"Y'know what we should've done... taken one of their vertibirds." Lee was still worrying about the window of time they had. He'd set a fast pace, and even though the trip back was longer than the way there thanks to the forced detour, only two day's walk had taken them most of the way back to D.C.

Charon had been trying to quell Lee's frantic state of mind by alternating reassurances with threats of breaking his legs, which had been somewhat successful, but they were still walking hard without let up. A ride in a vertibird would have been nice, but it was a bit beyond the realm of possibility. Charon said, "Sure, you know how to fly one?"

That gave Lee a moment of pause. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and muttered, "Eh, yeah, well... shut up."

"We're going as fast as we can. Don't worry so much. Autumn isn't going to crack that thing by himself."

Lee nodded and heaved a sigh; he closed his eyes and appeared to try to calm himself by consulting with his inner being. He slowed his pace, and in a deep voice he intoned, "I am calm. I am at peace."

Charon smiled a little as they continued on, re-routing around a hilly formation of rocks. Getting there on time wasn't what was worrying him; it was more the question of what kind of communications Colonel Autumn had with the rest of the Enclave. He had a vague feeling of unease regarding retaliation from whatever forces were left out here, and some slight apprehension at how many people Autumn would have with him to defend the memorial. As a general rule, scouting Enclave troops weren't hostile to traveling wastelanders, but the two of them were now enemy number one as far as they were concerned. There were no obvious signs of any Enclave forces as they walked, but Charon stayed on guard, regardless. The last thing they needed was another surprise attack.

Looking over, he caught a glimpse of Lee's pale, drawn face and the dark circles under his eyes. He was still mourning his father, and it seemed he was beating himself up about the Enclave ambush and Autumn getting away a second time. He had a strained, haggard look that Charon didn't like, and the ghoul silently lamented how delicate human bodies were. But in another day's worth of traveling they would be back at the Citadel and they could finally scrape together a quick plan with the elder and head paladins, if they would go for it, and take back the memorial. Then they could really have a rest. Probably.

Charon knew Lee didn't want to work with the Brotherhood at all if he could help it, but the sad truth was that they needed them. He could only assume Lee had already come to the same conclusion. But in order to get any kind of commitment, they would probably have to give up the only bargaining chip they had: the purifier. Lee could activate it, Dr. Li and company were there to keep it running, and the Brotherhood was the lesser of two evils when it came to who had enough knowhow to do the maintenance and enough manpower to keep it defended. Great, that's all settled then, Charon mused as he walked. I only hope it turns out that easy.

It would be dark soon; the sun was low on the horizon and covered in a scrim of clouds. A few pale stars could be seen overhead, and the warmth of the day was fading into a thin, chill wind.

"We're stopping there for the night," Charon said, pointing a finger at a good-sized building in the distance. It looked like some kind of fancy brick office complex, or hopefully an apartment building. It was still too far to tell. Lee looked like he wanted to protest and make them walk through the night, but let his mouth snap closed after a brief internal debate. They had time enough to take a rest. And he was bushed. It had been an exhausting past few days, and his legs were sore and feet blistering from the hard walking. Charon continued on after the outburst didn't come, "We're going to have to present our case to the Brotherhood elder to get their help..." (Lee groaned) "...and we both need to eat some actual food and get some actual sleep so we can function tomorrow."

"I've been eating!" came the indignant response.

Charon shot a look at Lee, "I shouldn't have to tell you this, but cereal and snack cakes do not count as food."

After a second of thought, Lee put his hands up in surrender, "Okay! Fine." He smiled and shook his head. "Fine... Guess a bed and some dinner wouldn't be too bad." The building loomed directly in front of them, and seeing it close-up revealed it to be some kind of hotel. "This looks good... Hope it still has beds; last soft thing I slept on was at the Citadel... Feel like a deathclaw walking around." He hunched his shoulders and slumped his back and lumbered forward as they stepped onto the cracked asphalt of the parking lot. Charon rolled his eyes and gave Lee a light push, which sent him stumbling away laughing.

The building was comprised of the front reception area and what looked like at least twenty or so rooms; the rest of the structure had been blasted into unrecognizable rubble. It wasn't a tall hotel; it looked like the layout had been long and only a few floors high rather than the more impressive monolithic tower style. The two stopped in front of the entrance, looking and listening for any signs of life within. Nothing apparent and the only sounds around them were the usual scavenger birds calling to each other far overhead. Lee reached out and tried the copper-colored handle on one of the big double doors. It swung open easily, not even squeaking with rust or scraping against the threshold. The motion of the door pulled a draft of cool, stagnant air out past them. The interior was gloomy, but dim sunset light fell in dusty shafts from uncovered windows and ragged holes in the ceiling, illuminating the threadbare carpet and a chandelier that had to have been tawdry even when it was new. The two stepped forward into the foyer and looked around at the peeling plaster walls and broken wooden furniture.

"Whatcha think?" Lee asked, voice sounding overloud in the still air. Compared to some places they'd had to hole up at for rest, this was palatial. And having a room to sleep in would be a nice change of pace. He was starting to miss his shack in Megaton.

"Looks good enough." Charon shrugged and walked further into the lobby, examining the front desk. "Take a look around and make sure nothing's hiding."

Lee flashed the OK sign at him and split off to a long hallway lined with side rooms connected to the main lobby. He eyed the extensive row of doors. This is going to take forever. He pulled out his gun and rested it on his shoulder just in case, and in a surprisingly decent tenor, sang out, "Come flyyyy with me, let's fly, let's fly away..." The acoustics in here were dreadful, but the words carried well enough throughout the section of hallway. If anything was here, it heard that.

Charon turned around, surprised at the unexpected noise and laughed a little when he realized what it was. Fly indeed, sounds like Lee's still hung up on that vertibird. He drew his shotgun in preparation for the charge of any alerted inhabitants, but the place was still as dully quiet as ever, between verses of the singing anyway. He heard Lee's voice moving along in the corridor behind him, "If you can uuuuse some exotic booze, there's a bar in far Bombaaaaaay..." Charon knocked on the wall separating them, and heard an answering knock further down. The next line was hummed, and Lee's head poked around the corner on the far side of the room. "What's Bombay?"

Satisfied that the place was abandoned, Charon set his gun on his back and went to catch up with Lee who had already kicked down one of the numbered doors. "It's a city in a country called India. Entire other side of the world." They could use the collapsed rooms to build a cooking fire, letting the open air carry away the smoke. He cleared a space and started building, and Lee quickly joined in, piling up kindling and searching through his pack for components of their supper.

"Have you ever been there?"

Charon had to think about that for a moment. "I don't think so. Not post-war, and I don't think I traveled much outside the United States pre-war. Didn't have the time or money." A flick of a lighter and the fire was started; the warmth felt good against the rapidly cooling evening air. They'd have to find a room that hadn't been torn in half for sleeping in, but this was ideal for venting the small, smoky fire they'd built.

"Pre-war..." Lee murmured as he poked the fire around into a better configuration. He'd threaded strips of mole rat meat onto metal skewers and leaned them against the short pyramid of the fire after it died down a little. They never came out evenly cooked, with one end being charred and the other extremely rare, but to hell with carrying around pots and pans. "If you don't mind my asking... how old are you exactly?"

Charon had been gazing into the fire, arms wrapped solidly around his knees, and he now rocked back with his face pointed at the dark sky and broken hotel room ceiling. He grumbled as he thought. "It's now... two-hundred one years past what some people called the Big Sunset. I was older than you are when it happened, but not by much, I don't think. My time as a human is most of what I can't really remember." He caught a look from Lee when he glanced back down. "It's strange. Don't really know how to... hmm. It's as if someone paints a picture in watercolor, then accidentally drops a cup of water on it while it's still wet. Some tiny bits are still there, you can see it was meant to be a painting, but almost all of it is just a big washed-out smear." The term 'watercolor' was lost on Lee, but he got the gist of what it meant. He felt a renewed pang of sadness for the ghoul; losing your past was a scary thought. Charon nodded to himself. "Two-hundred twenty-eight years old sounds about right."

Lee had shared out the skewers of meat and they ate as they talked. He knew ghouls lived a long time, but he was floored again at the sheer amount of time Charon had been alive. That was around four normal human lifetimes, if said human could avoid raiders, rads, monsters, and the all-around fun one, starvation. "So are ghouls immortal or what?"

Charon laughed around a mouthful of mole rat, then paused and actually considered the question seriously. "Well... in the most basic sense of it... I think so. I've never heard of a ghoul dying of old age." He chewed and swallowed, letting the skewer stick dangle from his outstretched fingers. It pendulumed back and forth, catching glints of firelight. "We die from bullets, asphyxiation, poison if it's strong enough, getting stabbed, and I even saw a guy get pushed off a building (he didn't make it)... but, no, dying of natural causes doesn't seem to happen." Charon dropped the skewer into Lee's pack with a soft clink and stretched his arms out. "And now it's time for sleep. Or at least time to find a suitable room."

"'Kay, pack up my stuff, I'll be right back." Lee returned to the hallway and ducked into the bathroom to fill up a few bottles with water for the remaining embers of their fire. The hotel might be ugly, but there was no need to set fire to the thing while they were in it. Lee poured one in and scuffed the ashes with his boot until the remains were just a muddy spot on the bare linoleum floor.

With the fire gone, it was nearly pitch black in the building; moonlight shone through the cracked ceiling, but it only gave a very dim glow to the place. Armed with Lee's flashlight, they walked back to the front part of the hotel and found a good enough room on the second floor. Small, box-like, and bare of all but the necessities, but the bed was unbroken, everything was relatively clean, and the door still pulled nearly flush against the jamb. There was a smaller door near the bed, Charon rightly guessed it had once been a double room with the door leading to the room adjacent to theirs, and the far wall was covered with a curtain. Lee pulled it open and could see the parking lot and the hills stretching away in the distance under the faint light of the moon and stars. Charon pulled up a cushioned chair and sat back in it, letting Lee flop heavily onto the bed and sneeze with the resulting puff of dust.

"Pfah," he squinted and fanned at the air. There was a low night table beside the moth-eaten bed, and he laid his PipBoy on it so the glow from the screen could do what it could to illuminate the room. Lee rolled over onto his side and propped his head up with a hand. His body was tired but his mind was still wide awake. Sleep would be a long ways coming if he tried to just drop off now. "Tell me about your life, Charon."

The ghoul raised an eyebrow, "What, the whole thing?"

"Unless you've got somewhere to be, sure."

Charon frowned. "Shouldn't you be resting, kid?"

"Look, I'm resting!" he gestured at himself, "And we haven't really had time to talk lately anyway. I miss your stories."

Charon's mouth twitched up into a faint smile. He shrugged with resignation and said, "If that is what you wish, very well. Ask, and I'll tell you what I can."

Lee grinned. Score. "Alright, start with something easy. What's some useless piece of trivia about you that doesn't really matter?"

The ghoul rolled his eyes and shifted back in his chair. He drew an old square of cotton cloth from a pocket, and slowly set to work dismantling his shotgun. Lee had seen him clean the parts many times and he watched the process again, relaxed by the quiet routine. Charon paused, "Useless trivia... how's this? I'm ambidextrous but I write left-handed."

"Huh, that's pretty neat. Okay... what's your favorite song on the radio?"

"I kind of hate them all. Three Dog doesn't have much of a selection, and the Ninth Circle had GNR on almost every day. The one I hate the least, I guess, is Let's Go Sunning. She sounds cute."

Lee laughed as he rolled onto his back again. 'Cute' wasn't a word he'd expected to hear from Charon. He looked up at the cracked ceiling for a while, and then turned back to watch Charon's ragged, but deft fingers wiping down and categorizing all the tiny mechanisms and pieces from his gun. The bed was starting to feel more comfortable, and he sank in further.

"Who was the best contract owner you've had? Besides yours truly, of course."

Charon snorted. "There've been plenty of shit heads but a few that were tolerable, yeah. Or even pretty decent human beings, funny as that is to think of." He'd finished with his gun and started re-assembling the scattered bits into a cohesive whole with a series of soft clicks and snaps. "There was a lady named... Helen, I think it was. If you can imagine a grandmotherly slaver that was her."

"Tell me about her," Lee said, dangling an arm off the bed.

"Helen was... late fifties, early sixties. A kind of pudgy older lady with greying hair. She won my contract off a guy named Jack in a game of cards. This was in some shithole town out west near the Great Lakes in a bar called The Vixen. They played a few hands of poker, and the last I saw of Jack he'd dropped his cards on the floor and was staring after us with this dazed look on his face. He'd challenged her because she looked like an easy mark. He got suckered in by Helen's silly blathering and fake air of ditziness and vulnerability. Lots of people did. I knew what she was doing though, as soon as she sat down at Jack's table with her drink and her frilly purse. It was her eyes. They were too sharp and watchful for the façade she was putting up. She was a good one though. Much smarter than she looked, but she was never cruel and didn't scheme against those she called her friends. Always treated me and the others in her employ fairly. Even gave us allowances of what she liked to call 'shopping money', which I'm sure just tickled her.

"Jack, on the other hand, I was glad to get away from. Arrogant, flashy, and careless because he was sure I'd always be there to bail him out of trouble. I was, but that's a stupid attitude to get. He had a tamed mountain lion that followed him around. I honestly liked the lion more than Jack. Ferocious in a fight, but always ready for an ear scratch or belly rub during down time. I wonder where they ended up." Charon leaned the now-clean shotgun against the arm of his chair, laced his fingers together and stretched his arms out and up, hands coming to rest locked behind his head. "Not sleepy yet?"

In truth, Lee was almost ready to pass out, but he liked hearing Charon's stories more. Imagining the people and places he'd seen was always great. So he shook his head. "D'you remember anything about the Commonwealth?"

Charon closed his eyes and grumbled deep in his throat. "Mmmm... the Commonwealth. In an area that used to be called Massachusetts. It's a wreck. Most of it is just a lot of blasted nothing; craters, empty stretches of mud plains, tiny settlements of raiders and war bands. The Institute is the shining gem in all that, as it were."

Lee raised an eyebrow.

Charon shrugged. "Maybe I've given you the wrong idea about it. As a personal experience it was awful; old life erased and born again empty. But there's plenty of good stuff that goes on there too. Good and bad, it's all about scientific advancement. Some of it helps mankind in easy to see, straightforward ways, other things may be more convoluted. I don't like what happened to me but I try not to be bitter about it. Too much."

"What's something really sad that you've seen?"

"People filling a mass grave for a town they were reclaiming and trying to repopulate. They dug a huge hole in the ground, lined it with tarps, and removed bodies from the city by the truck full. Seeing the ... just endless drifts of skeletons and mummified people made me really think about what we've done to ourselves. We let things get so bad with other human beings that we nearly wiped ourselves out. Hard to see how it could go so far" The ghoul frowned into the carpet, face agitated.

The answer had come quickly, it sounded like something that had really weighed heavy on him. "Ghouls usually separate themselves from humans if it's ever brought up."

"Hmph. Yeah, most do. I don't buy that though, we're still as human as we ever were. Look and sound a little different, but we still walk and talk and think just the same." Charon shifted forward in the moth-eaten chair, elbows on knees and hands hanging. "One more and then we have to sleep."

"Yeah, alright." Lee's jaw stretched in a yawn. "What's a really memorable place you've been to?"

"Let's see... down south of here along the coast is a huge region called the Gulf. I was there with some fool of a merchant who called himself Senator. Out of shape blowhard who was looking for an easy score of some undisturbed treasure hoard so he could stop travelling and be set for life. I can tell you right now, things like that are few and far between out here, and they are never easy to get.

"But where we were was practically a jungle. The people that lived there were wild. Huge clans of tribal people: warriors, gatherers, trappers, wise women, witch doctors. There were perfectly good houses and buildings a little further inland, but nearly all of them chose to live in the swamps, mostly on tall platform houses in the trees. At night, if you picked a clear spot with a view, you could see all the treetops light up with the candles and torches they lit to see by.

"And the swamp itself... a mess of muddy water, saw grass, cypress trees that look like bones, and a low-hanging mist that was almost always there. It was really something to see, but it'd be tough to find a more dangerous place. The locals were distrustful as a rule, quickmud was always there to suck your shoes off and drag you down, the entire region was highly radioactive, and the things that came out of the swamp..."

Charon smiled and shook his head.

"Deathclaws are the meanest thing out here, but down there they had mutant alligators. Scaly, thirty foot long monsters that were nearly undetectable in the swamp water and underbrush. Sometimes you could hear them growling and avoid them, but mostly you just had to watch and hope you were faster. Practically go blind staring so hard into the fog looking for something that probably wasn't there."

Lee had closed his eyes, imagining the dense trees and standing water. The terror of being unable to see more than five feet in front of you and hearing the drips and crashes come from all around you, disoriented and confused. But also the comfort of being able to climb up out of the muck and watch over the sea of mist in your own shelter in the trees. He hoped he could see something like that someday.

"Did Senator ever find his treasure?"

A disdainful laugh. "No, he didn't. Not there anyway. He hated the constant wet and dealing with radiation sickness all the time. And there were quite a few times when his blundering nearly got him snatched him into the water. When the swampfolk finally got fed up with his brashness and disrespect of them he wasn't too sorry to leave."

"Sounds like an amazing place."

"It really was. To think that there's stuff like that out there to see and I was stuck in Ahzrukhal's bar for so long. Waste of my time and talents." Charon glanced over at Lee lying on the bed. "You know why I hated him so much?"

Lee had always figured it was because the wheezy ghoul was a horrid asshole who lied and stole when it was convenient for him, but it sounded like there was something more. He shook his head, "No."

"Because he had no imagination. He was boring. There was more to it, but that was the most uniquely offensive thing about him." Then, more briskly, "And now, no more talking. Sleep so we can leave in the morning and make it to the Citadel early."

Eyes still shut, Lee smirked and saluted at the ceiling, "Yes, captain." He flailed and his eyes flew open as a mouth descended on his and gave him a kiss. Charon had stood up and snuck next to him without him noticing, and now flopped back down in his chair.

"Quit bein' a wiseass and sleep." Charon closed his own eyes with an amused smile and folded his arms over his chest.

Grumbling quietly, Lee rolled over on the ancient hotel bed and after a long while of staring at the PipBoy light cast on the curling wallpaper, fell asleep.

Lee dreamed. He was in the reactor room of Vault 101 again. He was younger, or at least shorter, and someone was with him, a friend. He felt anxious, but nothing around them seemed wrong. He walked past the huge capacitor hubs and checked behind it. Nothing strange. His friend, a familiar-feeling entity with an out-of-focus face in a vault suit, stood behind him.

"They're coming, Mouse."

Then he could hear it. A deep siren, the wail of it rising and falling. And the thump of many feet running from far away but getting closer. The feeling of fear doubled.

The friend grabbed his shoulders, spun him around. Lee looked up into the shifting, changing face of his fellow vault dweller.

"Mouse, you have to go. They're coming. Wake up, okay? Wake up."

He could feel his arms and hands, the real ones, as he struggled to escape the dream. He could still see the vault lights and hear the low siren as he tried to open his eyes.

"Wake up..."

It worked. He sucked in a breath and stared up at the green-tinged ceiling, blinking and coming back to reality. He was back in control of his arms and let his breath rush back out. Weird dream, what the hell...

A low sniffle came from his left. His body froze. Charon's chair was to his right. Feeling the vertebrae in his neck creaking, he turned to look beside him. A face, not unlike Charon's, but more gaunt and wild-looking was peeking over the edge of the bed. The milky eyes were fixed right on his own, and the thing's hand came up and settled on the edge of the bed. The last of his sleepiness fell away in an instant and he shouted out in terror and surprise and scrambled back up against the headboard.

The sound awoke Charon, who immediately snatched his gun from the floor and fired after a split-second assessment of the threat. The feral's body wavered and fell back onto the floor with a wet thump. Their ears rang with the thunder of the shot.

Lee's voice was hoarse with tiredness and the unexpected strain he'd just put on his vocal cords. "Thanks. But... ugh, fuckin' guh-ross." He raised his hands in front of him and looked down at his gore-soaked shirt. The ghoul had been shredded about a foot away from him and Lee's entire head and torso was covered in sticky blood and tiny slivers of skin and... tissue. "Well. No more sleep." He flicked his hands downward and heard the tiny splat of the stuff hitting the floor. Guess I was due for a bath anyway, he thought, minorly revolted.

Only a few seconds had passed, and now both their backs prickled at the sound they heard coming from outside the room's door. A wet slapping of feet and a chorus of inhuman howls. Charon stood and strode over to the door. It had been only a bit ajar to admit the lone invader, and now Charon pulled it the rest of the way open. He turned to Lee. "Stay here. I'm going to check." Without waiting for an answer, he stalked out, low and silent.

Lee carefully pulled off his shirt and wiped his face and neck with the clean back of it, and dropped the sodden mess on the floor. He grabbed his rifle from where it was propped against the wall, and went to the door to look out. They had picked a room on the second floor, which was more like a balcony lined with guardrails that ran around the edges of the main floor. It was still the middle of the night, but the wan moonlight falling in from the broken ceiling showed a huge mass of ghouls wandering around the lobby. They looked disturbed, but none of them had realized the sound had come from this floor yet. Sweat stood out on his chest and he swallowed hard. This would be difficult to get out of. A hand closed on his arm and he had to choke back a scream. He whirled around to see Charon crouched next to him. He let his wide eyes and pale face do the talking for him, as he glanced down at his arm.

"Sorry." Charon whispered. "I came back in through the connecting room." He beckoned and crept back into the room they'd been using. Lee followed.

"Where the hell did they all come from? There's a whole mob of them!"

"I'm gonna guess this place has a basement, and they stay there during the day. I saw a set of stairs leading down and a few milling around." He straightened his armor plates and checked the drum of his shotgun. "Well, so much for a good night's sleep. Let's dispatch these things so we can at least get what rest we can." The two of them were the invading party here, but honestly, after seeing so many ghouls turn feral, it was a mercy to put them down.

Lee drew his rifle around and nodded. He could pick off a few from up here and let Charon take care of whatever found the stairs.

It only took about three shots fired before they got wise and traced the source of the sound. What happened next was a bloodbath. Lee scoped and fired, bullets piercing anything moving slow enough to get a good bead on. Charon roared and tore through the bottlenecked flood of ghouls pounding up towards him. Buckshot vaporized multiple bodies at once, and Charon kicked the rest of them down the stairs when he re-loaded, their thin bodies crunching on the risers. In almost no time at all, the last stragglers were picked off, dying whines fading away to silence again. The floor was covered in blood and the air reeked of the coppery smell. Lee wrinkled his nose and stood to join Charon again.

"Gotta check and make sure we got them all," Charon said, and started carefully walking down the slick stairs. Lee followed, grasping the handrail and gingerly trying to avoid the big puddles of gore.

They stepped over the bodies and went into the back where Charon had seen the supposed basement entrance. There was a set of stairs that yawned onto an empty black hole with a damp breeze blowing out of it.

"That's probably where they came from. Guess we didn't really check the whole place."

Lee stood well back and eyed the hole with distaste. Having Charon the walking natural disaster with him was a considerable morale booster, but the last thing he wanted to do right now was crawl down into that hole to flush out the last remaining ferals. "We're not going in there, are we?"

Charon turned to him with an amused grin on his face. His eyes were alight with some kind of mischief. "No, we don't have to. But, you wanna see scary? Watch." He handed over his gun to a confused Lee, and shook his arms out. "Gotta get into the right mindset," he added. Lee just watched him, still mystified.

Charon stood in front of the hole and let his arms drop forward as his shoulders hunched. His eyes closed and his face went slack. A moment passed. His eyes snapped open and he threw his head back and let out a terrifying howl. The cords stood out on his neck and his hands hooked into claws. Lee's skin prickled, startled at the ferocity and volume of what he heard. But it had somehow worked. He heard answering grunts from the basement and the footsteps that followed. Charon gave his torso a small shake and he turned back for his gun. Lee handed it over and let him finish off the last few hideaways of the hotel. That had to have been it. Unaware he'd been holding his breath, Lee let it out in a whoosh. The way Charon had snapped his head back… and the chilling scream had been as seductive as it was alarming. He felt a warm flush travel over his skin. "No kidding, scary. Did you... talk to them?"

"They don't really talk, just use different tones to communicate general ideas. That was 'I found something good to eat.'"

Lee laughed shakily and swept his hair back from his forehead. He'd felt tense and on-edge since the feral had first peeked over the bedside and the feeling wasn't going away even though the place was now truly empty. Exhilaration still wound through his body, and he fought to keep from shaking and jumping as they trailed through the blood-soaked lobby. He felt a weird thrill from the sensation of Charon following him quietly up the stairs and down the hall back to the room. He heard the low grumbling chuckle that served as Charon's laugh coming from behind him. "What?" he asked.

"What are you excited about?"

Again, stupidly, "Uhhhh, what?"

"The way you're walking, breathing," they had reached the door to the room they'd been sleeping in and Lee paused to push it open. He could feel the ghoul step up close, and he stilled. Charon's face was hovering somewhere behind his ear and the ghoul inhaled deeply. "...your smell, even."

Lee's skin prickled at the soft rush of air over his neck. "Maybe I am." He stepped into the room and turned around grinning to look at the hulking silhouette standing in the doorway. "If you can find me I'll tell you."

Charon folded his arms and leaned against the inside of the doorframe. He looked relaxed, but Lee could see that his muscles were tense and his eyes alert. He smiled, teeth glinting and face looking downright evil in the harsh shadows, and said, "I'll give you a head start then, smoothskin."

Still smiling, Charon closed his eyes. Lee snatched up his stuff and bolted through the side door. As he slunk through the crumbling hallways, heart pounding and skin on fire, he heard another rusty howl erupt from the room where Charon was. The head start had been about twenty seconds, and now the harbinger was on the prowl. Ready or not, here I come, echoed in his head. He moved faster, taking care not to make any noise, but also nearly scrambling along the broken corridors. He knew Charon would find him, but the thrill was in the chase. The hunt.

He ducked into one of the mostly identical rooms at the end of the long hall, sliding the door shut oh so quietly. The room's curtain was open, allowing some small light in but it would be much too noisy to try and shut it. He crawled behind the bed and waited in the deep shadow, willing his hands to stop shaking and straining to hear whatever noises he could pick up beyond the door. The room deadened any sound, and he could only hear and feel the blood beating in his temples. For the longest time, there was only his hoarse breathing, damped down to a quiet pant. Then... the softest creak of a floorboard in the hall. A sniff... and it moved away from the door. Lee had been holding his breath and he now let it out in a tiny rush. The footsteps outside stilled... and came back. Lee cursed himself and felt his heartbeat crank back up to galloping speed. The door shushed open. Charon rounded the bed, eyes shining and face cast in shadow, arms tense and body drawn up to its full intimidating height. Stifling the urge to shriek, Lee cowered back into the wall behind him, both lust and a panicky feeling of familiarity suffusing him. The ghoul stepped forward, leaning down and easily pulling Lee upright by his still bare and blood-sticky upper arms. He lowered his head so that they were face to face, and growled, "Found you."

Lee looked into the blazing blue eyes. Charon's hands were like vices pinning him to the spot. He ran his tongue over his dry lips and whispered, "What are you gonna do, huh?"

Charon's mouth split into that unsettling toothy grin again, and he rasped back, "Hah, watch me."

Lee was tossed onto the nearby bed and Charon followed, practically pouncing on him. The ghoul hovered over his outstretched body, doing nothing for a moment, seeming just to examine him. The light was shit again and Lee couldn't see more than a fuzzy shape in the dark. Heart still pounding, he closed his eyes, anticipating a vicious bite or a rough yank on his hip to flip him over. He was startled when the next point of contact was a feather-light kiss on his jaw. Charon lowered himself closer and rubbed his cheek against the side of Lee's neck, exhaling warm breath across his skin. Lee arched his back into the body hanging over him and groaned quietly at the surprisingly gentle touches. Charon sat back, and rough fingers trailed down Lee's sides and caught at the band of his pants, dragging them down. With no further use for foreplay, Charon's mouth covered him and his hands rested on the thin hips, pulling him closer or pushing him away as the need arose. Lee gasped at the feeling; wondering not only at the soft, almost delicate treatment, but at the act itself. Coherent thought was soon swept away though; the hot wetness of the mouth against him, the pulsing pressure building within, and the powerful hands stroking and massaging his burning skin. It all felt almost... luxurious. He came with a quiet groan, digging his hands into the bed and digging his head back into the pillow. Lee felt oddly harmonious. I could sleep forever, right now. He sighed, splaying his arms out across the wide hotel bed. "I wasn't expecting that."

Charon hopped up beside him and pushed at his hip, "Budge over." Lee obliged, pulling up his chinos and rolling over to find a spare shirt in his bag. Charon stretched out on the big double bed and propped his arms behind his head with a small smile. "Expect the unexpected. And get to sleep right now, we're up at dawn."

Absolutely no argument here. "You got it..." Lee rolled back, flopped an arm over the ghoul's torso, and buried his face in Charon's side, falling asleep to the smell of the sun-burnt leather.