Archive of Our Own

It had been two weeks ago that Fixer laid her hand gently on Deacon’s elbow, getting his attention in a shadowed corner of HQ. 

Need you to cover for me , she’d murmured, while Deacon dragged his eyes up from where her fingers met his skin.

What’s up?

Nick needs my help with a thing.

That had gotten his attention. He’d known Nick Valentine had helped her in trying to find her kid, but not that they were close enough to be asking personal favors. What else had she been up to - no. He shook away the thought before it could fully manifest. She was a grown woman, she didn't answer to him. 

Sure thing, boss. Whatcha up to? That apparently sounded suitably casual, because she just smiled and shook her head.

It’s personal. He just needs an extra set of hands, that’s all.

Deacon fought a frown. He had roughly one million more questions, but if it was Nick’s business it wasn’t really his, was it? He liked Nick. He trusted Nick, as far as he trusted anyone. But god if the temptation to pry wasn’t overwhelming. Occupational hazard, probably.

Just come back in one piece, alright?

Promise.

And then he hadn’t heard anything. Not a peep for two weeks, while he ran solo and tried to get used to the hole in the air next to him where Fixer should have been. Resisting the urge to track them down, figure out what was so important Nick needed to steal his partner. For two weeks. 

Until now, with the runner sliding through the back tunnel and making a beeline for Deacon.

“Bunker Hill,” he gasped out. “Fixer.”

If there’s anything else he never hears it, because he’s out the door before he can take another breath.

The solo trip through Charlestown is more nerve-wracking than usual, his mind on his surroundings way less than it should be. It’s on her , damnably, why all the runner had to say was her name and not what might have happened to her.

There might have been more to it if you hadn’t bolted out the door , his mind taunts him. He shakes it off, irritated - he was allowed to worry about her. Right? She was his partner. His friend, even if he was really, really bad at saying that last part out loud. Hell, he just got comfortable saying the first part. With extending that kind of trust. 

“You’re fucked up,” he mutters to himself, for neither the first or last time, and quickens his steps through the city.

When he hits the settlement’s gates he makes a beeline for the market, detouring only when he spots Nick at a table in the corner. The synth stands to greet him, but the friendly hand falls away when he sees the look on Deacon’s face. 

“She’s upstairs,” he says simply. Deacon turns on his heel, taking the stairs two at a time. As a result he beats Nick to the second floor, realizing only once he’s there that he doesn’t know which room she’s in, and has to wait with barely-contained agitation until Nick catches up. Not thinking. Not planning. Pure reaction, pure impulse. Gonna get myself killed like this. 

“Kay did her best,” Nick mutters, approaching a door in the center of the hall. “But she’s gonna need a real doctor. Not that Kay’s - you know what I mean.”

That does nothing to help Deacon’s agitation. When Nick gets the door unlocked it takes everything in him not to shove past him, to get into the room as quickly as he can. 

“She might be asleep,” Nick says, sharp against Deacon’s hurry, but there’s already stirring in the bed in the corner.

“Deac?” Her voice is slurred - she had been sleeping. He feels a little bad for waking her until she sits up, ignoring Nick’s noise of protest, and the thin sheet falls away.

“Jesus Christ.” Deacon takes a half-step towards her, hand outstretched, but stops himself. Lets the hand fall and just stares . She’s wearing a button-down shirt, two sizes too big so that the collar falls low and he can see the litany of bruises crawling up her neck from under the bandages wrapped around what looks to be her entire torso. “What happened ?”

“Gunners,” Nick says grimly. That’s bad enough, but the way Fixer flinches is worse. She didn’t want me to know . The thought is clear and solid in his head, and he feels his jaw settle into a hard line. 

“So a real ‘you should see the other guy’ situation, huh.” The joke is automatic; he doesn’t feel it. Fixer, to her credit, meets his eyes as she nods. Even that small movement has her wincing, and she settles back against the wall with her eyes closed. 

“I’ll…wait downstairs,” Nick says, sliding out into the hall, leaving the two of them alone with the thick, heavy discomfort in the air between them. 

Fixer hasn't sat up, still leaned back against the wall, breathing shallowly. 

"How bad?" Let me see , he wants to say. Let me fix it.

"Ribs." Her voice is strained. "Back. Mostly bruised. No breaks. Probably."

"Grenades?" She just nods, wrapping one arm around her middle with a hard wince and a hissing inhale. 

"That and a car." Deacon closes his eyes, takes a deep breath in. Lets it out slowly. 

"Why here?" 

She opens one eye. "What?" 

"Why have Nick bring you here?" 

The eye drifts shut again. "He doesn't know the way home," she murmurs. "Doesn't want to. Operational security ." The phrase is accompanied by a thin smile. "Knew I could snag a runner here." 

"You couldn't have sent more than your name?" He sinks into the room's only chair, adrenaline finally draining and leaving his muscles sore. He can’t be mad. Wants to be, wants to know why she went and what she did and why she didn’t want him to know, but he’s just too tired and too relieved to find her in mostly one piece. His eyes are still fixed squarely on her, the ragged way she’s breathing and her jaw clenched against the pain. She cracks one eye again, frowning at him.

“I did. Said I was alive but needed help home.”

Told you so. He swats the mental voice away. “He didn’t get to that part,” he admits quietly. “I left pretty quick.” Fixer’s mouth curves into a smile.

“Careful, partner. People might start thinking you care.”

There's a sudden tightness in his chest he can't explain. Probably just adrenaline. He struggles to return the smile, but manages it in the end.

 Fixer eventually drifts back into a fitful sleep, Deacon staying rooted in his chair until he hears her breathing slow and even. He makes his way back down the stairs, where he’s surprised to see Nick still seated at the bar. 

“Figured you’d have headed out,” he mutters, sliding onto the stool next to him. 

“Wanted to see you two off.” Nick takes a long drag off his cigarette. Deacon wonders, not for the first time, where the smoke even goes , or what Nick gets out of it. 

“It’ll be a bit,” Deacon warns, ordering a NukaCola with a gesture. “She can’t travel like this, not with just the two of us.”

“If I thought it was safe - “ Deacon waves off Nick’s apologetic tone. 

“No, it’s the right call. We’ll pump her full of stimpacks and at least get her to where she can walk.” He looks at Nick over his sunglasses and lowers his voice. “She looks like that after a stimpack?”

“After a couple.” Nick’s voice is grim. “She was right next to the car when it went up. Armor did its job, is why she’s still breathing, but it was a nasty blow.” Another pull on the cigarette. “The wall she hit didn’t have much give, either.”

Deacon rests his forehead against the unopened bottle for a moment. “Shit,” he says plainly. Nick gives a sardonic little chuckle.

“That’s what I said. Give or take a few.” He stubs out the cigarette, the two sitting in silence while Deacon opens his drink, sliding the cap back across the bar. 

When Nick speaks again it’s slow and deliberate, like he’s considering his choice of words very carefully. “Not to tell you your business…”

“Spoken like a man about to tell me my business,” Deacon mutters. Nick’s smile is quick and sharp.

“She never shut up about you,” he says. “Before or after. Everything before was some tale of the two of you - carefully redacted,” he adds, holding up a placating hand when Deacon’s eyes cut over to him. “All very vague. Honest.” Deacon eases down, taking a swig of his drink. 

“Everything after the - well.” Nick looks down at the bar. “After. I don’t know if she even remembers it. It didn’t all make sense. But it was a lot about some promise she made you. How she had to make it back. Because she promised.” 

Deacon sets the bottle on the bar with a gentle tap , because his throat has closed over and also his fist is trying to clench around the glass. He doesn’t think it’d break, but he’s also not interested in finding out.

“What’s your point, Nick?” he asks when air can make it through his trachea again. 

“No point, really.” Nick stands from the bar. “I just know you’ll never hear it from her, and I think you oughta know.” 

Deacon turns on his stool to follow Nick as he heads for the stairs. “Oughta know what, Nick?”

Nick doesn’t look back, just tosses his metal hand up in a careless wave. “G’night, kid. Get some rest.”

Deacon turns back to his drink. “I’ll ‘kid’ you,” he grumbles to no one in particular. It does nothing to loosen the knot in his chest. It’s entirely too easy to picture her, delirious with pain, surrounded by fire and dead Gunners. He’s seen too much like it in the past. Knows what burning coolant smells like, the ozone tang of a radiation burn. Knows what getting blown up feels like, too, can feel the phantom bruises crawling up his own skin. And if Nick wasn’t fucking with him completely, all she was thinking in that moment was about the off-hand comment he’d made before she left. 

He wants to thump his head against the bar. The only thing stopping him is knowing it’d draw attention in the slowly emptying market space, and he’d trained himself out of that ages ago. In and out. No attention. No connections.

How’s that last one working out for you?

He tries to drown the mental voice by chugging the rest of his drink, and tosses a handful of caps on the bar for a room.

(The room stays empty. Deacon sleeps sitting up in the chair at the foot of Fixer’s bed, waking every few hours to make sure he can still hear her slow, soft breaths in the dark.)

Nick actually comes to the room the next morning. If he’s surprised (or amused) to see Deacon there he doesn’t show it, instead helping him ease Fixer out of bed. Her muscles have settled and stiffened in the night, and even sitting upright involves a lot of pausing and quick, shallow breaths.

“I told you,” Nick mutters at one point. “The first morning after’s always the roughest.”

“Because you’re such an expert,” Fixer huffs from between clenched teeth, managing to swing her feet over the edge of the bed. 

When Deacon looks over at Nick he finds Nick looking at him , though the synth’s eyes cut away after a moment. “I know a thing or two,” is all he says. “Come on, up and at ‘em.” 

“Up and atom ,” Fixer snickers, looping one arm around each man’s neck. 

“Did you give her anything yet?” Nick asks, sotto voce . 

“She’s just like this,” Deacon mutters back, and each of them gets a swat to the back of the head for the by-play. 

It feels more like they’re carrying her while her feet skim the floor than her actually walking. She’s so damn little it makes it hard for Deacon to lean down enough to support her on his shoulder without his own spine protesting - you’re getting old - but unsurprisingly Nick seems to carry her weight easily enough. They get her to the bathroom, Deacon trying to listen for sounds that mean help without actually listening in a way that makes him feel like a creep. 

“That sure is easier with two,” Nick says.

“Yeah?”

“She may or may not have been on my back most of the way here,” he admits. The image flashes in Deacon’s mind, once again entirely too vivid - Nick trying to sneak through the city with Fixer laid across his back, no treatment yet except maybe a hastily-applied stimpack - he shakes his head to chase it off just as the door swings open. 

“That’s a bruised kidney,” Fixer says bitterly. That raises alarm bells in Deacon’s mind, but Nick just positions himself to help her back across the room. 

“We figured as much,” he says. “I’m sure Deacon doesn’t mind getting you some breakfast and some meds.”

Deacon doesn’t mind, but still feels somewhat like he’s being managed, no matter how smoothly. 

“I can go,” Fixer says between gritted teeth. Deacon looks over at how pale she is, feels the fine tremors in her arms as she tries to hold herself up on their shoulders.

“I’ll race you,” he says, carefully unlooping her arm from around his neck. The look she gives him is pure venom. Deacon is getting the idea that she’s what Carrington calls a “difficult patient”.

He steps to the door, opening it just a crack to survey the hallway more out of habit than anything. “Any requests?”

“Go fuck yourself,” she pants as she stretches out little by slowly. 

Deacon’s mouth quirks up into a smile. “With or without fries?” 

She flips him the bird as he edges out into the hallway, which just makes him smile more. She’ll be fine.

He swings by the medic while he’s out, grabs something for pain and an extra stimpack. Once she’s got something on her stomach they can get the medicine in her, get her moving around a little more. If they have to be stuck anywhere he’s glad it’s here , where the Railroad-to-civilian ratio is a little more in their favor, even if they still have to stay in the room as much as possible to dodge suspicious caravaners. It’d be great to have Kay come up and examine Fixer instead of him and Nick trying to eyeball everything, but it’d draw attention. Fixer hobbling back and forth using the two of them as crutches even more so. He makes a mental note to put together a message to send back to HQ, explain what’s going on and why they’re still gone - and maybe tell Carrington to keep his schedule open.

For some reason, that’s what makes everything hit him, and he has to sit heavily at a table before he reaches the stairs. This, all of it, caring for someone who’s hurt, in a place he feels safe - or at least as safe as he ever feels, anywhere - he can’t remember the last time it happened. Patching up the survivors of the Switchboard, sure, but that was in a blind panic, responding to Carrington’s orders barked across the din, trying to make sure the next person wasn’t dead before he got to them. Even when one of them gets sick or hurt they tend to let Carrington patch them up and then isolate until they’re well - no one wants to be a millstone.

This feels better than that, except the part where Fixer’s beat to hell. This feels right , how it should be. He knows logically they simply can’t spare the members for convalescence - god knows he’s gone out with taped-up ribs or a half-healed concussion before - and their recruiting focus is on refilling their operational ranks, not getting Carrington a nurse. But idealistically, they might all be doing a lot better if they could.

 He manages to make it upstairs before the food gets cold, but pauses when he hears voices drifting out into the hall. 

“I still can’t believe you told him.” Fixer’s voice is somewhere between exhausted and annoyed. Leaning towards the former, though.

“I wasn’t gonna lie to him.” Nick, on the other hand, is exasperated. Perhaps fondly, it’s hard to tell sometimes. Deacon still hasn’t gotten a good read on the modulated voice. “I told you I wasn’t gonna lie to him.”

“Couldn’t fulfill a girl’s dying wish?” 

There’s silence for a long moment before Nick speaks again, and this time it’s quiet and strained. “That’s not funny.” 

“...sorry.”

Deacon stomps his feet a few times like he’s just now coming up the hall, and when he shoulders the door open he sees Nick’s hand withdrawing from Fixer’s. He pulls his eyes away from it and pastes a smile on his face. “Order up. With a side of modern medicine.”

Fixer tries to sit up, her elbows giving out almost immediately, and Nick helps her maneuver her way up to sitting against the wall. It occurs to Deacon that he could probably just lift her and put her where she wants with about as much effort as lifting a doll, but also that Fixer would remove his arms and demand ransom for them if he tried.

“It’s just steak and tatos,” he says, setting the dish in front of her on the bed. “But it should shore you up for the time being.”

“It smells amazing,” she mutters, lifting the fork to her mouth. 

“Don’t wolf it down too fast,” he cautions. “Throwing up will not feel good on those ribs.”  

Her eyes flick up to him, annoyed, but she starts chewing a little more deliberately. 

“I’m gonna take a walk while you two chow,” Nick says. 

“Gonna pick up some side work?” Deacon asks. “Maybe a lost teddy bear?”

“Someone’s gotta support you two freeloaders,” Nick returns easily, and steps out of the room.

“You’re so mean to him,” Fixer says, but she’s smiling. 

“I’m mean to everybody,” Deacon says off-handedly, pulling the chair closer to the bed. 

“Not everybody .” She takes another small bite. “Just most of everybody.”

“I have a vanishingly small circle of people who don’t deserve it.”

“Am I in it?” She shifts uncomfortably, trying to adjust her weight against the wall. 

“It might be just you.” The admission comes easily, but when Fixer doesn’t respond he looks up to find her gaze fixed (ha) on him. 

“I’m sorry,” she says suddenly, quietly. 

“What for?” He knows what for. He doesn’t know why he’s making her say it. That feels mean. 

She just gestures at her torso. “You gave me one job .” The corners of her mouth turn up but there’s no joy in it.

“Leaving the house is never safe in the Commonwealth.” He shrugs with a casualness he doesn’t feel. The tension of the day prior is back in the room, hanging between them like a physical presence. 

“So how much of my message did get through?” she asks. 

“This place and your name,” he admits. “Like I said last night.” 

She blinks, surprised. “I thought you were exaggerating.”

It would have been hard to exaggerate the way his heart crawled into his throat, the immediate assumption that she’d died, that he was going to reclaim her corpse and have to scratch her name out on the board.

The thought, somewhere deep in his soul where he could barely hear it, that he’d failed. Again.

“Didn’t want to give Dez the chance to tell me no.” he says instead. She gives a small smile in response, taking another bite of food. 

“Would she have?”

“What, stopped me? Nah, you’re the teacher’s pet.” 

“What’d you tell her, anyway? About me being gone?” 

“That you were helping a synth.” He grins and she matches it fully this time. 

“Not a total lie.”

“The best lies are half-truths,” he says with mock seriousness. “Lesson number…whatever.”

“I feel like we covered that one already.” 

“Probably.” He waves his fork dismissively. “It’s a pretty basic one.” 

The tension is draining from between them, which he’s grateful for. He likes how easy it is with her, the back-and-forth equal and reciprocal, the way she meets him blow-for-blow. The silence that fills in the absence is companionable, comfortable.

“Missed you.” 

His mouth just opens and the admission falls out. It’s involuntary and even worse, sincere. He missed having her at his side, at his back, in his day-to-day. He just never intended to tell her that, or at least not in so many words. 

“Missed you too.” She’s not looking at him. The tension has come roaring back, twice as thick, weighing down on him like a physical presence on his shoulders. 

“But you had Nick with you.” He’s trying desperately to tease, to bring the easy atmosphere back from wherever his word vomit chased it to. 

“Nick’s not you.” Her voice is small and quiet and she’s trying to curl in on herself. Deacon can hear his heartbeat in his ears. “He’s great, he’s my friend. But he’s not my….my partner.” 

Deacon hears the aborted sentence. Doesn’t know how it was going to end, but hears it anyway. 

And the realization crashes into him, hard enough that his breath catches in his throat. Because he knows how he wants her to have ended it, and that makes him stand from his chair as his fork clatters to his plate. He’s filled with the urge to run , to be anywhere else, to disappear into the crowd and never reappear. 

There are footsteps outside the door just before it opens to admit Nick back into the room. Deacon wonders if it sounded so fake when he did it.

“Back so soon?” Deacon’s putting more effort into controlling his voice than he ever has before. “I think I’m done, I’m gonna take my plate down.” 

He pushes past Nick, ignoring the synth’s noise of confused protest, and practically slides down the banister in his haste to be literally anywhere but here.

He manages to talk himself out of leaving the country. Instead he ends up halfway up the tower, high enough he has a view of the city but not so high he starts hyperventilating. Which is good, because he’s already having a panic attack. The feeling in his chest, trailing down his arms and into his fingers, the way his head is buzzing. He knows this feeling. And he had yearned so badly in that moment for her to indicate in any way that she was feeling it, too.

He turns the last few days over in his mind. The agitation and worry, the distracted anger, the way he flew out of HQ at the suggestion that she’d been hurt - he likes to think he’d have done that for any of the Railroad. Carefully detached demeanor aside. 

But he knows a lie when he hears one, even when it’s to himself. He was terrified . To the point of stupid recklessness. Yeah, he would have gone after the others if they needed him to. But he would have taken it a hell of a lot slower, cleared his corners in a way he simply didn’t here. He barreled right in and didn’t regain the ability to have second thoughts until he saw her breathing. 

(The whole time fighting down the anger from where he’s shoved it and caged it and thrown away the key, a snarling rage that wants to burst out of his chest and up his throat like dragon fire, a purging flame he wants to turn on anyone and anything that contributed to her pain.)

His chest is too full. He feels hollowed out. He wants to bolt, in literally any direction. He wants to meld into the stone and never move again. He wants to throw up. He’s never felt more invigorated. 

And he can’t do anything about it. 

He can’t risk his partnership. Their friendship. Their work for the Railroad is more important than him. He might actually lose his mind if he has to go solo again, especially if it’s because of this.

Deacon takes his sunglasses off, rubbing his hands across his face. He has to put this aside. He has to stuff it down where he stuffs everything else, because Fixer called him here to help her, and whatever idiocy he has going on aside, she’s his partner. His friend, even if he never grows enough balls to say it.

She never shut up about you . Nick’s voice floats from the recesses of his memory. I just thought you should know. He pushes it away - a fantasy, a childish hope he can’t afford. Into the box with everything else, locked away where it can’t hurt him. 

(Except that’s a lie, too. It still hurts. It cuts like a knife, excising the part of him he thought he’d already cut away, the part that hopes and yearns and wants. Those things aren’t for him. Not anymore.)

He stares out the hole in the stone for a long moment, letting the light sear his eyes before he puts his glasses back on. Halos dance across his vision and he can barely see his feet as he makes his way back down the steps.

When he finally manages to make himself open Fixer’s door again, she’s sat up in bed, hugging a pillow while Nick grumbles behind her. Her eyes are unfocused, pupils blown wide, and her mouth drops into a small “o” of surprise when she sees him. 

“You came back,” she says quietly.

“You’re on drugs,” he says, smiling wanly as he walks around to where Nick is struggling with something. “Need help?”

“It’s this damn hand,” Nick mutters, waving the skeletal metal digits in disgust. “Not exactly made for doctoring.” 

“Here, let me.” He takes Nick’s place on the mattress behind Fixer. When he finally gets a full look at her back he takes a sharp, hissing inhale - she’s taken the button-down shirt off, leaving only the bandages wrapped around her torso. She’s a mummy from hips to sternum, and everywhere else is covered in mottled blue/purple/black that makes him hurt just to look at. There’s barely a patch of her original skin tone left, except for a small spot near her shoulder blade that must be where Nick jabbed her with a stimpack before the bruising could really set in.

“You did a number on yourself, huh?” he murmurs. She mumbles a hazy apology and he just shakes his head. “We went over this,” he says. “No more apologizing.”

He thought this would feel…different. That the sack of hammers he got hit with would change how he saw her, how he spoke to her. And maybe it will, when she’s sober again and can actually respond to him. But patching each other up is common enough that his hands don’t shake when they touch her skin, skimming over the bruises. She hisses and flinches away, making a strangled noise at the sudden movement.

“Sorry!” He lifts his hands away. “Sorry. Believe it or not, that’s a good sign. No nerve damage.” 

“Do I want to know how many times you’ve done this?” Nick asks, bemused. 

 - everyone’s yelling, everything still smells like smoke and ionization, the agent on the floor in front of Deacon whimpers, clutching at his arm, I can’t feel my legs, god, fuck, I can’t feel my legs -

Deacon just flashes him a wide grin. “Probably not.” He gestures for Nick to hand him the stimpack. “What am I doing?”

“I talked to Kay earlier, about the, ah, kidney issue.” He winces. “She said the best thing is to inject the stimpack in that area. Less distance for the medicine to travel.”

Deacon echoes the wince. That would be a sensitive area on a good day, and Fixer’s probably solid black under the bandages. 

“She’s got two kidneys, though,” he says out loud. “How do we know which one needs the stim?”

“I think it’s a pretty equal chance either way,” Nick says dryly, and Deacon has to concede the point. 

“Alright, Fix,” he says, laying a gentle hand on the bandages over her back. “Everything that’s about to happen is going to suck. Like, a lot.” 

She mumbles something he can’t decipher, and he doesn’t try to make her repeat it. The more checked-out she is right now, the better. “Nick, help me get her on her side.” 

They maneuver her onto the mattress, still hugging the pillow. (Deacon gets the one out of “his” room for her to actually lay her head on. He’s pretty sure he’s not gonna use it.) He knows the medicine is doing its job not just because of how stoned she is, but how little she protests when he starts shifting the bandages away from just above her waistband. 

“Alright,” he says, apology in his voice. “I gotta jab you right here.” He touches the area with two fingers. Fixer groans. “You got that right, pal.” Sighing, he takes the stimpack from Nick, pulls the guard off of the needle end. “Here’s hoping you don’t actually remember this.”

Nick manages to get between Fixer and the wall, laying his hands along the top of her leg. When Deacon pinches the skin between two fingers she makes a noise like she’s being strangled, and when the needle actually enters the skin she jerks like she’s been shot. But Nick’s grip is firm and Deacon presses the plunger down, watching the medicine flow through the barrel of the syringe, chanting “sorry, sorry, sorry” under his breath the whole time.

She makes another disgruntled noise as he withdraws the needle, but nowhere near what she sounded like when it went in. 

“Good job, kid.” Nick pats her leg companionably as he struggles back off the bed. “Didn’t even kick anybody’s head off.” 

“The day’s young,” she grumbles. The pain of the procedure seems to have cleared her head slightly. “I’ve got time.”

“Well it would have been my head you kicked, so I still appreciate your restraint.” Deacon watches as the medicine’s most potent effects hit the skin around the injection site; cells repairing themselves in a bloom like dropping alcohol into ink. “Does it at least feel better?”

“Maybe in a little bit,” she says, adjusting her head on the pillow. “It just still feels like I got stabbed right now.” 

“Very fair.” He claps his hands together in mock glee. “And this afternoon we get to do the other side!” 

Fixer just groans into her pillow.

She drifts into a nap after that, trying to get actual restful sleep while her body isn’t screaming at her. Deacon sits in the corner with a pencil and paper, getting down the basics of his letter home before he commits it to holotape. Nick’s retrieved the chair from Deacon’s room - might as well - and is sitting in the opposite corner, unmoving. He’d said something about diagnostics and then turned into a statue with glowing yellow eyes. Deacon’s trying not to look, honestly; he’s seen that exact expression on too many gen 2s in pieces on the ground. 

Safe at BH. Fixer getting fixed up. With a friend. 

He frowns at that bit, scratching a question mark over the top of it. He’s not sure if he wants Nick’s direct involvement mentioned. Mostly for Nick’s safety, if he’s being honest. He’s way too public a face to risk a direct connection to the Railroad. And besides that, he still doesn’t know what the two of them went off to do, or why it ended with Fixer getting intimate with the concept of concussive force. 

Fixer gives a little snuffling snore, drawing Deacon’s attention. As she settles back into the pillow Deacon feels the soft smile spread across his face, the little bubble of affection inside his chest. He scrubs one hand over his jaw, feeling the stubble scrape against his palm, and sighs at himself. 

“Stay on task,” he mutters to himself, bending back over his paper.

“Trouble with your homework?” Deacon damn near jumps out of his skin at Nick’s soft question. When he looks over the synth is smirking at him.  

“Jesus Christ , Valentine,” he hisses. “I watch over your corporeal form while you go play mechanic in your own brain and you thank me by trying to give me a heart attack?!”

“You weren’t watching me ,” Nick says, and his own gaze goes to the woman sleeping in the bed against the far wall. 

Deacon looks back down at his paper. “Of course I was,” he mutters. “ She already exploded. It’s you I gotta worry about now.”

Nick’s laugh is quiet in deference to Fixer’s rest. “If only it worked that way.” Deacon’s eyes flick back up to Nick’s face; he’s watching Fixer now, expression tight. 

“It’s not your fault,” he says quietly. It takes Nick long enough to react that Deacon thinks he might not have heard him.

“I’m why she was out there in the first place.” The regret in his voice is clear, even with his quiet tone. 

“Well, I don’t know how things work between you two,” Deacon gestures between the pair with his pencil. “But the last time I tried to tell her not to do something she wanted to do she fed me my own foot. So if she was there it’s ‘cause she wanted to be.” He’s actually very proud of himself for not asking what were you even doing , for about the millionth time since he got here.

Nick’s smile is soft and only a little bitter. “I suppose that’s true.” His eyes cut over to Deacon. “You might hold onto that little pearl of wisdom for yourself.”

“What -”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here.” Fixer’s grumpy command cuts across Deacon’s bewildered question. 

“Sorry,” both men say in unison. 

“How’re you feeling?” Deacon asks. 

“Like I got hit by a truck,” she says, trying to roll over without actually moving any of her muscles. 

“Not totally inaccurate!” 

A hand emerges from the blanket pile with a single finger extended.

“She’s fine,” Deacon stage-whispers to Nick, who just shakes his head.

“Go write your letter,” he says, making a little shooing motion as he stands. “I got her.”

Deacon only hesitates for a moment, his eyes lingering on the spray of chestnut hair that’s all he can see of Fixer.

“Yeah, okay.” He stands as well, clearing his throat. “Might as well actually use my room for something.”

“Could always just move that bed in here, too.” Nick’s parting shot lands just before the door clicks shut, so it’d be more awkward for Deacon to re-open it just to respond. Bastard. Snarky, well-timed bastard. He hears Fixer, muffled but definitely indignant, and Nick’s laughter through the door as he steps across the hall.

He gets the message recorded, and ends up mentioning their “friend” after all, if only so Dez won’t feel like she needs to send backup. He wraps the tape in a shredded paper bag and some other shit from his pack, and wanders downstairs to find the twitchiest-looking kid at the bar. (He’s not sure if they’re all on Jet or just naturally high-strung, but runners always seem about one loud noise from either keeling over or hitting the roof.) 

“Hey.” He gets the attention of someone that seems to be about twenty-five percent blonde ponytail by volume. “You got a geiger counter?”

“Sorry, it’s in the shop.” The runner just sounds tired, which makes Deacon feel a little bad. But only a little.

“Shame. Hey, can you take this to the road for me?” He gestures with the bundle of garbage. “Careful, it’s heavier than it looks.” He slips a couple of caps into the top of the bundle, getting a grateful smile from the ponytail. 

“Yeah, I can do that for you.” 

“Appreciate it.” He flashes a smile and heads back up the stairs, surprised to pass Nick on the way. 

“Got a lead on a thing,” he calls over his shoulder, not even giving Deacon the chance to ask. “Won’t take long.”

I’ll be damned. He really was picking up work. Deacon makes it back into the room to find Fixer sitting upright in one of the chairs, one leg stretched out to rest on the mattress. Her head is tipped back and her eyes are shut, but she’s only half as pale as she’d been that morning. 

“That was quick.” She opens one eye, the other following it when she sees Deacon. “Oh.”

“‘Oh’?” Deacon mimics her tone. “That’s a hell of a greeting.”

“I just thought it’d be Nick, that’s all.” She shrugs, winces.

“Yeah, he said he had a thing. I passed off the letter home.”

“That’s good. I probably worried everybody enough as it is.”

"They might call off the air strike, anyway. How're you feeling?" 

"Being vertical is a nice change of pace." Her eyes drift shut again. "Nick thinks hitting me with another couple of stimpacks'll at least get me to where I can walk." She pulls a face. "Carrington's gonna tear me a new asshole." 

"At least he'll sew it back up after." Fixer gives a small snort of laughter that ends in another wince. “Hey,” Deacon says suddenly, losing control of his mouth again. “What was that earlier? The ‘you came back’?” 

She opens her eyes, blinking before she tips her head up to look at the ceiling. “What do you mean?”

It'd be so easy to play it off at this point. In for a penny… He pulls the other chair a little closer before sitting in it. “It is a mark of extreme shame on me personally how bad of a liar you are, Fix.” 

She does at least look at him when she speaks next. “You left,” she says simply. “We were talking, and you just…left.” Her gaze finally drops. “I thought you might’ve finally bugged out.” A mirthless laugh. "I know I would have gotten tired of me by now." 

Deacon wants to punch himself in the head. "I'm not bugging out on you, Fixer." He wants to touch her, some kind of reassurance of his presence, but her status as a walking bruise makes that difficult. "I mean it." 

She tips her head. "Said the liar?" 

A litany of swears runs through Deacon's head. He once again resists the urge to punch himself. He's spent all these years building walls around himself with outrageous lies and obnoxious behavior both personal and professional, and now he wants to tear it all down just to get that look of uncertainty off her face. Just to let her know she can trust him, despite all evidence to the contrary, because at this point leaving her would be like tearing off his own leg. 

"Hey." He touches the inside of her elbow with his fingertips, just like she'd gotten his attention in HQ. It's all that feels safe. "I'm in your corner." 

Her smile is so soft and slow and real that something in Deacon's chest squeezes so tightly he thinks it might pop. He withdraws his hand, dropping his eyes. "Besides," he says, already hating himself for how reflexively he's breaking the moment. "Dez wouldn't let me back into HQ without you." 

She presses her lips together - but she's still smiling. "Oh really?" 

"Would leave my ass on the stoop like a stray dog." He leans back in his chair. "Total favoritism. I swear I'm gonna call HR about it." 

There's joy in her eyes now where there's only been dull pain or irritation, and he figures he can pride himself on that, at least. "And who's HR?" 

"Tinker Tom." 

She bursts into giggles that leave her clutching at her chest and ribs, and he has to help her back onto the bed to stretch out the abused muscles. 

"Sorry," he says as he draws the blanket over her. 

"Don't apologize for making me laugh." She winces as she adjusts. "It's all I've got sometimes." 

He looks down at the top of her head. He does forget sometimes that her mere existence in this world - in his world - is one big cavalcade of trauma. Even more so than the rest of them. She carries it like Atlas holding up the world, and probably nobody ever told that guy a good knock-knock joke. 

"Then I will continue. Maybe even escalate." He settles the blanket around her shoulders. "Though maybe I'll wait until you can take full breaths again." 

She catches his fingers with her own before he can pull away, just a brief squeeze. The closest she can get to a hug. "Thanks, Deac." 

His throat clicks as he swallows. "Any time, Fix."

When Nick slips back in with a plate and sees Fixer stretched out on the bed, his eyes go immediately to Deacon. "What'd you do?" 

"What?" Deacon gestures at Fixer. "She's fine!" 

"She was sitting up in a chair when I left." Nick drags said chair to the side of the bed. 

"I made her laugh ," Deacon says defensively. 

"Well that seems unlikely." 

Deacon looks from him to Fixer, who is clearly repressing another round of giggles. " I'm mean to him ?!" 

Her shoulders shake a little with laughter, but she doesn't flinch away from the movement like she had earlier. 

"That's more like it," Nick says fondly. “Seems like the medicine’s working.” 

“Maybe laughter is the best medicine,” Deacon mutters, just to see the little spark of mirth in her eyes again.

Nick is less appreciative, aside from a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “ Eat , both of you.” 

Deacon takes the plates down when they’re done, and when he gets back Nick is examining Fixer’s bruises again. While the visible area across her neck and shoulders is still splotchy and dark, it’s much less dramatic than it was even that morning. Deacon flexes the fingers of one hand before reaching out to lay them on her shoulder, warm against his touch. Or maybe he’s just cold, from the way she shivers.

“Do I have to get stabbed in the kidney again?” she asks, pulling the pillow to her chest to help support her.

“It’d probably be for the best. Just in case." The apology is clear in Nick's voice. "It's the other one this time, if that helps." Fixer just groans and starts shuffling her way onto her other side. She’s already moving so much better, the light and life returning to her little by little. She still hurts, evidenced by the slow way she settles onto the mattress, but she’s acting like Fixer again. 

Deacon can’t help but credit himself for that at least a little, no matter what Nick says. 

“Alright, Deacon, you’re up.” Nick is back in his earlier stance, bracing Fixer with both hands. He doesn’t seem as tense this time, possibly because Fixer is sober and might have slightly more self-control. 

“Sorry, partner.” Deacon starts to shift the bandages out of the way. The bruises there remain almost entirely untouched, the splotches still ink-dark and angry around the edges. “Try not to tense, it won’t let the medicine disperse.”

“Why do you know that?” Fixer mutters, making a disgruntled noise as he pinches fat between two fingers.

“Didn’t I tell you? I used to be a mad scientist’s assistant. You inject enough monkeys and you learn a thing or two.” He takes advantage of her snort of laughter to slide the needle in, and the snort turns into a surprised grunt.

“That was dirty,” she says as he depresses the plunger, but there’s no ire to her tone. 

“It’s not dirty if it works.”

“That doesn’t feel accurate.” She makes another small noise as he removes the needle, and he pats her leg fondly. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’s still weighing every interaction, what feels different and what doesn’t, and why . It’s mostly a confused mess, scribbled-over notes and question marks after every line. 

Nick just shakes his head, settling in a chair across the room. “Kinda miss when you slept all the time,” he says, but his tone is purely fond. 

“You knew what you were getting into,” she says as she wriggles back down under the blankets.

“Kid, I don’t think anyone knows what they’re getting into with you.”

That’s the damn truth, Deacon thinks as he pulls the blanket up over her shoulders, watching her settle into the pillow with a soft smile that he can’t help but match. 

(He sleeps sitting up in the chair again, which his spine will eventually stop allowing for, but this time as he listens for her breath in the dark it’s with a catch in his throat and panic in his chest. How did he fall this far this fast? Or has he been falling the whole time and just now caught sight of the ground?)

(He sleeps better with her nearby.)

 The next morning she’s able to get out of bed on her own, though she still uses Nick as a crutch until she’s moved around a little and loosened up. Nick goes to get Kay, who kicks the two of them out of the room while she undoes Fixer’s bandages. The door is shut but the walls are thin, and they hear the disgruntled noise she makes when Kay has to jab her with another stimpack.

“She’s never gonna take another stimpack again after this,” Deacon mutters. Nick’s only response is a soft snort of laughter, and then Kay’s emerging from the room with an armful of cloth. 

“Congratulations,” she says. “You managed not to kill her. She probably needs another day but I know you’re itching to get out of here.” She gives Deacon a look that he responds to with a grin on pure reflex.

“Dunno what you’re talking about.” Nick rolls his eyes behind Kay’s back. 

“Give her a minute to get dressed,” Kay says, ignoring Deacon entirely. “Try to at least eat before you throw her back out to the wolves?”

“Hey, I’m throwing me with her,” Deacon says as she walks away. 

“I’ll grab you both a plate,” Nick says, following after her.

“I’ll…twiddle my thumbs, I guess.” 

“It’s what you’re good at,” Nick says good-naturedly. Deacon wonders if he’ll ever have a line the old synth won’t have a comeback for. 

He waits outside the door, mentally counting at least two minutes before knocking. But when he hears muffled swearing and grumbling on the other side of the door he knocks gently. “You good?”

“Hrmlflmph.” 

“...I’m coming in.” 

He does give her a moment to protest, but when he’s met with silence he cracks the door open. She’s got a tank top on and is halfway through putting a t-shirt on over it. She’s got one arm on, the other dangling loosely as she presses a hand against her torso. 

“Should have stuck to the button-up,” she says ruefully, taking a ragged breath. 

“Do you need to get taped back up?” Deacon asks, carefully extricating her from the t-shirt. 

“No,” she says immediately. “I really am ready to get out of here. Just - help me get into the shirt.” 

He obediently holds it up, letting her slide her arms in one at a time. It’s still huge on her, hanging loose around her collarbone, but it’ll keep her armor from rubbing against bare skin, anyway. "That's not an answer, you know." 

"What?" She's still got her back to him, buttoning the shirt. 

"About if you need to get taped back up." He pokes her in an unbruised part of her shoulder. 

"I'm fine," she says flatly, doing up the last button. She turns around, spreading her arms as best she can. "How do I look?" 

He just reaches out, laying two fingers on the bruises still visible over the neck of the tank top. She shivers again, and when he meets her eyes he knows she's not cold. 

And there it is. What finally makes it different . Looking into her eyes with his hands on her skin, feeling her heartbeat in his fingertips. Seeing the expression on her face and trying to convince himself it's not a mirror of his own. Still trying desperately to cut away hope while it grows all around him like untended ivy.

He lets his hand drop as he turns away. "I'll hold you to that," he says, impressing himself with how steady his voice is. 

There's a long pause before she answers, voice quiet in the deafening silence. "Thank you." 

He wants to ask what for . Doesn’t, because he’s not sure he can take the answer.

Nick shoulders the door open, holding a plate in each hand. “One more for the road,” he says. They each take a plate, Deacon settling on the bed to let Fixer have the more stable seat, and they eat breakfast in relative silence. Nick’s eyes dart between the two of them, but he says nothing, to Deacon’s great relief. 

“Okay,” Fixer sighs as she finishes her plate. “Now for the rest of it.” She lifts herself out of the chair at an angle, bending at the waist as little as possible, and heads for the corner where her pack and her armor have been neatly stacked since she and Nick arrived. 

“Need help?” Deacon asks. She picks up the leather chest piece, squinting at it like it’s suddenly her sworn nemesis. 

“Yes,” she says, sounding absolutely livid about it. 

“I’ll let you handle it,” Nick tells Deacon. “I’ve got business downstairs, anyway.”

“ More work?” Deacon asks, incredulous.

“Securing transport,” Nick corrects. “I’m not keen on wandering all the way back to Diamond City all on my lonesome.” He slides back out the door, and when Deacon turns back to Fixer she’s staring after him with a look of guilt on her face. 

“What if we just blindfolded him?” she asks. “Take him home and then when I suck less I can go back to the city with him.”

“We’re not leaving him blindfolded in the First Feral Church of Boston,” Deacon says, dropping his voice. “Can you imagine?” She starts giggling. “I’m telling Nick you think him getting eaten by ferals is funny.”

“Not that ,” she says, flapping a hand at him. “I’m just picturing a bunch of ferals in the pews. Feral preacher.”

“Oh, god.” 

“ Exactly .” Her triumphant grin is what finally breaks a chuckle out of Deacon. “Feral choir!” The chuckle turns into a full laugh and he has to lean against the wall with a hand over his mouth.

“I’ll never be able to walk through the front door again,” he says, gesturing for the armor piece. “Give me that, or else Nick’s gonna yell at us for slacking off.” 

“He won’t be mad,” Fixer said, but handed the chest piece to Deacon. 

“Just disappointed,” Deacon says along with her, unbuckling the straps, and when he glances back up at her she’s grinning at him in a way he can’t help but echo. 

I can’t lose this. The thought is unbidden but he feels the weight of final certainty in his chest. He'd rather have her at a remove than not have her at all. And he's just going to have to learn how to live with that.

It takes a little patience and some slow, deep breaths for her to get her arms over her head enough to slide the armor on, but once she’s in it they get the rest of the pieces on without much fuss. Deacon’s strapping on his own greaves when Nick comes back in. 

“Alright,” he says. “I’m headed out.”

“Already?” Fixer both looks and sounds dismayed. 

“Caravan’s heading out in ten,” he says. She crosses the room without another word and hugs him fiercely, being careful to tuck her face into his coat rather than the broken “skin” over his throat.

“Be careful ,” she says as he wraps his arms around her in return. 

“Always am.”

“That’s a damn lie and you know it.” 

He laughs, ruffling her hair with his good hand as he pulls back. “I always try ,” he amends, and she squints at him for a long moment. 

“Better,” she decides. “Also, what the fuck is in here, it’s like hugging a sack of coal.” She starts prodding his coat pocket, and he withdraws a cloth bag that rattles with every movement. 

“For services rendered,” he says, and Deacon realizes the bag is full of caps . Enough that the sides are bulging with it. That’s what the side work was for.

“I can’t take that,” she says flatly. 

“I know.” He hands it over her head to Deacon, ignoring her squawk of protest. “I don’t know what your doctor charges,” he says with a faint half-smile. 

Deacon returns it, hefting the bag in a mock toast. “Your contribution is appreciated.”

“That’s not - you don’t - “ Fixer splutters. “You’re my friend ,” she says plaintively, and Nick turns his smile down on her. 

“Then let me help,” he returns gently.

She puffs her cheeks out to let her breath out in a long sigh, which only looks a little childish on her. “ Fine. But we’re even after this.”

“If you say so.” Nick pulls out a cigarette, Deacon thinks more to have an excuse not to look at Fixer than the actual act of smoking. They’ll never be square in his mind, he thinks to himself. Guilt is a hell of a drug. His gaze settles on Fixer. Especially when you already think the other person is stooping to your level.

He cuts off the train of thought before it gets more introspective than he’s comfortable being at ten in the morning, and fastens the last buckle of his armor. 

“Alright,” he says. “Lock and load. Nick, we’ll head out behind you.” No sense in whatever caravaner he’s traveling with connecting his face with theirs. 

Fixer hugs Nick again, mutters something that makes him laugh before she steps away. Deacon extends his hand to shake Nick's. "Be safe." 

"You too." He looks at Fixer. "You especially." His expression softens and he gently pushes her glasses up on her nose, an affectionate gesture that makes her smile. "Look me up next time you're in the city." 

"Of course," she says softly. Deacon's pretty sure it's the first place she'll drag him once Carrington clears her. Possibly before then. 

He heads out the door with a wink and a wave, and after a moment Deacon steps forward to bump Fixer’s shoulder with his own. “He’ll be fine,” he says gently. “Come on.”

She stares at the door a moment longer before turning away. “Yeah, okay.”

Deacon returns the borrowed furniture to the other room while Fixer rearranges her gear. When Deacon comes back in she’s sitting on the bed with her pack in her arms. 

“You good?” he asks.

“I can’t put my stupid bag on,” she mutters, grimacing down at it. “I could barely pick the fucking thing up.”

Deacon chews on the inside of his cheek. “You sure you don’t need an extra day?”

She shakes her head. “One, we’ve already been here too long. Even if it’s a…friendly area. It’s still not secure.” There’s something of him in the way she says it, and he fights to keep the smile off his face for fear of making her feel patronized when really he’s just proud . “Two.” She’s ticking the points off on her fingers now. “Even if we give Kay that big fuckin’ bag of caps Nick apparently produced out of his metal ass …” She shakes her head, huffing a sigh through her nose. “She’s still limited by what she can get from traders and caravans. I mean I’m still gonna give her something for this week, I’m not a monster, but we - by which I mean Carrington - can get more with it. And three…” She looks up at him with pleading eyes. “I have seen nothing but this room and a toilet for a week. I wish to leave the room please.”

He gives a snort of laughter. “Alright, come on.” He offers her his hand and she takes it, hauling herself up at an angle the way she stood from her chair earlier. They redistribute their supplies, Deacon carrying the bulk of the weight and strapping her gun to his back. 

“But - “

He cuts off her protest by handing her a pistol. “Please imagine the recoil of a rifle on your shoulder right now.” Her face immediately contorts with the hypothetical pain. “Yeah.” He wiggles the gun at her. “Go on. I got us.” 

She takes it, giving him a small smile. “You got us,” she echoes as she slides it into her thigh holster. It puts something warm in the center of Deacon’s chest, spreading out across his shoulders and down his arms as he helps her slide her bag onto her back. He tries to let it wash over him and away, to pass with the moment, but a little more of it hangs around every time. He'll have to deal with that eventually.

Not if you don't acknowledge it exists, his mind provides cheerfully, and he tries to ignore it in favor of adjusting the straps of her armor.

When they get downstairs she slips off to give Kay a portion of the caps Nick left them with while Deacon hangs by the front gate, shifting the unusually heavy bag on his shoulders. He’s going to hurt by the time they got home, but he’s not telling her that. She already feels like a burden. She’s not, and he’ll tell her as much as many times as she needs to hear it. He’s equally certain she won’t listen, because like recognizes like.

“Hey.” She limps up to him, face pale under her helmet. “Shut up,” she says in response to the way he frowns. “I’m fine . I just haven’t moved around much lately.”

If he tries to tell her they need to stay put she’ll just argue that they’re already at the gate and she already tipped Kay. He can already hear the argument in his head, and already knows he’d lose. So he just sighs and bows towards the gate with an arm outstretched. “Ladies first.”

He follows her out, eventually falling into step beside her. She’s uncharacteristically but understandably quiet and he finds himself missing her usual running commentary on literally everything. But she’s there , more or less whole, and they have the means to bring her back to 100%. She’s a constant in his life now, and he’s determined to keep it that way, no matter how loud the voice in the back of his mind gets or how deep the knife cuts. 

She’s worth the hurt.