The Courier, it turned out, was a very chaotic sniper pair.

He was twitchy, and not in the sense that he was jumpy. Every so often, Boone saw his right forearm wriggle like worms were crawling under his skin. Sometimes his eye would twitch, the one with the blown pupil. And his eye was, indeed, blown. Boone hadn't believed him at first, but he watched the boy's uselessness with long-range weapons when Boone called out a coyote sitting on a cliff in front of them. He had pulled up a beat-up varmint rifle, aimed, and fired, and shot far to the right, tipping off the coyote and three of its friends. Boone and ED-E, the creepy little eyebot the boy had brought with, had made quick work of them, but still, it had been an adjustment for sure.

Boone had never worked with a sniper that… couldn't snipe.

He was also very talkative, something Boone was not used to. Never anything important, and a lot of it seemed to just be to himself. But some of it… was not. The Courier was nosy. He asked questions, he made jokes, and he told stories. But never stories that made sense, and a lot of times, the same stories that seemed to repeat.

The boy also did not seem to sleep. They had walked erratically until it got dark again, when Boone was almost certain he would drop from dehydration, when the Courier announced that they would be returning to Goodsprings for the night. So they doubled back after happening upon a huge set of red rocks and retraced their steps to the tiny little town.

Boone was ready to pass out and sleep for the next twelve hours, but the Courier headed towards the bar. How the boy was still going was beyond Boone, but he had no choice but to follow.

He'd never liked bars. Dirty, crowded, prying eyes and ears… nothing remotely attractive about it. His outfit had always tried to drag him out when they had a day off, and they would come home stumbling drunk. Before he'd met his wife, he had even agreed to go out, drinking beers and shooting the shit about the Mojave desert and the NCR. The company had been okay.

But the last thing Boone wanted to do at that moment was meet more people after being awake for almost a day. Even superhuman snipers had limits.

He tried to ignore the old man sitting on the porch of the Prospector's Saloon, but the man had to comment anyway, on his distinct beret. "NCR folk coming to Goodsprings, huh? Things keep getting stranger out here, I'll tell ya."

Boone ignored him, gritting his teeth and pushing through the door.

The Courier had already settled into a bar stool that almost certainly had his ass imprinted into its seat. "Trudy," the boy said, "get my friend and I something to eat and some whiskey."

"I don't drink," Boone growled, sitting angrily at the bar next to him.

The Courier snorted derisively at his new companion. "What kind of self-respecting man out here doesn't drink?"

Ignoring the two, the barkeep vanished to get them food, probably. Hopefully, or Boone might abandon any semblance of manners he had and dig into his bag to scarf down whatever can or bag he found first. He idly wondered if they would serve complimentary water, judging by the other customers sipping on dirty glasses next to him.

"Haven't drank in a long time," Boone said simply, hoping that would be sufficient to shut down the line of questioning.

It wasn't, of course. "When did you give it up?"

"I don't see how that's any of your business."

"If we're traveling together, I feel like it is," the boy said. "I don't know how I'm supposed to trust someone I can't kick back and have a drink with."

The barkeep, Trudy, returned with two plates and two bottles of whiskey for the two of them. Glancing down, Boone barely recognized what mysterious dish had been placed in front of him, the meal an unappetizing pile of brown mush. Still, he started eating immediately. He'd eaten far worse out in the field, anyway.

Unphased by Boone's disgruntled silence, the Courier thanked the woman and slapped down some caps, a quantity that seemed far less than what Boone would pay for a meal of this size. Plus the alcohol.

Drinking reduced mental acuity. Drinking made things harder to keep straight. How could he spot when he could barely walk straight? No, he did not think tonight was the night to drink.

It was nothing about the nightmares alcohol seemed to reliably bring on.

Next to him, Boone heard the kid saying something, but he had already tuned out. He was listening around the bar for off conversations, for people talking about the Legion. He'd heard of Goodsprings, of course, but he'd never listened about it. He just knew it was a tiny town to the west of him that never bothered anybody.

His eavesdropping proved that. All anyone could talk about was how brave the Courier was, how he'd led a vicious fight against the Powder Gangers and blasted the living hell out of all of them with a few sticks of dynamite. He also heard talk about how he'd been in Doc Mitchell's house for months after they dug him out of that graveyard.

Boone noted the suspicious lack of talk about his talkativeness.

Or, he mused, watching the boy's wriggling forearm again, his twitchiness.

The Courier threw back swigs of the whiskey on the table every so often, and he'd burned through about half of the bottle by the time he suddenly stood. "Gimme a look at it, then," he said, hopping around the counter and picking up the radio on the counter.

Boone quickly returned his focus to their conversation. "Yeah, the sumbitch who shot you knocked it over," the woman said, shaking her head disapprovingly. "They always drank too much. Got too rowdy."

The Courier nodded, his brows furrowed, clearly deep in thought. "Mm. And you said they were nice-looking guys, right?"

"If you're into that sort of thing."

"What sort of thing?" Boone watched as the boy smacked the side of the contraption with the palm of his hand. Then, he turned his attention to Boone. "Hand me my bag, would you?" He picked up the sack from the floor next to them and handed it over the counter wordlessly and unceremoniously, and then he finished the last few bites of the food off his place.

As the Courier dug around in his bag, the woman continued talking. "Real self-absorbed guys. Slicked back hair. Always calling you baby or hon. Patronizing." The boy's eyes got wide as he dug around, and he withdrew what looked like a screwdriver and a coil of wire.

"Oh, there's nothing I like more in a man," the kid laughed, standing again and fiddling with the radio once more. "You're sure they didn't say anything about their names?"

"Aside from Benny? Nope."

"Huh." The Courier shut the radio and set it back on the counter triumphantly. He tweaked the dial on the front and suddenly, Mr. New Vegas' rich, distinct voice filled the little saloon. "Got her!"

"It's me again, Mr. New Vegas, reminding you that you're nobody 'til somebody loves you. And that somebody is me. I love you."

Boone grimaced. It had to be this repetitive bit. It couldn't have been one of his other annoying, insipid phrases he said over and over. He clenched his jaw and reached for his canteen, but it was empty, so he couldn't even wash out the acrid taste forming in his mouth.

"Oh, you're a dear!" Trudy exclaimed. "Let me pay you back for your meal. It's the least I could do." And of course the kid didn't say no, just grinning back and accepting the meager amount of caps that had already exchanged hands once that evening.

"It's just about time to get you some news. A package courier found shot in the head near Goodsprings has reportedly regained consciousness, and has made a full recovery. Now that is a delivery service you can count on."

"Oh, that's you!" the woman exclaimed, smiling happily as she cleared Boone's plate from in front of him. "Word travels fast around these parts."

Next to him, the Courier continued his conversation and once again, Boone stopped listening. The banter was far too charismatic and engaging for him to wish to engage. Boone had never been a talker. It was one of his many soft skills he lacked, according to his superiors. Not that they complained. He had what mattered: the eyes and the brain of a sniper.

Snipers didn't need to be able to charm the pants off of anyone. They'd never get close enough.

Still, waiting for the kid to eat took forever. Boone returned to one of his favorite boredom-breaking activities: counting the cracks in the drywall in front of him.

At one hundred and ninety two, he was interrupted. "Alright, tough guy, time to go," the Courier said, standing up from his roost at the bar. He swayed. Boone noticed he'd blasted through the entire bottle of liquor. "Bring your whiskey. I'll drink it tomorrow."

Silently, Boone grabbed the bottle and stashed it in his pants pocket. Then he grabbed both of their bags and followed the Courier out of the saloon, leaving Guy Mitchell to croon about his heartaches to the gossipy bar for the rest of the evening.

"Now I think Victor's up and gone to the Strip, so we can sleep in his shack," the Courier slurred. "Creepy fucker."

Boone did not ask who Victor was, because he did not care. The only thing he wanted was to pass out

"Still. It's a charming town 'round here," the Courier commented. "Kinda makes you wanna settle down." He approached a tiny shack on a hill and rested against it, blocking Boone's entrance. "Don't you think?"

Ignoring the question, Boone asked, "Why'd you fix that lady's radio?"

The Courier shrugged. "I dunno. I could, so I did. Smart people plan actions, not results." Boone just returned a blank stare. Shaking his head, the Courier grinned, and opened the shack. "Only one bed. You good with sharing?"

This caught Boone off guard. He stammered for a few seconds at the kid's genuine expression before the Courier barked out a laugh. He withdrew a blue coil from his bag and threw it at Boone, harder than Boone had thought he had in him.

"Kidding. I nabbed a bedroll from a friend in town. No need to cuddle tonight. Although…"

Boone was barely listening. He'd already unrolled his sleeping bag and kicked off his shoes and was in the process of removing his shirt so it could dry off his sweat before the next day when he realized the kid had stopped babbling.

"Although what?" Boone asked, hanging his shirt off the edge of the desk.

"Nothing," the boy said. "Forget I said anything."

No problem, Boone thought, immediately lying down and resting his eyes, I forget most of it in the first place.

"You don't talk much," the boy pointed out, wiping the sweat off his forehead and tilting his head back to drink the last bit of water he had in the bottle. "Oh, are you out of water too? We can go refill before we head out tomorrow."

Boone just grunted. Would the kid ever shut up? Were they supposed to sleep ever? How did the Courier expect him to function if he was planning on consistently sleep depriving him?

"Okay, tough guy. Goodnight."

Good riddance.

Just as Boone began to relax into a hopefully dreamless sleep, he was interrupted once again.

"Do you believe in fate, Boone?" the Courier asked suddenly, jerking Boone out of his sleepy state. He almost groaned in distress at the sheer distress at being interrupted, at the overwhelming grasp of exhaustion fighting with the boy for his consciousness.

But also, he wanted to groan at the question, one he'd been grappling with for a long, long time. Life has a way of punishing you for the mistakes you make.

Now is not the time. "I believe you'll get another shot to the head if you don't let me sleep," Boone growled in response. And that worked, and Boone was out like a light.