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Six weeks, or thereabouts, since departing New Vegas, The Ghoul is lining up his shot. He hasn't been tracking the days as well as he should, focused on the goal rather than the journey, and he’s already been more sidetracked than he’d like, but what's new? He's been burning through his rations, and it'll be damn nice to have some fresh meat. He might even build a fire, roast it up proper. Dogmeat stays still and silent next to him, like she knows she’ll get some of that meat if he makes the shot.
It’s an old and sinewy bighorn sheep ewe, half-starved and not especially big to begin with. The meat is likely to be gamey and stringy with age, but it's not like the taste is all that important to him. The dog certainly won’t complain, and he won't have too much to carry back to camp.
It's a tough shot to make, and his rifle ain't exactly made for precision work, but it's a quiet afternoon with no wind to speak of. Golden-orange light settles on the horizon as evening looms. The ewe hasn't got anywhere to be, it seems, standing so cooperatively still and chewing on a tough patch of yellowed grass.
His finger--his now, anyway--curls around the trigger of his rifle and pulls. In the insignificant span of time between the movement and the mechanism putting the bullet into action, an unheard sound startles the creature, lifting its head and stepping back just enough that The Ghoul's shot misses its mark.
He hits it in the forward leg, and the ewe stumbles, but before it falls another shot rings out, and one bullet passes cleanly through the mangy creature's head, dropping it.
“God fuckin’ dammit,” he says under his breath.
The Ghoul gets up from his perch behind some rocks and shouts in the direction of the second shot's origin.
“That’s my kill, motherfucker!”
He starts heading down to the carcass, gun cocked and aimed at the poacher’s assumed position.
He hears rustling from behind a pile of rocks in that direction, and then: “Sorry!” One hand emerges, held up in an empty apology. He’d consider shooting a hole through it, but he knows that voice, and--if he gets closer--yep, he knows that index finger, too.
“What the hell are you doing, vaultie?”
Lucy MacLean stands, and--Hell--her face lights up when she sees him.
He doesn’t dare to guess what his face is doing. She comes out from behind the rocks and makes her way to him, boots crunching on the uneven ground. She’s traded her vault suit for a pair of pants with generous pockets on the thighs, along with a tank top and a long-sleeved shirt tied around her waist. She’s got her holster strapped onto her hip, the leather pauldron at her shoulder. Slung over the other is a heftier backpack than he last saw her with. Well used, but sturdy NCR issue, he’d say at a glance. The only thing muting the brightness of her face is the shadow cast on it by her hat, a light and breezy thing with a pinched crown and a wide brim.
If he didn’t know her he might not even realize she was a vault dweller. Until she opened her mouth, anyway.
“It’s really you!” she says, and she’s beaming. He wants to back up, the way she’s barrelling at him, but instead he stands his ground, and she wraps her arms around him, squeezing. He waits, and she pulls back, awkwardly patting him once on the arm.
Dogmeat noses at her hand when it drops, and Lucy gives her a scratch behind the ears. “Good to see you, too,” she says, and the dog gives her a polite sit, tail swishing contentedly.
“You followin’ me, Miss MacLean?”
“Not exactly,” she says, sidling up beside him. “I’m on a mission. But I got some intel, and I had hoped…”
He doesn’t ask her what her mission is. Why would he? He’s not trying to get sidetracked again, and he’s not looking for someone to babysit.
“Alright, well, help me get this carcass back to camp and we’ll have some supper before you head out.”
That smile of hers is back. “Actually, I had a better idea.”
Her better idea, it turns out, is lugging the ewe to a settlement a couple hours walk away, where they’ll prepare and cook the meat for free if Lucy and The Ghoul agree to share some and let them keep the pelt.
“I was just there, and they mentioned that arrangement. They have spices, like a glaze they brush over it. It smells incredible. So I thought I’d try my luck at some hunting, and maybe get a decent meal out of it.”
The Ghoul shrugs, tying a short length of rope around the sheep’s hind legs before moving on to the front. It’s maybe a 50/50 shot that the folks she met actually follow through on their offer, otherwise they just intend to take the kill and leave her for dead. Maybe throw her on the cooking spit, too. But he doesn’t bother saying any of that, because it ain't his business.
“Alright, have it your way.”
They each take one end of the rope, hauling the carcass up until it swings between them. Lucy takes the lead, since she knows the way to the settlement.
It's a mile or so of idle chit chat--her babbling about her trip out, mostly. He tries to tune it out. Apparently she’d hitched a ride with an NCR transport as far as the Utah border, so she’s a little more fresh than he is, as far as travel is concerned.
Around an hour in, she looks back over her shoulder. Not looking at him, but drawing his attention.
“Why didn’t you ask me to come with you this time?”
Leave it to her to ask the question he's been avoiding asking himself.
“You got your business; I got mine,” he says, because it's true enough. “And aside from that, I'm still healin’ from that pole you skewered me on, like a damn ticket at a lunch counter.”
She stops, setting her end of the carcass down and turning to face him.
“I am sorry about that. But I’m still mad at you. If you’d just told me--I mean--” she stumbles over her words, trying to defend herself against an accusation he’s not making, “--your family. I can understand. My dad--” Her voice cracks, and he wonders how much she’s talked about whatever it is that happened after he walked away. Not much, he reckons. Probably didn’t intend to talk about it now. It’s fresh, and he remembers that sting, however distantly, the way the words get caught in your throat like sticker thorns in wool. The way grief can tie the words in knots before they ever reach your tongue.
“What’d you end up deciding?” he asks her.
He’s genuinely curious, which is news to him. Probably shouldn’t be. He’s been doing his best to put Vegas behind him, but it wasn’t so long ago, and Lucy--she’s still her.
She exhales in a sound that would be a laugh if there was any humor in it. “Didn’t get to, at the end.”
The Ghoul tilts his head. He’d done what he could, but the universe--bastard that it is--apparently had other ideas for Miss McLean and her dear daddy.
“He, um,” she continues, one hand brushing away a tear sneaking down her cheek. “He had another remote for the chip, and he used it. One minute he was my dad--and I was so, so angry at him--and then he didn’t know who I was.”
He doesn’t expect the anger that flares up, small and useless, but there in his chest anyway. Hank MacLean, taking the easy way out and leaving his daughter to cobble together some kind of life with the pieces. True to form, he supposes.
“Hell of a thing,” he says.
She nods, a little absently. “I think he was trying to be kind? He didn’t want me to have to kill him, so he just--” she winces “--took himself out of play.”
“Sounds like a coward’s move to me.”
He sees the urge to defend him puff her up for just a second, and then she deflates.
“I almost did it myself. Erased his memories--or enough of them, at least. I considered it--I can’t believe I--and then he did it and… maybe it was kind of him. To not let me be the one to do it, I mean.”
“I wouldn’t go putting so much stock in his decision-making,” The Ghoul says. “Young Henry never struck me as a particularly thoughtful fella. Near as I can tell he made another in a long line of destructive decisions that didn’t much factor in anyone else at all.”
She doesn’t look consoled, but she looks tired, and the tears aren’t pooling in the corners of her eyes anymore. “Maybe,” she says.
She turns back around, grabbing her end of the rope and waiting for The Ghoul to do the same.
Looking back over her shoulder, not quite at him, she asks, “What did you find?”
He breathes, squinting into the last sliver of sun very nearly set behind the horizon.
“Cryo-pods were empty.”
She takes a long time to respond.
“I’m sorry,” she says finally.
“Don’t be,” he says, even if her misplaced sympathy shouldn’t be worth the effort. “Gave me the first real lead I’ve had in centuries.”
“Oh,” she says, pained but earnest, “that’s really good.”
The settlement, when they reach it well into the evening, is an impressive affair, if not a bit ramshackle. They must have set up fairly recently, since he hasn’t heard a peep about it, but they’re established well enough. A few buildings cobbled together around some more that must have been standing in disrepair for quite some time, centered around what looks like an old highway motel. They’ve even got string lights hooked up to some kind of generator, highlighting the sign over the entrance to the courtyard, CHECK-MEAT written on it in bold painted letters. The faint sound of a guitar strumming swims through the air as they pass under it.
Lucy does the talking, since she's been here before, and because The Ghoul can't be bothered to care. A woman by the gate gives Lucy a rundown of doing business, and directs them to a counter across the courtyard.
Lucy nods her head, and as they walk says, “So, that woman--Ms. Party, apparently--said we just take this to Boneyard Benny over there, so he can give us tickets to claim our share of the cooked meat when it’s done. He weighs and butchers it, then it goes to the pitmaster over there, Nooms." She gestures to a clearing with a handful of smokers and barbeque set-ups, most of them actively cooking already, smoke and red-orange coals creating a mellow bright spot in the darkness. “He'll cook the meat, and we can claim it from him when he's done tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” The Ghoul's eyes narrow. “How long we ‘bout to be stuck here?”
“Well…” Lucy says, stopping to turn around and letting her half of the carcass sag. “It's a slow-cook process. They told me all about it–-it's really pretty interesting if--” she clocks the sour expression twisting his already sour face and redirects. “Anyway, it should be ready in time for dinner tomorrow night. They'll feed us tonight, though! Isn't that nice?”
The Ghoul grunts. He's been with Lucy a few hours and already lost a day's progress, like a pit he’s just tossing time into.
They drop off the carcass with the butcher and, as promised, get a ticket to reclaim the meat when it’s done. The fella is remarkably friendly despite the artfully arranged pile of bleached bones that decorates the perimeter of his work station. After, they’re directed to an outdoor seating area, half a dozen tables and chairs set up around a--porch? It looks like they took a suburban facade from a movie set and set it down in the middle of the courtyard, with a cobbled together outdoor kitchen set up in the back. It’s very home-y, and as much as this kind of old-world nostalgia type establishment usually puts his hackles up, there’s something about the honesty of the artificiality that settles him.
A man called Dirty Dawg greets them jovially from the porch, telling them they can sit wherever they’d like.
“Stew’s on the house for folks who bring something to share,” he says when they settle at a table well enough removed from the handful of other patrons. “Beer’ll cost you two caps though. And we have a menu if you’re looking for something more made-to-order.”
“Great,” Lucy says, “I think we should be fine with two bowls of stew and…” she looks at The Ghoul, “...two beers?”
The Ghoul nods at her.
“Yes,” she says, definitively, “two beers, please!”
Dirty Dawg nods. “Get those right out for you folks. I recommend sticking around. Later tonight we’ve got pre-war trivia, and if you’ll be here tomorrow evening we always need fresh faces for speed-dating.”
“Oh, that sounds so fun!” Lucy says, and there’s no doubt at all that she means it. “But, I don’t think my friend and I will be participating. Thanks so much, though.”
Dirty Dawg bows politely, and leaves them be.
“You know,” she says, “I used to teach pre-war history back in my vault. It wouldn’t really be fair to the other patrons for me to participate.”
That very nearly gets a laugh out of The Ghoul. The wasteland might be making inroads on Miss MacLean, but that vaultie is still in there.
Dirty Dawg brings out a bowl of water and a few hunks of something fleshy but otherwise indistinguishable for Dogmeat. They get their stew. The Ghoul, of course, doesn’t have much of an opinion on the taste, but it’s hearty enough, with a few vegetables knocking around with hunks of various meats in the thick broth. Each serving even comes with a roll, a little stale, but still good for soaking up the last bit at the bottom of the bowl.
The beer is probably swill–it all tastes like dishwater to The Ghoul anyway–but it’s nice to drink after their walk today. Lucy takes a sip and cringes, swallowing reluctantly.
“It’s good,” she says, clearing her throat and nodding.
She manages to make it through the bottle, getting used to it as she goes.
Halfway through her second beer and his fourth, she says without sequitur: “You wanna see the room?” Her cheeks are pinker than they were an hour ago.
“Room?”
She digs in one of her pockets and pulls out a small brass key dangling from a chess piece keychain. A rook, he thinks, although it’s been more than a century since he’s played.
“I rented one before I headed out to hunt. Figured it would be nice to have somewhere to bunk down for the night.”
“Didn’t realize I was dining with miss moneybags. Where’d you get the caps?” He can’t imagine she’s taking bounties, and frankly doesn’t know what other wasteland jobs she’d even remotely qualify for.
“Maximus’s friend, Thaddeus? He’s got a mountain of caps, and he can be pretty generous with them.” She leans in, like she’s sharing a secret. “Pretty sure Maximus told him to be generous, but either way, he was nice enough to give me a tidy sum when I left New Vegas.”
The Ghoul’s tongue is almost loose enough to ask why Maximus isn’t here with her. He’s almost feeling relaxed enough to be relieved that the kid survived the deathclaws that The Ghoul all but fed him to.
“By all means,” The Ghoul says, gesturing for them to stand, “let’s see if you wasted your money.”
She smiles and, for the second time today, leads the way.
They take what’s left of their drinks with them, and the room is shockingly decent. Not exceptionally spacious, but it’s got a bed, a small couch, and even a desk with a chair, as though this establishment is hosting business travelers during the week. No running water, but there’s a basin and a pitcher with clean water by the bed, and another in the washroom. Five-star accommodations compared to what The Ghoul is used to.
Lucy walks around the room, dropping her backpack and her holster at the desk near the door. She takes a deep breath in, and exhales, plopping down on the foot of the bed. Dogmeat, tuckered out from a full day of hunting, waiting, and walking, curls up on the rug under the desk.
“Four walls. Feels nice, right? After being out in the open all day?”
“Sure,” The Ghoul says.
Lucy takes off her boots, wiggling her toes in her socks and sighing contentedly.
“Well,” he says, finishing up the last of his beer and leaving the empty bottle on a table next to the couch, “looks like you’re set up fine here. I’ll go camp out at the bar, let you get some sleep.”
He doesn’t really want to give up his share of the meat that he helped to lug halfway across the desert, but it might be worth it if he can sidestep the complications it comes with. He’s already gotten too soft on her. If he had half a brain he would have butchered the creature right where it was shot, sent the vaultie off with what she could carry, and taken the rest for himself.
“No,” Lucy says, standing, “I mean, wait. I thought you could stay here.”
“This is your room. You don’t gotta share it.”
“Please, you helped with the bighorn! I don’t think I could have actually gotten it all the way here by myself.” She puts a hand on his arm, willing him to turn back with the gentle pressure of her thumb through his duster. “It’s the least I can do.”
The Ghoul knows the pull he feels to stay can’t be trusted. He knows it’s coming from someone who’s useless to him right now–especially now.
“Alright,” he says. He leaves his saddlebag on the floor by her things and, for some reason he does not care to dissect, takes off his hat and shrugs off his duster, leaving them hung on the desk chair.
Lucy studies him, and the soft smile that spreads over her face has so much warmth in it he thinks it might burn him.
She sits down on the small couch, patting the empty space for him to join her.
He does, leaning back and already wishing he still had his hat, or his beer. Anything to do with his hands. She sips her own beer, and then swirls it lazily around the bottle, watching the liquid spin and reform.
“What if the bargain had been different?” she asks.
There’s a stillness that falls over her, and he wonders, very, very briefly, if she brought him here to kill him.
“Lucy,” he answers, “that ain’t a road that needs traveling.”
“If you didn’t know my dad as well as you thought. If he said you had to kill me. Or if he wanted to put one of those chips on my neck and turn me into one of his zombies right in front of you. Would you have done it? For your family?”
He stares at her, because he doesn’t want to avoid the question no matter how much he hates that she asked it.
“Maybe,” he says, his voice weak. It terrifies him, like a deathclaw looming in his periphery, that he doesn’t know for sure. That he’s even less sure now, on the other side of the betrayal he thought he could live with. The one that was almost a kindness to her, in the right light. Even that one had made him wretched.
It terrifies him, because if there’s one thing he won’t do for his family, there might be others. They might bloom, one from the other like thorny desert roses, if he doesn’t tear it out by the root.
“Then I guess we’re pretty lucky he just wanted to send me to my room and make me think about what I’d done,” she says, smiling, like it’s funny, but there’s no humor in her eyes.
“I guess we are,” he says.
“Was it all for show? Helping me? Getting me back from the Legion? Was all of that just to pursue your own goals? Let me think we were friends so you could just sell me off--” she holds up her cadaver finger as illustration “--again?”
The Ghoul sighs. “What do you want me to say?”
Her face pulls in on itself, frustrated. “Why did you come back? Why did you stop him? You could have let me get brainwashed and I wouldn’t have been your problem anymore.”
“God-dammit, Lucy,” he says, almost under his breath. “You let me hang while you dilly-dallied with your rifle. You threw away our last stimpack and left me alone to stitch my own leg back up after one doozy of a radscorpion sting. You impaled me on a fuckin’ pole.”
“I--” she says, and The Ghoul lifts his hand.
“And when we got to New Vegas I still had to drink myself into a stupor to even consider handing you over to your dear daddy. I truly wish it was all for show, sweetheart. I wish when I saw you out in the desert today I had the good sense to walk in the opposite direction. But I didn’t.”
Lucy breathes out, like she’s relieved.
“I could feel it, you know?” she says, shifting closer to him. “After everything, I felt crazy, but I could tell we were really becoming something. We were a good team.”
The Ghoul relaxes, despite himself, a little of her relief catching in him, too.
“You ain’t the worst I’ve ever run with.” That’s a mighty low bar to clear, but it is true.
“Coming from you,” she says, and leans in, closing the space between them to a scant few inches and looking up at him, “that is astoundingly high praise, and I will take it as such.”
“Take it however you like, darlin’”
“In that case,” Lucy says, and closes the space completely, her impossibly soft lips meeting his, dry and scarred and kissing her back for a moment before he registers what’s happening.
His hands are rising to cup her jaw, and he’s not actually certain that they’ll do what he needs them to until she’s being pushed gently away.
Her eyes flutter open, and he lets his hands fall. He waits until she’s looking at him.
“What is this?”
“Do I need to explain? You’ve been around a couple centuries, right? Surely the birds and the bees haven’t changed that much.” She’s trying to keep it light, but there’s a plea dancing nervously in her eyes.The Ghoul’s pulse is heavy in his veins. His body is on alert in a way it usually isn’t unless bullets are flying, like if Lucy touches him again his skin might split open from the sharpness of it.
“Whatever you think I can offer you, I can’t.”
He watches the residual hope drain from her face. Her smile is small and forced, but she’s trying to be polite. She nods.
“What about your tin soldier? He went through hell for you–I’d know; I put the devils in his path. I can’t be your only option for this.”
“Max is great,” she says. The smile that tugs at her mouth is wistful and laced with regret. “He’s wonderful! He's so kind, and brave, and a surprisingly competent lover considering his upbringing. He–” a crease forms between her eyebrows, “--thinks I'm perfect.”
“That boy thinks you hung the moon, sweetheart.”
She laughs, one tired exhale. “It should be nice, right? It should make me feel better? But every time he looks at me it feels like I'm lying to him. Does that even make sense?”
“It does,” says The Ghoul. “It'll fade.” Or you'll become such an ornery insufferable bastard that no one will make the mistake of imagining that you're a decent sort ever again. Whatever comes most natural.
Her being here makes sense, finally. Her finding him. No one in the wasteland better equipped to make her feel better by comparison. No one she could take her boots off with, anyway.
“It doesn't have to be a long-term thing,” she says, and he realizes she’s talking about the two of them again. About him. “If–when you find your family, I won’t get in the way.”
His voice is weak, betraying too much when he asks: “Why do you want this, Lucy?”
She closes her eyes and leans back on the sofa. “Ever since Vegas I--I don’t feel like I’m in my skin. It’s like I’m one of those big metal suits and there’s someone doing a Lucy MacLean impression walking around for me.”
The Ghoul hums.
“I bought some drugs. Didn’t tell Maximus. I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t want him to judge me, or because I was afraid he would want to do them with me.” She tucks her hair behind her ears. “I didn’t, though. Use them.”
He’s not going to give her a gold star for it, but it does make him wonder. “Alright? You didn’t use ‘em.”
“I left instead. I think I might have broken his heart?” Lucy squeezes her eyes shut, like she might have broken her own, too. “But I couldn't stay. I couldn't play house and pretend like I'm the person he thinks I am. I don’t know what happened to the part of me that could. It's so lonely.” She’s struggling to find the words to explain, as though he wouldn’t know that feeling like the sole of his boot.
Finally, she says: “I just want to feel like I’m in my body.”
She stares at him, and it’s the simplest thing in the world.
The remaining objections he had evaporate as he tries to grasp at them. Cooper Howard and The Ghoul, in agreement on this one thing, and he finds himself standing up from the couch. Lucy looks up at him, eyes wide and lips parted. He kneels in front of her and reaches out to put his hands on either side of her face. She stares at him, unspeaking, and he tilts her head down ever so slightly as he leans in, pressing a kiss to her forehead. When he pulls back, her breath has a tremble in it--or maybe that’s his.
“Alright, darlin’”
Lucy takes a moment, heavy like the air before a rainstorm, to process it, and then she slides herself off the couch so that she’s kneeling with him, her legs slotted with his. The Ghoul--or hell, maybe it is Cooper--tips her head to the side and presses his lips to the space under her jaw. She shivers, and she sighs when he curls one hand around the back of her head and trails his mouth down her neck. Her pulse is hot and thudding under his tongue when he swipes it fleetingly over her skin. His ghoul senses being what they are, he only gets a hint of salt, has to imagine the heady human scent of her, but it still feels a little like drugs.
Her hands fist in the front of his shirt, tugging him closer, as if he’s going anywhere. He supposes he can’t blame her for doubting him.
His own hands slide down her body–a body he's maimed and manhandled and dragged and carried and so, so briefly, comforted. It feels like it's made of something else, now, something other than cheap human meat and dumb fuckin’ luck. Touching her feels like walking around with cold fusion in his pocket, back when he only half-knew what that meant.
He lifts her by the back of her thighs and stands, bringing her to the bed and setting her down. She keeps holding his shirt, so he stays close for a while, pressing his mouth to her collarbone, grazing his teeth over her throat. When her hands migrate to curl around his neck, his find their way to the hem of her tank top. He tugs it up, pulls it over her head, separating them for a moment, but the fresh expanse of skin is warm and responsive to The Ghoul's mouth.
The simple cotton bra she wears must be new too, no sign of blood on it, and only the faintest yellowing with sweat, unavoidable. Her chest expands with each breath, and her fingers are curled around his arms, pressing a little insistently into his biceps.
He leans in, speaking low into her ear. “What are you aching for, sweetheart?”
He hadn't been expecting a particular response, but when Lucy looks up at him with her disarming brown eyes and says, “You,” it makes Cooper feel dizzy. It starts in his head and travels all the way down, spreading through his chest and low into his gut.
“I need you here,” she continues, taking one of his hands and bringing it to her face. “I need you to…” she brushes her lips over his knuckles, even opens her mouth, testing one finger against her teeth, but she doesn't bite down. “I need you to want this.”
She says it like it's some great task, some burden thrown over his shoulders--and maybe it is--but it's a burden he's already been carrying. Likely for longer than he realizes.
“You already got that, Lucy,” he says, and she’s searching his eyes.
Whatever she finds, she smiles at him, and it’s an exhausted smile, like the weight was something she’d been carrying too. Her fingers start to work at his shirt buttons, and The--Cooper stops her.
“You sure ‘bout that? You may have grown accustomed to my face, but the rest of me ain’t in any better shape.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she says. “Please, just--let me.”
Cooper relents, and she opens his vest and his shirt, tugging the latter free from his pants. She touches his chest, exploring him up to his shoulders, pushing the collar back. He pulls his arms free from the sleeves, and the vest and shirt are abandoned somewhere off the side of the bed.
Lucy's fingertips are light enough he can barely feel them on his scarred, nerve-damaged hide. It's easier than it ought to be to let the gentle touches fade into the background of the whole impossible scene. His hands move down her waist and start working at the fly of her pants.
She sighs very softly when he descends out of her reach to pull the pants off completely. On his return, he traces his way up, mapping, starting where the top of her sock meets her shin, his lips grazing over the soft hair of her legs. When he reaches the inside of her knee, he opens his mouth to drag his teeth up her thigh, and she shivers through her whole body.
Cooper is fascinated. There’s no other word for it. Watching her, he remembers what it was like to have a body so responsive, as vulnerable to pleasure as it was to pain. He wants to turn her over and over and play her like an instrument, because he can, because it might make her feel better. For a little while, at least. He’s been around long enough to know there’s no version of better that actually sticks around.
He reaches the juncture where leg meets pelvis, and he presses a kiss there. He turns his head to nuzzle into the white cotton briefs she wears, damp with sweat and arousal, and when he inhales he can just make out the scent, earthy and alive and thick, somehow, even though he can only get a dilute sense of it.
Lucy writhes under him, lifting her hips when he tugs her underwear off. He tastes her, naked, the damp forest of her pubic hair parted by his tongue. She whines, high in her throat, and his cock starts to press against his pants.
“You just keep singing for me, sweetheart,” he says, and drags his tongue through her folds, rocking in place over her clit until she’s gasping. He coils his arms around her thighs and pulls her in until she’s pressed up against him, nowhere for either of them to go. He dips his tongue into her, deep into the source of all that desire, and she moans for him.
Cooper’s working her up, her thighs starting to tremble under his hands, and he’s so focused on pushing her the rest of the way that he almost doesn’t notice when she puts her hands on his head and says, “Wait.”
He lets her settle back on the mattress and lifts his head.
“Let me get up,” she says, and Cooper backs off, standing at the foot of the bed.
She doesn’t look rattled, exactly. She’s on-edge, drawing up her knees and swinging them off the bed. When she stands, she says, without looking at him, “I don’t mean to be difficult.”
“When have you ever been anything but, vaultie?”
Her eyes find his again, and some of the tension in Cooper’s spine releases.
She gestures at the bed. “Can you lie down? Please.”
He looks at her for a long moment, but she only clenches her jaw, lifting her chin a centimeter or so.
“Whatever the lady wants,” he says, and sits. Before he scoots back she chimes in again:
“Take off your boots, first.”
He gives her another questioning look, and then nods and does as she asks. Then he slides himself all the way back, reclining propped up on his elbows.
She kneels onto the bed between his knees, and stares at him while her hands work, pinning him in place just as surely as twelve feet of steel through his middle. She opens his pants without fanfare, tugging them down his hips and shuffling off the bed to remove them completely. Staring down at Cooper, naked as the day he was born and considerably worse for wear, she licks her lips.
His dick, already half hard, twitches to life under her gaze, and her eyes dart to it for a second before she’s looking at him again. If she’s bothered by the look of it, scarred and mottled as the rest of him, she doesn’t show it. Whatever this is, she’s still hungry for it.
Crawling back onto the bed, Lucy straddles him, her wet sex resting softly over his dick. She gives it one experimental grind, and Cooper groans. He swells against her, and she stills, although she wants to chase the feeling. He can see it in the way her eyes squeeze shut for a moment, steeling herself against it.
Her hands travel up his stomach and his chest, lingering under his chin. Lucy’s eyes narrow, pondering for a long moment before she lifts her hand, and she slaps him hard across the face.
There’s a moment of silence, and then a single bark of laughter erupts from his chest.
“What in the hell was that for?” His cheek stings, fading rings of harmless pain radiating from the epicenter in the hollow under his cheekbone.
“For not telling me the plan in Vegas. Because I could have helped you, if you would have let me. Things could have gone differently. And for letting me think I could trust you, and then, when I finally understood I couldn't, you came back from the fudging dead and didn’t even let me have that certainty.” There’s real hurt behind her anger, and he recognizes that too. It’s an endlessly punishing thing, putting your trust in someone else.
“That’s two things. Maybe more, depending how you count it up.”
“What’s your point?”
“Sounds like I earned another slap, is all.”
Lucy looks at him like he grew another head.
“You want me to hit you again?”
“I want you to get whatever it is that’s tearing you up out of your system. You gotta purge that shit or it’ll eat you up, sure as a gulper. It’s alright, I’m a big boy. I can take it.”
“Why would you want that?”
The corner of his mouth tugs up, and he lets his head fall back on the pillows. “Don’t you worry about me.”
He rubs his hands over the expanse of thigh above her knees, her skin so smooth it almost feels like nothing against his calloused palms. She's searching his face again, looking for all the world like she wants to argue with him, but holding her tongue.
She slaps him again, same cheek. There's not as much bite in this one, like she's lost some of her resolve, but it ain't a little love tap either.
“That's it, sweetheart.”
Her brow furrows, and she hits him again, other cheek this time. His dick throbs where it's pinned between them.
“You're getting off on this,” she says, and shifts her hips, giving him just a touch of friction before she settles again.
“Don't act so surprised, darlin’.” He can't help grinding himself up against her, if only to hear the half-stifled sigh it coaxes out of her. “I appreciate a little honesty.”
“Can you even feel it? Does it even hurt, or do you just turn it off like you turn off caring about anyone but yourself?”
“Oh, I feel it,” he says. “My hide's a little tougher than yours, but it still stings. Do it a few more times and I’ll turn red on you, like a smacked bottom. You'll get to see me blush.”
She flinches, barely noticeable, and Cooper--even if he feels more like The Ghoul now--thinks it has more to do with how she felt about it than what he actually said.
When her face settles, it's with a steely resolve that goes straight to his cock.
She hits him three times in rapid succession and, when the shock fades, the burn blooms sweetly in his cheek. She watches the red flush, undoubtedly faint under the surface of his deadened skin, begin to rise, and brushes her thumb over it.
“You like the look of that, don't ya?”
“Makes you look like you have shame,” she says, her fingers on his chin, tilting his face to see it better in the lamp light.
“I don’t know,” he says, sliding his hands up to her hips and holding her fast to him, the wet slide of her folds torturous and perfect over his cock. She whines, like it’s taking some amount of strength for her to keep from coming on him just like this. “Might need a matching set to sell a farce like that.”
She smiles at him a little helplessly, and gives it to him.
He loses count this time, just lets her smack him until she gets the color she wants in his cheeks, and then maybe another couple more for good measure. By the end of it they’re both panting, and he can’t contain the smile that splits across his mouth. It makes his face feel hotter.
“Feelin’ better, darlin’?”
She laughs, soft and breathless. “I have no idea.” She says it with a surprised relief that makes Cooper want to pull her down and kiss her.
“Why would you let me do that?” she asks, saving him from himself. Her own smile starts to fade. “What if I didn’t stop at slapping you? What if I got up and grabbed my gun?”
“Well,” Cooper says, “then I’d stop you, sweetheart. But I don’t think you’re gonna shoot me.”
“Why?” Her voice cracks when she asks it. “I have shot a lot of people.”
She looks to the side, like she can’t meet his eyes, and blinks at nothing.
“For one, I don’t intend on doing anything to piss you off quite that bad this evening.”
She laughs, even if it sounds more like a thwarted sob.
“And because you might be a little cracked right now, but you ain’t completely off your rocker. I can spot an itchy trigger finger, and I can spot a death wish, and I don’t think you’ve got either at the moment. Just looking for a little something to take the edge off. Who doesn’t fuckin’ need that from time to time?”
Lucy takes a breath, steadier this time, and lets it out.
“Thank you,” she says, just loud enough to hear, and then she leans forward, her face next to his. She kisses him on one cheek, then the other, and Cooper is relieved until she presses her lips to his. He makes a sound he isn’t proud of, and lets her. Her lips part on his, a tease of her tongue on the closed seam of his mouth, and he tips her chin up, kissing the column of her throat instead. She sighs and moves her hips again, the angle less than ideal, but sending sparks of interest back into his groin all the same.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Cooper says. “We got unfinished business.”
Face pressed into the curve of his neck, Lucy asks, “What would that be?”
“Before I was so rudely interrupted, I do believe I was about to make you come on my mouth.”
“Yeah?” She says, and grinds down on him.
“Mmhmm,” Cooper hums, “I think you outta get up here.”
“Who says I care what you think?” Lucy asks, but she’s already crawling her way up his body, stopping when her knees reach his armpits. With a little maneuvering, he’s got her kneeling on the pillow, weight planted on either side of his head. She holds onto the headboard and looks down at him with some trepidation.
“Don’t be scared. You just sit right down.”
She lowers herself on him, but she’s cautious. He has to crane his neck up to drag his tongue over her flesh with any force. He gives her one good swipe, and then lets his head rest on the pillow, licking her with light, teasing passes of his tongue that glance just off her clit.
She makes a frustrated sound, and shifts above him, impatient.
He curls his arms around her thighs again, but he doesn’t tug her forward. He lets her writhe above him until, finally, she lets herself fall the final few inches, grinding herself down on his open mouth.
Cooper groans against her, moving his tongue firm and fast over her clit, and Lucy is gasping already. One of her hands reaches down to cradle his head as she rides his face, her fingers pressing into his scalp. Her soft inner thighs blanket his cheeks, still raw from the beating they took. She’s moving on him, more and more forcefully until all he can do is keep his tongue out for her, a tool to be used. Cooper basks in the simplicity of it: his body being a purposeful thing, not yet entirely broken down, still capable of unbloody feats. It doesn’t take much of that before she’s shaking all around him again, and he does tug her close, sucking at her clit with a penitent’s desperate fervor.
When the orgasm finally crests, it’s with her shout ringing in his ears and a fresh wave of arousal, warm and slick on his tongue. The taste of her is faint but unmistakable, sharp and distilled physical need. She tenses, like she’s been struck, and then her strings are all cut at once. She folds in on herself, trembling as she slides off his face and perches briefly on his chest.
Untangling her legs from over his shoulders, Lucy maneuvers back down his body. Straddling his waist, she peels her bra off over her head, and Cooper barely has time to appreciate it because she bends down to kiss him, tongue licking into his open mouth, smearing her face with her own wetness. He wishes he possessed the resolve to resist it, to deflect her again, and perhaps preserve some thin gossamer of distance, but his traitorous hands are cupping her jaw and holding her as he kisses her back.
His fool heart--what’s left of it--stutters when she finally breaks the kiss. Her pupils are wide, exhilaration or desire dancing in them, and she reaches down between their bodies, taking his cock in her hand and stroking it as she stares up at his face. It feels like a spear of need straight up through his gut, and his head falls back.
“Fuck, Lucy,” he murmurs, and he’s thrusting up into her hand.
“Working on it,” she says, and she’s stopped stroking because she’s lining him up with her entrance. She sinks down on him, and even with the radiation damage to his nerve-endings, she feels like heaven. So tight around the girth of him that he can't breath at first, and so wet there's next to no resistance as he sinks in to the hilt. Her face falls into a sort of delirious relief, like being filled up by him is a lungful of fresh air after too long without breath.
Lucy rocks her hips in place, at first. He’s buried deep inside her, but the movements are shallow and leisurely. She coos like a dove, sweet and almost mournful, and Cooper thinks she might be trying to torture him.
He draws his rough hands over the smooth planes of her middle, the dip of her waist dragging him in like gravity. His fingers travel up the divot in the middle of her chest formed by the joining of her ribs, and he's cupping her breasts, impossibly soft, like their existence--her existence--is a contradiction to his own physical reality. He brushes his thumb over one dark nipple, and Lucy leans into him. He pinches it, and she grinds down harder onto him.
“You want it bad, don't you, sweet thing?” Cooper thrusts what little he can while they're already locked together so tight, driving himself just that little bit deeper. “You want me to fuck you ‘til all that jagged shit in your brain comes loose?”
“Yes,” Lucy gasps, “please,” and it's so nakedly pleading it puts Cooper's hackles up as much as it makes his dick throb. He realizes the absurdity, worrying about her recklessly trusting him when they've already come this far, but it's an instinct beaten into him by centuries: trust is a dangerous luxury. If she’ll trust him, she might trust anyone. He knows she has a decent head on her shoulders when she wants to, despite the coddled idiocy of a vault upbringing, but this isn't like watching her charge an onslaught of feral ghouls. Watching her walk unguarded into this particular kind of peril feels too much like reaching out to touch a hot stove with his own hand.
But it’s too late to save her from it now. Even The Ghoul doesn't have it in him to break her heart again. Not when he’s the one who let her get so close in the first place.
Cooper wraps his arms around her and turns them so she’s on her back. Lucy is peering back up at him, heavy-lidded, her mouth slightly open. Cooper stays close, rocking himself into her as he takes one lovely peaked nipple into his mouth. Lucy clutches at him, her fingers pressing bruises that won't show into his shoulders, his arms, the back of his head.
He can’t resist anymore, and she clearly doesn’t want him to, so Cooper takes her by the waist and pulls out until only the head of his cock is still inside her. In one snap of coiled motion he buries himself in her again, and Lucy gifts him a startled moan. He fucks her with deep, forceful thrusts that rattle the bedframe against the wall, and her body takes it with the greediness of a flower for sunshine.
Every part of her is gorgeous: the sheen of sweat on her thighs, the flexing of her abdomen as she meets his thrusts, the smattering of freckles that dot her breasts--and Cooper can’t stop looking at her face. It’s a striking face, has been since their first meeting, but it’s a spell cast on him now. She’s drunk on it, he thinks, and that’s close, but not quite it. Out of her mind is more like it. She only exists right here, and as he thinks it, the rest falls away for him, too.
It doesn’t last forever, because nothing so sweet ever does, but it’s a respite all the same. When reality creeps back in, it's not so bad. He’s still fucking her, his thumb drawing circles over her clit. Her hips are lifted completely off the bed under her own power, straining for the release he’s working to give her.
“That's it, sweetheart,” Cooper says, “it's right there. All you gotta do is take it.”
He sees it in her face, just a moment before the rest of her body: the wrinkle between her eyebrows deepening, the grimace just before her mouth goes slack. Her cunt clenches around him, and Lucy cries out, full-throated and animal.
When she stops gasping, Cooper presses his lips to hers, swallowing the last trickle of moans and whimpers as she comes down. His last few thrusts are mindless, erratic things before he follows her over the same precipice and spills into her. It feels like he's being hollowed out, and he keeps kissing Lucy through it.
Eventually, the kisses start to lose their form, exhaustion taking its toll, and Cooper rolls off her. Lucy’s fingers brush with his where they rest on the bedspread, and he doesn’t shy away from it.
Lying there, Cooper is detached from time. His head is swimming with something that feels alarmingly similar to peace, and he can't quite bring himself to push it away. He can't convince himself that he should.
Lucy, of course, breaks through the reverie.
“I have a question that might be extremely silly,” she says, and turns to face him, leaning on her elbow. Cooper admires the curve of her breasts at this new angle.
“Shoot,” he says, feeling agreeable.
“Are you Cooper Howard?”
He squints up at the ceiling.
“You want an autograph?”
“Holy moley,” she says, mostly to herself. “I guess my life wasn’t weird enough.” If she has further thoughts about it, she doesn't speak them aloud.
They do eventually get out of bed and wash up. Cooper slips back into his pants and shirt, leaving the latter unbuttoned. Lucy puts on a fresh tank top and briefs from her pack. She washes the underclothes she'd been wearing in the restroom basin, and hangs them up on the naked shower curtain rod. It tugs at some long slack string in his chest, watching her tend to the mundane tasks of living.
He wonders, for just a moment, if they might stay here another day or two. Maybe he'd shell out the caps to get them both a bath, actually make a dent in the build up of wasteland grime.
Cooper scrubs his hands over his face. Fuck.
“So, vaultie,” he says, “where you headed off to?”
“Oh, I guess I didn't mention it,” she says, and sits next to him on the bed. “Turns out my dad’s evil brain chip experiment was, unfortunately, pretty successful, and he wasn't just working on it for himself, or even Vault-Tec. There seems to be another player, and I'm going to figure out who they are and what they want.”
Her particular turn of phrase catches on his brain like a cactus needle. God-dammit.
“And where's that leading you?”
“The great state of Colorado! Which, I admit, is a pretty big haystack to go searching for a highly resourced secret organization of a needle, but I might have some leads, and I’m confident that I can collect more intel on the way.”
Cooper closes his eyes. The universe has always had a sense of humor, but there are times he genuinely believes it takes a certain pleasure in slapping him, specifically, right in the dick.
“Feel free to tell me how foolhardy and pointless my mission is. I’m very determined and I won’t be dissuaded,” Lucy says.
Cooper stands up and makes his way to the desk by the door. He picks up his saddlebag, rifling through it for a few seconds before he takes out the piece of cardstock he’d been searching for. He takes it back to the bed and drops it in front of her. She picks it up, and the corners of her lips turn up as she examines the postcard.
“Don’t suppose you’re in the market for a traveling companion?” Cooper says.
For better or worse, she smiles at him.
—
In the morning, Lucy wakes him up with a kiss on the cheek. When he opens his eyes, she’s sitting on the bed next to him with two mugs in her hands. She hands one to him.
“They have real coffee in the cafe outside,” she says, “and breakfast, but I wasn’t sure what you would want.”
He sits up and takes the mug. He only gets a faint whiff of the coffee, but the steam feels nice on his dry nasal cavity.
“Thanks, darlin’,” he says, and it comes so easy that Cooper feels like he’s being dragged out to sea.
“Thank you,” Lucy says, “for last night.”
Cooper sips at his coffee. “Anytime.”
Lucy raises her eyebrows at him. “Really? Because, honestly, I’ve been thinking about it all morning and--”
Cooper raises his hand. “Breakfast first.” He’s trying to keep his head clear for a little while, at least.
She sighs, but manages to contain her disappointment. Cooper wonders what he’s gotten himself into. They sip their beverages for a few amicable minutes until he finally asks the question he’s been pondering.
“How did you get pointed at Colorado, exactly?”
“Oh!” Lucy says, and sets her mug down on the nightstand. She gets up and digs through her backpack, pulling out a pip-boy. He hadn’t actually thought about how different she looked without the usual silhouette on her arm, but when she slips it back on it feels like time blurs for a moment.
She activates it, and a familiar green face blinks to life.
“Greetings, Mr. Howard,” the overly friendly voice says through the tinny speakers.
“What the fuck, House?”
“How goes your journey, old chum? Found the family yet?”
Lucy winces and clicks it off, lowering her arm. “I wasn’t sure how much I could trust him, but he said you might be out this way, too, and--here you are.”
Cooper rubs his forehead. “Do me a favor and don’t turn him back on until I’ve got some food in my belly.”
“Deal,” she says. “After breakfast… you’ll probably think it’s a waste of caps, but I’m going to see if they’ll bring us some hot water for the bath. If you’d like to join me.”
“Sure, sweetheart,” Cooper says. “Why not?”
—