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“Didn’t they teach you manners in them vaults o’ yours?”
They had , is the thing. Learned your please’s and your thank you’s alongside a classroom full of your peers, etiquette and social graces from your folks, and rules from the Overseer.
You know stealing is wrong. That’s not up for debate.
But in this, the first moment you’ve had to catch your breath, those lessons which had seemed so important in the confines of the Vault are now…small, insignificant, ridiculous even. It’s been days, limping down that dark artery that was once a highway, the single nearly-unbroken road in the vastness of the desert that runs the length of New California. Everything aches, your feet from the miles of trudging across shifting sand, your back from carrying your pack of meager supplies, even your wrist - your Pip-Boy had never seemed burdensome before now, but the fucking thing has begun to chafe.
So you can’t be faulted, really, for forgetting those manners, just for a moment. The shack on the outskirts of Filly had seemed plenty abandoned, its door hanging like a broken jaw off one remaining hinge. While your Vault-Suit was well-suited for the temperature-controlled bunker you’d been born into, nights in the desert were bitterly cold.
Clinging valiantly to its frame, the door squeaks dramatically as you shoulder it open, sending detritus skittering across the floor like a horde of radroaches. Nothing the wasteland touches goes un-destroyed, and this place is no exception. You navigate the splintered remains of a bed frame (no mattress, you’d never be so lucky), and the sagging, threadbare sofa, your gaze alighting on the dresser. All its drawers have been haphazardly pulled out, giving it the appearance of having been disemboweled, spilling threadbare clothing out of its belly like loops of tattered intestine.
Sitting neatly on top, incongruously clean, is a saddlebag (you had one in miniature for your Giddyup Buttercup), one of its flaps enticingly pulled back to reveal - well. You don’t recognize half of the cloudy vials or loose syringes, but an amber glass bottle of pills snags your attention. Rad-X, which you are woefully out of, and is the only thing standing between you and the radiation sickness you’re no doubt accumulating simply by being up here.
You’re wrist deep in the bag, pockets bulging with meds, before two things happen simultaneously. One, it occurs to you, finally, to think about why a bag full of loose drugs is sitting conspicuously in an abandoned shack and two, it occurs to you, finally , that perhaps one ought to have confirmed the abandoned-ness of said shack before looting it like a fucking scav.
Something moves in the hallway. A fishhook barb in the thin membrane of your awareness tugs, oh, and a crashing wave of nauseous fear flares in the pit of your stomach.
You are not alone.
“Didn’t they teach you manners in them vaults o’ yours?” a low, country drawl comes out of the darkness, skates across your nerves like a knife.
Run, is the obvious impulse, smash yourself into the door as hard as you can and hope that single rusted hinge gives out, serpentine across the rapidly darkening desert hoping you don’t catch a bullet or snap your ankle in a molerat hole. Whatever, whoever, is leaning in the darkened hallway doesn’t move, so you turn on your heel and -
Well, you hadn’t counted on the fucking lasso .
You’re not even sure what it is at first, just a sudden jerk at your midsection, snugging tight as a noose about your waist. Sudden aborted momentum makes you stumble, and a powerful yank has the floor rushing up to meet you. You struggle with everything you have, with every dumb, animal impulse toward self-preservation, as heavy footsteps approach you from behind, each one punctuated by the incongruously jolly jingle-jangle of spurs.
With no breath in your lungs, you can only wheeze. “Hey, sir, please, I’m sorry, please dont-,” you gasp raggedly, squirming, trying to roll over so you can see the man you tried to rob, “- please don’t kill me.”
A boot lands on your flank and none-too-gently pushes you over onto your back. Your gaze travels from the tattered hem of his duster to - your babbling dies in your throat.
Ghoul.
Shrewd, dark eyes set deep in his skull of a face, lips (or lack thereof) curling back from yellowed teeth in a lopsided smile that is anything but friendly. It’s not very polite to gawk, but neither is it polite to lasso someone like an unruly brahmin, so maybe you’re even. A plea slips past your lips - “Mercy?”
He barks out a laugh, a harsh, guttural sound, and tips his hat back on his head, regarding you with the critical eye of someone judging livestock for the quality of its meat. You’d heard somewhere not to look a predator directly in the eye, so you settle for staring at the worn leather of his boots. When he speaks, it’s in that same smooth southern drawl, low and slow, very nearly friendly in tone: “I ain’t gonna kill ya.”
With speed certainly borne of practice, he tugs on the lariat tight around your torso, threading it between your flailing legs and around behind your back to loop once, twice, three times around your forearms, just above the Pip-Boy. The rope is thick and his hands are strong, and flexing against them does nothing but drag the harsh line of connection between your waist and your wrists even more taught. “Why-”, your protest is cut off by a firm yank on the loose length of rope, forcing you to spread your legs wider to balance. The rope rubs intimately between your thighs.
“I said I wasn’t gonna kill ya,” he crouches in front of you, leather glove finding your chin and tipping back your head to force your gaze to his, to regard the reality of his face, the cavernous hole where the nose used to be, high cheekbones under raw, pitted skin, “I didn’t say you’d I was lettin’ you go.”
When he stands, he seems eight feet tall, the tatters of his coat shroudlike, spurred boots kicking a swirl of dust up from the floor. “You want mercy, sweetheart?” He loops the loose end of the rope once, twice around his fist, gives it a cruel tug that forces your knees wider to avoid tumbling face-first into the dirt. His matter-of-fact drawl brooks no argument: “ then you can get on your knees an’ beg for it.”
Ah.