Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

Authors Note #1: Because Abraham and Rosita have like, nothing written for them last time I checked and I think that is a gosh-darn atrocity, okay?

Warnings: *Contains: spoilers from "Self Help" to "Crossed" adult language, adult content, sexual content, vague comic book references/possible spoilers in terms of backstory, my own personal take on their first meeting in Dallas, vague reference to attempted suicide, attempted sexual assault, mentions of divorce/marriage issues, reference to the usual emotional trauma, angst, sexual situations, friendship, love and unexpected bonding along the way.

Operation: Football Bat

Chapter Two

She didn't talk about it much.

About the people she'd run with before they'd met up in Dallas.

She didn't have to.

He'd seen enough in the first five minutes to make her an offer he knew she couldn't refuse.

Hell, it wasn't like he could leave her out there on her own anyway.

What with those big eyes and cocky expression.

The world would eat her up and spit her back out, quick as anything.

It probably had more than once before he'd come along.

Not that she'd ever talked about it.

Besides, like he'd told her right then and there, he liked what he saw.

She could take care of herself.

She'd be useful, maybe even essential in helping get Eugene to Washington.

What he hadn't told her was that either way, it wouldn't have mattered.

No matter how far gone you were. Leaving people behind just wasn't him.

It would never be him.

Because if it was, what was the point?

He was tired of being alone.

Ellen had been right.

Sometimes you needed more than just the mission.

She'd looked remarkably young - far younger than she actually was - as she looked up at him through a tangle of dark hair and tight jeans. She was filthy, mouth bloody around the edges from where she'd bit a chunk out of the arm of one of the assholes she'd been runnin' with. Not taking too kindly to his wandering hands and selective deafness when it came to the word "no" as she leveled him with a withering stare from across the blacktop.

It'd been her eyes - doe-wide and slightly feral - that'd made him take a second look.

There'd been something in them he'd recognized. A likeness.

She was a fighter. Whatever the world was now, she took it on willingly. Fully intending to beat it, no matter the odds. He respected that.

She kept the high ground, staying on the opposite side of the dirty van. Suspicious, but too busy wheezing for breath from the sucker-punch the jerkoff had gotten in a few seconds before he could charge out of the brush to intervene to do much about it.

It hadn't taken much. The guy had been too busy thinking about getting his dick wet to consider that anyone and their dog could be lurking on the other side of the ditch. Either way, he was glad he'd left Eugene in the root cellar of some house a few miles back, knee deep in an inventory of their supplies. Anything to keep him from getting into trouble as he surveyed the area up ahead.

They were low on gas and just about everything else.

Normally he brought His Nerddom along, but the guy was still a shit shot and he wasn't familiar with the road up this way and after the traffic jam they'd budged their way through to escape that herd, he wasn't taking any chances.

He couldn't risk it – risk Eugene – not with what was at stake.

"I could have handled it," she rasped, voice hitching as she coughed and forced herself to straighten. One hand low on her gut as she fought the urge to spew breakfast all over the asphalt.

"You were handling it," he returned, shifting the butt of his semi-auto to his right hip – finger far from the trigger as she relaxed a fraction. "Ain't nothing wrong with accepting a bit of help now and again."

"Oh yeah?" she shot back, tone bitter and damn near cold as ice as she spat up a mouthful of blood-tainted phlegm and wiped her mouth, pig-tails flying. "And when was the last time you asked for help, tough guy?"

The corner of his lip quirked in spite of himself.

Attitude or not, it was her eyes that gave her away.

"Right now," he admitted, feeling a few sizes too big for his skin as the wind shifted and a soft easterly breeze sent trash and debris skittering across the road. "None of us can make it alone anymore. We shouldn't have to. More to the point, I don't want to. And I am not ashamed of that."

He was lucky enough to get to watch as a perfectly shaped brow arched, sassy and keen in all the ways he was just itching to get to know as she looked at him like he was halfway to crazy. And hell, maybe he was. Either way he could barely keep from grinning.

"Who the hell are you?"

He just smiled.

"My name is Sargent Abraham Ford, and I have a very important mission."

It didn't take long for him to figure out that Rosita was one of those types who'd still be young, sassy and endearing until some heinous old age, like eighty-nine or a hundred and two. It was a pretty stark difference considering that Ellen - god bless her trying little heart - had been the just about the opposite. The kind whose good grace and patience had been used up long before she hit thirty five.

It didn't take much to get her trained up. Most of it she already knew, considering she'd survived this long with only a bunch of jerkholes for company. He'd basically laid down a few ground rules and let her figure the rest out for herself. In fact, it wasn't long before she and Eugene were going at it like wet cats. She called him out on his bullshit and Eugene responded in kind, doing his best to wind her up right back.

Sometimes he felt like he was the only adult in the room.

Like he was too damn old to deal with this type of shit.

Other times he couldn't help but grin and join in.

That was the problem.

Somewhere along the line he'd let it become more than just a mission.

More than some goal wrapped in gold at the end of the finish line.

It was better than that.

Worse.

Because deep down something in him just knew that when all this ended in blood and bullets, losing her – losing the both of them – was going to hurt like a sonofabitch.

The truth was that finding her had been the push he'd needed.

Not to get over what had happened or make it better.

Nothing could do that.

But it'd sure as hell helped get him back on track when it came into all that living stuff.

She was good at that kind of shit.

And lucky for him, she had a knack for making second hand stuff want to shine again.

Still, he'd be a full-out lying sonofabitch if he said he wasn't caught off guard when one night he woke up from a doze to find her closing the door to the room he'd settled in for the night. Face lit up by the flickering orange of a candle stub as she faced him down, cool as anything, as if daring him to question it as she tossed her hat onto the bed and shimmied out of her jeans.

It was only when her shirt went the same way and he swallowed hard, staring up at a landscape of tanned cream and off-centre constellations of freckles he desperately wanted to map out with his lips that he manned up and called her bluff.

"What are you doing?"

He was up on his elbows, sheets barely hitched up at his waist when the words finally made it out. Mouth opening and closing for a few precious seconds as she tugged her hair free and surrounded them in a dark, sweet smellin' curtain.

"Don't be stupid," she told him, slipping under the covers like water on silk, all easy movements and the sort of confidence he wished he could say he'd had at her age. Sitting astride him, bold as anything, as her hand trailed down his chest - raspy and exploratory until they hit pay dirt - enough to make him arch into it as her nail caught on a nipple.

He felt like a grenade with a faulty pin, struck dumb by the irony of it all as she squirmed under the covers and pulled him out of his briefs. There was no foreplay, no easing into it. Just his hands firming around her hips, gasping at the same air as she sunk down on him.

And in a lot of ways, it actually made it okay.

Just like the sigh of relief that bubbled up from her perfect throat when she bottomed out. Like she'd finally managed to soothe some itch she'd been meaning to scratch.

He could give her this.

Take this.

They could be here for each other, right here and right now.

They didn't have to talk about tomorrow or the next day.

They didn't have to talk at all.

Only problem was, it didn't stay that way.

She'd been different from his wife.

Christ alive, was that ever an understatement.

In truth, from start to finish, Rosita was nothing like her.

From the way she moved her hips – rolling and bold – to the way she bared her teeth when she came. All but purring into the crook of his neck as soft curves and impossibly perky little breasts pillowed against his chest as twilight settled in to stay. She was an entirely different animal, distinguishable even in the dark when he woke up in a cold sweat, jerky and soaked with blood that really wasn't there, he could always tell the difference.

And that was a good thing.

He thinks.

A/N #2: Thank you for reading. Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – This story is now complete.