After her trip through Kellogg's mind, Blue retreated to the Third Rail to drown her demons in drink.
Piper went with her, because of course she did. Mostly she didn't want the other woman to be alone right now, for her comfort and for her safety. Kellogg's memories had been painful, to say the least. Not only was his backstory frustratingly sad, but to watch his atrocities against Blue's family happen through his own eyes…
Piper couldn't imagine what the other woman was going through. She wanted to be here to lighten the load in any way she could. She wanted to be able to help.
She wasn't doing a whole lot of helping right now, though. Blue was perched on a stool at the counter, shoulders bowed and head down as she worked on her fourth bottle of Gwinnett Stout. Her short dark hair hung in messy waves in front of her face so Piper could not read her expression. She wondered if it was intentional. The vault dweller hadn't said a word after bursting out of the Memory Den and making her brisk way straight here. Piper didn't know what to do.
Magnolia's voice floating from the stage in the corner had kept the silence from crushing them all night, if barely. She was in the midst of a break right now, though, and she used the time to sashay up to the counter on the opposite side of Blue.
"Well, hey there," she greeted in her smoky low tones, eyeing Blue up and down. "New face. You're not from around here, huh?" Without hardly waiting for the vault dweller's nod, she drifted a little closer. "How'd you like the song?"
Blue raised her head for the first time that night and faced the woman. When she spoke for the first time, it was croaky and painful, but her words were smooth. "It was lovely."
"Yeah," agreed Piper, more of an attempt to encourage Blue than a sign she had actually been listening to the music (she hadn't). "Great set tonight." Even as the words left her mouth, she realized her eyes had been on Magnolia's sequined dress as she said it (the thing was bright, okay!) and thus the remark probably came across way more suggestive than intended. "—of songs, that is," she tried to correct quickly, feeling heat rise to her cheeks when she only served to dig her hole deeper, if the smug arch of Magnolia's brow was any indicator. Piper just gave up and buried her face in her hands, mumbling a half-assed excuse about the temperature of the room. She really did have a way with words. Never when it mattered, of course.
"Charming as always, Piper, dearest," Magnolia let the awkward interaction roll off her back and turned back to Blue, leaning an elbow on the counter in such a way that her dress pulled open a bit at the slit. Her pale thigh caught the light just so and Piper almost groaned aloud. This was not the time. Magnolia either didn't notice or didn't care. "Is there anything else I can do for you tonight?" she purred, sidling right up to Blue so it was nigh impossible not to stare at her glinting red dress, and by association her very visible cleavage.
For some reason that overture made Piper's gut clench into a rock-hard little ball that almost made her throw up her beer and she found herself watching Blue breathlessly for her answer, begging internally no. Don't. It wouldn't be fair. Magnolia was lovely, sure, and Piper wasn't altogether sure what kind of coping methods Blue usually turned to to smother her sorrows, but Piper had stuck by the survivor's side through thick and thin and if anyone deserved her attention then—
Piper cut off that thought, realizing how disgusting it was. Blue wasn't a prize; she was a person, and she was free to do what she chose. Piper would have to deal with that. She dropped her head onto her arms so she wouldn't have to watch, anyway, trying to fight down nausea. She really needed to lay off these drinks. At the same time, maybe they would make her forget whatever disappointment she would endure tonight.
Piper was so busy preemptively sulking into the table that she didn't hear Blue's answer to Magnolia. She'd just resigned herself to the assumption that the two would strike off somewhere private and get back to her in the morning, so it was a healthy shock when she felt a familiar hand on her knee. When she jerked her head up, she found Blue watching her with tender concern behind the haze of pain and alcohol in those gray eyes. And Magnolia walking away with a casual wave over her shoulder.
"You okay?" the vault dweller asked.
Piper was so surprised by her presence plus her hand on her knee that she barely even comprehended the question, much less how out of place it was—why should Blue be concerned about her right now? "You didn't flirt with her," she blurted instead, unable to keep the confused relief from coloring her beer-slurred speech.
Blue was drunk enough that she didn't read too far into that. Instead she shrugged loosely and removed her hand to pick at the grain of the wooden counter, suddenly very intent on its surface. "I don't really like sex."
"What?" We're talking about this now? Don't get her wrong, Piper was glad Blue was finally speaking to her, but she was so caught off guard by the woman's bluntness about the topic, not to mention the words themselves, that she couldn't even process them for a second. Then once her brain caught up, she furrowed her brows. "But—Shaun. Nate." It wasn't as eloquent or tactful as she would have normally managed, but it got the point across.
Blue lowered her cheek onto her arm and regarded Piper with unreadable eyes. The silence stretched long enough that the reporter began to wonder if she should apologize, but then Blue let out a long, tired sigh, and her shoulders relaxed like she'd decided she could trust Piper with her next words. "Nate was on active duty," she finally began to explain, if in a roundabout way. "He would be away from home for months at a time." She returned her attention fixedly to the counter. "When he got back and wanted time with his wife, was I supposed to say no?"
Piper was speechless for a long moment, her mind reeling, not least because she was surprised that Blue was getting into this now, searching for a suitable answer. Nothing helpful made itself immediately known, so she was left stumbling: "So you—I mean, he—were you—"
"I loved him," Blue assured, sounding like she choked on the past tense but not correcting herself. "We were as happy as a military family in the middle of a war could be, I guess. But…" She shrugged helplessly. "That was never—I mean, it wasn't—" A frustrated sigh huffed from her throat. "That part was never as important to me."
Piper scooted a little closer on her seat, feeling like she should be comforting Blue right now, and not just because of the events of this evening rubbing salt in her wounds.
The vault dweller looked over at her again, and Piper stopped. Those gray eyes held a familiar look: humor thinly veiling pain. "Don't get me wrong; everything else is still on the table," she said, lips curling wryly at one corner. Then the smile faded. "I'd just—rather not be touched. Like that."
Piper nodded a little too enthusiastically, anxious to assure her friend that that was fine and respectable and normal even if her own husband hadn't realized it, and also a little excited at Blue's comment—everything else is still on the table. She burned to know whether that was a general truth or an admission intended for her.
Before Piper had much time to mull it over, Blue straightened up to lean her elbow on the counter and fix her with half-lidded eyes and a lazy smirk, like a schoolgirl who always seemed to know a little too much about everyone. "What about you, papergirl?"
Piper stiffened uncomfortably. "Oh, uh! I, uh—I guess I'd like it as much as the next girl." She should have been expecting this, and yet her sluggish mind had failed to form an answer that wouldn't make her look like a fool. She grimaced to herself and covered her eyes with one hand.
"You don't know?" Blue asked, sounding only curious, not accusatory.
But, "There tends to be more important things to worry about most of the time," Piper said more defensively than was necessary. "End of the world and all." This had been a tender topic since Nat had reached the age that the first flickers of romantic interest appeared and started asking questions. Questions Piper couldn't answer. Why don't you know anything about this? she'd asked, and it hurt an undue amount. You're supposed to teach me stuff.
"I'm sorry. I wasn't making fun," Blue—perfect, careful, understanding (even when drunk) Blue—responded instantly.
"No harm done," Piper assured weakly, but she didn't really mean it. This insecurity had definitely caused her some harm over the years. It had only gotten worse since she started the paper and basically became Public Nuisance No. 1 in everyone's eyes. The old hurt bothered her like a wound that hadn't healed right; made her say in flat self-deprecation, "Who would want some nosy, big-mouthed reporter girl, anyway?" She chuckled mirthlessly. "Nobody."
There was a long pause during which Blue stared down into her drink with a gradually intensifying expression furrowing her brows. Then, slowly, deliberately, the vault dweller lifted her head and swiveled on her stool until she was facing Piper, so close that she had to bracket the girl's knees with her own to sit comfortably. Piper was almost painfully conscious of the contact paired with the look in the vault dweller's eyes right now: heavy, warm, clouded by alcohol but intense all the same. It was making her head spin and her chest tight. Her face heated as she wondered what the hell her companion was doing.
"Nobody?" the taller woman asked softly, purposefully.
Piper suddenly found it difficult to swallow. Yeah, she would definitely not be getting drunk around Blue again anytime soon. She was pinned by Blue's lovely gray eyes, and the touch of her legs against her own was distracting her, and when did she get that close? and Blue's words everything else is still on the table reverberated through her mind like a more pleasant version of warning bells and—
"A'ight, ya bloody whores, why don't ya take it to the Rexford for the night, huh?" Whitechapel Charlie's tinny drawl cut sharply into the moment, and Piper jerked back from what had become mere inches between herself and her companion. Her first instinct was to scowl, partly at the robot's interruption and partly that his insult was so inappropriate based on what they'd just been talking about, but of course he didn't pay her any mind.
"Yeah. Alright," Blue broke the tension for her, only a hint of that previous emotion in her voice, and slid off her stool to go with drink in hand. Piper was disappointed but not surprised at the sudden change, and she accepted it with a sigh. She reached to pull the mostly-finished beer—her fourth—from the vault dweller's hand and place it on the counter.
"I think we've both had enough," she replied to Blue's sour face. The other woman nodded, though, and let herself be guided toward the door by Piper's surer hand.
The way to the Rexford Hotel could have lasted thirty seconds or a hundred years. Piper was aware of nothing but the nervousness growing in the pit of her stomach as she wondered what exactly she was walking into; what exactly could follow the conversation they'd just had in the bar, not to mention the moment after. She worked herself into an almost-panic with the conflicting sentiments of what if something happens? (excited) and what if something happens! (terrified) and by the time they reached their room, she was practically hyperventilating.
It turned out to be for nothing.
Because, once alone, Blue acted as if the tension from before had slipped her mind entirely, and she was tipsy enough that Piper couldn't be sure it hadn't. The vault dweller went through her nightly routine of cleaning up (as best she could in a place like this) and changing into comfortable clothes as if she'd forgotten Piper was even there. The reporter wasn't sure if she was more relieved or disappointed that it looked as if nothing would go down between them tonight. She supposed, objectively, that it was a good thing. That didn't stop her from feeling as though her heart shriveled a little inside.
Once they were sleep-ready, they piled into the double bed together, as always, simply because it was the logical thing to do. Piper's chest barely even tightened at the experience anymore. It wasn't anything scandalous; they never touched when they had to share a bed, especially when it was dark like this; easier to forget their inhibitions, alcohol notwithstanding. It was sort of an unspoken rule between them, even before their friendship started hovering on the verge of something that was…more. And the way Blue had been acting since they'd arrived here, Piper figured tonight would be like every other night—aside from the fact that tonight she had a thousand new thoughts to keep her up until the early hours, exacerbated by the other woman's presence at her side.
But tonight was different.
Tonight, Blue didn't keep the unspoken yet mandatory sliver of space between them.
Instead, mere seconds after they lay down, she shuffled forward until her front was pressed against Piper's back and, though that was heart-stopping enough, didn't stop there. No; she went on to wrap both warm arms around the panicking reporter and pull her snugly against her.
Piper couldn't help the startled almost-whimper that accompanied the thrill of Blue's touch. At the sound the vault dweller stiffened and loosened her grip. "Okay?" she murmured worriedly in Piper's ear and, even drunk, waited for the girl's nod before relaxing into her again with a sigh. "Okay."
Piper was seriously wondering if this was an alcohol-induced hallucination. She would be lying if she said she hadn't imagined this exact situation more than a few times, on the nights where she could feel Blue's breath on her neck yet could never entertain the thought of getting more. She'd fantasized about having her feelings reciprocated ever since she'd found herself growing fonder of the vault dweller than was strictly platonic, way back when they'd first started traveling together. But to have the possibility become real?
Piper was virtually vibrating from head to toe with a mix of apprehension and excitement, hoping against hope that Blue wasn't just being clingy because she was drunk. The way she'd looked at her earlier, when she'd just drawled "nobody?" in layered tones and leaned close and hypnotized Piper without even trying—that couldn't be nothing, right? That wasn't just the alcohol talking, right? She couldn't be sure.
She was so entangled in her racing thoughts that she didn't notice Blue was crying until a drop of wetness hit the back of her neck. It was immediately followed by a sniff, and Piper was run over with guilt. How could she forget that her friend was not okay? Just because she'd been able to hold a drunken conversation didn't mean she'd forgotten her grief. If anything, it meant she was handling it worse; bottling up one's emotions never worked very well for long.
Cursing herself even as her heart melted for her friend, Piper turned over and slid her own arms around Blue, strong and careful against her hiccuping body. "Oh, Blue," she murmured as the vault dweller buried her face in the crook of her neck. She ran her hands over her back in soothing strokes. "I'm sorry."
The other woman didn't answer but for the press of her nose deeper into Piper's hair, as if she could hide there and escape the pain of her reality. Piper could do nothing but pray that it worked.
They stayed like that for a long time, and though the reporter's back grew stiff from lying in the same position for such an extended period, she held Blue tightly and without complaint until her quiet sobs subsided. After that, the vault dweller seemed to relax somewhat. Her breaths by Piper's ear were no longer so ragged, and her grip on the back of her trench coat was less desperate. Their embrace became less like a spur-of-the-moment urge and more like a comfortable choice. Though it made Piper's heart trip in her chest, she savored it for all it was worth. She could almost make herself believe that this wasn't a one-time thing born of agonizing emotion; that maybe it was a sign of something else between them; something deeper.
But she knew better, and she prepared to be disappointed in the morning when Blue forgot all about this and never came near her again.
She wished things could be different.
Piper sighed and absorbed what warmth she could from the press of the other woman's body against her; from her arms around her. She whispered soft comforts to her friend until her breathing deepened into sleep, and then wished for some comfort of her own.
It was safe to say that she fell asleep long after Blue did.
…