The Walking Dead | rick/shane
title: trying not to need you, is tearing me apart
characters/pairings: (possibly) one-sided Rick/Shane, Lori/Rick
rating: PG-13
word count: 580
prompt: 04. erratic
summary: Three snapshots from their lives before the apocalypse.
erratic : having no fixed course : wandering
“You deserve more, you know,” Lori says and it takes Shane a few moments to adjust to the soberness of her caring voice. They’ve been sitting in the living room, drinking beer to wash away the aftertaste of that dinner from hell Lori and Rick made together, and Shane has been telling funny anecdotes about his one-night stands in a hushed voice so he wouldn’t wake their newborn baby.
Shane wants to make a joke at first but her expression is warm and maybe just a little sad, so he just shrugs with a lopsided smile. There are discarded baby toys all over the floor and he chooses to stare at a rubber duck instead of the way Rick and Lori’s fingers are entwined.
“Don’t embarrass him,” Rick laughs and kisses Lori’s temple. She opens her mouth to say something but Shane cuts in with that trademark cheeky glint in his eyes.
“Can’t help it if you swooped up the best chick, man,” he jokes and both Rick and Lori laugh and then they snuggle closer together. Shane smiles fondly and goes back to staring at the rubber duck.
erratic : characterized by lack of consistency, regularity, or uniformity
Carl is three and he was promised a whole afternoon of playing with his new race car he had gotten for Christmas from Shane, but Shane’s late and isn’t picking up the phone and Carl starts crying, Lori is angry and Rick is just worried.
When Shane later turns up completely wasted at their doorstep Rick is the one who gets angry and Lori starts worrying, asking Shane over and over again, what’s wrong, what prompted this.
Rick doesn’t get it - what prompted this was that Shane preferred to get drunk with some chick instead of playing with a kid. It’s no rocket science. But Lori just shoots him a look like he’s an idiot.
“I sh... I shouldn’t h’ve come here,” Shane slurs a little helplessly even as they are putting him on the bed in the guest room and Lori is tucking him in.
That makes Rick’s anger go away immediately. “Come on, man, we’re here for you, you know that.”
Shane lets out a bitter fragment of a laugh and turns over.
erratic : deviating from what is ordinary or standard
On the surface nothing ever changes. They are partners, holding each other’s backs, complementing each other, stealing food from each other’s plates. They are best friends, talking about women (in Shane’s case many, in Rick’s only one, only ever one), going out for drinks, telling each other things women would never understand. And they are family, too. Shane gets invited for dinner sometimes several times a week, he plays with Carl and teaches him a few things a boy should know but Lori won’t let Rick teach him, and they are close, close as only family can be, knowing about each other all the little details that matter.
Except this. Shane keeps expecting it to slip out - during brief disagreements when people say things they don’t want to, or during comfy silences on night shifts, or that one time when Lori moved out for less than 24 hours and Rick spent the night on Shane’s couch drunk and angry with himself. But in all these years it still hasn’t and sometimes Shane doesn’t know if he still knows how to even say those words.
Maybe it’s for the best.
characters/pairings: (possibly) one-sided Rick/Shane, Lori/Rick
rating: PG-13
word count: 580
prompt: 04. erratic
summary: Three snapshots from their lives before the apocalypse.
erratic : having no fixed course : wandering
“You deserve more, you know,” Lori says and it takes Shane a few moments to adjust to the soberness of her caring voice. They’ve been sitting in the living room, drinking beer to wash away the aftertaste of that dinner from hell Lori and Rick made together, and Shane has been telling funny anecdotes about his one-night stands in a hushed voice so he wouldn’t wake their newborn baby.
Shane wants to make a joke at first but her expression is warm and maybe just a little sad, so he just shrugs with a lopsided smile. There are discarded baby toys all over the floor and he chooses to stare at a rubber duck instead of the way Rick and Lori’s fingers are entwined.
“Don’t embarrass him,” Rick laughs and kisses Lori’s temple. She opens her mouth to say something but Shane cuts in with that trademark cheeky glint in his eyes.
“Can’t help it if you swooped up the best chick, man,” he jokes and both Rick and Lori laugh and then they snuggle closer together. Shane smiles fondly and goes back to staring at the rubber duck.
erratic : characterized by lack of consistency, regularity, or uniformity
Carl is three and he was promised a whole afternoon of playing with his new race car he had gotten for Christmas from Shane, but Shane’s late and isn’t picking up the phone and Carl starts crying, Lori is angry and Rick is just worried.
When Shane later turns up completely wasted at their doorstep Rick is the one who gets angry and Lori starts worrying, asking Shane over and over again, what’s wrong, what prompted this.
Rick doesn’t get it - what prompted this was that Shane preferred to get drunk with some chick instead of playing with a kid. It’s no rocket science. But Lori just shoots him a look like he’s an idiot.
“I sh... I shouldn’t h’ve come here,” Shane slurs a little helplessly even as they are putting him on the bed in the guest room and Lori is tucking him in.
That makes Rick’s anger go away immediately. “Come on, man, we’re here for you, you know that.”
Shane lets out a bitter fragment of a laugh and turns over.
erratic : deviating from what is ordinary or standard
On the surface nothing ever changes. They are partners, holding each other’s backs, complementing each other, stealing food from each other’s plates. They are best friends, talking about women (in Shane’s case many, in Rick’s only one, only ever one), going out for drinks, telling each other things women would never understand. And they are family, too. Shane gets invited for dinner sometimes several times a week, he plays with Carl and teaches him a few things a boy should know but Lori won’t let Rick teach him, and they are close, close as only family can be, knowing about each other all the little details that matter.
Except this. Shane keeps expecting it to slip out - during brief disagreements when people say things they don’t want to, or during comfy silences on night shifts, or that one time when Lori moved out for less than 24 hours and Rick spent the night on Shane’s couch drunk and angry with himself. But in all these years it still hasn’t and sometimes Shane doesn’t know if he still knows how to even say those words.
Maybe it’s for the best.