Work Text:
They didn’t talk all too much for the first few days. Because whatever they could say would pale in comparison to whatever the fuck that was back there, and Cooper didn’t particularly care to give her the download of the last 200 years of American history he’d rather forget entirely either.
“You gotta eat.”
Silence. The uncomfortably wet noises of Dogmeat killing a radroach a couple paces off, while he took a bite from a just as uncomfortably wet can of Cram. They’d made camp for the night under a Sunset Sarsaparilla billboard with truly groundbreaking graffiti that’d replaced the bottle with a dick, then double replaced it with an old screed on joining up with the Legion. (Which was funny for old world reasons that he couldn’t quite recall, but still itched at the back of his skull. Huh.)
“Your daddy’s gonna squish you flat in your little boyfriend’s power armor easier than he will otherwise, if you show up rad-sick and underfed,” Cooper said while picking at his teeth, which got a vague, disgusted-sorta grimace out of Lucy. He’d count it as a sign of life. “We got another long day of walkin’ tomorrow.”
Silence again. The bright red-orange campfire between them cast long, unflattering shadows; from certain angles, with the dark circles under Lucy’s eyes and the hatred painting her expression haunted-gaunt, you’d almost swear they were a pair of ghouls crouching over a corpse. Cooper’s throat clicked loud as he swallowed a mealy mouthful.
“Though, y’know. You bein’ silent is a fine change from the usual gabbing my damn ears off—"
The Cram was suddenly going down the pipe all wrong because a squeezing hand was at his throat so quick that he was almost certain it was wasteland raiders with a Stealth Boy stashed in their pockets. He hadn’t gotten a good breath in beforehand either, so he was already gasping as Lucy’s unmistakably smooth-skinned hands shook him. Incandescent with simmering rage that’d been building since she shot her mother, since her bastard father had been unmasked as a simpering Vault-Tec stooge. Since he’d had a noose around her neck in return. Though, this particular noose felt altogether more personal. He could’ve twisted out of it, sure. All easy-like—there was a dozen ways to go about it. ‘Specially with women of her slight build when matched against raw strength. Cooper could bust her arm three ways to Sunday and leave her by the dying campfire to wail for a spell. He just couldn’t help wondering how long until it broke. Her brain or her grip—take your pick.
Cartoon stars were beginning to spot at the corners of his vision. Lucy was screaming something fierce too, enough that Dogmeat’s paws padded towards them curiously. It was all going vaguely dark; charitably, he wondered which pretty eye she’d miss less. He’d aim for the other one. Then, just as quick as it started and not quick enough all at the same time, it was over. Air rushed back into Cooper’s decayed lungs while Lucy fell back on her ass in the dirt.
“D-Did— motherfucker, augh—” he wheezed, sounding like one of the near-feral ghouls that begged for chems outside of roadside dive bars. A hand scrubbed at his throat, and felt where she’d left a thumbprint in particularly weak flesh. “Did that get it out of your system, princess?”
The girl, meanwhile, looked more present than she had for the past week. She wiped snot from under her nose like wiping away dried blood, all before swiping his half-finished can to shove food into her mouth.
“You’re not a very nice man.”
Cooper, meanwhile, laughed a warped, raspy sort genuine laugh that wracked his entire body like a sob. Anyone who happened to hear them from a distance off must’ve run for the hills by now, even those do-gooder Followers. Surely there was something batshit by that billboard off I-15. Best steer clear.
“Well, if that’s all then. Imagine if I was nice. Perish the fuckin’ thought. Here, drink,” Cooper pulled a silvery-dented flask from his coat pocket. “All that excitement made you pop a blood vessel.”
He extended it down towards her after recovering, and she partook without remark— thank the fucking lord. She downed a long enough swig before wincing, letting some of it drip down her chin with a grimace.
“I just tried to hurt you. Unprovoked too, even if you aren’t nice. I— Wait, is this…?”
Cooper had never been happier to not have to entertain the kid’s existential crisis, quickly supplying: “Moonshine. Make it myself outta mutfruit and stash it across the state to let it ferment whenever I get a chance. Just refilled while you were asleep a few days back. That was my 30-year aged batch. Goes down like gasoline, don’t it?”
Lucy grinned at that after a beat, oddly enough, replying: “Huh. Reminds me of when the schoolkids back in the Vault graduate. They all, every year, think they’re inventing making bathtub gin in the decommissioned family unit housing. And every year, I’m the one who catches them nearly electrocuting themselves near the generators because they’ve never been that drunk before.”
She paused though, dark brow furrowing down at her food like the can of Cram had called her mother a whore. Her nails, the very dead looking one that perpetually looked to be on the bleeding edge of rotting off notwithstanding, began to pick at the label. Her knees had drawn up towards her chest.
“Should really stop talking about it. I’m never going back. And it was all a lie anyways, wasn’t it? Me. All those kids, we were… breeding stock for people like my dad. I wondered why he was always so proud of my perfect scores on my yearly gynecological testing. Like my mother wasn’t damaged goods. Provided use after all.”
There wasn’t much to say to something like that. Other than an unintelligent, drawn-out … well, sheeeit that may get him choked out again, and there’d been more than enough thrills for one night. Looked as if Dogmeat thought so too, as she’d curled herself into a tidy ball to sleep just across from them.
He fumbled. Other movie stars he knew hadn’t ever liked being on the receiving end of therapizing for other people, even pre-war. It just made him feel clumsy, and a little sneeringly annoyed at the fans who used to shove battered holotape copies of his worst pictures in his face just to tell him that he’d saved their life. Don’t you feel pathetic down there on your belly? Don’t you want to stand with the rest of us human beings? But Lucy was… Well. Cooper had seen it from the day they met. Frayed. Not that she wasn’t genuinely good, but that the goodness was sitting right alongside something else. Most vault dwellers didn’t last more than a day out in the wastes. But Lucy MacLean had her daddy’s anger. Like the damn cockroaches that’d evolved with the never-ending waves of radiation, it’d just passed down and warped.
Cooper could tell she was crying now by the way she was now scrubbing at her eyes. Pink and bloodshot in the half-darkness; he could also tell half-because he’d been pretending to be asleep behind his hat for the past three nights while she quietly sobbed. Somewhere in the distance, a radio tower blinked-blinked-blinked red at the base of the Sierra Madre. He let her cry for a while in silence.
Poking at the embers with a long, discarded metal pipe, crackling sparks flew up through the night air above them. Nights out here got real cold, if you weren’t careful.
“Was the gin any good? That your kiddos made.”
“Oh,” she snuffled after a moment whilst gesturing indelicately with a dirt-speckled hand and a screwed-up expression. She’d been somewhere else in that head of hers. “Jiminy Christmas, no. Was like drinking lighter fluid.”
Cooper stage-gasped with aplomb, half-to charitably cover Lucy’s sniffling.
“So you admit to imbibing!”
“Well, someone had to make sure they weren’t poisoning themselves, didn’t they?” Lucy huffed all sour, like it was the most logical thing in the world to make a yearly tradition out of sampling god-awful bathtub gin. “Besides, a little rebellion is good for children. It shows them the limits of what’s acceptable behavior in a well-functioning society. Imparts wisdom and discernment, to boot.”
“What do you call all this then?” he gestured around them, at their general brahmin shit sandwich of a situation. “Just a little weekend’s fun?”
“One, for the record, I haven’t legally been considered a child for years. And two, I call this ‘something I hope I’ll forget all about one day.’”
Cooper snorted. “Good luck with that, sweetheart. Good fucking luck.”
He remembered every contour of the unnaturally cold terror on children’s faces upon seeing their little life as they knew it go up in fiery mushroom cloud smoke. She’d remember this. If they lived.
They were quiet again with a sort of blessedly companionable silence. Lucy had fully picked the label off the can of Cram, and idly kicked it into the fire where the plastic began to curl hot at the edges. They’d finished off the last of the moonshine by wordlessly passing the flask back and forth; it sat bitter-acrid over what was left of his rotted tongue.
“Oh! Word to the wise! Alcohol dehydrates you faster,” she remarked in the same tone of voice as someone cheerily reading the phone book to avoid watching the bombs drop outside. She was on the offensive. Lovely. "Or. Well, it acts as a diuretic and suppresses your kidneys in absorbing water effectively. It also causes increased perspiration, and disrupts your electrolytes. Thus, when you drink as much as you surely do, it leads to inefficiencies caused by your body not performing at its peak. You’d shave travel time off if you abstained from it.”
Uh-huh. “Uh-huh.”
There was nothing left for her to pick at. Crying seemed passé. All her scabs were already bloodied-raw.
“’M not going to apologize for choking you either,” Lucy commented apropos of nothing in mining a new vein. Her tiny, perfect nose was silhouetted by firelight. Her tiny, perfect nose turned upwards with a haughty glee, and he wished to rip it off so they'd match in the family portrait. “You deserved it. Call it even.”
Ah.
His eyes flashed steely down in her direction, and there was already a matching flash of momentary terror across her face akin to facing her own mortality. Poking the 200 year old bear.
“Word to the wise for you, then. Tough guys don’t choke someone, then get hysterical about the idea of choking someone.”
Afterwards, it was impossible to judge who pulled first. Not like earlier, where Lucy was clearly aiming for revenge. Could be a misunderstanding. Plausible deniability and all. One moment, she was mumbling about heading off to get “an adequate amount of rest.” The next, his rusted, jagged spur on the foot resting on the ground beside her now shifted. It dug into a bare patch of skin where her white undershirt rode up over her waist-tied vault suit. Nothing but miles of unblemished smoothskin hide being marred by filth. Her pointed fingernail in turn dug into the hand she’d maimed with canine teeth. She’d been making a pass to hand back his silver flask at the time, faux-innocent. Cooper felt her push harder still. Miss Vault Dweller 2296 couldn’t stand to not come first at something, even if this something was mutually assured pain. He didn’t feel it like most normal folk, not anymore, seeing as his nerve endings were (oft-literally) shot. But he did feel this. It rocketed-electric up his forearm, up to his brain. Their eyes met— resolve against fucked-up resolve.
The only thing he could liken it to was squabbling with other ghouls. Not even over resources or fresh meat, but out of sheer instinct. It simply was in their nature. He pitied her daddy already.
That’s it. I see you, little rattlesnake. I see you.
Lucy smiled again. Genuine. It was all bright, terribly unnatural sunshine in the dark. It was the manic glee of discovery and something pulling behind Cooper’s navel that didn’t much bear thinking about. The thought of getting her flat on her back with a pistol nudged under her chin flashed across his hindbrain. Cooper could only imagine she was thinking the same of him. Maybe with some added, creatively-utilized schoolteacher 8th grade math to calculate the parabolic arch of his blood peppering the road into the Mojave. Hate and recognition of the self intertwined in ways that made part of him want to bolt for the hills. Leave her to her own fuckin’ insane devices.
The other part wanted to insinuate himself inside the warmth of her perfect ribcage just to see how it’d feel before she burst.
Cooper, terrifyingly, was fairly sure she wanted that too.
With a mutually silent understanding, they both winced through withdrawing their weapons of choice. Of course the coward of a vault dweller dealt in claws and knives in the back. She’d dug hard enough into the skin that it’d given way to muscle and fatty tissue; the star spur-shaped marks at her hip dripped an angry red. Man, she’d do some real damage with a knife. He mentally cursed his regenerative properties for not letting his souvenir scar for long, while hers was sure to stick around.
It felt like his brain was crawling through molasses. Her thumb was already over the new wound just to press at the edges of it, press inside; the image stopped and rewound-replayed again and again and again. Inside. Inside.
“Sweetheart,” he managed while attempting to loom over where she sprawled. The endearment looked as if it landed sour in her mouth-- lip coiling upward in a sneer, even while her pupils didn’t look all too different from a jet junkie’s. Dark and unfocused. “Next time you wanna get burned that bad, I got some pre-war cigs in my pack. Would save us a hell of a lot of waffling ‘round the subject.”
Her only response was sniffing in faux disgust behind a curtain of hair.
“Pervert.”
Cunt.
“Takes two to tango. Now, get.”
Unable to do nothing but clam up, they slowly, jointly made their way towards their bedrolls. Tomorrow, they could pretend this had never happened. But, for now, it was too soon to bury this rotting corpse. Dogmeat huffed in her sleep. Radioactive wind shook what few dead trees there were left in a low hush. The quiet of the wasteland was nothing compared to the way his much-abused heart still thump-thump-thumped out of rhythm. Cooper, meanwhile, shook his head through laying back with a reflexive hand moving to cover his face with his hat.
His last thoughts before falling into a fitful sleep were of Barb, a look of sheer disgust plastered across her fine features.
His last conscious awareness was of soft, telltale-sort of feminine whines through the dying embers, and the weight of her gaze settling like a funeral shroud wrapped around his throat.
You blew up the world, I fuck around with crazy. We call it even.