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It had become more common for Ron to sleepover at the Grimes’ household, especially after graduation when he didn’t have an excuse to be out of the house for over 8 hours everyday, minus the weekdays he had work. It was to much time at home, or his house anyway, lately Carl’s place had started to feel more like home than that place ever did.
Having recently convinced his dad to let him put a couch in his room, Carl had prompted the idea to watch a movie on it after Ron showered, he desperately wanted to wash the remnants of Walmart out of his skin. Of course he agreed though. Carl and him used to always disagree about movies but lately they had started watching things the other liked even if they hated it — sacrifice of being friends he supposed.
No matter how many times Ron took a shower in his bathroom and came out wearing his clothes, it still made Carl’s heart pang hard inside his chest, practically rattling his rib cage with sheer force. There was one shirt Carl wouldn’t let anybody touch, not even Michonne to do laundry at first, it was not only a special edition Star Wars shirt, he was lucky enough to have it signed by Han Solo. He wouldn’t even wear the thing for a good year, it’s not like the signature mattered all that much, he also got one paper just incase it did ever wash away, it just seemed to important to him as a kid and never really left as he got older, call it sentiment.
Either way seeing Ron wear it nearly made him drop to his knees and start praying to whatever god was up there and thank them for blessing Carl with this moment. But for fairly obvious reasons he decided not to do that.
It was slightly big on him even though he was a bit taller than Carl, but as a kid Carl had insisted on getting a shirt big enough to wear for the rest of his life and had been practically swimming in it for almost 9 years. Besides, it looked better on Ron when it was barely hanging off his collarbones, tilting to one of his shoulders.
The plaid pajama pants Carl let him borrow were a little big as well, loose enough without the drawstring tied that his ‘hubba bubba bubble gum’ theme boxers strap was visible when he stretched the front of the shirt out to try and emphasize to Carl just how big it really was like he wasn’t the owner the damn thing. Apparently they were on some $1 sale at his work and he just ‘couldn’t miss the opportunity’ or something along those lines. Carl didn’t like them all to much for that reason, if they were only a dollar how could they be good quality at all?
He also didn’t like to wear those pajama pants to much because of how loose they were with or without the drawstring tied, he only gave them to Ron to wear because Carl knew he usually preferred baggy pants, considering the only jeans he wore could most likely fit both of them in the one of pantlegs together if they really tried. He considered just asking Ron if he wanted them, but he was thinking over how weird that might be.
Ron’s blonde hair wasn’t completely dry yet, now that he was an adult his mom was finally respecting his wishes and letting him grow out his hair, so right now he had a half wet half scrunched mullet-ish cut, he had no right to look so pretty so casually, it wasn’t fair how horrendously bad Carl wanted to kiss him.
He could barely contain a glimpse of a smile as Ron stumbled over and plopped down next to him onto the raggedy black couch, a towel hung lazily around his neck with part of it being vigorously scrubbed against half his head to try and dry his hair faster, even though it wasn’t really working as well as it used to since he started letting his hair grow out, not to mention now he had to worry about his hair getting caught in his earrings, not like they were that big, but small, thick black hoops could still easily get caught, just watching Ron try to dry his hair gave Carl mad anxiety.
“You know I have a hair dryer for a reason, right?” he mentioned snarkily, the amusement definetly not contained as he spoke.
“Yeah, but those are for girls.” and oh did he backtrack fast “And you.”
“Watch it Anderson, or I’ll blow dry your hair in your sleep.” whatever the hell that even meant. It was supposed to come out as some type of threat but after actually saying it Carl just felt more dumb than anything.
“Oh no! I’m so scared!” Ron mused, exaggeratively shaking his hands next to his head as he lifted one of his legs up on the couch.
Carl did the only logical thing and shoved him, not to hard but hard enough to slightly knock him off balance.
“At least I’m not pelting you with cheese. ” he stated with what was meant to be a hateful tone, but no matter how hard he tried he could never hate Ron, or even be mad at him for prolonged periods of time, especially over something — he would never admit — was pretty funny.
“Oh come on! It was hilarious and you know it man.” Ron replied with a small giggle, debating on if he should pull up the video of the two — or more specifically Carl — at one of their sleepovers a couple weeks back. In which Ron found a funny trend on social media, long story short, it ended up with him taking a video at damn near four a.m. while he threw four pieces of cheap plastic wrapped american cheese at Carl and his minecraft themed bedsheets while he slept. Ron had said the two hundred and four likes that post got were almost worth Carl beating his ass after that.
“You can keep telling yourself that but it doesn’t make it true.” Carl exclaimed with an overly dramatized sigh and shake of his head.
“Two hundred and four people on the internet seem to disagree with you, cowboy.”
“Well then they’re just as stupid as you.” he said as if it were the most obvious thing on planet earth.
“Rude, Grimes. Just rude.” Ron spoke with a disappointing click of his tongue and a shake of his head.
Carl just laughed and shoved him again, telling him to shut up. Which of course Ron responded with a ‘don’t make me bring out the cheese’ whilst shoving him back.
So obviously Carl pushed him back, again. And before he knew it they were full on wrestling like little boys in karate using a bunch of definetly illegal moves.
It didn’t last very long, though. The pair got a little to rough and ended up falling off the couch, ironically directly on top of each other. Because of course they did.
Ron fell first, more so on his side but he was quickly moved to lay on his back when Carl came toppling down directly on him. It definitely hurt the absolute hell out of the bruises that littered his body. Unfortunately for him it was evident on his face when Carl finally opened up his eyes to look around.
“Shit — sorry man.” he said, his voice full of sympathy.
He awkwardly crawled off top of Ron, wary of any points of contact as he stood up, outstretching his right arm for Ron to grab.
“‘s fine.” he muttered, swatting away at the beckoning hand. Carl watched as he lifted himself up, not really sure what to do.
“Stop staring at me with your freaky blue eyes.” he heard after less than 5 seconds of Ron standing up. This guy…
“I thought you said you liked my eyes, Anderson.” he said, a horrendous, obviously fake sad tone in his voice as he leaned closer to Ron, looking up at him with said freaky blue eyes.
“Absolutely not.” he replied, splatting a hand over Carl’s entire face to push him away before flopping back onto the couch.
“Well you did.” he continued, landing right next to Ron, maybe a little to close “You also said you liked my hair, my face, my hands, my smile —“
“Okay okay! I get it already that’s enough.” Ron half-yelled, putting hands up to shove Carl away, there was absolutely zero force put into it, but hey at least he could say he tried.
“What? Embarrassed?” Carl laid back against the couch with a smirk, his gaze never left the Ron though, teasing him was just to fun sometimes.
“Nope. If I don’t remember it didn’t happen.” apparently to try and occupy himself Ron picked a random comic from the center table, having skipped the entire fist half and pretended to be extremely into whatever plot climax was going on, very unsuccessfully.
“You weren’t even that high!!” he protested, they had barely smoked a quarter of the joint that day.
“Was too.”
“Was not.”
“Was too.”
“Was not.”
It went on like that for a while, arguing like children and an old married couple at the exact same time.
The squabble ended with Ron covering his ears with his hands and saying random bullshit to act like he couldn’t hear Carl, but Carl couldn’t help but break into a laughing fit at the sheer stupidity of it and they both ended up just laughing hysterically on the couch, completely stone cold sober.
Ron had doubled over, neither of them not even remembering what they were laughing at by that point, it was nice to just laugh for a bit like carefree teenagers who didn’t have college to worry about. It seemed like that anyway, until Ron leaned his head a little to close to Carl’s shoulder, and made the mistake(?) of looking up at him, only to find Carl was already looking at him.
Carl didn’t mean to stare, he never really did, sometimes — most of the time really — he would just zone out and not even realize what he was staring at. That was never exactly the case with Ron though, even if he used that as an excuse. Ron was pretty, really pretty, sure handsome is what he should say, boys are handsome and girls are pretty, that’s how it goes, but not for Ron, Ron is downright gorgeous, with his stupid shaggy dirty blonde hair, hazel eyes that are brown at the rim and fade into green the closer the color bleeds to his pupil, his bumpy nose, and most of all his smile, Carl wished that Ron smiled more often, but unfortunately for him it was somewhat of a rare occurrence, most of the time it was a half lipped smirk at best, but in that moment Ron was smiling, really smiling , and Carl couldn’t find it in himself to do anything but savor that moment, not even daring to look away when Ron’s eyes connected directly with his.
He couldn’t exactly use the excuse he was high, both him and Ron were on a conjoined tolerance break, so if this went south he didn’t really have a valid excuse to back himself up, but Carl Grimes wasn’t scared, he could do it, god he needed to do it.
But before he could even start to lean in Ron’s lips were already being slammed against his own, almost rough enough to clink their teeth together but thankfully not quite. He couldn’t help but chase Ron’s lips as he pulled away, eyes slowly fluttering back open to look down at Ron’s extremely red face, he didn’t even remember closing his eyes, but he certainly didn’t mind Ron being the first thing he saw when he opened them.
“God dammit!” he said with a small laugh “ I wanted to be the one to kiss you! ” pushing his hand against Ron’s shoulder to slightly topple him to the side.
“Just get good, man.” the blonde replied snarkily with a triumphant grin, and Carl couldn’t tell if he wanted to slap or kiss it off his face. What an odd combination.
“But if you wanted to kiss me still.. I definitely wouldn’t protest.” it was soft spoken, almost so quiet Carl barely made it out, which was very unusual for Ron, who was just dead staring at the side of the couch, hands twiddling around each other.
Carl reached a hand up to cup around Ron’s jaw, the other shooting to the side of his torso before he could even really register what exactly he was doing. He wasn’t complaining though, and judging off the lack of protest and eager arms snaking around his neck Ron wasn’t either. This time Carl got the chance to lean in, and kiss him properly this time, like he may or may not have wanted to do for way to long at that point.
Ron’s still damp hair latched onto his hand, only making him drive it backwards to clutch at it, grasping at Ron like if he let go the boy would disappear. Usually he hated the texture of wet hair, and he definetly still did, but in that split second he couldn’t find enough shits to give to make him care, he was kissing Ron Anderson on his couch while Ron was wearing his clothes. There was absolutely no way the night could get better.
Or so he thought.
Michonne came up only a few minutes later, the sudden knock startling them both so bad they practically flew at light speed away from each other, Ron picking back up that comic and Carl fumbling to get his phone out of his pocket so it would look like he was doing something to, because he’s cool like that.
When Michonne informed them that the pizza was here Carl had a feeling she knew what was going on behind the previously closed door. Whether it was the flushed faces, kiss bitten lips, tousled hair and shirts, or just the fact Michonne was always great at reading him Carl didn’t know. Maybe it was all of the above. Or maybe he was hallucinating and Michonne had barely glanced in their direction.
Once that door was closed again both boys emerged back into that fit of laughter, trying to look at each other with a straight face before coming down the stairs, it didn’t end up working to well, and their solution? Just kiss a bit more til Michonne yelled at them again to come downstairs.
The two spent the rest of the night eating pizza and various other junk foods, switching from Carl’s couch to his bed to watch TV in, Ron’s head laying on his chest with an arm wrapped around his torso while Carl spared the occasional forehead kiss, only to be pulled into a real kiss a moment later, plus the free food, it couldn’t have gotten any better.