A/N: ttgranger, I read your request. Funny thing is I was already working on a Richonne Alexandria multi chapter fic when you sent that review, lol. Then the finale aired, and I had to get this particular fic out first.

I hope everyone enjoys this story, and check out Got It by Marian Hill, if you want to hear what was on repeat in my ears when Rick kicked his messiness into gear.

Apologize

Rick didn't check his watch, but he was sure that it was close to three o'clock in the morning when he finally walked into his house and dropped his dirty shirt and jacket next to the door.

Michonne hadn't walked in that long ago herself, maybe an hour, but she was showered and ready for bed. Except she was standing in front of the fireplace and staring at her mounted katana.

"How did it go?" she asked Rick, her eyes on the sword.

"Fine," he said, his heels heavy on the floor right up until he stopped within breathing distance behind her.

After a shower that was more on the cool side, Michonne keenly felt the heat emanating from his body.

After she, Daryl, and Morgan had secured the area outside of the walls while Rick had sprinted home to check on Carl and Judith after Pete's break-in, most of the community had taken Reg and Pete out for a burial. Very fast, very methodical. There wasn't a place cold enough in the community to store dead bodies before a burial.

There had been no time for parting words. Deanna had held it together, and Jessie had stood in shock over Pete's grave after most of the group had set back for the community.

The Alexandrians got their first taste of "making it" when Abraham ordered some of them to help him remove the walkers.

Michonne and Rick had stayed close to Deanna after the funerals, and then Rick had asked to be alone with the new widow. He'd finally gotten the opportunity to wash his face of the walker leftovers then, and Deanna had given him one of Reg's white t-shirts. It was a tight fit. And he still reeked of walker, thanks to what had dried in parts of his hair.

"I told her she didn't have anything to worry about right now," Rick said. "I told her I was with her and that I'd make sure the gate and the surrounding area are secure at all times. I apologized."

"Everyone's accounted for," Michonne said, her eyes on the sword. "Maggie and Sasha had father Gabriel, and Glenn came back with Nicholas. There's a story there," she said, turning to him.

"I know," Rick said.

"Oh, you do. Oh, okay. Great. Well, I'll still let him tell you about how Nicholas tried to kill him tonight. The living room window's broken, and the curtain's ripped off. Goodnight."

"Michonne," he said, grabbing her wrist to stop her.

"Do you understan-Father Gabriel told Deanna that we're Satan's agents in disguise. We, all of us, he told her that we aren't what we seem, and that when push came to shove we'd put ourselves above her people. He betrayed us. We're lucky he wasn't at that meeting tonight. We're lucky that you showed up with that walker, hell that those walkers got in. Because I was reading that woman, Rick. She was listening to our testimonies, and she was weighing the pros and cons, and she was deciding that it wasn't worth it, that we weren't worth it. That was where her mind was headed. Because in her mind, before she'd welcomed us here? No one was pointing a gun at a crowd in broad daylight. And of course we would've followed you if she'd kicked you out, and you better believe that you would've been kicked out, because there's no way I was going to let a bloodbath happen, because you didn't want to behave!" she yelled.

"Shit," she breathed as she swiped a hand over her brow, hoping she hadn't woken Judith or Carl.

"I'm sorry," Rick apologized.

"You don't get it."

"I do."

"You don't. It doesn't work if you give in. You have to try; you have to fight. You never know when it'll sneak up on you, and giving in is so easy. It's safe. It feels like you can think more clearly, but that's a smokescreen, Rick. It's different for you. When I, when I was under, I was hyper alert, hyper focused; that was my autopilot. Everything inside me was off. You, you're reckless. This time around, you got reckless. Sasha, she's overconfident, and that's not gonna get her far. Not alert, confident, and it's gonna lead her to that same recklessness. I've already seen it. Twice. The problem is with your own people, and you couldn't see that, which would've been just fine, if you'd at least been talking to me, if you'd at least been talking to anyone. No, I'm sorry, except for Carol."

She made an attempt to head for the stairs again, and he stopped her again, grabbing her wrist with his left hand, the bruises on his busted right hand flaring up for a moment.

"I don't know how to get you to understand that our problems were bigger than we thought, bigger than I thought," Michonne continued. "Here I was, thinking we just needed to convince Deanna to let go of what she saw but in reality one of our own had already appeared like a damn premonition and forewarned her. And you played right into it, Rick."

"We knew that man wasn't worth a damn when we met him," Rick said.

"We didn't know this. Imagine it from Deanna's perspective: this man is supposed to know us better than she does, and here he is taking the "risk" of warning her about us."

"Michonne, we're still here," Rick said emphatically as he let go of her wrist and cupped her face. "We are still in Alexandria. And I'm sorry I almost took that away. I'm sorry I almost made sure we weren't."

"We're gonna have to have a meeting. We need to regroup and lay everything on the table. Daryl looked like he went through it today; your friend is here; everybody needs to talk, because I'm back to feeling like I've been asleep. Everyone has their own little thing going on, and it's just, it's not working. We need to talk."

"Okay," Rick readily agreed. He hated seeing her like this. It was disconcerting, and it had been the same when she'd told him to give Washington a shot despite Eugene's lie: her words were fast but clipped, and she was blinking a lot. She was feeling insecure, like things weren't in her control, like she was barely keeping her balance on a shaky tightrope.

"We'll need to deal with Father Gabriel, just like Deanna's gonna have to deal with Nicholas," she said.

"I know."

Michonne stopped talking and took him in. His palm still cupped her cheek, and his thumb smoothed over the outer corner of her eye. She became aware then of how much she was craning her neck to look at him. He was on her.

"Michonne," Rick said, as if he could fix his screw-up just by saying her name.

"The outside got in tonight," Michonne said quietly. "So you should feel more comfortable going forward."

She removed his hand from her face and detached their bodies, and she walked back to the fireplace.

"I deserved that," Rick said, his hand hanging in the air.

He retraced his steps, and he was standing behind her again, and she wished he wouldn't stand so close. His heat was too comforting.

"I will try," he promised hoarsely. "I'll try for you, and for Carl, and for Judith. I'll fight. You can trust me, Michonne."

With his three middle fingers, he moved her locs to one side of her neck, drifting his fingers over her neck and shoulder in the process. He'd gotten a taste of what it felt like to caress her skin when he'd been smoothing the outer corner of her eye, and he already wanted to do it again. So he kept his hand on her shoulder and used his thumb to caress the back of her neck, rubbing in small circles. Her skin was smoother and softer than it looked, a wonder considering how much time she'd spent out in the elements.

Something skittish went through Michonne, and she trembled before she could stop herself. She removed his unnerving hand again and turned to face him. "Can I trust you?" she asked.

Rick was surprised by the question. He'd wanted to reassure her that she could trust him, because, over the course of the long night, he'd seen the wheels turning in her head. Because of his actions, because he'd gone about things the wrong way, Pete had gotten incensed enough to kill Reg. He knew that he had to make more amends with her. He knew that he had to try harder. But to hear her actually voice doubt in her trust of him, he was taken aback. He'd messed up that bad.

He cocked his head and asked, "What?"

"Standing here, I realized, I remembered, that people change. People change, and the fall of civilization didn't get rid of that. As long as we breathe, we change. You can change; you will change; you are changing; we're in a new place, a new element, and I….I need to…I need to not get comfortable. I need to wake up. The only thing that's unchanging, the only reliable thing is…."

Rick's eyes drifted up to the katana.

"And I even lost that for a while," she said.

"You're wrong," he rumbled as he looked down at her. "You are wrong. Okay? I-I'm not changin'; I haven't lost myself, because if you can't recognize me, then that means what I see isn't real, that means Carl can't recognize me, that means….that means-that means I've lost."

Michonne softened. He was melting her heart and her defenses, looking this shaken up by her words. He got her point, but she wanted to brand it in his skull. However, she hadn't expected him to be this affected by her opinion of him changing, a fear really. His reaction did make her feel better, because it meant that no matter how he appeared on the surface, he was aware of himself at the most basic level.

"How's your face?" she asked sympathetically.

"Kind of stinging since the adrenaline left me."

"They look like puzzle pieces," she said of his bandages. She softly traced a line down the bridge of his nose with her three middle fingers. She was in constant awe of the fact that no matter how many times his face got banged up, he came out on the other side keeping his attractiveness. It was his genes, she decided.

"I'm not changing in any way you won't recognize," he vowed.

She nodded, assuring him with her rich brown eyes that she believed him, that she didn't think he'd lost the fight. He'd just made it crystal clear that he relied on her as a gauge for how okay he was, a voice to reassure him of what he knew deep down. And on the off chance that he doubted what he knew, he needed her. What she knew was as good as what he knew.

That revelation helped her regain her balance on the tightrope. That revelation centered her.

"I believe you," she said.

"I promise not to keep things from you," he said.

"Even when you know I'll be against what you want?"

"Even then. Disagreement is the spice of life, right?"

"I've never heard it quite like that," she said, and she laughed, not because of what he'd just said, but because, "You didn't tell me because you knew I'd talk you out of it, which means you knew what you were planning was wrong, which means you wanted to be wrong. You wanted to be wrong. You wanted to wake up wrong, go to sleep wrong, and have your secret wrong meetings with Carol."

Rick dissolved into laughter and pulled her into him in the process, wrapping a strong arm around her waist.

He touched his forehead to hers and sobered. "Anything that would've kept me from thinking about the fact that I'm here. It's like you said: I thought I was right. I felt in control. Until you snuck up behind me."

"I really didn't want to have to do that," she shared, putting some distance between their heads so she could see his eyes . "But there was no stopping you."

"It's okay. I know if the situation was reversed…." he trailed off, but he couldn't help breaking out into a rakish grin.

"That would never be me, Rick," Michonne said delicately, like she really needed him to understand the words coming out of her mouth. "You would never find me ranting and raving on asphalt."

"Probably not," he said, laughing. The past minute was the best he'd felt since Alexandria's gate had closed behind him, and he'd heard every bit of those wheels dragging between the rails that first day.

He was touchy tonight, more touchy than Michonne's ever known him to be. His arm was still firm around her waist, and he connected his forehead to hers again. She thought she should say something. The man had woken up bandaged after being hit with a rock, and that was after he'd gotten into a drag out fight. He'd been put in quasi isolation for a couple of hours, and he was fresh off of killing someone.

All of that was wrapped into the fact that he'd been going through something since they got to Alexandria, and there was no indication that it was over. There was no over. So, as a responsible person, she should put his behavior into context for him. His behavior wasn't normal. No matter how good touching foreheads felt.

"Rick," she began, putting two firm hands on his shoulders and pushing herself away. "Are you ready to go to bed?"

"Yeah," he said, staring at her.

"I mean, are, are you ready to go to your own bed? Alone?" she clarified, blinking at her faux-pas.

"No."

She dropped her shoulders and gave him a put-upon look, and he smiled.

"Well, I'm ready to go to bed, my own bed, so I'm bidding you good night."

"Michonne," he said, catching her waist again before she could get anywhere, and it sounded so much like he was whining, and she chuckled, God help her, but she needed to get serious.

"Okay, listen," she said diligently as she grabbed his biceps, "I don't think this is a good idea, whatever this is. I think that you need a good night's rest-"

"I plan on getting a good night's rest."

"Rick," she chided. "This doesn't make sense. A lot happened in the past couple of hours, and you've been going through it longer than that, so I don't think-"

"Wait a second, now, I'm not some fragile glass thing," he said, releasing her.

"I know that. I don't want to do anything to add to or affect what you're going through. I spent these past couple of days thinking you were fine."

"I lied to you, Michonne. That's mostly what it was. Are you back to thinking I'm losing myself? I thought we just talked about that."

"We did, but can you put yourself in my shoes for one second?"

"Fine. I'm not accepting charity tonight anyway," he said, and he left her to head to the stairs, but Michonne accidentally grabbed his bandaged hand to stop him while calling his name.

"Ow, shit!"

"Whoops! Oh my God. Oh my God, I'm so sorry," she said as she bent her knees to stay level with him while he bent over and breathed through his teeth.

"Ow," he groaned.

"I'm sorry. It was an accident."

"Sure," he responded dryly.

"Oh, come on. Let me see it."

She gently cradled his hand when he gave it to her. "You wouldn't happen to be exaggerating this, would you?" she asked as she examined his hand, trying to make light of the situation.

Rick didn't answer. His focus was elsewhere.

"I'm sorry," Michonne said again when she looked at him.

"Are you cold?" Rick asked.

Michonne tried to understand the question. The house was obviously not cold. And then the one thing he could be referring to dawned on her. Instead of looking down at her chest, she cocked a defiant hip. "And?"

"I got heat," he said as he pulled her to him by her flimsy shirt.

She would've rolled her eyes if he didn't look completely serious, so serious that he hypnotized her. She wore a bra to sleep, because she didn't discount the possibility of needing to wake up and run, but this bra was apparently worthless in the concealment department.

"This isn't a trick," Rick said. "This isn't a lie. Whatever you're feeling, you can trust it. It comes from somewhere true, just like mine. Shit happened tonight, but shit's always happening. I only had one thing on my mind as I walked back here. Two. And I did the first one: I apologized."

"Well. Aren't you cocky," Michonne observed quietly.

Rick narrowed his eyes in consideration. "Are you looking for an excuse not to?"

Michonne lowered her eyes.

"You ain't asleep, Michonne. And neither am I."

Michonne inhaled, and Rick kissed her then, giving her a brand new reason to hold her breath, a good reason to hold her breath. He didn't stop, capturing her lips over and over so that when she exhaled, she exhaled on his lips. She took two steps back, staggering from the feelings he was stoking, and he followed, catching her around the waist again, and he didn't stop kissing her. Michonne wrapped her arms around his neck, and both felt like they were falling, not quite off the ground, but falling, like the entire house had titled, and they were slowly following.

He deepened the kiss, and they were off the ground, floating somewhere in the middle of the living room. It was better than they could've ever imagined, and the more they took from each other, the more they needed, the more they felt like they'd only just begun to taste.

Michonne pulled at the back of his shirt, and he wanted hers off. He was distracted by kissing her, though, even more so when he kissed along her jaw and started on her neck. Michonne was sure that she wanted to be naked; she was sure that she had the capacity to make it happen, but her capacity was being overloaded by Rick. He suckled the skin at the base of her neck, and all she felt was heat, heat all over her, heat manifesting between his taut body and hers.

Her body was the mix of hard and soft that Rick had fantasized about. What he'd gotten wrong in his fantasies was how deep she would pull him in. He'd given himself too much credit in his fantasies.

Michonne backed up and guided them until she hit the fireplace mantel. She lifted the hem of his shirt, and they both wrestled it over his head.

"Rick, can you even do this?" she asked. "Your face."

"The adrenaline's back," he said.

"You'd say anything," Michonne said.

"You're damn right. I'm glad you know that," he chuckled.

She shook her head, smiling, and then she pulled his head down to get back to the kiss.

Rick reached for his left hand with his right, and he pulled off his wedding ring. It was slow going because of his injury, but he did it, and he broke the kiss after.

He placed the ring at the back of the mantel, and Michonne turned her head to see what it was. The seriousness of what they were doing hit her when she saw the ring. She could pretend this would be a one night thing. When she turned back to him, she knew that she didn't have a chance at pretending. He wouldn't let her. And the longer his hands stayed on her, the less she was interested in pretending. He was opening the door, and she was floating right through it.

Rick ran his hand down her hair, down to the waistband of her pajamas, and he continued down, dragging them down. Michonne helped him, and he sank down with her pants. While she stepped out of the pants, he was already on her underwear. He pulled them down by himself, no help wanted.

As soon as she took one leg out, he took hold of it and hooked it unto his shoulder, and after a cautious glance at the stairs, he licked her pussy up to her clit and sucked. Michonne licked her upper lip and placed both hands behind his ears.

She was a lot less hairy than he'd fantasized about. On the road, he'd fantasized about going down on something that mirrored his beard.

He twisted his tongue between her folds just the same.

"We should at least turn off the light," Michonne sighed with a worried look toward the stairs.

Rick wordlessly left her to go turn off the light, and Michonne decided right there that voicing something that made him take his mouth off of her was the rudest thing she'd ever done to herself. When he came back, lit only by the moon, she put a firm hand on his shoulder and helped him to his knees.

He put her leg back where it belonged and drove her to new heights with his mouth, savoring every drop of her that ran down his throat. The sound of his wet mouth on her wet cunt seemed especially loud to Michonne, and it made her nervous about Carl, but other than checking the stairs, she didn't do anything about it. She'd already done her best by suggesting they turn off the light.

She caressed the hair at the nape of Rick's neck, and she caressed his ears, and she memorized the feel of his lips and tongue on her, how he captured her hooded clit in his lips and slowly released it, how he licked her clit until it outgrew its hood.

Slowly but surely, the wet sound of his lips on her cunt was joined by her sharp breaths and gasps. She bit her lip to try to keep them in, and she squirmed against him. Still, Rick ate, knowing there wasn't much that could pry him away from her folds. A horde of walkers could come through Alexandria, and he wouldn't leave unless one of them actually stumbled through the broken window.

She gasped his name when she was close, very worried about how she might come. She said it again, like he was somehow supposed to help her, like he was somehow supposed to be worried about how she might express herself. This was what he wanted.

Michonne started taking deep breaths, but it was difficult, because it seemed like the deeper she breathed, the closer she came to orgasming. The deeper she breathed, the more intense it felt like her orgasm was going to be.

She wanted to get it over with, come what may, literally, and at the same time she wanted to stay on the edge forever, his tongue teasing her with the promise of a very good orgasm.

Rick wanted to stay leeched onto her pussy, too, but he was tugging at her floodgates, and, more than anything, he wanted what was on the other side.

He kissed her mound and put her leg down, and then he held her hips to anchor himself, and he stood.

"Come here," he said, and he took her hand and led her to the couch.

"Are you kidding me?" Michonne asked, the insult that she felt at him taking his tongue away knowing no bounds.

Rick licked his lips and grinned. When he reached the couch, he sat. "Come here," he repeated as she straddled him. "I'm broken, so you have to be on top."

Michonne shook her head at him. "I can hear you smiling," she said. He wasn't too broken to respond to her kiss, though, and as she proved that, her hands worked on freeing him from his pants.

She stopped kissing him when she grabbed him. Her eyes drifted down, even though she wasn't working with the best light, and a smile slowly spread across her lips. She wanted to feel silly for being so taken by his girth, but this was literally the stuff of her fantasies.

She resumed kissing him and stroke him to a full erection. He breathed her in and squeezed her thigh every time she got him good. Michonne has always been proud of her handcraft, and she was glad to see that she hadn't lost her touch.

Rick took her hands away, and he slid his beneath her thighs and moved her vagina toward his dick.

"I get the message," Michonne said, her voice dripping with arousal.

"Come on," Rick said softly. He lined his dick up, and then Michonne took over and slid down on him. It was slow going, but not as slow as she had expected, horny as she was.

"Damn, Michonne," Rick strained when she started riding, sounding the most southern she had ever heard him sound.

She wasn't even going fast, not yet. She couldn't yet, even if she wanted to. But the feeling of being inside of her was mind-numbing, the way she bounced on him was debilitating.

"Damn," he groaned, fattening Michonne's ego.

She wasn't doing much better than him. Every time she went down, she was hit with the amazing feeling of his dick spreading her.

Outside of the house was, not a walker, but Jessie. Her boys had long fallen asleep, before the meeting, even. They had no idea their father was dead, and the prospect of telling them tomorrow, on top of what she'd witnessed tonight, was keeping her awake. How was she going to help her children transition from going to sleep with their father alive, however terrible he could be, to waking up to him gone forever? Murdered. And he'd died a killer himself. Would she even tell them about that part? Considering the number of witnesses, did she even have the luxury of keeping it a secret?

She hadn't considered Alexandria that neighborly in the first place, simply because she hadn't felt like she could confide in anyone about the kind of man Pete was, but now she felt even more isolated. She had her kids. And she had Rick. She knew he would help her, but whether her kids would now hate her for bringing him into their lives was a question she didn't want to mull over.

Right now she just wanted to talk, or, or to at least not be alone.

When she got on the porch, her eyes were drawn to the broken window. She didn't feel anything about it. She wasn't processing what Pete had done, not fully. She didn't have it in her to retrace his steps right now. She'd heard Michonne say that Pete got her sword, and now she was seeing how, but she couldn't-

She heard two heavy sighs inside the house. She didn't know why she thought to go closer to the window instead of going to the door to knock.

She figured Rick might be in bed. Carol had walked her home soon after the funeral, because she'd needed to be close to her kids, so she didn't know when Rick had gone home.

But someone was awake in the house. Two people were awake, and the closer she got, the more she had an idea of what they were doing, and she was flabbergasted as to how anyone could be having sex after what had happened tonight.

But she still wasn't prepared for what she saw when she got to the window. She hadn't expected to see Rick, and she hadn't expected to see Michonne, and she most definitely had not expected to see Rick and Michonne sexing by moonlight.

Michonne was naked from the waist down, and Rick was naked from the waist up, and he was pulling on the back of Michonne's shirt and kissing her arm as she trotted on top of him.

Jessie tore her eyes away. She didn't understand. It was another thing that didn't make sense tonight. She hadn't connected with a guy since meeting Pete, so it has been a very long time, but she was sure that she remembered how these things went. She hadn't misread Rick.

She'd believed that Michonne was just platonic. Rick had told her that it was just him with the kids, and then she'd been a little surprise when she'd heard that Michonne was living with him, but she'd figured they were being practical. The whole group kept to each other, outside of the jobs they'd been assigned, and none of them had chosen to live alone. The only one who interacted with anyone else on a non-work basis was Rick. He talked to her.

She'd figured that Michonne helped him with the kids. Just because he was the only parental figure, didn't mean the others didn't help out.

It had never come out of Rick's mouth that Michonne was platonic, and she had never asked to clarify, but she'd thought she'd had her answer because of how he behaved with her. He'd given her a very intimate kiss.

He'd told her that he wouldn't have tried to risk helping anyone else.

"Damn, Michonne. Come on."

She looked through the window again when Rick spoke, and she watched him stand with Michonne wrapped around his waist and then lay her down on the couch.

Jessie backed up, having seen enough. She turned and left. She didn't know what this was. She didn't know if Rick wasn't as alone as he'd first told her; she didn't know if this was just the kind of guy he was, a guy open to any opportunity; and she didn't know if he was just having a slip.

He could've come to her.

She was ready to sleep now. She was ready to leave this whole night behind.

"I thought you were broken," Michonne said breathlessly inside the house.

"I'm not that broken," Rick said as he braced his good hand on the arm of the couch.

Both of them were unaware that they'd had a temporary voyeur.

Rick began to stroke, and Michonne emitted a guttural sigh, and she proceeded to learn that Rick was just as good with his hips as she was with hers.

In the past couple of minutes, she'd made the mistake of thinking sex with him couldn't get better. Busy fucking him, busy driving them both to an orgasm, she hadn't been thinking about him taking the reigns and fucking her.

And fuck her he did, and he took away all of her worries and all of her troubles, all of her planning and all of her tomorrows. Nothing existed or mattered outside of how good he was making her feel.

She hallowed his name, and he got to hear her precious vulnerability in the process.

She arched up to him when she came, her shallow breaths and quiet sharp moans caught between their heated bodies.

"Damn it," Rick groaned, and he pulled out. Her sharp moans threatened to push him over the edge, and he knew he was at the end of his rope.

He began stroking his dick, his hold firm.

Michonne wasn't going to let him get there without her. She sat up and commandeered his dick, and she took him in her mouth.

Rick was so surprised to find himself in the warmth of her mouth that she didn't have to take care of him long before he came. She focused her mouth on the head of his dick, her hands holding him at the base, and she sucked him like it was what she'd been doing all along. There was a focus and intensity in the way she sucked his dick, and he held the back of her head, and he came, his hips snapping at her face.

He couldn't even speak enough to say her name, although that was all he saw in his head: her name, her face, her mouth, her body, her pussy.

Michonne swallowed him and licked her lips, enjoying his taste.

Afterward, Rick shifted to lie on the couch, and Michonne fixed herself on top of him. Content, they worked on calming their breaths. There was pain in Alexandria tonight, but there was no pain in this house.

Rick had one hand on her lower back and the other tracing the curve of one of her butt cheeks when Michonne felt herself drifting to sleep.

"We need to go to bed," she said. "I slept in a chair last night, and we no doubt have an early morning tomorrow."

"You mean today. We need to fix the window," Rick said, and he looked at the broken object in question.

"We don't have the wood, and we don't have a plastic bag big enough to cover it. I don't even know if we have tape," she lightly, her eyes closed.

"I'll sleep down here, then," Rick said.

"You slept on a thin bed last night. You should sleep in your bed tonight. I'll stay down here."

"You slept in a chair," he reminded her.

"Good point," she mumbled, like she hadn't already made it. "Okay, I'm gonna leave."

She fell asleep. Rick knew it when he heard how even her breathing was, and he smiled. He let her sleep for what he guessed was five minutes, just because he wasn't ready to end the anomaly that was him holding her like this.

He kissed her hair before he woke her up. "Michonne. Michonne."

"Mmmm."

"Wake up. You need to go to bed. Even if you were sleeping down here, you're not wearing pants; I don't have a shirt, and my dick's still out."

Michonne groaned as she lifted herself off of him. She hadn't felt this tired before her orgasm. "God," she sighed.

She left him to go to the kitchen to wipe herself, and then she retrieved her underwear and pants and slipped them on.

She picked up Rick's borrowed shirt and then decided to get him his sleep shirt instead.

"I need to wash the walker blood out of my hair," Rick said tiredly as he stood. He wondered if he was tired because of the past couple of days or because it was that long since he'd had sex.

"I hope you didn't leave blood on the couch just now," Michonne said. Most of the blood was toward the front of his hair, but stains were strange about how they chose to transfer themselves.

She went to the stairs and waited for him. He joined her and let her walk in front of him.

"If you have a nightmare, feel free to come down here and wake me up," he said as they went up.

Michonne smiled and shook her head, knowing what his remedy for a nightmare would be. She might end up faking a nightmare.

He was through with lying to her, but he wasn't done being reckless.

The End