Join me in my Mando garbage can.

He's heard her complain, quiet, under her breath, about the little things for weeks now. The bugs. The weeping sores on the curves of her arches that she rewraps every evening when he declares the day’s travel done. The sand in her suit that never seems to fully leave no matter how often she beckons him to turn his eyes away. 

It's the silent, bigger things that perturb him though. How she hasn't mentioned her mother in almost two weeks. How since he’d spilled his own guts, she seems almost more intent on helping him than their original deal. Then, of course, there's the fine-pointed questions that come along with her unending, insatiable curiosity. 

Cooper watches Lucy where she sits close by near the fire, bared foot propped up on her opposite knee. She is peeling away a strip of white cotton with that same single minded focus she puts into every task before her. It's the bottom hem from her undershirt. He’d realized so days ago with a poorly timed turn of his head; an honest to god accident. Two small strips that she rinses clean on every rare occasion that presents itself. Resourceful of her in a way that’s unexpected, but wasteful all the same. They will be stained red come next nightfall, regardless.

She winces as it's unwound to the point where bandage begins to lift away from raw skin. 

He should have missed it cross her eyes. He shouldn’t be looking at her at all. There is no point, nor time for distraction in the worst hours of a wasteland night. But there’s just something about the way it all looks on her; the determined cut of her figure that hasn’t faltered once since they’ve left the observatory. The stains of carnage on her neck and chest that they now leave together in their wake; her acceptance of its necessity growing the smallest bit lighter over up-tight shoulders every passing day. The way the desert dust itself clings to her clothes and skin, in the wild of her hair, as if it merely welcomes her back home. 

Walking at her side from the ashes of those prim outer layers only continues to make her all the more remarkable. And yet she endures. 

He had bet himself early on in the silent turmoil of his own mind that she’d turntail and run back to a more comfortable vaultie living in a matter of days, if for nothing more than to get away from him and his bottomless pits of ire. And he wouldn’t stop her. Wouldn’t even blame her really because, despite his best efforts, the centrifugal force of her whole fucking being is ‘good’ and ‘orderly’, and he is no longer a decent or cordial man. 

But as the miles stretch on and the nights grow colder the damndest thing is happening. 

She is keeping up and keeping close.

“Aren’t you supposed to be tallying up the caps?” Lucy asks without raising those big, inquisitive eyes from her work, and for that he is grateful.  

Both her backpack and his saddlebag rest fully debauched on the ground between his boots. The sharp metal ridges of a measly two caps dig into his gloved palm. He deliberately loosens his fist, lest he damage their value.

“Been done. We ain’t got shit left for supplies.” He kicks his pack so that both it and his right spur jangle in harmony. “Ammo’s still all topped up from our little pitstop in Hoover though,” he baits with a snide curve of his lip, just to shutter her focus. A rude reminder of a hard afternoon filled with harder bargaining and flying insults, and ending in bloodshed; as futile an attempt as it ever is when a ghoul dares propose civil trade. 

First time he’d ever seen Lucy outright steal something though, come to think of it; a scope for his old Ruger that still stands guard, butt to dirt, against her thigh… She’d risked her own life with it to save his that fateful fucking day. He’d rather claw his own larynx out than to make it clear he knew so.

“Can we not tonight, please? I have enough on my plate to regret as it is,” the end is pained, hissed through set teeth as she tries a final attempt to draw bandage away from skin before giving up her ministrations entirely. Her head tips back toward the stars. 

He has seen her cry exactly one time, in the shadowed stolen moments before she’d put a bullet through her own mother’s skull. The memory — the tick of a firing pin, the transient, blissful complete acceptance — still burns at the back of his neck when he thinks on it too long. 

He knows well and when to push and prod to achieve the desired reaction, as is his profound specialty. Now though, precious water wells at her lower lids, reflecting back at him still in the glow of the flame though she has tried to angle herself away. It's her own goddamn stubbornness that will not allow them to fall. 

Not all that long ago he would relish in the discovery of another crack along that once pristine suit of company regulated armor she wears. Another golden petal wilting and falling to the dust…

Now is not one of those times. 

“Ain't nothin’ on that plate worth regrettin’,” he shrugs, ponders a moment. “When’s the last time you’ve eaten?” 

It brings her eyes around to him, quick and shell shocked. Two molten moons against a backdrop blanket of stars. 

“What?” 

“When-” he leans forward under the sheer weight of proper annunciation, falling into the comfort of exasperation like a crutch, “is- the- last- time- you’ve- eat-en?” 

Because if he’s honest with himself, he really can’t remember. As long as he has his chems and a few strips of meat every once in a while, the world's fine and dandy. Lifetimes worth of bleak survival and adaptations. But humans are such fragile things. Needy, cumbersome, distracting…

He's watched her nibble at dried mutfruit from her pack every so often. Ration out thin slices of that nasty fucking Cram shit. She sneaks Dogmeat more than she eats herself when she thinks he isn't looking. It makes him feel something painful at the base of his throat, not unlike reflux. 

“Wait, can we rewind for just a second?” Lucy lifts a hand in pause. “Nothing to regret? How dare you say that to me.” 

“Hardly the worst thing I've said…”

“I mean it. I know trudging through the desert shooting at anything that looks at you funny comes easy to you, but I was raised to abhor violence. Of any kind.”

“And so the hypocrisy continues. Runs in the family, I see.” 

Lucy's brow cinches. The tears are long gone, effectively burnt away. Cooper's grin widens slow in giddy anticipation.

“Every time I pull that trigger I think of my mom,” is what comes from her mouth moments later. Steady as steel and just as heavy. “Not the one from the observatory, no - but the bits and pieces I can make out from before. The parts of her I can still remember… she would be so disappointed in us… In me.” 

Once upon a time, he would have been so good at this. At consoling and reassuring. A useless skill lost to sand and sun. 

“She's dead darlin’,” he says. “And I think she'd want you to cover your own ass instead of worryin’ about what's left of hers.” He looks up to a heaven he doesn't believe in. Crosses his chest in desecration. “May it rest in peace.” 

“You are such an asshole,” she bites back at him, but there's some levity behind it now too; a flair for the dramatic one of the few traits they share. 

He likes it when she cusses. Especially when he’s the one to draw them from her. A rare, jolting treat. 

“I think that vendor back in Hoover would say the same about you,” he tilts his head in consideration. “I'd rather be dead than dickless. Next time we’re puttin’ you somewhere higher, I think. Farther out. Gotta work on that aim for those future generations of simpletons your lot’s so worried about.” 

Lucy has the good sense to look offended. 

“I would have to adjust for velocity and drop,” she rattles off like a textbook. “Not much incline underground, of course, so I haven't quite pinned down the zero range on this scope yet,” she pats at it gently in a way that raises Dogmeat's head. “But my aim is just fine, thank you.”

He knows. He's seen it. Felt the tip of a needle grazing sharp against a splintered, rotten heart. He's still going to poke back as often as possible, as is fair. He's just about to again when -

“And about twenty-two hours ago,” she adds in the stretch of silence. Her hand comes to rest across her stomach. 

“What?”

“The last time I've eaten… The uh, mystery casserole at Ruby's yesterday,” Lucy grimaces. 

He tries his best to remember how nearly a day without food affects the human body. Painful but not yet dangerous. She will start to slow soon, however, if it's not seen to. Slow him down, that is… then she'll begin to lose her sharpness and concentration not long after. That steely determination will waver in place of vicious survival... 

He can't help but wonder if she thinks he'll leave her behind should she express her needs. He's pawned her off for less. 

He simply can't have that. Not when they're both so close to the answers they're owed. 

“We’ll take a field trip to Novak come sunrise,” he decides, reaching down between his legs to root in his bag. “They're expectin’ me there anyways,” so to speak.

“But we’re nearly to-”

“We’ll make it, don't you worry,” he cuts her off, agitated, until he finds what it is he's looking for. 

He hands her over the bag of long stale crisps and a pair of healing poultices, crinkled and stained from years at the bottom of his kit. They would prove useless on his thicker skin.

For a while she just stares doe eyed at their last two caps and the supplies outstretched in his hand, wary, as if she expects them to foam at the mouth and nip at any advance.

Good. 

“Can’t have you missin’ your shots now, can we?” he explains, and that seems to do the trick; selfishness easier for her to digest than any unearned show of kindness. A small adaptation of her own. 

“Thank you,” she breathes, genuine and good natured as she ever fucking is as she accepts the offerings with slow hands. 

He uses her distraction to pluck the last of the dangling strip of bandage from her foot. Quick and remorseless. A fast little sting that will be long gone before she could ever carefully peel the damn thing off herself. 

The curse sits at the tip of her tongue. He can almost taste it himself. Her hands are filled or he would likely taste blood as well. The fire flickers in her eyes and swallows him whole.