Just Me
Request: Yes / No Hi please may I ask for a FTWD sibling figure to Alicia who is aroace? Anon
Requests are open, but for anything I write for but Riverdale, I’m not feeling much inspo for that right now! <3 Have a nice day/night
Alicia Clark x Non-Binary!Reader (I made it non-binary since there wasn't a gender wasn't specified)
Word count: 1405
Warnings: LGBTQ+ hate mentioned, but I believe that’s it!
Y/N: Your Name
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(Not my photo, credit to whoever made it!)
The first thing I learned after the world ended was how to survive. The second thing I learned was that surviving didn’t magically erase what had hurt before. Walkers didn’t care who you loved. They didn’t care who you wanted to spend your life with. They didn’t care whether you wanted a relationship at all. They didn’t care whether you wanted a relationship at all. But people… People still did. Or at least, the ghosts of them did.
I’ve been with the group for almost eight months. Long enough that Morgan trusted me to go on supply runs with Alicia. Long enough that June stopped asking if I was sleeping okay after every nightmare. Long enough that I didn’t feel like an outsider anymore. Most days, it felt… normal. Well, as normal as life during the apocalypse could be.
We were camped outside an abandoned ranger station for the night. The fire crackled softly while Maddison stirred something that vaguely resembled stew. Morgan and Dwight were discussing tomorrow’s route. Nick was sharpening his knife. June was reorganizing medical supplies for what had to be the hundredth time. Alicia sat beside me on one of the fallen logs, quietly cleaning her rifle. Nobody was talking to me. Nobody expected me to entertain them. Nobody expected anything, really. That should’ve made me feel comfortable. Instead… it made me nervous, because every time people got close enough to know me… Eventually, they found out. And eventually, they look at me differently. Even if they didn’t mean to, they always did. I stared into the fire, barely listening to the conversation around me.
“You okay?”
I looked over. Alicia had set her rifle aside, she was watching me carefully.
“Hmm?”
“You’ve been staring at the fire for like ten minutes.”
“I have not.”
“You totally were.”
“I was thinking.”
“You were brooding.”
“I don’t brood!”
She raised an eyebrow. “I have literally seen you brood.”
“I contemplate.”
She laughed. “They’re the same thing.”
“They’re not.”
“They kind of are.”
I rolled my eyes. “They’re definitely not.”
She bumped my shoulder lightly. “Whatever helps you sleep.”
I smiled despite myself. That was becoming a problem. Not the smiling, but feeling… safe. I’ve spent so many years leaning to keep parts of myself locked away that being accepted by this group almost felt suspicious. Like eventually they’ll realize I wasn’t worth keeping around. Like eventually I’d say the wrong thing. Like eventually… they’ll find out.
The next morning, Alicia and I volunteered to check a small grocery store a few miles down the road. Most of the shelves had already been picked clean years ago. We still managed to find a few cans tucked behind fallen displays.
“Jackpot!” Alicia said, holding up three cans of soup. I found a dusty box of crackers that hadn’t expired before everything fell apart.
“I think these are edible.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“You afraid?”
“I’ve eaten Strand’s cooking.”
“...Fair.”
We both laughed. The sound echoed strangely through the empty building. It had become easy to laugh with Alicia; she was like the sister I never had. She was easy to talk to, to exist with… too easy.
“You know…” She said after a minute.
“Hmm?”
“I don’t actually know much about your life before.”
I froze. She noticed immediately.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“No.” I forced myself to keep searching. “It’s okay.”
She didn’t push. That was one of the things I appreciated most about her. She never forced conversations. She just… left the door open.
“My parents weren’t great.”
She looked over but stayed quiet.
“They’re dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “It happened early.”
Another pause.
“They weren’t exactly…” I searched for the word. “...Supportive.”
“About?”
“Um… I’m aromantic… and asexual.”
The words hung between us. I couldn’t read her expression. She wasn’t frowning. She wasn’t smiling. She was just… listening.
“I never really told my parents.” I laughed bitterly. “They would’ve hated it. My dad always talked about how LGBTQ+ people were ruining everything. My mom kept saying I’d change my mind. So…”
I shrugged weakly. “I lied. I pretended to have celebrity crushes. I made up people I liked. I even let my friends try setting me up because it was easier than explaining why I never wanted to date.”
The memories made my chest ache. “I spent years pretending. So much pretending that…”
I looked away. “I don’t even know when I stopped pretending for other people and started pretending for myself. I kept thinking maybe everyone was right. Maybe one day I’d wake up and suddenly want all those things…. But it never happened.”
A tear slipped down my cheek before I realized I was crying.
“I felt guilty… Guilty because my parent swanted grandkids. Because they wanted this future for me. Because I couldn’t give it to them…”
I wiped my face quickly.
“It sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t.”
I looked at Alicia.
“It really doesn’t.”
I laughed once. “It does. The world literally ended, and somehow… I still worry about disappointing people who have been dead for years… I know they’re gone, but every time I think about actually saying who I am… I still hear them.”
I stared at the ground. “I’ve never actually told anyone before.”
“You…” I laughed weakly. “Congratulations, you’re the first person who’s ever met the real me.”
Silence. Long enough that my stomach twisted. Long enough that regret started creeping in. Maybe this had been a mistake… Maybe…
A warm hand rested gently over mine. I looked up, and Alicia was smiling. Not a forced smile, or an awkward one, just… Alicia.
“You know what my first thought was?”
I blinked. “What?”
“I’m really glad you trusted me enough to tell me.”
I stared. “That’s it?”
She looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“I just told you I’m aroace.”
“Yeah?”
“And?”
“And… thank you for trusting me.”
I frowned. “You’re not…”
“Not what?”
“Confused?”
“I know what aromantic and asexual mean.”
“No, I mean…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence. She understood anyway.
“You thought I’d look at you differently?”
I nodded.
She squeezed my hand. “Y/N.”
Her voice was gentle. “You don’t have to hide with me.”
The words hit harder than I expected.
“You don’t have to pretend you’re interested in dating. You don’t have to fake crushes. You don’t have to laugh along when people assume you’ll settle down with someone someday.”
She smiled. “You don’t have to be anyone except yourself.”
My vision blurred again. “I’ve spent so long pretending.”
“I know.”
“I don’t really know how to stop.”
“You already started.”
I looked at her.
“You told me.” She smiled. “That’s a pretty big first step.”
I laughed through the tears. “I was honestly expecting this to be awkward.”
“Why?”
“Because it always was in my head.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think there’s anything awkward about someone telling me who they are.”
She nudged my shoulder. “For what it’s worth, you know what I see when I look at you?”
I shook my head. “I see the person who insists on carrying twice as much firewood as everyone else.”
I snorted.
“I see the person who somehow finds books in places that shouldn’t have books.”
I smiled.
“I see someone who makes Morgan laugh. Someone June trusts. Someone Al trusts to watch her back. I see my sibling.”
She shrugged. “The fact that you’re aromantic and asexual doesn’t erase any of that. It just means I know you a little better now.”
I laughed quietly. “That’s… really anticlimactic.”
She grinned. “Were you expecting a dramatic speech?”
“A little.”
She pretended to think. “Okay.”
She cleared her throat dramatically. “Hear ye, hear ye! Y/N had informed me they are aroace, and literally nothing about our relationship has changed!”
I burst into laughter. The kind that made my stomach hurt.
“There!” She smiled proudly. “Dramatic speech accomplished.”
I wiped tears from my eyes. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
I didn’t, not even a little. For the first time since I figured out who I was years before the world ended, I realized something. Acceptance wasn’t supposed to feel like fireworks. It wasn’t supposed to be some huge, life-changing speech. Sometimes acceptance was just someone looking at you after you shared the part of yourself you’ve hidden for years, and treating you exactly the same as they had five minutes earlier.
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