me back. I don’t—”
But Negan’s mouth on his makes it a little difficult to finish the sentence. Warm and a little chapped, tasting like his favored Marlboro Reds. Hand on Rick’s jaw, thumb moving across his rapidfire pulse. It takes him a long minute to pull back, to rest his forehead against Rick’s. An impossibly confused Rick, trembling over every inch of himself.
“What—”
“I’m fucking gone over you, cornflower,” Negan says, his lower lip catching on Rick’s as he speaks. “I have been for a fucking long time.” He hesitates. “Years.”
Rick closes his eyes. “Don’t you fucking lie to me about this—”
“I wouldn’t,” Negan says immediately. Strangely desperate. “Should’ve fuckin’ told you two weeks ago, but I’m kind of an idiot.”
Rick feels like he’s breathing for the first time in years. He reaches up, threads his fingers against Negan’s. “Yeah,” he says. “Definitely an idiot.”
Negan smiles against Rick’s mouth. “Is that how you charm everyone you fall for, Grimes.”
Rick smiles too, tilts his head a little. “Only the assholes.”