Disclaimer: Fallout is the property of Zenimax Inc, this is a not-for-profit work.

This was done for a prompt on the Fallout kink meme that was simply "Courier/Boone." Will likely be three parts. This is a slash fic and involves non-graphic descriptions of two consenting adults having sex. If you can handle HBO or Skinimax fake-porn, you shouldn't have a problem with this.

Swift, Silent, Deadly
I. The Only Easy Day...

Didn't take me long to figure out the kid's gay.

He wasn't too obvious about it, but First Recon teaches you how to see things that aren't obvious. Hell, any old spotter can see things like this.

I saw it on Manny, too, after I met Carla. That's neither here nor there.

So, the kid's gay. The looks were the most obvious give-away, he was good at sneaking them, but like I said, I've got good eyes. Wandering the wastes doesn't give you the chance to have any more modesty than being in the army, so it's hard to miss these things. It's hard to miss when we find enough water that's not puking up rads to clean up with and he's on watch for raiders or mutants or god knows what, sneaking a look every now and then when I strip down, when he thinks I can't see him out of the corner of my eye. It's hard to miss the dopey grin on his face when he wakes me up at night for my turn at watch, and it's hard to miss the way he lets me sleep for an extra fifteen or twenty minutes sometimes.

Honestly, I actually trusted him more because of it. The kid doesn't exactly bleed professionalism, but he's a hard man under it all, he's just young enough for his age to hide it from most. He knows how to survive, and the fact that I'm not babysitting him is why we work so well together. He'd have made a hell of a soldier.

He's also curious, not just willing to learn but actively seeking it out. That was another giveaway, the way he settles when I'm at his back with my hands at his arms, fixing his posture so he'll know how to fire his shitty old rifle better then a psycho'd up fiend. Or the way he throws a leg over mine, an arm over my back when we're both flat on the ground, when he's actually being a damn good spotter to the point where he syncs his breathing up to mine.

So, he's gay. Me, I'm too numb to be weirded out like I would've been ten years ago, like I was when I realized Manny was making eyes at me.

I hate that fucking robot.

It floats around, and it just never stops making that damn whirring noise. Of course I can't tell the kid it's a problem, because I know damn well it's not loud enough to actually give us away to anyone who's too far out to spot us. He'd know it too, if I lied.

I swear, this thing either loves me or hates me. It bumps into me all the time, usually right into the back of my head. It has to be doing this on purpose, it can't just be bad wiring or some bullshit like that, because it's the perfect buddy in combat. It's no sniper, but it's still as good a shot as any decent soldier, and it never gets in the way while it's floating around giving fire support.

Naturally, the fucking robot flat-out saves my life after we take down a Legion scouting party and one of the bastards wasn't as dead as we thought it was. You see crazy things out here, but I'd never been what you'd call a wanderer before I met the kid. There was a limit to the crazy in the army, and there was certainly a limit while I was sitting in the dinosaur, but as long as I live, I will never forget the sight of this Legionnaire with the side of his head turned to mush from my shot, his skull cracked open, pushing himself back up with one hand and raising a pistol with the other.

The fact that I froze in shock means I'm either getting old or I'm not nearly as good as I thought I was. Maybe a little of both. Then, the fucking robot comes to the rescue, zips right in front of my face like a shield, takes the bullet, and then zaps the guy with its laser so bad he actually catches on fire while chunks of his head are still flying through the air.

I'd never seen the kid so...distraught as he was when the fucking robot fell right out of the air with a sad little clank, only to float up again like it was carrying a hundred-pound ruck.

"ED-E!"

I almost laughed. It's not a name, I wanted to tell him. It's a stupid acronym, thought up by whoever it was that made the thing, whoever it was that had to be military, because only the military thought up of crap like that.

Watching him run over to the floater and grab it when it fell again, helping it float, made me wonder if his age wasn't what hid the worst of his life from others, but if he just had that much genuine empathy.

I don't know why I volunteered to carry the thing until we found a nice, safe husk of an old building to plunk down in so he could look at it. It was heavy, and high on my list of civilian pleasures was not having to carry more on my back than I rightly needed, so I was more than happy to put it down and watch the kid take his pack off so he could get at his tools.

I hated that I started caring about it, but stupid annoying robot or not, it took a bullet for me. "Is it...like, busted?" I said.

"Not too bad," he said, hands fast at work, faster than I could make sense of. I didn't know the first thing about machines, unless keeping my gun clean and working counted. He had the side off in the time it took me to blink, fingers tapping at that wrist-mount of his to turn it into flashlight. "It got in through a seam, looks like the second layer stopped it...there's some messed-up wires and he needs a new sensor module."

"How do you know all this stuff," I finally asked. It wasn't the first time I'd seen him work meds like a doctor or go at machines like an engineer.

"My daddy taught me," he answered. There wasn't any more to the answer, or at least not any more he was willing to give. Instead, he gave me that grin again. "Wanna learn? Only fair, you've been teaching me how to shoot."

It was just basics. Electronics aren't as easy a thing to learn as gunfighting. He showed me how to solder the wires without being sloppy, how to respect all the different components while swiping out the defective one so nothing else would break...once the armor plate was replaced and I screwed it on tight, the damn thing went right back to floating with that obnoxious sound. It looked at me and played a jingle.

Great; now the fucking robot liked me.

I hadn't been sure coming back to Bitter Springs had been a good idea.

Now I know it was, if for no other reason than the twenty-plus dead Legion at our feet.

I'd be dead if it wasn't for the kid, his shitty rifle gone in favor of one of those plasma weapons NCR grunts have wet dreams about, his crummy T-shirt and jeans folded in his pack while he wore the crazy armor he'd gotten from those Brotherhood bastards. He didn't try to make me like them; it's always useful having friends, even if you don't like them, he'd said.

We'd both be dead if it hadn't been for that armor. We'd be dead and the robot would be scrap. The raiding party didn't have any heavy weapons. It was quite possibly the greatest thing I'd ever seen in my life, watching one of them try to throw a spear at him only for it to bounce off his chest.

The kid was like something out of hell, marching at them, at them, taking all the attention, taking all the fire from their pistols and shitty rifles, cheap bullets bouncing off him as he took each step, his plasma rifle taking care of the ones in front while me and the robot stayed back, shooting the ones bringing up the rear and working our way forward.

There aren't many ways two men, or two men with an extra shooter, can take down an opposing force outnumbering them ten or twenty to one. This was a way.

"Boone, you're bleeding."

It was hard to tell where he was looking because of the armor, but I tried to follow his helmet, and he was right; I'd nearly taken a shot in the arm, it'd winged me enough to make an open wound. Considering where I was and how the night had went, I couldn't really bring myself to care. No...that's wrong. I did care, for the first time since...I actually cared about myself, I was just too exhausted to take it seriously.

We just took one of the tents and the robot was courteous enough to float outside. Most of the refugees were partying as much as they could manage, drinking what booze they had, kicking the Legionnaires' bodies when they weren't looting them. Good for them, I thought.

The kid took his helmet off and set it down, told me to take off my shirt and hold out my arm while he looked for things in his pack. "Does it hurt?"

"Nothing I can't handle," I told him. It wasn't a lie, but I would've said it anyway, the last thing I needed was a Med-X habit. I still flinched when he disinfected it, his disinfectant of choice being vodka.

I'd expected to die tonight, and I told him as much. I'd expected my payback for what happened the last time I was here, and I expected...maybe release from the feeling I had in my gut ever since I pulled the trigger on my wife.

"I wasn't going to let you die."

The kid paused after he was done with the stitches. When he talked, he didn't look at me. "My daddy taught me everything I know, except for guns, of course. One day he catches me...you know, with someone. Someone he didn't like, though." Another guy, I guessed. "My mom tried to get him off me when he grabbed the knife, so he..."

The kid was still alive, so I could see where this story was going. With him kneeling there next to me, in armor that let him shrug off a horde of madmen, I suddenly knew what hardened him to the world, where his talent for surviving and coping underneath the smile came from. He'd gotten stronger instead of breaking from it. "Why are you telling me this?"

I hadn't meant to sound uncaring, we'd been on the road and watching each others' backs more than long enough for apathy to be out of the question. It just didn't make sense to me, that he'd relive something painful like this just for the sake of conversation.

"Fair's fair, you told me about your life." His smile was forced this time. "My daddy never saw it coming. Grabbed his gun right off the table before he even turned back to me. I dunno if he was sorry or if he thought he was in the right, just shot him and never looked back." When the kid looked back at me, he tapped at the scar on his head. "Life paid me back, too."

I didn't know what to say to him. The silence was anything but calming while we stared at each other.

When he leaned in and kissed me, I really didn't know what the fuck.

Neither did he, if the way he knelt there blinking at me was anything to go buy, and he just said, "I, uh...shouldn't have done that." It'd been quick, painless, just his lips on mine, probably plenty of dirt we'd had caked on exchanged in the process. He went for the roll of gauze he'd taken from his pack. "I'll just finish on your arm..."

I grabbed the collar of his armor before he could start up with that and kissed him back, thinking the whole time that I wasn't in my right mind. I was still on the adrenaline high, still going on instinct, and actual human contact seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe I understood Manny a little better.

People with wanderlust have weird ideas about what walking the waste is like. Even other grunts in the army think being a civilian out here means being some kind of free spirit, you against the world, with automatic romance whenever you traveled with others. Reality is, you're always dirty, you marinate in your sweat, and...christ, neither of us had showered since our last stop at the strip, the only possible thing that could be more rank than me would be him inside that armor.

That's probably why it didn't go further than his hand down my pants, his left hand, the one with his Vault-built wrist-mount he can't fit the armor over. The steel on his other hand held the back of my head, fingers tracing the band of my beret while we tried harder to shove our tongues further down each others' throats, and I could taste the dirt and feel his dry skin and didn't care, I moved to his neck and bit down when I came.

Once the rush was gone, I flopped onto my back, crooked on the bedroll under me, looking at nothing but the low top of the tent. I could hear his armor move as he shifted off his knees, sitting with his legs stretched out. "Want me to return the favor?" The words sounded like someone else was saying them.

"I," I heard him start to laugh, "I'd have to take my armor off."

I just about lost it, I laughed hard enough to drown him out and when I remembered to breath, I realized I actually felt better.

Some beeping got my attention; tilting my head, I could see the robot hovering low, just inside the tent, staring at us. Christ, and I hadn't even zipped up. Instead of doing that, I did the next best thing and raised one arm to flip it off. It beeped again and floated out. "Fucking robot."

"Hey, don't be mean to ED-E."

So, the kid was gay. I could live with it.