A/N: Some chapters are serious, some are funny. Sorry. This story is so weird.
Boone can't say no anymore.
It's never been like this - a steady woman on a steady night. No sniping. No constant threats of death from Mojave creatures or local gangs. Just waiting. Waiting all day in a penthouse of a casino, waiting all night on streets so brightly lit it seems like day.
Just days of watching NCR troops come in to spend and drink and try to kill themselves in an emotional way before they're ordered to die beneath the hooves of the Legion. Greenhorns order a stripper and never come back, killed by nameless Fiends in a likewise nameless battle.
It's all cannon fodder before the real test - the dam is the only battle that will matter, that will get cadets' names in memorials and statues in honor of the fallen. Everything else dies in the shadows.
It's never been like this for Boone. Not since Carla. He'd tried peace once with her, and that had turned out great. Just great. So great, in fact, that she was now dead and he was now a million miles from where he began.
Major Elizabeth is a woman. A soldier. She's seen things and knows things, and when she walks into the Vault hotel room they usually rent, he can't say no.
Because he's a man. Because he's sick of being alone.
Because the person who made him sick of being alone is afraid of him.
Arcade shoots him looks when he comes home in the wee hours of the morning. Boone growls a 'fuck off, fruitcake', and the scientist turns back to his papers with a refined sniff. Cass spends more time in Freeside than Boone does in the Strip, organizing caravans with Mick and Ralph. ED-E is comfortable as it is - a robot, unfeeling. Sometimes Boone envies it.
Boone is the first one to see her come back.
Thunderous rain. A rain that wipes the streets of Vegas clean of strippers advertising and drunk NCRs staggering and gamblers bemoaning their losses. Gray sky, gray earth, and silver water in the air.
Boone smokes a cigarette under the awning of the Lucky 38. It's his seventh today. Doing nothing drove a soldier to one of two things - smoking, or going insane. Boone preferred the former. He smokes and spits and when that damned cowboy robot asks him if he's okay he draws a finger over his throat and the robot sighs and goes back to silent guard duty.
Rex tears up the wet steps, robot parts glistening. He barks and wags his tail at Boone, whose blood goes cold. If that dog was here, then -
"Hey NCR! You look as broody as ever." Veronica's cheery voice resounds. She shakes the water from her combat helmet and detaches it, hair mussed. "Damn, wish the storm season would of waited a little longer. Guess it didn't get the memo I don't appreciate lakes in my bra."
"Dearie, be sure to dry off when we get inside." Lily calls out, straw hat and everything below it thoroughly soaked.
"What about you, Lil?" Veronica looks to the nightkin.
"Oh, don't worry about me. Leo loves the water." Lily looks down at Boone. "Why hello there, Joshiekins. I hope you weren't waiting long for us."
"No." Boone deadpans.
"That's good! Let's go inside, dearie." Lily takes Veronica's arm (which is not unlike a mammoth grabbing a mouse with it's trunk) and leads her inside.
Rex sits at Boone's feet, head cocked as if waiting. He whines happily when the last figure walks up the steps. Her armor is different - black combat armor ripped in places, but sturdy. The combat helmet hadn't done anything to protect her face from the rain. Slick skin, a bruised cheekbone, and gold eyes with slit pupils.
He lets out the breath he'd been holding.
"Hey."
"Greetings." She murmurs. She takes the combat helmet off, hair damp. Her ears spring up. There's a quiet as he watches her and she looks anywhere but at him.
"Hello, Victor."
"Good afternoon, lil' lady!" The robot crows. "Mr. House is waitin' for ya upstairs!"
"Thank you." She smiles, turning to go inside. He's never been so glad to see those ears again, that tail. Even if she won't look at him, it's alright to just see her.
It's enough.
Arcade fusses over her bruises. Cass sloppily tries to make something on the stove involving a radscorpion poison gland and whiskey.
"Are you so jealous of my good looks you have to try to kill me?" Arcade grumbles, spitting the food - Brahmin shit, really - back onto his plate.
"Shut up, Pocket Protector, and be grateful." Cass sneers.
"Oh yes. So grateful to lose a kidney."
RM giggles. Boone picks the edible parts out of the disturbing parts. Lily sneaks her food to the floor for Rex to eat. "It's such a lovely meal, dearie."
Veronica holds her empty plate out, cheeks stuffed. "Mo' pshease."
The table goes quiet as they stare at her incredulously. The Brotherhood member's eyes go wide.
"'Wut?"
Arcade holds up his mug of wine. "To the grossest taste buds in the world."
Glasses raise. "…grossest taste buds in the world."
"I'll be gone for a few days. Just me." RM says to Arcade. The older man raises a fine gold eyebrow.
"Really? And where would you be going all by yourself?"
She smiles. "That is a secret."
"You'll be alright? You have enough stimpacks?"
"I won't be fighting."
And then she's gone for a week. No clue as to where she's headed, or what she planned to do once there.
Arcade is a light sleeper. During the nights he hears faint ringing coming from the vents, like the vibrations of some high-pitched noise. The noise gets louder as the days wear on, and he can faintly make out words, 'please' being the most prominent.
With a little math, he figures the noise has to be coming from the basement of the Lucky 38. He knows the basement - a door at the bottom of the stairs in the lobby, guarded by two unsleeping Securitrons. There are two things Arcade won't stand for - torture, and extended torture. He throws the covers off and sifts around in the equipment lockers - finding a decent set of armor and a laser rifle. He wouldn't need either if all went well.
He gets down to the casino level and rolls the pulse grenade down the stairs. It gives him thirty seconds of stunned Securitron silence in which he can open their faceplates and hack their motherboards. It wouldn't last long, maybe four or five minutes, because the robots were immensely sophisticated and refreshed their connections to House's databases often, which overrode any hacks. House would know someone had tampered with this robots, but by then Arcade would be in and out of the basement.
Past the door, the single hall is empty and twists. The cries become louder, the voice familiar.
The room opens, empty and small and so dim he can barely see. A plexiglass cell holds back a single person.
"Hello?" Arcade tries. This isn't torture - calming music of some kind wafts from unseen speakers, and the smell of lavender hangs in the air. The dimness is calming, too. He stops walking forward as two huge yellow eyes loom from the darkness behind the glass. He can't see the face, or the body, but those slit eyes belong to one person.
"RM…is that you?" Arcade gulps.
No words. The yellow eyes simply grow closer, glowing with an unholy light.
"Arcade." Her voice croaks. "Good, sweet Arcade. Won't you get me out of here?"
"Why the hell are you in there in the first place? Did House do this to you?"
"Oh, Arcade. Always so concerned about me. You really care, don't you."
"Is there a terminal I can use?" He looks around, but the darkness swallows everything. Everything except those eyes.
"It hurts, Arcade."
"What hurts? Did he torture you or something? I'll get you out, don't -"
Panting. She starts panting. It's loud and hot and leaves clouds on the plexiglass.
"Arcade….it hurts so much. It's so empty. I'm so empty - you'll help me, right?"
White teeth flash in a smile - the incisors sharp. Her tongue lolls out, and he briefly sees white skin of fingers that dip low, lower, into the hem of her pants.
"Arcade….please."
Her pleading is pitiful, dark, needy.
"RM, w-why are you -"
A hand claps over his mouth from behind. He starts, nearly drawing his laser rifle, but the intruder's other hand is on that, too. Arcade recognizes the calloused fingers and smell of gun grease.
"Don't talk." Boone murmurs. "It eggs her on."
"Boone!" RM's voice pitches up in surprise. "You've come back. I knew you could not stay away. I missed you. Ooh, I missed you very, very much. I kept thinking about you."
Boone lets Arcade's mouth go. Beneath the classical music, Arcade can hear a slick, rhythmic sound. The breath on the glass clouds larger, the pants ragged. The yellow eyes grow hooded. If Arcade had any inclination for women, the sounds alone would get to him.
"A-Ah…Boone…please, please, please -"
Boone grabs Arcade's arm and leads him through the hall, RM's voice trailing after them.
"Come back, Boone! Please! I -"
It devolves to a long, shuddering moan. Arcade feels Boone's hand tighten on his arm, like he wants to snap something in two.
He slams the door open and throws Arcade into the casino. The Securitrons are back online, and one of them has House's face on it.
"Arcade Gannon. I would appreciate it if you would not pry into such affairs again. RM has requested this incarceration, and I have given her my word she would remain alone."
"What the hell is going on here?" Arcade starts, rubbing his sore arm. "What was wrong with her?"
"I believe Boone knows. He tried a…much less elegant method to get in a few days ago. Goodnight, gentlemen. Leave RM alone, and refrain from breaking my robots, if you please. It will only make me angry."
The glowering cartoon face replaces House's.
"Violent mating season." Boone grunts. "Veronica told me. I heard something in the vents, went to see what it was. Saw that…thing…in the basement."
"She's….in heat?"
"Needs to ride it out. Lasts a week. Don't bug her again."
Arcade watches him go, gait stiff.
When Arcade gets back to the suite, he reaches for the nearest bottle of wine and cranks the radio to drown out the pleading coming from the vents.
RM comes out a week later, her usual bright, cheery self. Arcade can't shake the image of her pressed against the glass. Boone doesn't look at her. She doesn't look at him, or when she does, her face reddens with an emotion Arcade knows all too well - shame. Her calm, collected voice now is nothing like the vicious, dark cries of the wolf in heat.
He had been afraid.
He is still afraid.
He tries not to show it.
Arcade isn't sure how RM's managed to convince them to come to this place. He's fairly certain it involved witchcraft, copious amounts of bribing, and promises of never being forced to eat Cass' food again. No one would come to this zombie-infested place otherwise. Well, Lily would, but she was psychotic. Boone would too, but he was also a serial killer.
So, besides serial killers and psychotic nightkin, no one in their right mind would come here. And Arcade prided himself on very much being in his right mind.
REPCONN's facility has long been abandoned - a derelict station centering on all things space. Arcade never had much interest in space. The Enclave had, of course, and he'd grown up hearing about 'acquiring alien technology' and 'contacting other species'. Nothing they did amounted to anything more than locating maybe one or two crashed UFOs in the Capital Wasteland, and those had been picked clean by someone they called the 'Lone Wanderer'.
Nevertheless, the equipment inside the facility is interesting to Arcade - hundreds of machines he never knew about, all in one place. The ghouls squat in piles of rotting skin and old books. They split up at the door and clear the building out like pros - it wasn't hard with the quality weapons RM stocked in the suite. The voice on the intercom demands they stop, and they do, and they meet the strangest ghoul group in the world - all bent on getting into space. RM agrees to help the leader, a glowing ghoul with a name that made Arcade laugh for a full minute. Jason Bright. It was the little things that tickled Arcade's fancy.
Without him they'd be lost, he decides.
He sighs and pushes them aside and works with Chris on fine-tuning the rockets for launch while RM, Lily, and Boone head down to the basement to clear out a particularly troublesome nightkin infestation. For reasons unbeknownst to Arcade, RM had Lily carry around nearly fifty REPCONN collectable rockets at all times. He wondered if she had some strange ESP regarding where and when she would require certain children's toys.
They squeeze into the viewing platform. Lily has to duck, Boone has to lean on the window. The dome opens and Arcade watches his handiwork as the rockets flare to life in a blossom of neon fire and take off into the night. RM's eyes light up in wonder.
"Oh look, dearies - that's such a large shooting star!" Lily crows.
Arcade chuckles. Out of the corner of his eyes he sees RM shift, body bumping into Boone's briefly. Her face lights up like a bonfire - Boone sets his jaw.
"Should bring Major Elizabeth here sometime, Boone. Women love romantic star-gazing crap like this." Arcade clears his throat. The words seem to douse RM's blush with ice water. Boone says nothing, staring out at the fading nuclear trail of plasma in the sky.
RM is quiet on the trek back home. She walks with Arcade, Lily taking point and Boone taking rear.
"Does he….does he like her?" Her voice is timid. Arcade knows instantly who she's talking about - Boone and the Major.
"Sure. Went out to see her pretty much every night when you were gone."
"Is she nice?"
"Yeah. Real composed and knows a lot."
"That's good. Knowing a lot is good." RM nods, smile small. Arcade swallows hard, staring at her incisors. She's wrong.
Knowing a lot is horrible.