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You were leaving Goodneighbor tomorrow. Sitting idle made you antsy, and it had already been several days since the urge to wander had struck. You'd only stuck around because... well.
"You want another hit?" Hancock asked from the other end of the couch, head lolling on the back of it, dark eyes turned to yours, canister of jet held out to you.
After a long moment of consideration, your jet-addled brain working overtime to comprehend, you shook your head mutely. Hancock shrugged his shoulder and stuck the canister into his mouth.
"Fhoot-eulf," He said incomprehensibly around the spout, then pressed down on the mechanism. His whole body sagged further into the couch, somehow managing to look even calmer than he had after the last three hits of Jet. Even if ghouls really did have higher chem resistance than lowly humans like yourself, you were sure Hancock topped them all. You'd had one Jet to his four, and he'd also spent the morning working his way through a Brandy bottle, which you'd always found made your heavy-limbed high feel a little more like paralysis than a comforting buzz.
Probably a good ten seconds after Hancock had spoken, you let out a muffled, "hmm?", cheek smushed into the couch so you could keep staring at him.
Those black eyes, momentarily distracted by the Jet in his hands, turned to find yours again, crinkled at the corners. His smile, ever charming, lingered on the verge of turning mean. He did like to tease you about being a lightweight.
Instead, he leant to the edge of the couch and hooked you by your socked feet, tugging them into his lap, dragging you a few inches closer to him.
"Nothing, sweetheart."
He patted one of your knees placatingly, the way one pet a startled a horse. Or (you thought, a few painfully slow seconds later), that was to say, the way one used to pet a startled horse. Seeing as they were extinct now, or possibly mutated into something hideously unrecognizable.
Hancock's hand, warm on your knee, disappeared after a minute. Or after a few seconds, seeing as trying to keep a grasp on time on Jet was a losing game. He dug into his pocket, pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Ever generous, he offered you one. You nodded, but could seem to make your hand rise up to take it from him.
He grinned, placing it between his lips. You wanted to disagree with this, but your vocal chords didn't want to respond either, and no words were coming to mind anyway. Sober, you would realize these were the classic signs of the Jet comedown, that momentary disconnect between body and mind, which unnerved you enough to take a few days off before finally succumbing to Hancock's next offer.
High, though, you were left to watch as Hancock raised the lighter to the cigarette, lighting it with a deep inhale, before plucking it from his mouth and passing it over. He blew the smoke teasingly into your face, laughing when you scrunched your nose in distaste.
"All the drugs a person could need. A warm bed, semi-clean streets." He said, a new cigarette between his teeth, "Honestly, I don't know why outsiders are always badmouthing Goodneighbor. Best fucking place in the Commonwealth."
Slowly, like an overloaded computer rebooting, your body came back online. You picked the cigarette from your lips, flicked ash from the end of it, ignored the thought of how it had been in his mouth before yours.
"You might be a bit biased, Hancock."
He laughed back at you, gravelly, that mix of ghoul and smoker and just pure... him.
He had been dropping these comments increasingly over the last few days, probably picking up at your unease. It was probably why he had suggested the two of you stay up in his office getting high for the night instead of going down to the Third Rail. Crowds made you antsy, the heat from bodies and the din of echoing small talk reminding you all the more of the open, fresh air you were missing.
Hancock was clever, he knew what was coming even without you spelling it out for him. Over the months since you'd discovered Goodneighbor, you'd been crashing in the Statehouse whenever you found your way to this area of Boston, preferring it to the stifling atmosphere of Diamond City. (Or so you told yourself, the truth might be you preferred the company).
He also clearly knew some of the affinity you held for him, the way you'd let him charm you into sticking around almost a week after you'd planned to leave.
"Still," He said, "One of the better places to be, hmm? Well, as long as you stay on the Mayor's good side." He winked at you.
Yet, he was too proud to come right out and beg for you to stay.
You could always ask him what he wanted. But you worried that his answer might be enough to sway you.
"Oh yeah," You deflected instead, ignoring the spark his wink shot down your spine, ordering your traitorous heart not to beat faster. "Heard the guy's a bit of a dick."
"Oh, he's a lot worse than that," His hand snuck back onto your leg, making a slow path up your calf, "But not to pretty things like you."
It was your turn to laugh, ignoring the heating in your cheeks, ignoring the goosebumps his touch left in it's wake. "John," You said, mock scandalized, "I thought you were an intellectual. Is a pretty face really all it takes?"
He had been slowly easing closer to you, or maybe he had been pulling you closer to him. When he leant over to stub his cigarette, his shoulder brushed yours.
"'M not easy. But I'm smart enough to know that when you find something this pretty in an ugly world, you hold on tight." He'd moved in close, hand reaching your upper thigh. With the other, he plucked the cigarette from your lips, down nearly to the filter, and flicked it to the side, not breaking eye contact. You could feel his breath tickling your nose, smelling like cigarettes and the slightly metallic taste jet left in your mouth. It made you lightheaded, entire mind screaming that he was about to kiss you, finally, after months of flirting and opportunities neither one of you had taken.
Instead, though, he squeezed your thigh and pulled back, eyes trained on you, a curious glint in them, like he was watching your reaction.
For just a moment, like you were a magnet following his pull, you followed after him, hand sliding downwards as if to bring his hand back to where it had been, keep it there, keep him there.
Then, the rational part of your brain, offline since before you'd accepted that hit of Jet, kicked in, screaming at you about everything that could go wrong. Taking this from a friendship to... something more would complicate everything. You didn't have the time or the energy to spend on a relationship, you didn't want to be chained to a settlement. If word got out about your... whatever it would be, you might lose out on deals with some of the seedier members of the community, you might lose trust with others. In other places, a relationship with a Ghoul might even be enough to have you barred from entry.
But, a traitorous voice from the back of your mind whispered, none of those really mattered. The truth of it was, after everything that had happened to you, if you were to let this go any further and something were to happen to him, it would break you.
So, you pulled back, shutting your eyes and taking a steadying breath. Your hand, halfway to grabbing his, stopped and balled into a fist, dropping back to your side.
You wracked your brain for something to say, something joking to diffuse the tension and return things to the way they were.
You heard Hancock shift besides you and allowed yourself a little breath of relief, assuming he'd gotten the hint and backed off, tired of waiting for someone who chickened out at every opportunity.
Instead, though, you were surprised to find his warm hand on your cheek, felt the corner of his hat press softly against your forehead. You opened your eyes, found him looking at you, almost desperate.
"Maybe I'm wrong," he started, voice pitched low and quiet, less sure of himself than you were used to, "In which case you just tell me. But I get the feeling it ain't that. I see the way you looked at me. I know you know how I've been looking at you."
You swallowed, traitorous body responding before your mind can butt in. You nodded, hand coming to grasp onto his bicep, wanting more than anything for him to move closer, to remove the patch of air the two of you were both breathing.
"So tell me," His voice had dropped to a whisper, like he was speaking with a startled animal. "Why won't you kiss me?"
You exhaled, a shaky thing. For some reason your eyes stung, and suddenly you were fighting off the urge to cry. Your grip on Hancock's arm tightened, not wanting him to let go.
Words escaped you, but you worried he'd take your silence the wrong way. You used your free hand to move the front of his hat high enough that it wouldn't poke you and leant your forehead to his. You shut your eyes again, partly to hide the tears that you couldn't seem to stop from forming, partly to embrace the moment better.
Hancock's thumb stroked slowly across your cheekbone. He whispered your name. Worried your voice would break, you nodded against him, eyes still squeezed shut, afraid of moving from this moment, of going forward or pulling back.
Quiet, he said, "Please kiss me."
You dug down, finding the person who sleeps under the open sky of the wasteland, who fights off hordes of ferals, sneaks through Gunner camps, takes on Deathclaws and survives.
You pressed your lips to his.
Warm, softer than you had envisioned, just like the man himself. Hancock's other hand rose to your cheek, so he was cupping your face in his hands, pulling you even closer. You let him take the lead, tilting your head gently, licking against your lips. You opened your lips for him easily, your hands wrapping around the back of his neck, leaving the two of you chest to chest, you halfway in his lap as he licked into your mouth, ravenous as if he had been starving for you.
You never wanted it to end, wanted to spend every moment of the rest of your life pressed to him, feeling his hands on you, his lips on yours, his tongue exploring your mouth.
When the tears slipped out, you almost thought it wouldn't matter, thinking you could keep the kiss going, sure you would survive without breathing, so long as he didn't stop kissing you.
But then a hitching sob rose from your chest and you were pulling away despite yourself, tucking your wet face into the crook of his neck. His hands wrapped around your waist, settling you properly against him.
You swallowed any other rogue sounds, blinked rapidly to try to rid yourself of the tears, trying to pull yourself together so you could face Hancock again. One of his hands was rubbing soothingly along your back, the other having worked it's way up to your hair, gentle fingers smoothing out tangles, rubbing along your scalp.
It took longer than you would have liked to pull yourself together, and a bit longer than that to gather the courage to look at Hancock, sniffling lightly.
His smile was tight, self conscious, as if he genuinely believed you could have been crying because of his kiss.
You didn't even let him get through his dejected, "That bad, huh?" before you were spitting it out, desperate for him to understand that it wasn't his fault, "I'm leaving Goodneighbor tomorrow." You got it out fast, as if it left a bad taste on your tongue.
He blinked, insecurity fading from his expression, replaced by genuine confusion.
You continued, desperate to repair your faux-pas, to make him understand your thought process, why it would lead you to tears; "This just... makes it that much harder to go."
You ran your hand down his chest, anxiously fiddling with the stitching on his lapels, "Hanc- John, please believe me, I've been wanting to do that for fucking ages, I just-"
The gentle press of his lips against yours cut you off, a quick press of heat and then gone again. This time you did chase after him, managing to get in a peck against upturned lips before he was pulling away.
It was your turn to be confused, pulling back to look at his smiling face, wondering if all that drug use had finally fried his brain.
"That's what's got you so worried?" He asked, voice soft.
You blinked at him before giving a small nod, expecting him to tell you to just stay with him, pressure already building behind your eyes as you imagined explaining to him that you just weren't made for sitting idle.
"So, then, when do we leave?"
"We?" You whispered, not trusting your voice.
"If you're alright with delaying the departure a bit, I should probably wait for the ne'er do wells to sleep off the hangover to give a little speech, pretty sure it's bad form for the Mayor to up and vanish. Then again, it's me we're talkin' about, they should know better than to–"
You pressed your lips to his, partly from exhilaration, partly for him to shut up long enough for you to process the information he'd presented you with. You'd never considered asking Hancock to leave his town. In your mind, he was Goodneighbor, the very best of it.
You pull away, running a finger across Hancock's cheek, feeling the muscles jump under you as he gives you a soft smile.
"Are you sure?" You ask.
"Love, I'd like to see anyone try to stop me."