'RALPH! Ralph, wake up. Wake the fuck up, man! Wake up!' Was not the most pleasant way to be woken up the next morning. Ellie's yelling followed by the shaking of his shoulders had certainly set him in a bad mood for the day ahead, and he placed his hands over the younger girls' to pry them from his jacket. The second he released her, she was pressing his pistol into his arms and not sparing any seconds to give context.

She rose to her feet quickly and unsheathed a knife from a workbench, walking over to Joel's sleeping self and clenching his limp fists around it. Ralph blinked a couple times, worried about the two girls, and then found Lou in the corner, reloading Joel's rifle and the other one she had "found" yesterday.

Obviously, Ralph had a shit ton of questions.

'Ralph, you need to keep him safe.' Ellie ordered frantically, pointing down at Joel as she stood by his side. 'There are- There are men coming, okay? We're gonna lead them away from you guys, but if anyone makes it down here, you fucking kill them, you got it?'

'Men? What men?' Ralph scrunched his nose, pressing his palm to the floor to support himself as he got to his feet. Ellie didn't stand still, not even answering him, zipping around the basement on the tips of her toes. In a short span of time, confusion turned to irritation, and Ralph raised his voice. 'What the fuck? You two told me that you didn't see anyone, why the fuck would you lie about that!?'

'I don't know, okay!' Ellie replied hurriedly, throwing her hands up in surrender for a brief second and then ducking down to tug her backpack over her shoulders. Ralph's yelling wasn't helping either of them to calm down, especially not when he started naming and shaming the two of them individually. Then, the yelling died down, and Ralph thought for a moment before making a beeline for the stairs. Ellie watched him with wide eyes. 'Where are you going?'

'To go kill those men.' He replied through gritted teeth, cocking his pistol back and planting his feet on the old, wooden boards. He got about four steps before a different gun clicked behind him.

'Stay here.' Lou demanded, and he turned around to find her aiming the rifle right at his chest. She was bluffing. He knew she was. She knew she was. But, he appreciated the hustle. There was still no way in hell he was giving in that easily, though. He spun back around and kept walking.

Until a gunshot rang out, accompanied by the sound of wood splintering, and the bottom step was split right down the middle.

'Stay. Here.'

...

RALPH REALLY WISHED HE HADN'T LISTENED. Like, really wished. But, it was either that or Lou fired that gun again and drew those men to their exact location, so, he listened. He was regretting it a shit tonne, though. Especially after those gunshots he had heard outside, off in the distance. He prayed to God that Lou and Ellie had actually listened during all of those aiming lessons, hoped that they were the ones firing the bullets instead of the bullets being fired at them.

Ralph was pacing with a fingernail between his teeth, marching back and forth at Joel's bedside with his pistol in his hand and a pool of anxious vomit burning the bottom of his throat. He was still pretty sleep-deprived, though he certainly wasn't as delirious as he had been the past few days. Joel was still lying there, heavy eyes watching as he did laps around nothing.

'I shouldn't have let them go.' He said finally, shaking his head. 'Shouldn't have let them go. Fuck sake, man, what the fuck was I thinking!? They're gonna get themselves fucking killed, dude, they're gonna die out there!'

He stood still, fingertips pressed against either temple before he dragged his hands forward to cover his face. The steel of his pistol pressed against his forehead at that action, a wonderful feeling considering that he was covered in sweat from head to toe.

'I- Fuck, my- They're-' Ralph took a moment to gather his thoughts, taking it as a sign to drop his shaky hands from his frowning face when his words weren't even making sense anymore. 'The girls- They're gonna- My kids are gonna- They'll fuckin' die out there, man! Holy shit, I'm gonna vomit, holy fuck, oh my God.'

Ralph walked away from him then, urgently, and an unpleasant sound from the far end of the empty basement led Joel to believe he was doing exactly what he said he would.

Joel understood it. Parents worried about stuff, even over minuscule things. He thought about Sarah's first day of kindergarten, how Tommy had to drag him back to the car and they were late for work because Joel refused to leave her by herself for a half hour. They got to work, eventually, but Joel was worried sick the whole day and wouldn't let her out of his sight the moment she got home that afternoon. That, of course, had very little comparison to right now. But, Joel understood at least half of it.

It stopped very soon after it had begun and the room went quiet apart from shallow breaths in the far corner where Ralph was and the sounds of Joel attempting to get to his feet and comfort him, wherever he might've been.

Joel's focus quickly shifted to the noise of two voices upstairs, followed by scraping on the hardwood above them. On their way out, Lou and Ellie had shoved some sort of barricade in front of the door, and Joel had no doubts that the movement upstairs was it being removed from the doorway. Then, the sound of a doorknob twisting echoed, and the top of the stairs creaked with the weight of someone stepping onto it.

Joel was about halfway to his feet, sitting upright, when the second step sounded, and he only heard Ralph's footsteps scuffing his way at the fifth or sixth. It wasn't like he doubted the guy's abilities, but he was still a little bit spooked by his casualness.

The barrel of a gun poked out from the sectioned-off staircase and then, slowly, a man crept around the corner, aiming right at Joel's mattress on the floor only to find it empty. The man kept walking, tip-toeing through the darkness as his friend climbed down from the top of the oak steps to join him. It went on like that for a moment, just the two strangers circling and whispering to each other, until both of the men found themselves with their backs turned to a corner, squinting at the rest of the basement.

Ralph's pistol clicked behind the first guy and his reflexes were far better than he had expected them to be. Instead of an easy kill, he ended up tackling the guy against the wall, a hand around the barrel of his rifle in an attempt to control it. Unluckily, somewhere in the chaos, the guy had managed to snake his hand upwards and dealt Ralph one or two punches to the jaw. Hurt like a bitch, but he stood his ground.

Then, the man pulled the trigger, aiming at Ralph's leg, but shot in the narrow gap between his feet and ended up hitting the cement beneath them. He was hardly going to be able to reload his gun and take another shot, but he was still trying, and Ralph admired that determination before he swung his pistol down, hit the guy in the face with it, shoved him to the ground, and then shot him in the brain.

Instantly, his mind wandered, and he looked back over his shoulder to find Joel, sitting on the ground, pulling his knife out of the second guy's neck and frowning at the blood staining it.

He didn't ponder on it for too long, he only ducked down to swoop his arm underneath Joel's and assist him to his feet, something he should've been doing earlier had he not been spitting out the small amounts of food he had eaten in the past few days.

Joel stood rather easily after that, and Ralph prayed that his muscles were beginning to strengthen up again. As much as he cared about Joel, he had no clue if he could keep this up for very long, especially not if he was running and gunning during it. Thinking back, he applauded Joel and Henry for their efforts back in K.C. Must've been difficult to carry Ralph's whiny ass everywhere.

Ralph stopped thinking when the rough, worn leather of Joel's glove began to swipe at his upper lip, getting rid of the blood that was dripping from it regarding that fateful encounter and those pretty good punches. After a moment, Joel nodded weakly, authorizing his own attempts to try and spruce him up a little bit.

Ralph nodded back at him, smiling.

'Let's go kill these motherfuckers, Jo.'

...

NOTES!
murderous boyfriends ate

joal r couple goals me and who fr