Hey all. This is my first time writing a Fallout fic. I know that the Boone/F Courier pairing is all the rage right now, and maybe this isn't the most original idea ever, but I got the bug real bad to write something with these two.

Just as a note, there is a bit of stream-of-consciousness going on in this part. I'm trying it out and mixing it in and around straight narration.

Please review if you like! I admit to being as in love with feedback as everyone else, and it helps give me that extra push to write the next part.

-SL

He woke up, finally, as they settled down in Freeside, first night there.

Which was not to say that he hadn't been walking around, scrapping about the Mojave desert, shooting any man or beast that threatened them for the weeks between now and that moment when he had completed the task that he had devoted all of his thoughts for a year, maybe longer. All with her help of course. Wasn't sure if he was happy for that, but his mind had stayed mercifully numb, quiet, since then.

Perhaps it was being out near familiar places, or the proximity to the Strip, or perhaps she was finally getting to him for some reason – maybe all of the above, really. That would make the most sense. Regardless, that part of him that thought about anything besides stark survival had enough napping and woke up disoriented – after all, it had last been with him somewhere in Novac – to the sound of the squeaky, well-used and likely abused springs on a queen-sized bed with faded red blankets that had sex stains dating back to before the bombs fell.

He looked towards the sound – this is how he knew that he was awake and he nearly said 'Fuck' aloud for it – he responded to her presence there with him and that was that. Sidelong glance, turn of the head slightly and the sight of her as she unlaced one dust-grayed boot paying him no mind.

His heart thudded hard against his ribs, smells familiar and new assaulted his senses.

He was awake, alive.

And, god damn it all, it hurt to be alive.

Years of keeping it all bottled up was the only reason he could think that he'd been able to calmly stow his arms and gear, tuck his shades into his hat neatly on a nightstand and excuse himself to 'get cleaned up' and get safely to the sanctuary of the bathroom without completely imploding. He wasn't sure if he were to melt into a puddle of human-emotion goo or go into an utter fugue of destructive rage on the room if he had failed making it those five minutes, but he found a small corner of relief that he had spared himself the humiliation of losing it in front of the girl.

Girl… woman… whatever…

The door closed behind him too loudly. He twisted the shower tap on to full blast then allowed his body to collapse to the floor and buried his face in his hands. Blinking away tears and taking short, heaving, harried breaths he allowed his re-emerged emotions a tiny glimpse of daylight before he held his breath a few times and focused on the dingy blue and white wall tiles in front of him, willing them back down, at least to the point that the near-fever level of anxiety and pain dulled to that familiar old deep ache. A few more ragged ins and outs, a squeeze to the eyes with the backs of his hands to deny that there had been anything more than irritation from the fine irradiated dust of the wastes, and he was back up. Best take that shower, who knows how long this dump's hot water will hold out for.

Boots thumped to the floor, dirty shirt, dust-soaked fatigues (they used to be green once), and the singular feeling of scalding hot water shot to skin was all he knew for the next five seconds. Oh fucking thank you, the silence in his brain was the closest thing to heaven he could imagine, and he stood there perfectly still with nothing but the sensation of the hot rivulets cutting paths down his naked body and the din of falling water and gurgling drain.

Ok, buddy. Take a step back; how did you get here again? Good question…

His mind was back up and running; the hot water 'reboot' had done wonders to reorganize his mental priorities – baby steps of reason and fact were one of his well rehearsed mechanisms for beating back emotions that threatened to consume him, and rote actions edged out the want to wander back into memories that he wished he didn't possess. Fact check, go; routine bathing, commence.

Novac. Started at Novac. Move forward, dodge unpleasant memories, though satisfaction from taking that goddamned bitch's head off… no… Just an accomplishment. Goal of two (my god has it been two years?) years, reached, and then what did I have? Guess I didn't get to think about it because then she came back again (shit she'll give me crap if I use all the hot water I just know it.)

He paused in his thoughts. Her. It's all her fault nosey busybody pushy… no no no, not pushy. Persuasive, calculating, but not pushy.

Could've stayed there, could've gone on my own, kill those Roman wannabes to the last one or my last breath, but what was it? She did that … thing where it just made sense to do what she suggested. Hasn't been bad… been over the goddamned wasteland for six weeks; she kept us moving from here to there following side-tracks and back on the trail of that guy she's looking for… what's his name?

"Benny. You know anything about a guy named Benny? Nice suit, clean, kind of a douchebag?"

He heard her ask again in his head, from that first night he met her, when she was too stupid or too brazen to know better than to sneak up on a sniper at watch – he's nearly blown her head clean off. Funny thing was she seemed to know he wouldn't, calmly moving the long barrel of his rifle away from her face with an upheld finger. That's when it started. That's the first time she became a red light in his mind, something that was different enough. That's why he asked for her help.

She'd been quick about it, and only two nights later he was jolted out of his nightly watch-trance by the flash of his own red beret, and the sound of her voice, sweet as plum pudding saying, "Golly, Jeannie May, I'm sure I dropped my room key over here. You're a doll for helping me look for it."

He'd almost laughed, but he was busy aiming. Jeannie May's head was in many, many pieces before she could blather any reply.

She then walked away from the body like it wasn't any concern of hers and up the stairs to the top of the dinosaur, and in the course of five minutes revealed what she'd found to convict the batty old motel manger of selling his wife off to Legion slavers, explained that she had some business up at the old REPCON place up the hill, and that he ought to tag along with her for the fun of it. Well, at least that's how she made it sound. His head was still spinning from it when he went down to get his crap from his room, and spun right around again when he found her dragging Jeannie May's body down towards the bridge.

"I could have done that, you know," he gruffed when he caught up with her, grabbing the old woman's right arm while the girl had the left and heaved the dead (literally) weight up over the cracked cement railing and heaved the body down into the ravine. It landed with a satisfying thud.

"Eh, I felt like it. Thought it would be a nice 'thank-you' for that smart red beret you gave me," she nodded upward with a smirk at the extra First Recon beret he'd given her (it was honestly all he had to give her for her efforts, and was happily surprised when she seemed thrilled to have the old thing.) He recalled that she hadn't taken the thing off except to sleep and bathe since he gave it to her, snorting with amusement at the realization.

He also noticed that she kept it tugged over a pink, freshly-healed scar along her hairline. Girls hate scars, or at least Carla did—

Damnit.

Anyway…

He couldn't decide if he should laugh or puke when he saw that she had also carefully collected the bits and pieces of skull and brain from his shot of vengeance into an old paper bag and was now emptying them out down to where the body had fallen.

"Well that's … thorough," was all he could manage to say, and she nodded back with a smirk, and produced a Legion machete from her rucksack, wiped its edge on the blood-soaked bag bottom and tossed it down as well. "Cunning, too. Though the Legion isn't that sloppy about leaving stuff behind."

"They don't know that," she replied with a thumb towards the sleeping town of Novac. "C'mon, we gotta go turn some dirt over the blood, then we can go."

He stood there and watched her saunter back towards the mound in front of the dino, utterly confounded. He hadn't the fortitude to make heads or tails of what had just happened, so he pushed it all down and let it sink into the directionless mire that was his heart and mind. Leaving him only with the instincts of a soldier, which bade him follow command and follow the gun, he set himself to marching in step to the closest thing he had to a C. O.

And lead him she did. Six weeks out in the Mojave, running this way and that way, shooting monstrosities, men, mammals, all loosely tied around her tracking down this Benny fellow. Who he was, exactly, he never asked, didn't really care as the tasks of the road kept his mind occupied with staying alive and helping her help other people along the way – some, because they were bribing her to do their laundry with what they knew about Benny, others completely out of this strange desire she had to just… be kind to people.

At first it had annoyed him, and even now it still did a little, especially when she tried to help some ungrateful scummy wastelanders that he knew would never be grateful… but they just made her deeds shine all the more brightly. He knew he was coming to trust her as more than just a voice to give order to his shattered world. And he knew if she kept up this way, he would even admire her.

Shit…

Why can't we just run in the Mojave until I die? Why'd we have to stop… I want to run and shoot and feel nothing but the heat of the desert and know nothing but my orders to follow and bury those memories under irradiated dust.

The water shut off with a squeak, and he stood there staring, again, at the tiles in front of him, at nothing.

Feel that heart beating like a hammer.