A/N: Thanks to Miss Cullen - I Wish for pointing out that this chapter and Chapter 8 got messed up when I ported them over. I didn't even notice!

Charon is frozen in place, his eyes locked on Gal's cheek where he's struck her. She's still flat on her back on the floor. Her cheek stings like a bitch, and she has to take short, shallow breaths while her body recovers, which makes her ribs ache. The things that have been knocked off the bookshelf come to a stop; then, to settle the incident, one more book falls from the shelf with a loud slap.

She doesn't usually catch him staring at her (though she can tell he does it, by the way the hairs rise on the back of her neck), so she's unnerved by the way he's doing it now. She slowly climbs to her feet, cradling her sore cheek with her hand, and smiles carefully at him, hoping that will convince him that she is not angry about the accident. Charon doesn't move, except to tilt his head as she stands so he can keep his eyes on her.

"Hey, big guy, you really need to watch where you're swinging -" she starts, taking one step forward. The sentence breaks off as Charon turns on his heel and flees for the back storage room. He nearly runs into a shelf in the process but pushes off with a stumble and ducks around the corner, out of sight. His uncharacteristic clumsiness makes Gal's mouth go dry. Something is very, very wrong. Slowly, she crosses to the storage room and peeks her head around the corner, a little scared of what she might see.

Her ghoul is backed flat up against the shelves, his breath quick. His hands are splayed against the cans of food behind him, scrabbling as if looking for a way out. When Charon locks eyes with her, she sees a rush of terror take him over. His pupils dilate rapidly; his body shivers as if he's cold, knocking boxes of instamash and cans of pork and beans off the shelves to roll around his feet.

"Charon..." she says softly, stepping in to the storage room. As her foot crosses the threshold, Charon's whole body flinches. He tries to take another step backwards, but steps on a can instead. He hits the ground hard, and it's only a split second before he's sitting up and scooting back against the shelves, as far away as he can. The paradox is so strange that it makes Gal blink once, twice. He is the very picture of a scared little boy, trapped in a man's body, and it shakes her to the core because she does not know what's happening.

"Charon, what's wrong?" she asks, daring to take another step into the storage room. When he doesn't answer, she continues moving forward and stops just shy of his still body, unsure of how to handle the situation. Should she comfort him? Talk him down? Why is he reacting this way in the first place? Has his accidental blow to her cheek caused some sort of fearful reaction?

"Physical violence invalidates the contract." she remembers him saying suddenly, the first time they had discussed his terms. At the time, she'd taken it as a warning not to strike him(not that she ever would have), but now she thinks maybe it goes both ways. Maybe violence on his part nullifies the safety he has from his own employers. His violently fearful response weaves tendrils of dread through her core, and she thinks of all the times that she has asked him about his training, and he has refused to answer.

"Charon, I'm going to touch you." she says in warning. He flinches again.

She moves to the side of him and lowers herself to the floor, so she can scoot up with her back against the shelf next to him. Boxes and cans are gently pushed out of the way so she can settle comfortably, shoulder touching his shoulder, aware of his feelings about physical contact but knowing he needs some type of comfort. Gently, she pulls her legs up so she can wrap her arms around them and settle her head on top. It's almost a mirror image of his pose, but hers is relaxed, comfortable. Even the nudge of her armoured shoulder against his causes a flinch that wracks his whole body.

"Charon, I'm not going to hurt you. It was an accident." she says softly, leaning into him a little bit. "I mean, I wish you hadn't almost destroyed my bookcase but I was thinking bed without supper or something." The joke falls flat and Gal realizes she really sucks at comforting people. She shuts her mouth. Instead, she just lets her shoulder rest against his and looks straight ahead, waiting for him to calm down. They are silent for several long moments.

Then, fraction by fraction, Charon relaxes under her touch and lets his arms slide down around his knees the way hers are. His head stays bowed, and she does not move. Finally, his eyes flick over to her, so quick she almost misses it. His knuckles are white against the dark fabric of his trousers, and his body is still stiff and unyielding, but he's no longer hiding his face. She thinks that's a good sign.

"Tell me why you reacted that way." she demands. He swallows, making his adam's apple bob. It takes him several long moments to speak.

"The physical violence clause in my contract prevents me from intentionally harming my employer, but the scientists who built me were aware that accidents could still happen, so they had to condition me to avoid the unintentional harm of any employer. The conditioning was... harsh."

Gal presses her lips together as he speaks. She tightens her grip around her legs, and she can feel the line of tension in his shoulders.

"What did they do to you?" she asks, afraid of the answer.

"It was... different every time. Sometimes they beat me. Other times they commanded me to do things that violated my moral code. Once, when I accidentally broke someone's arm, they stripped all the skin from my right arm with a scalpel, and let it heal back naturally. I still had skin back then to lose." he stops and swallows.

"It was... not always about conditioning either. Sometimes, it was just about punishment. Entertainment."

Gal physically shudders.

"No wonder you don't like being touched. I wouldn't let anyone come within a mile of me if I'd gone through something like that." she mutters. She feels him shrug, and turns her face up to lock her eyes with his, straining her neck to do so.

"I'd never hit you, Charon. I want to think that you know that and it was just a response, but in case you don't... I would never do those types of things to you."

Charon doesn't reply, sliding his ice-blue eyes from hers and focusing on the mark on her cheek. The bruises she's acquired on their trip to Vault 112 have been numerous, and she likely looks like a human rainbow with all the colours on her face right now. Her ear is still healing from where she'd been grazed by a bullet at the Memorial. Charon takes all this in, and slowly, the line of his shoulders begins to slope. But abruptly, he stands instead, nearly knocking her off balance and into the wall.

She holds back a yelp and watches him retreat to the doorway of the storage area. He doesn't exit, just stops and rests one hand on the doorway. They stay in silence for a moment. Gal realizes eventually that Charon isn't going to speak.

"So, do you want to tell me what's been up with you lately? You've been acting weird since we found my dad." she asks hesitantly. The situation feels a little unbalanced with her curled up on the floor; Charon towers over her even more now.

Charon shakes his head – then sighs and nods.

"I... you have to understand. I have had employers for most of my life. And most of them have not – been like you. To some, I was a weapon, others, a plaything, but at the most I was never more than an object. A few weeks of freedom doesn't balance out a lifetime of killing on command. "

He is now leaning on the doorframe as if it's the only thing holding him up. The slope of his body suddenly looks tired, as if he's letting out a breath she didn't know he'd been holding. She's known that he is a good actor, but she didn't know that the acting had taken such a toll on him.

It takes her a minute to digest that sentence and understand what he's saying.

"You think it won't last." she says. He nods and turns his head to look at her. The expression in his eyes is challenging.

She stumbles up to her feet, feeling like she needs some more height for this conversation. Her scrambling knocks a box of Sugar Bombs to the floor, but she ignores it.

"Charon, you're not a weapon, or a plaything, or a tool to be discarded when you're not useful anymore. I've never given you a reason to think that you were."

He snorts, clearly not believing her.

"Have I?" she asks in challenge.

His eyes narrow, the set of his shoulders becomes more aggressive. The anger that she's seen in spurts for the last week comes back in a flash. He whirls around to look at her. His hands grip the doorframe with white knuckles, and the exposed muscle of his neck practically vibrates with tension as his mouth opens.

"I've known you for two weeks, smoothskin, and you've treated me well, better than I'd hoped for. But I've been alive for two fucking centuries, and you're not the first that's bought my contract with 'good intentions'. Intentions that don't last. Nowadays, life isn't about doing what is right, it's about fucking survival, against all odds. And when it's your life against the 2000 caps you spent for me, you'll snap your fingers and point, and I'll go get pumped full of lead and be done with this shitty, miserable life."

The silence is palpable. Gal gapes, speechless. Even when he has snapped at her before, his voice didn't sound like this. She's pretty sure that it isn't just his time with her talking - it's the whole 200 years that he's been tied to the contract. It hurts, that he still doesn't believe her. Then it morphs into anger, at the face that he's blaming her for the things others have done. She's done everything she can think of to prove she's different, and sometimes it feels like tiptoeing through landmines, but she's done it for him. And he still doesn't trust her. After months of traveling together, doing everything she can think of, she's still sitting on the same platform as Azrukhal.

"You're wrong." she snaps back. "I would never do that to you, or to anyone else. I'm doing as much as I can, Charon, I'm trying to make this shitty world a better place, but I'm just one person. There's only so much I can do."

Her words start off harsh, but they become softer as she goes on, almost desperate. Everywhere she goes in this place, people have unreasonably high expectations of what she can do. Save this person, protect this town. Solve this problem. Get rid of this pest. She's a 20 year old vaultie, not a hero. She can't fix everyone's problems. She can't even fix the one she's got right here.

Charon stalks back over suddenly, looming over her with his hands curled into fists and his mouth twisted in a snarl. She knows subconsciously that he can't hurt her, but the primitive instincts in her tell her to dart for the door and don't look back. The less primitive, colder side of her tells her to assert her dominance and tell him to back the fuck down. She swallows that back too because she will not shut Charon down when he's only just started to show her his real face.

"And what have you done, little girl? Who have you saved in your selfless travels through the wasteland? You paid a measly sum of caps so I could keep you from dying out in the wasteland, not to help me. You saved your father because you wanted him to come running to your side and protect you. You saved your precious vault because you thought you'd be safe there, and when you weren't, you let yourself be chased back out like a stray dog, back to the safety of Megaton." Gal tries to keep up a blank face, but her chest is hurting and her breaths are shaky, because there's some truth to Charon's words. She wants to tell him to shut up, but she won't.

If she makes him stop speaking, she will have to admit he's right.

"And what about the people who can't help you, smoothskin? What about the slaves in Evergreen Mills? Or your friends in the bar? You're not sticking your neck out to save them, I see. Not when it means you could actually get hurt."

That's too far. Gal looks away from the blaze in his eyes; her breath catches in her throat, her eyes hot and watering. She couldn't speak to defend herself even if she wanted to. One hand in his chest to ineffectively push him away, she stumbles past and to the entrance to the storage room.

He's right, of course.

Just before she leaves, Gal stops and looks back at him, trying to glare through the water in her eyes.

"You're not wrong." she says with as much force as she can muster. "But you will be. I promise you, you will be."

Charon sneers at her as she leaves him in the darkened room. She ignores the ache in her chest and the mucus dripping from her nose and digs through her pack for the first aid box, then sticks a handful of cutlery in a stack of glasses to bring it up to her bedroom. Charon goes past as she has her back turned. There's a thud, and then some metal creaking behind her, and when she turns to look, the ghoul is swinging one leg over the railing on the second floor with ease. She guesses guiltily that her order not to touch the stairs is still in place. Charon disappears into his room, slamming the door, and then there is silence.

She pretends she doesn't care about that and brings her makeshift work materials up to her own room, pulling the door shut behind her. The cutlery clatters against the glasses from the tremble in her hands, but she ignores it.. Then she spreads the contents of her armful of supplies across the desk, chems rolling off every which way due to her shaking, and finds what she needs.

And Gal vows as she breaks open vials and measures liquids and powders that Charon will know the next morning that he is wrong about her.

When Gal steps outside the next morning, there's a crowd gathered outside Moriarty's bar. They form a semi circle around the entrance. Some people are muttering lowly to each other, but it's impossible to make out what they're saying. Gal makes her way up to the building and pushes through a few people to the front, where Deputy Weld and the Mister Gutsy from the armoury are holding back the crowd. She can see Gob and Nova inside with Sheriff Simms, but Moriarty is nowhere to be seen.

"What's going on?" she asks Billy Creel, who's standing standing there thoughtfully with his arms crossed.

"Sounds like Moriarty kicked the bucket." he replies. "Simms said it looked like heart failure, but he's questioning Nova and the ghoul anyway. Thinks it might have been foul play."

Gal's heart drops into her stomach and she darts under the arms of Deputy Weld before it can push her back into the crowd. Inside, Simms is facing down Gob and Nova, his lips set in a hard line; Gob is nervously wringing his hands while Nova faces Simms down with her hands on her hips, looking taller than her five feet and change.

"Simms? Is Moriarty really dead?" Gal asks breathlessly. The new voice startles Simms. He turns in surprise to look at her, then sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose.

"Yes. Gob came and got me this morning. He told me he found him dead in his bed. Doc Church is looking at him now." He looks back at Gob, who ducks his head. "Gob, you sure you don't have anything to tell me? Everyone knows you and Moriarty weren't best friends."

Gal puts on a confused face, as if she's wondering why Simms would ask such a thing. "Billy said it was heart failure. So how could...?"

"Heart failure can come out of the right mixture of chems too, Gal. And Gob's got the most to win if Moriarty shows up dead. No offense, Gob, but it's hard to believe that Moriarty turning up dead right after he gives you the beating of your life is pure coincidence."

Gal turns back to Gob and sees that it's true; Gob looks like a real trainwreck. Once of his eyes is swollen shut and a ring of ugly purple bruises encircles his neck; even his posture is pained, though he's trying his best to stand up straight and pretend he's okay. One leg is bent, as if he can't put any weight on it. Gal kicks herself for rushing in without at least seeing Gob and Nova first; otherwise, she would have known to wait. Now Gob has a clear reason to have killed Moriarty and it's all her fault.

Gal opens her mouth to claim responsibility when Nova cuts her off.

"It can't have been Gob. I would know, he was with me all last night after Moriarty beat him." she says sharply. Gob's eyes widen and he looks at Nova in surprise.

Simms scratches his cheek and looks doubtful. "Now, Nova, I know you mean well, but that's not really -"

"That's not what I mean, Simms." she replies. "I was with Gob last night. You can test me if you want. But it wasn't him."

"Nova -" Gob starts hesitantly, reaching his hand out towards Nova.

"No, Gob." she says, quieting his protest. Her eyes go soft and she puts her hand to his cheek, thumbing the swollen, dark skin under his eye tenderly. "It's okay. I don't care if they know."

Simms is looking torn as he glances back and forth between Gob and Nova. Gal knows that Simms is a good man, and he's never condoned the way Moriarty treated Gob or Nova, but he is also a man of justice, and she knows that if he found out Moriarty's death wasn't natural, he would do the right thing. He won't let this go down without a fight. She hadn't expected any of this when she'd put her plan into action last night.

The door of Moriarty's room on the second floor opens, and Doc Church comes down the stair to the gathering, wiping his hands on an old rag. His face is as sour as ever. Doc Church is hot and cold in how he treats the residents of Megaton; he's done Gal good and bad turns in equal amounts, so she doesn't know what he will say about Moriarty's cause of death. Her poison was nearly flawless, but she also knows that if anyone can detect a poison, it's Doc Church. And it would be no skin off his nose to tell the Sheriff, either.

"Relax, Simms," the doctor says, gruffly, "the ghoul's clean. Looks like Moriarty's diet of whiskey and Jet finally caught up with him. I'll get some men to help me bury the body."

The atmosphere in the room calms down considerably after that. She sees the relief in Simms' eyes, though he does his best to hide it. Turning to Gob, he extends his hand and, when Gob clutches it reluctantly, gives it a firm shake.

"No hard feelings, I hope. Just doing my job." he says. Gob nods, with a relieved smile, and Simms slaps him on the shoulder gently. "Well, seeing as Moriarty didn't have any family that I know of, and you've been working there long as I remember, I think it's only fair the bar goes to you. We'll make sure it's noted on all the paperwork." He tips his hat to the stunned ghoul and turns towards the door. The crowd shrinks back as he exits, allowing the door to shut behind him. She can hear him outside talking to the crowd, probably explaining what happened.

The words strike Gob almost physically. Even though it must hurt with the way his lower lip is swollen, he gives Gal and earsplitting grin and turns and grabs Nova around the waist. She shrieks in delight when he twirls her around, then leans in to wrap her arms around his neck when her feet hit the ground again. There's some kissing, and Gal thinks it's time to make her swift exit, but before she can someone grabs her shoulder and pulls her around.

Doc Church's eyes bore into her relentlessly. She tries not to squirm under his accusing gaze.

"Takes some real medical experience to make a heart failure like that happen. The kind that Gob doesn't have, but a doctor's daughter might." he says softly. Gal freezes. She's caught.

She doesn't regret it, though, even if it ends badly for her.

"...I had a debt to pay." she says honestly. She thinks of the look in Charon's eyes as he towered over her, lips curled back in a sneer.

Doc Church looks at her for a moment longer, then huffs softly and lets go of her shoulder.

"Yeah. Me too. Don't let it happen again." he says sourly. Turning on one heel, he stalks towards the door and exits the bar.

Gob and Nova are left staring at Gal, who swallows nervously and pastes on a smile.

"Gal... you...?" Gob asks, arms frozen around Nova's waist.

"Moriarty had a heart attack. End of story." she says firmly. The more it's spoken of, the more likely the wrong person will hear, and then their story will be blown. Gal couldn't stand if that happened to her friends.

Gob shuts his mouth agreeably, but before she can argue his arms are around her shoulders too, squeezing her gently. She returns the hug, smiling at Nova over Gob's shoulder, and receives a saucy wink in return.

A group of men come and take Moriarty's body from his room to bury it outside the town. Gal cracks the safe for Simms so he can look through Moriarty's documents and get the bar signed over. She also helps Nova strip the sheets on her old bed and the ones from Moriarty's and burn them in an old barrel outside. Nova tells Gal with glee that she's retiring; though Gob will officially own the saloon, he wants Nova to help him run it and she agrees excitedly. She even asks Gal quietly to help her dispose of her jet stash. She doesn't it need it anymore, she says, with a look at the bed that had served as her 'workplace'. Together, they also throw out all the liquor Moriarty has pissed in and start giving the whole saloon a deep cleaning, scrubbing years' worth of grime and who knows what else off the floor with buckets of water and abraxo. The work is hard, but satisfying. Gal can't help but smile every time Gob stops and looks over the bar with pride.

Gal is on her knees, scrubbing a particularly sticky patch, when the door eases open. Charon strides in and glances over the bar. His eyes stop on her with a hint of relief. She waves awkwardly, feeling guilty that she didn't tell him this morning where she was going, but she's still a little angry over their fight last night so she doesn't say anything. Nova gives Charon a friendly smile from where she's wiping down the bar; Gob's disappeared into the back to determine how they're going to restock their liquor. Neither knows where the giant bruise on Gal's cheek came from and she plans to keep it that way.

"What's going on?" Charon asks, stopping in the doorway so his boots don't muddy the wet floor.

"Moriarty died last night of heart failure." Gal replies, giving him a significant look. "And since he doesn't have any family, Gob owns the bar now. I'm helping them do some renovation."

Charon gives her a long look that she can't decipher. She glares back at him for a minute, then goes back to scrubbing the floor, feeling a vicious surge of satisfaction. She's ashamed that it took Charon's outburst for her to help her friends, but it feels good to know that she'll never see the bloom of a bruise on Gob's face or Nova's jet-glazed eyes again. Even just knowing that she'll never have to hear Moriarty's stupid Irish accent as he's berating his workers is enough to make her smile a little.

After a moment, Charon strips off his boots and socks carefully and sets them off to the side of the door. His feet resemble the rest of him; one side is stripped of skin, leaving smooth muscle that flexes in interesting ways as he crosses to where Gal is working. He's missing a toe on his right foot. Stopping, he bends over to push his trousers up a little further and then sinks into a graceful crouch.

"Hey smoothskin," he says, picking up a spare scrub brush and tackling another section of floor by the bucket, "Sorry about... what I said last night. I was too hard on you."

Gal shrugs and smiles at him, to let him know he's forgiven.

"No, you were right, and I'm glad you said it. I got so caught up trying not to sink to the level of the people around me that I convinced myself I was doing all I could. And I wasn't, not by a long shot."

Charon quirks his mouth in that small smile that she's still not used to seeing.

"Hell, smoothskin, we might make a real wastelander out of you yet."

"That's not what you were saying when I blew that mutie's head off right before he smashed yours in." she snipes back, letting out a bark of laughter when he 'accidentally' sprays her with water. She soaks his right pant leg with a splash from the bucket and ignores the satisfied look Nova is giving the two of them from behind the bar. Just like that, everything's fixed. It feels like Charon's letting her off too easy; then she remembers what Doc Church and his helpers are doing right now and thinks maybe the trade was fair.

Gob pokes his head in from the storage room and smiles at Charon, crouched on the floor next to Gal. It's a far cry from the wary look he normally gives her companion, which tells her he's still floating on cloud nine about the whole thing. He's got a bucket of paint in his hand and a paintbrush in the other.

"Hey, Gal, do you think Charon could help me out with the sign out front? I want to paint over it, and he's the only one tall enough to reach."

"Ask him, not me." Gal says simply, looking back to her scrubbing. The heavy gaze on her neck makes her ears burn.

"...I can assist you." Charon calls to the other ghoul. Gob joins him at the front door and once Charon has his boots back on they go outside to fix the sign.

There's silence in the bar for a moment, as Gal and Nova both scrub at the gunk all over the bar. Gal's glad the lighting inside is too dim to really see what she's doing. If she knew what she was scrubbing up and getting all over her hands and knees, she'd probably need counseling. Some of it is even chunky, and it's bad enough to just pretend that it's dropped food.

Nova looks infinitely more excited to be covering herself in questionable materials than Gal is. She's always been pretty, but the smile on her face makes her beautiful, even with the dark circles under her eyes. Gal figures that some of that smile comes from being free of Moriarty, and a life of prostitution, but when she sees a dark patch on Nova's neck, she's reminded that some of it may come from...somewhere else.

"So, you and Gob...?" she asks casually, giving the woman a conspiratorial smile.

Nova blushes and nods, but a smile blooms on her face at the same time. Gal's already noticed that her meager belongings have been relocated to Gob's room sometime between her arrival and now.

"Yeah. Me and Gob. You know, I've been thinking about it for a long time." Nova huffs out a sigh, and looks thoughtful for a moment. "Gob's – he's the only guy who's ever treated me like a real person, knowing what I do – did – for a living, you know? And after Moriarty beat the shit out of him last night, I just... I just wanted to make him feel better." she lets out a giggle, sounding all the world like a teenager in love. "I know I said a lot of cruel things about him being squishy and all, but let me tell you... boy, was I wrong."

"Whoa, whoa, that's more than I want to know, thanks!" Gal says with a laugh. Nova rolls her eyes.

"Good. It's about time my sex life wasn't the whole town's business. I can't wait to see the look on Jericho's face when I kick him out of the bar." she says with glee. "So, what about you and Hunky McMuscle, then? Ever thought about seeing how big his... feet... are?" Nova asks curiously after a minute.

Gal turns to throw more Abraxo solution onto the floor to hide her flush. Her mind instantly races back to the noseless man in her dreams, tall and red-headed and built like a tank. "It's not like that. I mean, I've seen him shirtless a time or two, but only because he was bleeding out and about to die."

Nova stops and gives her a look.

"So you're telling me you've NEVER thought about it. Not even once."

Gal ducks her head and just like that, Nova knows. She's unstoppable when it comes to getting information, so Gal wasn't really expecting to win this battle. Then again, she didn't really want to keep it a secret. It's nice to share with someone who wouldn't look at her like she was mentally deranged.

"So, what are you going to do about it, then? I bet it's been a long time since tall, dark, and handsome has played hide the sausage."

Gal's smile slides off her place and she looks back down at the bristle brush in her hands, turning it over and over to give her something to do with her fingers.

"It's just not that easy. He's... under contract to follow my orders. And I wouldn't want to think that he was doing it just because I commanded him to, you know? It wouldn't be right." She goes back to scrubbing the floor.

Nova ponders that for a minute. She imagines that Gob's explained Charon's contract, what he must know of it, to her.

"Makes sense. That would be a rough situation to be in. You're a better woman than I am, though. I'm not sure any moral crisis would keep me off that." she teases. "I'd probably let him bleed to death by accident if it was me trying to patch his wounds with him shirtless."

Gal feels a little shame when she thinks about the looks she's sneaked but pushes forward anyway. "Just so you know... you could do a full load of laundry on those abs."

Nova loses her composure and has to set her rag down. Her shoulders shake with laughter. It's enough to get Gal laughing too, with a little bit of relief mixed in with the happiness.

Both girls go quiet as the door opens again, smirking at each other across the floor as Gob and Charon trudge back in. Charon goes back to helping Gal with the floor. Gob pulls Nova aside to discuss replacing the whiskey and scotch they've thrown out, and they bicker good-naturedly about how much of Moriarty's incredible stash of caps to spend to stock up.

With the four of them working, it takes only a few more minutes to finish. It looks brighter somehow in the room, and a little warmer. She's sure some of it comes from the bar being clean, but she thinks maybe a little comes from the two new owners too, who are laughing and slapping each other on the arm with dishtowels.

"Well, what now?" Gal asks, bellying up to the bar. Nova sits next to her, and her hand slides along the bar unconsciously with a hint of possession.

"Now," she says with satisfaction, "we get sauced. On the house."

They do just that. A little ways into their third beer, Charon goes back to the house to break into Gal's stash of whiskey. Gal knows it's a terrible idea to mix beer and liquor, but she does it anyway, and so does everyone else. Somewhere after their first bottle, Gob grabs Nova around the waist and they dance around the bar to the Fox Boogie while Gal claps in time. She thinks later in the day she ends up dancing on the bar, but she can't remember. There's definitely a lot of laughter, maybe some drinking games, and something Charon says to her makes her lose her shit around the third bottle, but she also loses her shit when she trips and falls on the floor, so he really could have said literally anything.

Eventually, Gob and Nova get really handsey, nearly knocking the radio off the bar, and they stumble upstairs to Gob's room, luckily before any clothes come off. Gal and Charon take that as their signal to leave. Gal nearly pitches herself off the side of the walkway, but Charon snatches her back at the last minute, and she bumps into his side, giggling. Together, they make it to the house without any more near-accidents. Wadsworth greets them at the door, but Gal waves him off and looks at the stairway, somewhat intimidated by the idea of taking all those stairs all the way to their rooms.

A thump behind her distracts her, and she turns to see Charon lying flat on his back on the floor, groaning in pain. She giggles again and tumbles to the floor next to him.

"Good idea. Waaaaaaaaaay better than stairs." she snorts.

"You'll be – oh fuck, that hurts – you'll be sore when you get up." Charon grunts, slinging one arm across his eyes. Gal puts her arms over her head and rolls towards the couch. When she's in reach and able to sit up, she snags two pillows from the couch and throws one at Charon, who despite his inebriation catches it in one hand right out of the air.

"We'll be sore if we fall down the stairs too. Better to be sore down here together." she stops and thinks about that. "Wait, that came out wrong -"

Charon hits her in the face with the pillow to stop her talking. "I know what you meant, kid. Don't sweat it."

With a smile, she wiggles her body up to Charon and throws an arm over his torso. The muscle of his bicep is a far better pillow than the one she's snagged from the couch, so she leaves it lying next to her and breathes in the leather and copper sent of him. There's a distant alarm bell in her head about something she's doing, something that she shouldn't be doing - but it doesn't seem terribly important at the moment.

"Is this okay?" she asks sleepily, hoping he won't say no. She's entirely certain he'll have to push her off if it's not, because she doesn't think she can move. Charon stays quiet for a minute. Then he hesitantly wraps the arm she's laying on around her shoulder.

"Yeah, it's okay." he says quietly. Gal barely hears him, already drifting off. She thinks she feels fingers carding through her hair, but she's too drunk to remember.

-

A/N:

WARNINGS: something like a panic attack, mentions of torture, murder.

Another big thank you to my readers and kudos-ers and commenters!