No Tomorrow

.

"I wanted...to ask you something...I wanted to know if you'd sleep with me tonight."

Candle light flickered across his face and my heart seemed to stutter and skip a beat when I saw that he was serious.

"....you know you could have just asked me without all of this right? Is this why you went out today?"

He pulled me a little closer into his body and I shivered, the energy between our bodies was making the hairs on my arms stand on end.

"Maybe...you're not just some notch on my belt so I thought our first time should be something special. If you agree I mean."

"Mm...."

I stared at the bed to think a little and my brain ran through all the possibilities, I knew that Jay would never hurt me.....but..

"You don't have to if you don't want to...I just thought..."

Jay touched my face to make me look at him and when our eyes met again, my mind was made up; his hand was stroking my face and when his thumb pushed against my lower lip his breathe caught in his throat. I pushed his hand away gently before I leaned up on my toes and threw my arms around his neck, he had maybe one second of realization before I crushed our lips together. He moaned and wrapped his arms around my waist before he pulled the both of us down onto the bed.

*Three Days Later*

"Be careful, please."

Clouds scuttled across the blue sky and I could hear birds chirping on the wind, it was a decently breezy summer day and the weather didn't look too awful yet; someone had lent their RV for this trip to Hilltop because Glenn had made good on his promise about Maggie. She wasn't getting any better so a few people were going to take her out to get a checkup on the baby, Daryl was trying to fein getting his bike ready to roll out with but I knew he was listening in on us; Jay agreed to go with them for the day as long as I stayed behind to protect Alexandira. He was the last one to load in because he kept hanging on the open door to talk to me.

"Aren't I always?"

He leaned his face out a little more to kiss me and the heated spark played across my lips and reminded me of the first night we'd laid with eachother.

"....I love you, but alright, alright, I'll remember."

Jay glanced over to the bike and narrowed his eyes before he kissed me again and ducked back into the RV, the door was shut and I stood back to let them roll on past and I blew a last kiss to everyone.

"All of you better come home alive!"

Boy if only I'd known that life wasn't quite done fucking me over yet, if I had I would have made every single one of them stay behind.

*

Back in Jay's house later that night I found myself wrapped up like a burrito in the blankets that had Jay's scent on them and I kept alternating between smelling them and the pillows. I had my first class that day and all the kids had loved it, they learned the basics of animal anatomy and basic genetic sculpture and I already had the lesson planned for next week. Alexandria had a decent selection of school books but most of this was coming from core memory but none of the parents seemed to care, at the end of the day it was just a good distraction for a few hours that let them do whatever they wanted. I started drifting off into an uneasy sleep and I smiled softly to myself when I started thinking about how nice it would be to cuddle Jay until the both of us passed out.

*

"Open the gates!"

A few people on guard yanked the gates open and jumped back when the RV rumbled through but something smelled off about everything, one of the tires were slashed flat and there were bloody marks all over the thing; the thing rolled to a grating halt and the door fell open off its hinges before Jay tumbled out. His hair was a mess, a healing bruise covered the right side of his face, and there was blood splattered across his shirt; his clothes were a little torn and ripped and when he spotted me he started to cry before he ran at me.

"Woah, what the hell happened to you Jay?"

"God....I'm so sorry Belle, I'm so sorry."

His arms were like vises around my waist and he nearly tackled me to the ground, I tried to push him back up and away from me so that I could see his face but he kept pulling me along the road to a big open house that was used for meetings until the pressure started to hurt my wrist.

"Come on, you need to sit down."

*

Maybe an hour later more or less the news of what had happened finally spread, apparently a man by the name of Negan had killed both Glenn and Abraham and was due to come here any day now to comb through all of our stuff and take whatever he wanted; Daryl had been taken hostage and Maggie was still at Hilltop because she wasn't supposed to move much until the baby was born. The people who survived last night's problems were all shaken up but I was just a little numb around the edges; despite what he'd done to me, it made me feel weird to know that someone had taken him away...

"Belle?"

Jay shook my right shoulder until I came out of it and I blinked as the room sharpened back into focus, hadn't this room been filled with people not that long ago?

"Hm?"

"Didn't you hear me? Rick needs our help with hunting for game- he doesn't know when Negan and his people are coming but he wants us to be ready."

"....ok, when?"

Jay stared at my face for a long time before he sighed and held both of my hands between his wide ones.