a/n: Another tumblr prompt. Enjoy~!
He really begins to notice her after Bitter Springs. They're bleeding, sweaty, and too many innocents are dead, but there's something about victory that gets his blood boiling. When the last Legionnaire falls and she throws her rifle to the ground, whooping and hollering triumphantly, all he wants to do is scoop her up, swing her around, and thank her.
"You must have gotten knocked upside the head, Baldy." she'd tease, would probably lift up her sleeve, slip off his beret, and cheekily "shine" the top of his head. She would ignore his hints, might even laugh them off. She never seemed to take anything seriously. But he was fond of that.
The first couple of weeks were absolute torture, traveling with the inexperienced woman. Thanks to the bullet fragments lodged in her brain, her sight isn't too great, and she wouldn't be able to hit a Deathclaw in the face if it was three inches in front of her.
Not like he'd let one get that close.
The Courier was loud, asked too many questions, and everything that Carla could have never been. She was brutally honest, socially awkward, and vulgar where his wife had acted poised, sophisticated and tasteful - but he couldn't (couldn't want her) imagine her any other way.
Sure, she was a little too trusting, a bit skittish in a firefight, and rushed into debates and conflicts without thinking, but there was also that endearing, honest smile she flashed him from time to time that made him think that with such a candid, sweet woman around, the world couldn't be that terrible.
But he knew otherwise, and despite wanting to forget, to just let go, she wouldn't let him, wouldn't let herself. The Mojave had dished the both of them its worse, and for some reason or another, they'd both managed to hold on to reality.
With all they've been through...
Yeah, of course Boone's thought about her in that way. He'd berated himself about it, but got himself off on the idea a few times even, yet there are a few significant events that trigger something deeper, something closer to what he felt for Carla, but entirely...different. It was Six afterall.
Six with her innocently pretty Hispanic features, that sexy, curvy waist, and an attitude to boot.
The thought that he could have feelings for someone other than Carla sometimes makes him cringe...but although he knows Carla wouldn't want him to be unhappy, there's just something strange with moving on to a woman like the Courier. Not that he would mind, God no.
First time he feels physically attracted to her is on that fateful night in Novac, when she slips his beret on, when she takes the splatter of Jeannie May's blood across her face with a tired, knowledgeable silence. The second time comes not soon after - when she rolls the headless, mutilated corpse into a hole she digs herself, telling him that no matter the person, everyone deserves some kind of burial.
Third is Bitter Springs.
That memory is the clearest, the most lucid, the most special to him. He can shut down, can picture it against the dark canvas of his eyelids. They sit on Coyote Tail Ridge for hours, him processing what seems to be the end of his torment, and her acting as an anchor for stability, sitting next to him, silent for one of the first times in her life. At one point she returns with two packs of stale beer in her hands, handing him a few bottles and raising one of her own up towards the stars.
Rex is nestled against his leg, sleeping soundly despite the number of Legion throats he had ripped open. She turns to him after a few quiet hours, gives him that bright smile he will always compare to the dazzling lights of New Vegas in the distance, and carefully gives his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
Fourth time he begins to feel that particular warm, burning sensation for her is right now, staring across the dining table in the Lucky 38 at her pretty, Wasteland-roughened face.
"Three days," she murmurs, swirling a glass of old whiskey with one of the kitchen's lackluster silver spoons.
He looks up from cleaning his Anti-Material Rifle, the one she had order personally from the Gun Runners for him, and raises an eyebrow behind his aviators.
"Giving a warning for the end of the world?" he asks, and she sighs, cupping her jaw in a gloved hand warily. Despite her twenty-three years, the baby fat of her cheeks pushes up under her palm in a way he finds strangely, endearingly fuckable.
She sighs again, and this time it's accompanied by a familiar, cheeky twist of her lips, yet still with an honest-to-God sadness. She waves an arm around the 38's kitchen dramatically.
"End of our world, at least."