"Sometimes too much drink is barely enough." - Mark Twain
When Craig turns nine, he and Bethany have been homeless for nearly three months. Their only saving grace is the sickness that wracks his thin frame with chills, and a wet cough that worsens as the day drags on.
He wheezes as they leave the ruins of an old diner behind with their rucksacks full of junk. The sun is three-quarters of the way gone and he hasn't complained yet. But every bit of dust they kick up makes his throat itch and his coughs won't let him catch his breath anymore. When he pukes after the next bout hits him and Beth yells at him, he knows why. Food is scarce and he'd just wasted half a can of Cram on the side of the road.
His fever dreams are of radscorpions that night, the heavy rattling in his chest haunting him. When he wakes, he's given something that coats his tongue before it knocks him out again, taking him back to the scorpions that continue to stalk him.
But he wakes up in a warm bed, so it's almost worth it. Especially when the Followers hand him food as soon as he feels up to it. Which is almost immediately in his state.
And Beth hugs him when she finds him awake, too. Really squeezes him, and the best part is it doesn't feel forced. She doesn't nearly smother him in her rough grip because she's trying to make up for something for once. Even if it is his birthday.
"That was two days ago, dumbass."
He grins at her response and continues scarfing down his Blamco before it gets cold and chewy. His stomach isn't eating itself and Beth is back to being his asshole sister. For now, all is right in his world again.
1.16.2283
When he stirs he doesn't recognize where, but the sharp scent of abraxo and a tang of sour liquor wafts towards him. His eyelids burn in the faint light and when he opens them, he's stretched out on a lumpy mattress with a sloped roof overhead. An attic, by the looks of it.
Indoors this time, at least.
Boone roots around blindly for the bottle jabbing his kidney and lifts it up to the light to find the amber nearly gone. The lid is missing and he grimaces at the dampness on the back of his shirt and the mattress, the spilled liquor a fucking waste. His throat is parched, his mouth bitter tasting and the morning is frigid, making his sinuses sting. Rubbing gritty eyes, he sits up, letting out a cough that rattles his lungs.
Low voices are coming from downstairs and someone's left a dented bucket steaming with hot water next to the mattress along with a bar of soap and a threadbare towel. He attempts to get his bearings but last night is murky at best. Failing at that, he finally pulls the faded quilt off to wash up.
He takes the steps down the rickety stairwell carefully and spots the stuffed brahmin head mounted center stage above the bar, dozens of colored bottles shelved underneath it.
The Dry Canal Saloon in the outskirts of New Reno had been run by a shifty prospector who'd come across a wayward shipment of Jet on its way south to other NCR states. He'd gotten the idea to sell it alongside his watered down liquor, maybe grow some of his clientele in the process. Boone had put a stop to that pretty quickly. The Families were jealous guardians of all the vices Reno had to offer and they kept a tight rein on any and all drug business near the area.
When Boone had painted the wall with his brains, he'd found the deed to the bar on the man's person and sat on it for a good solid month before Joana finally convinced him to open the bar up again. No one had come to claim it during the time it was closed.
It was a good source of caps. He'd just never slept under its roof before.
Boone takes in the familiar eyesore and the recognizable face standing behind the counter and some of the previous night comes back to him, trickling in and absorbed like rainfall on cracked earth. He'd just gotten back last night.
Thoughts tumble in his stagnant mind; he hadn't quite failed his last job but had found his objective nearly dead before he was able to get to her. He didn't think the Van Graff's had leaked this job out to someone else. Why do that, when they had already paid him the first half upfront?
So his suspicions remained the same, a wide net with nothing new caught in it.
He settles on a stool as Joana finishes her conversation with the two people already tucking into their plates. The place is empty otherwise, the morning not bringing in many customers.
"Good morning sugar. I've got some lurk eggs with cactus and jalapenos on the menu. Let me plate some up for you."
She hadn't lost her Vegas veneer, setting a freshly poured beer in front of him with a smile. The ex-prostitute had left the Strip with Carlitos and ended up single and bartending in Reno, not six months after. Win-win, she had remarked with a wink upon their first meeting, somehow recognizing him when she'd found him at the bar she worked in. Boone ran his operation just fine on his own but found himself back at that stool more and more as the months went on. She had become a good source of information when he was in town.
Boone shakes his head, takes a long swallow of the beer. It's grainy and thick enough fill his stomach. "Where's my pack?"
"I took out your clothes and they're drying out back. You sure you're not hungry? You didn't eat anything last night." Her eyes are questioning, but he drinks what he has in front of him before he pushes away from the bar with a muttered 'no'.
The plumbing was faulty this far from the city proper and there are outhouses instead of indoor toilets. He empties his bladder in one of them, mind drifting as the cold air does its job to wake him fully. Hanging on the line, his pants are still damp but the shirts are almost dry. He pulls off the one he's wearing and drops it in the washbasin, works on situating himself with the current day as he stares at the snow-capped mountains in the distance, still not used to the sight. He'd grown up too far south to see snow before.
"Boone?" Joana stops when she sees that he's still shirtless but doesn't turn away as he pulls a clean one on. "Look, I know you just got back from a job, but I have something that might interest you."
"Those two inside?"
"Yeah. They have an issue with their landlord. He's more of a slum lord, and they're being robbed every month, their building is falling apart-"
"How much?" he interrupts.
Joana fidgets. "Well, they just paid their rent so they're a bit short of your usual..."
"I don't work for free, Jo."
"I know. But if you hear them out-"
"They either have the caps or they don't." It was simple and it kept him out of these types of situations.
But Joana was starting to make his life as 'not simple' as possible since he brought her on board. "I'll take a cut in my pay-"
"It's not how this works."
"Why?" And she's angry now, eyes flashing. "Caps are caps, right? Doesn't matter where they come from."
"It does when I'm paying them out."
"They need help, Boone. I thought that's why you were doing this-"
"I'm not the law, Joana. Let the NCR handle their shit." He begins to feel a headache behind his eye sockets.
Her eyes narrow now, two bright spots of red on her cheeks but she says nothing for a minute. When she finally does, her tone is tight, "When I came to work for you, I thought you were doing this like the Courier -"
"Don't."
"- the way you both did when you were in Vegas. You helped people then. You two helped me when I nearly died - when everyone else would have just written me off as some junkie on the way out. And now you're telling me that you're not going to help these families because they don't have the caps to pay for it?"
"Jackpot." He is calm to her growing temper, as unmoved as a brick chimney. He wants to shut the door on this conversation and any future of its kind. "You think no one got paid to do what we did back then? That she did it out of the goodness of her heart?" He feels the bitterness in his stomach, the bile churning. "Didn't think prostitutes were this naive."
Her eyes are still bright but burning with something else now. He continues staring her down, waiting.
When she has no response, she turns and heads back inside.
He isn't surprised when she doesn't speak to him for the rest of the day.
Boone takes advantage of the empty morning to renew the wood stores that were running low. He really needed to hire someone to help at the saloon. Someone needed to replace the 'C' on the front sign. It was only funny until the customers started harassing Joana about it.
At some point, Joana breaks her silence long enough to remind him he needs to pay the feed guy if he doesn't want the Bighorners to go hungry through the rest of the winter. The two he originally started with would become three soon and they wouldn't make it on grazing alone outside that little shack he called a home by the foothills.
He finally locks himself in the tiny office in the back, reaches under the loose floorboards to get his cap stash and his scattered sheets of responsibility and begins dividing the caps into separate piles.
When he emerges, he lifts a hand before Joana can open her mouth and gestures at the neat piles on the table behind him.
"Instructions are there. So's an advance on your pay and some extra. Might not be back for a while." Or ever, but there's no need to voice it.
She nods quickly, expression worried but she doesn't say anything, for which he is relieved. He shoulders his rucksack and his weapons. Hangs around awkwardly as she gazes at him.
"Are you still seeing that guy you told me about? You should stay with him for a while. Maybe a few weeks." He hesitates but decides he needs to be honest if he wants her to listen. "Trouble might be following me."
She studies him, pursing her lips before she nods. "I'll keep things in order until you come back. Be safe."
Safe is the last thing on his mind. Prepared is more like it.
"Also, Boone? You might wanna shave if you're meeting with Tiaret. She's not a fan of facial hair."
He smirks, decides it's another way to tempt fate today.
The Gold Dust is in West Side, in what used to be Salvatore territory. The balance of power had shifted in New Reno, not just with the Families in the last few decades, but also with the NCR's tenuous hold on the territory. It was evident with the announcement he'd listened to in Junktown and all the dissatisfied citizens he'd heard since then. Kimball's popularity had eroded and was on a downhill slide. Oliver's resignation had only opened the floodgates.
He arrives at the casino, the bar humming with activity. He gives the bartender his name and the man signals towards the back, to a figure standing guard near a closed door. The muscle gestures for him to take a seat at the table nearby and a beer is set down in front of him without him having to ask.
Joana's comment comes to mind as Boone takes his first sip.
The Van Graff muscle was a kid still. Tall, sure – a strapping six-foot-five, but with a roundness about the jaw that spoke more to Boone than the sudden growth spurt did. He held his laser rifle with practiced ease, but his grip on the weapon was loose, relaxed. It made the sniper's fingers twitch and he was tempted to take it from him, the sloppiness needing immediate correction. But he didn't entertain the thought for long. He was probably a nephew if Boone were to guess, no doubt following in the Van Graff tradition of indoctrinating family into the growing business.
Or maybe a grandson, Boone corrects mentally, as the Van Graff matriarch makes her way across the dimly lit bar to his table near the back. He never approached their establishments unless they called him. If he wanted to drink, he did so at the small bars where getting kicked out wouldn't cost him future employment.
Tiaret was dressed is a set of leather armor that fit her well. She could put younger women to shame.
The image of a woman slowly turning purple with poison in her veins stutters across his mind and he takes another long swallow of his beer, pushing it back.
"Mr. Boone, how nice to see you in good spirits."
Boone's expression hasn't changed since he arrived, but he stands as he'd been taught. She doesn't sit, just curls a finger for him to follow as the boy opens the door to a back room.
She pours herself a drink from the decanter on one side of the lounge they enter and settles herself in a red chaise, the material looking almost whole except for a few cigarette burns he could spy from where he sits across from her.
The muscle remains behind him and Boone's not offered a drink, so he knows she's ready to get down to business.
"How many jobs would you say you've done for us?" Tiaret asks, offering him a cigarette from the little metal case she brings out.
"A dozen, now." He takes one, lights her up before he takes a puff, pretends he is completely at ease as his anticipation mounts. He's not sure what to expect here, had almost assumed he'd be escorted to Golgotha when he first stepped on Virgin Street.
"That's right... it started with that King on the Strip."
It had. He had left the Mojave and returned to the region four months after with Pacer in his sights. It had been a quick in and out, and even though he'd seen Cass near the King when he did it, he was sure she hadn't seen him.
"You have shown us loyalty. We appreciate that. Tiaret's dark eyes eat up his every detail and he feels like prey in her gaze. "We have another job for you."
Boone smokes idly, mostly as a means to have something to do with his hands. The less he says, the better. She hands over a folded sheet, one he doesn't look at yet.
"It's a fetch and retrieve job."
"I think I made it clear in the beginning. I don't do any slaving," he mutters but she laughs, a tinkling sound that is pleasant to the ears. He could see some of who she had been when she was younger in that mirth, in her expression.
"There is no slaving, I assure you. I just need you to bring my guests to me. I think you will be able to persuade them where no one else could." She takes a sip of her drink, continues smiling at him.
He finally looks at the paper.
Return to sender. Room and board in Westside.
Courier Six & Infant
He frowns. "What infant?"
Tiaret's smile is venomous. "Hers, Mr. Boone."