Work Text:
Maggie was the first person to notice Jesus’s eyeing Carol and Daryl together. “Don’t take it personally,” she advised him, smiling at the look on his face. “They’ve been close since I’ve known them.”
Jesus lowered his gaze from Maggie’s eyes to his hands. He couldn’t shake the feeling in his gut that he could never be her, that Daryl would never trust him as deeply or as inherently as he did Carol.
It was Carl who noticed next, telling Jesus, “Carol, Daryl, and I are the last ones of us left from the start.”
That caught Jesus’s attention. “What about your dad?”
Carl shook his head. “That doesn't matter. We were a part of a group on our way to Atlanta when we thought safe zones even still existed. The only ones of us left are me, Daryl, and Carol. Dad joined up with us later.”
“Is that why they’re so close?” Jesus asked.
Carl couldn’t hide the way he hesitated after Jesus spoke, but he answered with, “It’s not my place to say,” and left it at that.