23. Bliss to Sick

MacCready POV

West Coast by Lana Del Rey

There's a knock at the door. "What do the neighbours want now?" Beth asks, still half asleep as she rolls away from me, disturbed from the quick rap on our door. I've been sitting up in bed for a while, writing some random ideas down.

I laugh at her gently before getting up and putting some pants on to answer it. Not like I didn't hear the giant aircraft land on the island in the first place—I was just too engrossed in my writing to really think about it.

Once I answer, Danse greets me. "Good morning. Hope I didn't wake you?"

"Nah, I've been awake for a while. Can't say the same about Beth."

"What about me?" she asks as she comes down the stairs, wrapped in my duster.

"I was just saying how you were asleep, but nevermind on that." I give her a quick kiss as she stands next to me, peering up at Danse.

"What are you doing here?" she asks him.

"Ingram sent me on account of Dr. Li. She wants me to tell you that she's already arrived and is meant to start working on our project soon."

"Project? What project?" Her brows furrow.

Danse continues, "I don't think I'm at liberty to talk about it. Besides, I think Ingram was really wanting to show you herself.

"Anyway… Dr. Li is going to be working on it with her for the unseeable future. Possibly around a month, depending on various matters. So, if you want to, you can take this time to explore or travel—use the time as you see fit. We just thought we'd let you know."

"Well, that was nice," Beth smiles at him. "Thanks for telling us." Her face looks like she remembered something. "Oh! How'd the report go that you wrote last night?"

At first he looks confused, then sees me nodding my head slowly, my way of trying to tell him to play along. He sees my rounded eyes and loses the confusion. "The report went well. I was happy to have MacCready as an extra set of eyes and ideas." He looks to me. "Thanks again."

"No problem," I drawl, hopefully making it sound like a natural response. And as I glance over at Beth, she seems to have bought the whole thing. Phew. Thanks for saving it, I think toward him.

Danse looks to our right, into the room of all randomly assorted things. "Is that the library?"

"It serves as more than that, but yeah. Robert said you'd probably want to see it soon, but I wasn't thinking this soon." She chuckles. "You can come in and look around if you want. I don't think you've been in our house yet, have you?"

"I have not," Danse confirms, releasing the eject sequence to his suit.

For the next hour or so, Beth is busy showing her comrade in arms around our living space. She leaves the "library" for last, and explains further what the room is used for.

"It's kind of a room full of the Orders," he comments after she explains the room's contents. At her confused expression, he adds, "The Order of the Quill," as he points to the desk and shelves of books. "The Order of the Shield," he points to the cabinets with clothing and armour. "And the Order of the Sword," he points to the cabinets with a diverse collection of weapons. "Very impressive to be running a personal amalgamation of the scribes' jobs—especially for just two people," he laughs.

"Gotta do what you gotta do," she responds with an easy smile—the one I love so much.

"Well, I suppose I'll see you around," Danse says as he makes his way to the door. "I should be getting back—I hadn't planned on staying this long to begin with."

"Well, I'm glad you did, Danse," her smile beams on. "Be safe out there."

"I'll try, thank you. Enjoy your month off, so to say."

"I will," she looks up to me at her side. "Definitely will." Her smile turns a bit impish.

"Right." He seemed to have noticed her devilish change in expression and is probably thinking it means the same thing I am. He gets back in his power armour and goes to leave. "See you."

As soon as she sees the Vertibird take off, she hooks her finger in my belt loop and starts to drag me toward the stairs. "Definitely will," she repeats, her mischievous grin resuming where it left off.

More than guessing where she's leading me, I stop and remove her hand from my pants. She looks like she doesn't understand until I put my hands on her shoulders and say, "You led last time. My turn." Her grin reappears.

Careful as to not put any more rips in my duster, I slide it off her shoulders and cast it to the side. Within seconds, she jumps on me, wrapping her legs around my waist and starts drowning me with kisses. Taken aback by her sudden action, I stumble backwards a little, but catch myself on the wall. Instead of being scared, she throws her head back in carefree giggles. Taking advantage of this, I envelope her neck in kisses of my own, leaving marks behind as I spin and pin her back against the wall that caught me. She tilts her head back even further, knocking it on the wall in the process, as she grabs the back of my neck hungrily, a small whimper escaping her lips. Taking this as a cue, I set her on her feet as we both start shedding what little amount of clothing we have on—leaving a trail of the few garments as we head upstairs to our goal: the bed. If we even make it there, I manage to incoherently think.

"That… was amazing."

We had surprisingly made it to the bed in time before we went absolute animal on each other. We now lay here, reeling for breath on our backs, our hands intertwined.

"You're telling me," she says, her breath as ragged as my own. She turns her head toward me. "Remind me to keep an eye out at police stations." She giggles.

"For what? …Oh." I can't help a grin, to which she looks away, madly blushing red. "Into that now, huh?"

She shrugs a shoulder. "Maybe."

I laugh and reach over to the nightstand. "Aw, man. It's been so long since I've had a cigarette like this." Pulling the pack out, I silently offer one to her. She shakes her head as she moves onto my chest. "No? Okay." I pull one out for myself and light it up, taking a nice, long drag, savouring the flavour, the feel. "Best time to smoke," I say around it.

She looks up at me from her resting place and stares at the cigarette hanging from my mouth. She plucks it from my lips and slowly places it between her own, tentatively taking a puff. Almost immediately, she starts coughing and hands it back to me. Laughing, I flick the ash into the tray and put it back between my lips. "Never smoked before?" I ask her.

"No, I have," she says, still coughing lightly. "I just decided to quit when I conceived with Shaun."

"Ah." I take another drag and flick ash into the tray again.

We lay silently for a few minutes, enjoying each other's presence and the now fading feeling of ecstasy. I just stub out my cigarette when she asks suddenly, "Wanna go somewhere?"

"Where to?" I return.

"Well recently, I've been thinking about that vault we came across a while back—the one near Diamond City? I'd still like to explore it, see if it's abandoned."

"You think you'll be okay in there with it being a vault and all?"

"Yeah, I think so. I mean, we actually went into 111, and I was fine."

I think about it for a moment, but know if she wants to go, she's gonna find a way somehow. Might as well accept she wants to do it and be with her. "Okay. When?"

"We can go after we eat. You hungry?"

"When am I not?" I ask with a chuckle.

"True," she chuckles herself.

After we got fully dressed and had breakfast, we prepared ourselves for scavving with the satchels we take when remembered. We "parked" the boat near the CIT ruins like yesterday and made the short-enough trek to the vault. We found out that it actually wasn't abandoned—to Beth's surprise—and people have been living there ever since the War, trading with outsiders when necessary.

The place seemed like it had vault-style folk in it, until we ran into a guy named Bobby—the kid was strung out on Jet, despite his being at work. He reminded me of a Raider, always on some kind of chem.

After a while, we found Bobby in the clinic, saying he knew a place that could help one of the patients—a young boy, sick with something strange. Beth wanted to help, so we followed Bobby to a secret part of the vault, where mole rats were running rampant through the halls, infected with some kind of disease. We ultimately found a cure—along with a Miss Nanny with what Beth said was a French accent. Taking said cure to the doctor, he hastily injected it into the boy, Austin, who woke up from his coma immediately. Although he needed to stay for observation, he said he felt one hundred percent better.

The clinic doc—Dr. Forsythe—then turns to Beth and starts asking questions.

He starts with, "How many of these cures did you find?"

"Just the one," she responds.

"Just one?" He looks down and sighs. "Hopefully you eradicated all the infected mole rats?"

"We did."

I speak up. "But not before she got bit herself." He looks over at me with a concerned expression. I step forward and take Beth's left glove off, showing where a mole rat had bitten through, leaving no more than a small graze from its teeth.

The doctor balks. "You said there was only one cure…" He looks toward Austin, now sitting on the edge of his bed, perfectly fine compared to a few minutes ago. Looking back to us, "He was on the verge of death. I don't know how to treat you…"

Beth seems to just wave it off. "I'll be fine, doc. Always am." She turns to leave the clinic. "See you around."

Following after her, I whisper, "But what if you're not gonna be okay?"

"We'll get Curie to make another cure. Like a Miss Nanny can just forget something like that." She leads us to the depot.

"You're trusting a robot?"

"Yeah, I am. She may be a robot, but she's also a scientist." Walking up to the counter, she greets, "Hi. We're new here. Got any forty-five or five fifty-six ammo?"

"Uh, yeah." The woman bends down and picks up a couple boxes of ammo and sets them on the counter. "That's all I have right now."

"Better than nothing." Beth gets out the right amount caps and takes the bullets. "Thanks." As we leave, she continues. "I mean, I am an adult—Austin is just a kid. I imagine I would have a better immune system than him. If any symptoms do set in, I'm sure it'll be not only a while from now, but also small scale in comparison."

A few minutes later, as we head down the stairs, she starts looking around. "What are you looking for?"

"The lavatory." She spots a door and runs to it. Although I'm confused I follow, and am just in time to hear her retching on the other side of it. I try to open it, but it's locked.

"Beth," I knock on it, "let me in." I hear a click and it opens, showing Beth on the floor in front of the toilet, her glasses on the counter and holding her hair back. I walk in and close the door behind me. Taking place of her hands, I hold her hair and ask, "You okay?"

She stands and flushes. "Fine. Just got sick suddenly."

I feel her forehead as she wipes her mouth with a towel. "You feel pretty warm. Might have a fever. We should go to the clinic."

"I'm okay," she reassures. "Probably just the food I ate at the diner earlier. Tasted a bit off."

"Tasted fine to me," I counter. "It's probably whatever you got from that mole rat."

"Yeah, about that. There was no need for you to go blab to the doctor about it. I'll be fine—there wasn't a reason to bring it up." She stands and goes to leave the bathroom, only to sway and nearly hit her head on the wall. Before she can, I grab her arm to keep her from falling.

"You're fine, huh?" I put my arm around her back and start heading toward the elevator—to the secret part of the vault where Curie is. "I'm taking you to that robot, and there's nothing you can do to stop me." For once, she doesn't argue.

Once we reach Curie, she sounds surprised at seeing Beth like this. "Is she okay, Monsieur?"

"No, she's not." I'm nearly dragging her by now. "We need another cure. She got bit while we were down here."

"I only had the one." One of the Miss Nanny's optical lenses focuses in on Beth. "I need more ingredients for the cure to make it."

I set Beth—who is almost unconscious—down on one of the Vault-Tec office chairs. "What do you need? I'll go get the stuff."

"Are you sure, Monsieur?"

"We don't have time. Just make a list." I look over at Beth as the robot turns to a pad of paper and a pen and writes down a number of items.

Giving it to me, she says, "Your best chance to find those are at hospitals, clinics, and research labs. It would be good to have a person with you to—"

"Yeah. I'm gonna go pick someone up real quick. Thanks." I move to Beth who looks at me from under heavy lids. "Hon, you have to stay here. I'm gonna go get Danse or someone to help me find this stuff. I'll be right back." I kiss her on the forehead and leave the vault.