Games We Play: Waiting

Notes: Everything belongs to Bethesda and Obsidian, I'm just playing with their toys.


waiting

verb (used without object)

to remain inactive or in a state of repose, as until something expected happens (often followed by for, till, or until)

Deacon is very good at waiting. Well, he should be - he's not even sure how much time he's spent waiting for one thing or another. He must've spent three years waiting for Charmer to wake up, and that's just the time he spent on the ridge overlooking Vault 111, fending off mole rats and living off Cram and Blamco Mac 'n' Cheez. It doesn't take into account the time he spent searching and wondering, all the dead ends and blind alleys he turned down before he found the vault at the top of the hill.

It's been three days since they left Bunker Hill. They spent one day on the road, then another resupplying and resting at HQ before they headed back out again, this time towards Covenant to see which of the rumors about the place are true. The sun is blinding but the wind cuts when it blows; the day looks warmer than it is.

Charmer has no skill for waiting; it's no surprise, really, given that she was asleep for two hundred years. She's impatient on the road, distracted. She keeps checking her Pip-Boy with a frown. It's making him anxious, which in turn makes him grumpy. He wishes she would just chill.

"It's not right around the corner, you know," he tells her when they stop to take a drink of water. She just frowns at him, which is typical these days. She's been more than a little distant since that night in Bunker Hill. He wants to tell her more, to explain himself, but the voice in his head that keeps him out of trouble keeping telling him: wait it out. She'll get over it. She always does.

She trusts him. Despite everything, she somehow still trusts him.

Deacon can be patient.

At his insistence, they give Bunker Hill a wide berth, traveling to the south along the river and taking the long way around Cambridge, following the road towards Sanctuary Hills. It'll mean spending two nights on the road instead of one, but in the competition between efficiency and the chance of someone recognizing them, he'd rather lose time.

Well, recognize her at any rate. Whatever she said, he still refuses to believe he's that easy to pick out of a crowd. She's always been better at picking him out than the average joe.

The first night is much the same; she keeps to herself, checking her Pip-Boy every so often with a frown, and then goes to bed early. The next day, though, the frost seems to have receded, and by the time they arrive at Mercer Safehouse, they've fallen into step together again.

Clover's on guard duty when they walk up; despite the raider-style cage armor she wears, he can tell because of her signature golden hair gleaming in the sun. She looks down at them casually from atop the guard tower and lazily asks in her drawl, "Do ya'll have a geiger counter?"

It's funny sometimes, being asked these questions by people he knows well, people he trained himself. Still, he's glad to see someone taking his precautions seriously.

When he answers with the usual counter-sign, the gate swings open and Clover winks at them, one green eye sparkling as she says, "Welcome back, Deacon. Charmer," she nods at the other woman.

"Hi again," Charmer gives her a terse smile and heads inside. Deacon watches her go, then bars the gate behind them and heads up the guardtower to sit with Clover.

"Trouble in paradise?" The blonde gives him a flirtatious smile. It's been almost two years since that night, but she hasn't given up trying for a repeat performance, he mulls as he offers her a cigarette. He lights hers, then his own, as he thinks about how to answer.

"You know me," he says, smiling around his own cigarette. "Making friends everywhere I go."

Clover laughs in that way that got him into trouble last time, deep-throated with her head tossed back.

"It's nice to see you again." When she says it, it sounds sincere.

"We're just here for the one night," he says by way of explanation. It does nothing to stop the long narrow fingers she's walking up his leg. This girl's an open book. Too easy to read, like one of those large-print books he found on that trip he took to the library a few years back.

"Of course," she turns to blow her smoke out over the gate, and Deacon is glad to have her eyes elsewhere for a moment. It gives him all the time he needs to stand and shake her off.

"I'd better head down, start dinner."

"You're cooking for us tonight?" This comes from below; looks like Jackpot snuck up on them. Deacon wonders briefly what the old man saw, but he's inscrutable as always. He's always liked that about the old gambler; he's hard to read.

"Yeah, you know, we picked up some mirelurk and thought we'd have a boil." He stretches and picks up his pack again. "I think Charmer brought some wine. Figured we could have a little New Year's party."

Jackpot grins in that way he has, with the edges of his eyes creased. "I knew I liked that girl."

"Figured you'd feel that way." Deacon climbs down the ladder and heads inside.


He breaks his own rules for one night; it is a party, after all, and somehow Deacon knows that with Charmer around he won't find himself crawling into Clover's bed again. Against his own better judgment, he trusts her to keep him from doing something stupid like that.

So he has a glass of wine, and then another; his feet and fingers finally grow warm with the help of a mild red. They turn the radio up and take turns on watch duty. Jackpot insists on dancing with each of the "ladies" as he calls them, shimmying with Clover to "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and giving Calavera a turn to "Keep a-Knockin'". He even lures Charmer into a dance during "Sixty Minute Man," which Deacon files away for future ammunition. She moves well, though - maybe all the musicals she performed in paid off.

He sits in a corner with D9-45, who prefers to go by Jerome, and Pinocchio and the runner who showed up halfway through dinner, Hermes. The four of them play spades and bridge and any other card game they can think of, although as the others get more and more drunk, they disperse over time and start towards their beds. It must be nearing midnight when they draw straws for guard duty. Calavera tells the rest of them to fuck off, gives them all a black look, and takes her place to finish watch for the rest of the night.

Sometime after that, Clover gives him a look from across the room, wine bottle in hand. Deacon thinks about it for a moment, then shakes his head at her. With a shrug, she grabs Jackpot's hand and guides him upstairs.

It's nice to know the old man's getting lucky, Deacon reflects as he adds a couple more logs to the fire. It's still cold in here, no matter what he does.

He's starting to come down from his good mood when the couch shifts under added weight; Charmer settles next to him on the loveseat, close enough that their legs touch. It feels friendly; companionable. When he looks at her eyes, it's clear she's had more to drink than he realized. She looks both sleepy and wired, a cool feat.

"How're you doin' there, buddy?" He watches her as she pulls apart another Mirelurk claw and delicately picks the meat out. One thing you can say about her - she handles her alcohol well.

She lets out a burp, followed by a giggle.

Well, maybe not always.

"Do you know," she begins when she settles down, "that this was my anniversary? Two hundred and ten years ago, I would've been married for three years."

Fuck. That's probably why she's been so weird. It didn't have anything to do with him, and he's a selfish asshole for thinking it did. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

His brain flits for a moment to the sight of her in the cryo pod, icicles in her hair, her face frozen in anger and terror. The glitter of the frost on her eye. He only went inside the vault that one time. No one else stood out, but somehow he'd been drawn to her pod. He'd known even before he checked the records that she was Shaun's mother.

He can't think of that now. He tries to focus, but it turns out that when you don't drink, two cups of wine is a lot. He's struggling and hate this feeling.

"No, I didn't." He's scrambling. He has to keep her talking. "How'd you meet him?"

A wistful smile crosses her face. "It's so silly. It's not even a good story," she laughs.

"Go on." Now he's curious. With everything he learned about her before he ever even met her, it's not like there's a record of this anywhere.

Charmer sets the claw delicately on the end table, giving up on it as too much work. She pours herself a little more wine and offers him the bottle. Deacon means to shake his head, but somehow ends up nodding, and she pours the last couple ounces into the coffee mug he forgot he was holding.

"We lived in the same building. I was in 537 and he was two floors below me in 357. I ordered something and it got mis-delivered. He brought it down." She laughs again and takes a sip of her drink. "I guess you could say it was love at first sight."

Not for the first time, Barbara flits through his mind again. It's hard to believe it's been twenty-five years since they met. Were her eyes blue or green? He can't remember.

"I think that sounds like a nice story." It may be the first completely honest thing he's ever said to her.

Charmer turns and looks at him. There's something in the crooked way she smiles that makes him want to hug her, but instead he takes a sip of his drink. Upstairs there's a loud thump and a giggle from Clover, followed by rumbling baritone murmurs that must be Jackpot.

"Sounds like they're having fun," Charmer laughs.

Deacon nods.

"Tell me about your wife."

"She...well." He tries to think of something he feels comfortable sharing with someone else. It's hard enough admitting that she existed. He doesn't dare get too close to what happened to her. He's been skating around that forever and still can't quite process it.

Charmer's still looking at him, but for the first time since they met, she doesn't seem like she's trying to figure him out. There's something in her eyes that makes him feel safe.

"She loved old movies. I got a projector, and whenever we found an intact holotape, we'd try watching it. Her favorite was The Maltese Falcon. Mysteries were her favorites. She wanted to try to figure out the answers before the detective did." He tries not to think of the way she cried when the holotape wore out, of the way he promised he'd find her another copy. It had been just a couple weeks later that everything went to hell. Another promise broken.

"You really loved her."

"Well, yeah." The word is swallowed when he takes another sip of his wine. It's salty. Why is that?

Deacon touches his cheek and realizes that he's started crying. When did that happen? He scrubs his cheek under the sunglasses, for once not worrying if he looks cool.

"I get that," Charmer says without further explanation. In the other room, Pinocchio lets out a loud snore.

"It's been...a really long time. I miss her." Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Charmer nod, then take another sip out of her water glass.

"Why Deacon?" It's hard following the wild twists and turns of her thoughts, but this is definitely a safer topic.

"I used to have another name, back when I had another face. But I liked the meaning of it. I'm both a servant and a messenger."

"Everything's a joke to you, isn't it?" She laughs, even though none of it's particularly funny. He turns to ask her why she's laughing, but the question never leaves his lips because instead, she's kissing him.

It's surprisingly chaste. Her lips are softer than he would have thought, if he'd stopped to consider it. They're warm and tender, lightly flavored with tobacco and wine. Her tongue is tentative, querying at his own bottom lip, and he opens his mouth more to let her in; there's a sudden surge of adrenaline that ripples from his brain to his extremities, and he wants to reach out to her, to grab her arms and feel her body against his.

Instead she pulls away and smiles lazily at him. She laughs, running a hand through her hair.

"I should get to bed." She's gone before he can figure out what happened, around the corner with a shuffling gait that shows him how much she's really had to drink. He's left on the couch, a half-drunk mug of wine in his hand and a score of new questions he's not sure he'll ever have answers to cluttering his brain.