She is gorgeous and covered in Mirelurk blood. Maggie had given him a devil may care grin and all Robert Joseph Macready wanted is one of those funny looking hats she is wearing. Even after she had told him about her being the General to the minute men he hadn't really believed her until this exact moment where she fought a Mirelurk Queen and won.
Of course she was the General. What else could she be?
All he knows is he wants one of those fuc- freaking hats if it gets her to look at him.
"Where to now boss?" He asked trying to get his focus away from the force of nature of a woman in front of him. Lucy had been all broken places and mending… Maggie? Maggie… she was… he didn't know but he didn't want to leave.
"Dugout inn for some drinks and then who knows what?" She smirked.
"Can I get one of those funny looking hats?" He asked.
"I have one back at Sanctuary that is all yours once we get there." Macready swallows. Part of him hopes she doesn't mean just a hat. He is a widower and terrible at this. Maggie walks ahead of him and he can't help but watch the way her jeans cling to her hips.
The flush on his face would give him away, but she isn't looking. She is going forward.
He doesn't know what it is about the two of them that makes her want to drag him to hell and back. In this instance its why she keeps buying him another round and another. Vadim is flirting with her and it makes him hot and angry and he doesn't understand why.
Then she looks at him in between her glasses and gives him a smile that says yes, oh yes.
Macready wants to scream because he can't understand yes without the what and the fact that she leaves him guessing drives him crazy.
He wouldn't change the crazy.
Okay, maybe a little bit.
Maggie finds, scraps, and builds her way into the institute as he waits in Sanctuary Hills for her. It's an itch under his skin. It's him pulling up a patio chair along Preston. He ignores Piper's looks of 'shouldn't you be gone by now' he knows they all sit there and wait for the same woman.
He asks Preston if he could borrow one of those hats. The second in command gives him one willingly as they wait. Not a word between them but the understanding that she belongs to them. She is the hero, their knight in shinning armor, a woman who looks at the world that is and decides they all can be better than that. Perhaps they all are a bit in love with her the moment they sign on to follow her. Maggie is a woman who claws through the rubble and makes her way.
So Macready waits. Piper waits. Preston waits. She has to come home.
The transport brings her back half past midnight. Macready was asleep in the patio chair by the transport. He didn't understand the machines but he knew it would take her where she was needed. So he waited, he slept there, he wouldn't tell her how often.
He opens his eyes as Maggie falls to her knees. He runs to her lifting her arm over his shoulder and carrying her to her home. He had learned in the interim that this broken house had been hers before the war and now. It was a piece of her he wanted to solve, but only with permission.
Maggie says nothing as he helps remove her armor. Vacantly starring at the room that had once been her sons. Macready doesn't know what to do, so he sits beside her and does what he is best at: he runs his mouth. Maggie eventually leans against her shoulder as he tells her stories of little lamplight, of being a kid after the end of the world.
She dozes off and he goes to leave. As if on relax he feels her grasp his wrist and mumble something into the pillow that sounds an awful lot like the word "stay" in a tone that doesn't beg for arguing so he sits his as-butt on the bed as she curls into his side. He runs his hand through her hair like he used to do to Duncan when he was little. He hums her a lullabye and he stays.
Macready wakes to a mouthful of hair and his body acutely aware of the woman in his arms.
He moves his hips as from her as he can praying to every wasteland deity that Maggie didn't notice his erection.
Shit. Er, shoot.
Wearing the funny hat he got from Preston he tries to make her smile again. She takes one look at him with the minuteman hat, waggling his eyebrows and hoping to be as charming as he thinks he is.
Maggie lets forth a laugh that nearly shook the building as she doubled over. He purses his lips. He didn't want to look ridiculous. He wanted to look smooth, even heroic. Maggie grabs his hat that sat on the dresser and places it on her head.
She gives him the same quirked eyebrow watching him as he watches her.
Quickly putting the minuteman hat on the dresser and grabbing his off her head he quickly makes an exit.
Macready is halfway to Red Rocket when he realizes a little bit too late that maybe, just maybe she felt the same way. That same way his heart always beats too fast when she is near, or he gets all muddled with his words and actions. Then there is also the events at the institute she doesn't talk about as she throws herself in to more work.
He doesn't hide for the rest of the evening at Red Rocket.
Macready is working obviously.
"There you are, almost thought you forgot about me." He looks at his nails like this was no big deal and no he wasn't spending every waking moment wanting to talk to her, to tell her, anything or everything if she'll let him.
"Going to check out some trouble at a settlement, bringing Hancock with me." Maggie shrugs and his heart plummets.
"Don't wait up hot shot." The mayor of goodneighbor gives him a wink as he tries to hide his disappointment.
She looks beautiful against the setting sun, or some poetic bullshit.
Macready is up in the birds nest in Sanctuary watching as he sees Hancock and Maggie walking back towards the settlement. They are laughing. Her hand brushes the tip of Hancock's trifold hat.
He's not angry.
Definitely doesn't hide further under his own militia hat.
It's then he notices she is wearing his own.
He couldn't find it the morning she left. Macready runs his fingers down his face while his over active rabbit of a brain screams itself into circles of WHAT DOES THIS MEAN.
Maggie dresses them all with what happened in the Institute. Her son. What they are, what they want, and what she plans to do about it. She is a force of nature. A queen. A goddess. He wants to tell her that. He wants to tell her all the things he thinks about when she is around.
She arrives at the house he is at doorstep and drags him outside. "We're going to save your son." She is adamant. She is iron.
And she looks at him like only Lucy did. But more, cause she knows the whole of it.
"Why did you go off with Hancock?" He asks with a cigarette between his teeth. They are hunkering down the night right before hitting med-tek.
"I needed a walkabout to clear my head." She says as she curls up in a sleeping bag.
"Without me?" Macready asks quietly. He knows she heard him, but her reply is hidden underneath the sounds of the night.
He watches her as the embers burn low knowing that he should wake her and make her take second watch, but its been so long since he has seen her. He watches the fading fire illuminate her face, her freckles, her curly brown hair, and that scar she got from her first weeks in a new era.
The cure for Duncan is in the very bottom of the med-tek facility. Macready feels like he is ten again and the mayor of Little Lamplight having punched Princess. He holds it like he can't believe its real. He must have spent a good amount of time looking from the medicine to the woman who fought tooth and nail to get him here.
Her smile is small and she says "Your son can be saved. Where do we need to bring it?"
"Goodneighbor." He says immediately, "Daisy, she can get a caravan to him. I… I don't believe this is actually happening. I don't know what I can do to ever repay you but whatever-"
She puts a finger to his mouth, his quick silver brain running straight into a halt. "Bobby," She gives him a nickname, one that belongs to her only. Lucy called him Rob, to others he has always been Macready, but to Maggie he can be Bobby. "You don't owe me a thing."
He places the cure carefully on the table next to her making sure they didn't come all this way for nothing. Maggie braces herself like she knows what is coming as she wears his hat at the bottom of this godsforsaken facility. She hesitates a bit but looks back up at him with the same verocity.
Maggie is wearing his hat still and he likes to think it means something.
Running his gun calloused hand along her jaw she stares up at him with a whirl of emotions. He has always been tall and lanky but this is the first time he feels not enough. Never enough for this woman. He doesn't deserve the kindness she has bestowed on him. He wants to kiss her, he wants to feel all of her.
He shakes his head as if to shake himself of the courage when her hand goes up around his neck, drawing his face to hers. "Bobby." She says and it sounds desperate.
He wonders how it would sound when he is inside her.
Here in the bottom of a med-tek facility infested with ghouls is when he kisses her. A gentle meeting of lips, his are sun chapped and probably harsh but hers as soft and pliable as his fingers find their way to the sides of her face as he pulls her closer and closer. His hand trailing down her spine to the small of her back dragging her to his body as he kisses her breathless. "Maggie." His voice rasps as they come up for air. He looks at her, really looks at her. She seems indominatable and breakable all at once. She follows his lips back for seconds and he obliges. His body has turned to fire, to the shot with her the one holding the gun.
Sanity must have grabbed her or maybe the weird smell of rotting corpses. "Hey, want to get out of here?" Maggie says playfully.
"Yes." He doesn't hesitate.
Oh yes.
They make Taffington Boathouse by sundown. His hand entwined with hers. The other wrapped around the cure for Duncan. The two most important things still in this world to him. Maybe Lucy sent her to him, maybe not, but he feels like he is on fire as she breaks the contact to go talk to the leader of the settlement and secure their lodgings. It's a settlement she set up, but this is Maggie and Maggie does not take what has already been given to others.
He goes to make himself useful but ends up just kicking a rock unhelpfully. From here they will travel south to Goodneighbor. He'll send the cure to Duncan and then he'll help here with fighting the devil itself if that is what this comes to.
"They are setting up a bed in the boathouse." Maggie smiles as she saunters up to him.
"Are they, huh?" He probably looks besotted. Smitten. Or whatever other fancy words describe how he feels about her.
"So, we'll go from here south to Goodneighbor and make sure you get that to your boy as soon as we can." Maggie reaches out and shyly wraps her fingers in his, brushing her hair back out of her face and looking towards the ground.
"Sounds perfect." He kisses her forehead.
Any fancy plans to get her naked that night are stopped when bloodbugs hit the Boathouse sending some settlers screaming. It wasn't like Maggie and he were making out in the Boathouse trying to figure out how all those complicated buttons work when the screaming started.
They end up holed inside the house itself with scared settlers and him still being fully clothed. He tosses her a look and she shrugs like might be as disappointed as he is.
Maggie insists they leave early that morning after she sets up more defenses. "Can't have that happening again." She winks at him and he feels like he turned tato plant red.
He feels ten shades a fool but wouldn't change it for the world as she takes his hand.
Reaching Goodneighbor they get the vial to Daisy and she promises. Promises to get it to Duncan as soon as she can. Promises, promises, whatever is out there he hopes it gets to Duncan.
He feels elated until they get to the Hotel Rexford and its full. His disappointed pales compared to Maggie's who spends ten minutes in a tirade about how she hasn't been laid for 200 years and Macready feels like he has become one with the floorboards by the time she storms out dragging him with her.
It's not the not being laid for 200 years that bothers her as Maggie tells him on their way back to Diamond City, "Bobby," She insists with that sweet voice of hers, "I just really like your hat."
"Mags," He tries a name of his own and it seems to fit, "looks better on you." He gives her a grin with all the confidence he doesn't feel.
Why are they in the middle of Boston without a decent soft surface for him to spread her under him.
They are en route to Diamond City when Maggie comes to a stop. There are Super Mutants nearby and no doubt a wandering band of ferals she has dubbed "the neighbors" but that isn't it. They are at a building that he has a hard time making out the words. They are so old and faded.
"I used to work here." She whispers before she tries to unlock the door. "Fuck."
Yes, that is exactly what he'd like to be doing right now.
Two tries later and she finally has the door open. "Sorry, its an advanced lock." She says breathlessly dragging him in with her. He locks the door behind them as he takes stock of where they've come.
It looks like a lobby, or what he was told a lobby was, a skeleton laid out like it was reading a magazine.
"I wasn't working that day," she looked at him curious and hesitant about revealing such a part of her past. "I was trying to make partner."
"What does that mean? Is it like… us working together?" Some of that old world talk she has doesn't make a lick of sense to him.
"Follow me." She giggles playfully leading him forward.
It's some old world lawyers room she leads him in to. There are broken frames on the wall, burn books scattering the ground. A desk that has seen better days, and a raggedy couch opposite the desk.
"I worked here," Maggie explains, "I would listen to clients there and just… hope for a better world."
"Sorry," He doesn't know what else to say. Macready has grown up knowing the world was shit. That his teeth were shit. That he was shit. She is so untouched by all this destruction.
"Don't be, you didn't do anything." She turns and plays with the lapels of his broken jacket. "You are the best thing I've found."
"I don't know about that," he wraps his hands along the swells of her hips. "You are trying to make it a better world… I've only met one other person like that." Macready looks at her all hopeless and in love. She knows. He hopes she knows as she leans down and her lips meet his. It's a meeting of all things as he pushes her against the desk.
Maggie scoots up and spreads her legs allowing him more access to get closer, to touch her more as he kisses her. His hands gliding up her body discovering the curves he has always wanted to explore.
Maggie is impatient as she removes his scarf and pushes his broken coat off his body. The clothes pool at his feet as he begins working at the buttons on her vault suit grumbling as his hands come into contact with his chest plate. "I need you." He rasps against her mouth.
"I want you, Bobby." Maggie looks at him like she is drowning and he is a life raft.
Macready struggles and does the right thing, "Are you okay?" he stops this. He wants this badly but he wants her more. Wants her in her dark moments and the ones that exist in the light.
She starts crying and he knows he made the right choice as he wraps her in his arms and she tells him about her son.
"You don't have to do this alone," he whispers in her hair. He loved Lucy, but this unrelenting honesty with Maggie is different. He hates himself because it might have been what it could be with Lucy. Right now they are just two broken parents dealing with different shades of grief.
Robert Joseph Macready loves Maggie Baker. It is his singular thought on their walk to Diamond City. They kill ferals, they duck raiders and super mutants. He makes her smile and laugh and he realizes that this is love. He loved Lucy in the ideal way a young man does, but he loves this woman in every bit of his lying broken soul.
Home plate she called it. She smiles as they enter the door. It is so unlike her 'home' in Sanctuary or any place she calls to rest. This is her hidden place. She told him once that if she were to raise Shaun this would be the home she chose. He can see the broken crib in the corner and one of Hancock's hats and he knows now, knows beyond all measure that this is where their walk took them. This was a grief she could only face with someone who lived 200 years and felt the same.
He watches Maggie as she makes tea and dinner. Macready sitting on a stool in what she calls the kitchen. He tells her stories of his mercenary days and even of little lamplight. His days at the gunners. His days at the lowest. Maggie still looks at him with that same playful gaze she had earlier.
This is a game of want and wanting, but also growing. She reaches for him when all things are said and done and he meets her halfway. His hands bringing her scarred body to his. She tongues his broken teeth and he in turn drags his tongue over her wounds.
They are broken and beautiful as he carries her to the second floor where the bed she made lies. Her hands working his shirt, his pants, and any traces of what was off him as he meets her halfway. Macready unzips her vault suit slowly, tonguing his way down with each bit of revealed skin. He kisses every bullet and knife wound as he removes the garment.
Maggie is naked before him, but this is nothing new as he kisses her and loves her. She moans against his mouth as he finds his way to her. Macready lifts her leg up against his hips as her hand drifts drowns and helps him into her core.
Finally. Finally he thinks they both feel as he fills her. As she stretches to accommodate him as her nails scratch his back. As they become more of what they were.
"I love you." Maggie groans against his mouth as she finds her finish. He can barely respond as his thrusts become erratic and he stills, spilling himself inside of her. Maggie's nails making more tracks along his back.
They find themselves covered in sweat, panting softly on a bed in a place where games used to be played. The two of them look at each other with a mix of love and lust.
"I love you too." Macready smiles and it feels so real. There is nothing hidden here. No secrets. No pain unshared as he wraps her into his arms, as her fingers twine in his.
"You look good in that funny lookin' hat," Maggie giggles against his skin.
"And you look good in mine," He whispers against her skin.
They could be happy, oh yes. They could be very happy indeed.