Better Off Dead
Rating: ehh… I’ll go with 13+
Word count: 2k
Characters: Rick Grimes x Gender neutral reader
Setting: Alexandria, after TOWL ep 1 (SPOILERS!!!)
Content warnings: HUGE SPOILER WARNING FOR THE NEW EPISODE!!!!!!!! YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN READING!!! That’s two warnings don’t blame me. Self harm and suicidal ideation, this is an almost entirely mental health related drabble. Heavy talk of cutting and scars. Typical TWD themes.
Summary: FINAL SPOILER WARNING! Rick hasn’t even been back for a full day. He is also not the only one who suffered a psychiatric decline over the years you spent apart. Both you and him are unaware that the other was in a similar spot. Hurt/comfort ensues.
Author’s note: Did NOT expect to be writing a Rick x reader in the middle of the goddamn night but my theory about Rick’s hand got proven right within not even five minutes and I was losing my shit. I started trying to think of plot immediately and once I saw more on mental health I was gone. Me and my love for mentally ill men <3
I wanted to post this the same night as release it fought me hard 😭 never expected to be doing Rick x reader and wanted to be perfect. Once again, the title is linked to the songspo so you can listen along.
Unbeta’d again, hope this is decent for u guys :3
The very moment you woke up, the first thing you became aware of was the fact that you found yourself in bed alone. Not unlike all the other nights. It was routine by now. The occasional, unique circumstance of this particular morning though, was the urge. Unshakable. All encompassing. It crashed through your brain and down into your body, pulsing through your veins, begging to be drawn out and released. Trapped under your skin. Grief.
It was almost completely overwhelming, tears flooding your lower eyelids and venturing down to your lips just as a strangled sob ripped from between them, the sound a little hoarse from your voice being unused during sleep.
You reached out blindly to the nightstand, your fingers grasping for the knife you always kept at your bedside in case of waking up to a walker breach or anything similar. Even through blurred vision, you found the handle, and brought the blade to the criss-crossed skin of your arm.
What a way to start off the morning with a bang.
Inflicting harm over previously healed scars always made you flinch harder. But you didn’t care that it hurt more. If anything, you appreciated it. It was more effective, faster. You never felt the need to leave quite as many.
Hissing through your teeth, you sat the knife down on your knee and brought your pointer and middle fingers to either side of the new wound and spread it open, luring more blood to flow out. It tickled as the thick crimson rolled down your wrist and came to a stop right where the skin curves to the heel of your palm, and you grabbed the handle once more to start the process over again.
Halfway through the next was when the door creaked.
You practically jumped out of your skin, throwing the reddened blade to clatter on the floor and snatching the covers to pull back over yourself, press them to your arm. Your free hand wiped the tears from your face as you sniffled, clearing up your sight well enough to see….
Rick. Blue eyes darkened by confusion and worry.
He stepped in cautiously, taking care to slowly and quietly shut the door behind himself and return his attention back to you. “Hey, what are you doing that for?”
“Wh— what the fuck?”
It left you as no more than a whisper, and you knew that same confusion was reflected on your own face. Rick wasn’t supposed to be here. ‘Am I hallucinating?’
“No, you’re not hallucinating. I’m right here.” Rick had nearly asked if you were okay, but stopped himself short. He’d just walked in on you cutting yourself, there was only one answer that you would, or could, give him.
You were apparently not fully awake yet, or you were still reeling from the self harm, because you’d seemingly asked the question out loud and not in your head.
His manufactured arm piece remained immobile at his side while his real hand patted himself absently in various locations, the pockets of his shirt as well as on each side of his jeans, searching for something although knowing that it wasn’t there. Rather than stand there idiotically, Rick held up a finger to signal ‘one second’ and made his way further into the room, dropping to one knee to pick up the knife you’d flung down carelessly and wiping the blood onto his shirt. And then, while he was down there, he pulled open each drawer of your nightstand until he actually found what he was looking for. Bandages. Or, more specifically, a small med kit with bandages in it. Packed full of random, useful supplies.
He remained kneeling at your bedside and spoke as he opened it. “Already forgot that you have me back?” His smile had an odd edge to it, like he was happy to see you but simultaneously disheartened by the state you were in, and concerned about the fact you’d forgotten. There was so much emotion on his face your eyes filled again.
“Yeah, I guess, I-”
You jumped when Rick pulled the blanket away from your arm and instinctively drew it back toward your chest, shielding the mess of dried blood from his worried gaze, but he simply reached for it again and coaxed it back to himself. Tentatively, not one sign of upset visible on him.
As he assessed the damage, you ashamedly looked elsewhere and returned to what you had previously been saying. “When Siddiq was still around, he diagnosed me with C-PTSD. Honestly, I think we all have something like that by now.” Laughing weakly, you bit the inside of your cheek for a few moments as Rick took care to clean the area with a small, square cloth soaked with witch hazel. It wasn’t the medication that burned, just the contact. You carried on. “He told me one of the side-effects would be my memory. Short-term, long-term, or even both… so, probably that and the fact I dreamed about finding you as a walker and having to put that knife between your eyes.”
A flare of insecurity sparked in your chest when that last statement had Rick’s eyes flitting to yours. Suddenly you found yourself critically self-conscious that he’d decide you were too much work now and leave to find better. Memory problems? Who would bother dealing with that?
“Okay,” he said surely, his voice steady. “That’s okay.” You were overwhelmed with the urge to hug him, but it would have to wait until you had your arm back. After a moment of eye contact for a second time, Rick patted the skin dry with a square of gauze and shook a small bottle of bactine before spraying a thin layer on top of the area.
The tingle of numbness was immediate. You sighed in relief as he rolled a Q-tip covered in Vaseline over each laceration and used that same last piece of gauze to delicately wipe up the excess surrounding them. And then to preserve resources, Rick opted not to open another and instead flipped that pad over to lay the dry side on your wrist; wrapped a length of blue self adherent cohesive bandage around it a few times to keep the wound dressing in place. Brought the heel of your palm to his lips, only to pause when his eyes wandered to find the array of scars littering your inner forearm. There was one in particular that he couldn’t take his attention off of.
Trailing the pad of his thumb down the length of your arm, you glanced down to see what he was looking at.
And felt nauseous.
“This one?” he asked faintly, voice barely discernible. Jagged, raised skin followed your radial artery vertically. Perpetrated on yourself while you’d searched for him.
You shrugged in an attempt to play it off as a lot calmer than you actually were. “Didn’t go deep enough.” Shame, once again, enveloped you. You felt fucking pathetic.
“Me either.”
The words felt like a bucket of ice water being dumped right over your head. Freezing your entire body, soaking your flesh and seeping beneath it to chill your bones. Your eyes found his natural fingers to discover that they were pulling his shirt collar away from his neck to reveal a slash that scabbed very recently going about a fourth of the way across his throat. Your vision swam again.
“You’re here now,” you tried. It was a lousy consolation, but you still weren’t… entirely grounded yet. Pushing yourself up to sit on your knees, Rick muttering ‘careful’ under his breath as you put weight on the hand connected to your injured arm to lean the upper half of your body off the edge of the bed, you nestled your lips just above the new scar and kissed his thrumming pulse. “We’re both here.” The two of you were equally as anxious; the way his heart was racing proved that fact. Perhaps even for the same reasons. Feeling exposed.
It was hardly a long journey from Philadelphia to Virginia. You made it back with Rick before the day was over. Subsequently, he had barely been here for twelve hours. Perhaps you hadn’t spent enough time together yet for the fact that Rick was home to truly register with you.
It seemed he may have had the same idea.
He offered you a tired half-smile and stood, closing up the med kit and returning it to its previous location only to round to the other side of the bed, make quick work of kicking off his boots, and climb in beneath the blanket. Rolling to face him, you sidled up to rest your forehead on his chest immediately, and his genuine arm fell over your side whilst the sculpted metal one lie idle beneath the pillows. The numbing from bactine was still a thing to revel over because it meant you could throw your arm over his bicep and card your fingers through the curls at the nape of his neck. You did not miss Rick’s short hair. His fingers soothed up and down your back in a comforting manner and you both laid utterly still, breathing the same air, sharing the same body heat.
“I’m grateful I didn’t go deep enough,” he whispered once the silence stretched uncomfortably. “You found me.”
For what was probably not the last time today, your eyes stung again. And yet, you opted to lift the spirits of him and yourself with a joke. It was the first thing that came to mind. “Well, you do seem to fail at slitting throats, Rick.”
You grinned up at him when he scoffed; giggled when he started to chuckle himself. The pair of you sounded as exhausted as you both looked, and when the laughter died out, you absorbed each other again. His presence was so consoling to your brain that had successfully convinced itself he was still gone, that after a length of time you realized you’d fall back asleep soon. And Rick would probably ensure you didn’t wake up alone again.
You hadn’t gotten a chance to do something, though.
Propping yourself up on your right elbow, you blinked sleep out of your heavy eyes while pulling weakly at his new arm attachment; more as a question rather than an unpermitted attempt to uncover it. “Can… can I look?”
Unease cast a shadow over his blue eyes, despite the trust in them, and he nodded. Which you’d only half expected him to do. You’d braced yourself for a no.
You would see it eventually, so he figured it was best to do it now and get it out of the way rather than prolong it.
Sitting your pillow off to lean it against the headboard, Rick adjusted and repositioned to lay on his back instead, which gave you a better opportunity to look at his hand. It was strapped on in two different places; one at the elbow, and one at the shoulder. The fingers were hyper-realistic, yet closed into a fist with no opening for a weapon to be gripped. It was almost as if he could read your mind, because Rick drew his arm away from you to demonstrate the release of a blade triggered in the wrist.
You lifted a finger to trail it along the sharp edge of the custom weaponized extension and hissed through grit teeth when it left a thin, shallow cut on your fingertip.
“I’m not getting the med kit back out.” He finished saying it with a playfully chastising call of your name.
No need to bother. You sucked the blood from the pad of your finger and threw him a drowsy smirk. “This is hot.”
That definitely caught him off guard.
“Yeah?” Rick shook his head with a dampened smile. “Well, I’m glad you see my suffering as an upgrade.”
The greatest salve for your pain was his lips on yours. Maybe it would do the same for his wounded pride.
Quite the valid reason to try it.
“Shut up.”
Your smile met his, and they stayed there even after you fell asleep again. This time, dreaming of the future.
National suicide and crisis hotline: call or text 988
Help with self harm: text CONNECT to 741741
LGBTQ+ inclusive resource: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/article/support-for-self-harm-recovery/
Numbers for different parts of the world: https://blog.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines/
