Work Text:
Ron wakes up alone, in sheets that warm his skin from the sunlight streaming through the open curtains, a natural way to wake up before his first period at school or his shift at the record store. Ron always wakes up alone these days, in a one-bedroom apartment that he has barely decorated. He'll have toast and cereal for one and get his delivery of milk on his porch like they still live in the 60s and then get ready for work or school. Work today, since it's a random Saturday in April, two months away from his final year in post-apocalyptic high school at the Commonwealth.
Slacks, a band T-shirt to match that he found on a run or got gifted to him by one of his friends, and then he's out the door. It's a simple routine, one he never thought he would have again after the Grimes and their group showed up and threw a wrench in their perfect little community, killing his dad, getting his mother and brother torn apart to the point they didn't know who's body parts were who's. Since Negan, since the Whisperers, now both dead and rotting into the earth. He never thought he would get ready for work, he normally stayed in the gardens at the Kingdom during the war with the whisperers, needing to be as far away from Alexandria as possible.
The Commonwealth isn't as bustling this morning, the sun just now shining in the sky, and the streets are filled like they would have been on a busy day in Alexandria, where everyone is basking in the sun and eating fresh fruit as a treat, but this is small for the Commonwealth, a place with over 60,000 people now. Ron can walk to work like everyone can, because the people in charge place them close to where they work, there are no cars unless you're really rich.
The record store is a small place, nestled in between Elodie's Bakery and a small restaurant that serves Thai food. Ron sees Elodie through the window when he walks past her shop, her thick braids pulled into a bun on top of her head as she expertly pipes frosting onto cupcakes before the store officially opens, he waves and she smiles back, hands full. Elodie was Carl's sister. Well, it's a little more complicated than that, Elodie was Michonne's daughter from before the word fell, only a few years older than Carl, a mere 23 now, who had lived at the Commonwealth for a few years before they showed up and Elodie found her mom, with a new family and children of her own.
Ron remembers hearing about it from Carl, how weird it was to no longer technically be the oldest but also still know that he's the oldest. Judith and RJ had accepted her with open arms and love, and Carl had tried, but he said it was hard, thinking of someone as your sibling when you didn't even live with them and didn't even know them. But Carl didn't even live with his siblings anymore, they lived with his parents in a nice apartment because Michonne was a lawyer. Rick had given up being a cop a long time ago, choosing to retire in his old age, but his retiring didn't really mean anything, he helped anyone and everyone who needed him, off the record.
Carl lived in the same complex as Ron, three floors above on the top with a large balcony in a two-bedroom apartment with Lydia. Lydia, who had come in and swiftly taken the position of Carl's best friend right out from under him, from Enid and Sophia, had come in covered in dirt and a child of their newest threat and Carl had taken her under his wing and they became fast friends, like magnets drawn to each other. He and Carl hadn't been like that, they had been a push and pull of mixed emotions and crappy thrown punches and wanting but not allowing themselves to have it.
Ron wanted a friend in Carl, but he hated Carl in the beginning, Carl was everything he wanted to be, cool and funny, respected by the adults around him when he was only 14 years old and scrawny and short. Carl hated him because he thought Ron had it easy, because he had lived in a gated community and never had to kill a walker, never had to watch people he cared about be bitten or torn to pieces or shot down. Never had to watch his own mom die in front of him, never had to put her down. It's almost funny, how things change like that.
Things are better now. They're all friends now, whether it was born out of being the only teenagers they could stand or trauma bonding through every traumatic experience that comes their way. From the time they were forced to walk through a herd holding hands and covered in guts and Lydia in her mask because they got stuck and needed to get home. The five of them had become friends, and Ron had been waiting since they arrived for the other shoe to drop, for all of them to finally realize that their friendship born out of isolation and near-death experiences wouldn't last in the closest semblance to the real world they had left. But it's been almost a year now, and they're all still friends.
Carl isn't waiting for him behind the counter when he lets himself in. Instead, it's Gage, who despite the town's large population, Ron never seemed to be able to escape.
"Where's Carl?" Ron asks, sliding a hand down his rumpled shirt, he tosses the keys to the building into the small bowl on the counter, a warped record that formed the bowl shape.
"Your boyfriend didn't tell you? Called out sick," Gage smirked at him as Ron blushed down his chest. Carl was decidedly not his boyfriend, no matter how much Gage teased him for it, Carl wasn't his and Ron wasn't Carl's.
"Did he tell you why?" Ron asks, glancing out the window like he would be able to spot him, instead all he saw was Glenn Rhee holding his newborn daughter in his arms, walking down the street leisurely.
"He said he was sick," Gage gave him a bored look. "I'm gonna organize the back," Ron lets him because it means they won't have to spend time together, but there's nothing to organize back there. Ron and Carl had already organized them all in the way that worked for their brains and made sure that no one else would understand the system but them.
So Ron sits down at the stool behind the counter, his baggy pants falling under his shoes and he waits for anyone to come in. He wishes he could play on his phone like the movies, or that he had the attention span to read a novel like Carl does while he waits, or do crosswords and not feel like an idiot for not being able to find the words immediately. Carl's good at those, Carl's good at reading, and Ron isn't, never has been, the words jumble in front of him and he can never unscramble the letters, forcing him to read incorrect sentences and mismatched numbers. The only people who really know are his friends, and he told them not to tell anyone, because he doesn't really care, and neither should they.
Perhaps an hour or so in, when the sun has moved enough for it to shine across the whole store does someone come in. Lydia. Her hair is freshly cut, and Ron wonders if it was Enid who gave her hair the tasteful layers and blonde highlights and overall lighter brown tone to her hair, wonders why Lydia would change it so much from her drastically darker hair, so dark that it used to look almost black in certain lights.
"Ron! Hi!" She says excitedly, rushing in, the bell clinking behind the shutting door. She's wearing short overalls and a light blue zip-up hoodie that's unzipped, and stained on the right sleeve, like Carl's. She's wearing Carl's clothes, and it sends a pang through his chest. She looks good in them, he decides that she must've just grabbed the jacket on her way out to protect herself from the wind.
"Lydia, hey, I like the hair," he said a little awkwardly. Small talk did not come naturally to him, even after all this time. There was no small talk during wars, it was listening to people talk and argue strategy for hours, listening to Rick give motivational speeches when the only motivation most of them needed was not dying.
"Thank you, Enid did it, it took forever, but I just... needed a change and Carl had to pull the razor out of my hands last night," she shrugged like it was a joke, but Ron knew it wasn't. Lydia was volatile and acted without thinking often.
"You would've looked good bald," he jokes.
"I would've looked like my mother," she shudders dramatically, then looks around at the records questioningly, but cluelessly. None of their other friends knew much about records of music, not like Carl and Ron did, they all had players gifted to them by the boys, and a few selections of bands that they thought they would like, more country and pop for Sophia, indie for Enid and Lydia a strange mix of heavy metal and lots of dance-pop that Carl said she would love. None of them really knew as much about music as they did, which is why they worked here and no one else, even though Carl was trying to get a comic store set up and was getting pretty close to making that a reality.
"Do you know what Carl would like?" Lydia asks desperately, rushing to the counter. Ron blanches for a moment.
"You want to Carl a record?" He asks dumbly.
"Yeah. His birthday is soon and we're celebrating today, just the two of us, and I wanted to get him a gift," Lydia explained. But it's like none of it processed, Carl's birthday is soon? They had never celebrated one of his birthdays despite having a calendar at Alexandria.
"Carl called out sick today," he says. Lydia smiles slyly.
"Carl never gets sick," she waved him off. "It's so we can go on a picnic outside the walls. A gift for him," she says. Right. They love going outside the walls together, they love nature and being in the trees and swimming in lakes and shit. Enid and Ron are not fond of the outdoors, not like they are, they would rather swim in the Commonwealth public pool or have lunch in the park than leave the walls and go hiking through the wilderness like they're back on the road all over again, starved and desperate for a roof over their heads. Ron will never get the pair's urge to go out there so often, but he stays quiet, because Carl would go crazy if he didn't go out.
"Oh. That sounds..." awful. "Really nice. He'll love it."
"Exactly!" Lydia smiled. She had a pretty smile, a smile boys like Carl would fawn over. She had been smiling a lot more now, with the whisperers gone and her life in peace for the first time in years, her personality began to shine through, and Lydia was over-expressive to the point of uncomfortably sometimes, and some days she was so sullen and quiet you would think she was dead. "Which is why I need your help picking out the perfect record to get him for his birthday, I already have a present for his actual party but I want this one to be special."
Ron weighed out his options here. He could lie. He could give Lydia something Carl would hate. But they would all know that he had given it to her damn well knowing it was going to Carl, and even if it wasn't with him, Ron wanted Carl to be happy.
"I've got the perfect thing," Ron gives her a shaky smile and turns around, pulling down a record he had heard Carl talking about for months now, since they started working there. He had caught Carl staring at it when people came in, silently begging for them to not be the person who bought it because he couldn't justify the price. The old owner said it had been here the longest, even when this place used to just be a record store from before the Apocalypse started in the 80s, and no one had bought it.
"Sheer Heart Attack, Queen, 1974, signed by all the members," Ron said, showing off the literally encased record, hidden behind glass and framed. No one would think it was for sale, merely a prop.
"Ron. I need something I can afford," Lydia deadpans.
"Well good thing it's free," Ron grins.
"Ron..."
"Don't. It's been here since the '80s. No one could afford it and money doesn't mean shit anymore. Anything for Carl, y'know?" Lydia gives him a knowing glance, and Ron feels himself heating up again. Of course, anything for Carl.
Because Carl is Carl and Ron has been in love with the kid since he was 14 years old and small and scrawny with a temper and enough of an attitude to stand up to fucking Negan and somehow come out unscathed. He loved Carl now, almost 18 years old and no longer small but still scrawny with noodle-like arms and floppy brown hair he cut choppily himself because he hated haircuts. He still loves him, and hasn't stopped. Doesn't think he can.
"Yeah. This is perfect. Thank you, I'll take it to get wrapped down the street. Your amazing, Ron," she grinned and gently took the framed record for him, holding it gently in her hands like it was something precious, and it was, it really was something precious, maybe because of what it was or just because Carl loved it so much. Lydia left quietly, waving goodbye when she got outside and Ron smiled back vaguely, and then leaned his head on the glass counter and groaned until his throat hurt.
"Damn, guess I was wrong about Carl being your boyfriend," Gage said from behind him. "You're just his little bitch."
Ron couldn't even argue it, Gage wasn't even wrong.
"Did you know that Carl's birthday is soon?" Ron demanded, sliding down next to Sophia on the picnic bench, who had a side area of food from her lunch pack.
"Yeah. April 13th, why?" She asked, popping a chopped carrot into her mouth, and Ron resisted the urge to groan again.
"Am I the only one who didn't know he had a birthday?"
"Everyone has birthday's Ron," Sophia points out unhelpfully.
"You know what I meant," he shoots back. She grins knowingly, of course she knew what he meant, she didn't care.
"Yeah, I guess you're the only one who didn't know. It's not like we really celebrated it or anything. My mom would make him a cupcake and the group would get together and wake him up in the morning, make him blow out, Rick made breakfast but it wasn't really like... a big deal." Sophia explained quickly, then almost violently stabbed her fork into her pasta salad that her mom made for her.
Sophia lived in a large apartment with her mom, Ezekiel, and her adopted brother Henry, who's only 11 and annoying as shit if Ron is honest. He reminds him of Sam.
"By group you mean..." he trailed off.
"Anyone who showed up B.A, Before Alexandria."
"Right," Ron said nervously. He hated knowing he was excluded, hated knowing that he would never be as close to Carl in the way Sophia was, they grew up together, and have known each other since they were ten years old. Eight years they have spent at each other's side, they lost parents and family with each other and Ron would never understand the special bond they shared.
"So who told you about Carl's birthday then?" Sophia asked.
"Lydia. She wanted to find a perfect present for him at the record store."
"The Queen album?" She asked, and Ron nodded immediately. Everyone knew that Carl loved that damn album, he could and would listen to it on repeat for days.
"I gave it to her," Ron says, and Sophia nods along.
"It's a perfect gift. They'll never break up now," She jokes. Ron feels like his heart stops beating in his chest.
"What did you just say?" He asks. Sophia raises a brow at him, silently judging. She learned it from Enid.
"They'll never break up. How can you break up with the person who got you your holy fucking grail of an item?"
"They're together?" Ron demands, and Sophia's eyes widen almost comically.
"You... didn't know that?" She asks slowly.
"No, I didn't know that!" He whispers angrily. He doesn't know why he feels betrayed, like he had been lied to. Maybe he was just stupid, ignoring the glaringly obvious fact the two lived together, that they shared beds on occasions when they didn't have to, and the way they looked at each other, the times when Ron wanted to make Carl look at him like that, but instead he would look away, close his eyes tightly like he could forget it and plaster on a fake smile and keep going like it doesn't seem to physically kill him to be standing next to Carl.
He had ignored every sign because he didn't want to see it, ignored Lydia wearing his clothes and her playing with his hair in the park under the guise of Carl being someone who soaks up attention like flowers soak up the sun, a blooming sunflower facing any person willing to hug him until he couldn't breathe. He had pretended none of those interactions existed because he wanted Carl to himself, wanted Carl to come to him when he craved that contact, when he wanted to be held and kissed on the forehead, but instead, he went to Lydia, his girlfriend, the girl he loved like Ron loved Carl.
It's hard to think about, to think about Carl feeling what Ron feels for him but for someone else, for Lydia, for his friend. Lydia doesn't feel like his friend anymore, almost like a stranger, he attempts to see her through Carl's eyes, attempts to analyze her face the way Ron had with Carl's, but he can't find himself caring about her big brown eyes and pouty lips when he could be looking at Carl's too-blue eyes the literal color of the sky and his pink plush lips that are never chapped.
"Ron... I'm sorry." Sophia says earnestly, and he doesn't realize that her hand has come to lay over his. Doesn't realize how long he had been spaced out, staring at her homemade donut.
"Did you know?" He asks pathetically. He doesn't have to specify.
"I... yeah. Yeah. I knew you loved Carl. I know you do. I'm sorry." Ron doesn't say anything else, shoves himself out of the picnic table, and storms off, mumbling something about his lunch break being over even though they both know he doesn't have a shift. Whatever. If everyone else can lie to his face, he can lie to theirs.
Ron remembered the first time he heard about Carl. He didn't know a name or a face or the way he looked or acted. He just knew he existed, in the vague way that he could assume everyone existed. His mom had gone to a town meeting with his dad, and only she had come back. He had been doing homework he didn't care about at the kitchen counter and she told him Deanna had let a whole group of new people in, and that they had a boy his age that Ron would be able to meet soon, and Ron hadn't felt anything but an annoyance that all kids feel at their mom when they're talking about something they don't care about.
So Carl was a vague person. Just a boy his age that was coming to town, not a name or a person, just a passing mention for a few days. Ron saw new people, adults with beards and grim looks on their faces, looks like they had truly seen some shit out there. Ron wasn't prepared for Carl. He officially met Carl at the welcoming party Deanna had thrown, had met the boy with the pale freckled skin and permanently red cheeks with hair that looked like it had never been brushed and trapped under a hat for his entire life.
It had only been trapped under a hat for three years, Ron would soon learn. Under a comforting sheriff's hat passed down from his dad after Carl got shot when he was ten years old. Ron had never gotten shot before by the time he was 13. Carl at the party was quiet, he was clutching a baby to his chest like a lifeline, a small blonde little baby who barely cried and chewed on her own fingers, they were together the whole night, and Carl pressed into his dad's side like a child would be. Ron half expected Rick to snap at Carl to leave him alone the entire night, he seemed like the type to be quick to anger, but he never did.
They didn't speak that night, but Ron didn't stop thinking about him the entire way home, his flushed cheeks or flat hair or small smile when his dad praised him to other people, his eye rolls when one of the adults made fun of him. Thinking about Carl quickly became an important pastime in Ron's life, thinking about Carl and him being friends, and making up conversations between them.
When he first tried to talk to Carl he had said something snarky that he doesn't even remember anymore and got a fist to his jaw for his troubles. And every time after that he got shoved or punched and even once slapped across the face like they were high school girls. After his dad died and Rick had killed him in front of the town did the fights get worse. Ron held a gun on him, Carl held a gun on him, Ron threatened him with a shaky hand holding a knife to his neck and Carl hadn't even looked phased, not bored, but challenged.
"You won't do shit, your a coward, just like your dad," Carl had said, then Ron stabbed the knife into the wall beside Carl's head and ran until his lungs burned.
After Ron shot his eye out, after his parents had died and his brother died with them and Carl had healed did Carl sneak into his window for the first time. Ron hadn't been sleeping, he hadn't been since they died. He expected Carl to kill him right then and there, he wanted him to. Instead, Carl said he was sorry that it went down the way it did, that he was sorry his family died, that they should've found a different way, and Ron felt the words spilling from his lips too, a rush of what his dad had done to him and how goddamn sorry he was for hurting Carl, for shooting out of his eye and leaving him blind.
"At least I'll have a cool scar," Carl had grinned, then sat down on the floor in Ron's room, thumbing through the records in a crate on his floor. His skin looked like it was glowing from the pale white moonlight, his hat casting shadows across his face and Ron's floor, and they spent the whole night pretending there wasn't unimaginable baggage between them, things that would've had them hate each other in the real world, but they didn't care about that anymore, they needed each other now.
Ron thinks about Carl a lot, the memories replaying in his head like a movie he watched, all his favorite parts with music behind them and the perfect lighting. But unlike the movies, Ron never says the right thing, and they never kiss before the credits roll, instead Ron daydreams about all the ways they could, but now more than ever he knows it'll never happen.
He blows smoke from his mouth, it billows with the wind toward the sky and the moon, the sky is clear and the stars are bright, and Ron maybe shouldn't be up here, doesn't know if it's breaking curfew to be on the roof of your own building after curfew is over. But now that Maggie is president none of their group technically has to follow the rules.
Ron sometimes wonders if he's actually a part of the group. Their family. He fought in wars with them, saved their lives and he saved theirs, but he wonders if they think of him like they do Sophia or even Lydia, if they see him as a part of the extended family they got by the world ending and falling apart all around them. Sometimes he thinks they don't, that they wouldn't care about him if they didn't have to. Now in the Commonwealth a bunch of people they had known in Alexandria, people he had seen every day for years were just gone, they faded into the background of the rest of the group's lives, not invited to group dinners or Thanksgiving.
"You know you're not allowed to be up this late right?" A smooth voice says, a faded twinge of a southern accent peaking through, Ron doesn't have to turn around to know it's Carl, but he does, finding the boy leaning against the door downstairs, in baggy jeans a tank top, his eye is free from his normal glasses with one lens popped out look he's been wearing for a while, and his shoulders are burned red from the sun, he must've had fun with Lydia today, it makes Ron feel sick.
"Since when were you a rule follower?" Ron teased, bringing the cigarette back to his lips as Carl sauntered toward him on limbs he hadn't gotten used to yet, too long legs and spindly arms that Carl didn't know how to maneuver with yet. He had always been a bit clumsy, bumping into tables and chairs and other people, but after his seemingly overnight growths spurt since coming to the Commonwealth, he's like a newborn fawn on ice some days.
"Got me there," Carly says easily, sliding next to Ron on the lip of the roof. They're ten stories off the ground, a huge apartment considering everything. Not all the units are full, but most are. Carl tosses his legs over the side and they dangle beneath Ron's shorter ones, scuffed-up black Converse he's been wearing since the whisperer war with dirty white laces strung out with rainbow beads on the bottom row, probably from Judith.
Carl runs a hand through his spiky hair, his hair was pin straight and shorter now, choppy cuts making most of it stick out of his head like that cool chick from the vampire movie that Enid likes. Ron's facing what Carl likes to call the cool side of his face, the side with the angry red scar and marred skin, the missing eye, and mauled ear. Ron thinks he looks beautiful from this angle, from every angle, and Ron wants to look at him again, and commit this new Carl to memory.
"Heard you got a birthday surprise today," Ron says, faux casually. Carl smiles, a wide grin taking over his face, showing off cutely crooked teeth and dimples as his dad has.
"Yeah," he laughs a little, "it was a good one. Lydia made a nice picnic. Never knew she could prepare such good egg salad sandwiches."
"Gross," Ron says immediately.
"Lydia of the egg salad sandwiches?" Carl jokes.
"Egg salad sandwiches. You actually like those? What the hell is wrong with you," Ron says teasingly, and Carl rolls his eyes.
"You just don't get it. They're good. I swear."
"Boiled eggs taste like chalk," Carl snorted.
"You just haven't had good hard-boiled eggs then", Carl says softly.
"I guess you'll have to get me some," Ron says quietly, he blows smoke in the opposite direction of Carl, but feels Carl pry his fingers apart like he wants to hold his hand, but instead he limply holds the bud of the cigarette left, Ron thinks he'll throw it off the edge and chastise Ron for smoking, but instead he brings it to his lips, inhales and blows out like he had done it a hundred times. Then he flicks the cigarette off the edge.
"Thanks... by the way," Carl says after a few minutes of silence.
"For what?" Ron asks.
"Sheer Heart Attack. Lydia said you gave it to her for free even though you know we get a bonus if that actually sells," Carl grins teasingly, bumping his shoulder, and for a moment it feels like something, like the beginning or a lost middle that Ron fell into.
"The only bonus I need is seeing you happy," he blurts out before he can think about it, and then feels his cheeks beating up, a blush quickly crawling up his cheeks and even down to his chest. Carl coughs. Ron looks at him, he feels tense all over, there's no way Carl doesn't know now, if Lydia did maybe he hadn't been as subtle as he had once hoped.
Carl looks back at him, those too-blue eyes the literal color of the day time sky staring at him, the moon makes him shine like he was made to bask in it. He doesn't look nervous, if anything he looks assured, confident almost, and Ron wonders why, but he doesn't have any time to think because Carl's lips are on his before he can let his thoughts wander. His first kiss, taken in the moonlight by the boy he had dreamed of kissing since he was 14 years old, the boy who doesn't put his hands on his face but kissed him softly, his always soft lips brushing against Ron's chapped and picked dry ones.
Ron will admit that he kisses Carl too, holding back a pathetic whine he draws himself closer to Carl for a moment and deepens their kiss as best as he can, he reaches a hand out and almost touches Carl's moon-streaked cheek before he flinches back, and Carl's arms come to press to him, keeping him from falling off the edge, his eyes bright and lips red and a little swollen from just a few seconds of kissing. Ron immediately feels guilty, the swelling will fade and Lydia won't even know that Ron made out with her boyfriend on the rooftop.
It all feels so stupid, so high school drama of them, when they had spent their childhoods and teenage years fighting off walkers and evil mothers and men with huge egos who talked big but couldn't deliver the same. It all feels so silly, to worry so much about something like this, but this is Carl, his best friend, and Lydia, his friend, Carl's girlfriend. He never thought Carl to be the type to cheat.
"What— why the hell would you do that?" Ron hisses. Carl flinches back like he had been slapped, his arms coming to rest at his sides like a child scorned, and it reminds Ron of himself.
"I thought... I thought you liked me?" Carl asks helplessly.
"So what? If I liked you what were you gonna do? Kiss me and make fun of me? You have a girlfriend!" Ron shouted.
"I... do?" Carl questions, eyebrows drawing together.
"You're dating Lydia," he says dumbly. Carl's face twisted, confusion and bewilderment, then understanding, then a smile.
"No. I'm not. That won't really work, on account of me being gay, and Lydia... also being gay," not for the first time today did Ron feel blindsided and a little stupid.
"You're... gay?" He asks. Carl laughs again, breathless and almost a little crazy.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm fucking gay. You... the Queen album?" Carl remarks through laughter.
"Straight people can like Queen?" Ron mumbles. Carl cackles, throwing his head back and laughing, full-on laughing, and he looks beautiful, head tilted back to the sky and the moon casting down upon him, and not for the first time does Ron try to commit every detail of this to his memory.
"Ron, you're ridiculous. I'm not dating Lydia. Never have been. Never will be. I like men. Specifically you," Carl says boldly, eyes hopeful.
"I uh... you too. You know?" Carl laughs again, a teasing grin on his face. "Don't look at me like that! I had a whole crisis 'cause I thought you were dating Lydia."
"Well I'm not, so stop worrying about upsetting her by kissing me, and just fucking kiss me," Carl teases, leaning closer, rubbing his nose on Ron's cheekbone, and he thinks he somehow blushes harder by Carl being so bold. Carl was a loudmouth for sure, making inappropriate jokes and starting a fight with anything that moves, but he never expected this from Carl, never imagined it.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll just kiss you."