Here we go, here's a longer one. Little bit of teasing in here, we'll start to see why this is rated M here in a bit...
Nate woke up to Hancock's head on his shoulder. The ghoul had fallen asleep with his shotgun in his lap and probably had the intent of remaining awake for more of the afternoon and night even, but at some point sleep had taken over and now his head was hung close to Nate's throat. He smiled a little and slowly moved his arm so that it would slide behind the smaller man and wrap around him. Hancock stirred and opened his black eyes just enough to give Nate the 'you disturbed my slumber' stare.
"Go back to sleep, it's fine," Nate said. He'd slept for longer than he should have, he could already feel the headache coming on. He couldn't be sure why he'd slept for so long, it probably had to do with how back the burns had been. Your body does heal best while you're asleep. He frowned and pulled the collar of his shirt to the side to see the shoulder Hancock was leaning against. Even after the stimpak the scar was gnarly. He didn't even want to know what it had looked like before healing. He might not have the ability to use his arm if Hancock hadn't worked so fast.
Suddenly he remembered Madelyn. Why was she so easily forgotten? Probably because unless she and Hancock were at each other's throats she was quiet. Even now she was asleep in a ball on a chair, sleeping quietly, taking up almost no room and not making a noise. He needed to get a plan together: what she knew, what she needed to know, and what she wanted to learn.
Something touched Nate's leg. He looked down to see Hancock's hand gliding over the fatigues from his knee up toward his torso with a slight pull toward the space between his thighs, then back down. "John," he warned, his voice soft but it held a bit of protest.
"Hush," the ghoul whispered, the word was barely a breath. Then he tilted his head toward Madelyn's sleeping form some ten feet away. Nate met his stare with a disapproving one, but Hancock's grew into a smile. His hand drifted to the fatigues' zipper where he slowly drew it down, and then up again. Nate watched, noting the bulge under the fabric growing quickly.
He grabbed Hancock's hand and held it up. "Not now," he whispered in the ghoul's ear, pressing his forehead against his temple.
"You really know how to torture a guy, don't you?" Hancock sighed and leaned away. "I'll be right back," he added and stood, grabbing his hat and leaving. Nate knew that he was probably going to pop a couple of mentats and smoke. In their time together he'd gotten to weaning the ghoul off the drugs, but sometimes he just had to let him do it. To be perfectly honest, Nate didn't know why it bothered him so much. The drugs probably weren't going to kill him, but it seemed like the habit alone was what upset him. With a sigh, he grabbed his sniper rifle from his duffle bag and started taking it apart to clean it.
"So, how was the journey, General?" Preston's too cheery question summoned a groan from Nate. He rubbed his forehead and then ran his hands through his thick, black hair.
"Do you really want to know?" he asked the Minuteman soldier. Preston was young, and as faithful to the Minutemen as Elder Maxson was to the Brotherhood. This got him respect, but it also gave him an annoying edge. Nate had only recently learned that Maxson was celebrating his twenty-first birthday this year, and that surprised him. Preston was going on twenty-three and showed it. Even now he was standing with a relaxed posture, his laser rifle's butt next to his boot as he replied his concern for his General's feelings. Maxson had been raised for his position, and that is where they differ. While Maxson was younger than most of those whom he ordered, his entire upbringing was for that, so that he could do the best possible. Preston had joined the Minutemen and was forced into being the last by circumstance; this didn't give him the same wise-beyond-his-years experience that Maxson had.
"Of course I want to know."
"It wasn't boring," Nate breathed, stepping around Preston to go to his quarters. Once he reached his room he looked back at Preston who sat his rifle on the ground, leaning it against the wall by the door. Nate took off his burnt brotherhood blouse and folded it, setting it on top of the dresser he stood in front of. A dirty mirror sitting there caught his attention. He'd not noticed it before, maybe someone had put it in here while he was gone; that's been known to happen. Either way, he looked at himself in the mirror, meeting his own blue eyes, pale and slightly hazy. Above them were thick black eyebrows and below them were sun-kissed cheeks littered with freckles. He needed to shave, the stubble he normally sported had grown into something more fierce, and gave him an age he wasn't ready to claim. Looking away from the mirror he turned back to Preston and pulled the leather tie he was using to hold his hair back. As he spoke he brushed back his hair, trying to smooth it down. "As I was leaving the Prydwen I was assigned Squire Madelyn Dangerfield as a permanent squire until I or Elder Maxson see her fit for Initiate Status," he started, then went on to explain the events of the trip.
Preston was a good listener, he didn't interrupt, and always looked engaged in the conversation. Even as Nate moved around the room, changing into the General Uniform that he was expected to wear while around the Minutemen. He'd worn it once to the Prywen and had gotten plenty of stares. Maxson thought it gave the impression of mixed loyalties and that it shouldn't happen again, but he didn't tell Nate he couldn't continue to be the General of the Minutemen. The Elder had earned some respect for that.
Nate recounted how more than once Madelyn had pulled her knife on Hancock, but it seemed to significantly decrease as the journey wore on. Hancock had had just too much fun with the squire, using her feelings against her by pretending one night to go feral, and woke her up by gently chewing on her arm. That, of course, had earned him a well-deserved fist to the eye socket. Nate hadn't come to his aid on that one and the ghoul still sported the black eye. Preston had thought that part was funny, laughing gently as he leaned against a wall, putting Nate at ease. He forgot sometimes how nice it was to just talk to people. Hancock was great, but he always had something witty to say, and it was needed sometimes, and other times, Nate just wanted to be heard. As inconvenient as Preston was sometimes, there was a reason that Nate called him friend.
As Nate adjusted his chest plate and grabbed his coat he finished the story, "… and Madelyn just won't accept calling me anything but 'the Sentinel'. I mean, I understand I'm that, but I'm also just… Nate." He turned around, looking at Preston who nodded his understanding and grabbed the General's hat. Nate took it and thanked him. "So, what is it that you needed of me?"
Preston's smile faded. "Actually, it's Sanctuary…"
Suddenly Nate's heart stopped. "What happened?"
"We've received word that Mama's not doing too good, she's asking for you, I didn't think I should tell you over the radio, it didn't feel right for everyone to has a radio to be able to hear…" he frowned and Nate's face twisted.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"You needed to talk, Nate," he frowned at the larger man, then rested his hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure she'll be fine, she just wants to see you. You haven't been out to Sanctuary in a while." Nate felt a swelling pang of guilt fester in his chest. He wouldn't put it passed Mama to fake an illness to get him out there if it meant she got to see him, she had, in fact, done that before.
"Thank you, Preston." The Minuteman soldier left and Nate turned to look at himself in the small mirror. At this angle he could see most of his torso all the way up to his hat. He wondered what Nora would think of him dressed like this, what she would think of everything he'd done. He couldn't fool himself into thinking she would be proud of everything, but he comforted himself with the knowledge that she would have loved him anyway.
As if he had known just what Nate needed, Hancock came up behind him in the mirror and grinned. "Breaking out the General duds, must be serious." The ghoul stepped up to him and rested his elbow on his shoulder, the action didn't look the least bit comfortable, but it made Nate smile which was the man's goal. "Where are we off to?"
"Sanctuary, Mama is sick," he answered, turning toward the smaller man.
Hancock always held his slender frame in a laid back way that drove Nate crazy. It was unfair how easy it was for him to warm Nate up and change any mood he was in. When he had married Nora he had felt a strong love for her. Prewar, everyone was worried about each other's business and they had very important images to live up to. Two men (or two women) could have been married, but no one wanted to live, shop, eat, or be around an openly homosexual couple, so most of the time those relationships were kept secret. A thirty year old, attractive bachelor (or bachelorette) called a lot of unnecessary attention, though, so it wasn't uncommon for them to get married to someone whose presence they actually enjoyed and secretly visit their lover.
Nate had live with two parents that had not only been very traditional, but were also not the least bit understanding. So it made sense that when he had told his mother that he thought a boy on his baseball team was cute that her reaction had convinced him that he was just misunderstanding his feelings. She told him that he was human, so he could tell the difference between people who were attractive and people who weren't, that didn't mean that you liked them. She promised him that girls would be more interesting to him as he got older. That didn't really happen though, because as girls became more interesting, so did boys. He felt the same toward them both, finding it easier to tell who he liked more when he would get to know them. He ended up never dating anyone because only girls whose personalities he didn't like were interested in him that way. And the one time he had told a friend of his that he was interested in the pitcher of his team, that friend told him he should never bring that up again.
Nate was an only child because of a mistake in his birth, which he later found out to be the reasoning behind a lot of his parents' marital unhappiness. A Nurse Handy had glitched while pulling him out via cesarean section, and destroyed his mother's uterus. He had never gotten any more details than that because she would always cry, so by the time he could actually understand everything he'd figured there was no point in asking for clarification. Since he was an only child, he had spent his free time with friends, of which he had too many to ever really call one 'best'. He spent as little time at home as he could, since his father would spend all his time at home on the TV and his mother would help the Mr. Handy they owned clean the house despite Cenric's direct requests of her not to. Looking back, he noticed just how much she hated that robot, and just how much she actually hated her husband.
Nate never thought marriage was for those who wanted to be outstandingly happy. He learned from his parents that it was more of an arrangement, and it was only made better if you actually tolerated the person you were with. So he got it in his head that he was going to marry a woman he liked enough to want to come home to every day, and when he met Nora, she seemed perfect.
He met her at the café he would later ask her to marry him in. She worked as a waitress and was several years younger than him. She was trying to pay off loans for law school, and he was on leave. Before going home for leave Sumner (a soldier in Nate's unit) had shared with Nate that he was planning on finding a pretty girl to call wife so people stopped thinking him queer. At this point in his life he had been called names, but he had always played it off. Sure, he liked girls, they made him happy, but so did men. He and Sumner had a lot in common, and Sumner had been relieved to find out that Nate shared similar feelings as he did. The only difference was that Sumner didn't see women like Nate did, and was actually quite disgusted with the idea of being with one romantically. Nate couldn't sympathize with him on that matter, but Sumner was comforted with the knowledge that he wasn't the only one who was interested in the same sex.
Nora was cute, and sweet. She had a rather straight figure, and modest breasts and rear. Other than her golden hair, which fell like water around her, she was all around almost plain unless she wore makeup. But he loved that about her. She didn't demand attention, and she didn't care if she had it. He had initiated flirting, and she seemed surprised by his interested, but reciprocated it. He spent every day on leave visiting her at that diner for her whole shift, and then walked her home. She fascinated him, and for the first time he found himself truly loving a woman. She wasn't preoccupied with the opinions of others like most girls, and this only made her more attractive. She decided she would take off his last day on leave to spend it with him, and he knew he would never have this kind of connection with anyone in his life time, so he asked her to marry him. And had he died in the years he was supposed to, he wouldn't have.
In the Wasteland nobody cared what you did with your personal life. It was almost liberating being able to be open about his feelings about John. And the only one who would care didn't care because he was a man. He didn't forget Nora, or his feelings for her, and the pain he felt when betraying their son. But he also was no longer prewar Nate.
He took Hancock into his arms. John's body fit against him similar to how Nora's had, which had only helped Nate fall for the ghoul. Hancock grinned at his being manhandled, "You get all dressed up just to take that back off?" His blue eyes narrowed as he looked down at John, "Tempting aren't I?" Nate leaned down and brushed his lips over Hancock's.