Summary: Oliver and Carl explore a newly cleared section of the prison. As their friendship strengthens, they start to notice that they each have secrets they are unwilling to admit to each other and to themselves.

A MONTH LATER

On a November morning, I'm woken up an hour early by Carl intruding on mine and Patrick's cell, and I'm not in a great mood because the way he woke me up was by smacking me in the head with my book, Butterfly Lion.

"That was cold," I grumble, "even for you."

"Find some clothes, we're headed out," Carl says, then jumps up, boots by my face, and shakes Patrick's top cot. "Wake up!"

"Cosa, cosa!" Patrick exclaims, then gets a look at what's going on. "Duuude," he moans, "why?"

I pull my sleeping bag up over my face. "We don't have kitchen duty until the shadow lines up with the chalk mark."

"Wait, what?"

Without looking, I point at the floor.

"Oh. Whoa. You guys marked the time on your floor," Carl says.

"Only when we have to get up." I don't hear him leave so I look at him. Carl's just standing there, leaning against the cot rail waiting for us.

"We're doing something else today," he says.

"Farming is your job," Patrick grumbles.

I see the way this hurts Carl's feelings, but pretend not to.

"Dad wants us to fix a leaky roof," he says.

I sit up, because a cloud must've moved through the high-up, cell-block windows and suddenly the whole room is glowing orange. I never seen it this early, so I've never really noticed the sunrise here — colour's not something I get to see a lot anymore. Michonne's rainbow cat is something, I guess, and the fresh vegetables from the gardens, but this is especially nice, being here in our space, with bright orange streaks lining across the cement and in Carl's hair.

"Come on," he says, used to colourful sunsets, I guess, "I might not get a chance to do something not farm related again."

Reluctantly, we get dressed, and once we're out in the common room waiting for Patrick to return from the toilet, I say, "Your dad took your gun, right?"

Carl's face closes up a little.

I add, "He took my machete, too."

"I know. I saw."

"I know. I saw you watching me."

His eyes search me. I can't tell why, but it's not the first time he's done it. In the last month, he and I practically spend every day together. I've learned that Carl is the kind of boy who figures things out in his head much more often than he'll ask for something out loud. Sometimes it takes me whole days to figure out what he's thinking, but then again, sometimes I spend whole days not talking at all, too. Maybe that's why he likes to spend so much time with me.

"I can't imagine you using a gun," I tell him, "or even killing a walker."

"Guess I'm not the kind of boy you think I am."

The silence is strange.

Patrick, suddenly by our side, breaks it. "You both ready?"

Carl nods, jumping off the benchtop to lead the way. "Come on. Said we'd meet Dad by the main building."

I follow after them both, thinking in my head that I'm not the kind of boy Carl thinks I am either. Not the kind of boy even my brother thinks I am. And I don't like keeping secrets. I only have two — storytime, and... something else. Something that I'm not sure I'll ever tell anyone, or people might act differently around me. So I push it down, and away, knowing what it makes me, or... what it doesn't make me, but knowing it's safer to keep it inside… down, and away.

The roof doesn't take us long. I guess Rick just wanted to show us how. When we're done, we climb down the ladder one at a time. Patrick found a few lost tennis balls, and had thrown them down while we were working, and now he's gathering them all up in a bowl made from his shirt.

"That should hold," Rick says. He takes the tool box and heads back to the main prison building. "Thanks, you three."

"Sure, Mr. Grimes." Patrick waves, even though Rick's turned away. I shake my head, embarrassed by him. Carl, too, seems unimpressed. When Patrick turns back to us, he looks at us both and says, "What?"

"Hey," I say, wishing to move on, "I found a way out of the prison through that block they cleared recently, the office block — wanna check it out?"

Carl turns to me. "What?"

"Yeah," I say, "there's a door that goes out to that big, blocked-off parking lot. The one that has all the blown-up fences?"

"I didn't know about that. We should tell someone—"

"Err," Pat cuts in, "he doesn't mean he actually leaves, do you?"

I look at him. I look at Carl. I look at my brother again and shake my head. "I don't," I say, and it's true. "You don't have to tell your dad. The door's usually locked..." I trail. "I just... like to sit in it sometimes. It's nice... I thought we could..."

"Nothing," Patrick says, putting a free hand on my shoulder. "You thought nothing."

Right, I think, more secrets.

I smile awkwardly.

"Alright!" Patrick chirps. "I'm gonna go take these back to the supply shed. The others'll be stoked."

We watch him go.

Carl's frowning at me.

"You know, I don't tell my dad 'everything'."

I pull an apologetic face.

He doesn't say anything.

"I don't mean to keep stuff from you," I say.

"But you still do," he says, and I'm too scared to say anything. Carl sighs. "Well, can we go see the locked door that leads out? I won't tell. Swear."

I can work with that, so I lead the way. The office blocks are still boarded, but easy enough to find where I broke in before. Since this building was cleared recently, the walker bodies haven't been moved out and burned yet, so inside, they lay everywhere, rotting along every dim corridor and office. The smell is terrible, barely made for mouth-breathers, let alone asthmatics.

"Dad'll kill me if he knows we're here," Carl says.

I look at him.

"What? He would," Carl admits meekly. "We should at least have something as a weapon, just in case."

I hand him a police baton from a desk, then unhinge a broken radiator pipe for myself.

"D'you know how to kill them?"

"Yeah," I say, holding the pipe firmly. "I know."

Carl nods, and leads the way, then realises he doesn't know the way.

I snicker.

He rolls his eyes.

"You like it," I say.

"Like what?"

"Breaking rules."

He frowns. "No."

"Liar."

"Hypocrite," he says. I feel my face stiffen. His softens, and he sighs. "Look, there could be strays. That's all. God, this is such a bad idea."

"But you're still here."

He smiles at me. "Because you are."

I smile at him, thinking again that I was wrong about his soul sound. It's not a tap, not a damned-up river. I think his soul sounds like the ocean.

I find the right door leading to a dim room with another locked door across it. It's white and heavy-looking. The key is on a desk.

"That's weird," I say.

"What?"

"I left it in the door."

We look around.

"Guess someone else knows about it," Carl says.

Using the key, I unlock the door. It creaks open loudly. The sun is bright across half of the parking lot, leaving the ground in front of us for a few feet shadowed by the building. I prop the door open with a brick, then sit on the step. Carl joins me. We watch the ruined parking lot.

"No walkers," he says, putting down his baton. "It's nice."

Setting aside my own pipe, I point to a part of the fence that's broken and boarded up with wood. "Can't get through."

"I know. I helped board it up."

"Yeah?"

"That's where Tyreese and Sasha came in last year," Carl says. "I found them in the tombs." He points at another building facing the parking lot, blown open completely on one side. It's the blocked off side of a C block, where the draft comes from if we leave the tomb doors open."

"Pat says Sasha came up with the boom-box thing," I say, "for luring the walkers to different places."

"Yeah."

I get up. "Stay here a sec. I'll be right back."

Carl watches me go, and I'm not gone for long — I'd found some things last time I came here. I bring them, and as I return to the dim room, now lit with sunlight, Carl looks very peaceful sitting there, passing time by throwing rocks out into the parking lot.

He looks behind him when he hears me. "A radio?"

"Battery operated," I say, setting it in the doorway behind him, "and this, too." I hand him an MP3 player over his shoulder.

"I don't really listen to music."

"That's terrible."

Carl cracks up and takes the MP3 player anyway, fiddling with it. "You like music?"

I nod. "M-mm. Kings of Leon. Bowie. Anything. Oh, man, so many. I like playing it, too. Guitar, some keyboard."

"I guess I used to listen to Weird Al sometimes," Carl says.

I grimace. "Why?"

"On the car radio, it was funny. You know, that one song? 'There's a smelly old bum sitting next to me—"

"Stop, please."

"—hasn't showered in a year'."

"You're the worst!"

We laugh and it feels great.

I shrug. "To be honest, I'd still listen to it... Swear if I don't find something other than my own breathing to listen to at night, or Patrick's snoring, my ears are gonna run away. And everything's so grey here, my eyes are already contemplating suicide."

He doesn't find that as funny as I think he will.

"Kidding," I say.

He lightens up.

"You help though," I add.

He looks at me. "What?"

"You have colour." I point at his eyes one at a time. "Blue."

He smiles. Carl has a nice smile.

He hands me back the MP3. "Can't hear anything."

"It needs headphones." I take it apart. "And the radio needs batteries." The two inside the MP3 player are good enough, so I get to setting up the radio.

"Thanks for bringing me," Carl says.

I shrug. "You asked me to."

"I just… if there's stuff you don't tell me — it's just..."

"It's fine, man."

"I know, I just... I hate knowing you don't tell me stuff. You totally should tell me stuff, if you want to. If it's stuff you don't want me to tell anyone, I won't. I swear."

I look at him. "Really?"

He nods.

"Well, you too, then."

"Okay," he says.

We're quiet for a long time. I think he wants me to tell him a secret, but I'm too scared. I want to, though. It's just... this isn't the way I would have ever expected it to happen. I don't know what I'd expect, really. And then I figure, just do it, so I'm about to own up, to just come out with my deepest, darkest, longest held secret, except I cop out and ask him if he's ever had a girlfriend and I hate myself for it. He hasn't, and he asks me if I have, and I tell him no. I tell him that I've kissed a girl, though, and that she was my best friend, and then, for some reason, I tell him that a bully at school once kissed me, and that I ran away from him —Carl's eyebrows jump at the 'him' part— and then, just to spite myself more, I tell him another boy kissed me, after the Turn, except it wasn't as bad because we were friends.

"Sounds like you were more than friends…"

"No," I say. "He died. Like, right after."

"Oh," Carl says.

Yeah, I think, Oh…

Obviously, I'm missing parts of the story, but I'm not brave enough to tell them. Still, we talk about it a little more. Mostly the boy part. I tell him I'm not someone who usually kisses boys because it feels like it's something I should say, and I tell him also that, "It didn't matter. Doesn't count," and I think it's a bigger lie than any lie I've ever told, but he believes me, so I catch my breath and Carl, thankfully, changes the subject.

"You carry too many books in your pants," he says.

"What?"

He points to the back of my jeans.

"Oh. Yeah," I say, pulling out a book, Twins, and a music album, Noah and the Whale. "I found them on a total fluke. I had them both as a kid."

"You do that a bunch," he says.

"What?"

"Re-do stuff."

"You mean remember?"

Carl shrugs.

I shrug back. "Sometimes it's nice to remember."

"Sometimes it's not."

"Sometimes it's healthy."

"Sometimes it isn't."

I roll my eyes.

"Fine," I say. "You win."

Carl grins. It fizzles out. "So, what was it like, you know, to be kissed?" he asks, and I'm not sure what to say because I thought we were done with this topic, and I must look disappointed because he adds, "I wanna know…"

I scoff, hating this. "I don't really know. It was only three kisses."

"Three more than me."

I sigh.

He waits.

"You've been kissed on the forehead."

"Guess," he says.

"It's like that," I say, "just, not on your forehead."

"Hm," he says septically.

And with my pulse in my throat I say, "I can… you know… show... you?"

He snorts, but rolls his eyes and taps his forehead. "Go ahead."

I watch him until I know he's serious. "Okay. Shut your eyes then."

"Why?"

"I can't do it if you're staring at me."

He looks at me, then shuts his eyes. A breeze blows up against the building, rushing through us into the empty room. It billows his hair around and I reach forward and brush it out of his eyes. He finds this funny, but tries to keep his face still.

"Ready?" I ask.

He nods.

Quickly, I take his face in my hands, pull slightly, and kiss his forehead.

Carl cracks up, pushing me away.

I laugh.

He says, "Kissing is boring."

"It's less boring when it's not on your forehead."

He snickers. It's suddenly a little hard to look at him, so I focus on the radio, pressing buttons until a blue light flickers on, flashes, and then the music starts and we sit and listen and watch the parking lot for a bit. Some walkers hear the music and bash against the fences, but we take no notice. Not until the whole album is over twice and we don't even notice the second time because we're talking.

In the quiet, Carl takes the radio and switches it over so it goes to static. He messes with the tuner, not really paying attention, I don't think — just passing time.

Suddenly, a voice comes through.

"–anctu... for all – mmunity for –– Those who arrive, sur—"

It cuts out, and there's just static.

Carl looks frustrated. "It's probably far away."

"Could it be that place," I say carefully, "err, Burywood or whatever?"

"Woodbury. No, it's burnt to the ground," he says. I remember the story. It's a legend. But I get a feeling like I shouldn't ask about it. He keeps trying for a better signal. When he gives up, I switch the radio off, then we carry it back through the office blocks together.

"Can I keep the MP3?" Carl asks once we're back outside in the courtyard, heading to D block. "For my dad. I think I know where there are headphones, and he gets tinnitus sometimes from when he was a cop, so the music might help."

"Sure. I don't need it since I have this."

"I won't tell where I got it. Swear."

"Thanks, man."

We go in my cell. Patrick's out, so the room is quiet and messy. I go around and tidy. When I'm done, I slump on my back on my bunk and sigh. Carl joins me, shoulder to shoulder.

"You really won't tell?" I ask the underside of Patrick's cot. When I glance over, Carl's looking at me like he's not sure if I'm really talking about the MP3 player. I'm not sure either.

He shakes his head anyway and says towards the top bunk, "I won't tell."

I smile at him, and then I punch him for good measure. He punches me back with the back of his fist. I grab it, and we scuffle for a moment playfully until he relaxes, and then he just keeps his hand there, pressed against my chest, our palms pressed, all relaxed and gentle. Calmly, I watch the sun streaks on the wall idly.

"I should go feed Violet."

"Okay," I say.

Carl doesn't move. Neither of us look at each other, just lie there, our hands together, eyes on the wall…

"See you, man," I add finally.

"Yeah," he whispers.

He still doesn't leave, so finally, I look over at him, only for a second before I look away again.

"Thanks for today, man," I say. "Was fun."

Carl smiles —I hear the familiar sound of his mouth moving— and then, without warning, he leans over me, watches me, and then he kisses my cheek, then he gets up and disappears out of my cell. Suddenly, I'm not sure who I am anymore because I'm floating away like a balloon and someone upstairs is humming and the trees outside are rustling, and I am a lot of things all at once, like the cement on the walls and the lumps in my pillow and the stale, musky, cell-block air and the water dripping in the washroom, and then Carl's distant footsteps are gone and I'm just grinning up at the underside of Patrick's cot.

SEVERAL WEEKS LATER
December 2011

There are several things that keep me busy as time goes by at the prison. I do chores, I work in the cafeteria with Carol and Patrick, I clean my cell, I go to storytime, and I hang out with my brother and Carl.

Tonight, I can't sleep, and Patrick is snoring, so I sneak out. Now, I won't lie, C block's tombs are terrifying, worse when I'm alone in the dark and the cold. I've heard the horror stories — the Governor's army, T-Dog's being ripped apart to save Carol, the old prisoners who lived here after the place was deserted, trapped in by the dead outside until Rick's group came and cleared the place, freeing them. I know how Judith was born in the boiler room, but her mom —Carl's mom— didn't make it.

I'm lucky enough to make it out alive.

Georgian winters are mild, which is good since we have no heating or back up reserves if our crops were ever to freeze. Sometimes I miss winters back home in Virginia, when it would snow around Christmas and new year time, and sometimes even in February.

Not now though.

Now, I'm shivering my ass off.

Standing in Carl's cell door, I shine my shaking flashlight in. The sheets are pulled up over his head. He must see the light through them because he jumps and pulls the sheet down to show his face, sitting up.

"Oliver?" he whispers. "Knock it off."

"How'd you know it was me."

"It's always you."

Rude awakenings have sort of become our thing.

"Do you have my inhaler?" I ask. "I think I left it—"

Before I even finish my sentence, Carl hands it over. I pocket it, then climb across his bed to lie on my stomach, slinging an arm over his chest. Carl sighs, similarly to how people sigh when cats curls up on their lap — he is stuck now.

"Were you asleep?" I ask, lifting my head to spell out his name with his hair on his shoulder. He shakes his head, messing up the L. It's good that his hair can't read, and that he doesn't know I use it as a form of one-way communication. "Then what were you doing?" I ask.

Carl hesitates, almost laughing, then he pulls a comic book out from under his pillow and opens it. Inside is another, smaller magazine, the kind with pictures of naked women in it, the fourth magazine like this that he's collected since the first time he showed them to me a few weeks ago.

I scoff. "Where do you keep finding these?"

Carl flicks his nose, which genuinely infuriates me since I thought I knew all the library's secrets, and I'm sure that's where he's getting them. It has to be. Regardless, we look at the pictures quietly together for a while, snorting at each other and occasionally spending minutes on end in complete silence. It's doesn't feel strange doing this, despite knowing people might think it is, and we've only almost been caught a few times — hence the comic book to hide the cover.

"You're shivering," he says.

"It's cold in the tombs. I almost froze my balls off."

"Probably don't need them anyway."

"Har har," I complain.

"Kidding."

I force a shrug, thinking I should have just told him that day in the office blocks — 'I like boys, too…' instead of beating around it, because it's worse now, not knowing if he really knows and just won't say it either. It's worse now because he was so nice about it.

When I shiver again, he unzips his sleeping bag so I can clamber inside next to him.

"I wasn't going to come tonight," I tell him.

"Bad dreams?"

I shrug.

"I get them, too," he says.

"I never remember them. I just wake up scared."

Carl sighs. "I dream of the prison. And I'm with them, the walkers. I run and I run but they're always faster than me. And they get me before I can stop them..."

His heart is suddenly beating very quickly — I can hear it.

"Erm… Oliver?"

I mumble something and glance at him. He's staring at something, shining the torch at it. I look and see a massive spider crawling along the wall next to our heads. It stops in the flashlight and we both leap out of the cot, spooking it, because it disappears under his bed.

I shiver hard. "I hate spiders."

"It's okay. I can get it."

"No, no. We should just go."

"Go? Where?"

"I can't stay in your room, man."

Carl groans.

"Please," I beg.

"Okay. Okay. We'll check on Violet."

I nod, already leaving, keeping my eyes on the wall. "How is she?"

"Pregnant," Carl whispers, hiding his magazine under his matress. "Let me put on my boots."

Outside, it's freezing but the growling is worse. And so loud. It always is, but at night it's deafening. Carl shuts us inside the pig pen and clicks his teeth.

"Violet?"

I see her in the shelter, lying down. "Wait, what's that moving?"

Carl looks closer, then gasps. "Oh, whoa... Yes. Violet. You did it!" He kneels beside her and examines each piglet carefully. He looks at them like he's naming them in his head — I know it. "Oliver, get over here. Look at them."

I'm still just standing here, that cornered zoo animal feeling back again. I know the guards are up on duty at each watchtower. I know I'm safe. Finally, I force myself to kneel next to Violet and her babies. Carl pets her gently, whispering how much of a good girl she is.

"You love this, too, huh?"

He looks at me.

"Farming," I add.

He scoffs. "No."

"You do. You love it like you love breaking the rules," I say. "You just act like you hate it so your dad doesn't treat you like a kid."

Carl is frowning at me. I think he'll argue, but all soft and quiet, he just says, "It's not that…"

He thinks for a second through the jangling and growling of the fences across the field.

"It's just, how can you be two things at the same time?" he adds. "How can you spend your life Playing Farmer and also be..." He stops, groans, and stands up. "Nothing. Don't worry about it."

He paces a few steps, then turns to me.

"I just... I don't wanna disappoint him, but it just feels wrong, like we're pretending, like we're just sitting here... waiting for—"

CLANG!

We startle. Over the growling, the fence creaks and groans. We watch it dip, swing, and crash against the secondary fence.

CRASH—CRUNCH—CHLANG!

It holds, just. Guards are yelling. Last month this happened on another part of the fence at night. A guy died. Beth marked it in her calendar — '0 Days Without an Accident'.

Twenty-nine days now.

The Council have set up schedules for when and where to take out clusters now, but it's getting bad again. Scouts are out attempting to draw hoards away with more boom-boxes.

Carl and I are still standing in the mud, panting and catching up with our heartbeats, and then I realise he's taken my hand — or I've taken his. We don't let go. Maybe I should, but I don't because he doesn't. Instead, we leave the paddock and go inside the cell block and along the hallway, hand-in-hand because of the dark and the cold and the spiders and the angry fence walkers. And then we're just standing there in the middle of his cell, not letting go even though the scary part is over now. I wait for him to let go but he doesn't. He just stands there looking at me, so I kiss his cheek, like he had mine that day, and then I kiss his forehead, and he lets me because he doesn't think any of this matters, that it doesn't count, because I said it didn't, before, and I think I'm bad for that and I can't stand it.

I step back.

He opens his eyes. I barely see the faint, reflective, moon light reflecting in them.

"Oliver…" he whispers.

I step back again. Our hands slip apart. I force a smile. I mumble something about chores and saving a plate for him in the morning and before he can say anything I rush out of C block alone.

Notes:

The title of this chapter is a song lyric from a Noah and the Whale song, see next chapter. And the holding hands bit was inspired by a Fangirl sub-chapter by Rainbow Rowell.

Happy reading.