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When Rick walked into the kitchen, a squirmy hungry Judith cradled in one arm, and saw Carl being crowded up against the kitchen counter by Ron Anderson his first thoughts are a clouded over haze of fear and rage and if it wasn’t for Judith he would have been across the too-spacious, too-clean, state of the art kitchen and Ron would have been half-way black and blue already.
As it is, Judith chose that very moment to try and escape again and Rick was forced to divert his attention to keeping her from diving out of his arms and straight onto the floor. It was time enough for him to take that all important second look.
Ron’s hands were at Carl’s waist, stroking tentative circles on the strip of skin above his hip where his shirt has ridden up, not quite brave enough to venture higher. And he kissed Carl thoroughly but carefully, as though he still wasn’t quite sure he would be allowed.
Carl on the other hand, well he looked like he was enjoying himself. His head was tilted back, his hat had fallen off at some point and lay forgotten on the floor, and his eyes had long since fluttered shut. He had a fistful of Ron’s jacket and its primary purpose seemed to be to pull Ron closer as Carl looped an arm looped lazily around his neck.
Rick tried very hard not to hear the sounds they made as their mouths slid together.
Faintly he remembered a faraway conversation with Shane and Lori, sitting around the remnants of Carl’s eleventh birthday party laughing about the stars that had been in his eyes when Maddie Trimm-Stevens had shown up at their door with a sunshine smile that was all braces and long blond hair. Lori had been teasing him, saying wasn’t it about time he sat Carl down and had a father-son chat about girls and the consequences thereof. Shane hadn’t been much better alternately snickering into his beer at Rick assertion that he was a ‘cool dad’ and reminiscing about his misspent youth.
They’d never had that talk. Though vaguely Rick remembers that Doc S had organised something of a sex ed talk for the young people of the prison, and in a place as lacking in privacy as the prison and Carl had probably gotten an eyeful more than once, lord knew Rick certainly had.
Did he need to have a talk with Carl? His son seemed to have things pretty well figured out by the looks of it, but maybe Rick should have a talk with Aaron about how exactly things worked between two men in case there was something he needed to pass on. Or maybe it’d be easier just to send Carl to talk to him directly? Was that less embarrassing? It’d be less embarrassing for him that was for sure…
While he was having that internal debate, Ron had hoisted Carl up onto the counter and Carl was laughing breathlessly hooking his legs around the taller boy’s waist and Judy gave him a burbling whine to remind him that she was waiting for her lunch, which they couldn’t get at without disturbing the boys.
And Rick found he was a bit reluctant to disturb them.
He was always a bit worried about Carl, who’d been forced to grow up fast and hard. Seeing him like this, happy, laughing and giving truth to the phrase ‘necking like teenagers’ was almost a relief.
This world hadn’t killed that spark of life in him.
He gave a short familiar whistle, the universal, ‘pay attention/look here’ that they’d developed that first winter on the road, and Carl’s head jerked up, startling Ron.
“Dad,” he said, sheepish, “Uh, I didn’t know you were home.”
Ron went white and then flushed all the way up the back of his neck to the tips of his ears.
“Just got back from our rounds,” Rick drawled, bouncing Judy on his hip slightly, “Judith was getting hungry. Ron.”
“Uh, hey, Mr. Grimes,” he said shuffling away from Carl and turning to face him.
Poor kid’s face was on fire. Rick shot his son an amused look and Carl just shrugged.
“You know, you’ve got a proper bedroom now, its got a door and everything, and people have to eat off these counter tops,” Rick pointed out, crossing over to the fridge to grab the veggie mash that Carol had made for Judy.
“Right, sorry Dad,” said Carl, “C’mon Ron.”
He hopped down from the counter and bent to retrieve his hat.
“You’re okay with this?” blurted Ron.
Rick gave him a stare he knew wasn’t entirely comforting, “I know that if anything was going on that Carl wasn’t okay with he would have let you know about it, with force if need be.”
He flicked his eyes at Carl making sure his son understood his meaning, and got a grim smile and a nod as acknowledgement. If Ron pushed and Carl wasn’t comfortable Rick had no doubt his son was fully capable of making his displeasure known.
“That being said, Carl, I expect you both to keep your hands above belt until we can have a conversation.”
“Dad, come on, I already got the talk from—” he cut himself off quickly.
Rick arched a brow at that pause, “From?”
“Shane,” Carl admitted, his face rearranging into something belligerent the way it did whenever Shane came up. “And Doctor S. And you know Zach told Patrick literally everything about what he and Beth got up to, and Patrick had that giant man-crush on Daryl so, I’m covered.”
“We’ll see about that when we have that talk,” said Rick, reaching over to ruffle his hair briefly before turning to prepare Judy’s lunch, “’Sides, according to Shane, it’s my fatherly duty to embarrass the hell out of you with this sorta thing.”
“Seriously?” groaned Carl.
“I’ll tell you a story some time,” Rick laughed, “Go have fun with your boyfriend.”
“Come on Ron, lets go, I can show you the comic books Tara brought back for me,” Carl said making for the stairs, tugging a still-mortified Ron along by the hand.
“Oh, is that what they’re calling it nowadays?” Rick couldn’t resist teasing.
“Shut up, Dad, Jesus!”