Things were looking up a bit more for Joesephine. Well, more like some things were looking up; she still didn't know where Shawn was, her husband had been dead for three years, her damn laser pistol kept refusing to go off at crucial moments especially during this run; and the real kicker was that even though the world had collapsed into a hellscape of radiation, monsters, and even more monstrous morality was that she, Joesephine, widowed in a horrific manner and childless, was happy. Even more ironic was that this two-hundred and twenty-five year old woman felt like a giddy schoolgirl as she walked up the stairs from Fallon's Basement with a newspaper wrapped parcel. She wasn't high on chems, or drunk off her ass, or even gone batshit insane. She was happy because she had found, in the midst of all the chaos-indeed, because of the chaos, someone to connect with. To become close friends with. To fall in love with, once again.
He was absolutely nothing like Nate, and the fact that she found him so endearing after a few years of knowing him had shocked her. Nate was the strong, smoldering kind of masculine and sexy, who had showered her with affection and tender words even after six years of marriage and seven years of law school and constant meetings at her firm. Nate had been excited like a little child on Christmas when Joesephine had told him she was pregnant, and he literally jumped up and down laughing. It was more surprising to her to see her normally serene and almost doe-eyed husband so vibrant and... electrified by her news than she was when she herself had discovered her pregnancy! Nate was just as attentive and doting when she was carrying as he was when they were courting. When Shawn was born, Nate never once looked discouraged as Joesephine screamed insults and profanities while clutching his arm. Nate was a fairytale Prince, and Joesephine was lucky enough to have been his Princess.
Nick, on the other hand, was an entirely different genre. Noir, as you might have guessed. When she was with him, from the very beginning she was the 'dame' to his 'dick'-only she wasn't some dewey-eyed heiress with a wavering voice and a sexy Manhattan accent. Joesephine had long since bleached her sand colored hair white, and shaped her neat bun in to a much more brutal and intimidating shave and ponytail deal. In place of the cherry-red lipgloss and light blue eyeshadow a starlet in a detective film would wear, she had black matte painted on her thick lips and around her eyes and had accented it with a powerful shade of UV purple. She was not a thin, figureless waif as was popular in the days of noir; she had full round hips, a muscular frame, and a handful-and-a-half of breasts weighing her down. She hadn't always been a butch woman. When she was Mrs. Coogan, she was tidy and liked to paint her lips with a bright magenta. She wore pant suits and curled her hair like Marilynn Monroe. She was a strong woman.
But the defining visual qualities of 'strong women' change over time. When she wanted to strike fear in to the hearts of her enemies, she couldn't do it just by being a feminine yet powerful woman in a court room full of men any more. She had to go full on shock factor, and she pulled it off well. Her previously soft and easily expandable frame had adapted well to the muscle mass she had accumulated after three years in the Commonwealth, and the baby fat and just-had-a-baby fat had gone ages ago. She was left with cheekbones that hadn't been there before, and a few scars in varying sizes had etched themselves over her body. While her body and mind had changed, not everything was different. Her eyes were the same piercing green as they were before the freezer. She still had those faint freckles covering her face and arms. She was still a mother, and she felt guilt for not spending every second of her time in the new Boston scouring every nook and cranny for her child. She was the same, but different.
And Nick got that all too well. He wasn't Nick Valentine the cop any more, and he wasn't the defective Synth prototype either. At least, not entirely. Nick the Synth Detective was a different man, made from two different beings. He couldn't help but feel that Nick wasn't Nick. Nick was literally essentially Nick the cop, after all. But Nick was definitely not the same man. He was a learning machine, after all. He had started out as that donut muncher, but when he began having his own experiences and the world began falling apart, Nick wasn't Nick anymore. He formed his own opinions about the new problems arising as radiation crept over the lands and settled in the oceans. He had Nick's memories, but they seemed different than the memories he had formed. He had Nick's likes and morality, but had changed his thoughts on a lot of things over 200 years of never-ending change. He'd lost people too. Not the same way, not exactly, but plenty of people he had cared about as Nick the cop, and as Nick.
And when that dirty, sunburned, disheveled blonde busted her way into Vault 114 and kicked the asses of everyone in the room near single-handedly, he took a shine to her. She had way more bearing than he did a few weeks into his rude awakening, and she had certainly adapted well considering everything around her was new and inverted from what she knew. He was a little irked at her for killing his client's 'darling Darla', but she won him over pretty quickly. When her guts had been spilled and her long, long, long ago past, he felt even more sympathetic and even more close. When they used Kelloggs memories, and Amari told him the first thing she did when she was woken up was ask with almost panicked concern "Is Nick okay?", he felt a bit embarrassed-but in a very pleasant way. Like how when Nick Valentine was in the eighth grade, Lenny Olmaro told him that his sister told him that Minnie Kustavo had a crush on him.
That silly feeling made him more than a little nostalgic, and he wasn't so sure about hanging around Joesephine if she was just gonna be some lovesick kid; but as they traveled around he realized that she wasn't exactly crushing on him. Not on a conscious level anyway. Joesephine would often get worked up into a panic for a lot of things, from misplacing a gun to a hostage she was sent to save being a little too perilous to save. She got really worried about people being in danger especially, and it began to click that she was not as strong as she seemed. She wasn't able to deal with the trauma on her own, and it was spilling over. He helped her through an extremely tender time, and when she pulled through the worst of it and saw that he wasn't poking holes in her confidence or strength (something her own psyche couldn't resist doing to herself) and was there for her in a genuine and loyal way, it sparked that something she had felt but hadn't noticed until that very moment.
Nick's feelings for her had grown itself, and he took note in the way her manner towards him changed. They had joked around with each other before, had arguments and punched each others arms like old pals for a long time, but her body language had changed. When she touched him, she lingered and was more gentle than usual. When they argued, she seemed to have an almost sultry tint to her inflections. And the tension... The tension was what had done them in. After one 'in n' out' job for a tiny group of settlers, they had locked horns about a certain someone not hearing another certain someone telling them to "move quick!" and had almost shot them. Things had gotten pretty heated, and they had stopped moving altogether. He made a remark about her "not being able to aim in or outside of V.A.T.S., like her hands were made of damn jelly and gravel!", and she dropped the strap of her bag letting all the random junk hit the ground with a clang and spill out.
"What the hell do you mean gravel and jelly?", with a calm-before-the-storm tone.
He opened his mouth to argue and came up blank for a moment.
"It means you can't aim a damn gun!"
"You can't move your goddamn half-gone ass, you bucket of bolts!"
"Yeah?! You don't know when to shut your fuckin' mouth!"
A tense three seconds passed as they looked into each other's eyes from up close, waiting for the other to back down before Nick grabbed Joesephine and put her in a liplock. He was met with no resistance, and fully reimbursed as she passionately kissed him back. They parted for a moment, holding themselves together tightly, and an out of breath Joesephine said in a near whisper, "I didn't know you could do that".
"I've got lips don't I, doll?"
The tension that had been building up for months had finally broken, and a good relationship had become a great relationship. In that one embrace, it seemed that years had passed and everything stood still. Until, with this being the world they lived in and all, Joesephine felt a trio of drops on the back of her neck. They parted once more, and she looked up at the sky to see that a storm was starting to roll in, and a full on shower wasn't far off. The nearest settlement was too far away to reach in time to beat the rain, so it was back to the raider hideout to wait it out. Nick grabbed her bag and, both of them ignoring the dumped loot on the ground, they made a dash for the entrance of the building. It was fairly small considering the usual properties that raiders seemed to swarm in, but it was still fairly intact. Nick said he was watertight, but with all those exposed wires and broken casings he refused to let her fix he was most certainly going to make him twitch at the very least.
He ran with a clenched jaw. While he could withstand the water... Well, it didn't mean he liked it. It was an unpleasant sensation, though not necessarily harmful as long as it didn't get inside the wiring. Safely inside the concrete box, Joesephine put her things down and took off her armor. Her leg braces and chest piece were waterlogged and had soaked her vault suit, but that wasn't anything building a fire couldn't fix. She found a few pieces of fallen or pryed up floorboards and made a pile with them. She dug through her sack of goods, but it wasn't going to be easy finding a lighter in that much jumble.
"Need a light?", Nick said, pulling his flip-lighter out of his pocket. Joesephine nodded and huddled up a little closer to the firewood as Nick ignited the kindling.
So, there they were, sitting by the fire in a storm-a not quite romantic setting. They sat in silence for a little while, and Joesephine started snickering. The hushed giggles soon turned into a full on hysterical laugh, and Nick was more than a little weirded out. "Ah... Are you alright, Jo?", he said as the cigarette in his hand burned down to the filter. His expression was one of concern and discomfort, and he leaned over to touch her shoulder. Joesephine couldn't reply; she was simply laughing too hard. He sat in silence as it tapered off, and she finally wiped her eyes and replied.
"It's just so funny!", she said with a choking laugh.
"You lost me, Doll."
"What just happened! No-what... WHAT just HAPPENED?!", she wheezed.
Nick pondered that question with a straight face, and bust out laughing as well. Jo playfully fell over laughing onto Nick, who lost his bearing and slipped back. His head hit the pavement, and Josepehine fell over into his lap, making them both laugh even harder.
Soon after they finally calmed down Joesephine was resting under Nick's arm, cozy and warm by the fire. She was tranquil, and sleepy in the way that only a good laugh could make someone. Nick was pretty cozy too, though the warm fuzzies floating around in his positronic brain made him a little bit uneasy. It'd been awhile since he had a flame, after all. The best part, to Jo and to Nick, was that it didn't feel awkward like they were afraid it would. They'd been such close friends for about three years, and three years of friendship often made for uncomfortable first few weeks after a confession of love, even if they reciprocated. But this wasn't like that. It felt natural. It felt wonderful. It was good to finally get into the open, and the way they did was phenomenal. Who knew that a Synth who was a tad more robot than android could kiss like that!
Hours had passed and the rain was still coming down, harder than before now. Nick shook Jo awake. "Well, it looks like this downpour isn't going to lighten up for a while. We can make camp here for the night, or we can leave anyway. But, i'd rather not go out in that... Wading through knee-deep water is one thing, but walking through heavy rain is another.", he said, looking out a cracked window at the weather outside. It was already getting dark anyway, and the wasteland wasn't any friendlier at night. Josephine nodded sleepily.
"Okay, let's stay here for the night", she yawned, falling back asleep almost immediately. Nick was trapped in place by a woman laying her head on his lap; and that was okay with him.
And now, weeks later, Nick and Joesephine were the talk of Diamond City. Nick was more quiet and personal about his affairs, but Jo was happy to talk about it to anyone who asked. Piper especially questioned her about it, frequently asking for an interview with the couple for a special edition of Publick Occurances; but Nick had absolutely refused. "If you wants to do a story about a machine and a human, she can go talk to Edna and Zwicky", he said to Piper curtly, as he pulled Joesephine away from her and walked off. Jo didn't tell Piper much, but she spilled almost everything to Scarlet who in turn spilled everything to Travis. And Travis made a few shout outs to "those love birds. The two weirdest people in Diamond City, getting together. A match made in the Institute. How about that?", mortifying Nick and delighting Joesephine. She stopped telling Scarlet everything about their relationship after Nick chastised her for it. Scarlet still relentlessly questioned her .
"What's kissing like? Do you two have dates often? Do you hold his robot hand? What does his 'skin' feel like anyway?", Scarlet would badger Jo with every chance she got. It was now, sitting on a couch in The Dugout with a few beers in Scarlet and three shots of whiskey in Jo that Scarlet got the (liquid) courage to ask Jo a question she'd wanted to ask ever since she found out about the odd couple. "So, how's the sex?", Scarlet asked with a giggle. Jo froze. She actually hadn't thought about that yet. It was strange, she hadn't even attempted to get under Nick's trenchcoat. Not yet, anyway. "We actually haven't, um... Done anything. Yet.", she quickly added. She thought about the synths she had seen before, and realized none of them had genitalia. Oh my God... He doesn't have a penis, does he?!, she thought to herself. It had been a few weeks since that intense kiss and their agreement on being an item. Perhaps it was time to have a talk with Nick...