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The sign up front proclaimed they'd entered a mattress store, but all the mattresses are looted or blasted to smithereens or hacked in a hundred places and used to stash chems or, for some reason, bits of skeleton. The best place to sleep is actually a single thin mattress under the stairwell, near a smashed window and a blotchy red scrawl of graffiti vaguely reading FCUK.
Dust swirls in nonsense patterns when Lucy lays down, Dogmeat curling up to snooze at her feet. Blood sticks her hair to her skin where it isn’t matted with sweat, but she can't be bothered to wipe her face more than once. It'll just get dirty again. She dials down the Ella Fitzgerald warbling on her Pip-Boy's radio; doesn't turn it off completely. It’s better than hearing distant gunfire.
By the stairs, the Ghoul is alternating between a cigarette and a flask he's dug out from his duster. It's annoying how cool he looks when he's just sulking and standing there.
Okey-dokey. Might as well. She can do this. She channels Vault 33’s sweetheart, who did all her homework and chores, and never ever doinked her cousin a little, no sirree.
Lucy gazes at the Ghoul until they inadvertently make eye contact. She smiles her most winsome smile.
She asks, “You got a name?”
He stares through the window, at nothing. “No.”
“If you were alive before the War,” she persists, smile wavering just a little, “then you probably have a name.”
“You asked, I answered.”
Fostering interpersonal tolerance was one of Lucy’s strengths in team-building exercises, and so, she doesn’t push. For his part, the Ghoul doesn’t pistol-whip her, or threaten to turn her into a type of smoked meat. They settle into a silence punctuated only by Dogmeat’s soft snores, the creak of overworked springs as Lucy rolls onto her side, the croak of roaming pseudo-reptiles.
Sleep eludes her. Most days, they're on the road until it gets dark and Lucy can't walk another step without stumbling. She's forgotten how to let sleep slowly wash over her body instead of giving in to exhaustion. Unbidden, Vault faces flash through her mind, some clean and smiling, some bloody or split open on her wedding night. Norm. Steph. Even Chet. It's a shame she can't remember anyone from her brief stay in Shady Sands except her mother and…
Lucy sits upright and asks, “Do you think Moldaver had sex with my mom?”
The Ghoul uncaps his flask and drinks in controlled, measured sips.
“Once or twice, or regularly - it doesn’t matter!” Lucy adds. “Just, could it have happened at any point in time?”
“Well, your momma plainly had shit taste in men,” the Ghoul reasons, “but unless she happened to be another Vault-Tec popsicle, I doubt I ever met her-”
“You did, kinda. She was the ghoul I shot.”
The Ghoul doesn’t look at Lucy, then, but it’s a near thing, a twitch of his neck, a shift of dark eyes.
“Regardless,” the Ghoul drawls, “I couldn't rightly say. Now, Moldaver, I actually talked to a couple times, but that was before the War. She wasn't much of a charmer.”
Two hundred years ago. Practically a different world. “So…was she the kind of person who would've had sex with my mother?”
“Sweetheart, I think you've got bigger problems.”
“Oh, no, it's not a problem!” Lucy exclaims. “It's fine! It’s unexpected, and it took me a while to realize, but it's fine! Gosh, it's crazy, but I'm actually happy she found someone besides my dad. Or I would've been happy, if my dad hadn't hunted her down and did worse than kill her and extinguished the brightest hope for civilization around her, and Moldaver hadn't kept her feral ghoul chained up instead of putting her out of her misery. I mean, I get it, but. Um.”
The Ghoul caps his flask and silently slides it across the floor between them.
“Oh…thank you?” Touched, Lucy blinks in gratitude and takes a sip.
The liquid comes back out in one huge spray.
“What the fu- what is this!?”
“Booze. Sounds like you need it. If you don't want it, give it back.” He flicks his cigarette to the floor. “And you’re wrong, by the way.”
“I didn’t see that kind of relationship in my Vault, but, I got a distinct vibe -”
“The NCR’s just kids playing cops, cowboys, and colonizers, the newest name for the same old shit.” The Ghoul stamps out the cigarette. Glares. “Not worth mourning.”
“It’s a tragedy no matter what,” Lucy insists. “Thirty-thousand people died, or were permanently displaced. And it’s not like they were total strangers in some faraway place, it was all because of…” Ludicrously, she almost slips and says my mother. She really, undoubtedly means my father.
For some reason, she also thinks: me.
The Ghoul cracks a crick in his neck, scowling, but at least he's properly looking at her now. “And what's got you cryin' over Shady Sands and not some place I shot up like Filly? The fucking flag? The Brotherhood’s got one, if you’re looking to pledge allegiance and die in your guts for some shitheel behind a desk.”
There’s no point explaining herself to someone like him. Lucy laughs without humor. “God, you’re awful.”
“You're the one wonderin' who her dear departed momma fucked.”
She steels herself before she tries to take a proper swig from the flask, like a hero in an old movie. She winds up spraying her mouthful over the floor with more force than before.
The Ghoul stalks over to snatch his flask back. She lets him have it, taking the opportunity to examine his skin; the muscles of his forearm; his eyes. The visible coarseness is rougher than age but not quite rotting. He's surprisingly limber. He still has eyelashes. How long has he been a ghoul? The transformation doesn't seem instant, and he's kept his faculties this long. At first she'd assumed her mother had been instantly ghoulified and instantly feral, kept in chains for all these years - because, she realizes ruefully, that's what her dad would've done. But maybe that wasn't the case. Maybe she'd had a few cognizant years.
Lucy flops onto her back and wonders aloud, "How does that even work?"
The Ghoul side-eyes her. "Two women?"
“No, no, I figured that out a long time ago. I mean"-she returns the side eye-"can ghouls have sex?”
“Well, it's a hanging offense in Brotherhood territory. Used to be illegal in parts of the NCR, too, way back at the start.”
Lucy wrinkles her nose. Banning reproduction between cousins avoids contaminating the gene pool, especially within the limited populations of Vaults, but people up here still restrict who gets to have sex with who?
“Gosh,” she sighs. “That doesn’t sound very American.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But legality aside, I actually meant biologically. Most ghouls seem to be missing noses, suggesting a weakening of cartilage, but reproductive parts aren't cartilage. And in most cases, other bodily systems seem to be intact, like digestion and respiration. I haven't seen any proper studies, but I've been thinking about it -”
The Ghoul's smiles are so often nasty and ironic, it's obvious when his lips curl in genuine amusement. “You been thinkin' about it?”
“- and it's probably like having sex with a severe burn victim,” Lucy concludes. "There's nothing inherently deviant or dangerous about it, as long as the ghoul is fully cognizant. According to my Pip-Boy, most ghouls' radiation levels are only marginally greater than other surface-dwellers'. If anything, genital skin may be dry, but it's nothing generous application of synthetic lubrication can't fix."
The Ghoul laughs, a startled sound. He shakes his head but the smile stays, and it lights up his whole face. He was probably handsome, once. Lucy sits back upright and scooches forward, in full view, and he doesn't growl at her to get back. Promising!
“Hey, sir, I've actually been meaning to ask..." His smile fades, disappearing into the natural dips and shadows of his face. "How are things between us?" The smile is totally gone now. "Are we okay, you and me?”
He grunts. “Haven’t killed you yet, have I.”
“Right, and I really appreciate that.” God, he is a - jerk. But that's not a dealbreaker. "As I hope you appreciate how I haven't killed you, either.” She squares her shoulders. Juts out her chest, just a little. “So, since we’ve been getting along, and I can't sleep -”
The feeling hitting the Ghoul is a shadow of when he heard Barb suggest the end of the world while Lucy’s own daddy droned on and on. The same damn ringing. The same warbling underwater effect. The same sluggish heartbeat pounding in his head.
The Ghoul tries to knock out the dirt doubtless lodged in his ears and demands, “What?”
“Would you want,” Lucy repeats slowly, as if that makes her nonsense any easier to comprehend, “to have sex? With me?”
It’s not that people haven’t asked. Two hundred years is a long time. Civilization breaks down, and plenty of weird shit happens. It’s just that it’s rarer than a one-headed Brahmin. And far as he can remember, the askers ended up dead. Usually by his hand. They definitely weren't this perky or pretty.
"It's a good way to bond," she adds.
He almost fires back, Is that a Vault-Tec guideline? or That the most fun you could have down there? or What the fuck is wrong with you?
But she must be rubbing off on him, because instead he asks the stupidest thing to come to mind: “Don't you got a thing goin’ with that boy training to be the Tin Man?”
“Maximus.” There's a sweet, soft curve to her lips, a sadness in her eyes. “Yes, I do.”
“So…what's this, then?”
“We’re not married,” Lucy says.
The Ghoul stifles a laugh. “That it?”
“I don’t see the problem." She's crossing her arms, defensive in that way that's more petulant than protective, pouting. "And we’ve just confirmed ghouls can have sex.”
He considers drawing his pistol to shoot Lucy or himself. Nah. Waste of ammo.
“Y'know, back in my day,” he drawls, “people did this thing called ‘going steady’. Meant you weren't married but you weren't seein' anybody else either."
"Like an engagement? I've heard about that."
God help him. "Yeah, like engagement, but an earlier stage. Sometimes you'd get engaged but, well, not always.”
“Huh. That's interesting. I imagine that slowed down the marriage process." She's shuffling the idea in her head, slotting that little tidbit into a monstrous mountain of Vault upbringing. "But Max and I never discussed it, so…I don't think it applies either way.”
For all her wide-eyed innocence, her talk about kindness, it doesn't even occur to her that she might hurt the boy. Fine by him. She's got a lot to learn about the world, and he's only here to teach her the worst of it. Heartbreak’s just another wasteland motif. He’s walked into his share of lovers’ spats escalating into standoffs, turned in a double-digit number of bounties for sawed-off ring fingers and mistress's heads. Hell, her face has probably broken plenty of hearts already. It's just wild hearing all this sex talk from a girl who still earnestly says 'please' and 'thank you' and 'darn'.
“Well?” Lucy prompts. “What do you think? Not to brag, but…I'm pretty good at it.”
He should say no, simple as that. Somewhere in his irradiated, boozed-up, drugged-up brain there's still a higher kind of self-preservation buried under centuries of the dirty survival type. It's screaming at him now. Just leave it. Let them abandon your dog. Let her start a war. Keep them safe, keep yourself sane.
The Ghoul asks, “Why the fuck are you even askin’ me?”
Lucy gives him the kind of look he gives her for suggesting they stop and ask for directions. “Are you kidding? You're obviously the best option for me to sleep with. I think I’m considered attractive up here"- she sounds like she’s been preparing for this, shuffling notecards in her head, like Barb the night before one of her damn presentations-“but it’d still take time and effort to find a suitable partner just for a fling. You're not a stranger, you're my traveling companion, so you're much less likely to hurt me. And since you're a ghoul, you can't get me pregnant.”
“‘You’re impotent’.” Despite himself, he chuckles. “Damn, you sure know how to charm a man, don'cha.”
“Sterile, not impotent. I hope. But we could work around that, if necessary! There's just…” Lucy hesitates, and hell, that’s the most endearing thing she’s done so far. “Just something about you.”
Easy laughs are hard to come by; he gets most of his kicks from kills. So he drinks it all in. The happy hope sparkling in those big eyes. That smile, mostly sweet, still more spice than bitter. And on those full, smooth cheeks, an actual, honest-to-God blush...
“Shit," the Ghoul yelps, "are you actually - attracted to me?” Her flush deepens. It's the worst thing he's seen all week. It’s been a long, long time since he experienced genuine horror, and it figures it’s thanks to a fucking Vaultie, some fresh-faced young thing sprung from the loins of yesterday’s nobody. “A month topside, and you got a ghoul fetish like one of those Freeside freaks or Moldaver?”
“I don't want to have sex with ghouls!” Lucy shouts, the sound bouncing off concrete walls, setting Dogmeat's tail to thumping, then she clears her throat and collects herself. Another brave smile, another mental notecard. “I mean, there's a general possibility in the future, since I’m open to consensual sexual contact with any suitable…person I may encounter. But right now I'm just interested in you in particular.” She pauses. “So you do think Moldaver had sex with my mother.”
“Yeah,” the Ghoul says. He tries to think of something to distract Lucy from this disastrous conversation. “Lots.”
“Okay. Well! I had my suspicions, but it’s nice to hear it’s not just me. I’m getting the hang of how relationships work in the real world! I could…test my knowledge further? With you?”
“Well, sweetheart, I gotta hand it to you” - her smile intensifies, halogen-bright, still so trusting - “that might just be the stupidest idea you ever had.”
Lucy frowns. “Did you not pay attention to my whole explanation?”
“For one, I’m old enough to be your daddy -”
“That’s apparently a pretty fluid time frame -”
“- and your daddy’s daddy, and his daddy, and maybe his daddy, besides. Years-wise,” he adds, before Lucy can object to the math.
Lucy processes all this information in the same thoughtful silence she grants any explanation about the old world. This ain't the hardest he's had to let a girl down, just the weirdest. Plenty of actors slept around, his own friends included; on their first date, Barb even told him point-blank she didn't care what he did, and that just made him fall harder. Infidelity never occurred to Cooper Howard. Betrayal was another world entirely.
“And what’s for two?”
The Ghoul snaps out of it. “What?”
“The reasons why it's a bad idea," Lucy prompts, in that polite mediation voice that fails four out of five times, as a generous estimate. "I've heard and acknowledge your first point. What are the others?"
The Ghoul stares, dumbfounded at her all-encompassing inability to let go of a stupid idea, until Lucy's hopeful little smile flickers and flips.
"Wait. Is that the only one you can come up with? That you’re old?” Her voice rises to an incredulous pitch high enough to wake Dogmeat and perk her ears. “Not that you don't feel the same way? Not how you tortured me and made me drink animal pee and cut off my finger?”
“Wasn’t torture, I told you. And you took my finger first -”
“Because you lassoed me - oh my God, it was animal pee, wasn’t it -”
“So, fair’s fair, following your own rule.” Lucy doesn’t even argue that point; she’s focused on her goal as surely as her hunt for her daddy, watching his face intently for any cracks. The Ghoul closes his eyes, and sighs heavier than he’d like. “You don't get it, do you? I was born in a world you can’t even imagine. My past is your history.”
Now she’s sputtering, the charming woman peeled to her precocious roots, used to doing what she's told and getting her way in return, the real essence of that fucking Golden Rule.
“But my mother got along with Moldaver, and even with my dad at the start -”
“Look how all that turned out. And anyway - ” It’s not entirely a lie, some days it's the only thing he feels in that withered heart of his, yet he has to force the words out, like choking on honey: “I'm…married. Remember?”
Lucy flings herself back so fast, a spring breaks through the surface of the mattress. He’s watched her gut radscorpions; he's waded with her waist-deep in radioactive sewage; she's just had raider blood splatter all over her face after redirecting their turrets. Yet he can't recall the last time she looked so horrified. Maybe back in the good old days of last month, when she was still gagging at a bit of cannibalism.
She's the most repulsed she's ever been in his presence, and it's directed at herself.
“Oh, sh-shoot. Ohhhh, that's right. Sorry! I completely forgot - what with all the running and explosions and killing things - and you never talk about your family, ever - and you’re just so -” She makes finger-guns, then looks mortified, then laughs, a bit hysterically. “I’m so, so sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned anything.”
The Ghoul sighs. “Whatever, kid.”
“You just don’t seem like somebody’s husband." He feels his jaw tense, back teeth grinding. "I don’t mean that in a bad way! I just mean you’re very…” She cuts herself off, wide-eyed, and gulps - a big one, like she had lots to say. “But you’re loyal. And dedicated. Obviously you care about your family very much. You probably didn’t nuke them, even a little. Personally I’m not feeling too confident about the ironclad contract of marriage at the moment but you seem to be doing it well, so…”
The Ghoul turns his back to her. “Stop talking.”
Springs squeak as Lucy lies back down. It really is a shitty mattress. He reaches for the flask again. When he turns to slip Dogmeat a piece of jerky, Lucy hasn't fallen asleep, hasn't turned her back to him, and her smile is almost fond.
“Your wife is lucky,” she says.