Sweet Tooth (Twd x Male Oc)

Chapter 8: Season 4 ~ The Office Blocks

POV ~Carl~

During the night, Jasper had an asthma attack. It was strange. I would've expected lots of hyperventilating and panicking, but he was just very quiet and tired, and when he spoke he wheezed. He was very willing to just wait for his airways to get better, since he had his rescue inhaler, but it must not've been helping because soon his lips went blue and his skin began turning odd shades of grey, so I got Carol and Dad.

Jasper needed a special kind of inhaler, which we, by some divine luck, had in the infirmary. Dad and I ran to get it. Things were easier after that. Jasper was pretty embarrassed. He said he only had the attack because of a nightmare.

In the morning, Jasper woke up early, his skin and lips a normal colour now, and leaves to help Glenn and Maggie dig graves. He doesn't even notice his machete and beanie propped together against the wall — I left them there as a surprise.

I soon learn that more people are sick now. Michonne's taking a supply run with some of our people out to get medicine from a veterinary hospital. Tyreese volunteered to go with her. Daryl and Bob, too.

It's strange not to see my sister all morning. I do chores to fill time and get done with still more time leftover, considering there are no pigs to tend to.

Eventually I remember the books in the boiler room and go to find them, heading through C block's tombs. I don't like the boiler room, but I try not to think about it. Inside, it's the same as I last saw it. Dim and dingy and dark, except now, instead of my mom lying in the middle of the room, there's just an old, brown, blood stain...

The books are on the desk, next to the telephone, stacked in piles inside a crate. I read covers. Twins. Elsewhere. Butterfly Lion. Misery. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer — these are Jasper's.

I can't carry them on my own, so I go to find him.

He's in the graveyard sitting at Patrick's newly dug grave. He hears me coming and lets me sit with him for a while. Glenn and Maggie are getting done filling in the last few graves, wearing bandanas and gloves. They give me sorry-looking nods.

Jasper's crying. I can see the wet soaking into his bandanna. Remembering his brother's glasses in my pocket, I hand them over. He holds them for a minute to his chest, like he's praying, then he puts them on Patrick's headboard, propped on the edge. The scratching on the board reads...

'Patrizio Abel de Luca
1994 – 2011.'

"I gotta wash up," Jasper mumbles, and gets up. I follow him slowly to the cafeteria, which isn't in use this morning as everyone is stuck eating preserves in their cells to avoid cross contamination. Jasper washes his hands and face in a bucket, then throws it away. He goes inside the cook-area. I sit on the outer side, almost like it could be a normal morning, only instead of watching him work with Carol and his brother I watch him sit alone at the counter, tearing up an old, leftover, coriander stem with his fingernails into four equal parts.

I reach out to touch him, but he pulls his hands into his lap.

I try not to look defeated or embarrassed.

"Jasper..."

He looks at me, looking angry and un-Jasperly. I don't say anything else because I'm scared to. I think of when my mom died, and I think of the boy I killed, and all the others I've watched die. And I think of how people talked to me, how they don't treat me like a kid, except my dad who only treats me like one, and how angry that makes me and how angry I have been for so long.

"Come on," I say, almost rudely. "I need you to help me with something."

The books really are Jasper's.