Poker Face

Chapter 70 - A Changed Man

I can't get my head around it,
I keep feeling smaller and smaller
I need my girl
~

"What the hell was that?" Maggie hissed, shoving Aven back beyond the walls of the Hilltop as the gates closed behind them. "I said act like a hostage, not act like you want to stay here."

"I'm sorry! I told you I'm not good at pretending!" Aven replied, holding her cuffed hands up in front of her face as though she expected to be hit. "I-I panicked, I didn't know what to do and I knew he was just going to say something hurtful to you and I didn't want anyone getting hurt because of me. B-But openly defying him like that, now he wants me back more. I'm more use to you now. He would have felt better seeing me hurt and scared."

"That makes no sense." It didn't make much sense to Maggie, but she had already been hoping to use Aven to show Negan he didn't have the control over individuals that he thought he did. Apparently, Aven was already a step ahead of her.

"HE DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!" Aven shouted, her voice cracking. She didn't know quite why she was getting so worked up, aside from the continued racing of her heart from being so close to Negan and not getting to go home. She could feel her volume drawing the attention of several strangers but she didn't care. "HE'S FUCKING CRAZY!"

"Then what makes you think you know him so well? If nothing he does makes sense-"

"It makes sense to him," Aven replied, reeling herself back in. "And I know what makes sense to him."

---------------------------------

When Negan finally got up to his room, it was late at night and he knew he wouldn't have the ammo to launch his attack the next day. He had to wait until the day Aven was supposedly going to be killed if he didn't give himself up. He wanted to trust the doubt she'd expressed about the threat, but he couldn't afford to just assume Rick and the widow were bluffing. He couldn't go get Aven back without ammo, but he couldn't wait until after she was supposed to be killed. He and his men would have to move out with what they had in two days.

He sighed as he looked around the living room at the fallen blanket fort he hadn't bothered to clean up. It was a stupid fucking idea in the first place (something he had to consciously remind himself of so as not to feel ridiculous for finding joy in it), but he didn't want to clean it up until after Aven was back. It was a small, tangible reminder of her presence, as was her notebook that he'd found in the dirt at the outpost and flipped through for comfort.

He dragged himself into the next room and without even kicking his boots off, he fell back on his bed and closed his eyes, so exhausted that the only things keeping him from sleep were worry, the sore tension in his neck, and another familiar tension that had been growing in the week or so since Aven had been wounded. He swore he wasn't going to touch her until her stitches were out, for fear of straining them and opening the wound in her neck, plus she hadn't been in a state of mind to be touched in any way less than innocent, her long, empty days in bed plagued with memories of being assaulted. It's not that Negan couldn't stand to go more than a week without sex, but it had been a particularly stressful week and it's not like he wasn't constantly thinking about sex anyway. Since she'd been taken, he'd had barely a moment to breathe let alone time to think, but as night fell and it became clear there was nothing to do but wait for the right time to strike the Hilltop, he couldn't keep his longing for her off of his mind.

When he closed his eyes, he could hear the gentle hum of her voice. He felt her fingers running through his hair and over his skin. The bed he'd spent almost two years sleeping alone in reminded him of all the time they'd now spent there together. The feeling of the mattress against his back easily elicited the memory of having Aven carefully nuzzled in his arms at night while she was healing in the previous week, but it was only a moment exploring that thought before he was drawn straight back to the last time he'd been inside her. It was the night before she was injured; she'd woken from a nightmare and begged him not to go the next day before starting to kiss him desperately and frantically as though it was the last chance she'd ever get.