"What're you making, a load of matchsticks? That what you call 'arts and crafts?'"
MacCready looked up from his whittling with a sudden flush to his cheeks. A pile of wood shavings littered the ground between his feet.
Eleanor's smile, though, was hardly judgmental - just that gently teasing smirk that she often wore.
"Pffffft," he waved a hand dismissively. "Says the woman who spent a whole day trying to make a chair out of scrap tin cans. Don't think you got much room to talk, boss."
"That was one time! Besides, without me, you'd be sitting around Sanctuary on your ass instead."
MacCready stood and shoved the hunk of wood he'd been attempting to carve into his coat pocket, sheathed the knife. "Isn't it about time we get off our asses and head out anyway?"
He raised a brow at the smudges of dirt staining Eleanor's trousers. "Done playing gardener?"
The Vault Dweller - what a stupid name that guy on the radio had given her - tossed him a fresh tato. "It wouldn't kill you to help out now and again, ya know."
"You paid me to shoot things, Elle. Playing farmer wasn't part of the deal."
Eleanor just looked smug and shouldered her backpack as the two crossed the bridge south and made their way into the Wasteland again.
Shit shit shit.
Elle was bleeding, pretty badly, from a nasty gash along her bicep. Bits of ragged cloth from her jacket stuck to the wound, and fresh red blood seeped down, coating her elbow and dripping down her hand.
MacCready slammed closed the door to the tiny closet they were hiding in, shoved a filing cabinet against it to keep it shut. He thought he could still hear the clicks of the Mirelurks outside, but his mind may have been playing tricks on him. They got them all, right? The one that got Elle was the last of them?
"Are you okay?" his voice quavered, with fear or anger or both.
"No, I'm not okay!" Eleanor hissed back, trying to peel the bloodied jacket off her arms. "One of those goddamned monster crabs - what were those things anyway?"
"Those fu- those things are called Mirelurks. But it doesn't matter if you bleed out. Lemme see your arm."
"What're you, a doctor now, MacCready?"
"Just lemme see it," he snapped, and she gave in, tugging the remains of her sleeve upward to reveal the breadth of the injury. "Can't see a thing with all this blood."
He rummaged in his backpack for a bottle of clean water - a real luxury - and another of vodka. "Here, shine your light on it."
Eleanor obliged, her PipBoy casting the room in a dim green light. The red of her blood looked a dull, sickly brown in the PipBoy's glow, but it was at least enough light for MacCready to better see.
He glanced up, face grim. "This'll probably hurt like heck. But you'll have to be quiet, unless you want to attract more of them."
She set her lips into a thin line and nodded. "Just do it."
First came the bottle of water, irrigating the wound and washing away the debris. The water flooded down her arm, tinged red and angry. Then came a flow of vodka and Elle's tight-lipped hiss of pain. A bandage, relatively clean by Wasteland standards, wrapped around her arm, covering tight.
"Thank you," Eleanor whispered.
"Let's just...not do that again."
They spent the rest of the night huddled in that dank little closet, and at dawn, they crept away from the Mirelurks and their nest.
Back in Diamond City, MacCready began whittling again while the doctor sewed Elle's arm back together with stitches.
Eleanor leaned back in her chair, a pile of caps stacked high on the table in front of her.
"I think you're cheating," MacCready grumbled, but his heart wasn't in it, even as he tossed his cards on the table in defeat.
His voice and expression softened. "Hey, how's your arm doing?"
They had been holed up in the Dugout Inn for the past week or so, thanks to the generosity of the Brothers Bobrov, while Eleanor's arm healed. No matter how many stimpacks they may have carried, they couldn't risk tearing her stitches and a possible infection, so the duo were on forced R&R while she recovered.
Elle stretched out her arms out in front of her, gently testing the range of motion of her injured bicep. She winced and gave the stitches a gentle prod. "It's better. I think another week or so and the stitches can come out."
The wound did, in fact, look better, at least as far as MacCready could see. The gash in her arm was less red, less angry, and slowly but surely, it seemed as though the stitches were helping her skin knit itself back together.
"Well, thank -" he began, but she interrupted him.
"No, thank you, MacCready. I'd probably be half-dead with some disgusting mirelurk fever or blood poisoning if you hadn't cleaned me up."
He blushed, stammered as he tried to cover the well of emotions that sprang forth from just her simple gratitude. "Well, uhm...of course. What kind of merc would I be, letting my boss bleed out in a broom closet?"
"The kind who takes the money and runs, the practical kind?"
"Well, no, I -" MacCready sighed, started over. "Look, maybe you already figured this out, but I'm just gonna come out and say it. You mean a lot to me. You're my best friend. It -"
He fidgeted with his cap, stalling. "It hasn't been about the caps in a long time."
Now it was Elle's turn to flush, her cheeks flaming, warmth spreading down her neck and chest. She looked at those she was going to say something, like words danced just on the tip of her tongue. But she took a sip of bad beer and laughed.
"Probably for the best, MacCready. Because I sure as hell don't pay you enough for what you go through."
"How about you use some of your winnings there to buy me a beer? And you don't...you don't have to call me MacCready, you know."
So she called him Robert instead.
They were camping somewhere near Salem - or what used to be Salem. They'd laid out sleeping bags in the corner of a decrepit building, under the remaining overhang of its roof, huddled next to a small fire.
It was probably stupid to have started a fire - out here where the raiders and deathclaws could find them - but it was cold and getting dark and the pair were just tired. Tired down to the bone, drenched from the constant drizzle that had started in the afternoon and refused to let up.
The fire crackled, and the two huddled close for warmth. Hovering his hands nearby, MacCready almost thought he could feel his fingers again.
"You know what this reminds me of?" Eleanor asked.
He just raised a brow at her, and she continued.
"Camping."
"I thought we were camping now."
"Well, yeah, but not like this. For fun."
"What was it like?" MacCready's voice was quiet, almost reverent. He was talking about her past, he knew. Elle didn't open up to him about specific memories, not very often. Hell, it was hard for him to talk about Lucy, about Duncan, and that was farther in the past than her past life was for her.
Eleanor was smiling, faintly. "It was fun. Relaxing, really. Back then there was so much...so much city. It just went on and on. To get away from it, to breathe clean air, to see trees and bushes not perfectly trimmed by a Mr. Handy..."
She shifted on the uncomfortable cement blocks they were using as chairs. Her shoulder brushed against MacCready's, and she didn't move away.
"Thinking about it now, it sounds really, really stupid. But then, it was...magical." Elle looked sad for a moment, her gaze falling to study the flames of their own small fire, but then she looked up again at MacCready, humor dancing in her eyes.
"You should've seen Nate try to build a campfire. My God, he was terrible at it. But he'd insist that he could do it, chopping at logs and fighting with the kindling for an hour or more before he finally gave up and got the starter kit." She laughed, and MacCready loved the way her eyes crinkled.
"Do you miss him?" MacCready asked, and Elle's face fell immediately.
Damn his big mouth. Why'd he have to go and just blurt that out?'
"Yeah, yeah...I do. But it's so different now that I -"
"I know," he said, in an attempt to be comforting. It seemed like the right thing to say.
MacCready reached for her hand, clasped it tight. "I'm sorry."
"Thank you, Robert." Eleanor squeezed his hand. "I don't think I could make it on my own, make it without you."
"You won't have to try. I'm not going anywhere."
And so they stayed like that for another hour, huddled against the dark together.
When the tear rolled down her cheek, he wiped it away without thinking.
"I'm - 'm sorry," she sobbed.
"Don't be," MacCready reached for her shoulders, pulled her to his chest. They were almost the same height, his lips at her ear as he whispered. "You have nothing to be sorry for."
They'd seen some of the worst the Wasteland had to offer today: children butchered by raiders, their bloody corpses left in a disrespectful heap outside the settlement. Eleanor's wall of smirking stoicism crumbled at once, and the tears fell hot and fierce.
"It shouldn't...I shouldn't let it get to me like this," her voice was muffled against his shoulder.
"Bullshit," he didn't bother to censor his language now. Not when anger boiled in his blood - for those miserable bastards who did this, for his failures in protecting Lucy and Duncan and forgetting how to feel...
But Eleanor had reminded him of those emotions he'd locked tight within his heart - more than just grief and anger but joy and...and love. Her passion for protecting the people of the Commonwealth, not just enduringbut thriving and living, truly living, was contagious. It was a much-needed jolt of energy, a slap in the face of his apathy.
She'd saved his life. Showed him how to care about other people again, how to not just accept whatever fate threw at them.
"Too many people out here don't give a damn about what happens to other people. I sure as hell didn't, not until you reminded me to stop being such an asshole."
A small chuckle broke through as Eleanor's tears began to slow.
"So don't you dare apologize for having a heart, Elle." He let his lips brush against her cheek, only for a second, but she wrapped her arms around him and held him closer.
"Thank you, Robert."
They were back in Sanctuary when he decided to stop stalling.
They'd both lost so much, why not...why not take a chance on something good for once?
MacCready made his way down to the river, where he knew she'd be. The branches of the trees overhead swayed in the breeze, and he could almost imagine what it would have looked like if any of them still had leaves - like in those old pictures. On days like this, with the sun bright off the water, you could almost forget that the world was mostly dead.
Maybe that was why she came down here. At the river bank, you couldn't see much of Sanctuary or the remains of Concord on the opposite side of the hills.
"Hey," he called out as he ambled down the hill.
Eleanor turned to look over at him over her shoulder, sitting on the bare earth, knees tucked to her chin. A smile burst onto her face.
"Robert! Come sit with me," she patted a patch of dry dirt beside her.
"Look, I know I can be a bit of an assh - I can be pretty arrogant, and I act like I wanna be alone, but the truth is, being alone scares the heck outta me."
MacCready tugged absently at the brim of his cap before continuing. "But you've shown me that I don't have to be, that I don't have to shut myself away from everyone else. And you, you act like you care about me more than anyone has in a long, long time."
He searched in the pocket of his duster, pulled free something small enough to fit within the palm of his hand. "So I want you to have this."
Elle raised a questioning brow and then smiled again at the small wooden toy soldier in her hand. It was a little rough around the edges, a little asymmetrical, and its paint was less than even. "Did you make this?"
"Uh, yeah," MacCready blushed. "I know it's...it's not much of a gift, especially since I can't carve worth a crap. Lucy made one for me - before, when she thought I was a real soldier - so I...well, I wanted you to have one."
"It's perfect," she said. Genuine joy lit up Eleanor's face, and MacCready thought he'd never seen anything so beautiful.
"I guess what I'm trying to say is: I love you, Elle." His heart pounded loud in his ears, fear and excitement mingling in his veins. There, he'd said it. For better or worse, she knows how you feel.
"I love you too!" she blurted out with a happy giggle. "Oh my god, I can't believe it..."
MacCready laughed too, out of sheer glee, giddy like a kid all over again. "For the first time in my life, I think I'm truly happy."
The curve of her smile was too inviting to resist, so he leaned forward, cupping her neck with his hand, and pressed his lips to hers. She wasn't quite expecting it, and their noses collided.
Elle giggled again. "I think we're both a little out of practice."
"I'm not going anywhere," MacCready grinned.
I wanted to acheive two goals with this story: 1) explore a "what if" where MacCready is free to take the iniative in the romance arc, and 2) craft a sweet little romance, boiled down to the essential scenes to allow the reader to imagine the connecting moments.
Hopefully I succeeded with at least one of those!
You can find me at AO3 and on Tumblr as FilmNoirette.