That night, Aven and Negan's dreams had similar content, hot and frantic that left their chests heaving when they jolted back into consciousness and felt disappointed when they remembered they'd gone to sleep in different rooms. Negan was ready to pounce on her after over a week of not getting his way. Aven, on the other hand, knew she wasn't ready to be intimate with someone again but still kicked herself when she opened her eyes and was alone.
In the morning, she woke to loud knocking on her door and groggily rolled out of bed, her body not wanting to move from the high-quality mattress. She dragged herself to the door, rubbing sleep from her eyes, and pulled at the knob before remembering she locked the door to be sure Negan wouldn't follow her in the night before.
He'd said a lot of things she wanted to believe and she was sure now that she wanted him, but if she was going back with him to the Sanctuary she wanted to make sure he followed through with his promises and knew he wasn't in control of her.
Aven opened the door to find Negan leaned with one arm up against the frame, his signature grin wide as ever and her leather vest slung over the shoulder of his white t-shirt. He trailed his eyes down and back up her body, noting she was still wearing the lingerie under nothing but her black t-shirt
"You left this at my place before you fuckin' blueballed yourself," he sneered, handing her the vest.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she shrugged.
"You know exactly what the fuck I'm talking about," he growled, the smile on his face unwavering. "You can lie, you can say the fucking words but your body told me exactly what you were really thinking."
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I blueballed myself. I took care of it. I don't need you for that." Negan raised an eyebrow, unsure if she was just trying to tease him. "Stare all you want, you're not gonna figure out whether or not that was a lie," she said with a wink before grabbing her jeans and backpack and retreating into the bathroom to change into more practical underwear.
"What the fuck happened to you?" he teased. "What happened to the quiet little bitch who looked at me like she was gonna bite my fucking dick off."
"Just because I have more to say now doesn't mean I won't bite your dick off," she called through the door. Negan shifted uncomfortably at the thought.
"Fair enough." He wandered over to the window and looked out down the main road of the town. "Doll, we gotta get going. That fuckin' herd's coming our way." He smiled to himself, satisfied with the outcome of his plan even if it didn't go quite accordingly. "We left a few trucks out back last time we were here. Can't trust that fuckin' bike to get us all the way back."
"What a shame," Aven said reemerging from the bathroom. "A man on a motorcycle is fucking hot."
"I do not fucking get you," he blurted.
"What do you mean?"
"You've been thinking that the whole fuckin' time and you still tried to act like you were gonna go waltzing off on your own in the end."
"The key word being tried," Aven noted.
"You're real fuckin' dramatic, you know that? You know exactly what you god damn want and you make getting it so fucking difficult," Negan observed with a sly smile.
"Hello pot, I'm kettle. I believe we're the same color," she shot back playfully.
"Different fuckin' shades of gray, doll."
"You can say the words," she retorted, repeating him with a knowing glint in her eye. They made their way downstairs and out into the daylight where some biters out in front of the herd had already made it to the hotel. Negan reached in front of Aven defensively and told her to stay behind him, but she nudged him out of the way and quickly stuck her knife in the head of one of the biters. She then went for another and Negan followed to take out three more with Lucille.
"Come on," Negan said, taking her wrist lightly when he looked up and realized the larger herd was drawing closer. They ran around the side of the building to a parking lot in the back where Negan led them directly for a green pickup truck. "We left more trucks," Negan muttered worriedly as they got in. "Someone's fuckin' been here."
"You don't own the whole world, Negan," Aven teased as they pulled back around the side of the building and onto the street, running down a few walkers before picking up speed and riding out of town.
It was fairly early in the morning, the sun having risen just enough to distinguish dawn from day. Aven sighed and leaned her seat back slightly. She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, resting her shoulder against the window and closing her eyes."
"Hey, no way," Negan warned. "You got your fuckin' beauty sleep when you decided to fuckin' blueball me. It's a long ride and you need to keep me company now." Aven didn't move and she let out a defiant grunt. "Wake the fuck up, princess," Negan growled, reaching over and quickly squeezing a gloved hand around her waist. Aven jolted away with a squeal.
"Fuck you!"
"That's gonna come in handy," Negan chuckled at her reaction. "Now that I have your motherfucking attention, open the god damn glove box and find the map marked in red on the back. Gotta swing by an outpost on the way back. I think I know the way but do me a fuckin' favor and keep an eye on where we are."
"Yes, boss," Aven sneered.
"Keep that fuckin' compliant attitude," Negan said. "I'm telling you right fucking now, when we're back I'm not gonna let your undermine me in front of my god damn men. And that is a fucking warning."
"Chill out," replied Aven, rolling her eyes. "I know what I'm coming back to."
"With all due fucking respect, I don't think you fucking do," Negan retorted, his expression hard now. Aven cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, trying to read his profile.
"Enlighten me then," she insisted, sitting upright and crossing her arms over her chest.
"You are so fucking lucky you're hot," he warned, "or I would have bashed your fucking skull in when you attacked Simon. You got off fucking easy. If you were anyone else you'd be fucking dead."
"You realize this is, like, the tenth time you've told me those exact words, right?"
"Well I'm not just fucking saying it-"
"I know!" she said, raising her volume more than she meant. "I get it! Christ, Negan, I fucking know! I think you think I'm some wide-eyed little victim that doesn't understand the reality of what the fuck is going on in the world."
"If I think that it's only because you make it so no one knows a god damn thing about how or what you're fucking thinking." Negan glanced at her to see she knew he was right on that account. "That fucker with the crossbow," Negan began, "you didn't kill him."
"There was no reason to."
"I bet you've never even killed someone," he goaded, completely for the effect of agitating her, rather than actually assuming it. She only snorted and shook her head at his purposeful immaturity. "What's the worst thing you've ever done out here?" he asked, motioning widely to the world before them.
"The worst thing I've ever done," she repeated thoughtfully before letting out a quick laugh that she couldn't hold back at the memory she was recalling. "Came across a group in the woods. Mind you, I'd just left a group who put me at the end of my bullshit rope. So first of all, this group I find is roasting fucking marshmallows in a fire in the middle of the woods, no supplies with them, they just walked out in the fucking woods defenseless to eat fucking dessert. One of the guys, first person to speak, first thing he fucking does is tell me he wished his wife there had an ass like mine but that my 'resting bitch face' turned him off. And his wife looked at me first like it was my fucking fault her husband was a pig, then all smug like he put me in my place or something."
"And what'd you do?" he asked with a snort, imagining the poor idiot who pissed her off when she was on edge.
"Shot him," she stated casually with a shrug.
"That's not that fucking ba-"
"Then I shot his wife to put her out of her fucking misery."
"HA! BRUTAL!" Negan roared. "Some bitch looks at you the wrong fucking way and you fucking cap her? Shit, that is fucking bad ass," he gushed with something resembling pride.
"My turn," Aven said.
"What?"
"My turn to ask you a question," she replied.
"Okay, shoot," he said.
"What's the worst thing you've ever done?" Negan's face fell slightly, the answer immediately coming to his mind. It was something he'd never told anybody but he felt strangely obligated to be honest with her, albeit reluctantly.
"My wife died and I couldn't do it, stop her from turning. Couldn't fuckin' handle being the one to do that."
"Well that's a shitty answer and definitely not the worst thing you've done," Aven replied.
"You're a stone cold bitch, you know that?" Negan said.
"Is that your next question?"
"No," he answered, rubbing his beard with his thumb and index finger in thought. "Well, if you're gonna be a fucking bitch about my dead wife, I'm assuming this is no fucking holds barred?" Aven shrugged affirmatively.
"When was the last time you were fucked?" Aven's jaw tensed out of habit, but she knew what he meant when he said "no holds barred."
"Well...depends what you mean, I guess," she frowned.
"Doesn't fucking count if you weren't participating," he clarified. "Fucking is fucking, rape is rape."
"At least four years," she admitted, staring out the window. "Can't really be more specific than that." Negan let out a long whistle.
"Shit, so you're long fucking overdue, huh?"
"It's not your turn to ask a question," she replied. "My turn. What the fuck kind of name is Negan?"
"It's Arabic. It means strong, godly entity."
"OH, GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK," Aven immediately broke out hysterically in laughter, cupping her hand over her mouth to try to contain it. Negan gritted his teeth together but her laugh was infectious and he couldn't hide his smile.
"My turn," he said. "What the fuck kind of name is Aven?" She calmed down and caught her breath, wiping a tear from her eye before answering.
"Well I looked it up one time and it had a bunch of meanings, but my mom was really into gemstones and she always told me she named me after her favorite one. Green aventurine, we had a really cool geode of it at home...She always told me that it comes from Italian, avventura. Which I guess probably translates to adventure but she said it used to mean 'by chance' or something like that...I don't know, she had very specific reasons."
"Avventura," Negan repeated. "What, like Jim Carrey?"
"Not Ace Ventura, asshole." She shook her head with a small laugh.
"So your parents named you 'by chance,'" he sneered. "I'm gonna go out on a fucking limb and say you were an unplanned pregnancy."
"I was a happy mistake," she said dramatically with a grand gesture of her arms. "They were young when they had me. But next question. What did you do before all this?" Negan hesitated for a moment, unsure if he wanted to tell her the truth. No one at the Sanctuary knew he wasn't always the man in charge that he was now. But he'd already told Aven about Lucille, and this new information was much less precious. And, he realized after risking his life alone out here with her, apparently he was inclined to trust her.
"Gym teacher," he replied after a moment. Aven had to hold herself back from continuing to meet his answers with humored disbelief. "My turn," he insisted before she could laugh or give a snarky retort. "What happened when you were kidnapped?"
Aven went still, her gaze wandering back out the window and watching the skyline above the trees. She bit the inside of her lip, thinking back to the night she'd met her captor and subsequently woken up in his basement.
"I, uh, I was out with some friends," she began. "They were all wasted, may as well have not been there. This guy, the guy who, um, took me, I recognized him from around town. Talked to him for a little while, nothing out of the ordinary. He got us water bottles at some point...I'm usually not that fucking stupid, I know not to take drinks from people."
"Well, not anymore apparently," Negan interrupted, referring to the previous night. Aven only shrugged in response before continuing.
"But it looked sealed and I didn't want to be rude...that's always the fucking problem is I don't want to be fucking rude."
"You better fucking not be blaming yourself for this," Negan said, looking at her seriously.
"No," she replied immediately. "No, I blame him...it's just...I don't know how to talk about it."
"What do you mean, doll?"
"After you survive something like that...I don't know, you're supposed to get help. If you're lucky you go to therapy and find a support group and you learn from other survivors. I had no concept of time, I didn't know how long I was gone. I never got the details, never found out what the full story was, who he was, if he'd done it before." Negan nodded thoughtfully.
"Well, what about-"
"Nope," she interrupted. "You just got two questions. Now I get to ask two."
Two questions later, Aven learned that Negan was from Virginia and that he'd been raised by a single mother. She could have gotten the information in one question but he was purposely stingy if only to annoy her. He also didn't want to drop the subject of her kidnapping and was eager to get to his next question.
"My turn. How'd you get those scars on your arms?" he asked.
"Some are self-inflicted, some aren't," she responded without hesitation.
"Self-inflicted? You don't still do that shit, do you?"
"You're really bad at this whole 'taking turns' thing," she retorted at his extra question. "But no."
They went on talking for hours, one question at a time back and forth, only stopping to check a landmark and make sure they were going the right way and to fill their canteens in a stream. They drove for most of the day and the sun began to set and Negan assured Aven they were getting close. It was her turn to ask a question but as they drove around a curve, Aven's expression fell flat.
Negan looked ahead to see what she was seeing: in the distance was a large industrial building, like a mini-Sanctuary, and when Negan came to a stop and turned the engine off they could hear alarm sirens blaring from up ahead. Walkers trickled out of the gates and into the road like ants, and smoke was rising into the orange sky.
"Last question," Aven breathed. "Is that your outpost?"
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A/N - So apparently Kirkman came up with the name Negan on his own (he was originally going to be named Negus so let's just all take a moment to appreciate the fact that he doesn't sound like a constellation). I looked up the name and it has a few different roots, but it is in fact Arabic meaning "strong" or "godly entity"