The lamp had been clicked on; the shade draped over it cast a lukewarm tone around the room. It was easy to distinguish the ferryman, even in the dim lighting. He was so much larger than others that it wasn't hard for him to swamp the entire atmosphere with his presence alone. The bed slightly dipped under his weight, making her prone to roll over on his side.

Evelyn watched him, silently. He was seated upright, the entire map of his broad back and muscled shoulders were left in plain view for her to study. She counted the exposed tips of vertebrae; traced the length of a deathclaw scar with her eyes. He had a book in one hand and quietly skimmed through its contents while his other was snaked around her calf, his thumb making small circles over an old, knotted mark on her skin from a bullet he himself had dug out.

For once, Cross was peacefully snoring in his sleep, and so she carefully removed his hand from her waist and wiggled to try and sit up. The movement turned Charon's head around, the novel slowly coming to a close.

"Did I wake you?" he rumbled in what was his comparison to a whisper.

"No, I just really need to pee." After she had escaped the stronghold of pillows and relieved herself, she waddled straight back to her designated place between them. "What are you reading? I thought you hated anything to do with books." She put on her best Charon scowl. "Waste of time."

He snorted with amusement and placed it to the side. "You had let it become a distraction."

"Well there isn't much else to do when you're traveling the wasteland," she huffed.

He looked thoughtful for a moment, revisited by his most recent adventures. "No…I suppose not." His hands picked up one of her swollen feet, and she immediately contented herself with being massaged.

"I can't believe I'm getting this from the same man who butted the end of his shotgun at my head to get up at an ungodly hour in the mornings," she mused as his strong fingers worked in between her toes.

"You complained of the heat in the afternoons."

"So what did that matter? You still made me walk until I felt like I was ready to die!"

"Your progress was slow," he rumbled while he massaged her heel. "We would have never caught up to him if you hadn't been faster."

She leaned her head back and blissfully sighed as he hit a tender spot. "I would have never gotten those huge blisters if I wasn't."

Charon remained silent for a moment, gently lowering her foot to begin again on the other.

"I had shown you how to wrap it."

"You threw wet, slimy, molerat skin at my face and told me to 'stop complaining, you are being dramatic'," she groveled in her best Charon impersonation. "You were so mean to me."

His hands slowly crept up her calf. "I was teaching you…and it worked."

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. "You were being a jerk."

A smile twitched on his face. He had been a lot stricter with her than he had with Adam…but she was also gritty, and cruel in her own way. She was able to handle it. "Thank you," he rasped out of the blue, and he met her quizzical stare as he lowered her leg to the bed. "For…that day."

"When?"

"In Megaton, when we first met."

A soft pfft blew from her lips, which then upturned into a smile. "Pretty sure I had to drag you along behind me. I honestly thought you were going to try and drown me when we had to swim across that stupid river. You were so pissed."

"I had warned you of the radiation risks- you did not listen. You were sick for three days."

"We had to cross!"

"No, you did not wish to travel through the metros."

"Well, sorry I didn't want to crawl down in the dark, scary endless maze full of ferals and God knows what else with a man I had just met!"

"There were only radroaches, at best…I had told you this."

"Even worse!" she whispered.

Charon had been so irritated and annoyed with her nearly every minute of every day. He hated the way she spoke casually with strangers, loathed the gambles she made when in combat, and absolutely despised how carefree and optimistic she was in general. Nothing could ever keep a smile from being on her face for too long, and her laugh was almost a second language.

It was so easy to fall in love with her, something he was beginning to understand that he had been for a very long time.

The ghoul laid down beside her with one arm behind his head. "When you touched yourself, what did you think of?" He watched her face grow so bright in color he could feel the heat radiating from it.

"How-how-?!" she began to gasp.

"You are not quiet…and you know I do not sleep."

"Then why the hell didn't you say anything?!"

"…you seemed less stressed afterward."

"Oh my God, Charon!I-I don't know-"

"Was any of it me?"

Now she spluttered and looked away. "M-maybe-" She quickly glanced back at the smug smirk he wore. "It's not like I was around anyone else all the time!"

He dropped his rasp to a husky whisper, leaning close to graze his mouth across her neck. "Tell me what I did to you."

She licked her lips; the confession felt like a nasty sin. She collected a wad of spit from her mouth to wet the tip of his dick with. A bead of precum glistened as she stroked him, and she quickly surfaced it around her palm and down his shaft.

"I'd actually imagine you jacking off to me," she admitted, the dirty secret now aired between them as she pumped her hand away. "I'd hear you saying my name and being so close to coming, breathing heavy and moaning."

She tightened her grip and began to stroke him faster, coming up once in a while to cup his tip and swirl her thumb across his slit and around his head. He groaned in her ear, grazing his teeth down her earlobe before lapping at her neck.

"I would always end up sucking your cock and letting you come on me."

He released her, a web of saliva drooling from his mouth down her skin. He grunted, hot and heavy. "Fuck."

Her other hand came up to cup around his jaw, and she squeezed down, hard. "Fucking come on me, big guy."

The bed squeaked as his hips began to thrust into her hand as his tip became cherry red, bursting forth a wave of white stripes to paint her with. It was so deliriously good; it was everything he had imagined when he had smelt of campfire smoke and tangy sweat while sitting under those stars.

Charon hadn't missed home; he had simply missed traveling with her. If she had come with him, explored every nook and cranny he presented her with, listened to her complaints and excited ramblings and light snoring around their campfires, maybe they would have never returned to Boston. Maybe they would have begun to form that relationship they had both secretly wanted from the very beginning.

They would be naked under their sleeping roll, him looking up at the stars with his arm behind his head and her squishing her breasts into his chest as she told stories and laughed at her own silly nonsense. He wouldn't have been afraid to wrap his arm around her waist at the bar, wouldn't have minded the nasty jeers or the open bigotry as he drunkenly kissed her neck after one too many beers. He would have told every and any man to fuck off if they made a move on her; openly declared that, yes, this pretty smoothskin swallowing his knob and fucking his mouth with her tongue was his.

He held her face and kissed her roughly, trying to move his mouth against her own out of sheer frustration for not being able to tell her how he felt, how he had felt for all that time.

The salty spray misted his face while the smell of the water and cry of the radgulls transported him back to that ferry ride to Port Stein. He kissed her for every note, every letter, and every word she had left behind for him in that journal. She did not want to die in that vault…but she had ensured that he would want to live.

"Knock knock," a raspy voice called in through the crack in the door. "Rise and shine."

Hancock's personal bodyguard begrudgingly untangled herself from her only good night's sleep, mouthed a cigarette, and trudged over to the door. Fahrenheit lit her smoke with a lighter as she widened the space in the doorway, granting the ghoul a good view of her goods.

"What?" she drawled in a less than humored tone.

"Ya always answer the door like that?" Hancock wistfully mused.

"Like you're one to talk," she said flatly.

"Touché. Actually, I need a word upstairs."

Fahrenheit blew a plume of smoke to the side. "Give me five minutes."

"Not with you…her." He pointed a finger past her shoulder to the shaven-head woman still asleep in bed. He raised his hands defensively at the instant smolder in her eyes. "Hey, look, you know it ain't like that. I just want a conversation…you know what I'm talking about."

"Five minutes," she repeated, and the door was closed in his face. With a heavy sigh, she came around the side of the bed and grabbed a handful of Lydia's ass, giving her a firm squeeze. "Wake up doll, your presence is being requested."

Lydia got to her elbows, sluggishly rubbing a fist at her eyes. "Cross?"

"Nah. Hancock needs to talk to you…probably about what happened."

Lydia rubbed a hand irately over her face, a mimicked trait from the old ghoul. "Shit." She began to reach for her clothes.

Within minutes, she was rubbing at her nipples that were perky from the cold and making her way up the stairs to Hancock's office. The door was left open, the ghoul in question seated on a couch with his own cigarette lingering smoke around the air.

Hancock turned his head and gave her an easy smile. "Close the door. 'ppreciate you coming up here."

For whatever reason, she was suddenly nervous. The doorknob clicked into place, effectively cutting off the rest of the world as it just left her and this ghoul she'd heard many stories about. She barely interacted with him personally, that had always been left to Cross and Charon...she had always been more interested in his bodyguard.

"Take a seat, take a load off," Hancock rasped as he kicked his feet up on a weathered and worn coffee table. Canisters, cans, and needles of various drugs were scattered about; more than a couple of empty beer bottles clanged together. "Ya want anything? Med-X, jet, we got some mentats lying around-?" Lydia crossed her arms, defensive, and he got the message. He tilted his tricorn hat back a few inches and stared at her. "No doubt you heard about Jolene."

She shrugged. "So? It was a bad deal."

"Okay, what I'm really trying to say is…why's he so hard on going after Sinjin? I cut you guys a deal on him before, and all I got was piss in the wind. He said he's done with the business…but he's out here busting heads and laying down the cards."

"Shouldn't you know? You're the one he talks to about it."

"Now ya see, talking is when two people have a mutual conversation…your old man? He doesn't talk. I think you know that." When she didn't say anything to refute it, he leaned his head back and thrummed his fingers against the backside of the couch. "His wife's having a baby, isn't she?"

Lydia's eyes widened, and he snapped his fingers at her surprised face, a wry grin coming to his mouth.

"See? You give it away right there. My advice? Work on that poker face. Now, the real question I have to ask…why would anyone give a shit over that? Think about it." He shuffled his feet back to the floorboards and reached for a few mentats to dissolve on his tongue. They rolled around inside his mouth while he still watched her gaping like a fish out of water. "Folks have kids all the time. So what, a ghoul can't be a family man too?"

"Get to the point," she hissed.

"Whoa, easy now, don't have to be so defensive over it. I don't want Fahr pissed at me." Hancock removed his hat and set it to the side. "It's his, isn't it?"

Lydia moved her feet, advancing towards him with a deathly glower. "What the hell is it that you want?!"

"This ain't that kind of conversation," Hancock said calmly. "I'm not going to stoop so far down low that I'd threaten a woman and her baby, hell, I'd congratulate him if I wasn't risking my neck over it. I still owe you guys from a few super mutant raids that would've kicked our asses…I'm just trying to get the whole picture together to keep my family safe."

"What, Goodneighbor?" she scoffed.

"Hey, it doesn't look like much, but it's home enough to some of us." He crunched down on a mentat, his black eyes seemingly looking right through her. "I hear enough whispers around this town, I listen to what the people have to say, and they're telling me, they're scared. Big, bad Sinjin is out roaming the Commonwealth, and no one can seem to find him. Cross ain't going to accept my help, not really, and we both know that...but he's going to need it. And he's going to need it real soon."

A delicious, sloppy blowjob was not the first thing Cross expected to wake up to. Her tongue wrapped around his balls while she squeezed his base with enough pressure to make him groan. He was still in a state of half-sleep, lazily thrusting himself in and out of her throat while he rasped delirious, lustful encouragements.

"God, just like that baby, suck that fuckin' cock, you're so fuckin' good," he whispered. She licked him clean from his balls to his tip, swallowing everything he had to give her and then some. "Okay, okay," he begged as violent tremors wracked through him. He had both his hands in her hair, and he pulled on her scalp. "God baby, stop."

There was a loud plop of her lips leaving his tip after a final suck, her hands running down his thighs with a wet kiss on his waistline "Good morning."

"Fuck," he breathed. He felt the bed shake as she rolled out with all the force of a tsunami. He hadn't had a wake-up blowjob in so long it was almost criminal. He sat up as she rifled through dresser drawers for the outfit of the day. "You want me to return the favor?"

"Charon wanted me to wake you up with the 'utmost urgency'," Evelyn drawled with little finger quotations. She tucked a light green gown over her head that billowed down around herself like a hot air balloon. "…I told him it could wait."

Cross snapped his head around to the clock on the nightstand. It was well after noon…the next day. "Shit." The ghoul sprang from bed and began to assemble his clothes. "Ya need anythin'? Some water, or-?" He shifted his pitch-black eyes to the side to catch her staring at his beltline. "What?"

Her hands planted around his lower abdomen, the touch eliciting an anticipated excitement from his dick. "Mine."

"You sure ya don't want me to…?" He broke out in a wolfish grin as she madly blushed.

Twenty minutes later, they finally left their room. Evelyn stopped him with a tug on his hand as she tilted his chin to the side.

"You still have some-" The merc wiped at the drool with a finger and licked it clean with a swipe of his tongue, making her grimace. "That is the most unnecessary and perverse thing. I was going to just get you a towel."

"Fuckin' difference does it make? You didn't say shit five minutes ago. All goes down the same."

She simply rolled her eyes and let go of his hand. "I sometimes wonder what it was I ever saw in you."

"Ouch." When she only walked along without him, he slowly sidled up beside her, a tinge of worry creeping through his words. "You don't really…do ya?"

She took the first step down the stairs, leaning on his arm for balance. "Do you know what your wife would love-?"

"No."

"You didn't even let me finish!"

"You've already asked, I already know, it's a no."

Evelyn removed herself from him when they reached the bottom. "I'm going to lose my fucking mind if I can't just take a walk somewhere other than the same place inside this fucking building!"

Cross grabbed her hands as they flew about like a conductor with no symphony. He pressed them to his mouth, took a deep, grumbled sigh, and spoke calmly. "I know you're gettin' stir crazy in here, but we can't."

"Everyone else gets to come and go as they please! I'm not even asking to go to a settlement, but just at least maybe down the avenue, fuck, just down the block."

"You want some air, you got the roof," he rasped firmly.

"I'm about to throw myself off of it!" she snapped, now caught in her own stormy ire as she wrenched her hands back to her sides.

This had been the start of the entire landslide of troubles. Once a small pebble rolling down a hill, was now evolved into a cascading avalanche that always seemed to erupt at any given time. It had led to bigger, and much nastier conversations with words spat out that neither honestly meant…but with no pleasurable aftercare to make amends for it, neither really knew.

Cross shook his head and bit his tongue before he could say something he really would regret. The image of Jolene's crushed skull was still fresh on his mind; still bloodied on his hands. His wife had been so attentive to his needs last night after his raging fit, and now she was seeping irritation right back into it.

"I know you're just protecting me, but this is getting extreme," she continued as he turned to the side so he didn't have to see her imploring face. She held so much more sway over him than she actually knew- it took a lot of willpower for him to deny it. "You can't keep me and the baby locked away forever. We're going to have to go back outside at some point."

No. If he had his way, she never would. It's what kept her safe.

"I'll…" He sighed and looked towards the elevator. "I'll think about it."

A complete fib, but it pulled off when she wrapped her arms around his middle and squeezed, a bright smile illuminating her face. "Really?!"

"Yeah…just let me take care of business first, alright?" he couldn't help but grumble sourly. He hated deceiving her, but it gave him time to think of a better excuse.

"Don't take too long, I'm going to make lunch." She pulled his face down for a sugary kiss on his cheek, and then tottered towards the kitchen to prepare some godawful creation.

He absentmindedly felt the spot where she had kissed him with such tender affection, a pang of guilt beginning to harbor inside his chest.

Is it yours?

All at once, it was swept away like a scattering of ashes in the wind. He started for the elevator, a renewed surge of boiling anger flowing through him.

He would keep her safe, no matter the cost.

A ratty curtain was pulled back for a few seconds, a barking screech becoming his wake-up call. "Hey! Boss says to get the hell up! He's got a job for you!"

Massive limbs and a sizeable physique began to move about on the large bed frame, the metal springs creaking under the shifting weight. Roman sat upright amidst the two smoothskin women who were unbothered by the noise. He turned his head to the window; it was daybreak.

The ghoul took a piss before clipping on his full gear and stowing a few weapons in their respective holsters. One woman finally stirred at the commotion, and she half-drunkenly looked around with her messy reddish hair obscuring half her face.

"Fucking time is it?" she whispered in a daze.

"Early," Roman answered as he laced up his boots. "Go back to sleep."

"You coming back to bed?"

"No."

She watched him for a moment, and then fell back into a tangled mess with the other woman beside her. Roman left his room and proceeded down a rickety walkway composed of rotting floorboards and fraying rope.

The settlement they had been camping out near the outskirts of the Glowing Sea would perhaps be abandoned in the coming weeks. Between the hired mercenaries, the small bands of Minutemen, and the occasional spy (that somehow always alluded them), they were continuously forced to remain on the move; vacating one foothold for another, disbanding an operation somewhere else to upkeep progress on the others.

If Sinjin was going to send him, then he must have finally lost his patience. Sinjin was getting too desperate.

No, he was getting too obsessed.

An ominous green haze lingered throughout the compound; the wash from the radioactive deadlands slowly ebbing over them throughout the day.

"About time you got your ass up," Sinjin hissed as he stepped inside their makeshift wardroom. He stood up straight from poring over his map on the table, giving everyone else a nasty sneer. "Get out."

No one made a sound, they all simply shuffled out under the tattered sheets used as doorways. It had been made crystal clear to the others to not defy his orders, not even for a good reason. If their numbers weren't dwindling due to outside factors, then it was always from cleaning house.

Sinjin stabbed a finger at the marker Goodnieghbor. "He's got to have heard about it by now. Jolene would've sung like a fucking canary for him."

Yes. The entire reason she was even sent to find him. Their past history and connections would have made it easy for her to get a trusted audience with the former mercenary leader, to drop her guard and think she was divulging secret information. It did not matter whether or not she lived through the experience, all that mattered was that Cross knew.

"He'll come looking for me himself now, he fucking has to," Sinjin rasped with an almost desperate tinge.

"And if he does not?"

Sinjin's mad craze snuffed itself from his eyes, his aura cold and sober. "You're going to fucking make sure he does."