Tucker

So many different ways to self destruct, and she took a little sample here, a little sample there. Going as long as she possibly could without food, until the hunger pangs receded into the background, living off of fumes and audacity, her world receding into pinpricks of light and darkness, dizzy with it. Getting into fights with Freeside thugs and not even bothering with weapons, knuckles bruised and bloody, returning to the Lucky 38 with gashes and bruises, dirt smeared on her face. Sleeping in doorways, stinking of whiskey and vodka, refusing offers of company. She knew she was sinking into her lowest form, her objectives forgotten, wanting nothing more than to disappear. She had wanted to help, but everything was pulling her in a thousand different directions, and she had nowhere else to go but sink to the bottom. 

Sitting on a dirty mattress in an abandoned building in Freeside, surrounded by broken glass and still maybe not definitely drunk, she fiddled with her Pip-Boy, her to-do list a thousand yards long. Squeezing her eyes shut, she leaned back, and gave in to the hopelessness of it all. Meet with Caesar. Figure out what, exactly, was going on with the Omertàs. Meet with the others of the Three Families. Negotiate with the Great Khans out in Red Rock Canyon. Somehow coax the Boomers out of hiding. Kill House. Maybe she should just kill herself. 

“There she is.” Boone’s voice. 

The Courier opened her eyes and sat up. Arcade and Boone stood in the cramped space, towering over her. 

“Wow,” she remarked. “Did you two stop sniping at each other long enough to go looking for me? I’m flattered.” 

The pair notoriously bickered like an old married couple, from everything to whose turn it was to do the dishes to the bigger picture stuff, like politics. 

“Amazing what you can accomplish when you have a shared objective and are, you know, seriously concerned for someone’s well being,” Arcade replied. 

She drew her knees up to her chest, the shame making it difficult to breathe. Her antics had left her friends worried, had them searching all over for her while she engaged in all kinds of bullshit that did little to satisfy the aching gnaw in the center of her chest. Would anything make that feeling go away? It felt like pushing aside a boulder, but she stood up, shoving the feeling down. 

“Fine. Lead the way.” 

Arcade raised his brows, giving Boone a knowing glance. Clearly he had expected more or a fight from her, given her temper, but there was a part of her that was tired of fighting. That wanted to just collapse in a heap for a little while. 

The walk back to the Lucky 38 was a silent one, and the Courier stared down at her boots, covered in muck and grime. She found herself wondering what the hell she did to deserve her friends, and in what world they would continue to stick around as she made a mess of things,everything jagged around the edges. 

“Six!” Veronica leapt up from her spot on the couch and rushed up to the Courier, then turned to Boone. “Where did you find her?”

“Freeside,” Boone replied. 

“If you’re gonna wander for days again, bring one of us, ‘kay?” Her brown eyes were filled with warmth, with concern, and the Courier felt like sinking into the carpet and never emerging again. The only thing she could do was nod. 

“Here. Eat.” Arcade pushed a plate of food under her nose. Fried Cram on small rolls of white rice. One of her favorite things to eat, and yet the smell turned her stomach, pinpricks of anxiety shooting up her spine and making her hands sweat. 

“I’m not hungry,” she said. 

“Bullshit.” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You can’t survive on a handful of iguana bits every three days.” 

Shit. So he had noticed her habits. She picked up the Cram-and-rice roll, hands trembling, her stomach doing backflips, as though the simple food had fangs and was going to bite her back. Small bites, each one more agonizing than the last. Why was this so hard? She wanted to throw the plate and bolt for the door, never to be seen again. Chew. Swallow. Repeat. Her mouth was impossibly dry, and she reached for a Sunset Sasparilla to make everything more bearable, but the sweet liquid did little to help. Finishing the dreaded thing and pushing aside the plate, letting out the breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. Heart beating wildly, with all the panic of a wild animal caught in a trap. 

Finally, Arcade breaks the silence. 

“So, are you going to enlighten us as to what, exactly, happened?”

The Courier peeled back the label on the Sunset Sasparilla bottle. “I…don’t know.” 

His blue eyes narrow in on her. “What do you mean, you don’t know?” 

“I mean I don’t know!”

 The Courier thought of all the times on her travels she had run headlong into danger, had acted before thinking, had done exactly what she had needed to do. Spearheaded hostage negotiations. Charmed people into giving her what she needed to help others. Taken out feral ghouls and radscorpions, fiends and thugs. Now, despite her twenty-two years, she felt like an inexperienced kid.

”It’s just…a fucking lot, sometimes, ok?” Her hand automatically went to the scar on the side of her head, and she rubbed the puckered skin. “I…don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, if I’m fucking it all up and I just…needed to think.” 

She felt the warmth of another, fingers brushing against her free hand, and looked down. Boone, his strong, callused fingers tracing hers. Offering the reassurance he didn’t say, wouldn’t say.  The way he was always there for her, in all the ways she didn’t know she needed. She looked up at him, and gave him a small smile. Quickly, his touch was withdrawn before anyone else noticed; their secret. 

“That’s what you call ‘needing to think’? Getting fucked up and disappearing for days at a time?” Arcade crossed his arms over his chest. 

“Lay off her, Arcade,” Veronica said. “Come on, Six. I bet you’ll feel better after a bath.” 

The Courier nodded, and got up off the couch, following her friend. And Veronica was right. She did feel better after a bath, scrubbing away the blood and filth of Freeside, slipping into a set of clean clothes. She padded down the hallway, peering into the suite rooms until she came across one of the bedrooms where she spotted a familiar red beret. 

Boone sat on the bed, organizing his ammo in his pack. Upon seeing the Courier, he put everything back into the bag. 

“Hey.” 

She leaned in the doorway, not sure if she should cross the threshold. “Hey.” 

“You can come in, if you want.” 

She crossed the room and sat next to him. “I’m sorry. For all my bullshit. I’m sorry you and Arcade had to go hunt me down.” 

Boone shrugged his shoulders. “You don’t have to apologize to me.” 

“I think I kinda do.” 

“I get it. The wanting to forget. Wanting to run away from yourself.” 

The Courier nodded, picking at a loose thread at the bottom of her shirt. “It doesn’t get easier, does it?” 

“Nope, not really.” 

She sighed. “So what now?” 

“Hell if I know. I think we do a pretty good job picking off those Legion bastards.” 

“We do.” She nodded. “Cleaned them the fuck out of Nelson.” 

“You did the right thing, then. By letting those hostages go.” He paused. “It seemed like you needed the reminder, that you do good for people.” 

Something within her melted, and she hoped it wasn’t showing on her face. “Thanks, Boone. Been kinda…kicked while I’m down lately, even if it is a hell of my own making.” 

“Hell is hell, doesn’t matter who is making it.” 

She couldn’t argue with that. Frankly, she didn’t want to argue at all–or talk, or think. She moved closer to Boone, until she was practically straddling him, her lips nearly ghosting his. She felt him stiffen, spine straightening, his hands finding a place on her waist. 

“Courier…what are you doing?”

She wished she had a sexy answer, something flirty, like when she had seduced Benny. Unfortunately, her mind was completely blank, and a clawing panic settled in her chest. How could she be so capable and sure of herself in some situations, and then fall flat on her face when it mattered most? 

“I…don’t know,” she admitted. It was the most honest she could be; she didn’t know if a quick fuck would make anything better or simply make things worse, like kicking a can down the road. Boone did deserve better than just being used to escape, and she still was a mass of contradictions over whatever the fuck they even were. What any of this meant. How to carry herself through this. 

With calculated gentleness, Boone removed his hands from her waist, and shifted her out of his space. 

“I don’t know isn’t an answer,” he said. “We can pick this back up when you do know what you want.” 

With that, he got up, taking his pack with him, and the Courier sank back onto the bed. As it turned out, something could break through her agonizing numbness, and for the first time since Benny put those bullets in her head, she cried.  

—

The Courier had seen plenty of fucked up shit as she wandered the Mojave. But what she was looking at right now definitely cracked the top five, easily. She stepped into the threshold of the hotel room, and the tang of blood assaulted her senses, followed by the buzzing of flies. The ordinary suite had been transformed into a torture chamber, that sickly-sweet stench of rot sinking into everything. In the center, a table, with the corpse of a young woman posed grotesquely, a camera by her side. 

“So the sick fuck was filming them,” Boone muttered, following behind her, and all the Courier could do was nod. Despite what had happened between them, he was still willing to be her traveling companion through the Wasteland, and she swallowed back the initial awkwardness, desperate for their old intimacy. 

“Looks like it.” It got worse: the Courier turned over the holotape in her hands. “I don’t even want to listen to whatever fuck shit is on here.” 

“Can’t say I blame you.” 

She circled the body of the dead girl and sighed. “It looks like she was killed less than a day ago. Fuck.” 

Likely she had been alive while the Courier was traipsing around Gomorrah, talking to Troike, and convincing Big Sal to let Troike out of his contract. Her throat locked up tight. Though she had no knowledge of what had been happening, she still felt as though she had personally failed this young woman, clearly only a few years younger than her. Her jaw tightened. She would make this right, even if it was too late for the young woman trapped here. 

“Come on,” she said to Boone. “I’ve seen enough.”

Her footsteps were brisk as she walked back to the suites where she had seen Clandon or Landon or whatever the fuck his name was, the lowest form of human. Sure enough, he was there, having a drink, casually swirling the liquor in the crystal glass like there was nothing wrong, nothing at all. 

“Why hello,” he said, giving her a cat-like grin, as if he liked what he saw. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

The Courier pulled out the sawed-off shotgun that Cachino had given her to deal with Big Sal and Nero later. “Monsters like you don’t deserve to live,” she snapped. 

“I’m afraid I have no idea–”

It was satisfying, seeing his brains and bits of his skull splattered on the wall, liquor spilled on the carpet, glass smashed. He deserved so much worse than a shotgun shell to the head, but she made do with what she had. Putting the shotgun back into her pack, she walked off to the bathroom to wash the gore off her hands, Rex at her heels, panting slightly. 

Everything else passed in a blur: Cachino ushering her in to confront Big Sal and Nero; how they had turned on each other, the shoot-out that followed, leaving Cachino as the new boss of Gomorrah, the revelation that Big Sal and Nero had been in league with the Legion all along, fully ready to turn against Mr. House. Cachino had been grateful, pressing some gambling chips into her hands, and she left the casino in a daze, Rex on one side of her, Boone on the other. 

Usually, after they’d gone on some adventure or another, the Courier was full of talk, with Boone offering a comment here or there, and the occasional sharp-witted joke. 

Tonight, with the bright lights of the Strip bearing down on them, the hookers hawking their wares on the sidewalk, drunken NCR soldiers on leave stumbling by, the Courier felt as though she was in some kind of bizarre alternate reality where nothing felt real. The usual ghostly presence of the Lucky 38 felt even more apt as the party returned to the others. She vaguely recalled spitballing some kind of generic answers to her friends’ questions; returning to her old bad habits and refusing food, opting to go to bed. 

Sleep was not the escape she wanted it to be. She tossed and turned, her dreams haunted by images of the dead prostitute, of that torture chamber. Finally, she got up, unable to take a moment longer. 

Maybe it was juvenile, maybe it was childish, but she wanted to be held, wanted to be close to one person, and one person only. The Courier knew she was nothing but a bundle of impulses and nerves, so she padded towards his room. She lingered in his doorway, trying to push past the lump in her throat. The last time they were close, in every sense of the word, it had ended with him pulling away. In their travels since, there was a gap that hadn’t been bridged, a gap that she knew was her fault. 

She crossed the threshold into his room, where she made out the outline of his body in his bed, covered in blankets. He was tall enough that he couldn’t fully stretch out on the bed, something that struck her as funny, given how short she was. 

“Boone.”

“Mmmph.”

“Boone.”

“.....Courier?”

“Yeah. Uh, sorry.” 

He sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes. “What’re you doing here?”

“I–couldn’t sleep. Kept getting nightmares.” 

“Get a lot of those,” he muttered. “C’mere.” 

She crossed the room, and sat on the edge of his bed. Every part of her itched to have his arms wrap around her, to sink into him, but the request died in her throat. 

“I just can’t shake the feeling like I didn’t do enough to help at Gomorrah you know?” She babbled, her speech rapid, “And so I just kept tossing and turning and I just didn’t know what to do with myself, and my mind was going in a thousand different directions, and well, then I started thinking about that conversation you and I had where you said I didn’t know what I wanted and–” she took a breath. Boone never interrupted her ramblings. He always waited patiently for her to stop, and then responded. But what came next made her want to rip her skin off, and she was convinced she could only say it because they were both in the dark. “I do know what I want. I want you, Boone. Your friendship is everything to me, and as for everything else…it can stay casual, if that’s what you want. But I want to be clear that I want you around, that I don’t want to use you to forget myself or some other fucked up bullshit. And–and now I’m just fucking running at the mouth so please put me out of my misery.” 

He chuckled a little at that. “You did enough. You did what you needed to do.” She nodded. “As for the rest,” he reached over and pressed a kiss to the side of her head, right where the scar was. “We’re okay. Now come to bed.” 

That was the first time after one of their trysts where she fell asleep in his arms, and inexplicably, the nightmares were gone. 

—

She had needed to clear her head, and when she heard the radio message from the caravan seeking someone with a Pip-Boy, it seemed like a perfect chance. Walking alone to the northern passage, pack down to the barest of essentials, ready to help where she could. 

And then the entire party was gone. That left her here, in this camp in the Narrows, looking up at the stars, watching Joshua Graham reading from a thick, well-worn book. His sacred book, the one about his God, that New Canaanite faith. 

The Courier couldn’t help but be curious. What moved him to such stillness, such serenity? Could those words be that powerful? They seemed to have an effect on Waking Cloud too–the woman often prayed out loud, for the health and good fortune of the pair when they went out of their tasks in the canyon, for the continued safety of her family, evacuated far beyond the camp. The Courier couldn’t help but admire the older woman, who moved with a measured strength she had yet to master. She was still too impulsive, hot-headed. Waking Cloud charged into fights with a straight-set determination and focus that the Courier hoped she would learn, too. 

The Courier remained skeptical of the whole holy book thing, but she couldn’t deny the effect it seemed to have on others.  

“Is there something on your mind, Six?” Joshua put one finger in the book to mark his place, and looked at her across the fire. 

That he called her Six, like Veronica did, felt like a bit of comfort in this unfamiliar world. 

“Oh. Uh. Sorry.” She wasn’t quite sure what she was apologizing for. 

“You were watching me read,” he noted. 

She looked down at the flames, suddenly feeling very much her twenty-two years. She rubbed the back of her neck. “Yeah. Yeah. I guess I was just curious, that’s all.” 

“A curious mind is an important trait to cultivate. Here—I have a spare, if you’d like to take a look.” 

The Courier walked around the campfire and took the book Joshua proffered, holding the worn-down leather in her hands. So much reverence and meaning had been assigned to what was just pages and ink. She sat back down, tracing the cracks in the leather with her finger. She knew she should probably start at the beginning, just like any other book, but her more chaotic instincts were taking hold, and she flipped the book open to a random chapter. 

Song of Songs, it said. 

Give me the kisses of your mouth, for thy love is sweeter than wine. 

Upon reading that first sentence, the Courier nearly slammed the book shut once more. If it hadn’t been offensive to the Ghost or the Father of the Caves or whoever Joshua and Daniel and Waking Cloud talked about, she probably would have tossed the book in the dirt. And frankly she didn’t care about pissing off an entity she didn’t believe in, but she didn’t want to disrespect her new friends. 

She glanced at the page again. 

Give me the kisses of your mouth, for thy love is sweeter than wine. 

Her mind immediately flashed to the night before she left for Zion, her last night at the Lucky 38. 

A few fingers of whiskey, poured into each glass. He loosened up a bit with the liquor, but was never forthcoming, and she had long stopped expecting him to be. Still, she had gotten him to laugh, and, feeling bold, she had kissed him on the cheek in the kitchen. Though it was only the pair, anyone could have walked in and seen her do so, seen him flush after, which she couldn’t help but find endearing. 

She wasn’t drunk, just warm and light, pulling him into the bedroom. He had her against the wall, laying such a kiss on her that she groaned against his mouth, burning deep in her lower half. Wrapping her legs around his waist, he supported her, hands grasping her ass. His kisses moved along her jaw, down her neck–she tilted her head back, veins humming with pleasure at the warmth of his mouth. When his teeth grasped at her earlobe and tugged she gasped, legs tightening their grasp around his waist, hands clawing at his back. 

“I can’t stay away from you, Courier,” Boone murmured in her ear. 

“I don’t want you to,” she replied. “I know you told me I should keep my distance, but–honestly, fuck that.” 

“You still should. But I can’t stop you.” 

She kissed him again, slowly this time, slipping her tongue into his mouth, committing every part of him to her memory. She didn’t know how long she would be gone this time, but she needed to hold onto him the way she needed air. When they finally broke apart, foreheads touching, her hands ran down his torso, lingering on his chest, where his heart beat rapidly. 

“Good,” she said. “Don’t stop me.” 

The Courier jolted herself out of the memory, and continued reading from the book. The story unfolded about a pair of lovers, one searching for the other through orchards and farmland, an ancient city. Something about their longing and yearning made her chest ache. The language was archaic and difficult to parse in places, but she understood all the same. 

Stay ye me with dainties, refresh me with apples, for I am love-sick. 

He had fucked her against that wall that night, both desperate and grabbing each other, chasing fleeting pleasure. But for her, every touch, every kiss, carried something more, something she dared not name, an extra weight and significance that yes, left her shivering and sighing, but with a strange emptiness after, when Boone parted ways with her to go to his bed. 

Sick was an excellent way to describe it, she realized. Around Boone she felt feverish, hands clammy, head spinning, body in free-fall. And after their trysts, when she was alone, her stomach dropped, her throat closed up, something desperate and lonely gnawed in her empty chest. She wanted, and she yearned, damnit, for something she could never have, something he could never give. Something that infected her very bones, the core of her being. And she couldn’t help herself. The feeling seeped out of her fingertips, leaked out of her heart. She saw Boone and her heart turned over in her chest; it felt like a hundred cazadores had taken up residence in her belly. 

---

He didn’t call her beautiful. And for once, she wasn’t drunk. 

The Courier knew what she was getting into with Boone. Aloof, blunt, a man of few words and molded by grief and trauma. She never expected to be anything close to what he had lost; the gulf was too wide to cross. 

That didn’t stop her from wanting him anyway. 

Her wanting would be her undoing, she knew that. It had snuck up on her gradually, and then all at once, and she never thought she would be able to fully face it without booze or chems. Yet here she was, mere breaths from crossing that line, sober as could be. 

It had started with the morning after Benny. Boone had left her at The Tops that night, understanding that there were some things she needed to face on her own. She would be lying if she said she didn’t know it was going to turn out this way. She had played her meeting with Benny over and over in her mind until she had nearly gone insane, thinking of the perfect way to string the bastard up by his toes. Turns out, he was easy to seduce. Even easier to kill. Before she knew it, the dawn had come, and she was slipping out of the casino in a complete daze. 

She had smothered him and he barely resisted. 

“Rough night?” Boone’s voice jolted her back to some kind of reality, the sky behind him streaked with pinks and blues.

 A reality where she had, in her lost reverie, forgotten to change back into her armor and had walked out of the casino in the skimpy red silk slip she had used to entice Benny. Boone leaned against one of the walls, sniper rifle slung across his back, and it was unfair how attractive he looked in that moment, the way his biceps flexed when he crossed his arms over his chest; she wanted to lick him from head to toe. He didn’t seem to be immune to the power of the silk slip, his eyes lingering on the tops of her thighs where the lace landed just so, then wandering to the plunging “V” of the neckline. She felt a rush of heat flood her, and took a breath, forcing her expression into something resembling casual. 

“Yeah,” she said, running her fingers through her hair. It was strange to be without her usual NCR beret she wore everywhere. “You could say that.” 

“What’d the guy with the hat want?” 

Shit, he had seen her speak with Vulpes. If he had any idea who Vulpes was, what invitation was being presented to her….

And fucking hell, that meant Vulpes Inculta had seen her in this stupid slip. 

The Courier tried to speak around the lump in her throat. “He was lost. Wanted directions.” 

“Right.” 

She chose to ignore the note of cynicism in his voice. “Let’s get back to the Lucky 38.” 

She didn’t go back to House right away, despite the platinum chip burning a hole in her pack. Instead, she and Boone headed back to the suite House had gifted her, and she sunk onto the bed, mind racing. Benny. Yes-Man. Vulpes. The note from Ambassador Crocker requesting her presence at the NCR embassy. The air felt thick enough to choke on, and she reached into her pack, pulling out the gun with the mother-of-pearl handle. The gun she had stolen from Benny. The one that put those two bullets in her head that night in Goodsprings. After all this time, it was over–well, sort of. Since she had woken up at Doc Mitchell’s house, she had been fueled by an all-consuming desire to track down the man responsible for the scar on the side of her head. She wasn’t the same Yua that had been shot that night, and she knew she would never get that version of herself back, even what little fragments she could remember. After so many miles trekked, all the people she met and places she had been, she had finally done it. 

She pulled the platinum chip out of her pack and stared at it in the light, turning it this way and that between her fingers. 

“All this fuss for you, huh? Hope you’re worth it,” she muttered, putting the chip back and falling backwards on the bed. 

That was the part that she hadn’t planned for in her revenge fantasy: what came after. She hadn’t expected it to feel like this, so numb and so very cold, staring up at the elaborate ceiling wondering what the fuck she was supposed to do now. Usually when she was in some kind of jam, it was easy to turn to booze or chems to make everything blurry around the edges. Throw some kind of relief into the feeling like there were constant pinpricks under her skin. Now, though, the thought of getting drunk was inherently unappealing.

“Hey.” 

She glanced upward. Boone lurked in the doorway, watching her in that way he did, where she knew he understood what she did not or could not say. 

“Hey,” she mumbled. 

He crossed the room in a few strides; sat on the bed next to her. She sat up, and shoved Maria back into her pack. 

“That Benny was a real piece of work,” he offered, and she ran her hand through her hair. 

“I…” She knew he was trying to make her feel better, in the way he knew how. Though she highly doubted he would judge her for what she did, the last thing she wanted was to go through a play by play of her evening. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I kinda…don’t want to talk about him. Or think about him.” 

“Fine by me.” 

She opened her eyes again. No, what she wanted was to forget herself, at least for a little while. Her fingers absentmindedly played with the lace at the bottom of her slip. Maybe she was imagining it, maybe she just wanted so badly that she let the feeling run away with her, but the tension in the small gap between her and Boone was as taut as a bowstring tuned too tightly, ready to snap. So the Courier did the only thing she could, leaning in and pressing her lips to his. 

At first, he seemed frozen in place and the Courier thought she had made a grave miscalculation; she began to pull away, ready to apologize and die of humiliation. Then his hand came up to cradle the back of her head, pulling her closer, kissing her back.

This was what she had longed for, too many times to count her gaze had lingered on his lips for a millisecond too long, wondering what it would be like to kiss him. Now, she was lost in him, his other hand drifting to the small of her back, burning through the cheap silk of the slip. She pressed further, slipping her tongue into his mouth, sending a jolt of electricity up the soles of her feet to her spine. 

Eventually, they broke for air, and he pressed his forehead against the Courier’s; the closeness was enough to drive her wild, feeling the heat of his breath and picking up his scent, that mix of soap and the cotton of his shirt and something uniquely Boone that made her damn near feral. She began to press kisses along his jaw, moving down to his neck, her hands running along his chest down to his torso; he tilted his head back and groaned. She reached for the hem of his white T-shirt. 

“Wait. Boone. Does the beret stay on during sex?” She raised an eyebrow, looking at his 1st Recon beret. 

“Yes.”

“Seriously?”

“Shut up, Courier.” 

She couldn’t help but laugh as she pulled off his shirt, but the laughter quickly died in her throat when she saw him–fucking hell, he was hot. Better than she imagined, all those afternoons when they traveled together on long roads, her fantasies often taking a turn. And you know what? Fuck it, she was going to lick him from head to toe, she didn’t care anymore, her tongue tracing his sculpted abs up to his pecs, stopping to flick her tongue over his nipple, earning her a whine that went straight to the heat coiling in her lower belly. 

“My turn,” he growled, pushing her back on the bed, and pulling the slip over her head. 

She had to fight the instinct not to cross her arms over her chest. The slip itself was aggressively feminine in a way that she was not, and most of her sexual encounters with both men and women were quick, hurried things in the half-dark. 

Boone did not approach her this way at all. His mouth and hands took in every inch of her, kissing, biting, teasing, until she was a panting mess, aching and desperate. She reached for the button on his jeans, palming the bulge. 

“Please.” She couldn’t recall the last time she had begged, and had been so damn needy. 

 Clothes shed, she wrapped her legs around his waist, eyes locked on his. She could never deny the intimacy of their friendship; when you had someone looking out for your life, there was no choice but to be attuned to their every movement, the sound of their steps, their breath, the slightest change in their body language. But now, as he moved within her, his gaze landing on her, she realized there was an entirely different sort of intimacy between them. One found in tension of shoulders, the flush that spread from cheeks down to neck, sweat beading at temples, shaking of thighs, a moan of pleasure slipped between gritted teeth. And, finally, a letting go, wrapped in one another. 

After, the Courier scrambled into her pajamas–threadbare boxers and an old t-shirt. Despite the fact that Boone had just seen her naked, she didn’t like lingering in that state; it felt too raw, too vulnerable. Every part of her itched for a cigarette, but she didn’t want to be that cliche, so she dug her nails into the palms of her hands and tried to will the nicotine craving away.

Boone sat on the edge of the bed, having pulled on his boxers and undershirt. She was once again left thinking how unfair it was that he was that attractive, and she wanted to straddle him and go for round two. 

She shook her head, trying to banish the thoughts into a dungeon in her mind. 

“Hey,” Boone said, and she looked up, jolted out of her fantasies. 

“Yeah?”

“Can we keep this casual?” 

A simple request. Not entirely unreasonable. Yet something within the Courier shifted, and she felt her stomach drop, for reasons she didn’t understand. Still, the bigger part of her that didn’t want to lose Boone, that didn’t want to risk his friendship, that wanted more of this, had her nodding. 

“Yeah. Of course.” 

“Thanks.” 

“No problem.” 

Later, she wanted to bang her head against the wall, not that would do her any good, given she already lived with a brain injury, but whatever. She could do this. Casual was good. Casual was fine. She had wanted him, and she had gotten what she wanted, so she should be happy, right? 

Right?    

—-

She couldn’t sleep. Slipping out of bed, she padded into the suite’s kitchen, where she found she wasn’t alone. Arcade sat at the table with a mug of tea, reading a book. She knew she shouldn’t have been surprised—she was aware from their travels together that he was an insomniac. 

The Courier pulled up a chair, drawing her knees up to her chest. “Hey.” 

“Couldn’t sleep?” 

She picked at a stray thread on the hem of her boxers. “Nah.” A beat. “Arcade, I think I fucked up.” She pulled out a cigarette from the pack she had been holding onto, lighting it up. 

He put his book to one side. “Somehow, I doubt that highly. You’ve got a reasonably good head on your shoulders, Yua.” He was one of the few that called her Yua regularly. 

She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Now I know you’re bullshitting me. We both know I have no hinges to speak of.” Exhaling a plume of smoke. 

“What’s a little traumatic brain injury between friends?” 

That got her to smile, finally looking up at him. “Well, when you put it that way…” she sighed. “Just…I was impulsive, ok?” 

“That’s not exactly news.” 

He wasn’t wrong, and she knew he had seen that side of her many times before—always ready to charge headlong into a fight, not always the most measured with her words, quick to temper. He had never been afraid to challenge her, to ground her, and that was what made their friendship thrive. She fiddled with her bangs with her one free hand.  

“I…slept with Boone.” Saying it out loud made it impossibly real, and his words to her lingered on her skin. She took another drag of her cigarette. 

Can we keep this casual?

“Just…don’t tell anyone, kay?” 

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Arcade replied. “And I wouldn’t  consider myself qualified to give advice on this sort of thing–men aren’t exactly lining up around the block to take me out, etc.” 

The Courier rolled her eyes. “We’ve been over this, Arcade. You’re a catch.” 

He dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “And beside the point of this discussion. So. You and Boone.” 

She leaned her elbows on the table, propping her chin up on her hands, dangling her cigarette between her fingers. “Everything just…spilled over, and happened so quickly. I don’t regret it, not really, but he’s not…I can’t ask more from him than he can give, you know?” 

“Boone keeps to himself. If I were to hazard a guess, its safer for him that way. But–” Arcade took a sip of his tea, “The only person I’ve ever seen him light up around is you, Yua.” 

She knew she should have felt some kind of embarrassment with how much this made her perk up, but she was too far gone for it. “Really?!”

“Why is that so hard to believe?” 

She considered this. Rotated it in her mind in several different directions. “I…don’t know. Feels like I’m bullshitting my way through this life most of the time. Don’t know which way is up or down, just hoping it all works out for the greater good in the end.” She tapped some ash into the ashtray. 

“You highly underestimate yourself. Think about it for a moment, pull it apart. You’ve managed to assemble this band of misfits from all walks of life, all with the purpose of creating an independent New Vegas. And Boone specifically? His trust doesn’t come easily, if at all.”

“But he trusts me,” the Courier murmured, and Arcade nodded. 

“Precisely. You’re charming, Yua.” Arcade traced the lip of the mug with the tip of his finger. “I’m not going to make any assumptions in regards to your feelings towards him–”

“I don’t even know,” she said. 

“Fair enough. But I can say, even if it’s not the feelings you want or hoped for, he’s opened himself up to care about you in a way he doesn’t for others. What you want to do with that information, and well–”

“Everything I’ve already done,” she added. “It could be just a one time thing but…I kinda don’t want it to be.” Both pleasure and punishment. The high of of being in his bed while knowing that they could never be anything other than a desperate fuck.  

“My brain just gets…stupid around him. Sometimes. I don’t know.” 

“Stupid how?” 

“Stupid like I end up fucking him?” Her laugh was bitter, and she finished her cigarette with a sigh. “No. Stupid like I want to lay my head in his lap while he plays with my hair. Like I want to tell him things I shouldn’t. I just—never mind.” 

“Yua, there’s a word for that—“ 

“Don’t say it.” 

He raised his hands in defeat. “Fine, fine. Like I said, I have no business giving advice.” 

She sighed, running a hand through her hair. “Aren’t we the duo?” 

“Give it enough time and a smidge of extra stress and I’ll start smoking your heinous cigarettes, too.” 

She nudged him on the shoulder. “You’re a doctor, you should know better.” 

“Once again, I am a researcher, but yes, well aware of the dangers of smoking. Which is why, incidentally, you should quit.” 

The Courier rolled her eyes. “I’ve been smoking since I was seventeen, let me live, Arcade.”

“One vice at a time, I suppose.” 

“Now you’ve got it.” She stood up. “Thanks.I..have no idea what the fuck I’m doing, but thanks for hearing me out anyway.” 

“Anytime, Yua.” He reached for his book, and she went back to bed, Boone’s words still echoing in her mind. 

Can we keep this casual? 

 She squared her shoulders. If casual was what he wanted, then that was precisely what he was going to get. 

.—

It could not be casual if she tried. The Courier was on her knees, the rain pounding around them, giving up her meager breakfast to the hard-packed desert dirt. Muscles locked, body shaking, a cold sweat pooling under her arms and sticking her hair to the back of her neck, her bangs to her forehead. She had taken the Steady when she and Boone had been taking out Legionnaires; a way to enhance her combat. She hadn’t expected to get hooked on it. Now, of course, she was out of her meager supply, and that brought…this. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and spit into the dirt, trying to rid herself of the sour taste. 

“Here.” Boone held out his hand to her, to help her up. In the other, he held out a scrap of fabric, a makeshift handkerchief. 

“Thanks,” she muttered, looking down at her boots. Her stomach cramped painfully, and she had the sinking feeling that this was just the beginning of her misery. She needed to get back to Freeside, to a doctor.  

A stabbing pain in her side had her doubled over again, and she retched, unable to control her head to toe trembling. “Fuck.” 

A pair of hands pulling her hair back so that it didn’t hang in her face; waiting patiently for her to finish her second round of puking. She wanted to shrivel up in a corner and die, all things considered. Anything other than feel this way. Anything other than being perceived in this raw, vulnerable state. She liked to be the tough one. The fearless one. The last thing she wanted was to be a burden, to be in need of caretaking. 

“Do you think you can keep moving?” Boone asked her, and she nodded. 

“Yeah. It’s not going to get better if I stay put.” Likely, it would get worse if she didn’t get her hands on the drug, or make her way to a doctor. 

“C’mere.” 

Much to her surprise, he wrapped his arm around her in support, pulling her close. He smelled like rain and the cotton of his shirt and something that was distinctly Boone that, for a brief moment, brought her a modicum of comfort. Their progress was slow-going, her world spinning; she had to stop multiple times to vomit until she thought she would have nothing left to give. By the time the pair reached Freeside’s east gate her legs were shaking so badly they had given out completely, and the Courier had barely enough energy to register her own embarrassment at her weakness. 

Boone took one look at her and shook his head. In one smooth movement he scooped her into his arms, bridal style, pulling her close. In her worn-down state she allowed it, leaning her head against his chest, soothed by the steady sound of his heartbeat, eyes fluttering closed. She could hear the screech of the gate opening, the sounds of Freeside coming to life around her: the cries of children hawking the wares of Mick &Ralph’s, barking dogs, bullets whizzing in the distance, breaking glass. Waves of nausea swam over her, and she bit the inside of her cheek, willing herself not to puke again, her empty stomach lurching unpleasantly. Every part of her ached, and she wanted nothing more than to sleep for a thousand years. She regretted every decision that had led up to this moment, but a bigger part of her knew well enough that it wouldn’t be enough to keep her off booze and chems permanently, a fact that only made her loathe herself even deeper. 

The Courier heard the creak of the wooden doors of the old Mormon fort, and cracked open her eyes. Sure enough, they had arrived at the Followers’ outpost, which was busy as ever. It didn’t take long for Julie Farkas to spot them, however, and she made a beeline for the pair. 

“Courier! What happened?”

“Ran out of Steady,” she mumbled. She clapped a hand over her mouth, using every ounce of willpower she had not to puke again. 

“Put her in here,” Julie directed Boone towards one of the tents, and the former soldier nodded, carrying the Courier into the space and depositing her onto a cot. 

The Courier opened her eyes briefly, taking in the canvas ceiling of the tent, only to close them again when the world began spinning at a terrible speed; she groaned, clutching her sides. 

“Here.” Boone put something next to her, and she briefly cracked open her eyes to register the object. A basin to puke in. Delightful. 

“Thanks,” she muttered. If this wasn’t embarrassing enough. 

Julie Farkas came into the tent, all business. “Your arm please, Courier.” 

She obeyed, holding out her left arm. The doctor had a syringe at the ready. “Fixer doesn’t work in the long-term,” she said. “But this should ease some of the withdrawals. You’re gonna have to ride this out, I’m afraid.” 

The Courier groaned, sinking back into the pillow. A pinch of the needle, and in a few moments her overwhelming nausea began to deplete. “How long will that take?” She asked. 

“For the initial phase? About twelve to twenty-four hours. Then we’ll send you home. But the drug will fully be out of your system in about a week. Here.” She handed the Courier a can of purified water. “See if you can keep down a little of this.” 

The Courier approached the water with equal parts desire and caution, taking slow sips. It settled uneasily at first, but still settled, and the doctor nodded in satisfaction. 

“Very good. Try and get some rest. That goes for both of you.” She threw a look in Boone’s direction before departing. 

The Courier wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You don’t have to stay, you know,” she said to Boone. 

“I’ll stay,” he replied. 

She looked over at him, resting his elbows on his knees, red beret on as always. “Thanks.” 

“Anytime.” 

Closing her eyes once again, her thoughts began to drift. Inexplicably, they wandered into thinking of Carla. Boone rarely discussed his late wife, and frankly, the Courier didn’t blame him. What little she did know of Carla came from outside sources–Manny Vargas, some of the townspeople in Novac, where Carla hadn’t been particularly well-liked. Manny had a focused hatred on her, but the Courier had the distinct feeling that animosity had more to do with latent feelings towards Boone that the NCR vet needed to sort out on his own. 

Jeannie May had described Carla as a “cactus flower.” Pretty on the outside, prickly on the inside. But given what Jeannie May had done, the Courier was disinclined to take her description at face value. 

It was clear that Boone loved Carla deeply. He wore his grief like a tight-fitting jacket, as constant as his 1st Recon beret. And truly, how did a person get over their lover and unborn child being taken into slavery by the Legion and killed while in captivity? She could see how he would carry those scars for the rest of his life. 

No wonder Boone closed the door on others. Impossible to trust, after everything he had been through. And yet, the Courier wondered if Arcade’s words rang true. If she was the person that Boone was beginning to let in. 

Despite their teamwork, everything they had been through together, the Courier knew, deep down, that she could never compete with a dead woman. There was no world in which she, with all her shortcomings, could ever come close to the Carla that currently existed, Carla the memory, Carla the symbol, Carla the amalgamation of desires and fears and love. How could she? Here she was, covered in a cold sweat, shivering, pathetic and detoxing from chems. 

And yet, Boone stayed. 

Sleep was overtaking her, despite her thoughts in knots, and for once she let herself give into it, exhaustion from the day having seeped into her very being. Whatever the doctor had given her to ease her symptoms left her without her usual nightmares and strange, wandering dreams, instead she was drifting into a blissful nothingness, until she woke, the dawn streaming through the tent flaps. Streaks of gold, and pink, and purple; the Courier sat up and assessed her condition. The cold sweat had dried on her body, leaving her clothes with an odd stiffness; her mouth was still desperately dry and her stomach questionable. But she was alive. She glanced over to her right, and sure enough, Boone was still seated, eyes bloodshot, focused on his gun. He turned when he saw her stir. 

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” he said. 

“If you could call it that,” she replied. 

“That bad?” 

The Courier winced. “I’m not in a hurry to repeat the experience.”

“I could see why.” 

“Could you hand me my cigarettes from my pack?” She asked. She was itching for one, after the day she had. 

“Sure thing.” 

He rummaged in her pack, and handed her the pack; she pulled one out and held it between her front teeth, leaning forward to search for the lighter she always managed to misplace in one pocket or another. He beat her to it, procuring a lighter from the front pocket of her pack, leaning forward to light her smoke for her. In the brief moment that passed in a flickering flame she could see the exhaustion in his gaze, but something else, too–a flash of fondness reflected in her face, a spark of light. Was Arcade right after all? Did Boone, always so stoic, garner some kind of joy in her presence? 

She took her first drag of the cigarette and sighed. “Fuck, that’s good.” Starting to feel a little more human, a little more herself, she turned her attention back to Boone. “So, when do you want to get back out there?”

He gave her a sideways glance. “You’re insane.”