A/N: Yes, I'm aware the Puwolski shelters in-game are about as useless as tits on a boar. I claim artistic license.

"Stupid human!"

MacCready flinched as a bullet buried itself in the crumbling rubble beside his ear, tiny chips of masonry flying up to sting his cheek. He'd told the Boss this was a terrible fucking idea (although not in those exact words). That whoever was dumb enough to get themselves captured by super mutants deserved their gruesome fate - but trying to talk her out of that damned do-gooder streak seemed about as pointless as arguing with the brick wall beside him.

Although the brick wall was a hell of a lot less likely to get him killed in the process at least.

Swiping furiously at the bead of sweat tangled in his eyebrow that threatened to ruin his focus, MacCready sighted through his scope and lined up another ugly green head in his crosshairs, holding his breath and steadying his grip on the forestock before squeezing off a round that turned the mutant's insides outside.

"Let's go to Trinity Tower! We'll make it quick!" he leaned out to call down in his best mockery of the Boss' voice. Curling his lip he snorted and settled back onto his perch on the second floor of the ruined building across the street. "Dammit, I knew I should have charged you twice as much."

It was only half an exaggeration, too. Boss was worth more trouble than any man should have to put up with, most of the time. The bitch of it all though was that he'd known as much from the moment she'd walked into that dingy back room at the Third Rail, wearing that shiny blue vault suit. Looking like something straight out of one of those old-timey magazines. Nobody in the real world was that filled out. Had teeth that straight and white or skin that smooth, without a single scar or blemish.

Or stumbled into damn near every frag mine in existence.

Fucking vault dwellers. Fucking pains-in-the-asses. He'd dealt with them once already in his life. Clearly he hadn't learned his lesson the first time.

"Shut up, MacCready," she shot back. From up here, all he could see of her where she crouched behind a rusted-out car was the top of her dark head, but there was a grin in her voice. "Don't pretend like you aren't having fun."

He was, to be honest. A hell of a lot more fun than he'd expected to ever have again after traveling to the ass-end of the Commonwealth, although he wasn't about to admit as much right now. "Look alive," he warned instead, fighting against the faint answering smile that tugged at his own lips as the ruined tower before them spat out a few more green-skinned imbeciles.

Boss poked her head around the bumper, the pistol in her hands jumping in time with the crack of gunfire as she took one out at the knees before burying another slug in its head. MacCready offered a silent thanks to whatever powers might be paying attention that the one time she'd listened to him had been when he'd talked her into something more substantial than that dinky 10mm she'd showed up in Goodneighbor with.

Taking aim he dropping another of the muties that were rushing her, spent casings chiming off the bricks at his feet as he threw back the bolt on his rifle after every shot. It was a wonder he could hear anything at all over the pandemonium the street had turned into, Boss ducking and weaving between hulks of wreckage, leading muties on a merry chase as he leaned out from behind cover again and again to pick them off.

Maybe that was why he didn't notice the flames at first, between the noise and ghostly flashes of gunfire that lit up the narrow street. Citrine tongues that licked innocuously over the frame of one of those abandoned vehicles she was dancing around, so small now but he knew what was to come. Bile rose, acrid in his gullet and on the back of his tongue, his stomach folding on itself as he realized she was still unaware of the danger - he'd followed her long enough to recognize that screwed-up look of concentration on her face, to know that she was seeing nothing beyond the end of her barrel right now.

'Boss!" he yelled, and she was startled into turning her head towards him, missing the mutant that had circled around to swing one of those wicked boards at the back of her skull in a glancing blow that sent her stumbling to the ground.

He pounded a round into that mutant's brainpan and bit back a savage curse. She was as good as dead. That car was gonna go at any moment, blowing her and the rest of those muties below to kingdom-come. The broken wall he'd been crouched behind would shield him from the worst of the blast, the 200 caps in his pocket would go far with Winlock and Barnes, and there'd be another person wandering into Goodneighbor looking to hire a merc sooner rather than later. All pretty damned good reasons for him to stay right where he was…so then why the fuck exactly was he slinging his rifle over his shoulder and jumping out of a second story window, running towards an impending explosion instead of away with barely more than a half-baked plan of action?

He wasn't some sort of goddamned hero. All they did was end up dead, sooner rather than later. What dumbass part of his brain had forgotten that one vital fact?

He supposed it was whatever one was being drowned out by the voice that kept insisting she'd do the same for him. Or anyone, really.

The hot-blood smell of burning metal seared his nose, tainted every breath MacCready sucked in as he scrambled and slid his way over the piles of rubble and scrap towards her, ducking under the flailing arms of one super mutant as he dashed past. She was just struggling to her feet, swaying slightly as she looked around, the towering flames casting sharp shadows and highlighting the look of confusion on her face as she focused on him sprinting towards her.

"MacCready? What…?"

At least that's what he thought she said, but her voice was nearly lost in the roar of fire and mutie fury, and it wasn't as if he had time to explain anything anyways. The air left her in a harsh grunt as he hooked an arm around her midsection and half-dragged, half-threw the both of them into the ridiculous blue booth behind her, one of his fists slamming blindly against the wall for a few precious seconds before hitting the button that set the door hissing shut behind them, that stupid goddamn jingle echoing around them in the momentary silence.

He didn't even have time to sort out the jumble of limbs they'd become before the blast hit, shaking the walls of their narrow little shelter and rattling the door in its track, heating the metal behind him uncomfortably. He'd always wondered if these Puwolski things were actually radiation proof. The fresh wave of nausea that rolled over him was answer enough.

"You alright?" He barely recognized his own voice, pitched high and strung out, breathless from the mad dash. Either time or some passing asshole had broken the bulb overhead, and the only light inside the shelter came from the faint glow of the button panel to their side. He couldn't tell if it was that or actual rad sickness that cast Boss' features in a sickly greenish light, but he wasn't taking chances. "Puke on me and I'm walking, caps or no caps," he threatened, pitching his voice low. At least, he thought it was low...hard to tell over the ringing in his ears.

"Open the door!" was her shouted reply, and he winced, slapping a hand over her mouth to silence any more outbursts.

"Be quiet," he bit out. "That car exploding might have taken out the muties nearby, but that tower was crawling with them. They're gonna come looking, and we're sitting ducks." His narrowed gaze took in the trickle of blood that matted her dark hair. "How hard did you get hit?"

Her only response was to clamp her teeth over the meaty part of his palm and stomp down on his instep, and he snatched his hand away with a yelp, putting as much distance between them as was possible in such a small space before she lashed out again somehow. "Ouch! What the fu-hell?"

"Open the goddamned door, MacCready!" she spat.

He batted away her hand as it fumbled over his shoulder towards the release button, clasping her wrist and pinning it against the wall, wondering what the fuck was wrong with her. "No! Are you trying to get us killed? Just sit tight for five damned minutes, and they'll forget we were ever here."

"I'll take my chances. I can't stay in here." The anger in her words had sharpened to a different sort of edge, and MacCready could clearly see the whites surrounding her dark eyes despite the dim light. In the tiny enclosure the sound of their breathing echoed harshly - so much so that it took him a moment to realize that instead of slowing down, hers was speeding up.

"Didn't think I smelled that bad," he groused, but his heart wasn't in the joke. He'd given her as much space as he could in the close quarters earlier but he'd been forced back in as they squabbled over the controls, and the line of her leg now pressed up against his. He could feel her trembling through it. "You sure you're ok?" Head wounds could be nasty things, he knew. Seen more than a few people acting weird after taking one. He began rifling through his pockets with his free hand, feeling his way in the dark for one of the few stimpaks he carried.

"You don't understand." Her voice was vehement, and she snatched her arm back from his grasp to knot her fingers together before her, breath whistling sharply through her tight jaw as her gaze darted about. "I can't - I won't…"

She was faltering, and that was the most disconcerting thing of all. Boss didn't stutter. She didn't stammer, or pause, or leave a thought half-finished. She talked circles around everyone, and yet somehow was the most direct person he'd ever met. He'd even asked her once how she managed it, after she'd haggled the immutable KL-E-O down to almost ludicrous prices. She'd just laughed and told him to try swaying a hung jury, whatever that meant. Something from her life before, he assumed. Times he tried not to pry too hard about because honestly it was too fucking depressing for the both of them. He didn't like hearing about what all the world had lost.

And lately, he'd found, he didn't like thinking about what all she had lost.

A violent tremor passed through her. "Let me out," she breathed, and he realized she wasn't even speaking to him anymore. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she was far away from this shelter. From this time.

Wasn't that the goddamned truth any day of the week, though.

"Boss," he began quietly, reaching out to gingerly lay a hand on one shoulder, trying to bring her back to the here and now. He'd seen a kid or two in Little Lamplight react the same way after getting caught somewhere in the dark recesses of the caves. Those were the ones that slipped out in the middle of the night sometimes and never came back.

She shuddered beneath his palm, like a horse about to bolt, before her eyes flew back open and

locked onto his, as deep and wide and black as the caverns he'd grown up in. "Vivian," she said, and continued when he blinked in confusion. "My name. Say it, please."

"Vivian," he repeated inanely, simply because she'd told him to, and was surprised at how much he enjoyed the way it hummed on his lips.

Dragging her hands down her face he saw she was fighting for composure, trying to force her panting breaths slower. "I'm not back there. Tell me I'm not, MacCready."

He had a pretty damned good idea of where 'there' was, even if he was a little fuzzy on the details.

"You're not." For lack of any better ideas (and because they were smashed into a goddamned Puwolski shelter made for one and were practically entangled anyways) he slid his hand from her shoulder to flatten on the slight curve of her spine, tracing short lines up and down in a shitty attempt at giving her something, anything else to focus on. He'd always felt he'd been crap at reassuring Duncan too, but his son had never really seemed to mind.

He more than half expected her to slap him away. He sure as shit didn't expect her to turn into his chest, smashing her face against it in a way that couldn't possibly be comfortable. Behind his back he felt her fingers balling up the tattered fabric of his coat, and the material of his shirt grew damp and warm where her breath soughed through it.

He tried to think of something comforting to say, anything to push past the strange way his guts were suddenly twisted. "You're stuck in this piece of shi...crap fake fallout shelter, and for the moment stuck with me. Dunno if that's any improvement."

Her muffled laughter reached his ears a moment later, as shock finally began to fade and he was trying his damndest to figure out just what the fuck to do with his hands. It sounded strained, pitched a little higher than usual, but it was an improvement over the near-breakdown of moments ago and so he wisely ignored that. "Beats being dead, I suppose," she said finally.

Giving up, he let his arms come to rest around her and did his best not to notice how fucking fantastic she smelled. "Can't argue with that."

Minutes ticked past in silence, broken only by the fading sounds of mutants milling around outside their little hideout. Boss' (no, Vivian's) tension slowly melted away, and for half a second he almost wondered if she'd passed out propped up against him. Maybe that knock to the head had been harder than he'd thought. He jiggled her slightly, questioningly, and was rewarded with a tiny sound of protest and her hands clutching at him tighter.

Fucking hell, he was shit. Utter and unrepentant shit. A literal, man-sized, MacCready-shaped, walking talking pile of shit...because all he could think about right now was how well she fit up against him and how good it felt to hold someone again. To have someone need him again, even for something as fleeting as this, which was beyond ten kinds of fucked up. That goddamned wedding ring of hers was gaudy enough to blind a man, and even if she hadn't worn it he knew there was only one way most of the people who depended on him ended up.

She sure as hell deserved better than that.

"We're all clear, I think," he said, and reached up to smack the release button before she could even respond, tumbling away from her and out the door. Realizing, through the panic that coiled hot and tight in his chest, that this time he was the one who needed to get the fuck out of there.

He pretended not to notice the hollow look in her eyes when he turned back around, and in another moment it didn't matter. She'd produced a stimpak and a Radaway from somewhere, jammed them into her thigh and moved to take point once more. Smoothed back on that fake bullshit face as she pushed past him, the one he recognized from all the verbal cartwheels she turned around most clueless fucks. The one that said she'd die before letting you figure out what she was really thinking.

Wordlessly he straightened his sagging rifle, fell into step behind her, and did his best to ignore her lingering warmth and scent as it slowly faded.

All in all, it was a piss-poor attempt...but it still went better than trying to ignore the unwelcome realization of just how goddamn much it stung to have that face turned on him.