Rick lay on the threadbare couch, still aching, watching them through half-closed eyes.

Carl is uncharacteristically still, the attitude and sullenness typical of a boy his age currently not in evidence. This, despite the thoroughly fucked world at large and the extra angst of going through puberty in it. He knows it’s because of Michonne, the woman who had limped into his life, baby formula in one hand and katana in the other, more than a year and half ago.

That seemed like many lifetimes ago.

She speaks in soothing husky tones regaling him with nothing less than the absolute truth, something he also does, but perhaps Carl needed to hear it from a woman.

Correction; this woman, one he respects.

She is not the kind of woman he would have gotten to know before the Walkers…

At least not beyond basic small-talk around the cooler or a warm voice over dispatch. That was the extent of his relationship with the two black women he knew, both from the station, both as close to non-entities automatic polite conversation with a married white male colleague would allow in Georgia.

He feels a twinge of reproach in that. His curiosity about Michonne is intense, but she’s not the oversharing type...At least not with him.

They do have a rapport bordering on telepathy at times, but she’s not big on talking.

Stealth born of his police training and this newly dead world, at least grants him small glimpses into who she is, without him having to feel like he’s interrogating her.

When she does talk about herself with his son, he listens.

Back at the prison, he need only blink in her direction and she knew to protect his flank or scout ahead for danger, the only person he could do that with.

Lori was a different story. She was often contrary and combative, begging him not to do what needed to be done in this world, because she feared the harm that would come to him.

She never understood that even when he was on the force, his core responsibility was to his men and the people.

They were all his family.

He would not abandon that for his wife and son as she would have him do, especially not in this world.

It just wasn’t in him to do that.

Maybe she did understand and that’s why it was so difficult for them in the end.

He did know that she both loved and hated him for it.

Michonne on the other hand has an easy acceptance and complete faith in his decisions, what has to be done -even the nastier things. There’s no judgment or doubt.

She’s an easy-going, reliable, altogether perfect partner.

She’s also quite sexy. You would think that with constant smell of unwashed bodies and death and decay, that fact would be easier to ignore but…

No.

Michonne is disturbingly hot. That’s a fact.

She’s beautiful in a way he’d acknowledge distantly in his former life but honestly wouldn’t have the guts to pursue, even if he weren’t married, because of her race. Why risk all the complications when acceptable is just so much easier?

But now that the world has ended, these things are different.

Big brown eyes, and flawless skin. Curves in all the right places and a smile that rivals the sun on the decreasingly rare occasions that she unleashes it upon them.

Michonne has somehow taken a place of special significance to him, more-so than any other person in his group. His heart is lifted by her presence, but he is absolutely terrified of letting it fully take hold. Hope is devastating when unfulfilled.

Too many losses.

Too many.

He catches himself watching her more and more often even without the guise of appreciating her interactions with his son.

He suspects Carl has a crush on her.

Like father, like son.


~~


“Hey you.” she whispers and Rick stirs, wincing slightly from the sudden movement.

“Hey. Everything alright? -Carl--.” he replies, his voice crackling with sleep.

“--Yeah. He’s upstairs reading comics. I just wanted to see how you were doing. You’re pretty banged up.”

“My chest hurts, my head hurts, and my nose hurts. I pulled out a tooth yesterday, so my mouth throbs every time my heart beats. ”

Rick chuffs.

“I’m doing baad.”

“Sure, but you’re getting better. Here.--”

She reaches into her front pocket, inadvertently tugging down her skinny jeans so her flat belly is exposed. Rick can’t keep his eyes from darting across the newly exposed skin.

Michonne retrieves a plastic bag full of pills.

“Found these, this morning. Percocet.”

He could kiss her.

Michonne smirks as if she’s reading his mind. Rick narrows his bloodshot eyes and waits for her to say or do more.

She approaches his prone form, shakes the bag so two pills fall into a groove in the plastic and sticks that part of it in her mouth. With a flash of white teeth, (from beneath her tempting bee-stung lips) she cracks one of the pills in half.

Rick’s mouth goes dry, and he swallows trying to get some saliva going in his own mouth again.

It appears she’s thought of it all though, because she also picks up a juicebox… Well, technically a juice-bag, a Capri Sun and she might as well have revealed a double-rainbow for all the wonder he feels at seeing it.

“To wash it down.” she adds needlessly. “I had to hide it from your son.”

And there it is, one of those rare grins.

He can’t help but smile in return.

She shakes the one and a half percocet pills to the very edge of the opening of the bag and leans her body over him, raising an eyebrow until he gets the hint to open his mouth.

He licks his lips and does so, and she tips the baggie into his mouth, maintaining eye contact as she does.

Is she teasing him?

She then sits back and delicately pokes open the Capri Sun packet with that tiny yellow straw and lifts it to his mouth to suck.

She doesn’t have to do this.

There’s nothing wrong with his arms, but damn if it doesn’t feel good to have her do this for him.

If she were his, he would slide his hands up and down her sides and savor her amazing shapely body with his fingers, while she did this.

He slurps as he finishes the sickly sweet juice.

“There. All done. Get some rest.”

And just like, that she’s gone.

Not far though.

Far enough to give him space and close enough to chop Walker heads if need arises.

….Around a corner in the room where she plops down upon a plush chair, puts her feet up and dozes.

~~

Rick listens to her relaxed breathing and muses on the idea of her being his...what? What could she possibly be to him in this world? --If she would even have him.

Glenn and Maggie have made the most of their situation.

He thinks about that slip of skin and her blinding white teeth. About how she goes from resting bitchface (badass face, really) to cute as a button in the time it takes for her to grin.

He thinks about how she manages to be so goddamn womanly even when she’s lopping heads off walkers.

Fuck.

He’s got it bad.

Rick eventually falls into a deep drugged sleep full visions of better things.

~~

He awakens with the delicate pressure of fine fingers on the snap of his jeans. Stirring slowly he manages to rasp, “Michonne, what are you-?”

“Shh.” she says and looks up at the ceiling, indicating his sleeping son upstairs.

“It’s late.”

Her bottom half is nude, but it’s too dark for him to really see her. She pulls him free of his pants and jerks him a couple of times, but he doesn’t need it.

It’s been almost three years since he’d last had sex. And a year and half of tension between them.

He tilts his pelvis, hissing quietly at the awakened aches in his body, duller now with the medicine she gave him, and lays back, sinking as far as he can into the couch, in total submission.

She can do what she will.

She does.

She rolls a condom down his length and straddles him, careful to keep her weight off him.

And then just as smoothly takes him into her body.

He hisses and grips her hip and watches as she takes up a sinewy rhythm.

“My god…” he silently mouths, because it’s so much better than he’d ever imagined, even with their awkward positions, his pain, and their not exactly pristine bodies.

The tension is building rather quickly and he’s trying to make it last but damn, she really knows what she’s doing and she’s so fucking tight...

“Rick... Rick, wake up. It’s me.”

Michonne is sitting beside him on the couch smirking at him.

He goes a shade of red he hopes she can’t see in the darkness.

“You were calling my name in your sleep.” she helpfully informs him.

“Sweet dreams?” she says, rubbing salt into the wound by glancing down at the tented blanket.

“I think you know it was…” he says seriously, boldly meeting those soft brown eyes.

She blinks at him for moment. “I just did a quick check around the perimeter. It’s a quiet night. Can’t hear or smell any Walkers. I think something’s drawn them away.”

“Michonne.-”

“Shh.” she says, and in an echo of the dream he just had glances up at the ceiling. “We don’t need to talk about it now.”

She stands up for a second and fairly glides across the room in stealthy silence, she picks up a well crumpled travel pack of Handi-wipes and comes back to sit next him.

“Here. Tip your face up.”

He obeys and she begins to gently clean his face.

She avoids any areas darkened with bruising, but manages to clean away any remnants of dried blood.

She’s so close he can almost count her eyelashes even in the shadowy dim.

“There. Just as handsome as ever.”

They both feel the shift of gravity between them and the kiss that follows is as desperate as it is inevitable.

Rick feels no pain as he pulls her body tight against his own and fairly devours her mouth.

She manages to pull away for a moment and look at him seriously.

“-Wait…”

Her eyes are wide with the unspoken questions. Is this really what you want? Everything changes after this...What about Carl?

“You and my son are all I’ve got left.” he rasps against her lips.

“I’ve wanted this for a long, long time.”

She chuckles against his lips.

“Likewise. Still, let’s be smart about this, okay?”

She kisses him once more tenderly, before she sits up.

She quirks an eyebrow at him.

“Trust me?”

“You know I do.”

“As much as I’d love to, we can’t take our time.” she says, as she undoes the zip of his pants, and pulls out his length, still impossibly hard.

“He could come down at any time.”

She strokes his length, with the damp wipe and he hisses.

“You have to be quiet.”

He nods and then grits his teeth and she smoothly lowers her head and takes his length into her mouth.

“...ahh fuck!” he rasps, as quietly as he can manage.

It’s good. It’s so good, his entire world is narrowed down to the delicious sensations between his legs.

At first he can’t move.

So fucking good.

His hands are balled into tight fists at his hips and all he can do is lay there and feel.

Then she does something with her hands and tongue that makes his body body seize and his eyes fly wide open and he can’t even find the air to gasp at the immense pleasure.

His eyes do find her katana, right next to her feet and he has a moment of hyper-awareness that he is fairly in awe at the realization that this warrior goddess is loving him with her perfect mouth.

He wants so badly to touch her, - to see her, to please her the way she’s so effectively pleasing him, but he’s too far gone to do anything but grip her shoulder.

Michonne takes him deep and hums around him swallowing, and that bowstring snaps, his mind going white as he comes hard, grunting as he pulses hot fluid down her throat…

He doesn’t even have time to warn her.

But she continues to suck, slurping greedily until he’s too sensitive, -too drained and he weakly nudges her to stop.

She sits up and wipes her mouth, swiftly stashing his spent length and the used wipes away in a plastic grocery bag she’s using for refuse.

He’s limber and relaxed, his body flooded with endorphins. His aches and pains forgotten. He can’t believe how amazing he feels.

“Come here.” he says smirking and tugging her hip.

The kiss he gives her is infused with tender gratitude.

“When I’m better woman, you’re gonna git yours.”

She smiles against his lips.

“I’m holding you to that.”