A Boone Companion

Chapter 2

By Polaris-Polus

They left Mojave Outpost the next morning and Boone was glad. He didn't want to be there anymore.

Breakfast had been sheer torture. As he and the Courier ate a meal of iguana bits and Sugar Bombs at the bar, Major Knight had entered. The Major and the Courier had exchanged a very brief look, then both men pretended they didn't know each other well enough to chat. Boone wondered what all those NCR troops and officers eating their meals at the tables and counters would think if they were to find out their Major and the Courier had spent a fair portion of the night slurping each other's cocks and reaming each other's assholes. At best Knight would find himself transferred to some hell hole like Camp Forlorn Hope and at worst he'd get fragged in his own bed. The Courier could very well find himself in some trooper's rifle sights, shot in the back and the incident written off as an accidental weapons discharge.

The two men passed under the statues and made their way down to the highway of vehicle corpses. Boone was scowling and he hadn't done more than grunt in response to anything the Courier had said to him that morning, but being as he was habitually laconic and definitely not a morning person, the Courier didn't seem to notice his foul mood.

When they passed the freight hauler where the Courier and the Major had had their midnight rendezvous, Boone gritted his teeth and forced himself to say the alphabet backwards in his head to keep his mind from thinking about what had gone on in the rear of that truck. The Courier didn't even glance at it.

They crossed the east side of the collapsed overpass and headed toward Nipton Junction, but once again Eddy's sensors picked up trouble. There were multiple red blips very close to the section of highway 164 leading to the town of Nipton. Given their location on the north side of the road and their number, it was a safe bet to guess they would be giant ants. Usually the ants stuck to the dusty Ivanpah Lakebed, but sometimes foraging parties got too close to the road for comfort.

The men and the 'droid moved forward cautiously until they were within scoping distance. Their suppositions had been correct. It was a group of six giant ants; four workers, about three and a half feet in length, and two much larger and more dangerous soldier ants.

"Well, shit," the Courier sighed. "That's the direction we need to go so it looks like we're going to have target practice. Hope you feel like BBQ'd ant meat for lunch."

Ants were quick and could cover ground with amazing speed. It would be crucial to kill them before they could swarm forward, but six was a lot of creepy-crawlers to pop off in a hurry. The Courier's small caliber 5.56 would have a hard time penetrating the thick chitin armor of the two soldier ants, but his Ratslayer had an 8-round extended mag and a slick bolt-action which made it faster to fire than Boone's .308. They agreed that he would target the four smaller workers while Boone concentrated on the two hulking soldiers. ED-E would stand by to catch any that made a charge at them and to make sure more weren't sneaking up from their flanks.

Boone and the Courier crouched down and assumed kneeling shooting positions for greater accuracy. The sniper waited for the other man to start firing first, then he laid into the soldiers. It went pretty well, though it took two shots to kill the second soldier ant and he heard the Courier's varmint rifle spit six times instead of four.

"Had a hell of a time getting that third one," the Courier said, lowering his rifle. "My first shot nicked its antenna and it went into a frenzy. You did great though. I saw that nice thorax shot you made."

He reached over and clapped Boone on the shoulder in friendly fashion, like he'd done dozens of times before, but as soon as his hand contacted the sniper, Boone jerked back and bolted to his feet.
"Don't fucking touch me!"
The Courier blinked in surprise and stood up too.
"Why are you mad at me?"

The anger Boone had been holding in all morning came spewing out like a gush of lava from a volcano.
"I don't want your filthy fucking faggot hands on me!"
For a split second the other man gaped at him, before sudden comprehension dawned in his silvery eyes.
"You followed me last night."
"Yeah," Boone snarled, "and I saw you and Major Cocksucker all over each other. Fucking disgusting!"

"Why are you so upset about it?" the Courier asked solemnly. "We weren't hurting anyone."
"That's the kind of shit the Legion does! Men fucking men!"
"Legionaries do a lot of things. They eat, they sleep, and they take the occasional crap, but I don't see you getting upset when I do any of those things."
"You're a fucking faggot!"

Sadness turned the Courier's eyes to the color of rainclouds.
"When I first met you in Novac, I could see how angry and hurt you were. I helped you find the person who betrayed you and Carla, and I helped you take revenge. When it was over, I could tell you didn't have anything left there, so I asked you to come with me. We've shared the hardships of the Wastelands and we've fought side-by-side. I've had your back and you've had mine. From that very first day when we left Novac, I've offered you nothing but respect and friendship, and now you talk to me like this?"

"You should have told me you're a queer!"

"There never seemed to be a very good time to do that, Boone, and besides, I knew you wouldn't like it if you found out so I kept it to myself. I never tried to grab your ass or fondle your cock." Then the man's raincloud eyes went stormy. "Or is that what you're really upset about, that I didn't try to seduce you? That it was Knight I had sex with in the back of that truck instead of you?"

Rage ignited in Boone. He punched the Courier in the face. The man staggered back as ED-E spun around and brought his blaster to bear on the sniper. The little robot played the snippet of music it always trumpeted before going into battle, but the Courier hurriedly called it off.

"No, ED! No! Don't attack him! Stand down!"

Boone had his .308 up and ready to fire at the 'droid, but the Courier moved in front of the sniper's gun. There was blood running down his chin from a bad split in his lip, but he didn't wipe at it. Instead he spoke very calmly but very sadly.

"I'm so sorry, Boone. I never meant for you to get hurt by this and I'm sorry you hate me for what I am. I didn't ask to be this way."
"Fuck you!"
"Yeah, well, if that's the way you want it, fuck you too. I think it's time we parted company. Eddy and I are going east, back to Nipton. You can pick any other direction. I wish you well. Be safe and take care of yourself."
He turned to his 'droid.
"Come on, ED, let's go."

Without a backward glance, the Courier and his little robot began walking up the cleared highway leading to the Legion-razed town of Nipton.

Anger turned Boone's mind into a blank red curtain. He stormed west, back the way they'd just come. For several long moments he was completely lost to fury as he headed toward the crumbled overpass, but then a jolt of bright paranoia parted his rage-curtain.

What if the Courier had sent him off in another direction in order to put a bit of space between them so he could draw a bead on him with that wicked little 5.56 of his! A quick pull of the trigger and he'd be lying face down on the crumbly asphalt with a hole in the back of his head! He'd seen him kill Powder Gangers like that, so why not him?

Boone instantly scrambled for the only available cover; a rusted section of guard rail still clinging to the side of the road. With his heart racing, he threw himself over it and crouched behind one of the supports.

Carefully keeping as much of his head and body hidden as possible, he put his .308 up onto the rusty rail and looked through the scope with his trigger finger ready to return fire, but instead of seeing the Courier with Ratslayer raised, he saw that the man was still walking up 164 toward Nipton with ED-E floating loyally behind. Then he saw that the Courier was holding his left arm up and the middle finger of that hand was extended. The man knew he was scoping him and was flipping him off!

For a moment the anger returned and Boone actually considered pulling the trigger. It was an easy shot. He could put a bullet into the Courier's skull, and unlike that New Vegas roller in the checkered coat, he'd make sure the man was dead...

But then the anger ebbed back as he remembered the genuine hurt and sadness in the Courier's eyes as he'd turned away.

'...From that very first day when we left Novac, I've offered you nothing but respect and friendship...'

Friendship.

Friends.

They had been friends. Boone didn't know when it had happened, or why, and he sure as hell hadn't wanted it to happen, but somewhere along the line of those weeks of wandering, he and the Courier had become friends. It didn't make any sense to the sniper. The man was his complete opposite in terms of personality.

He was distant and reserved, genuinely disliking having to deal with people, but the Courier seemed to enjoy talking to anyone and everyone about anything and everything. He'd seen the man chat happily with the spunky little cook in Sloan over the proper way to make a deathclaw-egg omelet and he'd watched him discuss the fine points of religious space travel with a glowing ghoul. He'd charmed old lady Gibson into giving him a steep discount on some rocket thrust control modules and convinced the NCR officer in charge of HELIOS One to let him into the most vital areas of the power plant.

The fact that the Courier loved to talk should have irritated Boone, but somehow it didn't. Personally, he took a bit of pride in the fact that if a regular person would say something in five words, he could do it in three, but the Courier never really expected him to add much to a conversation, he'd just carry most of the load himself. Instead of driving him crazy, the talking actually seemed to fill the emptiness of the desert wastes around them. It was nice to listen to the man talk at night when they were sitting around a campfire. His words helped keep the darkness back as much as the flickering flames did. Sometimes they would play Caravan to pass the time and Boone especially enjoyed it when the Courier would read out loud to him from books they found along the way, like the stories of Grognak the Barbarian, or the amusing recollections of the Junktown Jerky Vendor.

And the man's sense of humor. He'd liked that best of all. The Courier always found something funny in even the gravest situation. Like the time that squad of four Legion assassins had attacked them near a mud wallow south of the NCRCF. The wallow had been home to a herd of wild bighorners and the animals hadn't reacted well to all the gunfire. In the mayhem, the massive bighorners had charged the Legion assassins. After all the shooting was over, the bighorners and the Legionaries were dead. Boone and the Courier began looting the assassins' bodies, taking weapons, food, armor, and ammo, but they couldn't find the last guy. Then the Courier had started laughing. Indeed, the man was laughing so hard he actually had to lean against a rock to keep from falling over.

"I found him!" he'd finally managed to say, pointing at a foot protruding from beneath the front legs of the largest bighorner bull.

It was clear from the positioning of the bodies that the Legion assassin's head was located somewhere in the region of the Bighorner's hind end.

"Now that's the way all Legionaires should go to eternity!" the Courier had said. "With their heads up bighorner asses!"

And Boone had actually laughed. For the first time in years he'd laughed and it had felt good.

But now there he was with his rifle aimed at the Courier's back and his finger on the trigger. With Carla dead and his bridges with Manny Vargas hopelessly burned, the Courier had been his only friend in the whole world and now he was seriously thinking about killing him.

Boone pulled the .308 off the rail and slumped back against the rusty support. He'd lost everything. Part of him wanted to blame the Courier, after all this was his fault. He was the faggot! But he knew deep inside his aching heart that the problem wasn't with the strange, other-worldly man, it was with him. He was the one who was fucked up.

His eyes felt like they were burning and his vision blurred. He slammed his head back against the guard rail several times until the hurt drove the tears away and he was left hollowed out and hopeless.

He was the one who was fucked up.

There was only one thing to do that would solve that problem.

Boone placed the butt of his .308 on the ground between his feet and positioned the open end of the barrel under his chin. His hand slid down the duct-taped stock to the trigger. It felt awkward for it to be backward. It was easier to put his thumb through the loop of the trigger guard than his finger. He closed his eyes, exhaled and took a breath, holding it just like he did when making any other shot, but there was virtually no chance he'd miss with this one. Then he tried to pull the trigger.

But he couldn't.

It was as if Private Arm and Corporal Hand had turned rebellious and were refusing orders from Colonel Brain. He grunted and mentally tried to convince his troops that it wasn't going to hurt and that it would all be over quickly, but it wasn't the fear of pain or the fear of ending that was holding them and him back. It was something else...That same sort of deep-gut feeling he'd gotten when the Courier had asked him to travel with him.

Groaning in dismay, Boone pulled his hand away from the trigger and let his still-intact head flop back against the guard rail. It made a metallic gonk. He might have been done with life, but it was not done with him. The trouble was he didn't know what to do or where to go. He sure as hell couldn't keep sitting there against that rusty rail for very much longer. Eventually the remaining giant ants crawling the lakebed would sense him and come looking for a taste of people-meat. He couldn't go back to live in Novac. No, that place was too full of pain. Re-upping with the 1st Recon was not an option, not after what happened at Bittersprings. There was no fucking way he was going to belly-crawl back to the Courier like a whipped dog with his tail between his legs. That would be too humiliating.

So what the fuck was he supposed to do? Bumble his way around the Mojave like a drifter, slowly going mad the way No-Bark Noonan had when too many rad-scorp stings penetrated his head?

But what if he could go back to the Courier...just not ALL the way back?

What if he sort of followed at a distance, you know, just to keep an eye on things, make sure the man didn't run into too much trouble? He could do that!

Boone got up and moved east on the 164, trailing the Courier at a careful distance. He knew ED-E's sensors would pick him up, but he also knew he would register on the Courier's Pip-Boy as a yellow, non-threatening blip, at least now that he was no longer planning on killing him.

When he'd first learned of the robot's sensor system, he had asked the Courier how the 'droid knew when something or someone was a danger and when it wasn't. The man had given a long explanation about risk calculation algorithms and biometric scans detecting physiological hormone levels and a bunch of other sciency stuff that the sniper had pretended to understand, but in truth he still had no idea how it worked. What he did know was that the Courier tended to ignore yellow blips that were behind him, generally assuming they were crows and ravens coming in to pick the carcasses he left in his wake with almost unbelievable regularity.

The sniper made sure to keep as much cover between himself and the Courier as possible, using the abandoned billboards along the road, the ruins of Nipton Pit Stop, and clumps of rocks, just in case the man decided to scope his six. It wasn't hard to do this and move fast, his 1st Recon training serving him very well. The real difficulty lay in making sure nothing was sneaking up on his own ass. It was amazing how quickly he'd gotten used to relying on ED-E's sensors and without them he felt more than half blind. There were plenty of bad things roaming the Wastelands and the area around Nipton was crawling with eight-legged, six-legged and four-legged dangers, but it was the two-legged ones that worried him most. Not only were there Jackal Gangs in the vicinity, but by destroying Nipton, the Legion had made it clear this area was within their strike zone.

Sunset was rapidly approaching by the time the Courier was walking through the fluttering Legion conquest banners marking the entry to the razed town. Boone had been hanging about 500 yards back, but he hurried to close the gap. The numerous buildings would effectively hide him from the other man and he wanted to be close just in case there was trouble waiting.

In many ways Nipton was more dangerous than the open road. Not only were there deadly giant bark scorpions hanging around the trailer park, and the possibility of Jackal raiders and Legion patrols, but enough time had gone by since the town's destruction that word might have reached the ears of any number of prospectors.

In the old days, the word 'prospector' used to mean someone who searched for deposits of gold and silver in the ground, but now it meant people who scavenged through abandoned and ruined buildings and vaults looking for anything they could sell for a few caps. Mostly that meant scrap metal and electronics, empty glass bottles, and maybe some tools, but every prospector dreamed of finding some amazing piece of long-lost tech, like a powerful one-of-a-kind plasma weapon, or a cache of thousands of bottle caps which would make them rich. The idea of looting an entire town like Nipton would draw prospectors from the far reaches of the Mojave and some of those prospectors might not be too keen on sharing their claim. They'd think nothing of attacking a lone walker like the Courier and if there was more than one working together, they could be a genuine threat to the man.

Moving from covered position to covered position, the sniper was finally able to get a clear line of sight on the Courier. The man was walking up the middle of the street with his .357, Lucky, drawn. The revolver would be better suited for the sort of close encounters a town environment was likely to bring than the varmint rifle. It also had the advantage of better stopping power.

Just as he was about to reach the place where Nipton's main east-west street crossed the central north-south one, the Courier suddenly stopped and ducked back behind the corner of the town's trading post. He peeked carefully around the building. Obviously, Eddy had alerted him to something. The man holstered Lucky and unslung Ratslayer. Whatever it was he had his eye on, it was clearly far enough away to warrant a sniper-style attack.

Boone tensed, ready to rush in and join the fight if necessary, but the Courier took two quick shots, one right after the other, then stood up and reslung the rifle over his shoulder. He began walking up the north-south street toward the town hall and his easy movements told Boone that whatever the threat had been, it was now neutralized.

He hurried forward and peeked around the trading post from the same position the Courier had just used. He could now see what had happened. On the steps of the Nipton town hall were two dead mongrel dogs; Legion war hounds either intentionally or accidentally left behind by those skirt-wearing faggot-fucks. The Courier went to his kills and skillfully skinned them before cutting off the meat from their rear haunches. The hides would be worth a few caps in trade and dog meat wasn't half bad when prepared right.

By the time he finished with the dogs, the sun was below the backside of the mountains and the twilight was dimming everything with a haze of purple. The Courier took his hides and meat and went into one of the abandoned houses. Boone figured he was probably going to spend the night there, as it was dangerous to travel after dark without having an extra gun-hand with him.

Soon lights came on inside the house. The Legion had cut power to the town, but the Courier had probably found some fission battery lanterns or good, old-fashioned oil lamps. Unlike most places in the Wastelands, many of the houses in Nipton still had glass in their windows, though more often than not the panes were cracked or broken. Boone could easily make out the Courier's movement through those imperfect windows.

The sniper changed position, hiding in the ruins of a destroyed building across from the house so he could see the dwelling's front door. After a while the smell of cooking meat began wafting out from the broken windows. Boone's mouth watered. That was another nice thing being friends with the Courier had brought; the man was an excellent cook. The aroma of the meat carried with it hints of jalapenos, banana yucca, and honey mesquite pods.

Boone hadn't had much appetite at breakfast because he was so upset and the lunch of BBQ'd ant meat hadn't happened, so his belly was very empty. He rummaged in his pack and discovered that his food stocks were limited to a raw potato, a box of irradiated gumdrops, and a single bottle of Sunset Sarsaparilla. He hated the taste of sarsaparilla, the last thing he needed was to pack a few more rads into his body, and gnawing a raw potato was no substitute for a juicy medium-rare dog steak with all the fixings.

As if he needed one more reason to regret having followed the Courier to his midnight fuck-session...

If he had just minded his own business he'd be in that house right now, sitting down to a good supper while they listened to Mr. New Vegas on the Courier's Pip-Boy radio and maybe played some cards, but the man had ruined everything by being a damned queer!

Boone angrily bit a hunk off his potato and masticated it like a giant mole rat chewing a baseball. Why the hell would any man want to fuck another guy when there were women in the world? Women were soft in all the right places and their breasts were magical things- big-n-bouncy or small and perky, it didn't matter, boobs were great. And pussies! Well, they were the best of all! Nothing beat pounding into a receptive vagina with a double handful of tits for dessert!

The sniper tried to imagine having sex with a man. Men were tough and lean; all muscles and no softness. No boobs, just firm pecs with little knobby nipples. Where was the fun in that? And penises! Dicks were ugly meat sticks! Sure it was nice to have one of his own, but dealing with someone else's? No thanks! Then there was the whole asshole-fucking thing. That was just wrong on so many levels! How could that possibly feel good for either party?

Of course there was always blowjobs. That was one thing where it wouldn't matter if it was a guy or a gal giving it. In fact, a guy might even be a bit better at it because he'd know what felt good to another man.

Boone had a mental image of the Courier dropping to his knees in front of him and wrapping his mouth around his erection as his fingers curled around his balls and squeezed with just the right amount of pressure. He'd grab the sides of the man's head and thrust into his mouth. Women didn't tend to like that, Carla certainly hadn't, but he could skull-fuck the Courier and the man would take it...

Suddenly he blinked and jerked himself out of that thought, almost choking on a chunk of potato. His cock was hard and he felt flushed all over.

Fuck! What was he doing thinking things like that? And getting turned on by them! No-no-no! He was not gonna go down that road!

Throwing the nub of potato away into the gathering darkness, he huddled up in the corner of the ruins and spent a long, uncomfortable night.