Chapter Text
It all started on an unsuspecting supply run.
The run started out like any other did, packing up some weapons, supplies, and circling their newest location to scour on their map, before heading out in their banged up Tacoma.
It wasn’t anything unusual, the two of them heading out together. Joel and Rick often did Alexandria’s bimonthly supply runs together as two of the strongest men in their community, but they weren’t what he would call close. Hell, Joel could count the conversations he’s had with the guy on one hand. So the ride there was filled with silence, except for the godawful country trash Rick just loved to blast through the car stereo. Taking in the crackly voice from the speakers, Joel began to clean his gun as they made their way to the warehouse, car bumping along the dirt path steadily.
It was strange, Joel thought, to spend months and months with a person, covering each other's backs from flesh-eating crackbrains, and still barely knowing each other at all. Rick was a small-town cop from Georgia before all this, Joel knew, and he knew that Rick cared about his son a whole lot, and would do just about anything for him, but that’s as far as his knowledge on the man went. He found himself oddly curious about the man in the driver’s seat in that quiet moment, wanting to know more and more, and it scared him that he didn’t know why.
The slowing of the car stopped Joel’s train of thought, and he looked up to see they had arrived at their destination. A banged up warehouse, with a gas station a few feet ahead. The dirty cement was littered with bits of trash everywhere, as almost all places were now, but the warehouse door seemed untouched, largely free of bloodstains and grime.
They gathered up their gear quickly, hopping out of the car. Rick stealthily pulled out his small axe and began to walk towards the few straggling walkers surrounding the warehouse’s entrance, taking them out with practiced ease that looked strangely graceful. Joel had meant to follow and assist him, but Rick’s axe was awfully quieter than his own gun, and he found himself wanting to watch Rick in action, anyways.
He wasn’t sure where this sudden fascination with Rick had been stemming from in the past few months, perhaps it had been that they were finally in a safe base and he allowed his mind to stray a bit, but it seemed that every moment he spent with Rick only caused his interest to grow. And what scared him the most was that he couldn’t really bring himself to want to stop either.
As Joel stood there with wide eyes, still, mesmerized at the sight of the man, Rick took down the final walker of the four strays with swift movement of his axe straight through the walker’s skull, pushing it’s now limp and rotting body to the pavement, before turning his head back to look at Joel with a puzzled look, raising his eyebrow as if to say, What?. As he wiped the sweat off his brow and dropped his axe back into his belt loop with practiced ease, he tilted his head toward the warehouse, signalling for Joel to follow.
He snapped out of his daze instantly, face contorting back into his usual hardened glare, before grasping his gun tightly and following Rick inside. They walked side by side towards the door, banging it open and striding inside.
Joel’s eyes widened in disbelief as he stepped inside. The warehouse was filled with pallets of canned goods and boxed food items. He looked over to Rick to see a similar expression on his face. He began to amble around the enclosed room, taking in the surroundings and food.
“Let’s check dates, see what’s worth takin’ back for this trip,” Rick said with his usual southern drawl, back towards Joel, looking around the place once more with an inspecting gaze. He turned briefly and gave a sharp nod in response, and before inspecting each pallet of food closer.
The pair rarely shared words to each other, Joel noted as he absentmindedly continued with his task. They seemed to communicate perfectly simply with looks and gestures. He couldn't put his finger on what exactly that said about their relationship, but it fostered a trust and respect for Rick in him that he hadn’t found in many others for a long time.
Joel glanced over at Rick, to see him focused on sorting through the food, and glared down, cursing himself. How was Rick so focused, and yet his mere presence seemed to consume Joel’s being, distracting him from the simplest of tasks, and causing his mind to wander to unusual places.
As the two men continued to sift through the food in silence, Joel wondered, was this the effect Rick had on everyone? The reason the rest of their group of survivors followed him, trusted him to lead so instinctively, loyally? Joel couldn’t help but feel a desperate need to decipher the strange quality that caused him to gravitate so easily towards the man.
Checking the expiration date on the last pallet of the row, a whole box of sweet canned peaches he knew Ellie would love, Joel got up and headed back in the direction Rick had been working on, and found him to be finishing up as well.
“Found anythin’ worth keeping on that side?” Rick questioned quietly, still looking down at the large cans of chocolate pudding with a slightly amused look on his face, the one he only seemed to wear when Glenn had said something funny, or when he was with his kids.
“Peaches, green beans, some of that soup might be good too,” Joel listed off. “Should we start loadin’ em up?”
“Yeah, but we won’t be able to fit it all, might have to come back in a couple days for round two,” Rick said, drawing out the beginning of the first word he said like he did whenever he was making a decision. Joel simply nodded in response.
They’d spent about an hour taking down the stragglers and sorting through the food, so as they carried the first box of canned goods to the metal door, they expected the setting outside to be relatively unchanged.
What they saw was not relatively unchanged.
Instead, they opened the door to a gargantuan herd of walkers, passing right around the warehouse, surrounding it, parallel to the road they travelled on to get here, and completely blocking the path home.
Rick lost his grip on the box out of pure surprise and Joel let go too, taking out his gun and letting the precious canned corn splatter to the ground with a squelch.
There must have been hundreds of them, seeing as the herd stretched out farther than he could see, and Joel knew the ammo he had on him wouldn’t be enough to take this down.
“They must’ve come from the woods up North, otherwise we would’ve seen these useless shits!” Joel exclaimed furiously while aiming for the walker coming right for him, dressed in tattered jeans and a blazer.
He started picking off a few of the nearest walkers that began inching their way towards them, but Joel had left his silencer in the car, and the booming noise only attracted more walkers to them. He glanced hurriedly to the right to see Rick’s face harden into that fierce expression that had never once let him down.
And just like that, Joel knew they would find a way out.
“Head for the woods out South behind the warehouse! It’ll be harder for them to navigate through! We’ll make our way through and circle back to the car once the herd’s passed!” Rick yelled over the discordant groans of the biters, swinging ruthlessly at their skulls with his axe and kicking each that came near him to the ground with ferocity.
Joel shot another three targets dead in the foreheads, before beginning to retreat into the woods, never once turning his back on the herd, in step with Rick next to him. The herd’s attention on them only grew, the wobbling legs and dead eyes hungry for flesh growing more interested by the second.
As they drew closer and closer to the wild greenery of the forest, they turned around and began to sprint through the tall, sharp grass into the trees, Joel turning back every few strides to eliminate another biter with scary precision.
The threatening cacophony of moaning and snapping of teeth grew softer as they ran further and further into the bush. After running for a solid two minutes without a walker’s step crunching on the soil behind them, they slowed, stopping in a deserted enclosure within the forest.
Panting for air, hands on his knees, Rick turned to Joel, stepping closer towards him.
After taking a moment to catch their breath, the two men took in their new surroundings. Excluding the wooded area surrounding the walls of Alexandria, they didn’t go in the woods very often anymore. There wasn’t a need, seeing as there weren’t supplies there, and there was always an underlying threat of danger.
Now as they looked at each other wondering what to do next, they found themselves stranded in the woods, for an unknown amount of time, with no supplies but Rick’s axe and Joel’s nearly empty gun.
Alone.
Just the two of them.
Just Joel and Rick together, alone in the woods.
Just Joel and Rick.