Charon jerked awake, looking around warily in the dim red light before his head cleared and he remembered where he was, and more importantly, why he was buck naked. Fuzzy minded and cold, he sat up and groaned while rubbing the back of his neck, eyes latching onto Cort after a few moments. At some point she had curled up into a little ball, managing to roll herself entirely up in the blankets, a fluff of black hair the only thing visible. Absently patting at the floor when he noticed how frozen his ass felt, he looked down and blinked. How the hell did she get both of them? I outweigh her by at least a hundred damned pounds. Shaking his head, he quietly stood up and stretched, smiling beatifically as the motions produced a series of comfortable pops and snaps. Turning back to the swaddled lump on the floor, he considered what to do next. Not particularly enthused with the idea of getting dressed just yet, he crouched and carefully started to unwrap the cocoon Cort had managed to make for herself, finding it surprisingly difficult. Both blankets were somehow twisted up with each other, and her legs were twined up through the loops, making it impossible to locate where to begin. What the fuck did she do, have a seizure making this? Hell with it, she'll wake up before I'm done anyway. "Cort. Cort." Charon jerked aside just in time to avoid cracking his skull against hers as she shot upright, babbling.
"Invisible squirrels! They're with the iguanas, they're going to...Charon? Are we getting up now?" Cort held up her Pip-Boy and blearily squinted at the screen. "What? It's not even dawn yet for Chrissakes."
"You took all the damn blankets, and I'm freezing."
"Oh. M'kay then." Sleepily standing up, she expertly flicked both of them out after shaking her legs loose, the jumbled cloth straightening out immediately. She flopped back down on her right side and crawled in, yawning and closing her eyes as he looked down at her, incredulous.
"How the hell did you do that."
"Do what?" Charon stared as her feet started twisting up the bottom of the covers, somehow already managing to make a confusing knot out of them. Shaking his head again, he dropped down and got back between them before she could envelop herself, facing her.
"Nevermind." Placing a hand on her hip, he guiltily removed it when she flinched, thinking about the less enjoyable parts of the previous evening.
"Yikes, you are freezing. Alright, c'mere." Relaxing as she wiggled over and intertwined herself with him, he pulled her closer, relieved as the warmth started soaking back into him. "Better?"
"Much."
"Good. I make absolutely no promises about not sucking the blankets off of you again later, so enjoy it while it lasts." Pressing her head against his chest, she rapidly fell back to sleep, quiet snores starting up within moments.
Waiting to warm up enough to join her, Charon carefully propped himself up on an elbow, looking down at his employer. At some point he had lost the habit of waiting for her to fall asleep first, and it had been a while since he had watched her. Seeing her face completely still instead of going through its normal state of mercurial expressions, he decided he missed doing it. He wasn't sure when it had happened, but he had started liking every one that she made, usually changing from minute to minute, but it was nice to see her calm for once. He ran a hand through her hair and watched her smile briefly before returning to perfect blankness. Working his fingers back into it, she did it again, the vague little smile remaining on her face this time as he gently played with the wild tufts.
Running his hand down over her back, he let his mind wander along with it, thinking again about how differently things had turned out from what he expected them to be. At first, he had hated the little smoothskin on sight, for being what he wasn't anymore and then purely on principle once she had started making her false overtures to Ahzrukhal, dickering over his contract. There was also the fact that he had flat out hated everyone, regardless of who or what they were. Now, he couldn't stand the thought of being without her. He didn't even particularly like it when he couldn't see her, needing to touch her for reassurance whenever she appeared again, almost having to make sure she was really there. She had even gotten into the habit of absently tilting her head towards him after combat or being separated, knowing that he would want to tug on her hair and ready to fill the need without being asked.
Fuck, she always does that, knows what to do for me. She knows how to fix anything. Moving off his elbow, he bent to nuzzle around her cheek. Whatever parts had been broken or taken out of him, Cort had managed to put back in or repair, and her actions of the previous night had given him a way to finally possess his own contract, putting the last piece he needed into place. As long as she was around, he felt whole, and with it, Charon had gone past dutiful loyalty and settled into complete devotion. Moving his hand lower and getting aroused again, he started nibbling on what was left of her ear, then jerked his head back a moment later, startled as she suddenly exchanged snoring for speaking.
"You know, that's making it really, really hard for me to stay asleep."
"Cort?" She cracked her left eye open and tilted it up, the same eyebrow moving with it.
"Yeees?"
"I want to get in you again. Can I?"
"Course you can, I'm yours." Quietly griping, she started nipping at his chest. "You're going to wear me the hell out, though."
Charon gave a contented grunt as he stroked around to the front of her thigh, feeling elated. Mine. She says she's mine. He ran his hand up the inside of her leg, sliding his fingers higher, and he groaned out a reply as she bit him harder in response to it. "Impossible. The way your damned mouth runs there has to be a fission battery in you somewhere."
"Ha ha, smartass. Why don't you see if you can find it, then."
Cort never made it fully back to sleep. Somewhere around mid-morning, she finally untangled herself from a dozing Charon after Dogmeat started scratching at the door. "Hang on honey, I know, Momma's been...distracted. A lot. For...wow, nine hours? Really? Cripes, you must be ready to put out a forest fire by now." Quickly checking her Pip-Boy for any threats, she twisted the dial on the door and levered it out of the way as quietly as possible. "Okay, come right back when you're done and we'll get ready and eat, huh? I'll give you extra for being such a patient boy." Dogmeat whuffed and quickly trotted off to find a suitable corner as Cort stretched and turned back to look over at the sleeping man, comfortably sore this time. Gathering up their scattered clothing and armour, she thought about what she had started. For all his initial reluctance, once Charon had gotten the hang of it, he seemed determined not to let it go. Three more times. Three! Jesus, he's not a man, he's a damned jackrabbit. Smiling goofily as she picked up the shredded pieces of his shirt, she proudly admitted to herself that she might have been encouraging him into the behaviour just a tad. Well, he's not going to be wearing that one again. Oops.
Salvaging the larger pieces for rags, she hauled out a spare shirt for him and grabbed her own scattered clothing, taking up the half-empty bottle of dirty water along with it, then padded out of the room to find her own suitable corner to wash up in. Settling into one of the empty offices, she smiled again, thinking about everything while she sorted herself out. Once he had mellowed a bit, somewhere around their fourth go at it, he had proven to be fairly delicate for such a big man, driving her over the edge with gentle, unrelenting attention. It wasn't that surprising when she thought about it. Someone trained to use explosives probably wouldn't make it very Goddamned far being heavy handed. Cort's mouth quirked as she pulled her bra back on, following it with her shirt. Well, not quite accurate. The pieces would probably get pretty far after detonation. Tugging the rest of her clothes on, she walked back to wake up Charon and get on with the day, happy and ready to go back to the Memorial.
After eating and putting their armour back on, Cort decided she wanted to do something for the ghoul as they walked out of the Mainframe room and down the hallway, still riding on an emotional high. "Charon, how do you open locked doors, anyway? I've never seen you pick one."
Reaching out, he enveloped the knob of the closest door in one massive hand and twisted it, easily snapping it loose in one quick motion and tossing it nonchalantly down the hallway. Cort blinked, her mouth slightly ajar as the other end fell off a second later. "If that doesn't work, kicking it in. If I can't kick it in, controlled explosive charges."
"Well, then come on over here, I want to teach you something for once." Charon ran a hand down her back, slipping his fingers into her waistband.
"I think you did already."
Wiggling at the attention, she walked down to the next door, pulling him along with her. "Naughty. Now pay attention, I'll show you how to do this a few ways. I want to give you something for making last night so nice. This is the perfect type of lock to do it with, it's pretty clunky." Kneeling in front of the door, Cort carefully taught him how to pick the lock open and then how to re-lock it, first with both a bobby pin and a screwdriver, and then with the pin alone, both whole and after breaking it into two parts. She finished by forcing the lock with the screwdriver, grunting as she broke it apart. "You should really avoid this last one unless you really need to do it. Sometimes the lock will jam, and then you're screwed unless you can beat it open or something. Which yeah, you won't be having a problem with." Standing up and brushing the dust off her knees, she decided to do something about another door. "I'm going to go fiddle with the terminals and lock the Mainframe room up so nobody else can get into it. If there are people in those Vaults, I don't want raiders or slavers to end up with the coordinates, it'd be a fucking slaughter if they managed to open them. Can you start stripping that jumped up Robobrain for anything good? Make sure to take some wire out for Wadsworth." Cort blinked, considering something. "Uh. When we go downstairs, don't take anything out of the Mister Gutsys for that though, might be kinda morbid. I don't want to upset him."
"What the hell does the damn thing want wire for?"
"I dunno, but that's what he asked for when I offered to bring him something, so he's getting it. Maybe he needs it for personal reasons."
"What the fuck kind of 'personal reasons' is a robot going to have?"
Cort shrugged and walked down the hallway. "Ask him."
"It'll probably involve some fucked up way to murder us in our sleep." Looking back long enough to roll her eyes at him, she continued towards the first terminal.
Charon snorted and started pulling apart the remains of the Masterbrain, taking out anything useful and several jumbles of wire, neatly coiling them up. Sawing one of the arms open with his combat knife and ripping the corrugated rubber apart, he paused when light from the ceiling bounced off something shiny that looked oddly familiar. Putting the knife down, he yanked on the torn material with both hands, exposing the innards of the arm entirely. Running up the inside were a series of large, highly polished rings wrapped with various wires and straps, pulleys spaced evenly up the middle. He cut the first ring loose and held it up in the dim light, running his thumb over the smooth edges of the band as he examined it. About two inches wide and a little more across the diameter, it had the number one etched around the outside of it in four equidistant spots, and was made of the same silvery dark metal as the pacemaker she had used to hide his contract in herself. Setting it down, he pulled the next band loose, this one having the number two on it instead. Getting an idea, he called back over his shoulder.
"Cort. What's your favourite number?"
Her puzzled voice drifted back from somewhere down the hall. "What? Why?"
"Curious."
"Oh, uh. Eight. Dad calls it upright infinity, I always thought that was really neat. He said that was why my Mom liked it too, went along with her favourite Bible verse." Half-listening as Cort continued to rattle on about Fibonacci numbers and aliquot sums, whatever they were, he dug through the dissected arm until he found the correct part and carefully removed it. Getting up, he walked around the hallways, finally finding her leaning over the last terminal in the office abutting the Mainframe room. Moving over to her side, he held the band out in front of her. Cort blinked a few times to focus in on it, stilling her hands on the keyboard. "What's that for?"
"You. For last night. You can wear it if you want." Charon suppressed the urge to fidget as she silently reached up and took the present from him, running her fingers over it and tracing the numbers as the red light from the other room reflected off of it, the expression on her face inscrutable. She suddenly tugged it down over her right hand, broadly licking the skin on the back to make it go on all the way as it got stuck, and he let out a breath he hadn't noticed he was holding as she spun around and hugged him.
"Of course I want. It's awesome, best ever. Thank you."
Grumbling, he self-consciously rubbed at the back of his neck as she let him go. "You're welcome. Now let's get the hell out of here and finish up with this shithole you dragged us into."
"It was your idea, dipstick."
"Jackass."
"Love you too."
Descending rapidly through the building, both of them ripped apart every robot they found, hauling out power supplies, combat inhibitors and scrap, loading themselves and Dogmeat up with everything they could carry. Charon found another Stealth Boy, and Cort discovered several books and magazines, along with a pile of Vault-Tec lunch boxes which she quickly converted into protective cases for medical supplies and other breakables. Slinking carefully out of Vernon Square and back into the Metro around sunset, the ghoul looked over to her as they made their way underground.
"What do you want to do next, more new shit that will probably fucking kill us, or go back to that hellhole Memorial?"
"You always make things sound so attractive. Uuuh, after we go trade this stuff off in Underworld, we should probably go back to Project Purity. I want to make sure everything's all right, it's been a couple days. Besides, maybe now there'll be something Dad'll let me help with that doesn't involve cleaning or shooting."
"I like it when you shoot things." He reached down and tugged the hem of her shirt up, sliding his fingers over her side. Cort shivered and tried to keep her mind on track. If he had seemed to find touching her desirable before, now he appeared to be positively addicted to it. As long as it was tactically safe to do so, he was keeping it up near constantly. If her hands were free, he held one of them. If they weren't, he placed one of his own on her shoulder, or hooked his fingers into her waistband. If they stopped and she wasn't occupied with a task, well. Her lips ended up swollen and her cheeks flushed more than once. Fighting only intensified his advances, and riding on her own adrenaline high made Cort more than aggressive enough to counter them equally with her own, regardless of the location.
Making their way though the Metro tunnels, they had stopped twice on the way back to the Mall to barricade themselves inside the closest available room, and after killing a particularly vicious party of raiders who had reoccupied a fortified service area they hadn't even bothered with that. Once she had checked her Pip-Boy, Charon had loosened her belt enough to jerk her cargos down partway, and after removing the plating over his hips to get at his own he had pushed her over the nearest pile of sandbags, too desperate to do anything else. After they had finished, he had carefully redressed them both and then spent a long time doing nothing but quietly stroking the back of her neck, cheek pressed against the top of her helmet as he held her to him.
"Cort, how long are we going to have to stay at that fucking Memorial?"
"I don't know. At least until they get Project Purity running again, whenever that'll be. I can ask for an estimate though. You don't want to go back, do you."
"Fuck no, but I understand how important it is, and you need to be around your dad. You went nuts trying to find him, you'd probably lose your marbles entirely if you lost sight of him again. The reason I don't want to go back is because you get upset when those assholes start treating you like shit, and I know why they do it, it's my fault. I don't need a mirror to know I'm a fucking monstrosity."
Digging her fingers into his back, she started to get her own up. "No, it isn't, and you're not."
"Not to you, for some batshit reason. But to just about every other fucker out there, and me, I am. It doesn't matter. You need to stop letting it bother you." Cort fisted up the sides of his shirt and shook her head back and forth vehemently.
"No. I won't accept that."
He tightened his hand briefly as her voice cracked and Charon sighed, unwilling to wind her up over something so unimportant. "Just don't fucking worry about it, Cort. You can't do anything about it anyway."
"Don't tell me what I can and can't do." She was silent for a moment after snapping at him, thinking about things as she got her emotions back under control. "We'll get back, I'll find out what's going on, and it'll be fine. We can't do what we just did, there's no way we could get enough privacy, but we're going back to sleeping the way we usually do. I miss it." Cort snuffled quietly. "Besides, we have to. You keep rolling over on Dogmeat, and it makes him crabby."
"What about everyone else. They're going to give you a hard time."
"I don't care, fuck everyone else. They don't matter, they're beneath me." Charon picked her up and spun around, grinning as he coaxed her into laughing with the motion.
"That's my girl. You're finally getting it." He paused and started thinking, wanting to make sure he had distracted her entirely. Remembering something, he looked into her eyes, his mouth starting to twitch.
"So. Cortenay? That's the whole thing?"
Cort narrowed her own. "Cortenay Catherine Schafer, if you must know. Why."
"Nothing, it's just that Cortenay's so fucking girrrly." He held her tighter as she struggled to get down, affronted by the teasing.
"Whaat? This coming out of a big giant man who's named Charon. That's a girl's name. It's even a girl's name twice if you want to get into the semantics of pronunciation and-"
Charon did not, and after shoving her visor out of the way he cut her running mouth off with his own, smiling as he did so.
"James, are you sure it was wise to let Cort go off? It's dangerous out here, far more than it was twenty years ago." Having a rare free moment, Li had decided to approach him about her concerns at around the same time Cort and Charon were making their way back to Underworld, finding him working on one of the consoles in the Rotunda, muttering to himself as he dug around inside an open panel.
"I don't let her do anything, Madison. At this point in her life, she's capable of doing what she wants, making her own decisions. She's far too much like me to have any real trouble out there anyway, now that she's up on her feet. She'll be back as soon as she's finished with her errands, her destination wasn't that far away."
"I wasn't referring to the risk she's taking for herself, I'm sure she can manage well enough, especially with a bodyguard. I'm talking about leaving us with inadequate defences. In my opinion, it was very irresponsible for her to leave."
"Well, perhaps if more than half of your staff wasn't looking at her like she was filth she would have been more inclined to stay. It was half the reason I let her go so easily." James smiled at her sardonically as she sputtered before turning back to the console. "I'm preoccupied, not blind. If I didn't need everyone working here, I most certainly would have started punching certain individuals in the throat by now. As it is, I am extremely close to losing my temper."
Madison frowned as his speech became short and clipped, not understanding what he was referring to. "James, what are you talking about? What reason would my staff have to-" Cutting her off with an incredulous snort he turned to face her, a wry look on his face as he scratched at the side of his beard.
"Because of Charon, why else?"
"I can't believe that. As unfortunate as the poor creatures appear, everyone here is intelligent enough to know that they are effectively if not physically human. I'll admit he can be abrasive, but it's understandable, and that certainly wouldn't cause anyone to be hostile towards Cort."
James snorted again, shaking his head. "Really now, Madison. Have you honestly been wrapped up in your work enough to not notice that my little girl has managed to pair off with the ghoul? Everyone else sure as shit has."
Li gaped up at him as she caught on, scandalized as her personal morality fell short of her scientific ethics. "What? And you let her?"
"Well it's too late for me to do anything now. I wasn't exactly around to object, and as I told you, I don't let her do anything. I wanted her to make her own life for herself, and for good or ill..." He paused, smiling slightly at some private thought. "For good or ill, she has started making it with him. Admittedly, it isn't what I had hoped for, but I've had time to mull it over, and I think it could have been far worse, considering. He's devoted, protective, defers to her completely, and I have no doubt he would slaughter anyone who gave her so much as a paper cut without a second glance. What more could a protective parent ask for?" James' mouth quirked for a moment. "It also doesn't hurt that he's built like a brick shithouse, as Garza so colourfully put it. The sight of him alone is an excellent deterrent. So. I would appreciate it immensely if you would impress upon your staff the need to find their manners before they get back. Hmm? Do you think you can you do that for me?"
Looking at him, Li was held by the sudden emptiness in his eyes, unable to tear herself away from it or disagree, like so many other people he had managed to talk into doing things for him over the years. "Of course, James, whatever you say."
He turned back to the open panel, new warmth replacing the coldness. "Excellent Madison, thank you kindly. I also have things Cort can assist with now once she returns, which should help make her feel better. Once we have everything up and working, I'll have the time to teach her how everything operates and how to maintain it. I want to make sure she has a secure position in the future, and being in charge of the project will protect her, and the ghoul. It's the best gift I can give her. I trust I can count on you to assist me in that?" James raised an eyebrow at her and smiled approvingly as she silently nodded. "After all, someone's going to need to do it. Neither of us is going to live forever." Frowning, he closed the panel. "I am most emphatically not leaving it up to the Brotherhood. I'm sure you'll agree with me in that."
Relieved for the change of subject, Li latched onto it instantly. "Completely. A military organization should not be entrusted with something that has the potential to be so incredibly powerful. Their motives become too easily clouded, polluting the pure science. We can't allow the work to become corrupted."
"I'm glad we see eye to eye. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to finish up in here. I'm trying to work out the safety issues we've been having with the radiation purge, Daniel brought it to my attention yesterday morning. If the Purifier currently overloads with anyone in here, it will kill them instantly. Not exactly what I would call a useful feature."
Hey peeps! Thanks for the new reviews, PMs and faves! So, after looking for close to half a year, it looks like I finally have a job again, starting sometime in the near future(I need to take a licence exam from the justice department and a CPR course, so it'll be a teensy while before I'm working full time). Then I'll be a brand new, squeaky clean security guard. I am NOT STOPPING this story! It just means that chapter updates won't be nearly every day like I've been able to manage, but you'll still probably get at least one or two a week. It also means I can afford to eat something other than Wonderbread and discount peanut butter. It's totally win-win.
Oh, and for anyone trying to predict where Cort might be going, I'll leave you with six words: 'Jossed' is my favourite TV Trope. ;)
