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forehead-enthusiast · 5 years

Text

Drowning

Pairing: Lifeguard!Jaehyun x Reader

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 1.1k

Summary: A stupid friend, a stupid plan, a really hot lifeguard- what could go wrong?

A/N: this was meant to be about johnny but like me better hit kinda different you feel me?? basically just an extra long blurb about dumb cute pool antics :D anyway i hope you guys like it!!!

“Listen, I’m just saying, if he thinks you’re drowning, he will save you. It’s literally his job. And then you could pretend to need CPR, too, if you catch my drift.” Your friend wiggled her eyebrows, clearly proud of her plan.

“This is why I don’t tell you things.”

You deeply regretted letting slip how cute you thought Jaehyun, the local lifeguard was. She hadn’t stopped suggesting you try and drown yourself since.

Friendship at its finest, you supposed.

When her meddling eyes weren’t watching you, you’d sneak glances at the aforementioned man, squinting at the sunlight glaring off his skin. It was almost unfair how gorgeous he looked, sitting up in his tower, blowing his whistle at squealing children. He’d always smile when he’d tell them off for running. It was a painfully endearing smile, and you sighed wistfully without realizing.

“...And she looked at his glistening muscles, practically drooling, as her friend watched, but she was so lost in his biceps that-”

“Stop narrating!” You smacked your friend’s shoulder, mortified that she’d noticed your gazing. “I wasn’t even looking at his arms, I was looking at his cute smi...le.”

Wrong answer.

Your friend toppled backwards, absolutely cackling. “Oh, you’ve got it bad bad. Whaaaat, his smile make your heart flutter? Send butterflies to your tummy? Make you wanna drop down on one knee right now?” She held her sides, trembling, all too amused at her own teasing. You imagined a meteor falling out of the sky and crushing her.

“Shut up already.”

“Listen,” she wheezed, “He’d probably smile right at you if he thought he saved your life, right? Isn’t that worth drinking some gross pool water? For his smile that you just oh-so-looove?”

“Your logic is… just the worst. Besides, I can swim!” You hoped she wouldn’t notice that you didn’t deny the “love” thing she said.

“What’s your point?”

Jaehyun sat awkwardly a little ways away, and pretended he couldn’t hear every word you said. It was hard not to- neither you nor your friend were very quiet. If he was being honest, though, he probably would’ve noticed even if you’d been more discreet. He’d found himself time and time again looking for you unconsciously, and felt rather remiss when he couldn’t find you. On occasion, you’d lock eyes across the pool, and your shy smile and nod never failed to make him feel a little bashful himself.

Your voice seemed to stand out to him amidst all the other screams and shouts, and before he realized, he could pick it out without even trying. That seemed like it was backfiring now. He touched his arms awkwardly when he heard your friend’s comments, feeling self conscious in a way he couldn’t quite explain. He flushed when he heard you mention his smile.

He zoned out for a bit, absentmindedly yelling at some particularly rowdy teenagers, and wondered if he should say something to you. Of course, that would be embarrassing for both parties, but wouldn’t it be more embarrassing if he just let you keep going? Or would-

“Help, she’s drowning, oh no.”

He looked up at the sound of your friend’s very poor acting, and saw you floundering in the pool. You cursed your friend for shoving you in when you weren’t paying attention, and flailed, trying to right yourself. However, before you could gather your bearings, you felt a somehow-familiar arm wrap around your waist and pull you to the surface.

“A-are you okay?”

“Uh… yep.”

You stared unblinkingly into Jaehyun’s eyes, still processing the fact that he was right in front of you and that the warmth you were feeling pressed against you was his. Your friend’s taunting voice rang out in your mind as you thought about the arm holding you securely. You went temporarily deaf, all the noise from the crowds fading away as you focused your senses entirely on him. You didn’t even notice your friend giving you an enthusiastic thumbs-up from behind his back.

“Y-y’know, I’m, I’m actually good, you can let go, I, uh, I can swim.” And even if you couldn’t, water was less of a threat to your life than a face this beautiful being so close to yours.

“Yeah, I know.”

He knows? Knows what? That you can swim? How? Well, granted, you were a grown human, and one that he’d seen swimming many times before, so you convinced yourself it wasn’t weird he’d said that. You mutely allowed him to lift you from the water, and hoped you weren’t too heavy for him to lift when he left the pool. He helped you, as unnecessary as it was, towards a bench in the shade and let you sit down.

“Uh, I’m fine. I wasn’t actually drowning.”

“I know.”

He couldn’t think of any other way to respond, and panicked internally at his unintentional vagueness.

“W-what do you mean, you know?”

That was a hard question to answer.

“Well, I heard you. Talking. With your friend?” He peeked up to look at your expression, which could only be described as petrified. He laughed despite the tense air that had settled, relaxing a bit. It almost looked like your face couldn’t decide whether to go completely pale or completely red.

“Don’t worry! I’m not, like, mad or anything. Besides,” He looked away again, pushing some of his dripping hair off his forehead, “I probably wouldn’t have heard if I hadn’t been paying attention to you. But I was! Because I think you’re cute. Too.”

Your brain had switched off about two minutes ago, and you were not registering a single word he was saying now. He heard, he heard, he heard, oh dear God. Jaehyun waved his hand in front of your face, impressed by how completely blank it was, and chuckled. He looked around for any hint of what to do, and saw your friend very obviously spying from a short distance. She waved brightly, and when he waved back, stunned, she nodded in mock thankfulness. Then, with a sharp salute, she jumped back in the water, leaving him more confused and embarrassed than he’d ever been.

At least she gave him an idea.

He leaned forward, pressing a chaste kiss to your dripping forehead. You flinched, and finally snapped back to reality, only to clap a hand to your forehead and stutter madly.

“You- why- my- me- why did you-”

“C...CPR?”

“O-on my forehead?”

He flushed. It seemed a lot less dumb in his head, but now that he’d done it, he just wanted to drown himself too. A second later, he felt a soft touch to his cheek, and looked back at you to see you with your face buried in your hands.

“...My shift here ends soon. Do you want to go… somewhere? With me?”

“Yes. Please.”

“You guys are so lame! Kiss her for real, coward!”

“SHUT UP!”

Jaehyun still yelled at you for running as you chased that nosy idiot down.

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juicy-cookie · 7 years

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Through The Valley - Chapter 10

Fic Summary: A deeper look into The Sanctuary.

Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Boy has a weird obsession with a baseball bat, promiscuity and the word “fuck”. Girl has to find out if she can look past these things. Also, zombies and shit.

AO3 Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/10075958/chapters/25085109

Tags: @rickdixonandthefandomlifeposts @embracetheapocalypsewithme @redisunamused @kinkozan @lupienne @theblack-wolf @lovingzombiechaos @dragonracer @miiraal

Pairing: Negan X OFC

Chapter Summary: Snow Days

(Chapter 10 whaaaat??? Thanks to those people that keep reading this and I hope you enjoy this chapter)

Word Count: 4802

Negan walked into the hall with a spring in his step and a smile on his face. His mood was exceptionally good this morning. The wives had convinced him to join them for breakfast and it had been an unusually pleasant affair, with barely any bitching going on. Instead, they had all been flirtatious and attentive and it had resulted in a memorable foursome, with him fucking Valerie from behind, while Valerie was eating out Becky, while Tara sat on Becky’s face.

With breakfast long over, the cafeteria was almost empty and he scanned the hall for the one thing that could make his morning even more enjoyable. He found her in her usual spot on one of the sofas in the recreational area, closest to the small wood-burning stove that they had set up and running to provide some more warmth during the winter.

She was deep in thought over some papers in her lap, her facial expressions and movements ranging from frowning, to biting her lower lip to chewing on the pencil in her right hand. The latter was a rather disgusting habit of hers, but it was the entire scope of her mannerisms, right down to the thick green socks on her feet that were nearly falling apart and which she refused to throw away, that made Lilly, Lilly.

Negan realized that he had been staring at her and shook his head to pull his mind away from her lips and her feet to approach the object of his musings and plop down next to her.

“Morning sugartits.”

“Morning fancy-face.”

He chuckled and leaned closer to her to see what she was working on. The stupid nicknames had become a daily ritual, with an unspoken competition between the two of them who could come up with the silliest moniker. Lilly had come close to winning the morning before, when she had answered his “Morning sweetcheeks,” with a grin and a “Morning candy dick,” that had nearly caused him to spit out his coffee.

“Why the fuck are you doing points? I thought Laura finished the lists last night.”

“Yeah, but some of them didn’t add up this morning, so I told her I’d have a look at them.”

Negan sighed and rolled his eyes. Sometimes he felt like he was surrounded by idiots. It was a good thing that his newest lieutenant was so anal about the points and inventory lists.

“Did you see that shit outside?” He put his arm on the headrest behind her in hopes of getting her attention, since she had yet to look up from her papers. Lilly seemed unable to tear her gaze away from them, though.

“If by ‘shit’ you mean ‘snow’, then yes. It was kind of hard to miss when I looked out of the window first thing this morning. I already made snow angels with the kids.”

“Pfff… fucking snow just means more fucking work clearing paths around Sanctuary.”

“It also means frozen walkers. And fun. Don’t worry, I sent out a team to do some shoveling.”

He grinned to himself while he watched her correcting the last couple of pages. In the few short months that Lilly had been at Sanctuary, she had fast become one of the most productive members of his community. She was already sharing responsibilities with Dwight when it came to organizing scavenging runs, while showing no hesitation of going out there herself to get her hands dirty. She also had a knack for keeping some of the weight off Negan’s back when it came to the more tedious tasks of leading a group, like assigning snow shoveling duty to a bunch of lazy fucks and dealing with their resulting complaints.

“Thanks babe. I might just be able to retire soon if you keep doing my work,” he stated half-jokingly. She usually got testy whenever he made quips about her taking over Sanctuary and was very vocal about having no leadership ambitions, but he could not help himself from testing the waters from time to time. Sure enough, she finally looked up from the lists with a raised eyebrow.

“No rest for the wicked, Your Highness. Here, these should be in order now.” She handed him the points lists so he could use them for commissary this week. He folded them and threw them on the coffee table.

“So… snow angels? Why would you willingly go out there in the freezing fucking cold?”

“I love snow. It reminds me of home.”

“And what’s home?”

“Michigan. Halfway between Grand Rapids and Lake Michigan to be exact. We used to have some spectacular winters when I was young.”

“You never told me you’re from fucking Michigan.”

“You never asked.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He suddenly became painfully aware of the fact that he didn’t know anything about Lilly from before the world went to shit. That was something that needed to be amended.

“So how the fuck did you end up in bumfuck Maryland?”

“Got into Johns Hopkins, got a job in Annapolis after finishing my degree, tried to get to DC when the dead started walking. You know the rest of the story.”

“Annapolis, huh? I used to visit the beach at Sandy Point from time to time. Just my fucking luck that I never ran into your sexy ass.” He was also intimately familiar with the hospital there, but he kept that to himself.

“Sandy Point is nice. Crowded, though. Well, not anymore I guess. Where are you from, then?”

“Crofton, born and raised. Most boring fucking place on earth.”

“Aww, poor Negan. And what did you do there besides being bored?”

“Being the best fucking middle school gym teacher in the whole fucking county.”

“Seriously? You were a teacher?”

“Yeah yeah, I know. How can a bad motherfucker like me be allowed to teach kids…”

“No, I’m sure you made an awesome teacher. It’s just that I used to be one, too. I taught at St. John’s.”

“Oooooh… look at the fancy fucking college professor. I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of fetish to be explored here somewhere.” He winked at her and she laughed. He would have loved to elaborate on this particular topic, but they were interrupted by the arrival of Jax, Dwight, Connor, Gavin and Andrei. He was one of the scouts that commuted between the outposts and took their motorcycles into cities to look for potential places to scavenge. He also had the annoying habit of making moves on Lilly whenever he spent time at Sanctuary.

“Hello lovely.”

“Morning Andrei,” she smiled at him, “Did you have any problems getting here in this kind of weather?”

He took off his gloves and sat on the armrest right next to Lilly with a cocky grin on his face.

“Nah. A real biker doesn’t care about a little snow.”

“Jax and Gavin need some practice on the bikes,” Dwight addressed Negan.

“How good are we on gas?” Negan did not like the idea of them wasting fuel just so they could frolic in the snow.

“We’ve got more than enough. The weather isn’t so bad yet and all the dead are frozen, so the noise won’t be a problem.”

“Fine. Get the fuck out of here, then. Only for an hour, though.”

“You wanna join us darling? I can show you how to ride,” Andrei asked suggestively.

“Fuck no! No way am I going to get on one of those hell beasts.” Negan’s mood got even better. Lilly turned to look at Jax next and raised her index finger at him, “And if I see you without a helmet out there I’m going to whoop your ass.”

“Yes, mom,” Jax chuckled and the group of men made their way to the Sanctuary’s front doors.

Lilly stretched her legs and put her feet up on the coffee table, her head falling back against the headrest and his forearm. He damned the cold weather even more now, forcing him to wear his leather jacket and not being able to feel her hair on his skin. She stared at her feet and it seemed like she took a particular interest at the holes in her woolen socks. The blank face told him that she had one of her brain resets, though. He couldn’t blame her, really. Between correcting points, entertaining the children and assigning daily duties, her day had already been pretty busy and it wasn’t even noon yet. He almost felt bad that all he done so far was getting his dick wet.

“So you’re afraid of fucking motorcycles?” He tried to engage her again, “And here I thought you weren't scared of anything.” He wrapped a strand of her black hair around his finger and tugged lightly to bring her back to reality. She wiggled her toes and looked up at him.

“I’m afraid of lots of things. Motorcycles, bears, heights, werewolves…”

He laughed at that. “Good fucking thing you only have to deal with fucking zombies.”

“True. What are you afraid of?”

Large dogs. Loss of control. Hospitals…

“Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Told you I’m a bad motherfucker.”

“Uh-huh. And I’m Santa. By the way, I should probably go take a look how the snow shoveling is coming along.”

“No, I’ll go. You take the rest of the day off and catch up on some fucking sleep or knitting or rubbing one out while thinking of me.” He winked at her and stood up. She craned her neck to give him a smile and he tried to convince himself that this one was much more genuine than what she had showed Andrei earlier.

“Thanks boss. I owe you one.” That was kind of ironic, considering she had kept the Sanctuary up and running during his short absence this morning.

“Heh, yeah. Better not fucking go there babe. See you later.” He turned to go look for the snow crew before his big mouth told her exactly what she could do to make it up to him.

The following couple of weeks were slow and dark and cold. The weather had been relatively stable so far, but right after New Year’s, a massive blizzard hit the area and the Sanctuary was wrapped in a blanket of snow and ice. All scavenging was put on hold since they only had one army truck equipped for this kind of weather. Negan was once more proud of his foresight. Inventory was still full with rice that would last them through the rest of the winter and he had made sure back in the fall that enough trees around Sanctuary were cut down so they could keep the furnace in the hall and the stoves in the dormitory and the single rooms burning throughout the next couple of weeks.

His Saviors were in hibernation. Most slept a lot, others socialized more than usual and it only took him two times of threatening people with the hot iron until the occasional fights ceased completely. Or at least, people made sure he wasn’t around when tempers flared too high.

Lilly’s room had become sort of a refuge for him and some others, like Jax, Connor, Seth, Paula and Laura. It was one of the biggest rooms on the third floor, where the lieutenants lived and she wasn’t sharing it with anyone. With the Tower rec room pretty much abandoned and the hall packed with people at all times, the long winter nights were spent playing cards on her bed and passing around the occasional bottle of booze to keep their insides warm.

This morning after breakfast they had once more migrated to Lilly’s place. Connor and Seth were engaged in a battle of chess, while Negan got comfortable on Lilly’s bed, playing cards with Jax and the girls.

“Negan, any fours?”

“Go fucking fish! You have to take off your shirt now.”

“For the last time, we’re not playing strip Go Fish!”

“I’m your boss, you gotta do as I say.” This statement and his pouting earned him a couple of chuckles from the others.

“Can you imagine having someone like that as a leader?” Laura asked while rearranging her cards.

“It sucks, trust me,” Jax answered ominously and Lilly was quick to change the topic:

“Yeah, we’re lucky we ended up here. At least this one doesn’t have shit for brains.”

“Oh please. It was my awesome fucking charm and personality that convinced you to come with us. Not to mention my panty-combusting good looks.” Negan winked at Lilly.

“Your looks? No. It was Lucille that caught my attention,” she said while picking up the bat from its spot against the bedframe and twirling it in her hand, “All soft curves and sharp edges…,” she continued while stroking her thumb over the wood and watching the light reflect from the barbed wire.

“Holy fucking shit woman! Do you want me to nut in front of all these people?”

“Now that's a challenge if I ever heard one,” Lilly grinned and set Lucille back out of sight.

“Jesus fucking Christ, get a room you two!” Seth exclaimed from his spot at the small table by the window.

“We are in a fucking room, dipshit.”

“Yeah. And it’s MY room, and I can do all the nutting I want in here.”

Negan broke into a booming laugh and was just about to comment on Lilly’s ability to make people orgasm, when a knock on her door made everyone look up. Without waiting for an invitation, the door opened to reveal Carson, who looked even more timid than usual.

“Sir, we’ve got a problem.”

“What the fuck is it now? Is Dwight complaining about the Tower rec room again? I told him it’s his fucking responsibility to heat it if he insists on spending his free time there.”

“No, Sir. It’s… it’s the rice. The kitchen crew wanted to start preparing lunch and dinner and they discovered that it’s spoiled. I think it’s some kind of fungus. We opened all the rice sacks and there’s only two or three of them that doesn’t have mold in them.” Carson looked close to crying and he flinched when Negan jumped up from the bed and his lieutenants followed suit.

“Are you absolutely fucking sure that all the food has gone bad? How the fuck did this happen?” he asked in an increasingly louder voice. This couldn’t be happening. Maybe they all didn’t know shit about rice. Maybe it was just some bugs. They could still eat rice with some bugs in it, right?

“It might be the weather,” Connor offered as an explanation, even if it was far from helpful at the moment, “The storage room can get damp, but it’s not cold enough in there to freeze the food.”

“And why the fuck has nobody fucking thought about this before we put the motherfucking rice in there?” Negan yelled before he felt a hand on his arm. Lilly looked up at him with concern in her eyes, but she tried to diffuse the situation.

“Don’t panic yet. Let’s go down there and have a look. There might have been a mistake.”

He wiped a hand over his face, concentrating hard on not letting anyone see that he was shaking.

“Yeah… yes, you’re right. Let’s see if there’s been a mistake.”

There wasn’t.

A light blanket of gray fur covered the topmost layer of rice inside every sack they looked into. Negan did not lose any time and called for a meeting with his lieutenants. He had to get busy to keep himself from freaking out. Dwight and Lilly were tasked with finding a way to get supplies. Negan told them to go every route they could take with the army truck, whether it be the other communities, hunting, or scavenging, preferably further South along the coast. He ordered the scouts to try to get to the outposts and tell them that Hilltop and the Kingdom had to give up half of their supplies now, as long as it didn’t leave them starving. The rest of his lieutenants were told to organize food rationing and to make sure people wouldn’t panic.

His own panic was an entirely different problem. How could he have been so stupid as to solely rely on the rice? Dwight and Lilly did their best while going out with their teams, but the weather got even worse, with snow storms being an almost daily occurrence now. Lilly tried to go hunting once, but came back nearly frozen to death. While wrapping two wool blankets around her shivering body on the rec room sofa, Negan told her he would use the handcuffs from their first night together and tie her to her bed if she ever snuck out again.

The first week after the mold discovery, they managed to keep the news from people at Sanctuary, but after the tenth day without rice and with decreasing portion sizes, rumors began to spread and the Saviors started to get nervous.

A group of people were standing in Negan’s office, demanding to know what was going on, while he summoned his biggest inner asshole and told them to shut the fuck up and get the fuck out. No one would starve, not while he was leader, but he only told that to himself, repeating it in his mind over and over again.

He had just managed to either threaten or calm down the mob enough so they would leave, when there was another knock on his door and Lilly walked in. He was grateful for the distraction, even if he would have preferred for her to be able to go outside scavenging. The way she was nervously chewing on her lower lip and how she twisted her hands in front of her made his stomach sink. She sat down on the edge of the chair in front of his desk instead of assuming her usual relaxed posture.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“The only thing I can deal with right now is for you to ask me to fuck you on this desk,” he joked, but he already knew it had to be something important if she came to him instead of trying to deal with it on her own.

“Negan…,” she pleaded, clearly not in the mood for their usual flirtatious banter.

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Alright, what the fuck is it this time?”

“I think I have a solution to our problem,” she said while holding out her palm to him. In her hand was a small key, of the kind you would use for a padlock. Negan took it and stared at it for a couple of seconds, before raising his eyebrows in her direction to show her that he was waiting for an explanation.

“There’s a shed, not far from where you found me and Jax. It’s filled with food cans and rice, stored in airtight plastic containers and with packs of silica gel to control moisture. It should be enough to get us through the next couple of weeks until the weather lets up. It will take a while for us to get there with the truck, but if we leave today…”

Negan didn’t let her finish. He slammed his hand with the key on his desk and she flinched.

“Are you fucking telling me…,” his voice was dangerously low, “that you kept a whole fuck-ton of fucking food from me? From us?” He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. Rage had started to boil hot in his belly and he forced himself to stare at the treacherous key on his desk, instead of looking into those green eyes of hers that had only ever given him positive emotions so far.

“I’m so sorry Negan…,” she whispered and he could hear the tears in her eyes, “It was my backup in case things didn’t work out here.”

He got up so violently that his chair crashed into the wall behind him.

“Your backup, huh? Your fucking backup? You fucking lied to me, Lilly. I remember asking you if we had taken everything…”

“And you had! I told you we had taken everything useful from the house…”

“Fuck you Lilly! For motherfucking fuck’s sake!” He spun around to tower over her. She had the sense not to continue her train of thought. He could see through the red veil of anger that she looked miserable; guilty and scared.

“We’ve been talking about people starving to fucking death. There are fucking kids in here that go hungry. And you’re only telling me about this shit now?”

“I thought we’d manage…”

“Well we clearly fucking don’t, Lil. You fucking lied to me. You kept this shit from me because of your stupid fucking paranoias. Because you always fucking need a backup of a backup of a fucking backup.”

“You know why I am like that.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck if your former leaders gave you fucking issues. When have I ever given you any fucking reason not to trust me?” Apart from the obvious problem of her keeping food from his people, that was the other reason for his rage. That she didn’t trust him.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Negan,” she sounded like a broken record now and he didn’t care about her excuses, “I’m going to get Dwight and maybe Laura and Gavin and we’ll leave within the hour.”

“Oh no. You’re not going any-fucking-where. In fact, you’re fucking forbidden from leaving the fucking Tower for at least a month.”

“You’re grounding me?” The threat had brought back some of her fighting spirits. To anyone else, this would have been a relatively mild punishment, but Negan knew how much she valued her hunting and scavenging privileges, not to mention the laps she ran around Sanctuary every other day to keep healthy.

“You bet your fucking ass I am. You behave like some fucking teenage girl keeping secrets from her parents, you get treated like one. Jax is going to take Dwight to that shed.”

That made her jump up.

“No! Negan, you know Jax isn’t as capable as others out there.”

“I don’t fucking care. He knew about that food, too, right? This is his punishment as well as yours for not telling me about it. Now stop fucking arguing and get the fuck out before I think of something else, like demoting you, or throwing both your asses out into the fucking cold.”

For a moment she looked as if she wanted to continue fighting with him about it. Her chest was heaving and there were fresh tears in her eyes, but this time, they seemed to come from anger instead of guilt and fear. Negan’s jaw was set in a hard line and he put his hands on his hips, as if to challenge her. He almost wanted her to keep arguing so he could take his anger out on her some more. After a moment, she seemed to deflate in front of him and turned around to leave.

When she reached the door, she faced him again. “I really am sorry, Negan. You’re right. I should have trusted you more, instead of endangering everyone. I hope I can make it up to you.”

Her steps echoed through the hallway until he was left with silence and the hopes that the truck would get through to the place where she had stored the food. It would mean that they would survive this winter and Negan swore to himself that he would never rely on only one food source ever again.

It took Dwight, Jax and Gavin two days to collect the stuff from the shed and get back to Sanctuary. The rice was blessedly unspoiled and Negan wasn’t the only one who claimed to have developed an irrational distaste for it. They all kept eating it, of course, but he made a mental note about getting Marv and his crew to build those greenhouses and to look into potential fields to grow crops come spring. He also declared that the other communities would have to keep up with providing them with half their supplies. Anything to keep the risk of facing such a catastrophe again at a minimum.

Fortunately, as January ended, so did the snowfall. People were able to work outside again and the depleted supplies were restocked by his scavengers and by March, everything seemed to be back to normal, the Sanctuary standing tall and proud in the first rays of an increasingly stronger spring sun. Negan should have been elated that they had come out of their first bad winter unscathed, but the truth was that he was miserable.

While Lilly was allowed outside again, he still had not given her her responsibilities back and she had yet to be assigned to a scavenging run. Negan was still seething about her lack of trust and foresight and she seemed to react to his ongoing punishment with icy cold glares and that was only when she wasn’t avoiding him as much as possible. He had kept her slip-up a secret from the other Saviors so as not to add insult to injury for her. However, he couldn’t help but think that grounding her had been just as much punishment for himself as it had been for her.

He missed her. He missed her easy smile and her flirty wit and the way she had never shied away from touching his arm, or his side when she poked him, even if it had never gone any further than that. Instead, she kept ignoring him and the fact that she had become increasingly bitchy with pretty much everyone else didn’t console him one bit. He had caught himself smelling the red scarf she had given him on more than one occasion, even with her scent being almost gone from it.

Her bad mood kept coming up as a topic of conversation between his other lieutenants and he couldn’t blame them. One morning after breakfast, she walked up to their table to ask Seth for the points list to check something, doing her best to look anywhere but at Negan.

“Sorry Lil, I haven’t finished them yet. I can bring them to you this afternoon if you want.”

“Don’t fucking bother! I need them now. Why can’t any of you ever do their fucking jobs?” She ranted and the people around Negan gasped. Seth stared at her slack-jawed. He had always been friendly with her.

“Calm down! Jeez Lil, what the fuck is the matter with you? You on the rag or something?” Seth asked, clearly shocked at her outburst.

“Fuck you, Seth!” Lilly growled, her face a mixture of rage and sadness, before she turned on her heels and stomped back to the stairs and up into the Tower.

“What the hell? What was that all about?” Seth and the others broke out into incredulous whispers.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Negan declared before standing up to leave for his office. He didn’t want to be around while his lieutenants kept speculating about the source of Lilly’s abysmal mood. Although he silently agreed that her reaction had been extreme and more than just a little out of character.

He spent the rest of the morning pouring over schedules, inventory lists and scavenging plans and it all made him even more acutely aware of Lilly’s physical and mental absence. He really could have used her help in all of this. His pride forbade him from making up with her just yet, though, even if his callous comments added even more fuel to the ever burning rumor mill at Sanctuary.

He was just about ready to throw the papers that were scattered all over his desk to the ground in one sweep of his arm, when a knock on his office door distracted him from his ever-growing frustrations. He called for the person on the other side to come in, thinking maybe it was Dwight with another list of stuff people needed, or maybe a wife to complain about the lack of makeup in inventory. He was therefore surprised when it was Lilly who walked into the room. He briefly debated whether he should feel happy or annoyed about her turning up. He settled for happy, only to turn to concerned when he finally got the first chance in weeks to properly look at her. She was ridiculously pale, her skin carrying a green tinge and a thin layer of sweat was visible above her white lips. Something was very clearly wrong and he felt the strong urge to walk around his desk to help her sit down and to cover her with his jacket.

“Negan, I… I need to talk to you.”

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