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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 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.”
Nick and Hancock snickered at that, while Danse kept quiet and nursed his beer. He didn't know how to proceed at a civilian party, and his body felt all out of proportion without his power armor on.
“What'd you think of that, kid?” Nick asked.
Scout turned and blinked at him. “The deathclaw?”
“No, no,” Piper cut in. “I'm asking the questions here. What'd you think of Preston? C'mon, give me your first thought, the very first thing that went through your head.”
Scout didn't even have to think about it. “OK, so cowboys still exist.”
The room erupted in laughter. Hancock laughed so hard he had to lean on Nick to support himself. The mentats made everything a little fuzzy, including his balance, and the detective didn't mind. Maybe Scout would orbit back around his way and he could rest his head on their shoulder next. That was something friends did, right? Hell, he was doing it with Nick right now. Yeah, it could be totally appropriate and not needy or clingy at all.
“Always a pleasure, general,” Preston said, reaching up to adjust his hat.
Scout giggled again, and Piper recovered from her own laughing fit enough to ask her next question.
“What about me?” She sobered up a bit suddenly and hoped that didn't sound like fishing for compliments. “Uh, what'd you think about me?”
“Danny Sullivan done effed up,” Scout answered immediately.
Piper was the only one who understood that, but she relaxed and let out a short laugh. It was good to know she hadn't come off as “too angry” or “high strung.”
“You met Nick just after that, right?” Preston asked.
“Not really,” Scout said. “Went to his office, met his secretary, found out he'd been kidnapped too. Why's everyone gotta be kidnapped all the time? Like, stay put.”
“Oh, I heard about that,” Piper said with an excited bounce. “With all the Institute stuff going on, I never got a chance to run that story, but you rescued the detective from the mob.”
Scout looked down and sloshed their wine around in its bottle. “Yeah.”
The room quieted, and Hancock shot Piper a glare. Anything to do with mobs or mafia families was off limits with Scout. They didn't need any reminders about that. Shit, come to think of it, Skinny Malone might've been Scout's great-great-lots-more-greats cousin or something.
“You have thoughts about me?” Nick spoke up. “I probably wasn't what you expected.”
Scout looked back up, the sad moment forgotten. “You were exactly what I expected! I mean, sort of. Different material I guess, but the whole time I was imagining someone out of a Raymond Chandler novel and telling myself to expect some short balding guy or something.”
Nick straightened up, jostling Hancock. “You've read Chandler?”
Scout scoffed. “Of course I've read him. He was the best, invented the whole detective genre. And he had this line,” Scout untangled themself from Preston to sit up fully with a bright grin. “In his first novel, the guy—I can't remember his name—he's told by the saucy love interest that she doesn't like his manners. And he says, he says to her, 'Lady, I don't like 'em either. I weep for them in the long winter nights, but I'm not here to be polite.' And that's the first thing I thought of when I saw you!”
Nick smiled and brought his cigarette up to his lips out of habit. It wasn't lit because the smell bothered Scout, but it was nice to have the familiar gesture, especially when he felt quietly pleased. The rest of the group hadn't heard of Chandler, but the line itself went over well. Hancock and Preston laughed while Piper fumbled around in her pockets for a pen to write that down. Even Danse relaxed a bit and smiled.
“All right, um …” Piper looked up from her notebook. “What about Danse?”
Said smile disappeared as everyone turned to look at him. He wasn't a small man at all, but they were all so used to seeing him in his power armor that their eyes tended to skim right over him when he was out of it.
“Yeah, what about our old buddy, old Pal-adin?” Hancock asked with that infuriatingly smug smirk at him. Danse scowled back in reply.
“Who lost their angry Buzz Lightyear?” Scout said.
Piper blinked. “What?”
Hancock, Preston, and Danse himself were equally confused, but Nick got it and just about busted a circuit laughing. Scout gave him a bright smile. Finally, someone got their references. It was hard being funny when all your jokes were over two hundred years old.
“It's from a classic children's movie that came out in the twentieth,” Nick explained when he finished laughing.
Scout nodded. “Yeah, it was this movie about toys who came alive when children weren't looking, and there was this one toy, Buzz Lightyear. Andy got him for his birthday, and he meets the other toys like,” Scout put on their very best serious-while-still-drunk face. “Remain calm, citizens. I, Buzz Lightyear, have arrived to uphold the laws of intergalactic justice. Your applause is unnecessary.”
Hancock smirked at Scout's portrayal of Danse, who sat in his corner and continued to scowl. In his opinion, the soldier-man always looked like he was sucking on a lemon's asshole.
“What about Hancock?” Danse asked. “What'd you first think when you saw him.”
Hancock kept the smirk on his face out of spite, but the pleasant mentat buzz started to dissipate as he dug his fingers into the wooden floorboards beneath him. Danse knew damn well Scout couldn't have had any good thoughts when they first saw his ugly face, but fuck it all if Hancock would let Danse see him sweat.
“Hey man, I'm thinking some pretty deep thoughts myself,” Hancock said in the most stoned voice possible, just to piss Danse off. “Like, what's the universe made of?”
“Mostly hydrogen,” Scout cheerfully informed him.
Everyone in the group turned to look at them next, and Scout shrugged.
“What?” they asked. “I might have been a house-spouse, but I didn't actually stay home all day. I went to college part-time, and I'll have you know … that I know … lots of stuff.”
“You wanna come over here and tell me some of that stuff, College?” Hancock asked.
Scout grinned. “Sure!”
Hancock hadn't actually expected that, but he certainly wasn't complaining as Scout knee-walked their way over to him.
“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.”
Preston gave a low whistle.
“Geez, Blue,” Piper said.
Danse knew well enough to keep his mouth shut.
“Yeah, I used to do that a lot as a kid,” Scout continued with a shrug. “Anytime there was a pool, I'd throw myself in it. Didn't know how to swim, but I was determined to find out.”
“What happened?” Piper asked.
“I, you know,” Scout gave another shrug. “Drowned a little until someone fished me out.”
Danse couldn't keep quiet anymore. “So you just … 'Goodneighbor, yay!' and dived in?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Well,” Piper brought up her notebook again. “What was your first stupid thought?”
Scout made a pouting face. “How come he looks cool in a coat?”
Piper paused in writing that down. “Seriously? That's the first thing you thought when you saw Hancock?”
“He looked so cool,” Scout insisted. “Coats never lay properly over my chest 'cause my boobs get in the way, and if it's a long coat, the end drags in the mud, and the sleeves are always too long for my arms, but his coat fits perfectly and it always flaps just right in the wind, and he was all like,” Scout used their deepest, sexiest voice. “Coat-coat, murder.”
They tossed their head a little and gave Piper their best Blue Steel look, which caused her to collapse on the floor with both hands clapped across her mouth to muffle her drunk giggles. Hancock couldn't see the face Scout had made, but he wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't just hallucinating this whole thing anyway. There's no way that had been the first thing Scout thought when they saw him, especially if they'd never seen a ghoul before. No one looked at a ghoul for the first time—or any time at all—and thought, wow they look cool.
Piper pushed herself back up and tried to act like a very serious reporter again. “OK, now what about the second part?”
“Um, well,” Scout started fidgeting with one of the buttons on Hancock's coat. “It's pretty stupid too.”
“It's all right,” Hancock said. “Everyone has that kinda reaction when they first see a ghoul.”
Scout frowned and looked up at him. “I haven't told you what it is. Was everyone as relieved as I was?”
Hancock blinked. “Relieved?”
Scout blushed and looked down again. “Yeah. It's just—I mean, there were lots of things that were a shock, things I never expected. Waking up two hundred years later? Huge shock. Deathclaws? Like honestly, what even are those?”
They paused and waited for someone in the group to answer.
“No for real,” Scout said. “Radstags, sure. It has two heads, that's kind of what everyone imagined would happen to animals. They have two heads, so freaky! Insects getting really big, yeah, that makes sense. But what did deathclaws mutate out of? Geckos? Did a pet store lose a bunch of lizards somewhere?”
Piper had fallen back into the drunk giggles again, and Preston and Nick both gave a chuckle at Scout's indignant rant.
“And people getting kidnapped to be replaced by synthetic people?” Scout continued. “Definitely did not expect that. Not even on my list of possibilities. But people with radiation damage—I mean, yeah, that's what I expected everyone to look like! And then no one did. The one thing I thought I was prepared for coming out of the vault, and … nothing. But then I got to Goodneighbor and saw Hancock, and I was like, all right yeah, finally something makes sense.”
Hancock tried very hard not to make eye contact with anyone else. It was just the mentats, he was sure of it, making him feel all emotional and shit. “Probably insensitive,” his mottled ass. That was the nicest reaction to him, and ghouls in general, he'd ever heard of. He should have expected that from Scout though. If anyone was pure enough to have that kind of reaction to ghouls, it was them.
“And I'm sorry it happened to you and everything, and I don't mean to say it made me feel better that something awful happened to you but,” Scout looked up at him. “It did make me feel a lot better? Not a lot of things made sense coming out of the vault. Yeah, you were a little more upright and stabbing than I expected, but I—”
“Wait,” Danse interrupted. “Are you saying not only Hancock was the first ghoul you saw, but that he immediately murdered someone?”
“Yep,” Scout answered, popping the p.
Danse made a face like he was about to cop a squat and start shitting bricks. With how pissy he looked right now, Hancock was willing to bet he could shit all the bricks necessary to assemble a brick cow. He'd literally have a cow. A shit-brick-cow. All right, maybe that imagery wasn't Hancock's best work, but he had the remnants of a mentat buzz and the best person the Commonwealth had ever known sitting in his lap, so he could be excused for not being the pinnacle of wit at the moment.
“Sometimes you just gotta murder a guy,” Hancock said, grinning directly at Danse.
“Yeah, I didn't want to like him at first either,” Scout admitted in response to the near-growl Danse made. “I'd left that life of sin and murder behind me, and I was not going to start liking Mayor Stabby McStab-Stab.”
“Hey, you looked like you'd just fallen out of a vault that day,” Hancock defended himself. “I thought I was trying to protect some doe-eyed vault dweller, 'til you told me real cheerful that you weren't worried about me stabbing you, like taking me down wouldn't even mess up your eyeliner.”
Scout gave a smile that was a little more openly adoring than they would have if they were sober. “I didn't want to like you at first, but then you were so nice, and you got with my pronouns immediately and let my Ma off even though she tried to steal from you and—”
“Your mom?” Piper interrupted this time. “Was she in the vault with you? You didn't tell me that in our interview!”
Scout shook their head. “No, she's a ghoul, from when the bombs first went off. I should have figured. She's too mean to die.”
“Your mom is a ghoul?” Danse asked, face ashen.
“Yeah.”
Danse decided since he didn't have anything nice to say, he wouldn't say anything at all, especially not about his Sole's mom. So he looked away and drank his beer for lack of anything else to do. Scout watched him chug it all, then start playing with the bottle cap rather than look up at them again. Satisfied that he wasn't going to start anything, Scout shifted in Hancock's lap to look up at him.
“I told Ma that she turned so her outsides would finally match her insides and I've since realized that was an insult to ghouls everywhere,” Scout confessed, reaching up to cup Hancock's face in their hands. “You're cute and way nicer than my Ma.”
Hancock's brain stalled out at the word “cute.”
“You think he's cute, huh?” Preston asked, watching the two of them with amusement.
Scout nodded eagerly. “Yeah. You can't see him blush, but I know it's happening because he sort of ducks his head like,” Scout used their grip on his cheeks to physically move his head in demonstration, which Hancock didn't try to resist. “And when he smiles, his eyes get soft and crinkly and his voice lowers—but not in his murder voice, that's more sexy than cute.”
Hancock desperately tried to remember the moment he actually took the mentats. It had only been mentats, right? Just two? No, he had to have taken way, way too much of something a shit ton stronger to be hearing Scout call him “sexy.”
“Maybe you two need a room,” Piper said.
Scout looked up at the ceiling, then around at the walls. “Um, we have one? You guys are in here too though, and that's cool, I guess.”
Preston grinned so wide his cheeks hurt, and Piper mouthed wow.
“Well, I think it's time for this old mug to shut down for an hour or two,” Nick said. “Wouldn't want to get overheated if things turn steamy in here. Danse, you have guard duty?”
Danse shot to his feet. “Yes, I have it right now, immediately.”
If he had to hear anymore about the ghoul's “sexy murder voice” he was going to throw up and shoot himself in the face. Maybe not even in that order.
“Yeah, I think I'm going to turn in too,” Piper said.
“I'll walk you home,” Preston offered.
Hancock stared straight ahead as the room cleared and didn't look down even when it was just him and Scout. Cute. Sexy. Shit, maybe Scout had taken way too much of something. Should he be concerned? Unless they really thought—no. Scout might be the nicest person who also occasionally murdered people that Hancock knew, but even they couldn't actually think of him like that. And even if they did, they specifically said they'd sworn off people like him.
But maybe …
Hancock looked down, only to find Scout snuggled up against his chest, fast asleep and breathing deeply. That was all right. He slowly tightened his arms around Scout until he felt like he was really holding them. This was way better than all right. In a moment of weakness, Hancock let his head dip down so Scout's hair brushed against his cheek, which turned into resting his head on top of theirs. Just being trusted enough to hold them while they slept was great. Scout was so soft and warm in his arms, and Hancock could feel their heartbeat next to his own. He might not be the moral, handsome, clean-living man Scout wanted—that man might be frozen in a pod down in the vault somewhere—but he was their friend, and that was good enough.
Right now, that was perfect.