Chapter Text
It began with a simple question.
"Hey. Do you want to have sex?"
Lucy didn't know if she should feel offended at the way the ghoul choked on his water, turning to stare at her with an incredulous look.
"Lady, I just sat down," he said, in that slow, distinct drawl of his. He slurred his s's, she noticed, making every "s" come out as a "shhh" instead. Maybe he had a lisp of some kind.
"Oh, I'm sorry." Lucy waited a few seconds until she deemed the timing to be sufficient enough to ask her question again. "Has it been long enough for me to ask-"
"Sweet Jesus," he raised his hand in an aborted gesture to pinch the bridge of his nose, before settling on rubbing his temples when his fingers had closed on nothing. "Look, vaultie, you don't know what you're asking for."
"I know my reproductive organs very well, thank you," Lucy said, offended that he would think otherwise.
The ghoul just gave her one of those looks he always had whenever he thought she was being particularly stupid. He gestured to himself, "I don't know if you've noticed, girlie, but I ain't exactly one of them smooth skinned gentlemen you're used to down in your hamster cage."
Lucy leaned forward slightly with a frown. In all honesty, him being a ghoul? It hadn't factored at all with her desire. He was an awful, terrible man, yes, but to her he was just that. A man. Not some kind of monster. Just a man down a bad path.
And a man who could provide her the stress relief she needed.
"I don't care," Lucy said.
"We ain't particularly healthy to fuck. Being irradiated and all," the ghoul said. "Sort of fouls up the whole thing for smoothies like yourself."
"I have RadAway."
"You don't even know my name, girlie."
That was true. But…
"Do I need to?" Lucy asked, raising a brow. Because in her eyes, she didn't.
Maybe back in the vault, back when all she knew was how to be a proper young woman, a breeder, someone who would birth the next generation of humanity, someone who's only sexual experience was fooling around with her gosh darn cousin, maybe then she would have cared enough to know his name.
But the wasteland had weathered her. Calloused her, even if she still hung into her morals. There was more she could give a shit about than this man's name. It wasn't like she was marrying him.
Monty had kind of soured her when it came to things like that. Romance and such. Thinking about him still made her skin crawl. She still had the occasional nightmare where she was older, round with child, sitting up in bed when she turned next to her to see him, covered in blood, staring back at her.
The ghoul seemed to ponder her answer for a moment, his eyes flickering to and fro.
"Fuck's sake," he muttered, pulling his hat further over his eyes. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
The burning sensation that followed after wasn't pleasant, Lucy had to admit. Neither did his clinging hands in the afterglow. She didn't want him to touch her. She didn't want him to hold her close and pet her hair like she was some kind of dog.
But the sex was good. It was better than good. It was fantastic.
Needless to say, it was a repeating occurrence. Every time they set up camp somewhere that seemed secure enough, one of them would wind up sidling up to the other before they were rolling on the ground together. Lucy was pretty sure she had the imprints of the ghoul's hands permanently etched into her hips.
Things got complicated when Lucy noticed something troubling. She hadn't gotten her period yet, and it was nearing the time of the month where her cycle would usually end. She had only skipped her menstruation cycle once before- back in the vault, when she was sick with stress studying for the G.O.A.T., but back in the vault there were doctors who could assess her condition and tell whether it was something to worry about or not.
Up here, in the wasteland, they didn't have any of that. And if they did, Lucy thought bitterly, they probably would be as twisted as everything else in this goshdarn place. They'd probably be some… snake oil peddling chicken fiddler.
It was three weeks into their journey before they finally crossed the border into Nevada. The ghoul wasn't afraid to drag her by the hair if she dragged her feet, so by then, Lucy had gotten used to the grueling environment by force, though not without its own scares.
Finding out that the sun could cause her skin to peel off just from too much exposure was plain terrible. The ghoul laughing his stupid, wrinkly rear off at her panic was just the icing on the jello-cake.
"Look alive, girlie," the ghoul roughly nudged her, and she brushed his elbow away, frowning at the physical contact. "Merchants. Now you watch and learn, vaultie, 'cause up here these people will try and drain you dry."
Lucy glanced up and, sure thing, there were a handful of figures walking down the road across from them. Two of them were carrying guns and wearing more padded leather armor, and the other two were dressed in more covering attire, clearly meant to shield them from the sun. Lucy examined their headscarves in envy, thinking about the too-many nights she had to endure cracked and peeling sunburns.
What really caught her attention, though, was the large, two headed cow following them. Its skin was red and had a raw quality to it, as though it had been flayed alive, and flabs of fat swayed and undulated from beneath both of its wide, trunk-like necks. Strapped to the back of the cow was a large pack, most likely filled with the merchants' belongings.
It was times like these that made Lucy think about the impression that she had once had of surface-dwellers back when she used to live in Vault 33. She was raised to believe they were savages, uneducated and unorganized, guided only by their base, animal instinct and desires, but the wasteland, despite all of its… eccentricities, was dead set on disproving that.
Towns. Businesses. Governments.
Her people had underestimated the tenacity of the human race.
The ghoul approached the merchants with an easy smile. One of them, a woman with pale skin marred by several deep fissures that ran down her right cheek, glanced up at him. Her eyes narrowed, and though she returned the smile- lopsided on one side due to the scars- she laid one hand on the pistol at her side. She was slow and precise in her movements, keeping her back to her bodyguard.
"You looking to buy or trade?" She asked.
"I'm happy to peruse your wares, if you're so inclined," the ghoul said, and Lucy could practically feel the grease dripping from his voice. He could be devilishly charismatic if he really wanted to. "'Course, that don't mean I'm not interested in trading some of my own off to you, but only if you got something worth trading for, that is."
The woman cocked her head. Then she chuckled and called over her shoulder at the other merchant. "Jim! Get the tarp laid out, we've got a customer!"
They pulled off the side of the road. Lucy blinked in surprise as the other merchant- Jim- laid a tarp made out of a patchwork if fabric out on the ground. The female merchant began to set up her wares on the tarp, before taking a seat on one end. The ghoul took a seat on the other and opened his satchel, laying out bits and bobs that Lucy couldn't make sense of.
Lucy watched, completely lost.
Dogmeat trotted up to the Brahmin and sniffed it, before excitedly jumping around it, trying to goad it into playing with her. One of the bodyguards stared at her, before shyly looking at Lucy. Lucy cocked her head curiously, but inclined her head, and the bodyguard happily crouched down to pet Dogmeat.
The ghoul and the female merchant stared each other down intensely. The woman examined the ghoul's things. "Two bottles of purified water for that energy cell you got there."
"Make it two bottles and twenty caps," the ghoul easily replied. The woman tsked and supplies were traded back and forth before the ghoul made his own offer.
Lucy watched the trading commence with curiosity. Some items were clearly of higher value, which she understood- things like food, water, ammo, and weapons- but there were also some stranger things, like a pile of scrap metal that the ghoul had somehow procured, that made the merchant women's eyes light up.
The ghoul bartered with a practiced confidence, a clear showing of how many times he had done this before. Lockpicks for a box of cram, grenades for ammo, magazines for cigarettes, caps being shuffled back and forth like it was a game of some kind. Lucy examined the tarp with great curiosity, her brows raising when she spotted something familiar.
She leaned over and pointed to something, ignoring the ghoul's barking of, "I told you to let me handle this, can't you fuckin' listen?"
"Where did you find this?" Lucy tapped the slim, rectangular box. It was blue, with a yellow decal along its sides. On the front was an image of the female version of the mascot for Vault-Tec with a swollen stomach and a beaming grin.
"Oh, this thing?" The merchant snorted dismissively. "Found it in one of those old Super-Duper Marts. Never used, still in mint condition. Why, you want it?"
"Um," Lucy felt slightly ill at the thought of even being pregnant, and she nervously fiddled with her Pip-Boy. "How much… is it?"
"Mmm… one cap," the merchant said, giving the pregnancy test a disdainful look.
Lucy reared back in shock. So cheap! She recalled Steph's bright, grinning expression when she had gotten her own box after consummating her marriage. To think that the surface-dwellers didn't think it was worth much was bizarre.
"Really?" She asked.
The merchant nodded, picking up the box to examine the label with a frown. "I mean, they work, but it's Vault-Tec, so there was this funny thing with it where it would-"
"We don't got time to chat," the ghoul cut in, hoisting Lucy up by her elbow. "We gotta get our asses back on the road, vaultie."
"Can't you be decent for five minutes?" Lucy complained as the ghoul dragged her away from the merchants.
The ghoul gave her a sly smile. "You didn't complain about my decency when we were foolin' around last night," he said, and Lucy felt her face flush with embarrassment. "Besides, I nicked a couple o' caps offa that ugly feller with the plasma gun, and I ain't too keen on stickin' around and waitin' for him to find out."
"Stealing? Seriously?!" Lucy exclaimed, aghast. Did the ghoul want to become enemies with everyone in the Wasteland?
"Hey. I saw an opportunity and I took it," the ghoul said, raising his hands palm-forward towards her. "Decency don't matter when you gotta feed yourself."
"I can't believe you!" Lucy fumed. "For one minute I thought you'd actually be able to- to be decent, and-"
"Decent this, decent that," the ghoul mocked. "You gotta learn to stop putting expectations on me, girlie, I ain't a vault dweller. You're telling me nobody ever stole nothin' in your little vault?"
"Well I- no, and if they were, they were severely punished-"
"Oh, good lordy Heavens, they were severely punished? Say it ain't so. Tell me, how were they punished, hm?" The ghoul put his hand on his heart with wide, dramatic eyes. "Did your overseer wag a finger at them? No, were they given a talkin' to? Oh, don't tell me… were they given less desert durin' dinner time?"
Lucy's cheeks went red. "... no. Shut your pie hole."
The ghoul snorted. "Watch the profanity, you're hurtin' my feelings, girlie."
"You watch your profanity, you- you-!" Lucy stammered. Her stomach was churning.
"Oh? What're ya gonna do? Ask me politely to stop?" The ghoul mocked, but Lucy didn't answer. She staggered, feeling the world spin around her, and the ghoul's expression shifted from reverie to concern. "Hey. Hey, girlie? Lucy ?"
Lucy bent over and vomited on the ground.
The ghoul dashed forward and helped her keep her weight up with one hand, the other pulling her hair back from his face. He was cursing under his breath. "Just had to go and get yourself sick, fuck's sake, vaultie-"
"Don't touch me," she groaned, weakly pushing at his hand, but her stomach did this awful flip and she had to throw up once more.
"Fuck, what did you eat? You're not burnin' up or nothin', the hell is wrong?" The ghoul sounded frustrated as he pulled off his glove and touched her neck and forehead.
"I- I don't know. I've been feeling like this for the past week, but I've only now actually-" Lucy retched, and the ghoul rubbed her back, his expression warring between anger and concern, like he didn't know how to tackle the concept of caring about another human being.
God. First it was skipping her period, next it was throwing up, what could possibly come after that? Her entire body ached, and there was a migraine that wouldn't leave her alone. Lucy had never felt this way, not even back in the vault. The closest she could match this mystery illness to was when she saw how Steph was back when she first… got… pregnant…
… no.
No no no no.
No. Absolutely fricking not, no, no, no, so many no's, NO.
Lucy staggered to her feet and yanked on the lapel of the ghoul's weathered, leather duster. She pulled him down to her height, staring up at him with bloodshot eyes.
'What in the nine hells-?!" He exclaimed, but she swiftly interrupted him.
"You said ghouls aren't fertile," she hissed out.
"They aren't, " he sounded annoyed. "Why are you…" he stared. "No."
"I missed my last menstrual cycle, I'm getting aches all over, I'm sick for no reason-"
"That just ain't possible. Plain and simple," the ghoul firmly said. "I'm as sterile as a spayed mutt, vaultie, don't get stupid ideas in your noggin'."
"Are you sure?"
"Am I- vaultie. Lucy." He gestured to himself. "My swimmers have stopped swimmin' years ago, on account of the, y'know, radiation. "
Lucy was quiet. She swallowed, thinking back to the many mutated animals she saw during her time on the surface. "Plenty of animals are irradiated and still manage to breed."
There was a potent silence as the two stared at each other. Dogmeat whined and trotted up to Lucy, pressing her wet nose against her stomach. There was a sharp intake of breath from the ghoul. For the first time since she started traveling with him, she saw actual fear seep into his sunken eyes.
They looked back at the merchants, then at each other again, before they took off sprinting towards the merchants, screaming and waving them down, Dogmeat excitedly running and barking after them.