Author's note: My apologies if this gives anyone cavities.
"This place isn't safe," Charon announced upon inspecting the abandoned home.
"Charon, there's nothing in here except those Radroaches, and they're in cages. If I kill them, will that convince you?" she teased.
He didn't get teasing. He grunted in the affirmative and she nailed the bugs to the floor. Squish. She left their meat. Her stomach rumbled, but luckily the firefight outside had felled two Brahmin (four, if you counted each head). She'd pulled out a knife and butchered their carcasses, cutting out steaks of meat for lunch. The shack was a quaint enough place to eat, and she set up mines outside the door so they couldn't be surprised by any unwelcome guests, namely Talon Company mercs or raiders.
She set her packs and weapons down, rolling her shoulders back and popping her neck. Hours of walking with what felt like a ton of weight took its toll in back problems and a chronic achiness in her spine and feet. Her high heels didn't help, either. She kicked them off and pinched the blisters on her ankles. Her body was a world of hurt. Sometimes it was tempting to order Charon to give her a neckrub. Only she didn't want to order him to do anything. That really would make her a monster, as bad as Azrukhal.
"Charon, would you mind setting the table? I want to freshen up," she sighed, carefully phrasing it so it couldn't be construed as an order.
"If that is what you want."
"Yeah, but you don't have to do it," she added.
"You wish me to?"
She bit her lip and headed to the bathroom without an answer. The homes built before the war all tended to have similar layouts. Two floors, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and living room. There was so much room. Her house in the vault had been about the size of one of the bedrooms. How had these people lived with so much room?
The bathroom wasn't in horrible shape. No running water, obviously, so she stopped up the sink and filled it partway with purified water. She set her bonnet, the gorgeous hat wound with a black bow, down on the rim of the tub. Her sunset orange hair was matted with gore and the dust that swirled through the wasteland. Not to mention tangled. She stubbornly raked her fingers through it. What she wouldn't give for a shower and some conditioner.
Charon had bandaged up her last critical injury: a Super Mutant's nailboard ripping her abdomen. She checked under the bandage. It was seeping, but didn't look infected. The Stimpak he'd injected into her veins probably had something to do with that. She hadn't even asked him to do anything when she got hurt. He stepped in and helped, because otherwise she was careless and forgot about it.
Looting distracted her from more important things, like keeping her guts from falling out.
She leaned over the sink and stuck her face over the water. Her lips were cracked. She stuck her tongue in the water and lapped it up, catlike. Yummy. She splashed it over her face, rinsing away the dirt and violence of the days she'd been traveling. And her make-up. Dooof. She'd caked it on before leaving her Megaton house.
At least she was clean. She cupped the last of the water in her hands and wet her hair. Back in the kitchen, Charon had set the table with two chipped red plates, a pitcher of pure water, and a handful of random utensils. Two steaks were cooking on the stove. It smelled amazing. She raised a hand to her mouth to hide the fact that she was drooling.
He could shoot a man dead before she could even draw her weapon. He had an uncanny sense of knowing where the enemy and danger was (she relied on obvious trails of blood and gore bags). He was a badass. AND he could cook.
"Thanks, Charon," she said enthusiastically.
He turned to her, grumbling.
"You're clean," he replied.
"It's a smoothskin thing, I guess," she shrugged. She fiddled with her Pip-Boy, turning the radio up. She hummed along to the music.
The steaks finished up, and she speared one with her (clean!) knife, plopping it onto a plate. She took out a box of mashed potatoes and gave half to Charon. He thanked her and they ate like civilized wanderers.
"How are you?" she asked.
He grunted noncommittally and kept eating. She found herself watching the process with fascination. His skin was a mess of scabs, dead skin, and exposed, dry muscle, but his teeth were perfect. When they walked through civilized places, people complained about the smell, a mix between curdled brahmin milk and decomposing flesh. She stopped noticing a while ago that he stank. She couldn't have smelled too pretty, most of the time.
Mostly, she smelled gunpowder and the metallic blood that coated them after a gruesome fight.
Charon was just interesting to look at. His muscles were perfect from several lifetimes of fighting, and he had a good head of bright red hair considering that he'd stopped growing it a long time ago. He glanced up from his plate of meat and potatoes.
"What?"
She blushed and blurted out the first excuse of a sentence that came to mind. That's what it was, an excuse. "Uh, should I turn the radio off?"
Three Dog was announcing that The Wasteland Survival Guide was being translated into different languages. She'd heard this news bulletin before.
"If you want to."
"I'm asking what you want," she said, narrowing her eyes.
"Go ahead."
She muted it and tried not to stare at him. They finished up dinner in silence, and it was all she could do not to fall asleep at the table. Eating did that to her. Charon didn't sleep much. He maintained their weapons in the odd hours she'd sneak huddled up in strange beds, saying that he wasn't tired. She'd seen ghouls sleep. He was just sneaky about it. Determined to put off the inevitable crash for as long as possible, she uncapped a Nuka Cola and chugged the caffeinated sweetness. She coughed and the bubbles fizzed in her nose.
Charon had his back turned, doing the dishes. Quickly, she pulled a scrap of salvaged magazine from her pocket. She'd found it in a dumpster outside a radroach-infested grocery store and found it irresistable. For one thing, it was from a teen magazine, and she was, technically, still a teenager.
For another, it had to do with kissing. Truth was nineteen and had killed dozens, maybe hundreds of people and creatures, accidentally taken drugs, traipsed across the coast, freed slaves and assassinated horrid villains. She'd never kissed anyone, and while she'd never felt like she was missing out or even thought about it much, Charon was changing things. She was considering kissing him, and this article gave tips.
For example, that chewing bubble gum should not be done immediately before, because swapping gum is only cute in the movies. Whatever movies were. She glanced over her shoulder at Charon behind her, obliviously cleaning up even though she hadn't ordered him to. His shoulders were tensed up, his muscles practically rippling, and oh my was he tall. She blushed furiously and went back to reading, absorbed in the bolded type.
"Mistress, what are you doing?" Charon said much too close, and she squeaked, scrunching the edges of the paper in her hands. He leaned down to read over her shoulder.
"Um, I, uh-" She folded it up as soon as she recovered from the shock and pushed out of her seat to face him. "I can explain."
"You do not have to explain anything," he said somewhat sarcastically. "Smoothskins have their rituals. Is this about that radio announcer?"
She blinked in confusion. "Three Dog? No! No, no, Charon, you've got it all backwards." She rubbed at her eyes and smacked her cheeks. This conversation had to happen eventually, and if he rejected her, she could get over it and move on. "I'm nineteen."
"I do know that," he said. "What about it?"
"According to everybody who's anybody, certain things should have happened by now," she quibbled nervously. "Certain things involving another person where I'm not shooting them with railroad spikes. Or hitting them with a nail board. Or siccing a Yao Guai on them."
"You weren't preoccupied with this at first," he grumbled.
"No," she agreed. "When I bought your contract, it was the last thing on my mind."
"What changed that?"
"You did. I've never kissed anyone, and I want..." She hesitated. Finishing the sentence could make it an order, and that would make it pointless. "If you want to, Charon, then you could kiss me."
He stared at her, and the look on his face was either of confusion or anger. "You are my employer. I am bound to do as you ask. But why insult me?"
"Insult you? What do you mean?"
"I know that no smoothskin would want a ghoul," he growled. "Why should you be any different?"
"Because I am. Obviously I'm different, Charon. How many teenage girls do what I do every day? Yes, I'm everything the radio says I am-" Not bragging if it was the truth! "-but I'm also a girl who happens to like a man."
He shook his head. "No. You're mistaken. You're beautiful, and I'm a ghoul."
Her heart began to beat very fast then. She thought for sure she'd misheard, but he didn't look away, and his glower made her feel faint. "I like that you're a ghoul," she said hurriedly. "Did you just say I'm beautiful?"
"Of course you are," he said. He touched her cheek, not hesitating. She smiled uncertainly. "This is a mistake. The new word for my kind is "zombies," correct?"
Truth nodded. "So what? Do you want to kiss me? I want you to," she repeated, in case he hadn't gotten that.
He wrapped his arms around her and enfolded her, and the kiss made her head spin. Her back pressed against the table, and her hands tangled up in his hair. His patchy skin was soft and rough all at once on her face, and her lips matched his movements clumsily until she pulled away, grinning.
"Yes, I want to," he answered gruffly.