Work Text:
Nothing goes right for Nate after he comes out of the cryo chamber. No matter how much he’d tried, even his best efforts had been doomed to failure since the start. He was never going to get his son back and the old man he found in the Institute was but a stranger who was then gone.
Just like that, months of repressing the fear of this new ruined world, sleeping in the ruins of buildings he’d visited days before the bombings, wondering if the skeletons that lined the streets were of the shop clerics that helped him pick out a gift for his wife, all of it catches up to him. He leaves the ruins of the Institute, the synth boy following behind him. As the dust settles Nate looks at this not-Shaun and his heart goes still. Piper, of course, notices. That’s what she’s good at, and she acts fast. She offers to take the boy with her, Diamond City has a school, Shaun has lived there before he probably knows the kids around too, it’ll be good for him to mingle with those his age. Nate promises the kid he’ll visit often then lets him go.
He arrives in Sanctuary late at night and even in the moonlight he can see the changes that the group of people he helped lead back there have made already. There seems to be a vegetable garden growing between two of the houses, several metal barrels burn with low fires and soft candlelight flickers inside a glassless window. It’s quiet but it isn’t dead and it’s almost too much for Nate to take. Sanctuary Hills: a weed in the pavement of the apocalypse, trying to bloom. He takes a swig from the bottle that has been keeping him warm since the sun went down.
The ruins of his old house are dark, cold, and drafty. Nate stumbles his way inside and drunkenly collapses next to the crib in Shaun's room. It's a sick irony that the crib survived when almost everything else has rotted away. Even the spinner is still hanging above it, a small plastic rocket clinging onto the wire. It's only been a few months in his mind since he last spun it and watched his baby giggle at the sound. And in the time since he allowed himself to hope that maybe one day he could bring Shaun back here and show him. He could tell him about his mother and their life before. He hoped so he never gave himself the time to grieve, and now he cannot stop his tears from flowing, breath catching in his throat painfully as he tries not to wail.
They should have stayed home. They should have died together.
Nate doesn't remember falling asleep but he wakes up to something cold pressing up against his cheek. He flinches and the coldness is gone.
"Easy there." A smooth voice says softly.
Nate opens his eyes with some effort, his eyelids stuck together with dried tears, but when he does he sees Preston crouched in front of him. He's holding a mug in his hand.
"Garvey?" His throat feels raw, it makes his voice hoarse.
Preston offers up a small smile. "I brought you some water. You've been asleep for over a day now, maybe you'll be more comfortable on one of the mattresses?"
Nate frowns and notices someone covered him with a coat. He pushes it down to his lap and reaches for the water. It's cold which makes the taste of it having been boiled more tolerable. He still hasn't quite gotten used to that yet.
"I've been asleep for a day?" His voice is better now.
Preston nods. "We debated moving you sooner but… You looked like you needed the rest. I didn't want to wake you."
His arms and legs feel stiff and he can barely feel his back. "Thanks."
"You're welcome. Come on now get up, there's some food out for you. Make sure you eat well, we've got work to do." Preston stands up and offers him a hand.
Nate allows himself to be helped and watches as Preston takes the coat from the floor and puts it on.
"Work?"
"Yes. Sanctuary is a good place to settle but if we want to make a change we can't sit around and wait for it to happen. We're clearing out the rubble."
They do clear out the rubble. Preston has a working plan and following it lets them progress steadily. They spend hours lugging scraps of wood and metal around, sorting it all into piles just outside town. Sturges repurposes a couple of the old cars into carts and they use the power armour to push and pull the biggest bits out.
Working feels good. It feels better than the work he put in looking for Shaun because he can stop when the ache in his muscles gets too bad and he always has a safe place to hide when it rains. There is no rush to their work but they do it meticulously, taking only the breaks they need. At the end of the day Nate is usually too tired to have time to fall back into the pit of despair, and tired enough to sleep so deep that nightmares rarely reach him.
When the nightmares do reach him Preston is there. The two move their sleeping bags into the same room together a couple of days after starting the cleanup. It's easier to wake up like that, and they talk until one of them drifts off on the nights when sleep comes hard. So when a nightmare makes Nate trash around and cry out Preston always places a hand on his chest and talks to him softly until the horror fades and only their soft breathing fills out the air.
Preston has nightmares too. His nightmares are quiet, he wakes up with a gasp and leaves bed to seek fresh air. After several nights like that Nate decides to follow him out.
He finds Preston sitting on the curb, looking up at the sky.
"Penny for your thoughts." He says as he sits down too, their shoulders touching. Preston tilts his head in confusion. "An old saying. What are you thinking about?"
"The sky. Sanctuary. You." His eyes go back to the stars and Nate's remain on Preston's face.
"What about them?"
"You looked at these same stars, in this same spot, in a completely different world. And yet somehow you're still here, still looking at them. With me." Preston's smile reflects the moon and makes it melancholic. "What are the odds?"
"I don't know. But I am here so they must have been in your favour." Nate cracks a smile too.
The other man closes his eyes and lets out a breath. "I was on the verge of giving up, you know? Before you showed up. I didn't think I had it in me to keep doing this for much longer. Nothing was going right, I kept losing people, letting people down. I was sitting in that museum thinking that if we made it out I'd get them all to safety then find the nearest Raider outpost and take down as many of them with me as I could."
Nate's heart stills for a beat. Preston never seemed like someone who could give up, much less despair so much. Yet he understands. He had gone back to Sanctuary Hills with little desire to come back out.
"I'm glad you're still here." He says in the end. He's glad they're both there.
"It's because of you. I was failing my people and you showed up, dressed so weird, talking of impossible things. You'd just woken up in hell and you were wasting no time to chase after what mattered. It made me realise that I had so much more left to do. I couldn't waste that." His smile broadens, loses the sadness lingering at its edges. "And now you're back too and life doesn't seem so bad at all."
They don't go back to bed that night, instead they watch the sun rise and listen to the world around them waking up. Later that week Nate takes Preston into the Vault.
He hasn't been back there since first emerging. He knows what's inside and he's terrified of it, but the Vault also holds valuable resources they can use. It has clean mattresses, properly sealed fabrics that won't fall apart at a touch, crates upon crates of different things, and the crates themselves are a valuable resource too.
It's a crypt full of dead people, people Nate used to know, people he'd say hi to on the street, who congratulated him on having a child. His wife is there, frozen like the others, untouched by the years since her death.
Nate cries when he sees her. He sobs into Preston's shoulder until it leaves him weak but it makes him feel better. He mourns her, he mourns all the people inside, and when Preston leads him out and hands him a shovel Nate spends days digging out a graveyard for them. They don't deserve to be left outside like that.
Sanctuary holds a small ceremony once every grave is filled in. Mama Murphy gives a speech, they mark each grave with a stone, carve each stone with a name, and just like that it's done. The past is buried and behind them. The Vault resources help them bring Sanctuary back to life.
It isn't too long after that when a group of three wanderers show up. They look tired and desperate, but they have a brahmin and are willing to work. Preston welcomes them with open arms. It's what Sanctuary is for.
People across the Commonwealth hear about them eventually. Word starts coming in, requests for help or for trading. Others are doing with places what they've done with their small village. It breathes new life into Preston and the two take it upon themselves to go around from place to place and help with what they can. They carry food and extra resources, Sturges gets a couple of apprentices and begins production of defence turrets for each establishment that reaches out.
The sadness doesn't quite go away but its teeth grow blunt as laughter comes easier with each day that passes.
It's on a night after they've had to deal with some Raiders causing trouble that a nightmare leaves Nate gasping for air. They're sharing a bed in one of the villages, the settlers there had been kind enough to let them borrow it for the night, and Preston doesn't do what he usually does. Instead of the hand on his chest Nate gets the other man's body pressing up behind him and wrapping him in a hug. The man starts humming quietly, an unknown tune, until the shadows retreat to the corners and sleep finds them again.
Falling in love with his wife had been a moment worthy of a movie. Time had slowed down and the world around Nate had lost its meaning for a long minute as she’d smiled at him. It had been perfect, idyllic even, promising the start of a whirlwind romance.
Falling in love with Preston Garvey is slow but inevitable, like the changing of the seasons, and once Nate realises it has happened it settles onto him like a blanket, keeping the cold out.
They share a bed now. It seemed logical, after finally taking the extras out of the vault, to take one for themselves and leave more for the rest of the residents. Every morning they wake up wrapped up in each other, keeping the nightmares at bay through the night.
It's a morning like that, when they wake up at the break of dawn, that they speak it out loud.
It's a lazy morning. Work doesn't start until later as they expect a caravan to pass through with materials, so they take their time with getting out of bed. Nate in particular is reluctant to let go and with the way he's holding onto Preston the other has no chance of getting up even if he wishes to. So they just enjoy their time and talk.
"What's something inconsequential that you miss from before?" It's not a new question, they've talked about the things Nate misses often, but this particular variant hasn't been asked yet.
Nate hums in thought. "Dates. Going out to do something just for fun and not because it's our job."
"What's a typical 2077 date look like then?"
Nate shrugs. "A restaurant dinner. Maybe a movie after, or just going on a walk, no goal in mind but to be together."
He can feel Preston's smile against his chest. "Sounds nice."
"It is nice. We should do it sometime." Nate doesn't even pause to say it, barely even thinks about what it means.
Preston actually laughs and lifts his head to look at Nate. "You want to take me on a date?"
"I'm sure there's at least one restaurant still open somewhere in the Commonwealth. We can make it work." He laughs too.
"I'd like that."
They fall into comfortable silence after that, just looking at each other, faces close.
The butterflies explode into Nate's stomach but strangely he isn't nervous at all, and when Preston says a breathless, "I wanna kiss you right now." it's the easiest thing to lean in and do it.
They go on a date, eventually. The best restaurant they can come up with is the noodle shop in Diamond city, but then they find a spot high up on the stands and watch the lights below them twinkle as they share a bottle of ale, and with Preston's head leaning against his shoulder Nate feels like the world can be beautiful once again.