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‘You’re late again,’ Aasim commented annoyed at the boy running behind him with his chair leg in his right hand, ‘you know, being besties with Marlon won’t help our food situation.’
‘Well excuse me, I’m here now! Doesn’t that count?’ Aasim shook his head while walking.
‘If I could do this alone, I would…unfortunately, bringing food for all of you requires team work. Shame you aren’t a team player.’
Louis scoffed.
‘I am a team player, I have helped this school too!’
‘Yeah, barely’ Aasim argued right back.
As they walked, they ran into a walker that was hanging from one of the snares. Louis was the first one to find it.
‘Huh, check this guy out, he’s like a walker piñata!’ He exclaimed, amused as he rocked the walker with the help of Chairles.
Aasim sighed, Louis was close to getting on his last nerve.
‘Cut it down, fix the snare and let’s go!’
‘I will, I will…eventually.’
Aasim waited for Louis to play baseball with the walker’s head for a couple of minutes.
‘Dude, what is the hold up? Finish him off already. Do you want us to starve?’
‘Starve?’ Louis replied, swinging the bat one last time to silence the monster, ‘why you gotta be so dramatic?’
‘I’m being realistic. You need to stop being such an idiot and realize our winter won’t be a nice one with so many hungry mouths.’
Louis grew silent as he finished fixing the snare.
Aasim realized he was being too mean and decided to tone it down a notch.
‘I was told we were going to have some help today…the new girl-uh, Clementine was supposed to hunt with us, but she and the little kid decided to go fishing with Brody and Violet’ He commented when they resumed their walk.
‘Bummer, this would have been more fun with her.’ Aasim stopped and nodded at some bushes. Louis went over and moved the branches to see if something came out.
‘If she were here, she’d take things seriously and actually hunt’ He said right after firing an arrow, swiftly going through one of the rabbits that ran away from Louis.
‘Or, maybe she’d play a few rounds with me and Mr. Deadhead here!’
‘Guess we’ll never know...’ Aasim shrugged, while retrieving his arrow. Louis carried the dead animal over his shoulder.
‘I saw it when she saved your ass last night.’
‘You don’t have to remind me. I didn’t even got to thank her properly, because of Marlon.’
‘Brody did tell you to be nice to him.’
‘Yeah, I don’t like to sugarcoat our situation. If Marlon doesn’t like to see how things really are, that’s not my problem’ he had to remind himself to stop being so harsh on the wrong people, ‘I saw you trying to flirt with Clementine on the way back’ Aasim smirked, trying to ease up the mood.
‘She’s cute AND badass, you don’t get to see that often!’
‘It seems you already like her.’
‘What if that was the case? I see no sin in a little flirting, do you?’
‘I guess I don’t.’
‘I mean, everyone in the school is cute,’ He winked at his friend, ‘but she happens to be way cuter.’
‘You don’t really mean all of us’ He smiled, intrigued
‘Sure I do, even you… when you’re not being a sourpuss, that is’ Louis chuckled. Aasim thanked the compliment by widening his smile.
‘I mean, I don’t know if all of us, but I agree that there are people at school who are definitely cuter than others.’
Louis raised an eyebrow. ‘Care to elaborate on that?’
‘For example, I wouldn’t call Marlon cute, even if they paid me, Brody is kind of cute, sometimes…but Ruby is way cuter than Brody and Vi-’
Aasim pressed his lips, immediately regretting his words as Louis gasped dramatically.
For a dreadful moment, he had forgotten who he was talking to.
‘Ruby, is it?’ Louis laughs ‘Who would have seen that one coming?’ He scratched his chin.
‘No no no no no no, that’s not what I meant, I-’
Louis didn’t let him finish.
‘I think I know what you mean, It’s okay, dude. Having a crush is really not that terrible.’
Aasim glared at him, still flustered.
He shot another rabbit, hitting it on its hind legs. The animal jerked on the ground desperately, as an instinctive last attempt at running away. Louis cringed at the half dead creature, while his friend swore under his breath.
‘You should tell her, though.’ He said while Aasim snapped the rabbit’s neck to end its suffering.
‘Tell her what? There’s absolutely nothing to tell.’ He muttered, placing his kill on Louis’ left shoulder.
‘Come on, man, you obviously like her. I get it, you’re into sweet nurturing southern redheads. Ain’t nothing wrong with that!’
‘Well, when you put it that way...' He claimed with a sarcastic tone while walking away.
Louis, being the helpless romantic he was, insisted while walking next to him.
‘What do you like about her? I mean you guys have been friends since the beginning of times, but there’s gotta be something else.’
Aasim put down his bow and looked at Louis, noticing he wasn’t going to shut up about the whole thing unless he spoke up.
He decided to trust him. They were friends, after all. No matter how big of an idiot he was, he knew his friend meant well.
‘I’m not exactly sure when I started have feelings for her…’ He scratched his head, sheepishly as he stopped walking ‘Sometimes I look at her and my brain goes stupid, I can’t do anything… and everytime I talk to her, I notice something new about her, like how selfless she is, and how caring she is with all of us. She’s also disciplined and patient, she’s always helping someone. Her voice is really soothing when she’s focused. Like, this one time years ago, when I was hunting and I wasn’t very good at it, and I got a big cut on my shoulder. Ms. Martin had just taught her to stitch up wounds and I was nervous she’d be bad at it, but I was wrong; she’d speak to me so softly while stitching me up that I barely felt any pain. It was like magic.’
Louis wanted to talk but, Aasim didn’t let him, as he kept on describing her crush with a lovelorn expression on his face.
‘But she’s also firm and assertive when she needs to be, she definitely get things done, she has this tone she uses while giving orders, I swear, even the swear words sound beautiful leaving her mouth… and when she smiles, her eyes smile along with her mouth. Every time she looks at me, she smiles and she looks so nice. She lights up every place she’s in like that…only with her smile. She’s genuine. When she says stuff like “get well soon” or “I hope you have a good day” you know she means it from the bottom of her heart and that is super sweet...’
Louis blinked in surprise before giving his friend a big, sincere grin. He found his little ramble about Ruby impossibly endearing.
‘Seems to me you have a little more than a little crush in your hands, my man.’
Aasim realized this just then.
‘Please, don’t tell anybody’ He pleaded softly as they began walking again.
‘We’re friends, chill…’
‘Thanks’ His anxiety was starting to leave him until Louis spoke again.
‘Moreover, I’ll try to do everything in my might to help you guys get together.’
‘No, please don’t...’
‘Too late!’ He exclaimed, elated at the thought of Ruby and Aasim as a couple.
‘I hate you so much’ He rolled his eyes, half annoyed, half amused.