Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“If I die out here, you get dibs on all my stuff. All of it. Which basically totals up to a pair of shades and a broken Pipfall holotape.” Deacon ground out, leaning heavily on Ruby’s shoulders as the duo limped through the thick mists of the Far Harbor mountains. His left arm was wrapped protectively around his waist, pressed hard against the enormous black patch of blood on his jacket. When he had initially been swiped at by a yao guai, its claws digging deep into his side, he brushed it off and told Ruby to use the stimpack on herself. But it was an hour later and they still had another 30 minutes of slow walking ahead of them: and Deacon was losing a lot of blood, fast. Their situation was looking worse by the minute.

“Oh suck it up, Deac. It’s not that bad.” Ruby replied, doing everything in her power to keep the strain out of her voice from supporting most of his weight. It was a bad lie, but it was better than the truth. With a grunt she hauled them both over a large fallen tree in the middle of a bridge, nearly losing her grip on her partner in the process. Deacon let out as disgruntled noise of pain as his broken ribs and open wound were jostled.

He never thought he’d die here , with her of all people.

Ruby was short and stocky, with brown skin and an untidy ponytail of warm black hair. Deacon had known this for three years now: he had watched her clamber, shaking like a leaf, off of the vault platform when she first emerged from cryogenic sleep. “A woman out of time,” his dead-drop week-later report to the Railroad read, “may be useful w/ pre-war knowledge. Veteran. Will continue to monitor.” He had observed from the shadows of blown-out houses and buildings as she tottered off towards Concord, and used the time she was gone to creep into the house she went into as soon as she got to Sanctuary. It was oddly orderly; he guessed that was thanks to the bucket of bolts mr. handy that had floated away with her. Deacon ran his fingers across dusty pictures that hung, slanted and faded, on the walls. A photo of Ruby, serious-faced and saluting in old-world navy soldier fatigues. A snapshot of what was presumably her as a child with her mother and father on a boat, each holding a large fish with proud grins. A smaller photo on a dusty desk of her and a strange man, a chubby baby swaddled in his arms. Deacon carefully slipped this one from its frame, checking the back for a description. Me and my brother + his sweet little boy Shaun. Oct. 2nd 2077. The railroad spy brushed a thumb over the face of the giggling baby: he and Ruby’s brother were long gone now, dust in the wind somewhere. The clatter of footsteps got louder and louder outside, and Deacon barely had enough time to rifle through the bedroom desk and grab a handful of letter and documents before Ruby returned, looking exhausted and distant, a rag-tag group of wasteland survivors following her.

Over the next few weeks, Deacon learned that she had saved the last remaining minuteman from ultimate demise. He watched from afar as she and the other strangers patched up and rebuilt a few of the houses, broke and seeded the coarse and dusty dirt, and jury-rigged a lawnmower and a machine gun to make some sort of turret that rattled and swiveled side-to-side. He should have been impressed with her tenacity and her ability to adapt to this new world, especially considering what he had read in the documents he had taken: she’d served five years in the navy in active combat duty, then went back to school for five years to earn a bachelors in oceanography. But he wasn’t impressed. He was concerned. She didn’t spend most of her time working, or even talking to anyone: hell, she didn’t even leave Sanctuary. For eight months she did little but quietly cry in her destroyed house, hardheartedly help with weeding the makeshift farm, or shakily shoot (and miss) the various mutated bugs that wandered her way before running in the opposite direction. She seemed… broken. Hollow. Traumatized and fearful of the world in a way that Deacon had only seen in junkies dying in the streets, and synths fresh out of the institute with a courser sniffing their trail. He ended up checking up on her less and less as time went by, only stopping in Sanctuary as a wandering soul looking for a bed to sleep in or a job to work every month or so. She was always there, sitting out on a porch and looking at nothing in particular, or busying herself with an inane and useless task.

After two more months had passed, Deacon came back again, only to discover that Ruby was long gone: she’d been MIA for at least a month now. For all he could gather from the less-than-chatty settlers, they’d last seen her talking intently with Preston for a few hours before she packed up a backpack and started walking east. Well , Deacon thought to himself, at least that takes care of that . She was off his radar and officially no longer his problem. If she was still the trauma-torn and hollow woman he had last seen, she would probably be dead within a week. It’s weird, though , he couldn’t help but admit to himself as he walked away from sanctuary’s little community, I’m almost disappointed .

“How’s our frozen soldier?” Des asked as he ambled down the church catacomb steps, a thin wisp of smoke curling from her lit cigarette.

“Gone.” He replied with a neutral shrug. “And she’s probably not coming back.”

She came back.

After two years, Deacon had almost forgotten about her. The institute had gotten more active as of late, sending out more Gen ones and more coursers to recover escapees, and abducting more people in a month then they usually did in a year. Then one night as the spy was snapping on his Diamond City guard armor, prepping for a mission, Tom raised the alarm.

“Oh man, oh shit guys you’re gonna wanna see this!” He said loudly, staring at the terminal monitor he’d rigged to a commonwealth camera, “Someone’s walking the trail!”

The few off-duty members crowded around the tinkerer’s desk, watching as he switched from camera to camera, following the shadow-cloaked figure as they punched, shot, and bashed their way through ghouls and mutants, making a beeline for the church. As they pushed open the rotting wood door, Desdemona made the call to assemble behind the ring puzzle, guns ready. Deacon leaned on the wall just out of sight, listening with baited breath with the rest of the crew in darkness at the steady, scrape, scrape, scraaaaaaape , of the puzzle unlocking. Lights flooded the room as Desdemona halted the figure with her imposing voice and practiced speech.

“I’m no threat.” A warm feminine voice said.

“That’s up to us to decide.” Desdemona replied.

That ’s my cue . Deacon ambled around the bend, a laid-back comment ready on his tongue, and pulled up short, wide-eyed at the woman standing at the opposite end of the room. It was Ruby. Her hair was longer, her skin was wind-burnt and damaged, and her eyes were brighter, but it was unmistakably the same woman that crawled out of the vault like a scared fawn nearly two and a half years ago.

Ruby took the silent lull in conversation as an opportunity. She beamed, resting her shotgun on her shoulder. “Hi Desdemona. I’m Ruby Hernandez, and I’m here to help. You’re welcome in advance.”

Deacon was taller than Ruby by a fair few inches, so carrying him over her shoulders like a fireman was no small feat. But still she did it, clutching him with white knuckles, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other without her spine collapsing, running on nothing but adrenaline. They were feet away from the far harbor docks, feet . She had discarded their packs along the trail-side a long time ago; it was dead weight they could afford to lose.

Ruby made a choked noise, left leg nearly buckling. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, her mouth contorted in a pained snarl. Deacon had passed out fifteen minutes ago from blood loss, and if she didn’t get help now … she didn’t want to think about what would happen.God, she didn’t want him to die. She liked him too fucking much .

“Stay with me bud,” She grunted, holding Deacon’s limp wrist like a vice, “Stay with me.”

After what felt like years of marching through the cold and unforgiving mists, the gates of the hull finally came into view. Ruby could have collapsed in relief. “Captain!” She shouted into the mist, voice a rasping whisper. She swallowed hard and tried again, acutely aware of the ice-cold blood dripping down her shoulder. “We need help! Get a doctor! Captain!”

A single harborman, bundled up and sitting on the hull walkway, shot to his feet in alarm. After a few seconds of squinting into the fog, he turned around, shouting at the docksmen to winch open the hull, yelling for medical assistance. The massive gates creaked open with painful slowness and a swarm of people came rushing out towards Ruby. Immediately hands were on Deacon, grabbing him, supporting his weight and hauling him towards Teddy’s emergency cot. As soon as the burden was off of her, Ruby collapsed onto the icy ground, breathing hard through chapped lips. A hand was extended towards her and she batted it away, stumbling to her feet and doggedly following the troupe of people rushing Deacon to the doctor. She got there quickly, ducking into the dim room just as Teddy was ripping off the spy’s jacket and cutting away the shirt stuck to his wound. He was pale and unconscious, but he was breathing.

“Is he alright? Is he okay? Teddy, fucking talk to me.” Ruby’s words came out in a jumble as she watched the harbor doctor work. He gently prodded Deacon’s ribs, feeling the fractures along the edges of the deep oozing wound.

“Get me an O-type blood bag, we’re going to transfuse.” He replied coldly. Ruby almost sprinted to the fridge, wheeling the IV and attached bag over with shaking arms. She watched in silence as the doctor rigged up the tube and the needle and inserted it into Deacon’s arm. Only then, after the blood was flowing and the ribs had been set, did he dig the thick needle of stimpack into the base of Deacon’s neck. He went through three full syringes before he sat back on his stool, a bit of the tension draining from his brow.

“Christ, you really know how to cut it close, don’t you mainlander?” He said harshly after a few moments of silence. With a sigh, he stood up. “He’ll be fine. He just needs to rest-” Teddy was interrupted as Ruby pulled him into a spine-crushing hug with a relieved exhale. He stood there, uncomfortable and unblinking, until she released him. “... But if you arrived ten minutes later, I’d be covering him in a white sheet.”

“Yeah.” Ruby said, wiping the sweat from her brow with the sleeve of her thick knitted sweater, “Yeah. I know. Thanks so much, Teddy. Next time you’re at the Last Plank, all your drinks are on me.” She pushed a bag of caps into his hands before moving him aside to sit on the stool next to Deacon. His shades were still on, despite him being slack-jawed, passed out, and spattered with his own blood. Good , Ruby thought, pushing them a bit further up his nose, it’s a dignity the lovable dumbass deserves.

“He’ll be out for a good while.” Teddy said awkwardly from the doorway. Ruby nodded in understanding and the stressed doctor left the two railroad agents alone in the private back corner of the building. As soon as she was sure he was gone, Ruby’s shoulders drooped and she let out an exhausted groan, running a dirty hand down her face. Fuck . That was too close. Too close to Deacon being dead, and her losing her best friend. They should have restocked their medical supplies before they left. But she insisted they didn’t need to. She got cocky. Never get cocky on the island, she chastised herself scathingly, it’ll kill you dead. Her legs started to quake. The painful effect of carrying a man bigger than she was was starting to set in.

Ruby stayed by Deacon’s side for a good half-hour before the captain walked in, checking up on her. They chatted quickly for a while before agreeing to go retrieve the bags Ruby left on the trail. She had gone out to get some battery converters from the Cove tannery in the first place, and while they weren’t worth Deacon’s life, they would go a long way in refining Far Harbor’s on-deck generators. Ruby cocked her shotgun, cast one last look at her friend, and followed the captain out into the mists. They returned an hour later as the sun was setting, smiling and covered in gulper organs, holding a backpack each.

“I gotta say, I miss hunting.” Captain Avery admitting with a wry grin as they passed the converters off to Mariner. “There’s so much to do on the docks, I hardly have the time to sleep, let alone wander. What i’d give to just amble through the mists for one day, gun in hand.”

“I’m sure you'd be changing your tune when you’re high-tailing it out of the treeline with a crawler hot on your heels.” Ruby quipped as they moseyed back to the makeshift hospital.

Captain Avery laughed. “Maybe, maybe not. I may be getting on in years, but that doesn’t mean my gun don’t shoot just as well as it used to.”

“Hey now, that’s my line.” A sarcastic voice floated through the doorway of the medical room; Deacon was up and clearly doing fine.

Ruby rolled her eyes as warmth blossomed in her chest. She waved the captain goodnight before walking into the dim room. “Oh god,” She said in mock horror, leaning against the wall and grinning at the spy, “He’s awake and he’s making innuendos. Not even the lord can save us now.”

“Innuendo? More like in-YOUR-endo.” Even in the half-darkness, Deacon's glasses gleamed. Ruby knew there was a shit-eating grin lurking in the shadows. 

Ruby grimaced. “Low-hanging fruit, Deac.”

Deacon cackled as his friend moved to sit down next to him. He pulled himself up higher, leaning against the cold concrete wall. “Bet you regret saving my ass now, huh? I’m a certified goddamn menace. I got a lot more where that came from.”

“Yeah, yeah, funnyman.” Ruby grumbled, the exhaustion of the past few hours catching up to her. She stretched, standing and offering a hand to Deacon, who was slowly pulling his jacket back on over his ripped shirt, wincing. “Let’s get you home.”

The pair slowly ambled their way back to Longfellow’s Island in the cool evening fog. Deacon occasionally slipped on an algae covered rock or a bit of sea-slick seaweed, still dizzy from blood loss. The gentle hum of the condensers and the puttering generator were welcome noises as they stomped up the gravelly shore.

“Abuelito, we’re home!” Ruby called as they both limped past Longfellow’s house to the barn in the far back; it was no longer a toolshed, instead having been stripped of its various machines and transformed into a cozy little house with its own generator and bathroom. Longfellow, not even bothering to open the door, replied with a grumpy old man sound as the lights inside his cabin pointedly clicked off.

“Aww, I think he likes me.” Deacon murmured sarcastically as Ruby fiddled with her door lock. She laughed tiredly, setting her and Deacon’s bag down on a cluttered table and sighing in relief as soon as the door was locked behind them. The spy watched with a cocked eyebrow as the black-haired woman dropped down onto the edge of her bed and started undoing the straps on her fisherman’s overalls. She yanked the rubbery and damp things off, flexing her freed jean-clad legs.

“That’s the last time I hike in those damn things.” She whined, laying down on her back, “Those attached boots are an orthopedic nightmare .”

“I still can’t believe you had doctors dedicated entirely to feet before the war.” Deacon replied. He puttered around the small house, hanging up their packs and checking his scabbed-over torso wound in the mirror.

“What,” Ruby lifted her head from her blankets, “What do you do when you get a foot injury? Just go, ‘Oh, guess I live like this now. Just another day in the wastes I guess!’ Because that would be a cause for concern.”

“If it’s not something a stimpack and a few hours rest can’t fix, you pretty much have to live with it.”

“Yeah, I suppose that’s true.” The conversation, though light-hearted and joking as always, seemed to depress Ruby somewhat. She worried the inside of her cheek, looking ten years older than she was under the stark light of the bare overhead bulb. “Listen, Deacs. You got really hurt today. That’s on me. I’m not normally... usually i’m more alert about the dangers the harbor presents. I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

“Oh trust me, you will.” Deacon’s voice floated over from where he was crawling into his floor sleeping bag. “Two words: wet willie. When you least expect it.”

The undertones to his words were clear: It’s fine, drop it. He was the master of deflecting and de-escalating any sort of real emotional vulnerability in any conversation. With Deacon, it was always jokes, traps, and lies. Ruby’s brow knitted as she struggled to pull her knitted cardigan off over her shoulders so she could sleep in her undershirt. She and Deacon had been (friends? pals?) traveling together for over three months now. She knew, or thought she knew, so much about him. He liked his mirelurk eggs with the yolk broken, not whole. He couldn’t stand heights. His favorite color was grey because ‘it basically blends with everything’. And vise versa, over time, he had come to learn everything about her. Not just her favorite baseball team or how she liked her coffee; everything. All about her family. Her deepest fears. The things that kept her up at night.

Ruby often felt like their relationship was painfully unbalanced. Hell, there was no-one she’d rather hang around with than her favorite bald idiot, but she could always sense him holding her at an arm’s length at all times. Like he still thought that at any second she would spin on her heel and bury a knife in his chest. And for everything he said (‘we’re peachy keen, jellybean’, ‘you’re my best pal, vaultsicle’), she still had a painful and unwavering notion lodged in the back of her chest; she cared more about him then he did her. At the end of the day, if he was forced to make a choice, she wouldn’t be it.

“Goodnight, asshat.” She said, clawing at the light switch until the barn went dark and curling up under the dingy bed blankets.

“So charming . Go to sleep.”

Yeah, the same expected reply. Funny, gentle, sarcastic. Sometimes she couldn’t tell if that was just Deacon being Deacon , or Deacon being the shell of humor had worn for years now. Ruby buried her head in her lumpy pillow. What could be said? I want you to be more honest with me ? That was like her asking a brahmin to start laying eggs. Really, there was nothing she could do but trust him , and hope against all hope that someday in the distant future he would start letting her in closer to his real self. But it was torture waiting for that day to arrive.

Because Ruby had a terrible, relentless, irreversible crush on Deacon.

Chapter Text

3 months ago

Deacon will never forget the moment Ruby showed up at the railroad’s door, a gun in her hand and a grin on her face like she was on Undercover Boss. Desdemona was left shell-shocked at her name drop and Deacon could sense Glory was seconds away from filling his vaultie’s chest full of minigun lead.

“And who the hell are you?” Desdemona bit out.

“Let’s reel it in a bit, Des.” Deacon quickly mediated, “Don’t you know who this is?”

Desdemona fixed him with a glare.

“This here is our own genuine, 100% American-made vault dweller from 2077! Comes with the tags on and everything: trained gunsman, commonwealth local, loving sister. Funny though,” He paused to loop his fingers into his jeans, cocking his hip like this whole situation wasn’t sending his head spinning. “I thought you were dead.”

From across the room he could see her khol-darkened eyes narrow, her quickly formed opinions of him scrawled like writing across her face: shifty, unreliable, childish. Good. That was the impression he was going for. Her lips pursed into a straight line for a brief moment before she responded. “I got better.”

Oh, she’s got jokes.

Ruby focused her attention back on Desdemona. “Look, I promise I’m not here to spy or rat on your little organization. That would pretty much defeat the whole point of trekking over here. I’ve been working with freed synths for years now! Ever heard of Acadia?”

Des glanced over at Deacon. He shrugged but angled a pointed look over the brims of his sunglasses; he really wanted to see where this went. Des turned back to Ruby, just a little less guarded than before. “Before you take a step further, do you happen to have a geiger counter?”

“No.” A soft smile graced the vaultie’s lips. “Mine is in the shop.”

The tension in the dusty room visibly drained away. Drummer boy lowered his shaking grip on the gun, and Glory set her monster of a minigun down with a solid thunk, stretching out her arms a bit. Des ran a hand through her hair and muttered a relieved christ .

“You know, you probably could have lead with that.” Deacon piped up, an easy grin on his face.

“But where’s the fun in that?” Ruby bit out a reply, crossing the room and following Desdemona’s beckoning hand. The response was humorous but there was venom underneath: Deacon suspected she was unnerved at how much he knew about her, despite (to her knowledge) having never met. Good. Keep her on her toes .

A few minutes passed and Ruby found herself seated in a slightly uncomfortable high-backed wooden chair in the middle of an underground crypt, surrounded by a mass of people. Deacon could see from her expression that she saw what it really was; an interrogation. Her well-worn shotgun, thigh-holstered pistol, twin set of brass knuckles, and small kit of repair tools had been confiscated as soon as she walked down the stairs. She clearly disliked the check-for-wires pat-down she received soon after, but held her tongue.

“Come on, I gave you the counter-sign and haven’t tried to murder any of you. That should be plenty already!” She protested from her seat.

“Let’s make one thing clear.” Des said sharply, stepping forward and fixing her with her cold gaze. Deacon tugged at the neck of his shirt; he could feel the tension from all the way in the back. “The only reason you’re down here is because the sign is one of our most closely-guarded secrets, and our resident character evaluator vouched for you in the past. I advise you tell us everything you know, including information on this ‘Acadia’. Not doing so could result in a very bad ending for you.”

Ruby raised her hands defensively, “Alright, Alright, She-ra. I get it.” She sighed, crossing her overall-clad legs and threading her hands together. “Clearly you already know my name, and that I’m from a vault. Pre-war. I don’t know how you know it-” She paused to shoot a glare at the spy lurking in the shadows, “-But you do. I didn’t die, obviously. I went home. To Maine.”

“What the fuck’s a Maine?” Glory interjected, crossing her arms and lowering her brow in disbelief.

“It’s… right, okay. Let’s just say I went Northeast till I reached the coast, and convinced a sailor to take me out to the islands. It’s.. where I grew up, before the war. Bar- Far Harbor, it’s called. Anyways, on Far Harbor Island, there’s a repurposed observatory on top of a mountain. It’s a colony of synths- which, by the way, I didn’t even know existed until a few years ago- who wanted a safe place to call their own away from the Institute and the commonwealth. They’re the ones who told me all about you guys; where to find you, the code to the ring puzzle, the countersign. They’re good friends of mine, and while they don’t agree with everything you do, we thought it would be best if you had all the help you could get. And I had some free time.”

“What do you mean everything we do?” Desdemona asked.

Ruby swallowed dryly. “The mind wipes. A few of them have them, a majority of them don’t. None of them like the fact that they’re still happening. That’s actually one of the reasons they asked me to come down here.”

“You’re telling me that there’s an island full of synths whose memories haven’t been wiped?” Desdemona said in shock, horror dawning on her face.

“Yes, obviously.” Ruby replied.

“You do have any idea how much of a security risk that is to us, to our organization?”

“It’s worth it.” Ruby countered. Her laid back expression was growing stormy. Deacon could practically see the nerve this conversation was starting to hit.

“Those synths know the names and faces of dozens of our agents. They know the routes we took to smuggle them away. They know the location of our safehouses, the location of our main base, the callsign we use! Do you know what would happen if the Brotherhood, or god forbid the Institute found them? We’d be massacred in seconds. The Railroad would be wiped off the map.”

“But they don’t know where they are! They're not going to find them!” Ruby was matching Desdemona’s look-down-on-you tone note for note, rising out of her chair to go toe to toe with the Railroad leader. Tension pooled thick into the room. Guns were cocked and covertly aimed. “You don’t get to just decide that it’s best to destroy a person’s personality just because you’re a little scared!”

“It’s for their own good.” Desdemona bit out coldly.

“For their own good my ass!” Ruby gave an angry huff of disbelieving laughter. “When you steal their memories, you wipe every bit of development they’ve made as an independent person. When you set them loose on the commonwealth, that’s not them anymore. You’re replacing them with strangers. And have you ever seen a botched memory wipe?” She gestured angrily to her head, “It’s terrible! It puts synths in debilitating pain, unable to differentiate what’s real and what’s fake for the rest of their lives! You know what?” She paused her tirade to dig around in one of her waterproof pockets.

A railroad agent leveled a gun with her head. She looked at him with a sour expression, making a point to raise her other hand in submission and very slowly pull out a holotape. She promptly shoved it into her pip-boy, clicking the button as it whirred to life. “You’re not going to listen to me. I get it, you have a system. This tape was supposed to be a present, but maybe if you won’t hear me out, you’ll hear her out.”

The tape began to fuzzily play. “Hello. Wait, is it recording?” A nervous feminine voice said. Ruby’s voice piped up soon after, scratchy on the recording. “Yeah, go ahead.”

“Okay.” The strange woman’s voice filled the silent HQ, all the agents listening with baited breath. “Hi, Highrise! It’s G2-87. Or, I guess not anymore. I like the name Amanda now? So everyone is calling me that.” She paused to give a soft and happy laugh. “Anyways. I’m sorry I ran away from you. I know that… that pretty much every synth you help normally gets their memories wiped, especially when they know as much as me. But I couldn't do it. I didn’t want to disappear. So I bolted when you left Doctor Amari’s. I hope you can forgive me. But don’t worry, please! I’m somewhere safe, somewhere really safe, with other synths that are just like me! I don’t have to… hide, here, like I would in the commonwealth. Everybody in Acadia has their memories, and they’re proud of them. Proud to be synths.” There was a lull in the tape, and the sound of Ruby gently encouraging Amanda to continue. “Oh yeah!” The pre-recorded synth said, “I worked with the hydroponics scientists a lot in the Institute. I picked up a few things. I started a multi-tier hydro farm here, growing food for my friends! I’m really proud of it. I figured you would be too.”

A distant male voice appeared in the tape audio. “Hey Amanda, you coming with us? We’re making a supply trip down to the docks: you can see that Mariner you think is so cute!”

“Y-yeah, Mike, I’ll be there in a second!” Amanda's voice sounded embarrassed over the recording. Ruby, who’s gaze had been locked on the holotape play port, smiled distantly. “Okay, I have to go now. I hope Ruby gets this message to you, and I hope you’re doing alright. Stay safe, Highrise. Bye!”

The tape ended, leaving the room in stunned silence. It was one thing to see synths, shaking and petrified as they were guided through the dangerous warrens of the commonwealth. It was entirely different to hear from one that had flourished , that was calm and happy and safe. It was almost heartwrenching. Deacon didn’t consider himself a man of passion; so why did his throat feel so tight right now?

Desdemona broke the silence. “Deacon,” She said, not looking away from Ruby. “Have we helped a synth with that designation code?” Her voice felt like thunder in the tense room.

Deacon cleared his throat and readjusted his glasses. “If my memory’s still all there, yeah we have, boss. She went MIA during the final stage just a few weeks ago. Haven’t seen her since.”

There was a long drawn out pause as Desdemona seemed to judge Ruby, hands on her hips in the completely still-and-silent room. To her credit, Ruby did her best to not look unnerved at the soul-piercing stare the leader was giving her. They stood like that, silent and terse, for a few seconds.

“Everybody back to work.” Desdemona snapped. The room exploded into a flurry of commotion as the red-haired woman began to issue commands left and right. “Glory, send an agent out to recon the northeast coastline as soon as we have one to spare. Tom, get back to work on that PAM CPU upgrade. Deacon,” She swiveled to the spy, the only one still waiting, leaning on a pillar with crossed arms, “You’re on the new girl. Run a few ops, get back to me. We're stretched thin as hell right now so you better be boots on the ground as soon as possible.” She lit a cigarette trapped between two fingers and took a long and shaky drag. Ruby stood next to her, wide-eyed and confused as to how quickly the room had gone from tense ‘I might shoot you’ silence to business as usual. Desdemona looked at her for a brief moment, and gave her sharp nod before striding away.

A lazy grin spread across Deacon’s face as he watched Ruby tuck a few stray hairs behind her ear, clearly reeling. It wasn’t easy to get on Des’s good side, but he could see the begrudging respect she had for Ruby’s passion and dedication to synths. That (and their desperate need for agents in the field) was probably the main reason she let the vaultie into the organization in the first place. He shoved his hands in his pockets, ambling across the room towards her. “Wow. Look at that. You’re in, and in record time too. Obviously I had total faith in you from the start. The superiority complex you have really gets a guy confident.”

Ruby scowled up at him. “Who the hell are you.” Her brow pinched, and she surreptitiously took a small step away from him. “And why do you know so much about me? Do I have a stalker?”

The spy gave an easy and disarming laugh. “Don’t take it personally. When something as big as a vault opening up happens, we’re gonna do a little recon, shake the tree and see what falls. And I gotta admit, cryogenics? That was not something I had seen coming.”

“You and me both.” She replied. Decon sensed a deeper sorrow behind those words.

“You got balls of steel, you know that?” Deacon said as he walked closer. “Walking into HQ and immediately going toe to toe with the post-apocalyptic valkyrie herself. I thought that only an idiot would directly challenge someone’s ideals when that someone is holding a gun to her head, but clearly I was wrong. After all you’ve got a higher education than everyone in this place combined, PAM excluded.”

“How did you- no. You know what? I don’t think I actually want to know.” Ruby rubbed her cheeks with her hands, clearly getting whiplash from everything that was thrown at her within the past hour.

“Hey, no worries. Comes with territory. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.” He stuck out a hand; it was an old-world practice, but one he figured she’d appreciate. “I’m Deacon. Resident top model, James Bond stunt double, and proud owner of the title ‘Most Interesting Man in the Commonwealth’ three years running.”

Ruby looked at his hand with a single cocked eyebrow.

“Come on, it’s not gonna bite you. It’s my other hand that has the set of radiation mutated teeth.”

Her mouth quirked just a bit at his remark, which he was willing to consider a victory. She clasped his hand in hers shaking it firmly, and wow her skin was soft . It was calloused on all the places a working hand would be, but it wasn’t weathered and scarred like a regular wastelander’s.

“Hi Deacon.” Ruby said, “You already know who I am. And if what Desdemona said was anything to go by, I’m stuck with you.” Her entire body radiated tense suspicion and default dislike for the man whose hand she was shaking.

This is going to be interesting . “Correctamundo, rookie.” Deacon replied. “Now, let’s get out there and get our hands dirty, see how you really handle the battlefield. Not that I’m doubting you. You’re navy.” He gave a mock salute. “Come on. The night is young and so am I.”

“It’s 11:30.” Ruby deadpanned.

“Exactly.” Deacon said over his shoulder. He grabbed a spare jacket from a nearby table and started walking towards the exit.

“Wait. Can I have my shotgun back now?” Ruby asked him, hurrying to catch up.

“Shotgun? What shotgun? I don’t remember any shotgun.”

“ Deacon .”

“Kidding! I’ll go grab it, and we’ll be on our way.”

Deacon handed the vault dweller her weapons with a toothy smile, taking delight in her exasperated expression. She was level-headed, driven, and confrontational. Easy to get a read on. He’d have no problem working in her shadow if Des decided to keep her on board. She’s also got fucking phenomenal hands. That’s goin’ in the spank bank, heyo! The little devil Deacon inside his head sang out. He took that thought and put it in the back of his mind for later. Yeah, Ruby was soft in ways most people just weren’t anymore, and yeah, she was easy on the eyes. It was only natural that he found her, for lack of a better word, pretty damn fine. But he had shit to do; the Railroad never left anyone with much free time to ...socialize, with the locals. It left everyone pretty wound up, but it was a small price to pay for the good they did. 

Deacon let out satisfied huff as he and the new girl traipsed out of the secret entrance, headed for a tourist. For now, at least he could admire the view as Ruby stomped in front of him like a bat outta hell. He allowed himself so few indulgences; a little casual ogling couldn't hurt. 

“If I catch you staring at my ass again we’re gonna have a problem.” Ruby ground out.

“Me? Stare? Wouldn’t dream of it. I don’t even have eyes; that’s why I wear the tinted glasses.”

Ruby made an irritated noise and walked a little faster. Deacon smirked, thoroughly pleased to have found someone new to annoy.

God, this is gonna be fun .

Chapter Text

“Christ, you’re loud. You’re really loud , you know that? Everyone can hear you talking for miles away!” Deacon yelled over the drum of gunfire thudding into the side of the van he was hiding behind, silenced pistol gripped tight in blood-smeared hands. 

Ruby dove forward for cover next to him, barely missing a harpoon that went shrieking by her head, coupled with the maniacal laughter of a fog-mad trapper. She scowled at the spy as she reloaded her shotgun. “Faraday said Kitteridge had been cleared out already, how was I supposed to know we’d have company? I’m not omnipotent!” 

“What happened to ‘I know this Island like the back of my hand!’, huh?” Deacon shot back, mocking Ruby’s high voice. He ripped the pin from a frag grenade and flung it over the roof of the truck. They both cupped their ears, the explosion vibrating in their teeth. One of the trappers screamed in agony. 

“I do !” Ruby hissed, cocking her gun. “I’ve lived here for years! For example,” She paused to tilt her head and listen intently to the gunfire for a few moments, braced against the car, “fog makes everything sound around further away, when in reality-” Ruby leaned out of her cover and fired once, blowing a leg out from under a trapper that was sneaking up to their left, “-It’s much closer.”

“I’ll give you that one.” Deacon said with mock begrudgement. “How many left do you count?”

“Two. Dunno how much damage one of them took from that frag. They're probably both behind the tree thatch. Wait for the reload…” Ruby replied, holding a hand up, her back against the truck. The gunfire lulled for a split second. She winked at her companion. “Go time!” 

The pair of Railroad spies vaulted over the rusty vehicle. Deacon fired wildly in the direction of a leather-strapped trapper, who convulsed as he went down. Ruby delivered a blast right to the chest of the other one, sending him flying backwards and lying utterly still on the damp ground. 

“Are they all gone? Are they gone? Are all of them gone?” Ruby panted wildly, trying to catch her breath as she spun around. She was wide-eyed and still reloading; if Deacon hadn’t been with her all morning, he would be tempted to believe she was tripping on some sort of upper. 

Deacon weaseled a cigarette out of one pocket of his jeans, sitting down on a dented guardrail as he lit it. He took a deep drag to try and calm his racing heart, staring at the mutilated bodies that scattered the ravine. They’d just come down from Acadia with bags of repair tools and parts they were going to deliver to the newly-developing synth settlements that dotted Far Harbor. It was part of a Railroad-Acadia partnership to create more places to hold the overflow of escaped synths they were dealing with recently. When they were up in the repurposed observatory getting info from Faraday, he had told them that Kitteridge Pass was completely empty and thus the fastest way to move across the rocky island. He had been dead wrong. But working on that intel (and despite Deacon’s wishes), Ruby had been her usual loud self, jogging around and getting Deacon chattering about idle things. If he had just been more careful , done what he used to , they wouldn’t have gotten ambushed. They were both lucky to have made it out alive. 

Deacon let the smoke curl from his mouth, mingling in the mist. Stupid. Stupid rookie mistake. I’m getting soft . Where had his years of recon practice gone? He though running a long op on an island full of things that wanted to eat him would make him more cautious, not less. So what was the cause? Why wasn’t he himself? 

“I think we’re clear.” Ruby came jogging back over to him after making a wide loop around the mountain pass, checking for any hidden threats. “Besides, you could hear that frag blast in the Commonwealth. If anything hungry heard it, they would be here by now.” 

“Huh? Did you say something? Sorry, I’m a little deaf in both ears now because my partner thought it was a great idea to shoot her gun right next to my head.” Deacon deadpanned, wiping some congealed blood off his face and onto his shirt. 

Ruby gave a short huff of laughter; some of her manic energy was starting to recede. It put him on edge, how quickly a heart-pounding skirmish could change the island native into a woman of enthusiastic violence. It was something out of his control. Looking at her, with her too-busy-for-fashion ponytail and no-nonsense outfit, you wouldn’t peg her as someone to actively charge into the fray of gunfire. Especially considering her past of pre-war conflict. Maybe that’s what’s getting on my nerves: for the life of me I can’t get a solid bead on her. She seems to change every single day. Deacon took another long drag of the cigarette before dropping it with a hiss onto the perpetually-wet ground. This was his whole job : understanding people, taking them apart and reading between the lines until he could see each individual layer of personality, each facet and flaw that made them up as a human. Then he could use that to his advantage. Work around it, say the right thing at the right time, act the right way, and observe them from the shadows. That is what he was good at. But Ruby was finicky, with morals and reasonings that doubled back on themselves in confusing twists and loops. It made his job unreasonably hard. He still tried his best, though; every sentence was careful, securing her friendship and making her feel protected. 

You are friends, dumbass. Real, actual friends. She actually LIKES your lying, conniving ass. Deacon’s tiny shitty voice inside his head insisted. He waved it away. 

“I’m an oceanographer, not a general physician.” Ruby said with a tired grin. She handed Deacon an opened can of purified water. “But even I can tell that your ears are gonna be just fine.”

“So you like to say .” Deacon quipped back, draining the can dry. “But according to my sources, you never graduated.”

“I was three months away from a PhD! I had my damn bachelors!” Ruby threw a hand up in exasperation, as if in a futile attempt to curse the unfixable misfortune of the world being bombed to shit. “I’m probably the Earth’s leading expert on it by now! And your only ‘source’ on that is me. Smartass.”

“Let’s be honest, it’s ‘greatass’; I work what my momma gave me.”

Ruby snorted up some of her own water that she had been drinking, completely caught off guard. Deacon smiled. If there’s one thing he could always count on in his arsenal of kryptonite against the woman, it was offhanded and base humor. It never failed him when he was trying to get under her skin. With Carrington it was mushy emotional humor, with Desemona it was shock value. With Ruby? Butt jokes. “Why do you think I request field work so much? I gotta share god’s gift with the world.” He struck a mock-seductive pose, crossing his legs like a pre-war pinup.

Ruby straightened her backpack, turning away in a half-hearted attempt to hide her amusement. “And here I thought the reason was because you wanted an excuse to hang out with a friend. Now come on, we’re burning daylight and those synths need these repair tools.” 

“Right away, doctor- oh, wait. Nevermind. Forget I said anything.” 

The spy quietly relished Ruby’s exasperated groan that was almost entirely swallowed up by the fog around them. 

Two weeks later, Deacon was waking up to the sound of the barn door being opened. From his sleepy-curled up place in his sleeping bag, his hand clamped down around the handle of his pistol on blind instinct. Then he heard a muffled curse and the sound of plates rattling, and the tension dissipated. Just Ruby . 

She stumbled her way into the little pseudo-cabin and closed the wooden door with her foot. In each hand was a dinged-up metal plate laden with food; fruits of their recent salvage effort in a nearby feral-overrun town. 

With his glasses still on, Deacon looked like he was asleep. He let it come off that way; no reason to tell Ruby that the first thing she almost got walking through that door was a bullet to the temple. 

“Wakey wakey, baldy.” Ruby said softly, nudging Deacon’s still form with a heavy boot. He gave a mock stretch, pushing his fingers under his glasses to rub his eyes. With a hoarse grunt of thanks he took the hot metal plate he was offered.

“Wait. What… is this stuff?” Deacon asked, squinting at his plate. 

Ruby took a moment to swallow before responding; she was sitting at the overcrowded scrap table, balancing the plate on her knees and eating with her fingers. “It’s called migas. My neighbor used to make them all the time, and it kind of became a cooking habit for me when I left the navy scene.” She licked the grease off of her digits and gestured to the different foods on the plate. “It’s fried tortilla- I ground some corn masa the other day, so we used that- with scrambled radchicken eggs, some diced tato, pepper flakes, and some of those shitty little weird onions that I keep trying to grow and keep fucking up.” 

“And here I was ready to eat fried cram again.” Deacon said approvingly. He shoveled some into his mouth; honestly, it was a nice change from the stale prepackaged food that HQ tended to sustain themselves on. More often than not, nights on duty shift were filled with lukewarm nuka-cola and rock-hard sugar bombs cereal. “I didn’t know you could cook.” 

Ruby laughed, a hand at her mouth, trying not to spit. “Oh man. I can’t. All I did was grind down the corn; Longfellow did the rest. He’s a pretty decent chef if you get him liquored up enough.”

“So that’s what you were doing up so early? You know, the world ended. You don’t have to get up at six in the morning.” Deacon rumbled, throat still smokey from sleep. He could just picture it: Ruby and Longfellow watching the sun come up over the island, sitting together in their favorite rusty lawnchairs in front of the cooking pit, stirring pots and sharing a bottle of whiskey. They had a good relationship, like grandfather and granddaughter. Deacon identified it right away when he saw the way they interacted with each other. It was like they filled in the familial gaps that one another needed: Ruby lost her family to the atomic explosions of war, and Longfellow lost his child and wife to a cult, the only family he ever really had. 

Sometimes, living here with them, Deacon felt like he was intruding on a very personal and private relationship. It didn’t help that Longfellow didn’t trust him for shit on the principle that he was a mainlander, and wouldn’t let anyone see his eyes. 

“The eyes are the windows to the soul.” Longfellow said mistrustfully when Ruby first introduced him to Deacon. He trudged right back into his cabin afterwards, puffing on a cigar.

That’s why I keep them shuttered, old man. 

The two agents polished off their breakfast in record time. There was something comforting about the heavy and warm food on this cold and early morning. 

“Ruby. Nuke me.” Deacon commanded, setting down his plate on the floor and holding his hands up. 

Ruby nodded and started to hunt through the massive amount of crap on the dining table, looking through crates of salvage and bags of canned goods. She found two bottles of Nuka Cola, tossing one to Deacon and cracking one open for herself. 

Deacon popped the cap off of the soda and promptly got sprayed directly across his face and shirt. The room was dead silent for a few seconds, aside from the steady drip, drip, drip of cola off of his chin. 

“Huh.” Deacon said dryly. “Think the pressure might have been off a little on that one.” 

Ruby dissolved into a fit of giggles, barely holding onto her own cola as she did so. A wide and genuine grin was smacked across her face, her eyes crinkled with mirth. 

She looks good when she’s actually happy . Deacon thought to himself. Ruby, like himself, was pretty good at faking it till you make it. That included her smiles; it was more often than not that Deacon could tell there was nothing behind them. With a long-suffering sigh, the railroad spy hauled himself up and off his seat on his bedroll and began to pull the now-sticky shirt off of himself. He noticed in the corner of his vision that Ruby was pointedly focused on her cola, looking away from his bared torso. It was funny how visibly uncomfortable she was with nudity and bare skin; Deacon chalked it up to the pre-war standards of modesty and heavy-coverage dressing. 

Still. He wondered what she was thinking. 

Ruby Hernandez don’t you DARE look at his happy trail, don’t you even consider it for one second- goddamnit, you looked. And now that’s going to be in your brain forever. 

Ruby gazed with fascination down at her bubbly drink and the way the bottle shimmered and reflected in the low lamplight. She let her gaze wander for one second and got an eyeful of Deacon’s very cut stomach, and very fine dusting of ginger hair that led down below his waistline. It looked very soft. 

Ruby cleared her throat, hoping it would clear her mind as well. “There’s a spare grognak tee in the trunk by the door. Not exactly covert, but it’s in your size.”

Deacon let out an affirmative ‘mmm’, throwing on the shirt and moving to clean up the spilled drink with a dirty rag. Ruby tilted her cola back, downing the rest of it as fast as she could, like a shot. Hopefully the sugar would hit her system and get the gears of her brain moving a little faster for today’s activities. 

“Oh.” Deacon snapped his fingers, as if he had just remembered something. Ruby looked up at him with raised eyebrows. “I almost forgot. I got a little something for you sent in with our latest care package from HQ.”  He turned on the spot and opened up the breadbox-sized container marked with a little white lamp icon. They got them every few weeks, when the Railroad could spare supplies or had tech they thought would help them on the ruthless terrain of the island. It was often delivered via some crotchety old fisherman from the mainland, and given to Brooks for safekeeping until Ruby or Deacon could pick it up. Ruby always made sure to pay Brooks a finder’s fee. He was a nice man, and he kept their associations with the Railroad a complete secret.

Deacon flipped open the lid and grabbed a smaller canvas-covered box from its insides, tossing it to his friend. Ruby caught it warily, turning over in her hands. 

“Whoa, hey. Is this a stealth-boy?” Ruby asked, unbuttoning the top and looking at the little array of dials. It looked oddly well-preserved; unnervingly so. It was a throwback to a time long gone.

“So you’re familiar with them?” 

‘“Yeah, sort of.” Ruby admitted. “They were in development when I was a Junior enlisted. I saw them every once in a while, I know what they do. But I’ve never actually used one before.” She thought back to that time for a brief moment: boot camp was hell. She could still feel her whole body aching from the rigorous training if she concentrated hard enough.

“These aren’t your run-of-the-mill stealth boys. These are genuine Railroad revamps; Stealth boy two, electric boogaloo. Forty-five seconds of near-complete invisibility, with none of the mild nausea and skin numbness of the normal ones. They’ve pulled my ass out of the fire more than once.” As Deacon talked he locked the care package box up once again, sliding it behind a bureau for safekeeping. The agents and Longfellow were the only ones on this little island, but it never hurt to be careful. “I figured you should have one. You know, if a fight goes south and you need to make a quick getaway and hightail it out of there.” 

Ruby made to smile, but even she knew that it probably looked forced as hell. There was something bothering her about what Deacon just said. Was it the wording? No. His constant use of pre-war slang? No. 

It was, however, the fact that Ruby traveled and fought side-by-side with Deacon. They braved the fog’s dangers together . And he gave her a tool to escape; but escaping would mean leaving him to fend for himself. 

“Thanks. But. I wouldn’t just leave you in a fight alone, Deacon.” Ruby said, brow furrowing. 

“You never know when a situation might call for it. Sometimes you just gotta look out for number one, right?” Deacon countered, sounding very matter-of-fact. His glasses reflected the lamplight, impassive as ever. 

Ruby suddenly felt like a cat with their coat rubbed in the wrong direction. Deacon often disappeared with no warning; he was a spy and a compulsive liar. She knew this, and respected it as part of who he was. But did he assume she would do the same? Just evaporate like fog whenever it benefited her most?

Did he think she cared that little about him? 

“Yeah. Alright.” Ruby cleared her throat, smiling tightly and tucking the stealthboy safely into the bottom of her travel bag. “Thanks Deac.” 

“Ah, no need. Every field agent should have at least one.” He shot Ruby his signature crooked smile, temporarily stunning her into silence. “I’ll be right back. I’m gonna go powder my face.”

Ruby watched him saunter across the cabin and into the little built-in bathroom that Longfellow had helped her create when she first arrived. The radio inside of it clicked on, blasting the same stale pre-war tunes over the sound of a running shower. Ruby looked dismally at the bulging shape of the stealth-boy in the bottom of her back; it felt like an accusation, a finger pointed straight at her. ‘ I don’t trust you ’, it practically said aloud, ‘ I think you’re looking out for yourself just like I am’. 

Ruby gathered up their plates and moved to the cramped sink, trying to ignore Deacon’s off-tune shower performance of ‘Atom Bomb Baby’. Maybe she was reading too much into this; it could have just been a gift from a friend. Then again, maybe she was right on track. Deacon kept her on her toes; his words often had hidden meanings, his actions and reactions the same. 

At this point, she didn’t know what stung worse. The potential implication that she didn’t care enough about Deacon to stick around when he was in trouble, or the fact that she couldn’t find it within herself to have faith that this was simply a misunderstanding. 

Ruby set the plates out to dry and tried to focus on that day’s long list of things to do instead. It hurt a little less.

Chapter Text

“90 caps, and that’s my final offer.” Allen Lee spat, leaning unwaveringly against his dirty countertop. In front of him lay a shotgun; it shot just fine, but the metal was scratched and marred. 

“That’s barely enough to cover the time it took just to GET the damn thing!” Ruby spluttered. 

“If you don’t like it, go pawn your junk off to someone else.” Allen snapped back, “You’re lucky I’m opening my shop to you at all, mainlander.” 

“Mainlander my ass, you don’t-” Ruby started. 

Deacon put a hand on her shoulder, an easygoing smile on his face. He was sporting a thick beard streaked with grey, a heavy knit fisherman’s cap, and a pair of patched-up overalls; a new Far Harbor persona he had taken to calling ‘the fishmonger’. “That’ll do just fine, Allen.” He said. His voice was lower, older. “Don’tcha think, boss?” 

Ruby scowled. “Whatever. Yeah.” 

They began to trudge off the docks a half-hour later, having sold off all their unused scrap and spare scrounged-up weaponry. Ruby was flagged down by a very tired-looking Mariner, who currently had a condenser unit tucked underneath her arm. 

“I just got a radioed SOS from the Echo Lumber Mill village; their power is out. One of the condensers shorted out and brought down their whole grid. I have all the supplies I need to fix it, but I’m swamped as all hell just keeping everyone here happy. Is there any chance you could take it over?” 

Ruby eyed her acquaintance up and down worriedly. The Mariner was one of the nicest people here; it took months for her to really warm up, but as they were both women of research and science, they got along famously. She looked exhausted ; she should probably be in bed and resting right now, not running errands for grumpy settlers. 

“Ain’t no rest for the wicked, huh?” Ruby said, nodding her head in acceptance and taken the heavy bundle of machinery. 

“I can compensate you for your time.” Mariner replied with a relieved expression. 

“Good. Money don’t grow on trees.” Deacon interjected from the back in his rusty old-man voice. 

“And I do got bills to pay. Not to mention mouths to feed.” Ruby kept her face as impassive as possible. The Mariner wouldn’t get it. She did, though, and that’s what counted.

“Thanks for this.” The Mariner continued, shooting a confused look at the two agents. She pressed canvas bag of caps into Ruby’s hand. “You should probably get over there by this evening; those folks are defenseless.” 

Deacon and Ruby dropped of their non-essential supplies back at the cabin, packing up some food, water, and ammunition into their giant travel bags. Ruby gave Longfellow a long hug while Deacon stood uncomfortably out on the porch; they were crossing the entire island, and every time they did that it wasn’t guaranteed they would make it back alive. 

The pair hiked for hours down steep mountain trails and through foggy abandoned towns. They gave a wide berth to ruined houses standing in the middle of the woods, however: those empty shells tended to become claimed by the mutated creatures of the island as good sleeping spots. At one point Deacon yanked Ruby down into a bush so fast she nearly toppled over. Her knees hit the rocky earth painfully, twigs scratching at her from every direction. She was close to giving Deacon a piece of her mind when he brought a finger to his lips and silently pointed outwards. Moving slowly, ever so slowly through the fog, was a crawler about twelve feet tall. A single swipe from its scythe-like appendages could crack your ribs or slice you open like a meat pinata; it looked, acted, and moved like something from a horror movie. The pair waited, shivering in the cold, for a solid half hour as the monstrosity meandered away in the opposite direction. 

When it's slow footfalls could no longer be heard, they got to moving again. 

Evening was beginning to nip at their heels. The sky that was normally overcast and grey was slowly morphing into an eerie shade of snot green; a tell-tale sign of a radiation storm headed their way. Deacon picked up his pace a little bit: he really wasn’t keen on being caught in the middle of a storm while they were out here in the middle of fuck knows where. 

“No way.” Ruby said breathlessly, staring at a worn wooden sign off the side of the road in awe. Without warning she was darting off the concrete path down a narrow cobblestone street, into the trees. 

Deacon followed her rapidly retreating form with alarm and irritation. “Hey, last time I checked, running blindly into the woods is an excellent way to get yourself killed! What the hell are you doing?” He rushed down the path and around a sharp corner, nearly bumping into his partner and scaring himself half to death. 

Ruby was spellbound, staring up at a well-preserved old ruin of some sort of shop. There was a comically large wooden ice-cream standing out front, paint peeling with age, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. The lights were still on; she must have seen them across the treeline. “I’ll be damned.” She said with a low whistle. “It’s still here. And that turbine’s still paying off!” Ruby turned back to her friend with a grand gesture, dramatically directing her arms at the lit-up shop. “Welcome to Marnie’s Shoreline Parlor, vendor of THE most delicious ice cream and shakes on the northwest of the island. A few months before the bombs fell, these guys made the island paper’s front page by bein’ the first shop to install a wave turbine to convert oceanic energy into renewable power. I used to come here all the time as a teen! What’s your favorite flavor, Deacs? Mine’s moose tracks.”

Deacon gave a long-suffering sigh before releasing the safety on his gun and casually shooting open the locked door, breaching the building with his buddy. They’d done this many times before, sure, but he wished she’d be a little less casual about it. Just because you’re comfortable with something doesn’t mean it’s safe. “I guess if I ever got the chance to try ice cream, my favorite flavor would be something weird as hell, like black walnut or currant. I mean, what is  currant  anyway?” 

Ruby fixed him with an open-mouthed stare of disbelief after she quickly checked behind the counter for danger. “Oh. My god. I didn’t even think about that. You’ve never had ice cream.” 

Deacon pulled the double doors of the kitchen behind the serving counter closed: the only things in that dusty little room were moths and food prep machines that hadn’t been touched in hundreds of years. “Never have, probably never will. The name seems to say everything about it, though. Icy. Creamy. Dare I put two and two together?”

“Oh buddy, you don’t know the half of it.” Ruby replied in a pitying tone. The first roll of thunder of the radiation storm echoed in the distance, and seconds later her pip-boy responded with a soft wave of alarming clicks. Ruby grimaced. “Let’s find the most insulated room in this joint and pray we don’t go ghoul.” 

The duo poked around the shop for a bit, hunting through storage closets and break rooms. A few minutes in, Deacon pushed an old plastic carton aside and came face-to-face with a massive set of iron doors in the floor, angled slightly upwards like a root cellar. “Hey! Got something over here.”

Ruby joined him as the window nearby lit up dimly with a flash of green lightening, followed by a roll of thunder, louder this time. The vault dweller cocked her shotgun and nodded at her friend. Open it . Deacon hauled the rusted doors open, their hinges squeaking in protest. Ruby took point, easing down the concrete steps into the pitch darkness below, only illuminated a few feet forward by the pale light of her pip-boy. Deacon followed close behind her and wretched the doors closed. They shut with a tremendous boom; he wished it didn’t feel so much like he had just sealed them inside an underground tomb. 

His worried thoughts were interrupted by a shot and surprised cry. Deacon whipped around in alarm, hand on his gun, only to see Ruby at the bottom of the steps with a hand over her heart, breathing hard. 

“Sorry,” she said with a breathless laugh, “Sorry. This guy scared the shit out of me.” She pointed to a peeling and age-warped life-sized wooden cutout of a cheerful clown holding a large ice cream cone. 

“I don’t blame you,” Deacon said easily, “I don’t think that thing was appealing even before the war.” He ran his hand along the concrete wall beside him, fingers hitting a light switch. The room was suddenly illuminated in cold fluorescent white, the bulbs humming overhead. They seemed to be in some sort of cold storage area; the walls were only about fifteen feet across, but one of them sported a large freezer door that read ‘E-Z Freezy’. Dollies with old boxes labeled ‘napkins’ and ‘sampler spoons’ were scattered haphazardly across the floor. 

Ruby tapped the glass dial on the freezer door with a finger, reading it silently. “...Oh, please tell me that’s a real reading.” She checked it again just to make sure: it read -5 degrees Fahrenheit in dusty digitized lettering. She dropped her bag unceremoniously and started tugging at the several latches on the door, trying to get them open. “Come on, come on!” 

Deacon watched cautiously, gun at the ready. “Is that freezer still running? That’s some hardcore hardware.” Who knows what they’d find in there. He was hoping for a pile of frozen caps, but was prepared for a mass of half-frozen ferals ready to chew their faces off. 

With a whoosh , the door swung open, and a wave of icy air filled the room. Ruby brought both her hands to her mouth in awe as Deacon lowered his weapon, totally shocked. 

There, inside the freezer among 200ish years of ice crystal buildup, were rows and rows of real ice cream . The two agents were deathly silent. 

“FUCK! YES! FUCK YES!” Ruby crowed, wildly punching the air with a giddy grin on her face. She looked at Deacon, then at the ice cream, then back at Deacon again. The spy could feel his cheeks tightening in a smile; her childish glee was infectious. As expected, Ruby immediately began chattering about all the different flavors, and how they had to try all of them but put them back if they didn’t like them so they could keep them preserved, and oh my god you have to try maraschino cherry flavor. She flitted back and forth across the room, hunting in the boxes for spoons and scanning the shelves, talking the whole time. It was weird. And adorable.

“Listen, don’t get me wrong pal, this is amazing .” Deacon said, using a dirty thumb to wipe cold moisture off of his sunglasses. “But you’re acting like you just found the cure for cancer inside of a walk-in freezer.” 

Ruby kicked the freezer door closed, three ice-cream containers tucked into each arm, looking a bit sheepish. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just… I don’t know if you understand. I miss my life, the world the way it was, so much every day. So finding something like this? It’s like finding a little piece of me that I lost a long time ago. It puts me back together just a bit more.”

“No I get it, I do.” Deacon replied. He shrugged and cocked his head, fixing her with one of his signature wry grins. Had to keep his reputation up. “But don’t think that just because you pulled the ‘woe is me, my whole family is dead’ card, you can hog all the ice cream.” 

The duo set up camp, rolling out their sleeping rolls and listening to the sounds of Diamond City radio fill their air from their mobile radio unit. They could still hear the thunder overhead, but it seemed muted and far away. Ruby’s pip-boy didn’t click at all; Deacon hoped it stayed that way. Only when they were settled in side-by-side on top of their rolls, shoes off and all comfy, did Ruby deign it alright to crack open the first container of dessert. 

“The trick is getting the right cold-to-melty ratio,” she explained, peeling off the paper lid, “Too hard and you can’t scoop it. Too soft and you lose the signature texture.” The first flavor was something called Rocky Road; Deacon ogled the dark color of the chocolate and the strange swirls and dots of nuts and marshmallows. The Railroad spies clinked their scavenged spoons together and dug in. Mid-chew, ruby frowned, her whole face crumpling in disappointment. 

“Mmmph, ‘is ‘s SO ‘OOD!” Deacon got out around a mouthful of dessert like an absolute heathen. Not a lot of things surprised him, but this? This absolutely did. It was crazy to think about the fact that pre-war people could come get this delicious ambrosia of sweet and creamy goodness whenever they wanted: there were people in this world right now that would probably kill them both just to taste it. If his body didn't immediately give out from sugar shock, that is. 

“It’s all wrong!” Ruby said, eating another spoonful and looking even more put out. 

“What the hell are you talking about? This is amazing.” 

“Deacon, it’s not supposed to be CRUNCHY!” 

The pair spent a good while eating their pillaged treats after Deacon had stopped laughing. He couldn’t help it; seeing this woman across from him- the woman who regularly schlepped through mud for funsies and once bludgeoned a mirelurk to death with a stop sign- so put out over the freezer-burned dessert was the most hilarious thing Deacon had witnessed in a long time. 

Eventually they got to talking, relaxing back against the cold wall and munching their way through rocky road, mint chip, currant, and rainbow sherbet. Ruby produced a dirty glass bottle of high-proof moonshine that Longfellow had brewed, and it all went downhill from there. 

“Yeah!” Ruby laughed, wiping her mouth and passing the bottle back to Deacon, who was now propped up on one elbow, listening to her story. “So- I walked up to Marcy right after, and was like, hey Marcy, why do you have to be such a bitch all the time?” 

Deacon scoffed. “You didn’t actually say that. No way.” He knew he was right; he had watched her all those months after all. 

Ruby sighed and smiled. “Mmm. I should have, though. Would’ve wiped that angry grimace off of her face for a few seconds, at least.” 

“Personally, I wouldn’t consider pissing someone off that I had to live with a strategic career move.” Deacon replied. The alcohol burned the back of his throat, and he loaded another sampler spoon up with as much ice cream as it could carry. 

“Bah. What would you know about that, Deacs?” Ruby’s tone was light, jabbing. “You just kind of do whatever you want regardless of anyone, right?” 

“Hey, untrue. I’m a team player!” The railroad spy feigned a frown when Ruby laughed at the notion. “I am! I demonstrate teamwork by not being around the others at HQ so I don’t go absolutely insane with boredom.” He paused to take another swig; maybe he was drinking too much. Then again he could still feel his face, so maybe he wasn’t drinking enough. “Besides. I’m good at wandering, but I still have responsibilities. A bigger cause to uphold.”

“Oooh, a bigger cause .” Ruby gestured grandly, placing her hand on her forehead and leaning back like some noble martyr. She slumped back against the wall, cheeks flushed with her buzz. 

“Bah. What would you know about that, Ruby?” Deacon mocked.

“Hey. What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Now would be an excellent time to switch topics . The little voice inside Deacon’s head was drowned out by the heat of fermented drink in his stomach. It widened the little (normally heavily monitored) passageway that connected his mind to his mouth. “Well, like, yes , you’ve been working with the railroad. That’s- that’s super, kudos to you for that. But you’ve got a missing kid that you haven’t even looked for. Isn’t that a responsibility, too?”

The room fell deadly quiet. 

“Fuck you.” Ruby said. 

Deacon turned to face his partner, wanting to put his foot in his mouth. What the fuck was that? Why did I say that?  Sure, that's what he was thinking, but Deacon did't DO thinking out loud.  “Hey, I’m sorry, that was a major overstep-”

“No, Deacon. That’s none of your fucking business is what that was. A guy who won’t even face his own past , won’t even be honest with his friend about it, has no fucking right to tell me what I should be doing.” 

Deacon bristled. “That’s entirely different from abandoning your own kid in the wasteland-”

“HE’S NOT MY KID!” 

Ruby’s shout was framed by a distant rumble of thunder outside. Deacon’s mouth clamped shut. Of course it’s not her actual kid; he knew that. But it was kinda  her kid , right? Deacon watched as Ruby ran a hand through her hair in frustration and sat rigidly, her shoulders tense. She took a moment to inhale, exhale, collect herself. 

“He’s not my kid. My brother… Nate. When Nora died and he asked me to move in with him to help take care of Shaun, he just assumed I’d drop everything and help him. That’s what he always did. Assume that everything in my life was less important- or less interesting than what was happening in his. I don’t- I barely even know Shaun, Deacon. But it still tears me up that he’s out there somewhere; he’s the only piece of my brother that I have left, and I know he deserves to be found.” 

Deacon weighed the chance that this conversation might make Ruby shut herself inward versus it getting actually getting them somewhere. He decided it would be the latter. “So why haven’t you done anything about it?” 

Ruby looked at him like he had grown a third eye. “Isn’t it obvious?” When she paused, Deacon shrugged. She laughed dryly. “I’m fucking afraid, Deacon! I’m scared shitless! What if I spend my whole life trying to find him and never do? Christ, what if he’s dead, or sold to slavers, or is perfectly fine and I have to deal with the fact that I didn’t fucking look for him ?” She ran a hand down her ruddy face. “I’m drunk. I’m talking too much. I’m-” Ruby made an angry noise, scrubbing furiously at her reddened and damp eyes. 

“I get it. I really do.” Deacon said quietly, resting his elbows on his criss-crossed knees. “It feels better not knowing what the truth is. But that shit will eat you up inside. Trust me, if anyone can empathize with that it’s me. I-” Deacon stopped short, fingers tightening around his spoon. Ruby was so honest, so candid. Why did she have to be so goddamn candid? If she wasn’t, it wouldn’t make him feel like she deserved the truth about him so much. He swallowed, hard, then proceeded to tell Ruby about the U.P Deathclaws, his wife, the lynching: and how he still didn’t know if she was a synth or not to this day. “I think for me, not knowing is a good thing. Keeps me sharp. But for you? Ruby, you gotta face this thing head-on. Not knowing is gonna kill you.” 

Ruby sniffed, drawing her knees to her chest across from Deacon, looking up at him with watery eyes. Deacon’s chest clenched. Ah fuck, that’s sort of adorable . It seemed almost impossible that this stocky, sinewy woman with frown lines and wind-burned skin could make herself look puppy-dog cute, but that’s exactly what she was doing right now. 

“Yeah. I know.” Ruby replied quietly. She swore under her breath, rubbing her face with her hands in exhaustion. “Damn, this was not a conversation I was expecting to have in the basement of an ice-cream store.”

Deacon cracked a crooked smile. “Right? Dessert and booze is a social lubricant, who knew.”

“Oh, that combination’s been around since before even my time.” Ruby smiled weakly, and sighed. “...I guess it’s time to look down the barrel of the gun, huh? Start looking for my nephew.” 

“Yeah.” Deacon replied, handing her his half finished ice-cream tin as she collected them and put them back in the freezer. “I think it’s time. And hey, I’ll be here to help with that. Until something more interesting comes along of course.”

Ruby snorted, halfheartedly kicking at his bedding as she walked by. The pair settled down for the evening: judging by the readings on the Pip-Boy the storm was a relentless one. They would be better off just spending the night down here and hoping it had passed by the morning. Ruby rinsed her face with a little purified water and made Deacon turn around as she changed into her second set of ‘sleep clothes’; an old habit that Deacon couldn’t see the use for. He tried to pull the ‘I can’t see anything, my glasses are tinted’ line before she started undressing, but she threatened to smack him and Deacon knew from experience that she hit hard . 

The spy lit their hardy little oil lantern and shut off the main light in the room before snuggling deep into his sleeping bag. He rolled over onto his side and came face to face with Ruby, half-lit in the weak yellow light. She was looking right at him, strands of dark hair falling over her eyes. She looked like she had something she wanted to say. 

“Do you need something?” Deacon hazarded, ignoring the bite of his sunglasses trapped between the ground and his head. 

“I just wanted to say thanks.” Ruby said, biting the inside of her cheek, mulling her words over. “I think I needed someone to kind of get on my ass about Shaun. I think… I think I’m gonna pull out all the stops to find him. I will find him. For Nate.” 

“That’s the spirit.” Deacon said cheerfully. “Go to sleep.” He rolled back over in the opposite direction; less so for comfort, more so that he wouldn’t have to bear the uncomfortable sensation of someone’s eyes taking him in so intently, so closely. 

The room was quiet save for the distant thunder and pounding rain. Deacon was fairly certain that Ruby was asleep. 

“...Deacon? I’m sorry about your wife.” 

Ruby’s voice was quiet, soft. Gentle and understanding. She didn’t press him for any more details than he gave away, because she knew how incredibly difficult this was for him to talk about in the first place. It felt like a knife to the gut. Deacon didn’t move or reply, and eventually he heard her turn back over, heard her breathing mellow out. 

Yeah. I’m sorry about her too.