“I think I’d rather be dead,” Madelyn groaned, still wincing as she raised her head to get a better look at their surroundings. It was the standard ‘bad guy’ holding room—tools on a workbench, junk and trash, and the most awful lingering scent of flesh and blood.

“With a hit to the cranium like that, I’m surprised you aren’t,” he muttered. She felt his head tilt against hers with a gentle bump, a difficult task for him with their height difference, even when sitting and restrained. “You alright though Charmer?”

She sighed, pushing back in her own little gesture. “A massive headache but…yeah,” she smiled and despite it all, almost wanted to laugh. “Thanks Dee. Some shit we’ve found ourselves in, huh?”

He decided it was the perfect opportunity to chuckle. “I’ve been tied up under worse situations,” he stated. “Come to think of it, under much better ones too.”

The nearby door slammed open, two Gunners making their way in. A woman dressed in an old military jumpsuit, and a shirtless man with a bandolier strapped across his chest, the two clearly sent for guard duty.

“Oh will the two of you shut up?!” The one with the bandana shouted, clearly tweaking on some kind of drug—jet, psycho—Madelyn could see it in the wild way he was waving his plasma pistol around. But she also noted the glint of green on his wrist and narrowed her eyes—her Pip-Boy. Now she was alert and her blood got pumping.

Deacon couldn’t resist taunting the man, even though they were woefully unmatched. “Why don’t you make me?”

The male Gunner grumbled while the woman laughed. “Where’d that damn gag go?”

Madelyn stifled her own laughter, wondering if they had actually had to silence Deacon at some point—and if he had found a way to remove it even with his hands behind his back. “You’ll have to find a different way to gag me, big guy.”

“Fuck you!”

Deacon hummed. “Something like that.”

At that, she couldn’t resist and choked back a laugh, pursing her lips so the Gunners wouldn’t take out their frustration on her. Even though she couldn’t see him, she could tell Deacon was beaming. He curled a few of his fingers around hers as the Gunner guards began to pace.

“Come on man,” the rugged military woman urged the other man to back off. “The boss man wants these two alive for ransom. Something about this one,” she gestured to Madelyn. “Being valuable or sumthin’”

“What am I, canned cram?” Deacon mumbled under his breath. As the Gunners fussed over something frivolous, he squeezed his grip around her hand. “This is the part where we escape,” he spoke in a soft whisper, head craned towards her.

Madelyn turned but all she could see was the glimmer of his sunglasses out of the corner of her eyes. “Please enlighten me on how we are going to that.”

Deacon snickered as if she had just cracked a good joke—he seemed to find comfort in her dreary, cynical tone. “It’s time for us to use a Railroad classic. The Dirty Wastelander Phrasebook.”

Even though she knew that it is was more or less one of Deacon’s bullshit creations, she also knew it was sometimes best to humor him. She had learnt his ways, knowing that one day one of his lessons would come in handy—that Tuesday would be that day.

“Operation Cramalot?” she inquired, feeling him excitedly grip her hand. “Or do we want to skip the musical numbers this time?”

He was chuckling, shaking the both of them with his laughter. “Charmer, you know—”

Whatever he was about to say was cut off by the male guard stomping over again with a snarl, smacking Deacon across the face with an echoing slap. After quickly rebounding, his only reaction was to stay amused, accentuating his words. “Do you have a cigarette? My hovercraft is full of eels.”

“What?” the Gunner growled. “The fuck you talkin’ about cigarettes for?”

While the woman in the corner howled, entertained by it all, Deacon took the time to nudge one of his fingers against the small of her back, signaling her. Madelyn focused her attention on the female Gunner, watching her every movement while she felt her partner nimbly pull at the cords at their wrists.

“Do you want to come back to my place?” Deacon asked, voice high-pitched and full of sarcasm. The restraints came looser still. “Bouncy-bouncy?”

The Gunner shook her head, holding her stomach as she continued to laugh. “I think the boss hit this one too hard—he’s lost it!”

Madelyn decided it was her turn. “If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?” she eyed the female guard, batting her eyelashes, knowing she was laying it on much thicker than she ever would—but at this point she was well aware the other woman was under some kind of influence and wouldn’t notice. Plus, she had a codename to live up to.

Deacon, meanwhile, had loosened their ties enough to the point that they could make their move, but they would need to time it right. He tapped her once more, this time finding the teeniest sliver of skin where her shirt had ridden up—that was definitely on purpose, the flirt. “You have beautiful thighs.”

Finally, the other Gunner moved towards them with her arms crossed, obviously suspicious of the two. Madelyn stayed focused, steadying her breath and responding to Deacon’s signal. “Drop your panties, Dee, I cannot wait till lunchtime.”

With that, the two jumped up, scream-laughing as they tackled their perspective guards to the ground, not stopping until the sound of energy blasts signified their gruesome ends. All in another day for a wastelander just trying to survive, Madelyn supposed. Though, she wasn’t just another wastelander, but dwelling too much on those thoughts never did her any good. Instead, she wiped the blood and sweat from her brow, sighing as she pushed herself up from the ground.

She turned around just in time to find Deacon already standing with a satisfied smile. “I believe this belongs to you?”

Madelyn was all too pleased as she snatched the Pip-Boy—her Pip-Boy from him, quickly securing it back into place on her left wrist. She dusted off the grime and dust from the screen, sighing when the mechanism recognized its true owner, swiftly alerting her to her many injuries and her location. At least they weren’t too far away from Goodneighbor where they could rest up and get proper medical attention.

“Please fondle my bum—am I using that one right?” she asked.  

Deacon chuckled, nodding as he readjusted his sunglasses and pompadour wig. “You do the Railroad—me proud Charmer. I could—”

She eyed him, tilting her head slightly at his pause. “You could…what?”

Come to think of it, he been cut off earlier too. But Deacon wasn’t that easy of a nut to crack and his smile hardly faltered. He gave a little inconspicuous shrug and she suddenly felt a surge of adrenaline and all sense of sensibility fly out the broken storage room windows. She could only hope she was reading the moment and perhaps his signals correctly.

Without much of a second thought, Madelyn reached out to grab him by the shirt collar, yanking him down and closing the distance between them. He was still smirking when their mouths met, lips threatening to stretch into a grin before they finally responded to her kiss instead. She slid one of her hands and hooked it around his shoulder, bracing herself against him as his arms wrapped around her waist, the two clumsily bumping into the nearest wall.

Only then did she pull away with a small gasp of air, staring up at him in surprise—she had acted on impulse, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t wanted to do that, been thinking about doing that for months. They were still staring at each other with somewhat agape expressions, tangled in each other’s arms when he breathed out, the goofiest smile on his lips.

“My nipples explode with delight!” Deacon exclaimed—not quite using the handbook phrase correctly.

Madelyn snickered, tears of laughter prickling at the corners of her eyes at the hilarity of it all before pressing up on her toes so that she might kiss him again. “I figured you might say that.”