Chapter Text
1.
“Anna, wait. Please wait.”
A bullet bit the ground at Richie’s feet, making him yelp and jump back.
“Don’t be a bitch, c’mon!”
Another bullet made Richie dance back with a stupidly twisting mock-pirouette. Anna kept walking – or rather, kept marching. She was pissed. Richie sighed, running a hand through the sparse remnants of his hair. He winced as a meager handful of it came out and blew away as easily as dandelion fluff.
“Anna, it was an accident! You can’t seriously be this angry over an accident. How was I supposed to know they’d take it that badly?”
Anna stopped short and turned on her heel. Richie cursed himself for cringing back as she marched right up to him and put the hot muzzle of her laser pistol under his chin. The girl barely reached his breastbone, but she still managed to scare the everliving shit out of him when she was angry.
“You fucked the sheriff’s daughter.”
Richie winced.
“She was all over me! For god’s sake, a man’s got needs-“
“SHE WAS BLASTED ON JET AND YOU’RE ROTTING.”
“That is completely beside the point! I’m a human being, and human beings stuck with small angry women who don’t believe in putting out have NEEDS!”
Anna studied him silently, the laser pistol pressed up hard into soft flesh. Richie tried not to blink, determined not to show fear. After a long moment, she sighed, holstered the gun and turned away. Richie followed a few steps behind, hands shoved into his pockets.
“You’re absolutely disgusting. And now we’re completely fucked over, you realize that? We stopped in in that one-horse sinkhole for supplies. Food. Water. Ammo. We have nothing.”
“We’re surrounded by animals and shit that grows out of the ground,” Richie said, his natural casual optimism returning now that Anna had reigned in the worst of her temper. “C’mon, we’ve done hunter-gatherer plenty of times. I happen to know you love my mole rat stew.”
“When you’re starving to death, anyone would love mole rat stew.”
“…what’s that supposed to mean?”
Anna grumbled something insulting under her breath, kicking a loose piece of asphalt out of her way. The ancient road they walked on was a bluish-grey ribbon across the Mojave, great cracks and upheavals in the land making it a crooked path to follow. The sunlight was fading slowly, and long shadows were cast over the lonely hills. Richie jumped as he heard a coyote yip close by, and let a hand stray to the magnum .44 slung loose on his hip.
His hunting rifle had been out of ammo for days, and he was short on .44 slugs as well. Anna’s laser pistol only had enough juice left for half a dozen shots, and that was more than enough to put her in a terrible mood. Energy cells were painfully rare in the desert. The only good secure place to get them was Silver Rush, and Richie owed them what was left of his hide after killing one of their guards. It had, he’d explained to Anna as they fled Freeside, all been an innocent misunderstanding. He’d thought he’d been pickpocketing an NCR grunt, not a Van Graff hired goon. The scuffle that had resulted had been an exercise in survival of the fittest, and Richie had made it clear he’d had no intention of dying.
Anna had actually slapped one of his teeth out of his mouth for that whole mess.
“So…” Richie began, after an hour’s silence. Anna ignored him. Her old cracked boots crunched on the dusty gravel.
“Anna.”
Silence.
“Annie. Annie Marie. Annie Bannie fo-Fannie.”
An aggravated sigh.
“You know what I was thinking? Maybe we should head south. We’ve seen a whole lot of the west, and it’s pretty okay. Stable, even. It’s losing its excitement. Maybe there’s something left of Mexico City. That’d be interesting.”
“Mexico is irradiated.”
Richie grinned triumphantly. Her tone might’ve been cold, but at least she was talking to him again.
“Lots of places are irradiated. Hell, Nevada’s got spots that’ll make the Geiger tick. What difference does it make?”
“Plenty, when only one of us can walk through it and not be full of cancer afterwards.”
“Alright, alright, no Mexico. How about we amble back to California?”
“I’m sick of the NCR. I’m not going back to Cali. You can go.”
Richie made an offended noise.
“You think I’m any more a fan then you? After what they did to me?”
Anna sighed, long and deep.
“You were drunk and naked. It was midnight. The guy had every right to think you were a feral ghoul.”
“He shot me in the face.”
“It didn’t muss your looks none.”
It was Richie’s turn to grumble.
“If you’re gonna be this much of a bitch, I ain’t talkin’ to you for awhile.”
“Well then. Proof of a loving God.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
As the sun set and the stars shone glimmering and white over the desert, the human and ghoul walked on, each extremely irritated with the other.