Chapter Text
Scout was pleasantly drunk, the kind of drunk where they wanted to get cuddly with whoever was nearby and their voice volume was permanently on max. Luckily, all their other friends were various stages of drunk—or just a little bit high, in Hancock's case—so their own snuggly intoxication wasn't too embarrassing.
“So you'd just come out of the Vault, yeah?” Piper said, smiling with flushed cheeks.
“You already did this interview, Pipes,” Scout replied with a giggle.
“No, no, no, not this interview,” Piper protested. “I wanna—I wanna know what you first thought about us. Prezzy's the first you met, right?”
The Minuteman in question tipped up his cowboy hat with the neck of the beer he held so he could see what was going on when he heard his name. He'd been leaning back against the wall of the big shack Scout had insisted on building and then never done anything with. To be fair, things had been busy lately, and this large empty space turned out to be a perfect gathering spot for the impromptu party. Scout scooted away from their spot against the wall to get closer to Preston and nearly ended up falling in his lap.
“Yeah, this guy,” they said, patting his face with their hand and almost knocking off his hat. “I met 'im, and then I met a deathclaw. He was a lot nicer.”
“Ooh, I can see the headline now,” Piper said, spreading her hands out in the air in front of her. “Preston Garvey, nicer than a deathclaw.”
[a bunch of redacted fluff]
“The snuggle train has arrived!” Scout announced.
They flopped into both Nick and Hancock, who did their damnedest to catch their drunken Sole. Hancock had the double burden of trying to do that and not think about the kind of train he'd like to run on Scout. Wait, shit, scratch that. The thought of anyone else touching Scout was sobering him up way too fast and also making him itch for something stronger than just mentats. But then Scout squirmed their way into his lap and smiled up at him, and Hancock forgot about everything else.
“Hi,” Scout said.
Hancock clung to the tattered remains of his bravado. “Well hell-o, gorgeous.”
Scout threw their head back and laughed, and Hancock swallowed hard, trying not to stare at the smooth skin of their cheeks or their neck or down lower—not looking. Not. Looking.
“C'mon Scout, you must've had thoughts about Mr. Mayor here,” Piper said.
Hancock resisted the urge to thunk his head back against the shack wall. Goddammit, he'd been so close to skipping over that question.
“Um, well,” Scout blushed and worried their lower lip. “The first part is pretty stupid. And the second part is … probably insensitive? I'd never seen a ghoul before.”
Hancock froze up, and Preston's eyebrows nearly disappeared beneath the brim of his hat.
“He's the first ghoul you ever saw?” Nick asked.
“Well, you were my first synth,” Scout replied. “I'd heard about Goodneighbor, and I wanted to know what a ghoul actually was because no one bothered to explain, and I've always been a throw-myself-in-the-deep-end-of-the-pool type of person.”