Thanks to the anon who prompted this! Hope you enjoy!


It was Maggie's idea to have a big dinner party to celebrate surviving the mess with the Wolves and the walker herd's invasion. What she hadn't really realized was that everybody heard 'dinner party' and thought 'alcohol.' She found it pretty funny that she was the one who came up with the idea and yet was the only one besides Judith who wasn't able to drink (even Carl was allowed a glass of wine, and he didn't even seem to like it that much).

Anyways, it was pretty nice seeing everyone let loose a little bit. And alcohol had never been a big part of her life anyways because of her father, so she didn't really feel like she was missing very much. She tentatively touched a hand to her stomach and smiled. Nope, she wasn't missing out on anything.

She looked around to see if anyone had noticed her slip-up – she and Glenn were still trying to keep the pregnancy quiet from all but their closest friends. But she didn't have to worry: she was the only one in the kitchen.

It wasn't until a few minutes later, as she was standing by the stove and keeping an eye on the simmering stir fry that she realized she wasn't alone in the room anymore.

Rick had approached her silently; Maggie wasn't concerned with his presence until he cleared his throat a little, saying, "Uh, Maggie?"

"Yeah, what's up, Rick?" She asked, still preoccupied with stirring the meal – it had been so long since she'd cooked something for this many people.

"We – uh – we kinda screwed up on something tonight," Rick continued, his voice hushed.

"Oh, god, what did you break?" She asked, amused.

"No, nothing like that. The thing is…I forgot - well, not just me, also Daryl, Carol, and Carl, it's their fault too, not just mine – we, uh, forgot about something and it's just a little embarrassing, to tell the truth…"

She turned away from the stove, now really curious what had gotten Rick this flustered. And what kind of secret thing only Daryl, Carol, and Carl should have known about.

And to think she'd worried her life would get boring in Alexandria.

"Rick, just spit it out, what the hell are you talking about?" Looking at him now, she saw he was definitely tipsier than she would have thought Rick would get.

He leaned in and for a split second she was afraid he was either trying to smooch her or that he was falling down but then his mouth – thankfully – found her ear and he loudly whispered, "I forgot that we met you after we went to the CDC! I thought that you were with us that night!"

For a moment she was kind of flattered. Maggie smiled at Rick's admission that she'd become such an integral part of their group that he'd forgotten she hadn't always been with them. She was still confused, though. She'd heard enough from Glenn about his life between the walkers starting and meeting her to know that his trip to the Center for Disease Control was pretty much a cluster fuck. Why Rick thought that her absence from that experience was suddenly concerning confused her.

Rick was apparently sober enough to know what her raised eyebrow meant, so he kept explaining, "Did Glenn tell you about what happened before that place blew itself up? Wait, before you answer, first, he told you that that place was gonna blow up no matter what we did, right? It's just sometimes I think we, as a group, get a reputation for causing trouble, and I wanna make sure you know that nothing we did caused the CDC to go kaboom. Okay, you got that? Good. So, Glenn? Did he tell you anything?"

She smirked, "No. No, he really only told me about the 'kaboom' part. Oh, and something about a talking building."

"Yeah," Rick smiled, looking a little nostalgic, "Yeah, Vi, I think was her name. She was helpful. Dr. Jenner, not so much. But he did give us food and wine, which gets me back to my point. You weren't there, so you didn't get drunk like the rest of us. And it's not like we've had any opportunities to drink since then, so…you don't know what happens to Glenn. Here, this looks like it's done, why don't we just turn the stove off and…" Holding onto her arm, Rick led her out of the kitchen and into the hall outside the living room, remaining quiet. It seemed like he thought that the scene could speak for itself.

And Rick was right. Because now she was looking at her husband standing in the center of the room, apparently unfazed by the crowd gathered around him as he loudly hummed some incomprehensible song. Pausing for a second, he turned and yelled in the oblivious way only drunk people do, "Carl! Enid! Are you watching this?"

"We sure are, Glenn!" Carl replied with a wide smile before turning to Enid and erupting in laughter.

"What is 'this,' what's he about to do, Rick?" Maggie asked in a hushed voice, completely horrified.

"He found out that Carl and Enid never went to a school dance, they were too young when the outbreak started," Tara walked over to them and replied, not taking her eyes off of Glenn, "So he's about to teach them the dance that is apparently a rite of passage for everyone in middle school –"

"-Oh no –"

"- The Cotton-Eyed-Joe,"

"Dear Lord," Maggie exclaimed, unable to pull her eyes away from her husband, who was really starting to struggle.

He seemed to have realized belatedly that he was a twenty-five year old man and hadn't done the Cotton Eyed Joe in over a decade. But that wasn't going to stop him, Maggie realized as she watched him shake his head and yell, "Carol, start the CD again!"

"CD?" Maggie asked, "A CD with the Cotton Eyed Joe actually survived the outbreak?"

"Yup," Tara replied glumly, "That's what started this whole mess. We wanted to play some music and we were going through the CD's, Michonne found it and we all started laughing about it, Enid and Carl didn't know what it was, and the rest is history."

Cringing as the song started playing, Maggie said, "God, you'd think the end of the world could've taken that song with it."

Tara covered her ears, "I'm not drunk enough for this!"

Rolling her eyes, she replied, "Tell me about it."

At first it wasn't as bad as she thought it would be: Glenn just clapped his hands along with the music and sang some semblance of the lyrics to himself. But then, halfway through the song he seemed to reach an epiphany and, to her surprise, started actually doing the real dance. Huh, she'd started to think he'd completely forgotten how to do it.

"What are you thinking, Maggie?" Rick asked, seeming afraid of her response.

"To be honest, I'm a little impressed," she replied with a soft smile.

Noticing she was there for the first time, Daryl shouted, "Maggie! Look away! Glenn, buddy, stop right now! Your sex life is in mortal danger right now!"

Maggie just laughed, shaking her head, "Nah, it's gonna take more than that to get rid of me." She broke through the invisible barrier her friends had drawn between Glenn and the rest of the group, smiling at her husband. And because she loved him so much, she danced with him for exactly ten seconds which only made Glenn say, "Of course, Maggie can do it WAY better than me, see, because she's from Georgia!" Because apparently he'd forgotten that more than half of the people in the room were from the South.

And – also because she loved her husband – she said, "Okay, sweetie, I think they get it. Right, Carl, Enid? Yup, they'll practice in the morning and show you then. Now, how would you like some water?"

After all, she figured letting her drunk husband dance the Cotton Eyed Joe more than once in front of company would probably make him want to divorce her in the morning.


Thanks for reading! I'm gonna try to be way nicer to Glenn in my next fic, let him be really cool and brave. Making him drunk dance the Cotton Eyed Joe in front of his friends and family was probably a bit mean!