Chapter Text
“BOSS!!!”
“WHA THE HELL??” Thaddeus jolted up at the scream right into his ear, his hands that had been above his head and his legs all tangled about in his scratchy blanket, going straight as a rod as his eyes flew open. It was Perry, his hole of a nose right in the older man’s face and his dark brown, bloodshot eyes filled with worry and concern. “How the hell did you get in here, Perry? I lock the door.”
“You weren’t answering to our frantic knocking so… I climbed through the nearby air vent to get in here,” the young (well, maybe not young, Perry was about sixty-one technically but Thaddeus saw the kid as a kid) boy mumbled out, fixing his dusty tan cap as Thaddeus scratched at his clumped together auburn hair and began to sit up properly. “It was for a good reason, I swear, sir.”
“And that reason is…?” Thaddeus yawned, eyes adjusted to the streaming light coming from the bullet holes in the nearby metal wall. He was gonna have to patch them up eventually, maybe later today when he goes out to Freeside.
“We found a guy stuck in one of the traps you set up. That pit one you dug out, remember?” Perry picked at his gloves as he spoke in a barely audible mumble, shifting from foot to foot and Thaddeus groaned loudly, head falling to rest on his pillow once more. The boy’s eyes went frantic, gripping Thaddeus’s left shoulder and forearm as he looked down pleadingly at Thaddeus. “He was really thin and wearing a funny looking jumpsuit. Bobby and Jen had been playing outside, and found him about an hour ago.”
Running a hand over his face, Thaddeus sighed. He pulled his scratchy blanket over himself, waving the young boy away groggily as his eyes fell shut. “Well, I’ll bury him later, just don’t let the youngest kids see the body.”
“He’s alive,” Thaddeus’s eyes shot open, sitting up fully now while staring down at the little ghoul boy. “Lois and some of the older girls are looking at him right now, but he’s definitely not dead.”
“Where is he?”
𒊹︎> •~𐬾☢︎︎𐬿~• <𒊹︎
“Holy fucking shit.”
Thaddeus often hated cursing in front of the kids, they’re kids after all and Thaddeus wants to set a good example, but this was a moment where cursing would be allowed in the factory, because a young man, maybe even a teenage boy, was laying across a dusty old couch with his head cushioned and his bruised leg being tended to by Penny, Lois, and Jen.
And it was a fucking Vault Dweller too! An actual fucking Vault Dweller was laying, unconscious, in his bottling factory!
“How is he doing, Penny? Another majorly wrong or broken?” Thaddeus crouched down to the young human girl, her filthy blond hair done up in thick braids as she awkwardly dabbed a rag to the young man’s swollen and bruised right ankle slowly. “At least we know those traps are effective, huh? Sorry, I’m just… woah.”
“I mean… sure they work but when we got him in here, sir, he was already passed out cold,” Penny began slowly, wincing as she pulled the rag away and dug about the small medkit she had pulled off the wall and dug about for some tape. “I think his ankle is sprained or out of place, maybe you could get some more supplies or even a doctor out from Freeside back here? It’d be better than letting him walk it off or treating it wrong.”
Thaddeus grimaced at the suggestion, looking towards the unconscious young man as the rest of the kids watched on and encircled the couch to stare at the visitor. Penny quickly looked down, shame and fright coloring her cheeks pink with her brown eyes filling with tears.
“I-I’m sorry,” the girl whispered above a whisper, pulling the roll of duct tape close to her chest and to her thin floral-patterned pink dress. “I know we aren’t supposed to allow people to get close to the grounds, sir.”
Penny was from a Legion camp, apparently, daughter of a slave woman and had no clue who her father was. She’d managed to get out with her mother, but her mother had been injured and then, when drinking some irradiated water on their journey westward, had died. The other kids found her before Thaddeus had, and as one of the newer kids, he’d been easy on her. She’s new, and was being groomed into a healer, but she was tough and Thaddeus had this pain in his heart that reminded him of a young girl he once knew just like Penny.
“You don’t gotta apologize, Penny,” Thaddeus says as he rests his hand upon her thin, shaky shoulder, thumb coming up to raise her soft chin. He smiled, eyes crinkled, and the young girl, despite the fear in her nearly black eyes, smiled back. “I get it, really, you just wanna help this guy, but you know we gotta stay safe. I’ll try to get some supplies when I go out shopping later today, I promise. Just keep him stable and if he wakes up, get him some sarsaparilla.”
Lois grumbled as Thaddeus looked away, poking at the young man’s large nose and pulling back to cover her own. “He smells weird.”
Thaddeus was beginning to lose his own sense of smell but he still could and yeah, he could agree with that. The young man didn’t smell anything like he’s ever smelt, fresh with something sugary and creamy mixed in there. Looking towards Jen now, who was picking about a grey and blue canvas bag with a big thirty-one labeled on it, Thaddeus made a come close gesture. “Gimme that.”
The curly haired girl came immediately, handing the bag over, and Thaddeus swiftly poured out the contents onto the factory floor.
A few metal bottles of purified drinking water, a small yellow pouch filled with intact pencils, a little sharpener, and a lil square piece of rubber, a broken pair of glasses, a couple of hair pins, and a small doctor’s bag. No food, whatsoever. Or a single weapon.
“He must’ve come around here looking for food, or saw the bottle and thought of Nuka-Cola likely,” Thaddeus mused aloud, the kids coming around further and staring at the contents with wonder and confusion on their round faces. Looking back towards Jen once again, who was looking at the young man awkwardly with a tilt, the ghoulifying man arched a thinning brow. “He didn’t have a weapon. At all?”
“No, he didn’t,” Jen shook her head, coily black hair bouncing about as she spoke. “I don’t even know how he got past the robot, especially after you and Mr. Max fixed it back up from that fusion core.”
“Just keep him alive and don’t have him getting too cold,” the older man stood up, cracking his back with a groan as he shook his head, a few strands of auburn hair falling from his head. “Alright?”
The eldest boy, Patrick, well, technically he was a ghoul too but biologically he was the oldest at thirteen or so, grumbled, popping his head up with the boils and scars over his face scrunching up uncomfortably. “Why the hell should we even be nice to this guy, sir? What if he’s a spy for the Legion? Or some criminal from North New Vegas? What if he’s–”
“Hey, we may not know anything about this guy or even his name yet, but we aren’t monsters like the Legion or the NCR, and we’ll keep him safe until his ankle is properly healed up,” Thaddeus sternly corrected the lanky boy, looking around the faces and expressions on the rest of the kids. “Because what are we, kiddos?”
“Good people!” The kids exclaimed gleefully.
Thaddeus grinned, patchy mustache crinkling. “That’s right! And what do good people like us do to those in need?”
“Help ‘em when they’re hurt and then kick ‘em to the streets!”
“Bingo! We can only help those in our care as much as we can but we also gotta keep ourselves safe first. There’s a bunch of people out there who need help, that’s the Followers job to do; not ours, but we can help him until he’s on his way,” Thaddeus gave the kids some finger guns, smiling and laughing softly as Trudy, clutching her little patchworked doll, with a little smile on her warm onyx skin. “What’s up, Trudy?”
“What if he doesn’t like ghouls? Will we have to kick him out?” the little dark skinned girl asked meekily, her big black eyes wet as her small hand came up to grip at his dirty blood red button-down shirt’s sleeve. Thaddeus hadn’t thought about that, and that’s a concern they need to think about. Looking down at the young man on the couch, scratching at his own flaking skin, the olive skinned boy didn’t look like a bigot. He looked sweet, kind, peaceful even. Max’s partner was a Vault Dweller, and she ran with a ghoul, the Ghoul at that. Thaddeus swallowed thickly, looking back down at Trudy and swiftly plucking her up, resting her at his hip with a toothy smile that matched her own.
“Nah, he’ll be fine. He’ll be our friend, I’m sure of it. Maybe he’ll even like your dollie and play with you and the other girls while he’s healing up here,” Trudy giggled as Thaddeus spoke, some of the smaller boys and girls crawling around and between Thaddeus’s legs. “You know what? Rest of the day off! We have a visitor and how about we try to make him feel comfortable and welcomed, hm? Like setting up a room for him and some proper clothes.”
One of the younger boys, Matt, his pinstraight black hair and black eyes shimmering, grinned up at him, his missing front teeth on display as he spoke. “He’s not gonna be sleeping in here with us?”
“Well, he’s a lil older, and I’m sure he’d want his own room and such to rest in,” Thaddeus explained as Trudy’s arms came round his shoulders, giggling in his ear with her doll slinging about behind his back. “He’ll be across from my own room, so I can check up on him and give him a place for him to hide if he’s uncomfortable or scared. We don’t know what happened to him but he’ll be okay with us until he’s okay. Alright?”
Matt nodded slowly, sniffling with his little nose that was moving like a jackrabbit’s own. “I guess that makes sense…”
“Alright, good, and now let's start setting up this guy’s room and I’ll go out to Freeside and buy all the stuff on the grocery list, okay?” Thaddeus explained with a giddy tone, looking at Trudy with a bucktoothed smile, which the young girl met greedily as the rest of the kids moved about and talked amongst themselves. “Alright, let’s get started!”
𒊹︎> •~𐬾☢︎︎𐬿~• <𒊹︎
“Why do you need so much medical supplies, you can get the Followers if you have someone injured,” the trader, Ahed, asked, thin brow quirked up to his hairline as Thaddeus sat the last medkit into the back of his small cart, patting the plastic case. Thaddeus shook his head, glaring at the other man with a frustrated sigh leaving his thin lips. “I’m serious, they will help you for much cheaper, especially with all those kids. What’s going on, did something happen to one of them?”
“They found this guy in one of my defensive traps, and he’s got a sprained ankle and was thin as a stick. This medical shit is all for him and his future care,” Thaddeus moved his hand about in a circle, as if flinging away bugs from his face, and Ahed’s brows furrowed with a look of concern etching his thin, sun-tanned face. “Don’t look at me like that, man, I’m not going to them for fucking help ever again. She made that very clear that I ain’t welcome and Dr. Gannon already said that I ain’t really welcome there too, so yeah, this is the best I got. Got it?”
The older man laughed, rubbing a hand over his salt and pepper hair and shaking his finger at Thaddeus. “Dr. Hecke? She’s not nice, sure, but she works well and I’m sure she could get that young man in your care on his way quickly. You could’ve brought him here, and have him looked at but instead…”
Thaddeus puffed up his chest, inhaling harshly and sending the butt of his hunting rifle back into his left thigh, moaning at the pain. “If you’re implying shit that isn’t true, I don’t wanna hear it. The kids are already attached to this guy and I’m trying to teach ‘em some morals, like helping people who are hurt.”
“And apparently that also means teaching them to stockholm a poor injured boy as well,” the trader’s wife, Lilia, commented as she sat another bag of beans into his metal cart with a heavy sigh, dusting her wavy brown hair from her face. “Do you need anything else besides the stock food, the medical supplies, and the bedding?”
“Fuck you, but uh yeah actually,” Thaddeus grumbled as he pulled out his notepad from his backpocket, scratching at his neck. “I need clothes that can fit a guy about four-eleven with broad shoulders, have anything like that, but blue?”
Lilia made a face at the question, letting out an exasperated sigh as her hip cocked to the left, crossing her arms over her chest. “No, we don’t. We don’t sell clothes here, why not go to Mick & Ralph’s and ask there for something? Most of our apparel items are armor.”
“Fine, alright ugh, I didn’t wanna deal with Mick & Ralph’s, their prices make me genuinely wanna rip the rest of my hair out, but it’ll do,” Thaddeus stuffed the notepad back into his pants as he grumbled, adjusting his suspenders and his rifle. Going around the small cart and plucking up the rubber-covered handles, Thaddeus began to push the cart across the street with a groan of effort. I should get an animal like a brahmin or a bighorn to drag this for me…
Another thing on the shopping list, but it’ll be worth it in the long run for these bimonthly trips. Thaddeus whimpered in extrusion as he pushed the wooden cart over the bumpy and uneven concrete, the old car tires that replaced the rotten wooden wheels, filled with holes from nails and pebbles, creaking under the weight of the bags and boxes in the cart. Another push, over a pothole, and the cart went flying across the street with Thaddeus running after the cart. “Shitshitshitshit!!!”
Jumping forward frantically, and grabbing onto the lip of the wooden cart, grinding his black leather boots into the dirt and concrete to stop the cart from ramming straight into the storefront of an older woman’s grocery store. Said old lady, who was now screeching and flinging curses in Spanish at him and kicking at his cart while.
“Look, I’m so so sorry, ma’am. ¡Lo siento, lo mucho siento, doña!” Thaddeus pulled out his cap bag as he spoke, coming close to the screeching old woman in her multicolored shawl who was, still, kicking his cart in frustration. “Please just take the chapas, porfa. On me.”
The old lady, her scrunched up face in disdain, looked at the offered caps like Thaddeus wasn’t just offering her money but pocket lint. “Todos estos necrófagos… ¡No voy a tomar tus malditos chapas, demonio!”
“Porfa, doña… please? This is free chapas,” Thaddeus showed off the Sunset Sarsaparilla bottle cap as he spoke, bringing it up to his lips and biting down to show off its authenticity. “See? It’s real!”
“¡No me importa, vete, necrófago gringo! ¡VETE!” Thaddeus’s shoulders slumped as the older woman kept on shouting, her gray hair flying about in all ways as she kicked one of the cart’s wheels again in frustration. Thaddeus gripped the rubber handles, pulling the car back onto the road and slowly turning the front away from the old woman, who was now crossing her arms and holding her shawl close, her rosary now in his shaky, wrinkled hands as she prayed.
Thaddeus was getting used to this type of behavior, he has to be used to this behavior towards him for his appearance. He didn’t even know that lady and she was calling him a damn demon, thank Jesus the kids weren’t here with him.
The road was evening out, the old tires creaking but standing up some more as Thaddeus kept pushing, thinking to himself.
The young man on the couch was probably still out cold, the kids working on his new room and moving him there so he won’t have nearly twenty little faces of different colors and features. The young man likely hit his head on the way down the hole and knocked himself out, and if Bobby and Jen hadn’t pulled him out, he probably would’ve starved to death in that hole.
Wincing, Thaddeus grumbled at the thought. That would be a shame, the young man looked barely old enough to know the world truly, more so with him being a damn Vault Dweller. A fucking Vault Dweller from the same damn Vault as Max’s own partner.
They even looked similar! What if this was a family member of Lucy’s, or a friend of hers? Thaddeus had admitted to Lucy he was always interested in the Vaults, and maybe this guy could tell him about what it was like.
“Hey Thad! Good to see those kids haven’t killed you yet, man!” A ghoul man in a greaser jacket came up, Patty, smiling and showing off his dirty teeth and his black sunglasses twinkling in the sunlight. One of the last Kings standing, well, next Pacer. Thaddeus smiled, grinning as the short ghoul encircled his neck in a thin arm, finger patting at his chest. “What’s with all the goods in the cart? Is one of your little pussycats hurt or something?”
“Nah, a guy accidentally got stuck in one of my traps and got hurt, sprained ankle,” Patty nodded solemnly, hissing through his stained teeth, as Thaddeus explained, scratching at his jaw and his stubble meekly. He kept the cart going, and Patty had to keep up the best he could, with an arm still planted around Thaddeus’s neck. “Either way, it’s my shopping day and the kids needed a bunch of stuff like essentials and bedding.”
“You’re a good man, Thad, like your little broad of a sister in the fort over there,” the suave ghoul pointed his thumb over his shoulder, towards the Followers’ fortified fortress of a medical facility as he spoke earnestly. “Teaching those poor kids the good morals and helping ‘em know the straight path, that’s what a good man does. And as a fellow brother, I resist you taking care of some youngsters like us. They need a good and stable environment, and you’re giving ‘em one!”
Thaddeus’s cheeks pinked, eyes looking down to his cart awkwardly. “Patty, you don’t gotta say that. I’m doing the bare minimum.”
“An’ a lot fuckers out here wouldn’t do even that, man! Be lucky you’re one of the good ones rather than a Roman cocksucker or a bureaucratic dickwad,” Patty’s right hand pat hard against Thaddeus’s chest, his thin rotten lips in a smile. “Whatcha still need, Thad?”
“Clothes and definitely something to pull this thing now,” Thaddeus grumbled, Patty finally standing back and releasing Thaddeus from the arm hug. “The clothes are for the guy, he’s really short.”
Patty fixed his sunglasses, jumping over a broken bottle as they turned once again down the road. Mick & Ralph’s gaudy flashing sign in view now. “Like five-five short or…?”
“I say about four-eleven? Maybe five foot even? I dunno, I only saw him laying down and with the kids fretting over him,” Thaddeus said and Patty laughed out, cackling like a mad man. “Look, I don’t know how old he is but he’s definitely not a kid.”
“I ain’t ever heard of someone being that short before. What does he look like?” Patty asked in a snicker, laughing hard.
Thaddeus took a deep breath, thinking. “He uh… he’s got this tan olive skin, with a little moles under his lip and right eye, this big ole nose with a square face and high cheekbone, and he’s got some broad shoulders…”
Patty arched his nonexistent eyebrows, the expression etching his lips all smug like a cat. “Oh yeah, he sounds like a pretty piece of sugar. So he’s cute?”
Thaddeus grumbled, glaring down at his sort of friend. “I don’t know how old this guy is, Pat, and I’m not in the space or the time to think about that kind of shit. I have kids to focus on.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you date him or some kind of shit like that, I was just suggesting you get your dick wet before most humans decide you’re too ugly and gross to fuck,” Patty shrugged as they stopped, and jumped atop an overturned trashcan, grinning at Thaddeus, now at eye level. “Why does he need clothes? Did you find him naked or some shit like that?”
Thaddeus’s cheeks were bright pink, his turquoise eyes wide. “N-no, of course not, but he’s uh… a Vault Dweller, and the bottling plant gets really hot during the day, he needs better clothes to stand it.”
“Oh my god…” Patty gripped Thaddeus’s shoulders, leaning forward and letting his glasses slide off what was left of his nose and against his chest. If not for his glasses chain, the sunglasses would’ve shattered into the cracked concrete pavement below them. Big black eyes were now staring into his soul, and the auburned hair man gulped tightly. “Never fuck a Vaultie, man. They are messy as hell, and they always end up being the weirdest lays ever. Or so I’ve heard. You can’t let that dick of yours and some short pretty boy cloud your judgement, Vaulties will break your heart!”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Thaddeus rolled his eyes, shaking off the other man’s small, leather bound hands as he pulled out a few caps and tossed them. Patty immediately grabbed onto them, stuffing them into his leather jacket’s left pocket. “Can you watch my cart while I’m in here? I’ll be quick.”
Patty nodded, jumping off the trashcan with ease and giving the taller man a two fingered salute. “Of course, you’re my friend, Thaddy!”
“Fuck you, Pat!” Thaddeus snickered out, smiling as he pulled open the cracked and foggy glass double doors to Mick & Ralph’s, and sighed deeply as he shut the door. “Hey Joshua! Do you have clothes that could fit a guy with broad shoulders and who happens to also be four-eleven.”
Joshua looked up from his Gun & Bullets magazine, nodding as he pulled his cigarette out from between his lips and stumped it out into the nearby full ashtray. Ever since Mick and Ralph split, Joshua has been the one doing the most of the work as Ralph keeps to himself and upstairs. “We do, yeah, gotta new kid or something?”
“Nah, just some guy who ended up falling into one of my traps and shit,” Thaddeus fell into a nearby lawn chair, watching as Joshua pulled two large boxes out that were labeled with, ‘extra extra small-medium men’s’ and ‘kids’ written onto scotch tape with black marker. “He’s gonna be in my care as he heals up.”
“Did he get hurt or something already?” Joshua asked next, moving across the cramped store, past the knickknacks and swiftly pulling a cardboard box filled with hats, bandannas, scarves, and other accessories in all sorts of colors.
“The kids found him passed out and with a sprained or dislocated ankle,” Thaddeus explained, plucking up a small round ball that sat nearby as Joshua sat the cardboard box with the others. Squeezing the ball tightly in his left hand, Thaddeus let out a sigh. “Thanks, man.”
Joshua nodded, leaning back against the glass display case as Thaddeus got up and then knelt down to pull off the lids off the boxes. Flannels in ranges of deep lapis to smoky crimsons, short sleeved t-shirts with logos and slogans for different pre-war local businesses, and jeans. A lot of jeans.
The auburn haired man let in a deep inhale, exhaling through his flared nostrils. Take every breath of stale, dusty air like it’s the last time you’ll smell it!
𒊹︎> •~𐬾☢︎︎𐬿~• <𒊹︎
“Can I pet it?” Thaddeus was offloading the supplies he’d bought in Freeside, the older kids helping as the youngest was wowed by the Brahmin, looking at the tawny red bovine with big eyes. He looked down to Trudy, who was looking up expectantly for his answer. “Pretty please?”
“Of course you can, just be gentle with her,” Thaddeus told the young girl, who quickly ran back to the younger kids, and the whole group began to run their hands over the heifer’s hatters, her two pairs of ears, and over her snouts with oohs and awes. “You all are gonna have to take care of her, you know. Brahmin takes a lot of work to care for, and she’s gonna need a lot of care. Does anyone have experience with animals?”
A little human boy with a poofy afro of dark brown hair, Archie, raised his hand up, white gloves stained with the remnants of old root beer. His other hand was under one of the heifer’s chin, scratching at the flesh there gently. “My family worked as sharecroppers on a ranch in the NCR, sir.”
“Well, then you’re gonna be the role model for everyone else! I raised bloatflies and goats back in the day so I got some experience of my own,” Thaddeus plucked up a crate filled with plastic containers and bags of stock foods and grains as he spoke, Archie’s olive face lighting with a buck toothed smile. “You’ll be our little Brahmin rancher of the plant, Archie.”
“Does that mean I get to take care of her rather than unjamming junk from the conveyor belt?” Archie asked excitedly, thin arms encircling one of the heifer’s snouts as the kids around him pouted. Thaddeus nodded, smirking, and the boy screamed joyfully, startling the poor heifer and getting sent to the cracked concrete ground below. The girls giggled at the sight, hiding behind their dainty hands. Archie laughed, getting right back up and hugging the heifer again. “Hell yeah!”
Patrick tapped Thaddeus’s shoulder, and as the older man looked down to the young boy, Patrick frown deepened. “Yeah, Pat? What’s up?”
“Why do you buy so many clothes for this guy? He’s only gonna be here for a maximum of two weeks or so,” the pre-teen ghoul boy grumbled with a furrowed brow, arms crossed over his chest. “Think of the laundry load this is gonna cost us, and the food and production schedule.”
“Well,” Thaddeus scratched at his neck, shrugging as he spoke softly, grabbing a large burlap sack of beans and tossing it over the cart’s wall and onto the sun-bleached concrete. “We don’t know that, and anyway, we can keep it for whenever any of the human kids have a growth spurt. It’s actually quite smart.”
“No, it’s showing you wanna keep this guy here, and that’s stupid,” Patrick grumbled. “We already have enough mouths to feed, and this guy is injured. He’s dead weight practically.”
“Hey, you said that about Lupita when she came along and now she’s a happy little member of our community here, Patrick,” Thaddeus motioned to the little girl as he spoke, said Lupita was loading a bundle of blue and cream cotton bedding into one of the push dollies. She patted the fabric with a little smile, securing the bedding with a few cords, as her pleated and zigzag patterned skirt danced along with her. “So how about you be happy, man?”
Patrick’s nostrils flared in frustration, cheeks puffed up like little balloons. “Fuck you, sir.”
“Well, fuck you too,” Thaddeus dropped a heavy bag filled with cornmeal into the boy’s lanky arms, grinning at the boy. “Now, run along, we have a lot of work to do for the new guy.”