BY THE TIME THEY HAD RETURNED TO ELLIE AND JOEL, the youngest of the two of them was completely knocked out cold. It was getting pretty dark, and they had left the light on so the Zhenyas could find their way back.
On either side of the light was where they slept- Ellie snoring on the right with Lou's sleeping bag next to her, Joel was meant to be on the left with Ralph's sleeping bag next to him.
Driving for ages and ages had somehow made Ralph even more tired than walking places, and he guessed it was because driving was boring. At least when you were walking, you had things to interact with and the Earth around you to admire. In a car, you just sped past it all. Plus, that stupid country song that Joel started playing? Yaaawn.
'Hey.' Joel greeted them, already standing awake and alert with his gun cradled in his arms. He looked tired. He was tired. He had no idea what he was doing awake other than the promise he had made to Ellie, the one that nobody would find them. 'You guys took a while.'
'Not that long.' Ralph insisted, receiving a handful of berries from Lou as she emptied out her pockets and prepared to fall asleep. She shuffled the short distance it took to get to her sleeping bag, rolled Ellie off of it, and was out like a light the second she was under the covers.
Ralph took a little bit longer though. First, he found a safe place for their berries. Then, flicked off the light that Lou hadn't bothered to turn off. Afterwards, he climbed into his sleeping bag. Lastly, he addressed the elephant in the room.
'What the hell are you doing, dude?' He asked quietly, looking over at the man with the gun. He was still staring out into the woods on high alert, like he was about to start shooting the trees. Joel looked at Ralph over his shoulder, barely making eye contact before he turned back around. He raised his shoulders and dropped them in an uncoordinated shrug, another example of him being super goddamn tired. 'Can you go to sleep, then, please?'
Joel shook his head quietly, swaying a little bit on his feet to entertain and keep himself awake.
'You know that I won't be able to sleep if you're not asleep, right?' Ralph murmured, keeping his voice low due to the teenagers that were snoozing not too far away.
'Why not?' Joel asked like it was the only thing that he could do.
'Because I'll know that you're awake, and then I'll want to be awake.' He replied monotonously. Joel didn't dignify that with a reply, and Ralph turned over onto his stomach to look into the forest surrounding them. '...There's nothing out there, Joel. Go to sleep.'
'Sleep is for the weak.' Joel huffed.
'You'll be weak when I murder you.' Ralph threatened emptily. Joel looked back at him. 'I'm serious. Put that gun down and get some shut-eye or else I'll shove it up your ass.'
Joel stared at him for a moment, and Ralph stared right back at him. They had another staring contest, a rematch from last time. Somehow, even though Ralph was far more exhausted, Joel blinked first.
After a moments worth of hesitation, he shuffled over to their beds and placed his gun down, right next to the edge of his sleeping bag. Ralph understood it, but was also too grateful that Joel had finally gotten over himself to pay much notice to it.
Knowing that the bed next to him was occupied, Ralph rolled over onto his back again. He did this at the exact same time that Joel swung his arm back to place his jacket out of the way, his elbow knocking into Ralph's chest.
'Shit, sorry.' He said instantly, reaching down to place his hand over Ralph's heart in an attempt to soothe the spot that didn't even hurt in the first place.
Ralph looked at him, like any normal person would've, but Joel completely froze up. Ralph had nice eyes. He established that many times. That didn't mean he could stop himself from staring at them, though. Joel stared down at him, hand on Ralph's chest, entirely still.
'...Um.' Ralph said, his voice abnormally soft and low, almost like a whisper. That snapped him out of it, thank God, and he was able to clear his throat and pull his hand away.
He didn't say anything. He couldn't because his throat had gone totally dry, and even if he did speak, he was sure it would be all high-pitched and girly and cause even more embarrassment- If that was even possible.
Joel just rolled over onto his side and set a new world record for falling asleep the fastest.
...
RALPH HAD ALWAYS BEEN A PRETTY GOOD MORNING PERSON. His job as a janitor for FEDRA typically required him to be up at the asscrack of dawn, because there was no doubt that those assholes had killed someone while he was off the clock and now they needed him to scrub the blood off of the walls.
He got up in the morning when it was the morning, like seven or eight. He and Joel obviously didn't know that much about each other, because this fucker woke him up at five in the morning with a gentle heel to the stomach.
'The fuck?' Ralph grumbled, rolling away from Joel and his violent foot with his eyes still closed. He landed on his stomach and smooshed his face into his pillow.
'Do. You. Want. Coffee?' Joel repeated through gritted teeth. The tone in his voice led Ralph to believe that this was the fourth or fifth time he was repeating himself.
'Leave me alone, hillbilly Miller.' So much for a morning person.
Joel clicked his tongue and walked over to the truck, grabbing his spare thermos and deciding to pour him some anyways. With that attitude, it couldn't hurt to put a little pep in his step.
As his back was turned, someone else had risen from their slumber and was wiggling over to the pot of boiling coffee like a caterpillar in a cocoon. With her sleeping bag held high on her shoulder, Ellie flicked her hand out and open the lid. She stared at it for a moment, unsure of what to do, before she took a little sniff.
'Ew, what the fuck is that!?' She yelped, backing away from it like it was trying to kill her. She grimaced at the pot, and then smiled a little at Ralph when he rolled over to see what all the fuss was about. 'Hey, Ralph.'
'Hey, kid.' He replied, rubbing his hands over his face.
'You don't like coffee?' Joel looked back at her, eyes drifting over to Ralph when he sat up and began to stretch. He laughed a little bit at the sight of his hair, and Ralph glared at him tiredly. 'You got bedhead, man.'
Ralph dignified that with a noise of some sorts whilst Ellie flicked the lid of the can back over and wrapped her sleeping bag around her once more. She flopped backwards in a calculated attack, the back of her head smacking Lou right in the stomach and scaring her awake.
'The day awaits us, Louise.' Ellie sighed.
'I hope you drown.' Lou sighed.
...
'IS THAT SERIOUSLY WHAT THOSE STARBUCKS IN THE QZ USED TO SELL?' Ellie asked quietly, watching as Ralph drank the rest of his coffee all in one gulp. Joel made the right call with not saving it all for himself.
'Theirs was better than this.' Ralph scrunched his face up in a grimace as if he wasn't unscrewing the lid of his thermos to collect every last drop inside of it. 'They made different flavours and colors and everything. Strawberry, chocolate, pumpkin spice-'
'The girls at my school used to drink those all the time.' Lou added from where she was slumped against the window of the backseat. She was still in her sleeping bag, taking up most of the room in the left and middle seats. Ellie didn't mind because, when she wasn't sleeping or talking to Lou, she was annoying Ralph and Joel. So she had gotten accustomed to popping her head in between the gaps of their seats and just rambling. 'They fuckin' sucked.'
'The girls or the drinks?' Joel looked at her in the rearview mirror.
'Both.' She said.
'What the hell does pumpkin spice taste like?' Ellie asked Ralph, ignoring the others.
'Hell if I knew.' He waved his arms, setting down his thermos in the cup holder and taking a particularly long look at Joel's identical one in the holder beside his. Joel noticed it out of the corner of his eye and said nothing until Ralph slowly began to reach for it.
'Eyes on the map.' Joel swatted his hand away and pointed a finger at the map that was laying completely abandoned in Ralph's lap. The man took a moment to be shocked by such an encounter, before picking it up and holding it in front of his face.
'Seventy-six west, and then another seventy-three west, and- Oh, what a shocker! Seventy west.' Ralph deadpanned, letting his head loll back for a moment before heaving out a sigh and turning to look at Joel. 'Your brother seriously couldn't have picked a cooler place than Wyoming?'
'Tommy was never really known for being the cool brother.' Joel joked. He was still pretty bad at that because his voice never conveyed the right emotion.
When Ralph joked, he did a stupid thing with his voice where he went high-pitched for a moment, especially when he wanted to emphasize a word, and then dropped back down to his normal voice. When Joel joked, he sounded like he was about to tell you that your dog had died.
'Oh, yeah. I'm sure you were getting all of the babes back in The Middle of Nowhere, Texas.' He peered over the ledge of the map at Joel with those annoying little wrinkles by his eyes, the ones that indicated he was smiling.
'What can I say? The girls love a country boy.' Joel shrugged smugly, taking his eyes off the road for a moment to look over at Ralph, who was still looking at him. They held eye contact, and even though they had started to do it a lot lately, Ralph didn't think he'd ever get tired of it. 'You would know. Wouldn't you, Mister Cowboy Hat?'
'Haha! Cowboy hat.' Ellie laughed loudly. She had leaned back in her seat and begun to speak with Lou a little while ago. Neither of the men in the front of the car even noticed, too engrossed in their own little world with just the two of them.
'Yeah... Girls.' Ralph seemed particularly irritated when Joel mentioned it, clicking his tongue and squinting his eyes and looking out the window. Joel didn't think that he had upset Ralph. He was probably having a caffeine crash or something, maybe just grumpy because he actually didn't get girls back in Connecticut, maybe...
Maybe just annoyed because Ralph didn't like girls?
No.
That was stupid.
...Right?
'You know, I was thinking.' Ralph began to speak suddenly, scaring Joel and almost making him swerve the car off the goddamn road. He recovered from it quickly and pulled the steering wheel back to where it was meant to be. Even though they were steady on the road, Ralph didn't let it go, not without giving Joel a worried look. He shifted a little bit and then continued. 'If you have a nickname for me, I should have a nickname for you.'
'I-I don't have a nickname for you.' Joel stuttered, a little frazzled seeing as he was still trying to mentally rule out the possibility that the guy who had been making him think... Things for the past few weeks might actually be thinking the same exact things about him.
'You do. The other day, Bill and Frank's, you called me Al.' Ralph reminded him. Joel had no recollection of such a thing, and even gave him a confused look to back it up. Ralph nodded his head to try and convince him. 'You were all like, "Yo, Al, go check upstairs and shit!"'
'I didn't say yo.'
'Yeah, but you said Al.'
'You did call him Al, Joel.' Lou spoke up, lifting her head from the window she was resting it on to lock eyes with him in the rearview mirror once again. Ellie shuffled into view suddenly, nodding her head to agree.
'...I didn't mean to.' He replied gruffly, not too fond of the fact that he was being attacked by everyone all at once.
'You still did. Anyway, I was thinking Jo. But only two letters, J-O. It makes them match, kind of - Al and Jo.' Ralph suggested like it was a second thought, like he hadn't been thinking of cute nicknames for Joel the second he had let that usage of "Al" slip back at the house.
'Aw, if you put them together, it spells Joal. Just like Joel!' Ellie pointed out, her voice obnoxiously high like she was staring at a cute animal or talking about something she was very excited about. She was staring at something cute- The couple right in front of her. Lou didn't see the vision, not yet, no matter how many times Ellie pitched it to her. Ellie had a feeling something was up, though. Felt it deep in her bones. Sensed it like she was Spiderman.
To put it simply- Her gaydar was going ding ding ding!
'Yeah. Aw.' Joel repeated with a roll of his eyes, acting like he wasn't about to melt into a puddle.
...
AFTER A TOTALLY INSPIRATIONAL CONVERSATION ABOUT TOMMY BEING DUMB, how the Fireflies were delusional, and how Joel had no more hope for the world, they had run into a roadblock about thirty minutes after the initial, adorable nickname conversation.
Ralph and Joel looked at each other with the same expression of confusion on their faces, and, of course, Joel was the first one to grab the door handle and step out of the car. Cautiously, though. Not with the impulsivity that he always had. The placed his hand on top of the roof of the car and lowered his head.
'Cover me.' He instructed, and Ralph didn't have to be told twice. As Ralph undid his seatbelt and reached for his pistol, Joel looked to the backseat where Ellie and Lou were giving him a questioning look. 'You two stay here.'
Ellie looked like she was going to say something, but Joel and Ralph slammed their doors in sync before she got the chance to.
Joel didn't bother to go to the back of the truck and retrieve the shotgun he had taken from Bill's, or the rifle that Ralph decided to take, and he had no idea why.
If this was him three weeks ago, Joel wouldn't have even let Ralph out of the car, let alone bring him to the potential source of danger. He guessed it was because he trusted Ralph. At least with a gun. He shot the shit out of those Infected at the museum, so, Joel trusted him.
And it was probably also because Ralph was one of the coolest, nicest, amazingest people Joel had ever met, but he digressed.
'We're not getting through there, man.' Ralph added unhelpfully as Joel crouched down and peered underneath the truck that was blocking the tunnel.
'The road on the other side is empty. We could go around.' Joel looked up at him.
'You think that itty, bitty, shitty truck can offroad?' Ralph looked down at him.
'Fair.' Joel nodded, shuffling to get back to his feet and letting out a sigh of defeat before he even began. It was no secret that Joel was friggin' old, and even though they were close in age, Ralph's knees hadn't started to shit themselves just yet. 'We can make a U-Turn, go back the way we came, and cut through the city- Ow, shit.'
'Here.' Ralph caught him by the hand and placed another on his back, helping him up. Joel looked at him like he had saved the fucking world, like he was staring directly at the Messiah or something. Ralph backed up and dropped his hand, thinking that Joel could've been angry at him for treating him like an old man, and pursed his lips.
'...Thanks.' Joel said finally and quickly, turning on his heel and almost falling over in his rush to get back to the car. Ralph took a glimpse down at his hand, the one that Joel had held, smiled a little bit, and then followed him.
...
NOTES!
THY HELD HANFS THEY HALD HANDS THEY HELD HAANADS
YELLS
guys let me just tell u right now that these kc chapters are like FIIILLED with content im not eveb joking u
not all of it is GOOD content, but its still content!!!!
ive got a music test tomorrow and i havent revised i HATE music SO MUCH worst subject idc
anyway pray for me u guys