Chapter Text
Arcade sits hunched, back extended over a slowly-dying desk lamp, artificial light spread across the assortment of books and papers strewn across his work area. He is sitting as he often does on late nights, partly because any leftover ability from his youth to create a circadian rhythm has pittered out on him and died, partly because his crippling anxiety that only partially centers around the Mojave tends to flare up when his eyes are closed and his lights are off. (Something about the gentle blow of tumbleweed and the howling desert air sends his parasympathetic nervous system into overdrive; he scarcely sleeps unless he is passed out from the sweet equilibrium-seeking tendencies of sleep/wake homeostasis.)
He sits hunched, and only when he realizes he’s been sitting in the same position for a little over an hour does he sit up, spine cracking pleasantly as his vertebrae realign. It’s also only then that he notices Craig Boone in his peripherals, the glint on the sniper’s sunglasses catching Arcade's eye in the dim light and sending him near to jumping out of his skin. Damn it all, he thinks, if that man ever makes a sound, but then he starts using his brain and realizes that silence is probably a hard habit to break when one has sat in an uncomfortable position with a gun to his cheek for hours, maybe days. He forgives Boone.
“Sorry,” Arcade says, nervously, turning in his chair so that he momentarily face his company. “If I’d seen you come in, I would have offered you something. Coffee, tea, you know?” Both of them know very well that Boone can make his own coffee, and that he hates tea when Arcade makes it.
A long silence passes between them. “Are you always this responsive?” Arcade asks, because he’s at a loss for what else to.
“Yeah,” Boone answers, tilting his head forward with a slight nod, arms crossed tight over his chest. Arcade blanches a little, unnerved. Boone is an enigma, the only person in the Courier’s good graces that he has yet to crack, the one brain he has yet to file away a mental profile on. He wonders if that’s why he finds Boone so unnerving, that he hasn’t gotten him tucked into a neat little box like he has everyone else in the Lucky 38, everyone he sees anymore. He decides no, that isn’t it, because that doesn’t do Boone justice; he’s not a bad man just because he is quiet and reserved, it’s just that something about the way he takes a shot with not even a millisecond of hesitation strikes a nerve in Arcade’s inner Hippocratic oath.
After all, it’s why Arcade prefers to go with the Courier rather than stay in New Vegas with the others. He adores Veronica and Raul, and Lily is harmless enough, but between dragging a drunken Cass into the elevator every other night and shuffling awkwardly through the kitchen while Boone maybe-sleeps maybe-watches, Arcade gets anxious. It reminds him of Freeside sometimes so much that he wonders why he bothered to leave at all.
He likes routine, sure, it’s easy, but he can’t help but feel overwhelming relief when the Courier moseys over to him and gestures for him to come along. (He suspects the Courier takes him on the missions farthest out in the Mojave because he loves to look at the wildlife there, the flora that spreads just out of sight and could, perhaps, be of use to them in the future, when Stimpacks and Buffouts become things of the past, out of date because they’re out of stock. Or maybe they just like to make fun of him for getting sunburned, pink across his cheeks and on his nose. Probably a little of both.)
He really has to stop thinking so deeply, he thinks, which makes him laugh a little, which makes him snap back into reality. Oh, shit. Boone’s still there, and Arcade realizes he literally has no clue where he’s looking, if he’s even looking at him, oh shit. How long has Arcade been staring? “Sorry,” he says again, reflexively, because he feels like he should be sorry. “I started thinking about things and got distracted. I wasn’t trying to be all weird, looking at you like I was psychoanalyzing you or something.” (He wasn't.) He feels his ears turn pink, and he turns back around in his chair, staring intently at his papers. “I wasn’t, by the way. Psychoanalyzing you.” (He was.)
Boone shifts, thick eyebrows furrowing, and Arcade can hear it because his dogtags bump against his chest and jingle. “M’kay.” Arcade wants to explode. A striking conversational partner.
He wonders what the Courier does when they take Boone out, but then again, when Arcade himself and the Courier are out, Arcade fills the silence, his long-winded and one-sided conversation only interrupted by staccato orders from his mail delivering friend. Stand back. Do you have a Stimpack? I can't carry anything else. Arcade, is now the time to quote poetry? I’m bleeding out. He imagines it’s much more tranquil with Boone than with himself. Regardless, he will do his best to fill any silence he can. Including this one.
“Right then,” Arcade remarks, once again filling the room with the glorious sound of his voice, because any lingering pause between himself and someone with such a stoic face and concealed eyes makes him extremely nervous, makes his neck itch. “I hope you're enjoying yourself with, er. Whatever it is you are doing.” He turns back to his stack of papers, schematics for a suit of power armor amongst doctor’s scribbles and notes about a dinner he was planning to make for Veronica and the Courier as a welcome home gift, and also because the brahmin steak in the dingy fridge was going to spoil soon.
He absently scribbles a calculation in the margins of his paper, stifling a yawn. “If your aim is to subtly study my homely profile to paint a portrait, however, there are better ways to go about it. For example, you could hire me as a model.” He’s teasing now, but hardly thinks about it, because that's just how he breaks the imaginary ice. After all, it worked with Raul, with Julie Farkas, with even the Courier; his self deprecating humor is part of what makes him such a good doctor, too, he thinks, because it's easier to be stitched up by a shaky and unpracticed hand when you're laughing about his lack of social finesse. “Though I fear you may have a long debate with this suite’s inhabitants should you deem it necessary to hang it above the metaphorical mantlepiece. Maybe the fridge would do better for a picture of yours truly.”
Boone doesn't laugh, just shifts audibly again. Arcade also shifts, barely, so he can confirm that no, Boone is not even smiling, not even a twitch has appeared in his smile. Arcade winces. Tough crowd.
Or maybe it's that he hasn't quite followed the obscure path that this conversation has taken, a distinct possibility. Could he be offput by Arcade’s choice of wording, taking it as a flirtatious gesture as opposed to self deprecation slash attempted humor? Arcade starts to sweat, and Boone cracks his jaw absently.
At last, he speaks, sending a ripple of relief through the room. “Naw, never was much of an artist.” He shakes his head, as if to expel some notion from his brain. Maybe a memory? “Not patient enough.”
Arcade raises his eyebrow, turning fully in his chair to face Boone, a look of disbelief. “Impatience seems like the worst possible trait for an NCR sniper. Especially someone so,” he pauses, face screwed up, trying not to offend with his distinct lack of military lingo knowledge, “recognized.”
Boone laughs, and had Arcade blinked, he would have missed it. It's a small one, an exhale of breath in a raspy heh heh accompanied by the slightest twitch of his mouth. Arcade should be jumping for joy, should offer a toast to celebrate his accomplishment in cracking even millimeter of Boone’s cast-iron shell, but for some reason he is transfixed, focused on the obscure fact that oh, Boone has dimples. And a beauty mark. He needs a haircut, too, but Arcade notes that he looks better with his military-issue buzzcut grown out a little. It makes it look well lived in, worn and comforting. “I guess you're right, doc.”
And if that isn't just a novel idea.