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Neither of them thought the life of domesticity would work for them.
People would call it ‘history’ between them, making it harder to reach the future; a childish feud was more like it. An obstacle to get over before reaching the clich é finish line.
That’s what Ron thinks as he wakes up before Carl in the morning. It’s what he thinks every morning looking at the sunlight shining onto the both of them through their bedroom window. He’ll stare and stare and stare and just smile at the sight of Carl’s face smooshed into his pillow, small puffs of air could be heard every time he breathed out from his mouth. Ron’ll move some strands of hair from his face and Carl won’t even move an inch.
As many mornings as he can, Ron will carefully get out of bed, sometimes spending multiple minutes detangling himself from Carl’s grasp before he’s finally free to make them some breakfast.
Sometimes it’s simple like a bowl of cereal he’ll bring back to their room and have breakfast in bed, sometimes toast, but when he has the time, Ron will cook up some pancakes, cut some strawberries to eat on the side, and set the table for them.
It’s a pancake morning.
While flipping the pancakes, he laughs to himself when he thinks back to when Carl was the only cook in the house, Ron never having the patience to cook anything.
“But you bake.” Carl said one day when Ron told him that.
“It’s different.”
“How?”
“It just is, you wouldn’t get it.”
Ron taught Carl to bake that day and Carl cooked dinner alongside him.
Patience is what their relationship is built on. Cooking became familiar in his life, just like Carl.
Mid thought, Ron feels Carl wrap his arms around his stomach, laying his head onto his shoulder. He’s always clingy in the morning.
“Good morning.” Ron says as he presses a kiss to his head and pats the arms around him.
Carl just grumbles and Ron chuckles.
“They’re almost done, don’t worry.”
Carl yawns. “Smells good like always.” With a kiss to Ron’s cheek he makes his way over to their drawers and pulls out some forks and knives out as Ron puts the last of the pancakes on the plate he’d been storing them on.
The next 30 minutes is filled with metal forks scraping on porcelain plates. No conversations were needed. There would be time for that later. Instead, they stole glances at each other like teenagers would from across their table.
Some things never change.
They always clean in silence too, grabbing whatever the other doesn’t, storing the dirty dishes into the sink and the extra strawberries in a tupperware container before making their way back to their room and get dressed for the day's work: Ron in his mechanic jumpsuit, and Carl in his park ranger uniform along with his dads old sheriff’s hat he refurbished for his own job.
They’ll walk out of their apartment to their cars and separate after kissing each other goodbye.
It’s domestic. Something Ron didn’t know their life was capable of.
They don’t go back home for their lunch breaks. They see each other in the morning and then in the evening when work finishes for Carl at 5 pm, Ron finishing at 4:30 pm.
Today is Friday, and usually Carl would cook up something special for the two of them, a small and silent celebration of the weekend but he’s tired and instead pops in a pizza in the oven.
Ron, already in his cozy clothes, looks at Carl as he makes his way over to him, kisses his forehead – another way to say ‘hello’ – and then walks into their room, pulling out some cozy clothes – Ron can tell the shirt is his when it hangs a little loose on him – discarding his work uniform onto the ground like he used to as a teenager, and his dads hat is gently hung up behind their door.
Carl makes his way over to Ron on the couch and kisses him again, plopping himself beside him on their couch and watches whatever Ron had been watching before he came in. He feels himself dozing off before he hears the timer on their oven ding and feels Carl's weight leave his side.
Ron doesn’t bother to open his eyes as he hears Carl take the pizza out and places it on the stove top, rummaging through their cabinets before he finds their cork trivets and brings the pizza over to the living room, placing it on the coffee table and nudges for Ron to wake up. Ron kicks him back.
“Asshole.” Carl grumbles and Ron just chuckles, pushing himself up from the couch to lean over the table to not make a mess.
They share a couple of drinks together later in the night and share what they’d done for their day, something Carl tells Ron he remembers his parents used to do when he was younger and how old he feels doing it now.
In his head, Ron can’t relate knowing that whenever his dad drank it never ended well for either his mom or for him. He used to think about it a lot, when they first started having drinks together, how scared he was that anything could tick him off and he’d end up hurting someone, but it never happened and one night of drinking became another, then another and another.
Ron thinks that seeing Carl all giddy and dopey while drunk might’ve helped. He’ll never be sure but he likes to think so.
They don’t get that drunk anymore, just tipsy, and Ron thinks about how domestic it is, again. There’s so many aspects in their lives that are like that now. He doesn’t complain about it, ever, remembering how he used to dream of moments like these.
That was a dream once; this is now reality.
Domesticity is monotonous, repetitive, Ron knows this as he feels Carl start to kiss his neck from where his head was previously laying on his shoulder, snuggled into the crook of it, after their fourth drink. It’s always the fourth drink.
‘Old Ron’ would’ve rolled his eyes at it, at how stupid it is, ‘new Ron’ welcomes it as he turns his head to kiss Carl on his lips.
The show they’d been watching is only background noise now and their drinks are left to become room temperature overnight as they both stand from the couch, Carl letting Ron gently push and tug him into their room.
Ron can feel his shirt begin to slide off as he lifts his arms to let Carl take it off of him, Ron doing the same for him as they get to their bed. There’s nothing to say, there never is when they admire each other's faces, and touch every part that the other loves about them.
There were words in the past that were cruel that Ron would rather die than go back to.
Comfortable monotony makes time go faster Ron thinks as he’s sitting on the small balcony of the apartment with Carl sharing a cigarette. It’s Sunday already and they’d soon start getting ready for bed to wake up early in the morning to restart their week, escaping the private bubble they’d made for each other over the weekend.
Ron looks at Carl as he takes a breath in.
Carl isn’t looking at him, instead he’s looking out to the world, to the other apartment buildings around them, to the trees and water, listening to the birds chirp, everything. Ron finds that that’s one thing Carl enjoys the most about being alive; experiencing everything the world has to offer. He never takes it for granted, Ron admires that.
He always looks calmer when he just looks at life, at peace with whatever happened in the past. His eyes get droopy and he lays his head onto his arms that are wrapped around his legs. Ron likes to look at him when it happens because that calmness and peace seeps through his own body and he wishes to never leave this moment when it happens.
Carl looks at him with a calm smile and extends his hand, and Ron hands the cigarette to him. He watches as his fingers, rosy from the fall cold, wrap around the butt end and watches as he inhales, the end lights up in small orange lights.
“They’re going to kill us one day.” Ron says.
Carl exhales and without looking back at him asks, “Who?”
“The ones that want the poison.”
Carl laughs. “Us? Because we're so addicted to these?”
“Who else?”
“Don’t know.” Carl shrugs.
Ron sighs as he watches the sun set on the horizon then back at Carl. He remembers when Carl used to stare at him all the time and how annoyed he was. It’s what caused him to get mad at Carl so easily in the past.
A childish feud.
‘I’m not a child anymore.’ Ron thinks. ‘I’ve replaced my parents' footsteps.’ He looks at Carl, at his hair blowing in the gentle wind, at his eyes and cheeks that are squished into his arms, at the faint freckles that faded over time in his life only visible up close or like this in the light of the sunsets.
He thinks that, in a world of artists that find metaphors and symbolism, maybe the human body can make its own symbolism: of faint freckles from childhood only to be observed by those who want to look, to be noticed.
Ron reaches a hand to Carl and the other is about to hand him the cigarette before Ron’s hand settles in his hair and lightly brushes it away some stray hairs from his face. Carl’s hand holding the cigarette is paused mid air as Ron keeps his own hand on the side of his face, tracing his cheek with his thumb. The skin of his palm is itchy as he feels the light stubble Carl has on his face.
Adulthood overlaps with childhood.
Ron thinks of how many times he’s woken up to Carl clinging to him, or of other days, when it’s too hot, how the blankets were completely kicked off of them and Carl still manages to be attached to him in some way. He thinks of how long he stays on their bed just admiring him and the details of him.
Carl told him how his dad and Michonne were the same even when they weren’t in bed, back when they were younger and Ron used to gag at anything cliché about romance. He grew up to be a hypocrite. He doesn’t mind when he looks at Carl’s ears and his nose, his lips and how not thin they are.
“I think we should sleep in tomorrow.” Ron says.
Carl laughs at him. He laughs so much nowadays. So does Ron.
“And do what? Nothing? Miss work? That’s not how we make money and pay rent and food.”
Ron rolls his eyes, “I know that.”
“So why say it?”
“‘Cause it’s what I wanna do.”
“So, we stay here forever?”
“Not forever. I think we’d get annoyed by it.”
They don’t say anything for a second.
“We have a lot of time for this forever later.” Carl tells him.
Ron takes the cigarette but keeps his hand on Carl’s face and then moves it down to his knees as he scoots closer to him.
“Yeah, I guess we do.”
Ron knows that the world doesn’t give them forever for this but he also knows that it can give them these moments.
These moments are enough for him.