Hi everyone this is my Brick romance AU and I hope you like it! It's a single parent AU where Rick and Beth are both single parents. Please drop a review to let me know what you think of it and if there's anything I can do to improve it. Also I apologise in advance if there are any spelling and grammer mistakes, I typed the whole thing out on my phone and it doesn't have spellcheck. I've read and checked over it but in case I missed anything . . . Sorry! Hope you enjoy it!

Chapter One

It was an ordinary Saturday at the Grimes house. Rick, who had the day off, was minding his children Carl and Judith, while his wife Lori was at the gym. The warm May weather made sitting indoors crazy, so the father and son were killing time by playing soccer in the back yard.

''He shoots and he scores! Another goal for Grimes! 3-1! Come on Carl, you can do better than that!'' Rick laughed, tousling his eldest child's hair, who moaned in protest, before bringing his hands up to fix his hair. The eleven year old looked exhausted and was seriously questioning why he thought challenging his dad to his favourite game ever was a good idea. Soccer was the only game both Grimes men ever cared about winning and if Carl wanted to beat his dad, he would need a distraction. Just then, one came in the form of his one year old sister Judith, who started to cry from the shelter of the tree she was sitting under, watching her dad and big brother run around like fools.

"Hey Judy, what's the matter? Why are you crying?" Rick asked softly, running over to his daughter. When he reached her, he immediately saw what the problem was: she had gotten her legs tangled in the blanket she was lying on, preventing her from reaching her favourite toy which had fallen out of her reach.

"Oh so that's what you've gotten yourself into," Rick teased, freeing his daughter from the blanket, before setting the blanket to rights and placing his daughter on it. Reaching his arm back, he grabbed her toy, and placed it on her lap. "Better?" he asked smiling at his daughter. Judith gave him a toothy smile before bringing her toy up closer to her mouth to suck on it. Just as Rick was about to turn his attention back to his son, a shape whirled past him quickly. Carl - seeing that his sister wasn't hurt, had taken control of the ball and running down towards Rick's goal at the other end if the garden. "Hey!" Rick shouted, struggling to get to his feet, but Carl had already shot the ball right in the middle of the temporary goals they had set up just before they had started playing.

"He shoots, he scores!" Carl yelled, throwing his arms up in the air and running around in circles. "Come on old man, you're going to have to do better than that!"

"Old man, huh?" Rick asked with an odd glint in his eyes. Carl, who had spotted the glint in his dad's eyes was backing up nervously and getting ready to run. "Hey now don't even think about doing-" Carl started, before his dad charged at him, "THAT!" he finish in a shriek before turning and running away from his dad. The chase lasted five minutes, with both Grimes men running all over the place, including trampling Lori's prized flower beds. Eventually though, exhaustion caught up to the younger Grimes, allowing his father to catch and tickle him, as he knew exactly where Carl's ticklish spots were.

"Ok, ok, stop! You win! I give up!" Carl cried, tears of laughter running down his face. Satisfied, Rick sat back, allowing Carl the chance to catch his breath. Eventually the younger one sat up, no longer splitting his sides with laughter and looked around the yard and the damage they brought on it. "Mum is going to kill us" he said at last, his attention firmly on the destroyed flower beds. "Leave it to me, I'll fix it" Rick promised. "Really?" Carl asked excitedly. "Well you often cause the destruction, so it'll be easier for me to do it without you mudering the plants." At that Carl laughed and hit his dad jokingly in the shoulder, but made no effort to argue with the statement as he knew it was true. "But" Rick added as Carl left to go into their air conditioned home, "you've got to clean your room." Carl thought about for a minute, before nodding his head in agreement. "Deal" he said as he got off the grass and made for the back door and an ice cold coke that he knew was waiting for him in the fridge. Rick chuckled for a minute before turning to check on Judith, who had been oddly quiet for the past few minutes. She stared right back at him a confused expression on her face.

"Your daddy and brother are very silly aren't we?" he asked his daughter. Judith pointed at him and said something in baby talk that he couldn't understand but he felt that she was agreeing with him on that statement. "Right Judy, Daddy better clean this up before Mummy gets home and kills Daddy" Rick sighed, getting up onto his feet, exhausted from chasing Carl around and destroying Lori's plants. Judith gurgled in agreement with the statement. Smiling at his daughter lying peacefully on the ground, Rick started to set the garden to rights, the damage thankfully being not as bad as it looked.

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That night after Lori returned from the gym, they had eaten dinner together and he had put Judith to bed, Rick went out for a drink in the local sports bar, Easy Street with his friends. It was a weekly tradition between them to meet and catch up on each others lives as most of them all worked different jobs making it difficult for all of them to get together during the week. But they always tried to make sure that their calender was clear for Saturday night.

Walking into the bar, the sound of a group of men laughing drowned out whatever game was currently playing on the tvs above the bar. Smiling a little, Rick instinctly turned to go the group's regular booth where the source of laughter was coming from. The rest of the group were already there: Daryl, Abraham, Glenn, Eugene, Tyreese, Morgan and T-Dog. The only one not there yet was Shane, but he was probably running late.

"Hey Rick's here!" T-Dog cried raising his glass in greeting. The rest of the group turned and gave their own greeting as Rick slid into the end of the booth and raised his arm to get the waitresses attention. "Hey guys" Rick nodded in greeting, "Shane running late?" "He phoned me earlier" Abraham stated, "the station phoned him and asked him to come in. Apparently two other officers phoned in sick."

"Hate when that happens" Rick said, placing his order to one of the waitresses. "I'm just glad they didn't ask me to come in" Abraham laughed. Abraham served on the police force with Rick, Shane and another friend of theirs Tara. Daryl on the other hand ran his own carpentry and handy-man business which Morgan worked at. Glenn and T-Dog worked at Horvath's Motors owned and run by Dale Horvath himself, with T-Dog helping out with coaching the kids soccer teams that Carl was a member of. Eugene was a science teacher at the local high school that both Carl and Judith would be attending in a few years, while Tyreese was actually a baker in the county's most popular bakery Sprinkles. The irony was not lost on the group given that Tyreese was one of the most muscular and toughest looking ones out of the whole group was actually a harmless teddy bear who would prefer to spend his days icing cupcakes then using his muscles to intimidate people. But Tyreese would argue that his wife Michonne was the tough and badass one in his marriage, so someone had to be the good cop or the situation would be no fair to their children Andre and Julie.

"So any news?" Rick asked just as the waitress was setting his drink down on the table. A chorus of 'no' and 'not really' was his answer. "Ok then I want your honest opinions on something for me then." "What is it?" Glenn asked while taking a drink of his water. Glenn was the only non-drinker in the group as he was a total lightweight and after only one drink would be dancing around making a total fool of himself, much to the delight of the group and his own horror.

"Next week is mine and Lori's 13th wedding anniversary and I was thinking about taking her away for the weekend to the hotel we had our honey-moon in. Thoughts?"

The group was silent for a few moments as they processed Rick's plan.

"That sounds like a great idea" Glenn said finally. "I might do something like that for my anniversary with Maggie." "Careful not to use up all the good ideas before your even married Glenn" Daryl teased, "or you might run out of ideas of new ways to surprise her once your married." "Least I got a girl" Glenn countered. "When's the last time you had a girlfriend?"

"Glenn, Darly, we're getting off topic" Morgan reasoned before turning to face Rick "I think thats a great idea." "Really?" Rick asked. "Yeah" came Morgan's simple reply. "And if you don't already have anyone minding the kids I can take them for you. My mother's visiting that weekend and Duane would love to have a friend to hang out with to escape spending his weekend cooped up with an old person. Plus I know that my mother would love to have a baby to fuss over."

"Thank you Morgan that's one concern off my chest at least" Rick smiled.

"You know, I remember when I was dating Ellen," Abraham began, his eyes tearing up a little as thought of his late wife. "It was coming up to our four year aniversary and-".

As the rest of the group turned their attention towards Abraham and his story and Glenn slunk off to the bathroom, Daryl carefully pulled Glenn's glass of water carefully towards his vodka, before pouring some of the alcoholic beverage into his friends glass before pushing it back to where it originally was. None of the group bar Eugene noticed anything at all, but Daryl knew that the man wasn't going to bring it to anyone's attention. Eugene wasn't a snitch and Daryl was sure that the man was a little scared of him anyways. Smirking a little, Daryl raised his own glass to his lips as Glenn returned from the bathroom and took a long drink of his 'water'. Thank God, it was getting a little too girly with all the talk about relationships and anniversaries. If Merle saw him listening to this he'd wet himself from laughter. Thankfully Daryl was going to have them forgetting about chatting like girls in a few minutes and cheering their drunk friend on as he did something stupid. And by the way Glenn was downing that 'water' he wouldn't have to wait too long for that.

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Meanwhile at the Grimes home on the other side of town, Lori lied flat on her bed as Shane hoovered above her. "Nobody's coming right?" he questioned. Lori shook her head. "Judy's asleep, Carl probably is too and Rick is at the bar. They didn't suspect anything did they?" she asked. Shane gave a quiet snort. "I told those idiots that the chief called and asked me to come in and they bought it! Trust me, those idiots don't suspect a thing." At that Lori began to smile, "well you better get a move on" she purred. "Because we only got an hour and a half before you have to go to make sure Rick doesn't catch us." Shane moved closer to her neck. "Better get a move on then" he mumered before roughly attachting his lips to her neck. Lori shifted her head allowing him more room as she let herself go into the world of betrayal and adultery.