Chapter Text
Negan loves his makeshift penthouse. It makes him feel like King Thick Dick of the prairie even though he knows that Rick outranks him in terms of overall authority. The watchtower that Rick has let him take claim of outranks his old, dingy jail cell by far; Negan might even argue that it beats his old loft at the Sanctuary. At least here he doesn’t have to worry about a bunch of limp-dick drones falling out of rank. He doesn’t have to worry about keeping ungrateful brats fed and warm. Here, he gets to put his fucking feet up and actually do something other than stare at the wall.
Rick is letting him read books, collect some furniture that he doesn’t need, and change his clothes every day. All he has to do is “keep watch” and “notify the guards of anything suspicious.” Big deal! If all he had to do to get these fine privileges was cut some bald chick’s head off, he would have done that years ago. Well, realistically, it’s not like Rick would have even humored this idea before recently, but right now, Negan isn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth. It’s not like he hates living in Alexandria—hell, he loves it. He’ll eat Alexandria’s ass; breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Because that’s what’s gotten him to this point. He finally has some modicum of trust from Rick. Even just a hint of certified Grimes Trust is enough to get him high as a kite.
Negan also adores having some responsibility. He’s part of Rick’s Big Picture now, whether Rick likes it or not. It isn’t really a bad position to be in; at least now he can interact with other people, even if most of them look at him like he has two heads.
“Do you seriously just sit up here all day?” Carl asks, lifting the hatch to Negan’s little bedroom without so much as a knock. Unapologetic, he clambers onto the floor and reaches behind him to help haul Judith up into the room. She puffs her cheeks out a bit at Negan but there’s no real heat in her eyes. She’s performative, at the very least. It's refreshing to see.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite parole officers!” Negan exclaims, spreading his arms out and stepping away from a window. He looks to Carl. “By the way, fuck yeah I do. I have explicitly super-fucking-important orders to stay up in my little tower.” Carl huffs a laugh and quirks an eyebrow at him.
“Yeah, but it’s not like anybody expects you to follow the rules.” Carl has gotten bigger over the years; he’s just about as tall as his old man. He has some lean muscle, but overall he’s still pretty lanky. The scar tissue around his eye has gotten less mean-looking, yet the eye patch remains. His hair is shorter now, as well. His little sister has also grown like a weed—a brown-eyed little thing with very strong opinions and a pretty good trigger finger. Negan isn’t sure how Rick feels about the latter.
“I’m fucking wounded. Why wouldn’t I follow the rules? To end up back in a six-by-six box? I got it made up here, kid. I have a tiny grill!” Carl huffs again, clearly trying not to look amused, but it doesn’t go over very well. Negan is also ecstatic that he gets to see Rick Grimes’ cool as fuck kids on a regular basis. Even though sometimes Carl gets a hint of...something behind his eye. It probably has to do with Abraham’s fucked up face and Glenn’s new picnic basket full of sensory issues. Also the miscellaneous collateral damage of a stupid fuckin’ resource war, but hey! Baby steps. Luckily, Judith doesn’t really have much to go on in terms of grudges, so she’s never looked at him with anything other than the raw honesty of a child.
“You tell your dad that you’re visiting Alexandria’s Most Wanted?” Negan asks, deciding to sit down on the floor across from the kids.
“No, we’re gardening,” Judith says easily, working on untying and retying a boot lace. Negan barks out a laugh.
“Oh, but I’m the one that might be breaking the rules! Stick it to ‘em, kid. Don’t let the man get you down,” Negan praises. Carl rolls his eye, which brings Negan’s attention back to him. “What’s the deal, though? Up for a game of checkers? Uhh, help me watch out for literally nothing?” It’s not like Rick’s border patrols don’t see all the troublesome shit before it even reaches Negan’s range of view. Carl leans back on his hands and wags a foot back and forth lazily.
“Actually, I wanted to tell you that Judy’s going out on her first patrol,” Carl says casually, as if Negan doesn’t feel like back-flipping straight out the window.
“What?!” Negan exclaims, mouth unsure whether to morph into a shit-eating grin or a deep frown of disapproval. “That’s...really? Rick fuckin’ agreed to that?” Judith purses her lips and Carl grins.
“Barely. We’re only going out a mile, not even a dent in our patrol rings, but it’s just to give her a feeling of what it’s like without the wall.”
“I’m gonna use a compass!” Judith adds. From the tone of her voice, you’d think that she’d discovered the cure for the virus. It’s so endearing that Negan can’t help but smile.
“You are going to be so fucking good at using a compass, Judith,” Negan tells her. Judith smiles and her cheeks turn a little pink. Carl reaches over and ruffles her hair, to which she grumbles and swats at him. “So who’s going? Just you two and your dad?” Negan wonders if anyone else will have the pleasure of watching Judith map out the old, cracked pavement beyond the gates.
“Yeah, thought it’d just be us three. Unless...you wanna come, too?” Carl asks. It’s so casual that Negan thinks he must be having a stroke. Negan points a finger at him as if to say ‘not funny.’
“Don’t yank my goddamn chain, here, kid!”
“I’m not!” Carl insists, leaning forward, “Judy wanted to see if you’d like to join us.”
“I did not,” Judith says, quiet and petulant, but she pointedly stares at a little dent in the floorboards.
“Carl, holy shit, I would love nothing more than to see Judith become a motherfucking master of the compass, because I know she’s fucking going to be,” Negan pauses just to watch Judith giggle, “But Alexandria’s finest mayor isn’t exactly letting me off my leash anytime soon, especially after he’s already given it so much slack.” Negan crosses his legs with an air of disappointed finality.
The hairs on Negan’s arms practically stand at the idea of going on a little field trip with the Grimes family. He’d get to watch Judith learn shit, and there is literally nothing more attractive than the look on Rick’s face whenever he sees his daughter take on the tricky trials of life. Whenever she makes paper airplanes or ties a good, solid knot, you’d never be able to guess that Rick used to eat motherfuckers’ throats for misbehaving. Not that Rick still wouldn’t eat a motherfucker’s throat; that beast is still tucked away somewhere under the graying beard and the rustic button-up shirts.
Grisly tendencies aside, Rick just looks like a one-armed ray of sunshine whenever he looks at his kids and makeshift siblings. Unfortunately for Negan, it seems like none of that sunshine ever comes his way. He gets the underlying beast whenever he catches Rick glancing at him. Well...save for the occasion in which Negan sees something not beastly, but for the life of him, he has no idea what those looks mean. Rick needs to cut out the vague eye contact, or Negan is going to get his fragile little hopes up.
“Dude, he’d totally say yes if Judith were to ask. But we didn’t want to bother asking him if you don’t want to go,” Carl is dropping all of this life-changing bullshit on Negan as if he’s just talking about the weather. It’s so condescending, but Negan won’t bitch about it.
“You’re so full of shit!” Negan is very pointedly not bitching. Carl groans.
“And you have your head up your ass,” Carl insists, making Negan’s life all the more complicated, “You did right by us with the whole Alpha thing,” Carl says her name like there’s a bad taste in his mouth. At least he doesn’t seem to be crushing on her weird daughter anymore. “I don’t think Dad would really care if you talk to us. The tower thing is a formality, if I had to guess.” Negan narrows his eyes, considering. He rubs at his chin and looks at Carl.
“Are you giving me the inside fucking scoop? How am I even supposed to believe that? There is no way your dad is going to let me tag along on a fucking journey into the wilderness with some nobodies, much less his own goddamn kids.” Carl scoffs again. Clearly the kid has better things to do than try and shove Negan’s own hopes and dreams up his ass.
“Oh, come on, Negan, for someone that wants to get some more privileges, you sure are throwing a fit about it. What’s he gonna do? Say no? Judith just wants to hang with you more often.” Hm. It’s not like Negan can just talk to her when she’s sitting on the front porch of her house anymore. And Carl seems extremely blasé about the whole thing. Suddenly, there’s a knock on Negan’s bedroom hatch door. All this talk of Rick and his parental paranoia almost makes him jump a bit at the noise.
“Carl, your dad is heading over in a minute,” A man’s voice comes through the floor. Carl and Judith are too crafty for their own good; they must have one of the regular gate guards covering for their little visit.
“Got it,” Carl answers before turning to Judith. “Judy, go stall for me, I’ll be down in a second.” Judith nods, gives Negan a smile paired with a wave, and heads back down to the watchtower’s main floor. Carl turns his attention back to Negan. Once Judith is definitively out of earshot, his gaze no longer has room for any exasperation.
“You're into Dad, right?” The question immediately makes Negan want to take to the fields and see how far he can get before a guard shoots him in the back.
“That is way too fucking--”
“Like, it’s okay,” Carl waves a hand, like he didn’t just yank Negan’s stomach up into his throat. “It’s not a huge deal. There are worse things you could be doing. At least I think that means you don’t want to kill him anymore.” Negan’s eyes widen even further before he throws his hands up in defeat.
“Thank you very goddamn much, Dr. Phil! I can’t pay you for this session, but I’ll see you motherfucking next time!” Negan points at the door. “I just love your visits, they make me feel complete.”
“Was that the bald guy on TV?” Christ, Negan feels old.
“Goodbye, Carl,” Negan rises to his feet. Carl has the nerve to laugh and get off the floor as well, reaching out to placate Negan with his hands, but he doesn’t quite work up the nerve to touch him.
“Negan, you’re a dick,” Carl says, point blank but with a smile. “And nobody is ever really going to forgive you for all the shit that you did. But I don’t really mind you so much nowadays. Bigger fish to fry, I guess, and the world goes ‘round in spite of you.” Negan sighs through his nose and shoves his hands in his pockets as Carl goes on. “I’m taking a stab here, but I think you care about my sister,” Carl shrugs one shoulder, “And that means something to me. It’d probably mean something to Dad, too, if he...y’know. Anyway. He’ll say yes to the Judy patrol thing, so I’ll see you tomorrow,” Carl dismisses himself and goes to open the hatch. Negan doesn’t notice how hard he was biting the inside of his cheek until he goes to speak again. He tastes a slight twinge of copper.
“...So you're saying I’ve got a chance?” Negan can’t help the shit-eating grin that widens across his face. He can just see Carl roll his eye one more time, even if he doesn’t look back on his way down the ladder.
“Goodbye, Negan.”
The hatch door shuts with a ‘thump,’ and Negan is left alone in his quiet little bedroom. His pseudo-penthouse. He pulls his hands out of his pockets and flexes them out of a need to fidget. Carl puts him on the spot better than most of Negan's peers ever could. He and his sister are too...analytical for their own good, and Negan hates being analyzed. But then their conversation really hits him like a freight train, and it practically knocks him off his feet. Negan bends forward a bit at the knee and pumps his fist triumphantly in the air.
“Fuck yes!” He shouts. The smallest victories are so rewarding these days.