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Three weeks after he'd disappeared, the Courier stumbled through the doors of the Lucky 38 with a satchel full of gold bars and a whole new batch of vicious scars scattered across his bruised and bloodied body.
One of the benefits of having a bootlicking AI living in the walls of the casino was that the Courier's people always got up-to-date, if obnoxiously delivered, information about the comings and goings in the city. (It was a little terrifying if Arcade thought about it too long. Mostly he tried not to.) This time around it meant Arcade had just enough warning to grab a case of bandages, Med-X, and some disinfectant before the suite door chimed a welcome.
The Courier took a few steps inside, swayed, and all but collapsed on Arcade's lap.
"Whoa, hey," he said, grabbing the Courier as best he could to help guide him to the floor. "Take it easy, all right?"
He'd been ready to get mad when the Courier walked through the door—three weeks, when the situation here was already so delicate, without telling anyone, without telling Arcade—but it was impossible to stay angry at someone who looked this beat-up. Like death warmed over.
Later, he could chew him out for wandering off on his own again. The Courier needed a doctor, and for all Arcade was more comfortable with plants and paperwork he was the only option handy right now.
"Let's get you out of that coat, okay? I need to see what I'm working with here."
A small smile pulled at the corner of the Courier's cracked lips. "…I see how it is," he said. His voice sounded raspy, but at least he was lucid. "Can't even wait for me to get through the door."
Arcade couldn't tell whether he more wanted to punch the Courier or kiss him. Neither was a smart option, considering the amount of dried blood smeared on his face, so instead he settled for rolling his eyes. "Oh, yes, nothing gets me hot and bothered like a man with a fat lip and—one broken finger? Two?"
The Courier groaned. "Four, I think. Three on the left hand."
"Fuck," Arcade said.
Funny. His hands were shaking.
He took a deep breath to steady himself before continuing. "Okay, we definitely need to get these off, then. I want you thoroughly disinfected before I start pumping you full of stimpaks."
"Cut it off, then," the Courier said. "Easier that way. Got a knife on my belt." He paused a moment, thinking something over, then added, "Don't grab the one with the glowy-looking blade."
Arcade nodded, then reached for the Courier's belt and—carefully avoiding the one that was giving off an alarming amount of heat—pulled a knife out of its makeshift rope and leather sheath.
"Where did you even get this?" he asked as he began to cut through the Courier's clothes. The knife was incredible, sliding through leather and layers of metal armor both like they were no thicker than paper, but the stench was something else. "Smells like rotting corpses and acid."
"Heh. Yeah. Funny story." the Courier groaned. "I am going to owe Veronica such an apology."
Maybe scratch the lucid, then. Arcade worked his way down the Courier's body, glancing back at his face again and again to make sure he wasn't about to have a seizure with a knife pressed up against his skin, until finally he'd peeled the clothes off the Courier's torso like the hide off a mole rat. Arms and legs came easier—the fabric there was already shredded and acid-bitten. It wasn't long before he could finally get a proper look.
This wasn't how he hoped things would go. He'd imagined a reunion with a lot more yelling and then, hopefully, some really excellent make-up sex.
Arcade pulled the clothes into a heap and tried to pull them a bit farther from the Courier's prone form, only to come to a sudden stop.
"What's in your bag?" Arcade asked. The little satchel weighed more than should have been possible. the Courier loved to carry around guns and trinkets and all sorts of strange souvenirs, but he'd never been this bad about it.
The Courier laughed and gestured weakly for Arcade to take a look.
Well. Might as well. Not like he had any important life-saving medical treatment to attend to. No, clearly what the Courier really needed was for someone to admire his loot.
The sooner he got things out of the way, the sooner he could properly disinfect the wounds. He wearily pried open the top flap of the bag as he dragged it away across the floow. (How the Courier had carried it, he'd never know. All those implants, maybe, or possibly he just had some actual proper muscle on his frame, unlike Arcade.)
"If this is another mini-nuke launcher, I'm going to be… what."
Inside the bag, filling it almost to bursting, was bar upon bar of what looked very much like solid gold.
"Tell me that's not real."
"Like I said. Funny story. Figure it'll be good for bargaining, right? Against people who don't already want our electricity, anyway."
Arcade swore under his breath. With this kind of caps, you could—well, buy the loyalty of just about any group inside or outside of the Strip, for one. (Probably not including the Legion, very possibly including the NCR. At the least you could bribe enough top officials that it would mean basically the same thing.)
The Strip had value. Yes Man had value. Arcade was no diplomatic expert, but even so he could see that this was an entirely different kind of value. Discreet. Moveable. Quite possibly something that could turn the tide of this slow-brewing war.
And the Courier had gone out and very nearly sacrificed his life for it.
Oh, he was angry. Arcade took a breath, took another, waited for the sudden tension to ease. There was a pit of nausea in his stomach and his heart had taken up a double-time beat. He'd known from the beginning he was throwing himself into a world of danger just because a stranger batted his eyes real nice. He'd known that the Courier liked trouble, liked risks. Arcade wasn't stupid. But this…
They'd been near-constant traveling companions ever since that day. It was one thing when they got into danger together. It was entirely different when Arcade wasn't there to try and protect him.
"Just so you know," Arcade said, "I'm going to shout at you a lot once you're feeling better."
"Mmm. Thanks for the warning. I'll be looking forward to it."
Field medicine was easy if you had stimpaks and a strong stomach. Fighting deathclaws and super mutants had done a lot for Arcade's resolve, and so it was simple enough to ignore the sharp hisses of pain as he extended each of the Courier's broken fingers in turn. An injection at the knuckle when the bones were in place, and chances were he'd heal without losing range of movement in his hands.
The rest of him was more difficult. You couldn't just jam a stimpak in wherever you felt like it when it came to bodily injuries, or, at least, you couldn't if you wanted to avoid a massive infection. The skin would happily close up right around the dirt and bacteria. Arcade fretted over it a moment, wondering whether he could pull out some flares and start a fire for boiling water here on the Lucky 38's floor, before it hit him like a runaway Protectron how stupid he was being.
"Come on," he said. He pushed himself to his feet, then pulled the Courier up alongside him as carefully as he could. "Let's get you into the shower."
The Courier moaned in pain, falling against Arcade's side as he struggled to stay standing. "Yes Man's going to be furious. Aren't you?"
With a cheerful chime from the speakers overhead, a voice cut in. "Absolutely not! What's a little filth between friends, after all? Cleaning caked-in blood and dirt out of our luxury accommodations will help teach me the value of hard work, so really I should be thanking you."
"So that's a yes, then," the Courier laughed.
Arcade shuddered. Sometimes he could almost forget a machine with a dangerous personality disorder was watching their every move here.
"Well, I think you'll get over a grudge faster than you'll get over gangrene." Arcade took a slow, shuffling step forward, helping the Courier move with him as he walked.
One step. Another. Again and again. Until he moved just right to make the Courier's blood-caked twists slide off the back of his neck and reveals a patch of clear skin.
Arcade froze. He must've been silent too long, because the Courier twisted his head to try and look at him. "You okay?"
"Is…" He swallowed, then reached out with the hand not currently holding the Courier upright to not-quite-touch the exposed patch of skin. "Is this?"
Around the back of the Courier's neck, there was now a perfect horizontal stripe of red against brown, a patch of raw skin scabbed-over but still oozing in places. It disappeared into his hair on either side. Arcade had a feeling it went all the way around.
He'd seen this sort of scar before, though not often: neat-edged circles where the skin had been rubbed away. Mostly on corpses. Mostly on the necks of abandoned Legion slaves. Explosive collars left a very distinctive mark, even when they didn't manage to actually explode.
"Oh," the Courier said, "yeah. That part wasn't as funny."
Arcade pulled the Courier in closer, and for a moment he thought, I'll kill whoever did this. He couldn't have if he wanted to—not when the Courier had certainly killed them already. He was thorough that way.
It was a nice thought, though. Better than thinking about how he was helpless to do anything except try and clean things up afterwards.
Another stretch of silence, and then the Courier's arms lifted, shaking, to hold Arcade in return. "Arcade. Thanks."
"For what?"
"Everything."
Arcade needed to get him cleaned up soon, so he could finally kiss him again. "You know," he said, "keep buttering me up and I might give you a discount on my doctor's fees."
"Hmmm. Perfect doctor."
"Good start."
"Handsome."
"Mm-hmm."
"Glasses."
Arcade snorted. "I hardly think that one counts as a compliment."
"It does!" the Courier protested. "They look good on you."
"Half points, then."
Step by step, slower as could be, the Courier leaning on Arcade as they trailed blood and dirt and who knew what else across the floor, they made their way across the room.