Dance

"Come on! Dance with me you grump!"

He scoffed, but a grin followed soon after as she balled up her fists and wiggled to the music that blasted like a bomb from downstairs. While the whores fraternized with their protector, Dukov, she was opt to not care as the moans cut through the music. Her poor try at dancing was enjoyable to watch but he would not join her. The very idea of himself imitating her wiggling hips and silly steps would have made the most lonesome drifter chuckle. He was not, in any sense of the word, a prime dance partner nor would he attempt it.

"No one can see you but me," she smiled, twirling half-drunken-like and giggling, "and really, what have you got to lose?!"

"It's more entertaining watching you."

"Grump," and then she was off shaking her hips and shoulders in tight circle like the worlds worst dancer, mouthing the words to 'Sunning' with not shred of shame. If anyone could make him want to dance, just the slightest, it'd be her, but there wasn't enough alcohol to get him up to join her, at least not on the second floor. So he watched as the rum level grew low in his bottle - each sip letting his eyes linger on her longer than they should have.

By the time Three Dog started hooting and hollering, the bottle in his hand was dry and she had a dim sheen of sweat on her neck and forehead. One of those slow songs started by The Ink Spots and she started to sway with her eyes half closed; a content smile on her lips. A fire had started where the alcohol left a flame as her movement brought attention to the curve of her stomach and hip.

"Today wasn't so bad, huh?"

He nodded sluggishly. His eyes were trained on her hand as it went to swipe cooling sweat from her neck, but as with every heated look he let fall on her, she was oblivious. Just a young woman; naive with him around to wade out the scum that would have no doubt bothered her had she ever been alone.

"We've even got a bed to crash on. What more could we need?"

For once he almost said what he wanted - the words were right on the tip of his tongue, even his lips were parted, but thankfully he swallow them and grunted in agreeance. There was and never would be a time to say as he truly thought, even if she'd ordered it of him that first five minutes she held his contract. They had a good thing going, and he planned on keeping those good times rolling until she didn't want his company anymore. These past months with her had been better than the past forty years, maybe even longer - that is, if you could remember from that long ago. Repetition over the years had a way of slipping away, leaving holes in his memory. Sometimes decades at a time.

"Guess the food sorta sucks, but," she gave a huff of laughter, "can't have everything."

"At least you're learning," he muttered, grappling around his side for another half-full bottle of whiskey. She aimed a sly smile at him before kicking her feet in the air to the slow music - a complete opposite to the delicate melody. She really was terrible, but while on another that anarchy would bite at his nerves, it only made her more endearing.

"Always quick with a witty retort," she sing-songed, hands behind her back and feet now shuffling.

He wasn't sure how she was so...energetic, even after the long hike they'd taken from the DC outskirts to the middle of the damn ruins in one day. Mutant hordes aside, she'd been on those legs all day and still she danced on them as though she were...bored; pent-up. Even with his ghoulish stamina, she was impressive against him.

"Sure you don't wanna dance with me, might make you forget about the the dingbats downstairs."

Two fresh swigs into the whiskey and suddenly, the idea didn't sound so foolish. She was eyeing him around her shoulder, marching in a wide circle and grinning with white teeth and pink lips. One more deep chug and he stood on his feet, feeling his own weight suddenly bear down on him. His knees felt rubbery and a deep burn in his chest made him feel like panting, but for some reason...he shuffled forward to her makeshift dance floor; head on his shoulders and legs feeling quite useless. Her steady gaze made him itch for the reclusion of a cigarette. The pack a day was a habit he'd started to avoid looking back at her during those long moments where she saw no problem fixing him with long, silent gazes.

As soon as he was within arm's width of her, she grappled his hands in her own and tugged him - all 300 pounds - into her. The friction of her chest against his abdomen made a rash of heat flood under his leather. God, she was going to kill him someday and maybe not by her fallout either, at least not the bullet variety.

"Oops," she giggled, fucking giggled, while pulling his hands into a strange position - one pushed around at her back and left there just on the curve right above her rear. He wondered why it'd taken this long for him to regret standing up in the first place. This was a terrible idea.

"So...we used to have dances in the Vault, everyone would get paired up randomly and slow dance to Dean Martin...it was the uh, only record we had. Well that and Perry Como but no one liked that one."

As she spoke his eyes shifted around her, on their locked fingers - her bare smooth ones and his patched ones that poked through his fingerless leather gloves - and finally, without ease, he looked down at her to see her smiling up at him, a soft tint over her cheeks. Blushing, if he remembered right. She was blushing.

"We pretty much just did circles," and as Ella Fitzgerald started singing 'Into Each Life...' she tugged him with her, pulling him along on fickle feet. It was hard to watch each of his steps with her body between them - it happened more than once that his eyes drifted to her...and the open gash in the collar of her shirt.

By the end of the song he didn't need to look down, and instead he managed a slight smile as she hummed off-key and laughed, but not at him. She seemed to...enjoy this. It wasn't so hard to see why she enjoyed doing this, he supposed.

"You're a lot better than the guys in the Vault..." she near-whispered, against his chest.

"It's easier than I thought," he grumbled, unwilling to let it show how much he, too, enjoyed her compliment and this - this closeness...it almost felt intimate.

"Hey Charon," she asked lowly.

He mumbled in acknowledgment, watching his feet again to avoid those intense eyes of hers.

"I'm sorry I didn't defend you earlier, you know when Dukov said-"

"Don't worry," he snapped, then pushed his lips into a thin line - realizing how callus he'd sounded.

"Yea but," she paused as if expecting him to cut her off again, he didn't, too busy regretting his earlier words. There was always the fact that he had grown increasingly enraptured by the way her shirt slid under his hand at her back. He could feel the taut skin underneath and...he should have been at least mildly embarrassed of the stirring sensation below his belt.

"It's important that you know I never once thought that way about you...maybe when I first saw Gob I was a little...shocked. But honestly I just thought he looked like one of those monsters from Grognak, and the monsters were sorta' my favorite." As she spoke she sounded more and more sheepish, but he'd found over time that she tended to get this way when she was admitting truths. "Plus, you smell a lot better than Dukov," at that she chuckled, looking up at him under admiring eyes. He couldn't help but try at a smile.

"I'll take that to heart, kid," he said, feeling her close the distance and lay her head on his chest, moving slowly and perfectly with his steps as the songs poured out from down below.

"In fact, I'd say you smell...kinda good..." her hand on his shoulder slipped down and eased around his back while her hand in his released to join her other; hugging him lightly. For that moment he couldn't feel his heartbeat, just her arms around him, hands latched snuggling behind him. The top hairs on her head wafted as he breathed a sluggish exhale, looking down at the slightly messy crop of hair.

"Kinda like I figured a cowboy would smell like."