The sound of a door shutting woke Gibson up. As she forced herself to come around, a strong headache greeted her, making her task of glancing around her surroundings all the more difficult and disconcerting. She couldn't recognize the room, and for a second that felt like an eternity, she thought she'd been abducted.

Adrenaline kicked in, helping her to engage her brain fully. Her eyes zeroed in on her armor, sitting on a pile on the floor in a corner of the room next to her backpack.

She felt the involuntary impulse to run towards it to get to her gun, but then she said to herself, "wait a second. If I've been kidnapped, they would have taken all my gear away already."

Seeing no signs of her snarky sniper in the vicinity, she wondered, "but where's MacCready?"

Her attention shifted to the fact that she'd been sleeping on a bed. "Jesus, whose bed is this? Oh my god! What did I do? Worse! Who did I do?"

The sound of footsteps drew her attention to the stairs, and she recognized MacCready approaching with a pot of coffee and two white mugs.

"How's the sleepyhead?"

Gibson took a hand to her chest and let out a sigh of relief. "MacCready, thank god! I thought I'd been kidnapped. Where the hell are we?"

He set the pot and mugs on a nearby old bedroom dresser. As he filled the mugs he asked her, "what?" he let out a short bubbly giggle. "You really don't remember?"

With a slightly aghast expression on her face, she simply shook her head at him in response, but the pain caused her to take both of her hands up to her temples as she lamented, "no shaking. Nooo shaking. Shaking: baaad."

With a mug in his hand, he took something out of his pocket and offered it to her, "I got these from that chem-head Salomon, it's for the pain and this," he gave her the mug, "is Vadim's hangover special brew."

She looked at it suspiciously. "What's in it?" she sniffed it, trying to identify the content. "And please! Don't tell me it's Vadim's moonshine..."

He laughed again as he picked up his mug and leaned against the wall. "No. It's a very strong coffee with a few drops of liquefied jet." He shrugged as he drank. "At least that's what he told me."

"You still haven't said where we are..."

He looked at her quizzically. "You seriously don't remember?"

Gibson shook her head in response while taking the pain killers chased by the coffee.

MacCready did a rotating gesture with a lifted finger as he said, "you bought this place."

She almost snorted her coffee out of her nose. "I did what?!"

He laughed, "yup... Not cheap either, and you weren't listening to my objections, like, at all."

Closing her eyes, she asked, almost scared of the answer, "what else did I do?"

He walked up closer to her and sat at the foot of the bed before saying, "first," he announced, "a few minutes after we boarded the chopper, you collapsed on my lap. The pilot asked me if there was something wrong with you and if we should be taking you to the Prydwen instead..."

Gibson's eyes widened, and he acknowledged her reaction with an amused, "Yeah," before continuing, "so, I lied and told him that you'd had an early morning and were a bit tired."

MacCready's mind traveled back to that moment. The account he'd given her was the redacted version. What he didn't share was how he'd observed her sleeping on his lap. How he'd brushed the hairs off her face. And how, despite his hate of flying, he'd found himself wishing that flight would last forever.

The intimate gesture had not been lost on the chopper's pilot. He'd given MacCready a knowing grin as he strapped himself in. "So! This hot little number belong to you?"

The question made MacCready uncomfortable and more than a little defensive. "No! She's just tired. And would you keep your eyes on flying this thing. I've seen how competent you guys are. You really are on top of stuff... aren't you? Your machines are dropping like bloatflies all over the freaking place! We want a lift to Diamond City, not a ticket to the afterlife. Thanks very much!"

Gibson's voice brought MacCready back to the present time. "Oh my god, that sounds embarrassing."

"Embarrassing?" he asked her, for a second fearing he said out-loud some of the parts he'd rather not disclose. He quickly back tracked in his mind the last words he'd said to her. "You think, that's embarrassing?! Wait till you hear the rest."

"Oh. Please. Don't. Just tell me: we got here, I bought this place, blacked out on this bed. The end."

He let out a mischievous giggle. "You wish!"

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" she asked, giving him a fake death-stare.

"Of course I am! How often do I have information about you that you don't know!"

"Go on then..." she said resigned.

He picked up the story where he'd left it. "Then! And to my surprise, you managed to come around quickly as soon as we landed. You left a nice puddle of drool on my pants, by the way..."

"Shut up!" she protested. She then narrowed her eyes and looked at him skeptically. Kneeling on the bed, she moved closer to him. "Yeah, yeah, sure. Where?"

He indicated using his finger. "Right here."

She sat on her heels and cocked her head as she noticed how high on his thigh he was pointing, encircling the stain with a finger. Unintentionally, he was giving her the perfect opportunity to ogle at a very interesting area of his anatomy. The thought, 'fantastic view' crossed Gibson's mind, along with the temptation to ask, 'there? Are you sure it wasn't just a tidbit higher?'

But on closer inspection, and after noticing the appalling state of his pants, she opted to ask him the plain truth, "and how am I supposed to tell the difference between the stain you claim I caused and all the other hundreds that thing has?"

Satisfied with her assessment, she returned to her spot at the head of the bed before triumphantly stating, "you got nothing on me, MacCready!"

He offered her a cocky smirk. "I wish I could say the same and hey! That may or may not be true, but I'm not so sure the guard you were hitting on last night was left with the same impression."

She stared at him with eyes as wide as dinner plates. Happy with the response he got out of her, he added, "but we're getting waaay ahead of ourselves."

She demanded, "tell me now!" He ignored her...

"We cruised the market, which for the most part involved: me, following you around, making sure you didn't fall on your face, and also generally apologizing on your behalf to people you were being rude to or way too friendly with..."

"Oh, you're enjoying this a bit too much, aren't you? I'm so gonna get you for this," she mumbled under her breath.

"No, you won't," without skipping a beat, he continued his narration, "you made the rounds, bought some supplies... how that junk you insist on collecting counts as supplies, I'll never know. We stopped at the noodle bar where you had a very long and incomprehensible conversation with the serving robot. It never seemed to bother you that all it was saying to you was the one and only word it knows over and over and over. With something in your stomach, I thought my troubles were about to be over, but nope! Next stop was the Dugout Inn..."

"You didn't let me in, right?"

"You sneaked behind me when I laid my head on the counter for, I donno, a few seconds? I had to track you down there and by the time I arrived, it was too late. Vadim was already setting you up with his moonshine. And well..."

"Well, what?" she pressed him, noticing a subtle change in his tone.

"I don't think there's a bar in this part of the Wasteland I haven't been to. So, Vadim and I... we know each other, right? When he saw me and he realized I was with you he hooked me up with his hooch too."

Gibson looked at him disapprovingly.

"Oh, come on! Give me a break, will ya! Did you ever try to say no to that guy? You know what he's like. And don't you give me that look. Even though I've been drinking since I was six, I haven't touched the stuff since, well... since we met. And in any case, you're the one who started it! You're the one who brought the whiskey to the Red Rocket, or you forgot that too?"

In fairness, she kind of did. She felt some color creeping up her cheeks and with an embarrassed smile forming on her lips, she told him, "you got me by the short ones there."

It was at that point that she experienced a flashback from the previous night. In her mind's eye, they were indeed at the Dugout Inn. She'd been swapping road stories with a charming local named Hawthorne, when a song on the radio had started to play. For some reason, and even though she'd heard the song before, the melody had captured her attention and drawn her focus to the lyrics...

You got style and you know how to please
And a smile that makes me weak in the knees
If you're a guy who's gentle and tough
You might be the man, who's man enough

There had been something in the words that made her remember that one time, when she'd overheard Hancock's comment about what a hell of a gun MacCready was to have at one's back, and then him answering Hancock with a somewhat suggestive: I aim to please. Maybe it'd been the effect of Vadim's killer moonshine, but at that moment it'd all made sense to her.

Not feeling particularly self conscious, she'd interrupted the conversation with Hawthorne and nonchalantly asked MacCready, who'd been sitting next to her on the couch, "you do know this song is about you." It'd been more of a statement than a question.

He'd frowned in response. "What song?" He'd strained his hearing to make out the music and after recognizing it, he'd asked in an amused manner, "this song? What do you mean?"

"Don't play coy with me, Mr. 'I aim to please' - this song is from that woman from that place where I found you... what's it called?"

Sipping his drink, he'd answered her, "The Third Rail."

"Right! And whatsherface...?"

"Magnolia."

"That's the one," she'd pointed at him. "So, you know what I'm talking about! And now I'm wondering," she'd grabbed her chin, narrowing her eyes, "if you two have a history..."

He'd interjected with a blunt and rather stern, "no, we don't."

Unconvinced, Gibson had raised an eyebrow and mischievously asked him, "yeah, and why are you blushing then?"

She'd expected MacCready to wiggle himself out of the sticky spot with the sarcastic humor that always came to his rescue, but instead she'd observed him shifting on his seat and eventually telling her, "because, because... of the way you're looking at me."

Leaning in his direction, she'd rested an elbow on her knee and her chin on her closed fist. With a drunkenly Cheshire cat smile on her face and her eyes barely open, she'd asked him, "and what way is that?"

MacCready had shaken his head, mostly at the state of the picture in front of him, and seemed like he'd been about to answer her when her elbow had slipped, making her lose her balance. He'd caught her just in time to prevent her from hitting her head on the coffee table.

After helping her to straighten herself up, he'd let out a short laugh. "You know what? Never mind."

Present time MacCready's voice yanked Gibson away from her flashback and back to reality...

"Hey! We're talking here! Come back down to Earth, spaceman."

"Sorry, I'm just starting to remember... bits of last night."

"That's a shame," he pouted. "I wanted to be the one to tell you about the part with you skinny dipping in the reservoir."

She gave him a shocked look.

He let out that playful signature giggle of his that always hit her in the right spot. "I'm kidding!" he assured her.

"Thank fuck for that!" she said, relieved. "I still don't recount anything about buying this place though."

"We were at Dugout, you were chatting with that Hawthorne guy..."

Hiding her face behind the coffee mug, she mumbled, "yeah, I remember that part."

MacCready continued, "right? And that woman... the mayor's secretary? She mentioned they had a place for sale in the City and you seemed very enthusiastic at the idea. After we left the Inn, you headed for her office and that's when you bumped into the security guard I mentioned earlier."

She shut her eyes tightly, bracing herself for whatever it was that he was going to say next.

"At first, I was relieved thinking he might act as a distraction and stop you from blowing a small fortune in a house that you don't need, but it took a weird turn. To be fair to you, he started that one by telling you," he mocked the guard's voice, "well, hello there beautiful!"

Gibson's heart skipped a beat. 'If only he would tell me that. If only!'

And that was another redacted version of the previous night events. Now both were experiencing a flashback of the same episode, but each one slightly different from each other's...

MacCready's memory of the event was, that after seeing the guard and Gibson getting a bit too friendly, he'd pulled her gently but firmly away from the guard saying, "come on, boss. You had one too many tonight." Then he'd heard her saying to the guard, "and that's all the action I'll be getting tonight, I'm afraid."

What he didn't know, but Gibson and the guard did, is that as she'd said that, she'd pointed at MacCready behind his back, rolling her eyes at the guard. The guard understood the unspoken message by saying, "Oh! I see." After an amused laugh, he'd added a sympathetic, "tough luck, huh?"

"You're telling me!" Gibson had answered him, causing the guard to laugh even harder.

Back in the present, after their brief drifting off, MacCready continued...

"Anyway, you seemed to like what he said, judging by the kiss you planted on his, well... helmet."

She laughed. "So hoping that's not a euphemism for something else!"

"No!" was his semi-horrified response. "Why would I imply something like... and why would you..." He then closed his eyes, feeling his body heat going from normal to furnace temperature.

"And by god woman! You're incorrigible! Even worse than me and that's saying something. Are you sure you're not still drunk?"

She laughed even harder. "You're soooo easy to get all rattled. It's almost cute."

He looked at her sideways and with a smirk he told her, "aah! If that's how you wanna play it... I'll have to stop worrying so much about having your back and start watching mine, huh?"

"Oh, snap out of it you big prude," she bit back.

"Excuse me?" MacCready protested.

"And besides," she finished her coffee and then added with a sly smile and wink, "I've told you I'll get you. Now we're even."

He couldn't even lie to himself and say that at some level and in a weird way he wasn't enjoying getting his buttons pressed by her. And worse than that, he couldn't dismiss her teasing as simple 'drunk talk' like he had a day or two eralier.

'What in the world has gotten into her?' he wondered to himself, but out loud he said, "remind me not to mess with you when you're sober ...or drunk for that matter!"

Shaking her head, she got off the bed and headed for her armor, which was resting on the floor.

"Aaah, MacCready, if you only knew that messing is all you should be doing..." She collected her armor and returned to the bed. "And hey! That Vadim special brew really does work."

He interjected, "nah, Missy! Don't try to change the subject." As he observed her putting her armor on, he probed her, "what was that all about? What did you mean by that, the 'messing' part?"

She ignored him. "Do you think if I talk to that woman, we can get our money back? We hardly used this place. Hell, I'm a lawyer, there has to be some statute against selling houses to inebriated clients..."

He pointed at her. "There! You're doing it again."

An amused smile involuntarily formed on Gibson's lips. "Oh boy, if you gotta ask..." Snapping the last clamp in place, she added, "you know? Sometimes I do wonder how you managed to have a kid, which brings me to my next question..."

She got up, walked up to him and planted a hand firmly on his shoulder before asking him, "you're ready to find us a cure?"

MacCready blinked at her, perplexed for just a brief moment. "Damn right I am. Let's move!"