Author's Note: The second of 4 fics that creeped over my list of roughly 34 ideas.
This takes place around like 3 years into the time jump of season 9. Alexandria and Hilltop are already a lot more closed, but Jesus being Jesus, he still gets to come around with ease. Tara's still living here because Maggie's still at the Hilltop and therefore Jesus is not the leader yet.
Disclaimer: Obviously don't own TWD.
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Rosita was the first to greet him when the gate opened, a smile so big Jesus couldn't help but widen his own.
"Hey, Jesus. It's good to see you. How's the Hilltop?"
"Great. It's good to see you too, Rosita," he replied. "Maggie's been very busy and Hershel does his absolute best to put some new grey hairs on her head every day, but that's good news to me because that way I get to come by with nice stuff."
He pointed to the truck behind him filled with supplies for trade and turned around to hop back to the driver's seat.
"I like the manbun!" she threw at his back before he opened the truck's door, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically louder than recommended, but the last walkers he had seen on the road had been a good mile back. He had to chuckle at the words and the smile was still sillily plasted on his face when he crossed the gate into Alexandria, parking the truck a little further ahead on the road.
"What about you guys?" he asked, closing the door behind himself as Rosita shut the gate. "How've things been around here? All the kids' towering over all of us already?"
"We're good, and yeah, Judith's not that tall yet but just give her time. And let's not get started on R.J.. Gracie's been ill though, nothing serious but Aaron doesn't leave her side for a second."
"She's sick?" he repeated. Rosita nodded.
"Siddiq said she's just got a cold. It's unpleasant, but Aaron's worried sick, which is normal."
Jesus hummed in agreement, looking up the road towards Aaron's house as if that would be enough to let him know how they were.
"I'll go get Michonne."
"Thanks, Rosita."
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Michonne seemed to be in better spirit than last time he had seen her, and R.J. might have just reached past Jesus's knees height yet, but it seemed unreal how he could be the same baby he had seen just a handful of months before. Judith came to greet him too, Carl's hat yet to fit her head and therefore making her look adorable. He was sure it would fit her faster than he thought, though. The girl was bursting with joy and pride and was quick to share the remarkable feat she had achieved earlier that week, shooting and hitting two bottles with a Baby Browning. According to Michonne, everyone in Alexandria knew already, and if it were up to Judith, everyone in the Hilltop would too.
The girl gleamed with joy when Jesus told her he'd let everyone know she was the next best sharpshooter in the world, and gleamed brighter when she took the peanut butter chocolate bar he had brought her.
"Hide it from your mother or you won't get a chance to try it," he told her, winking. Judith grinned and tucked the chocolate safely to her chest.
"What was that?" Michonne said immediately, making Judith jump up and grin.
"Nothing! I mean..."
"I'm kidding. It's your, Judith." Michonne turned to Jesus. "There's still those things around? I thought I had cleared all there was to find."
"I'm a good scavanger," Jesus replied, shrugging with a smile. "I'll try to get you one next time. In the meantime, I brought one for sir Rick Junior too."
R.J. turned at the sound of his name and hesitated to take the bright colored bar, looking at Michonne to make sure it was safe. To her smile, he reached out his hand and accepted the gift.
"Tanks, Jeesus," the baby replied him, making both adults smile like dummies.
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Their conversation was long but productive, and Michonne invited him to stay until the next day if he wanted to. Jesus thanked her but he was expected at the Hilltop, and he still had several people he wanted to see before leaving. They still spent a couple of hours with the trade, loading supplies on and off Jesus's truck and taking notes of things he could try to procure them in the future in exchange for some of their canned goods. One of the people who came by to help was Tara, and the task was interrupted for the two minutes she took to herself to greet him, Tara-style.
"Hey Jesus! Looking good!" she glomped and pulled him into a hug, irradiating joy as always.
"Hello Tara, and yes, I do need to breathe too, you know," he replied playfully. She squeazed him harder and lifted him up in the air for one very uncomfortable second before he managed to free himself to breathe properly, and he almost failed to evade Tara's viper strike to his hair, but his reflexes were still as sharp as ever, specially now that his field of vision was so much better.
"Look at that! Jesus's turning into a samurai!" she joked between laughs. "I guess I need to get a make over too, but Michonne already took the cool one and now you stole the bun!"
"It's not a make over, it's just tied up. It's just getting a bit longer than manageable," he replied. He did feel considerably freer now when he moved and didn't have a curtain of hair to blow off his face every two seconds. But it was not like he'd get rid of his trademark hair.
"Looking more badass than ever," she still threw at him before picking up a cardboard box. "If only I liked boys, man, I tell you... Or if I was a guy, I mean..."
Jesus cleared his throat soundly and Tara grinned back at him.
"Thank you for the compliment, Tara." He took mental note to try to find something for her next time.
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After everything was dealt with, Tara walked with him to Aaron's house, winking before waving him goodbye. Jesus climbed up the steps and a baby's shriek resonated through the front door before he could even knock.
The cries increased after some moments and a couple more knocks, and the first thing Jesus did when the door opened was frown to the blonde baby's swollen eyes from crying and the father's sunken ones from lack of sleep.
"Jesus, you're here. It's good to see you." He knew it was heartfelt, but the emotion couldn't really reach Aaron's face over the exhaustion. "I'm sorry, Gracie's been sick, and I've..."
"I heard," Jesus replied. "And I can see. Can I help?"
"She's got a cold, and I don't want you to catch it-"
"It's fine. Let me help. You need it."
Aaron waved his head. "No, they've offered already but we're just..."
"You need it," Jesus repeated, stepping into the house and closing the door behind him. Gracie, who was normally quite lively when greeting him, barely spared him a glance before snuggling on Aaron's shoulder and quickly flipping the side of her face she was resting on with a loud moan.
"It hurts!"
"Sorry, honey, sorry," Aaron was fast to say, assuming his beard or his shoulder had hurt her, and cuddled her back.
"Hey, Gracie," Jesus called her. "I want you back on your mood soon, okay? I brought you something. Wasn't expecting it to be a 'get well soon' gift, but..."
The girl peeked over her shoulder as Jesus took the milk chocolate bar from his pocket.
"Is it medicine?" she asked. Her speaking had improved tremendously even judging just by those three words. Jesus waved his head and Gracie frowned.
"It's a delicious chocolate. It'll taste better when the cold's gone, though."
"It hurts," she complained. Her eyes were glossy and gleaming from her temperature, and he could see tiny beads of sweat growing on her hairline.
"Thank you," Aaron said in her stead, turning around so Gracie could look at him properly. "See, Gracie? You'll get better in no time and then you can see eat the chocolate Jesus brought you!"
"No! I don't want it," she complained immediately. It was normal to face a tantrum when she was clearly and genuinely unwell.
"Can you hold it for me, at least?" Jesus tried. "I really want you to let me know what you think of it. I heard it's very sweet."
She pouted for a moment but ended up reaching out her hand to grab the chocolate. However, she flinched back visually and yelled, starting to cry immediately.
"Gracie, what's wrong? Where does it hurt?" Aaron shot up.
She threw her hand to her head and it was as specific as she was. Jesus frowned at the child's clearly pained cries, her little hand scrubbing at her blond locks and her ear as Aaron kept desperately trying to soothe her.
The way she was reacting in pain brought him back to memories of young children he hadn't thought of in a long while, from far too many years ago. He remembered a little girl in pink pajamas and her hair up in a childish little ponytail, being cuddled up like Gracie, the foster mother hushing her while checking her temperature with worry etched into her features while the baby kept scrubbing at her ear. Jesus had stood by watching, wanting but not knowing how he could help a sick baby and an adult whom he barely knew.
"She may be getting an ear infection" he said, more thinking out loud than anything, but he immediately regretted it when Aaron's reaction was his face changing to sheer distress.
"What?" he gasped as if Jesus had instead said he would never see her again. "An ear inf-... B-but we've been at Siddiq's just yesterday, and..."
"Calm down. I said she 'might', not that she does. What did he tell you to do?"
"I'm making sure she stays hydrated, and I've been boiling water so she can get breathe steam. And Siddiq made us carrot and lemon syrup, but he doesn't have honey to make it better," he quickly replied, looking at Gracie with renewed worry at the prospect of Jesus being right. She still had tears streaming down her cheeks and he cuddled her against his shoulder. A strand of her hair got caught in his beard when he kissed the top of her head. "He didn't want to give her antibiotics yet. He..."
"Let me try something," Jesus asked. "I know it works for ear infections, so it'll help if she's growing one. Just give me one moment. You can warm up a diaper or something in the meantime. It's good to numb it down a bit. Do you have garlic and olive oil?"
"I think I still have some oil, yes."
While Jesus prepared the oilment he remembered the foster parent preparing more than once, Aaron managed to calm Gracie's crying somewhat, holding a light pink linen piece and cupping it on Gracie's ear, pressing it gently in hopes his hand would be enough to warm it somewhat. He said something about the iron breaking and he not thinking twice about it. Jesus told him to sit down with her on the couch while he looked for some cotton. He should have expected to find none, so he had to turn to a makeshift compress that he soaked in the mixture, folding it carefully and returning to Aaron's side, sitting down beside him and changing the linen to the new compress.
"I know it smells weird," he told Gracie, who snuggled up harder against Aaron. "But it'll help it not hurting, okay, Gracie?"
"Smells like food," she replied, sniffing the trail of snot that had run from her nose.
"It'll be as good to treat your ear as your dad's food is."
Gracie pounted but nodded, still sniffing and moaning for some moments when Aaron wrapped a blanket around her and rocked her softly to sleep.
Aaron's head sunk a bit while Gracie calmed down and dozed off. Up close, the dark bags under his eyes were even heavier than Jesus first noted them to be. The lines sunked deep on his skin didn't let his frown disappear even in this moment of silence.
"Hey." Jesus laid his hand over Aaron's wrist. "She's gonna be fine. It's unpleasant, of course, but she's gonna..."
"I know it's nothing serious," Aaron interrupted him, and the edge in his voice just made him realize that letting Aaron talk out his worries would be the only way he'd feel better. "Babies get sick, it's normal. But it makes me so worried that she may... that we may not have enough medicine, or that... I don't know."
Aaron sighed deeply, throwing his head back and then letting it fall again, avoiding Jesus's eyes and Gracie on his lap, looking to the floor instead.
"We used to talk about it, you know?" He pressed his lips for a moment, searching for his voice. Jesus saw how he swallowed, gathering strength to speak. "Before, because of our jobs, we couldn't care for a baby and be constantly away trying to care for other people too. We didn't think we'd be able to. And he wanted it more than I did, I... Eric was just more... And then afterwards, after it all happened, adopting just was never on our minds, it didn't really feel like the thing to do. Not with going out recruiting, how the world was. We knew more about outside than everyone else living here... Even though, now that I think about it, it'd actually be the best time of all."
His gaze fell on Gracie then. Her breathing was slightly ragged, her button lips parted due to her clogged up nose.
"I don't think about it all the time," Aaron continued, and finally turned to Jesus. "I don't look at Gracie and see the place she came from, or... or how she got into my arms, or what happened before it. I know. I don't think about it all the time. That's the good thing about being alive, I think. I... you get to live and overcome the bad things. But it comes back, from time to time. Why she's orphaned, what happened to Eric..."
"She's the good that came out of one of the hardest days of your life," Jesus summed it up. He rubbed Aaron's arm reassuringly as the other man struggled to catch his breathing, his eyes watering. "You're a great father, Aaron."
The words made Aaron look away again. He sniffed in an useless attempt to keep the tears at bay.
"I'm glad we never found a baby when we were out there. I wouldn't..." He swallowed hardously. A tear fell down his cheek, falling on Gracie's blanket. "I wouldn't know what to do."
"Of course you would."
Aaron swallowed with difficulty again. He picked up the linen cloth and cupped it over Gracie's ear again gently.
"Thanks for thinking of her. With the chocolate."
Jesus smiled. "Sure thing. Kids anywhere like to get a gift. And, as I said, an unintentional 'get well' gift is also appreciated."
"You're good with children. Where did you learn that medicine? Was it Maggie?"
"I'm not good with children," Jesus corrected. "I just learned stuff from living with lots of them. Eventually, I'd be the older boy in the group, so I was kinda expected to help around. And I didn't mind, but I often just wanted to be left alone, and well, it's not easy when you're always living with a bunch of people."
Aaron nodded. He dried the trail the tear had left on his face before asking: "Were it that many?"
"Children or group homes?" Jesus replied. Aaron pressed is lips together despite Jesus's casual smile. "By the way, both."
"I don't imagine you being a troublemaker."
"I wasn't. Much. I tried to get along with everyone. Sometimes it wasn't easy. The system didn't work sometimes, either. That helped add up the numbers."
"Was it hard? Growing up like that?"
Jesus gave it some thought. He didn't feel uncomfortable talking about it, which was still something he took note of. They hadn't talked about it before, but now, Jesus didn't feel awkward bringing it up to begin with, and for some reason he was sure it wouldn't bother Aaron. Either because the other man needed to wind off from his own worries and from his pain, or because he genuinely cared to know, Jesus didn't feel pressured or uncomfortable like he had felt before with other people.
He thought on the faces he remembered most, the people he cared for the most. What they used to do, the board games they used to play, the confessions he used to hear, the books he'd read outloud, the different ways he was parted from them, the different ways he went from caring to not caring. Those times when he fought to not care, when he fought against what wasn't right. How, in the end, both the people he cared and the people he didn't ended up in the same place, away from him, even when they were sitting next to him.
When the good memories started to get tainted by the bad moments, he stopped.
"I wouldn't call it bad. Specially not after the fact. Even back then, it wasn't really bad. I just never really belonged. I didn't want to. And I was never there a lot of time, either way."
"I see."
"I started going out more when I was thirteen," he continued. "I had moved from a couple group homes by then and I was just bored from the whole thing. And I was the older one there at the time, so I just wanted to wind off from kids. I told you, I'm not good with them. When I was eighteen, that independence worked out in my benefit and I got an apartment by the state. So I was finally alone. And still not belonging, really."
Aaron nodded. The worried lines on his face had softened somewhat.
"I got out of home when I was seventeen," he said. "I told my mother I was going out on for a weekend with my boyfriend at the time and just didn't come back home."
"One long weekend that was, huh?"
Aaron chuckled for the first time since he had arrived. Jesus smiled, feeling slightly lighter.
"Once, I thought of running away from home and get assigned to a group home," Aaron told him. Jesus turned his face to him again in time to see him clear his throat awkwardly. "Yeah, okay, saying this outloud sounds even more stupid than I thought."
"Why would it sound stupid?" Jesus asked. The other man shrugged.
"I wanted to do it in defiance against my mother, whereas you and other kids probably didn't have a chance to go to one or not." Jesus was about to open his mouth but Aaron continued: "And anyway, I gave up on the idea after half an hour or so when I thought how my mother would be without me around so yeah, it was stupid."
"Why would it be stupid?" he repeated.
"Because it was never that bad, not enough to justify me leaving," Aaron replied. "When I got older, it would just be the silent disapproval, the looks of shame and of self blame, or trying to pretend her son was 'normal'. My mother... She wasn't a bad person. She just..." Aaron sighed in defeat. The moment of silence that followed before he finished his words allowed Jesus to think on how, even now, after so long and through the apocalypse, these sorts of things remain etched into people. "She just didn't understand some things."
"It wasn't as hard for me on that aspect as you may think. When you think of a bunch of kids living with a boy who happened to not like girls... sure, you get bullies everywhere. I met more boys and girls with internalized homophobia than actual homophobics." Jesus shrugged. "First time I was actually beaten up for it, I kicked the boy in the face. That was stupid. It got me moved into a new group home. See? You didn't do anything stupid. You stood by and worried for your mother despite it all. I just kicked a stupid kid. I didn't care if he was trying and failing to have the guts I had to just be myself."
"So much for not being a troublemaker."
"Point being, I did try to get along with everyone and make them feel better if they were sad, but children are not easy."
"You care for people, Jesus. People see, and feel that." Aaron moved the arm Jesus's hand was still touching and took it in his. "You say you're not good with kids, but you bothered to take time to find a chocolate for Gracie, and helped me with her. You think you don't belong, but you do. I really hope you've started to feel that, because I know I do."
Jesus smiled and held Aaron's hand tighter. Well, some things do change. Specially when one isn't expecting them to. Like with Aaron, feeling comfortable enough to talk about this, not feeling like he's bothering, not feeling like he's being bothered. It wasn't something he could trace back to one day or an action, rather, several. Maybe he did start to listen to Maggie's advice without knowing.
Aaron sighed loudly, exhaustion and defeat bringing him back to the present.
"Sorry. Sorry. I'm the lousiest host in the world. I'm annoying, all worried about Gracie and then talking your ears off, I know. I just..." He sighed again and Jesus smiled reassuringly.
"Just breathe," he told him. He let go of the other man's hand and turned, inhaling in slowly, showing him how and hinting him to follow the cue. It took a couple of seconds for Aaron to follow his lead, but he did it, breathing in and holding until he followed Jesus breathing out. They repeated it two more times until he was mirroring Jesus's smile too, albeit less enthusiastic and a lot more exhausted. It pinched his heart and he just wanted to see those gone from his face.
"Thanks," Aaron said.
"Like I said. You're doing great." He planted a kiss on Aaron's cheek to push the other man's worries away. As simple as it was, at least it did make Aaron smile in earnest now.
"Did that work to make the kids feel better too?" he asked. Jesus shrugged.
"I didn't really try it often. Seems to work, though."
Aaron was chuckling now.
"Yes, I'd say it does."
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the end
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Author's Note: All those are home medicine tricks I either know or quickly browsed on the net.
Thanks for reading, feedback and corrections to English are encouraged.