Never Have I Ever

Piper had seen a lot of the Commonwealth's various nooks and crannies over the years, mostly in her work as a journalist, occasionally out of plain old curiosity, and even for a brief period during her youth she was forced to scrounge anywhere she could for food and shelter both for herself and her sister. More and more often though, she found herself traversing the post war wastelands in support of Blue and her typically zany adventures.

The strangest thing though, was that often enough the craziness never seemed to be intended. Blue would drag Piper and Cait out across the ruins of the Commonwealth on a merry jaunt through ancient shops, factories and homes, and the trouble would just find them somehow. Piper would have thought the blonde to be the unluckiest person in the Commonwealth, that is, if those encounters didn't always end in her seemingly inevitable victory.

Piper wouldn't have even minded the trouble so much if they came away from their little outings with something of value. More often than not though, the only loot they'd find would be some ragged clothes or rolls of duct tape, maybe even a bottle of Nuka Cola or two if they were really lucky.

She remembered the last time Blue had dragged her from the moderate safety and comfort of Diamond City. The blonde hadn't rested until she'd hauled Piper and Cait out to go wandering around a dilapidated office block. Then, after fighting their way through the building and the small army of raiders defending it, the most noteworthy thing they'd found amongst the debris was a box of pens that still had usable ink in them. Piper had claimed those as her fee for all the effort.

Still, even without any likelihood of great riches at the end of the road, the journey could often be worth it all on its own.

"What's taking you guys so long?"

Piper looked up to see Blue scowling at her and Cait both. The expression was decidedly less than threatening. Clearly Blue felt a little differently about the importance of the journey itself.

"We're coming, we're coming." Piper sighed as she trudged along at the exact same unenthusiastic speed.

Cait snickered at the brunette's side. "Speak for yourself, Pipes. You're gonna have to work a bit harder than that to make me come."

Piper fixed the redhead with a confused look for a long moment before realisation dawned. "God damn it, Cait!" She shook her head with a scoff. "You can be such a child!"

"Hey, you're the one who said it." Cait smirked. The brawler shunted to the side, shoving Piper in the shoulder.

Piper supposed that the motion was supposed to be playful, but the stark difference in muscle mass between the two women nearly had Piper flying through the store front on her other side.

"Oops, sorry, Pipes." Cait chuckled – not sounding the least bit sorry – as she reached out to steady the reporter.

Piper did her best not to appear flustered at all, focussing her gaze ahead at Blue. "What do you think she's after this time?"

"Who knows? Probably nothing but rubbish, again. You know what she's like." Cait shrugged, kicking a broken chunk of brick up the road a little. The brawler followed Piper's eye line up to where Nora was shaking her head at them both, hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. Cait's expression grew soft somehow. "Still, it makes her happy somehow, the bloody idiot."

Piper almost blinked in surprise at the tender expression on Cait's face. She glanced between blonde and redhead a moment before focussing on her footing over the torn up asphalt.

"Finally." Nora exasperated when the other two had reached her side. "What took you both so long?"

"Just admiring the view." Cait smirked with a very obvious leer towards Nora's rear.

"Very funny." Blue rolled her eyes but a bit of a self-satisfied smirk settled on her lips.

"Well, that, and Piper was trying to get me off." Cait said simply.

"Wha- I was not!" Piper exclaimed, cheeks enflamed.

"Oh she was, was she?" Nora spun an amused look towards Piper.

Piper chose to take that look in her eyes as a 'take no notice' message. She hoped that was the intention.

"She was doing such a piss poor job at it really." Cait sighed, disappointed. "Wasn't even touching me or anything."

"Don't be ridiculous." Piper scowled, folding her arms.

"You really gotta up your game you know, Pipes."

"Cait." Blue gave her lover a stern look. One that surely said 'behave'.

Cait chuckled but held her hands up. "Alright, alright. You damn pair of prudes you." She leaned in to press a growl and a kiss to her lover's cheek as she paced on ahead of the other two.

Blue chuckled, any semblance of a scowl or annoyance melting from her features immediately. After a longing look at the brawler, she turned back to Piper.

Piper really wished she hadn't. She didn't like having to maintain a neutral expression when that face of Blue's was smiling at her so prettily. It wasn't fair.

"You ok, Piper? I know you weren't really trying to get her off."

The unwanted blushing came back again. "Yeah, I know- I'm fine, thanks Blue."

Blue's smile only became more radiant somehow. "Good." She glanced up ahead to where Cait was gradually leaving them behind. She leaned in towards the reporter's ear with a mischievous grin. "If you were though: back of the neck."

Piper swallowed thickly. "E- Excuse me?"

"Start off light, and go right up into her hair." Blue assured her with a smirk. "Just if you ever need to distract her or … anything. Works every time."

Piper had no idea what to do with that information, much less what she was expected to do with it. "Right … ok, thanks, Blue?"

Nora chuckled and leaned away again. "Come on. Let's not let her get too far ahead." Then she took off after the redhead.

Piper sighed and, wondering 'why' about a lot of things, shook her head for a moment before following on.

xxx

Eventually, the three women found themselves picking though a dilapidated store. The shelves had all but collapsed into kindling, and what once were surely the products for sale was now just a heap of debris.

"Christ, it's just a giant pile of shite." Cait muttered to no one in particular as she half-heartedly leafed through the remains.

Piper was mostly inclined to agree, but unlike the redhead, she was slightly more inclined to optimism. "Well, you never know, there might be something we can use in here, somewhere."

Cait groaned. "Come on, Pipes, this place is a dump, got nothing but rubbish here. Don't tell me you've caught the happy-go-lucky-nut-job bug too?" She sighed. "I thought I could rely on you at least to be sane. I don't want to have two of you idiots to deal with."

Piper chuckled. There was a part of her that was somehow flattered that Cait thought of her as the 'sane one' of the group. She eyed Blue out of the corner of her eye, a little way away towards the other end of the store. Nora was humming something to herself happily as she dug through a rusty looking cabinet, oblivious to the other women's conversation.

"You do know that's your girlfriend over there, right?" Piper raised an eyebrow.

"Well, yeah, duh." Cait snickered as though Piper was the thick one for questioning it. She made a show of looking over at the blonde. "I can see her, Pipes."

Piper scowled. "What I mean is: you're talking like you're being forced to be here, with her. Like it's the last place you want to be but you have no choice in the matter?"

"Well, aren't I being forced to be here?" Cait cocked her head in confusion, and then she chuckled to herself. "Not sure what you're getting at, Pipes. Nora says 'jump', I 'jump'. She says 'don't shoot that farmer', I'll grumble and curse a lot but I probably won't shoot him."

Piper stared at her blankly for a couple of seconds. "Yeah, that doesn't clear it up at all."

Cait shrugged. "Not sure what there is to clear up for you."

Piper sighed, a part of her wishing she hadn't even started. "Look, it just seems to me like you and Blue have …" She regretted pausing to find the right word almost immediately.

"Great sex?"

"No, that's not what I-"

"'Cause we do." Cait smirked.

"Fascinating." Piper drawled.

"Oh, you don't know the half of it, Pipes."

"I'd very much like it to stay that way, thanks."

Cait chuckled, a demonic glint in her eye. "You sure? Cause I can tell you plenty of-"

"Completely different world views." Piper finished her original thought before being scarred for life. "Just now, you said Blue had to tell you not to shoot a farmer for God's sake!"

Cait at least appeared to be a tad uncomfortable all of a sudden. "You know that was just a joke, Pipes."

"Alright, fine." Piper didn't fell particularly inclined to verify that with Blue or anyone else anyway. "But you keep moaning about not wanting to be here, about being forced to be here."

Yeah?" Cait drawled, clearly none the wiser.

"So why are you? No one's actually making you stay. Blue's not got a gun to your head, has she?" Piper sighed. "Look, what I'm trying to get at here is that you and Blue seem like polar opposites, like you don't even belong on the same planet even."

"You trying to offend me, Pipes?" Cait drawled with what could have been an amused smile.

"No, I'm just- Can you honestly not see what I'm talking about here? You and Blue seem like completely different people sometimes. You …" – Piper's first thought was to say 'you don't care about anyone', but she thought that was a bit too much to say out loud – "make crude jokes, and like to fight with your fists."

"And I'm pretty damn good at both." Cait smirked.

"And Blue, well, she's not like that at all, is she?"

"Not really, no." Cait shook her head with a smile. "Look, I still don't really get your problem here. You never heard that 'opposites attract'?"

Piper chewed on her lip as she considered. She could well appreciate the concept, but surely it had to be more nuanced than that. If Cait and Nora were complete and total opposites, how could they ever agree on anything? What would they talk about? How could they live together without driving each other insane?

"Why don't you tell me then?" Piper asked in a soft voice. "What is it about Blue that attracts you?"

"Why do you want to know so bad all of a sudden?" Cait eyed the reporter carefully. "Writing a new article for that paper of yours?"

"No, of course not." Piper frowned. "I'm just curious, that's all." She glanced over to check that Nora was still out of earshot. "Blue's a friend. Hell, she might just be the best friend I've ever had."

"Ah, so this is you being all protective?" Cait smirked, though it didn't seem to reach her eyes. Perhaps she was finally taking Piper seriously, in a way.

"If that's how you want to think of it." Piper muttered. "So go on then, why? Why are you here, Cait?"

Cait chewed on her lip a moment. Then she smiled. "I mean, isn't it obvious?"

She looked over to where Blue was struggling to prize open a cash register that had seized itself shut. The Sole Survivor was muttering all sorts of expletives to herself as she strained.

Piper watched Cait watch Nora for a moment. The look of tenderly affection made the brawler's features so soft in that moment, that Piper was regretting questioning her in the first place.

"She's everything I'm not." Cait murmured gently. "She's smart. She's an optimist, and a good person. She's got a stronger will to do things than I'll ever have, to change things, make them better."

There was a clang and a clatter as Nora manged to break open the cash register, sending her flying back in the process. The blonde picked herself up from the floor quickly enough and let out a happy little 'Yes!' as she began to rummage through the till, ignoring her newly dishevelled hair.

"And she's pretty funny." Cait chuckled, before her gaze became serious and almost sad. "And … she was willing enough, and patient enough, to give me a chance. I still don't really know why she did that, but I owe her everything for it."

Piper's gaze fell to the floor for a moment.

"So, I guess to answer your original question, sure, delving through crappy stores and burned out husks of buildings isn't exactly my favourite past time, but it makes her happy for some reason. So, that's good enough for me." Cait smiled.

"You know, maybe I was wrong." Piper offered, picking her gaze back up to meet the brawler's with a slight smile. "I think there are some ways you two might be pretty alike."

"Oh I know." Cait smirked with a sage nod and a knowing look. "We're both hot as hell."

Piper let out a long sigh. We were having a moment there, a heart to heart. You just had to go and ruin it, didn't you?

"Hey guys! Come here a sec!" Blue's voice called over.

"Just ask her, she'll tell you the same." Cait winked at the reporter before turning to go join her lover.

Piper couldn't help but chuckle just a little and made to follow suit.

Nora had wandered away from the cash registers and towards the other side of the store. She was knelt down before a pile of rubble and assorted junk and had presumably pulled something free.

"Whatcha got there Blue?" Piper asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Hey look, it's us!" Nora turned her amused smile at the other two women, holding up what looked to be what had surely been a vibrantly coloured tray at some point. Time and wear had likely worn down it down from its original appearance.

"You've lost me." Cait drawled, eyeing the tray sceptically.

Nora tutted as she stood up straight, she approached them both. "Look, that's you." She pointed at Piper, then to a stripe of brown on the plastic. "That one's you." The finger went to Cait, then to what looked to be a faint pink. "And this one's me." Nora finally indicated herself and the off-white. "Neapolitan!"

Cait and Piper shared identical dubious glances.

"You sure you haven't taken a knock to the head there, Blue?" Piper asked warily.

Blue began to roll her eyes before a look of shock settled on her face. "Wait, don't tell me you guys don't know what ice cream is?"

"'I scream'?" Cait began to chuckle. "Why are you screaming?"

"No, not 'I scream', ice cream!"

"You're saying the same thing, babe."

"No, I'm not!" Nora groaned. "Look, it was a sort of food back from before the bombs fell. It was this … cold and sweet stuff, made from milk. I don't really know how it was made, but it was gorgeous!"

"Sounds great, Blue." Pipe couldn't help but smile at Nora's enthusiasm.

"It was!" Nora enthused with the brightest of smiles. "You had to be careful not to eat it too fast though, or it would give you brain freeze."

"Lovely." Cait drawled sarcastically, she turned a humoured smirk Piper's way. "Screaming food that gives you diseases, sign me up."

Piper snickered.

"It was amazing." Nora looked down on the plastic panel in her hands with a fond if bittersweet smile. "There was this type with three different flavours in the tub." She held up the tray again and tugged on her own hair for emphasis. "Look, this one's vanilla, and I'm blonde."

"So … your hair's this ice cream stuff, is it?" Piper smirked.

"It's the same colour!" Blue scowled. "Look, you're chocolate. You're a brunette!"

"Ok, ok." Piper accepted with a chuckle. She had no idea why this whole thing had gotten Nora so animated, but she wasn't about to dampen the other woman's fire. It must have been a pre-war pastime or something.

"And you Cait, you're a redhead, like the strawberry."

"But … that's pink?" Cait frowned and ruffled her nose cutely as she stared at the plastic.

"Well, yes, but strawberries are red."

"Then why is it pink?"

"I don't know! It just is, ok!"

"What even is a strawberry anyway?" Cait glanced over at Piper with a confused expression.

"Is it something like a tarberry?" Piper ventured with a shrug of her shoulders.

"Urgh! You two are hopeless." Nora shook her head in despair.

"Alright, alright." Cait sighed with a chuckle as she reached over to envelope the blonde in her arms. "I'll be your damn strawberry if it means that much to you."

"You better." Nora looked strangely proud of herself.

Cait threw Piper a pointed look.

"Err, sure … I'll be your chocolate as well?" Piper offered to Blue with an expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace.

"Aww, you guys!" Nora reached out to pull Piper into the hug as well. "Thank you. I'll be your vanilla too."

"Great." Piper couldn't help but drawl just a little. She still had no idea what any of that was supposed to mean, but it seemed to make Blue happy.

She saw that Cait too had trouble understanding the conversation, but the redhead merely rolled her eyes at Piper and was content to snuggle with them both.

A crack of lightning far off in the distance broke into the moment and the three women apart.

"Shit, that doesn't sound good." Cait murmured, throwing her gaze out of the window and onto the rolling sky above.

"Sounds like a storm coming." Piper sighed. "We'd better bunker down for a while."

xxx

The rad storm rolled in shortly after. It was a mercy that the three women had already been in the relative cover of the store, even though the open windows hadn't provided ideal protection from the irradiated rains.

Thankfully, they found a room upstairs that had yet to be completely destroyed, so they'd filed in and shut the door behind them. It looked to have been a lounge of some sort, or a maybe a cafeteria or the like back when those were things people cared about. It had a window that was still intact that the three of them could gaze out and onto the wasteland as it was pounded by the sizzling rainfall. The sky and the very air around them seemed to buzz with a faint green glow.

"It's almost pretty, isn't it?" Nora murmured as she gazed out.

"Sure, pretty terrifying." Cait scoffed, eyeing a sign that had been knocked over on the road below them.

Piper followed her gaze, and was fairly sure that what little was left of the paint work was literally being burned away from the metal with every drop that hit it.

"Always a pessimist." Nora elbowed her lover's ribs with a scowl.

"Well, why don't you go out there and see how pretty it is up close?" Cait smirked.

Nora grimaced. "Err, no thanks."

A chuckle from the brawler. "That's what I thought. We won't stop you though, will we, Pipes?"

"Hey, if anyone's stupid enough to go out there right now, then they deserve what they get in my book." Piper smirked.

"Exactly, so it's a good job I'm happy staying right here, cooped up with you two fine ladies." Cait drawled with a smirk of her own as she threw her arms around both Piper and Nora's shoulders.

"Flatterer." Nora chuckled as she swatted the redhead's arm playfully.

"Now, let's see if there's anything we can actually use here." Cait moseyed over towards the remnants of a kitchenette at the side of the room.

"I wouldn't bet on it. This place looks to have been cleaned out long before us." Piper shook her head. They'd barely found anything downstairs except decayed remains.

Cait let out a heavy resigned sigh, but she carried on searching the cupboards and drawers anyway. After a couple of minutes, she straightened up with a victorious "Aha!"

"Found something?" Blue asked as she wandered over.

"Yes! A bottle of whiskey." Cait set the dusty bottle down on the counter.

"Just the one?" Piper padded over too, leaning her elbows on the counter beside Nora.

"Looks like it." Cait murmured as she returned to her rummaging. "No … there's nothing else here."

"Well, shall we draw straws for it?" Piper smirked a little.

"Don't be silly, we can share it." Blue smiled.

"Works for me." Cait shrugged before snatching the bottle up and smacking the cap off with the counter, cutting a chunk out of the counter in the process. She flicked the cap Piper's way. "Here, keep the change."

"Thanks?" Piper accepted the cap with something of a confused smile.

Cait snickered to something only she knew and took a quick swig before handing the bottle over to Blue.

"You really couldn't find any glasses back there?" Piper ventured. It was too late now of course.

"Come on, don't tell me you're squeamish about sharing a bottle, are ya?"

"It's called 'hygienic'." Piper corrected the brawler with a faint scowl.

"What's the matter, afraid of a little spit?" Cait's eyes flashed the challenge.

"Afraid I'll catch the 'big-dumb-idiot gene', yes." Piper countered with a sweet smile.

Cait chuckled, almost to Piper's surprise. "At least you don't have to worry about catching the 'smart-mouthed-nosy-reporter gene', like me."

"I really wish I had some popcorn to throw at you guys right now." Blue sighed.

"Popcorn?" Cait asked with a raised eyebrow. "That another one of your pre-war doodads? Does it explode or something? Is that were the pop comes from?"

Nora smirked. "Not like how you're imagining."

Cait sighed. "The pre-war world is just an endless string of disappointments."

Piper blinked. That was almost profound coming from the redhead.

"You're not wrong there." Nora nodded glumly. She took a sip from the ancient bottle. "Come on, let's stop moping about that. Let's watch the storm pass."

"Hurray." Cait drawled with no attempt at enthusiasm, earning her a swat on the arm from the blonde.

Piper shook her head but duly joined the other two in pulling a seat each up towards the window and peering out. It wasn't like they had anything better to do anyhow while they waited for the rains to pass.

"So …" Cait began after only a few moments of quiet, with what surely had to be the mother of all smirks plastered all over her face.

"Hmm?" Blue murmured, her head on her lover's shoulder.

"Never have I ever."

Piper blinked, glancing from Cait to Nora and back again. "Never have you ever what?"

Nora sighed. "She means the game: Never have I ever."

"We take it in turns: You say something, if the other two have done it, they take a sip and spill the beans. If no one's done it, the one asking takes a sip." Cait explained. She set the whiskey bottle up on the window sill between them all.

"Right …" Piper drawled. Already she could envisage a thousand different ways this could go wrong.

"I'll start." Cait smirked, cracking her knuckles as she considered. "Never have I ever … kissed a guy."

"Oh come on, that's not fair!" Nora scowled. "You already know I was married to one!"

"Then that's a sip, isn't it babe?" Cait smiled innocently. She aimed a predatory look Piper's way. "How about you Pipes?"

Though blushing a little, Piper managed to smile back. "No, no sip for me, thanks."

"Oh, is that so? Well, don't worry. I'll get you at some point." Cait chuckled.

"Ok, well, you both know I was married before all this." Nora waved vaguely at the world around them. "Nate, I met him in college. We got a bit drunk on a night out and ended up making out in the bathroom of some dingy little bar. It was somewhere round here actually." She gazed out of the window as though to look for the exact spot.

"Romantic." Cait snickered.

"Well, that's what happened." Nora sighed. "Guess it's my turn then?"

"Does it have to be something you haven't done?" Piper asked. "If you're asking the question, I mean."

"Well, yeah. You're saying never have I ever, Pipes." Cait smirked.

Blue set the bottle back on the window sill and rubbed at her chin in intense thought. "Ok, never have I ever … broken a bone."

"Going for the low branches, aren't you babe?" Cait drawled as she reached for the whiskey.

"Hey, you started it!"

"Alright, alright." Cait rubbed her cheek for a long moment as she thought. "Well, I think the first time was back when I was a kid."

Nora hissed. She glanced at Piper with something like concern on her face. "Cait, you don't have to go into it if you-"

"Don't be daft. I started this game, didn't I?" Cait flashed the blonde a smile.

Piper glanced between them a tad warily. She only knew a little about Cait's past, enough to know that it had rarely been happy before Nora had entered her life.

Cait leaned her head back to gaze up at the ceiling tiles. "Let me think. I reckon the first time was when I'd knocked over this dumb vase my parents liked, some pre-war trash that somehow didn't smash when the bombs fell. I must have been ten or eleven then? I dunno. Anyway, it was an ugly looking piece of shit, damn thing was close to falling apart anyway but boy, my dad was pissed when he found out. Prick shut my hand in the door for that."

Cait lifted her left hand and flexed the fingers experimentally. They looked completely normal to Piper, until she realised that the index finger was bent in towards the others just a little bit too much, and the skin on the middle section of the finger stood just a little higher above the rest, like it had never really healed properly.

"God, Cait …" Piper breathed, but had no idea what to say.

"Ah, don't you worry your pretty little head about it, Pipes." Cait flashed her a smirk. She flexed her hand into a fist. "It doesn't stop me punching people, so it's all good."

Piper shook her head with a smile. "And you say you're not an optimist.

Nora smiled as well and reached up to rub at her lover's neck soothingly.

Cait closed her eyes and breathed deeply at her lover's contact for a moment, then flashed Piper a grin. "Come on then, your turn now, Pipes."

"Ok." The brunette sighed, racking her brains for a topic. "Never have I ever … left the Commonwealth?"

Both the other women sighed and glanced at each other.

"Wow, some imagination you've got there, Pipes." Cait shook her head with a bit of a smirk as Nora reached for the whiskey.

"What? It's perfectly valid!" Piper complained.

"It's also boring."

"Let me think." Nora pursed her lips. "I probably left the area a bunch of times as a kid, but the first time I can really remember was going on holiday with my parents to Europe."

"Ooh, very fancy." Cait teased. She turned a look Piper's way. "Is that fancy?"

Piper merely shrugged. She wasn't really sure where Europe was, or where it was supposed to have been if it was no longer there.

"It was." Nora confirmed with a smile. "We went to France, got to see the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, everything." Blue's smile became sad. "I wonder if it's even still there."

"Hey, no moping." Cait smiled. "I've still got to get you two drunk."

Piper rolled her eyes. "I haven't even had a single drop yet."

"Don't worry Pipes. I'm sure we can correct that soon enough." Cait chuckled.

"You better start picking better topics for your rounds then." Piper almost sneered.

"Oh I've got plenty up my sleeve yet." Cait considered for a moment, before her grin turned into something distinctly predatory. "Never have I ever … had a threesome."

"Oh God." Piper groaned, putting hand to face.

"Is that a no then, Pipes?"

"Yes! It is!"

"Damn." Cait drawled. She turned to Blue. "What about you, babe?"

Nora was blushing a little, but she shook her head. "Nope. Never … had the opportunity."

"Well, I guess it's something to work towards then." Cait threw Piper a wink.

Piper coughed roughly and turned her face away, certain she was blushing up a storm.

She was almost relieved when the storm passed a little while later, letting them leave the store and the game behind. Cait brought the bottle with her as they left. It was about the only thing of value they'd managed to find after all.