"You sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine," she whispered. "I think I need more sleep…it's been a pretty stressful few days. I'll be okay."
It was the biggest lie she had ever told him. Nothing about this was even remotely okay.
"Hey," Cross rasped, jutting his chin at the elevator. "Want to check out the roof?"
"Sure," she mumbled, and once they stepped inside and he punched the button with his thumb, she glanced up to Charon watching her.
She didn't think the big ghoul could ever look so sad.
The doors closed, and they ascended without him.
The smooth inlay of his heavy jacket came to drape itself around her shoulders; a weighted blanket she could close her eyes into and easily reminisce of their earlier days. The outside world was beyond a narrow concrete corridor and an access door- the topside of the parking garage was littered with assorted trash and empty bullet casings. Her toe stubbed against an empty scotch bottle, sending it spiraling across the way. Cross lit a barrel with flames, inviting warmth to those enduring the biting cold; frigid hands were held out against the fire that was crawling upwards to lick her skin. The merc supplied another source of heat underneath the layers of her clothing- his large hands cupped around her waist, more than acquainted with the territory they held.
"Talk to me," he rasped close to her ear from behind. "Tell me what's eatin' ya."
"You've asked me this before," she said rather quietly, staring into the fire.
When she didn't continue, he applied some gentle pressure. "And?"
A light laugh, as distant as a star. "And then I gave you head."
There was no return chuckle, a grin ghosting her cheek, or even a lewd suggestion. She turned her head to blink at his abnormal behavior- for once, she couldn't read what he was thinking.
"You really think you saw her back there?" His tone was completely serious, something she was beginning to realize she didn't like to hear. She just wanted his goofy smiles and terrible jokes; the world was serious enough as it was.
She faced the fire once again; an oracle blindly searching for a prophecy. "I did. I know how crazy that sounds…but I know what I saw."
Neither spoke for a length at a time. His fingers wandered around the curve of her hip, up along the dip of her spine and back across to her navel.
"I'm sorry," she apologized.
"No," he sighed laboriously. "I am."
"It's my fault, isn't it?"
"No baby-" Cross began.
"No, no." She pulled away from him, holding a hand up to stop his advancement. "Tell me the truth, right now. I deserve to know what the fuck is going on, you told me you would. Is this because of me? That ghoul, Thomas, this?"
Cross flexed his hands tightly, the muscles in his jaw straining as he clenched it. "Yeah…it is."
"You told me you were in the Mojave for five years, why did you come back?" The merc's glowing eyes sadly looked down at her. "Why did you come here, of all places?"
Cross didn't respond- he opened his mouth at an attempt, but couldn't verbalize the words. It seemed to answer her question, however, for she twisted her lips in an ugly grimace and pelted him in the chest.
"Why the fuck would you do that?!" she spat. "You know better! I was gone-"
"But you're not," Cross said darkly. "Those fucks took the one thing in my life I cared 'bout, you seriously think I wasn't goin' to do anythin' about it?"
"But look what it's gotten you!" she cried.
His hands swathed around her face. "It got me you!" When she shook her head and angrily wiped at her frustrated tears, he lowered his voice to a gentle murmur and held his face close to hers. "One way or another, this was all goin' to happen. It ain't your fault, you understand that right now."
"All those people," she said softly. "Braxton, Underworld-"
"That isn't on you."
"This is all on me."
Cross smashed his mouth to her own, trying to convey the message his words couldn't seem to instill through to her.
"It's on me," he croaked thickly. "I should've shot that bastard when I had the chance, but I didn't. I took the fuckin' job, your damn job, and this is where it's gotten us. I'm so sorry baby, I don't want to put this shit on you anymore."
"This would have never happened if I had just left with David-"
Cross released her, and kicked the barrel over, the mold of his anger dwindling embers up to the dark sky.
"Don't you ever suggest somethin' like that, do you understand me?"
She turned her head, hiding away from those cold eyes she wasn't sure were his own. "You can't risk this all for me."
The merc rubbed his jaw, exhaling slowly through his nostrils like a rumbling storm. His words were chipped, like cracks on ice. "Are you tryin' to tell me somethin'?"
A shake of her head, her voice wobbly. "No."
Silence. He merely stared at her, indifferent and calculative. Only when she began to sob quietly to herself did he deflate, the shame coursing through him stronger than his previous ire.
"I'm not tryin' to scare ya, baby," he rasped, wrapping his hands around her face and shoulder to pull her close. He held up her ring finger and kissed it. "I'm sorry."
"I just want this all to be over."
He held both her hands between his. "Do you want to leave? We can start, right now, head west- they won't ever find us. You tell me you want to go, and I'll drop all of this."
"No," she said softly. "I just want to be happy with you, knowing we finally left this all behind."
"I'll find them. I promise you that. I'll bury this whole fuckin' hatchet."
"I know you will."
"When this is all said and done, we'll settle down, you, me…and I guess fuckin' Charon, too. It'll just be us- no more being a merc, no more Boston, no more of this fuckin' crap…capeesh?"
"Capeesh," she whispered, her fingers trailing across his face. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me just yet," he rasped somewhat huskily, tracing her lower lip with his thumb. "I didn't get to the best part."
The heat of his kiss was as greedy as the night air sucking the warmth from the dying flames; each completely lost in the taste of the other's mouth. Those strong hands squeezed and pulled her hips flush against his own. He broke apart to only speak thickly in her ear, eager to enrapture himself in the intimacy of her world.
"Let's get to bed, baby."
She followed him through a hazy cloud, blood pounding through her sex and skull- it was like this every time, and she prayed it would never come to cease.
Their clothes became their own form of entanglement on the floor; her fingers made to swathe them in absolute darkness, but he stopped her by pulling her to bed.
"I want to see you," he rasped, and it was spoken with such sincerity it made her face bloom a million degrees. "I want to see everythin' there is to you."
And he did.
He witnessed the dip of his fingers curled inside, exploring the silken texture of flesh that he was so undeserving to touch. He watched the rise and fall of her climax; the twitch of her thighs and the disbelief in her eyes from the ethereal peak he guided her to climb, and then slowly helped her descend from when she made that leap from the tallest summit. He tasted her with a lap of his tongue, inhaled her with the sweetness of a kiss. He murmured hushed words and beheld the sight of yearning rekindle behind her eyes. When she rolled her hips against his own, he held on, at long last, a drowning man having found his mythical siren after years at sea.
Her eyes closed and he granted her the moment of peace- he could make love to her for hours on end, whether his body permitted it or not. Instead, he held her close and fought the heavy urge of sleep, for he just wanted to keep watching her, and everything there was.
For a raider-turned-retired-turned-mercenary, the Commonwealth wasn't that bad of a place. Granted, it nearly took the rest of his dwindling savings in caps to make the hike up here, but it was either a pinch in his purse, or a slow, agonizing sunset legged up on lung cancer.
The Commonwealth egg-head docs put those Capital Assholes to shame, but damn were they so fucking expensive. Forcing an old bastard such as himself to get a fucking job; raiders would eat him alive, and he'd sooner keel over and croak in the shit-stained streets than wrangle along with the Minutemen. He'd heard things about the Gunners- they laughed in his face and sent him on his way. If it weren't for his bad knees and an occasional flare-up in his lower back…
Who was he shitting, anymore? He was lucky the so-called Black Cazadors even let him walk through the front door. They must've been desperate, or readily not given two shits, letting a damn grandpa like himself join their ranks.
"So, newbie," Can began at his side. "You ready to meet with the Boss?"
"Quit calling me that," Jericho growled, wincing as he felt a slight pull in his left hamstring. His breath began to hitch in his chest, and he forced himself to pause. The kid he was tasked to follow along with and learn the ropes from was smart, and an arrogant little shit, at best. "I'll knock that mouth right into next week."
A calloused palm slapped down on his shoulder a few times. "Ha! I think he'll like you!"
Jericho grumbled something underneath his breath, wishing for nothing more than a forbidden drag from a cigarette. Those little fucking death sticks were the reason he was here, to begin with.
"I just want my fucking cut. I don't give a fuck who this bastard is," he eventually scowled. He didn't understand the formalities of it all. The Boss he thought he'd already met didn't even give two looks his way when he came around asking about a job. She was pretty attractive, and so he'd let the disrespect slide…she'd reminded him a lot of Nova.
"Oh, and just a heads up, since you're new, and all…" Can punched their code into the terminal, something Jericho wasn't yet privileged to know. "He's a ghoul…so if you don't want your mouth knocked into next week, I'd keep your personal shit to yourself."
He'd made it no secret of his loathing for ghouls- fucking maggot farms, zombies, shuffler time-bomb ferals. There was one in particular he wanted to strap to a fucking nuke and sail out west; he prayed to whatever God still gave a single shit that wherever that big, red bastard was-
"Oh, heya Charon, Boss around?"
The ex-raider rounded inside the concourse, disbelieving what he had heard…no…what he was seeing.
The ghoul turned his head, took him in for a split second, and then covered the ground so fast between them it automatically made Jericho flinch. It seemed neither could forget those little…altercations, back at Moriarty's. This had to be all of his karma coming back to repay him for his earlier way of life. It was just too fucking cruel to be any sort of joke.
"What are you doing here?" Charon growled.
Can took an uneasy step to the side- no one fucked with the big guy when he was angry.
Jericho looked to the kid for any sort of verbal explanation, and then shrunk back when the ghoul snapped his jowls and thrust a finger at his face. "I will give you five seconds to run."
"Hold on, Christ-" Jericho began hastily, but then the ghoul held up a finger.
"One."
"He's new, Charon, he's the new guy! Lydia said he's all good!" Can finally intervened, nearly sending the ex-raider into cardiac arrest from the relief that buckled through him. "He was actually going to have a word with the Boss."
Charon easily towered over both the grown men like they were simply children, ready to be picked up the nape and paddled over a knee.
If there was one thing Jericho hated more than ghouls themselves, it was the fucking fear dripping down his spine from the aura of this one. He was still just as nasty and hideous as he was way back then, when he had that fucking kid parading him around like he was human.
The ghoul crossed his arms, still staring down the ex-raider with intense malice as though the loathing could somehow physically maim. "He is asleep. I suggest you wait until he wakes." He then redirected his attention to Can, visibly cooler. "Did you find him?"
"Haven't heard word yet, but everyone's got an ear and eye out, just like the Boss wanted."
Charon gave a jut of his chin to indicate his dismissal, and Can dipped on by. Jericho went to follow suit-his knees were killing him-but the ghoul placed a hand on his chest.
"Not you," he growled, shoving the old lech back a few steps. "I have some words I wish to impart on you."
The merc awoke to a ruffle of pages and a soft light from a lamp glowing by the side of the open steam trunk. He internally groaned before rubbing his hands down his face.
"Been meanin' to throw 'em away," he grumbled.
"Uh-huh." Evelyn flipped the porno mag on its side, unfurling a four-page picture. She tilted her head and squinted her eyes. "I like her shoes…of course, that's all she's wearing."
A mutter of shame met her ears.
She sighed and set it down, rifling inside for more golden treasures. "I honestly don't know what I expected from you." A holotape was uncovered. "…what's on this?"
"Okay, we don't need to look at that shit." Cross sprung from bed, grabbing at his discovered collection of outdated porn and shoving it carelessly back inside. The lid of the trunk was then slammed and locked shut. "I ain't never really-"
"You're such a liar."
He was.
"Okayokay, I ain't got reason to look at it anymore," he quickly backpedaled.
She crossed her arms and jutted her chin, looking completely peeved for a few moments before she deflated into shy embarrassment. Her fingertips reached to the side for a magazine she had tucked away, and when she bit her lower lip and opened it to a dogeared page, he crossed his brows.
"I thought we could try this one," she said bashfully, her cheeks tickled pink as she handed it over.
Cross broke out into a smirk after he snapped the magazine closed. "Maybe I won't throw 'em out just yet."
The room was soon thick with their musk. He sat on the edge as she laid flat on her back, and he caught a trickle of sweat rolling down her waist with the bony tip of his finger.
"Want some water?"
She only weakly nodded, too delirious and faint to verbalize a proper response. He left the room, stark naked and rubbing at his bald head. Forget the fact he simply didn't care, his body felt like molten lava was rippling through it. She always got him so damn excited with those sounds she made. The cool air felt nice to breeze through, and when he began to descend the stairs he heard some low growling from near the entryway.
"Jesus fucking Christ!"
The smoothskin nearly jumped at the sight of him, which, in all fairness, he was a spectacle to behold. The aftermath of their heated fucking left his veins engorged and dick slathered in white froth. He reeked of her pussy.
"Who the fuck are you?" Cross snarled, further causing this short, nearly bald smoothskin to shrink as far back as he could in Charon's tight grip.
"Can informed me this is the recruit," Charon glowered.
Cross grunted. "No, he's not." He would have never hired him. One look at the guy spelled a washed-up raider trying to go out with a bang during his twilight years. The merc jut a thumb at the door as he turned around. "Get him out."
Jericho dug the heels of his boots in as they began to skid across the concrete. "Hey, hey! Wait! I'm just here to do a damn job! I earned my fucking cut-!"
Cross waved a hand dismissively behind him.
Charon booted the door open and tossed the old raider out like a bag of waste. His large hand settled on the handle before he swung it shut. "If you mention this place to anyone, I will come find you."
Jericho was left sitting on his ass in the dark, streaming explicit curses from his mouth with a throbbing spasm down his spine.
The touch of rough fingertips lightly mapped the length of her neck. Evelyn rolled over, blinking the drowsy dust from her eyes and automatically reaching a hand out for the promised deliverance of some water. Instead, it was grabbed between those stalwart fingers, and lightly stroked against a hard-set mouth. Her eyelids drew back fully.
"Charon," she said softly, if somewhat mildly surprised.
The bed creaked as he went back to stand, and he left her alone in the musky darkness without a word or hint of an expression. Under the influence of sleep, it felt as though it was nothing more than a dream, and she fell asleep with a parched throat and a sinking intuition.
The following morning, Charon was gone.
"Where did he go?" she asked, the overwhelming feeling of guilt building inside.
Cross shrugged. "I can't tell ya, honestly. I don't really do the whole…contract thing. I told him to do whatever the fucks he wants, and he does. Sometimes he's gone for a few days…" He turned to look at her, his expression unreadable. "Or months, dependin' on where he's goin'."
Evelyn felt nauseous from the sudden panic at the thought. "Do you think he'll be gone for that long?!"
"Nah…he ain't got a reason for that, anymore. I'm sure he'll be around…you're the only person he's damn near happy with."
The bed of her fingernails was suddenly a great fixation. "I don't think he's very happy with me right now…"
"Look, whatever you two argued over, you know he doesn't take it personally." He tilted her chin upwards to meet his eyes. "Don't worry 'bout it. He'll come back, then you can apologize for whatever's eatin' ya."
Evelyn sat in his workshop, perused through his personal items, and wrote little notes on yellowed pieces of paper from Cross's office. She tucked them in various places: a can of bullets, a pocket of a pair of pants, underneath a jar of oil. They were snippets of bad jokes she had forced herself to recollect, or scribbled drawings that she giggled over from how ludicrously terrible they were.
The day passed on, and he still did not return.
Cross finally left his office after getting something done; the initial worry over Lydia's lack of response was now beginning to gnaw deeper. Can did say she was struggling…and pissed at him or not, she knew better than to hold a stalemate this long. He prayed something hadn't happened, as unlikely as it was.
The safehouse was eerily quiet…Can was out on a supply run; Sparky was powered down at its station; Charon was wherever the fuck he wanted to be…
"Evelyn?" he rasped, poking his head into the ghoul's workshop. It was vacant. "Baby?"
He went to their room. Empty…but the bed had been made, and the shelving was dusted. He searched nearly every nook and cranny, discovering there were no dishes and the sink had been scrubbed clean, as was the bathtub. He rubbed at his head, confused by the unfamiliar cleanliness, and then remembered the one place left to check.
The elevator doors opened, and he was granted access to the roof.
There she was, sitting in one of the sniper's nests built by the ledge, peering through a pair of binoculars as the radio played softly beside her. The afternoon sky was somewhat warm for being so late in the fall, and he shed his jacket to hang on a hook before standing beside her. He nudged her foot with his boot.
"Ya lookin' for him?"
"Charon was right. Boston is crowded." Evelyn lowered the lenses from her sweeping gaze for a moment, and then resumed her search. "Are you done being busy?"
"Could ask you that," he joked, taking a seat down in the empty lawn chair beside her own. He rummaged through a cooler on a shelf, pleased the beer was still cold.
"Being a professional killer does not excuse you for being a slob," she commented matter-of-factly. "I'm surprised Charon put up with it."
"Yeah, well, looks like you'll keep 'em in line." He poked the tip of his bottle at her. "Mind?"
She set the binoculars down and popped the cap off with her bare hand, worming deeper into her seat as she granted him her full attention. "We'll have to go out at some point. You need new dishes."
Cross took a swig. "Fuck's wrong with the ones we have? Not a matchin' set or somethin'?"
"I threw them away," she said with some disdain. "They were too gross to be considered useful. I'm sure half of your team is riddled internally with diseases or lack of tastebuds by now."
"Christ," he muttered under his breath as he continued to drink. A snide remark of Darcy's upbringing made its way under the foamy hops on his tongue, but he washed it straight down. He didn't want to risk another heart-wrenching episode; he had felt so fucking useless…rather, he still did.
She had seemed to be reading his thoughts, for she swapped seats to sit in his lap. "I'm sorry about how I acted the other night. I know better…it was just a lot for me, in that moment, I guess. You don't have to worry about it happening again."
A loud gasp was exhaled as he finished his drink and set it down. His large hands curved in the dip of her thighs. "I don't want ya keepin' things from me if ya think I'm just goin' to leave you here."
"I won't," she promised. "But I'll be fine."
Cross leaned his head back to stare at her silently for a few minutes, until he finally belched and cracked his neck. "Let me take a shit, and we'll go."
Here he was, a two-hundred-year-old ghoul, with more kills under his belt and sins to his name that would make any man think twice about setting foot in his path. He was this side of the east coast's number one mercenary outfitter, long-term bounty hunter, and general fucking prick. Everyone in the Commonwealth who'd met him in person had something to say about his character, and none of them would have included the words of friendly or charmer. He'd risen from his own grave on sole wrath alone, survived becoming a glowing one, and had a dish of revenge he was going to serve straight fucking cold.
Here he was…grabbing another dusty box off a high shelf to put on the table.
"Ooh." Evelyn pulled out a Pre-War bonnet, shaking it into shape and smiling as she held it out for him to take.
"I ain't wearin' that," he groused.
"Oh, come on! Just for me! We're alone!" She waggled it with wide eyes and a pouty lip. "Please?"
Ugh. He took ahold of the hat and set it on his bald head. She immediately erupted into laughter, and he rolled his eyes.
Here he was, playing dress-up for his wife's sole entertainment.
"Oh my god! We have to take that back! I have to see what Charon looks like with it on!" she giggled, wiping tears from her eyes.
The merc mocked offense and moved his head away from her reach. "Mine now. Bastard can get his own."
It only made her laugh even harder, and her choppy breaths blew dust into the air as she resumed her snooping. Trinkets and odds and ends were assessed and placed into piles of either keep or not keep. The merc grumbled Hungarian under his breath as she added another book to the growing pile at her elbow.
He picked it up to turn it over. A Mariner's Guide to reading The Tide. "You're seriously goin' to read somethin' like this?"
She shrugged. "I take what I can get." Her eyes pointedly met his own, and she winked.
"Really scrapin' the bottom of the barrel then," he drawled, helping her load all the unnecessary junk into the duffel bag he was lugging around. "What do you do with all this crap?"
The tips of her fingers were splayed out on one palm, and she began to tick them off dramatically. "It's either to sell-"
"Ya don't need to scrounge for caps." Thankfully, his business left him loaded.
She continued. "-things I want to keep-"
His hand reached back inside and shook a Giddyup Buttercup leg at her. "Fuck you need this for?!"
The piece was carefully reset to its rightful place, and she finagled with the zipper in getting it to close, the seams bulging. "-and some things I don't find anywhere else. Pre-War stuff is pretty cool. I've read about so many things that don't exist anymore or didn't survive the bombs. I just sometimes feel like…I was left behind it all."
"I'm all the Pre-War ya need," he rasped.
Her head whipped up and she blew a hair from underneath her baseball cap, giving him her best smile. "Yeah. You are." If he had skin left, she would have noticed the blush in his cheeks, but she was left with his flustered scowl instead. "Don't be so grumpy. This is kinda fun, isn't it?"
"Got a weird definition for fun," he muttered, hoisting the bag with one hand. It was heavy. "Here, you carry this crap."
"Aww, really?" She sulked again, tapping her fingers together and giving him that cute fucking look.
He belted out an irritated sigh, looking to the ceiling under the brim of his bonnet still atop his head. "No."
"Okay!" she said cheerily, grabbing his free hand and moseying out of the condemned department store.
The sky was beginning to grow dark, and he retraced their steps back to the safehouse. Evelyn gasped, making him instinctively draw his gun.
"What?" He looked around, spying no threat lingering in the shadows.
"We forgot about the dishes!" She slapped a hand to her mouth and turned on her heel to wander back inside. "I think I saw some over by…"
She continued to blather as he harshly rubbed at his eyes. It didn't matter if it was pre-war or post-apocalypse, there was no escaping the grueling duties of being a husband trailing along on his wife's shopping excursion. Here he was, one of the most dangerous players in the Commonwealth, acting as a human shopping cart for all of his lover's incomprehensible scavenged things...all whilst wearing the stupid hat.