Fix You ! Cegan

XX

It hadn't been immediate, but over the course of the afternoon as day turned into evening, Carls brain seemed to finally right itself and it was longer and longer between memory lapses. The tension between Rick and Negan had reached an all time high, and Negan finally made his way out once Carl had slipped into a light sleep, swearing about how he was going to run over Rick with his truck later on. "Look forward to it!" Rick had yelled after him, waking Carl up for a moment who quickly fell back asleep.

At some point in the middle of the night Carl had started to stir, but wasn't fully awake. Rick startled- he'd been in his chair- as usual- only his head was on Carl's bed. He reached out and ran a hand through his hair, telling him he was here. Carl didn't quiet, so he took his hand. His eye didn't open, but Carl whimpered out something that made Rick's heart almost stop.

"Neeg?" Carl let out softly.

"Carl, shh," Rick tried. "He's not here you're safe." But that didn't seem to calm the boy, only made it worse.

"Neeg make 'em stop. Please. Please make 'em stop." Rick wasn't sure if he was going to throw up or pass out, but thought either one of those options would be better than facing the fact that his suspicions had been right. He had no idea what was going on between Negan and his son, but he wasn't blind. He saw how Carl looked at Negan, and how Negan looked at him. He'd been sick at the thought of Negan having Carl at the sanctuary, making him do whatever he wanted. But then an equally terrifying thought had struck him- what if Carl had wanted him, too? He shook those thoughts away. Regardless of what was going on, Carl was sick, and he wasn't about to make matters worse.

So when Carl sat bolt upright in his bed about 5 minutes later with a scream, Rick didn't stir in his chair that was now against the wall. He wanted to see who his son needed more.

****

Being powerless- and, frankly, downright useless- was not something Negan was accustomed to feeling. He found himself sitting on the porch of the home that contained Rick and Carl, absentmindedly cleaning Lucille over and over again in an effort to take an edge off of his anxiety. It was no use, though. His thoughts just kept wandering between the fact that he wasn't currently by Carl's side- fuck RIck- he thought angrily, what the fuck could be wrong with the kid, and where the ever loving fuck was Dwight and the damn doctor? He would be setting out in the morning to look for them, but until then he had nothing to do but sit anxiously. There was no worse punishment than this, he felt.

Finally, finally, after so many hours he felt himself slowly nodding off, amidst thoughts of the younger man curled up next to him in their- not just his, but their- bed. Where he could keep him safe. Relatively, at least.

In another world this would be wrong. He knew their whole relationship was fucked. If the apocalypse had never happened he wouldn't be caught dead with the kid. It was wrong on so many levels- in normal society. But this was not normal fucking society.

It was like Carl had been hand-picked by this apocalyptic world, chewed up, and spit back out and was somehow better for it, at least in survival terms. For every year that Carl had spent as a child, in average every day life, he had also spent an equal amount of time stabbing walkers through the brain, learning how to survive on literally nothing, and honing his shot. He had spent more years holding a gun than he had in school. And it was absolutely incredible to see how it had shaped him. Some bad, some good, mostly crazy. It was intoxicating.

Because of that, Negans fucked up brain reasoned they were essentially equals. It was as if time before the apocalypse didn't even matter. They had both spent the same amount of years trying to survive, trying to adjust to the new world. Only, it was easier for Carl to adjust because he had spent so few years in normal society- in a way, he was more dangerous. It scared, and fascinated Negan all at the same time.