"Oh my God," she breathed.
Her leg rode up higher, curling around the thick trunk of his waist, her toes curled and pussy absolutely broken. He pawed at her tits, squeezed hard, the cracked skin of his nailless fingertips scratching and pulling at her nipples. How did the bed not break? It was caught in rough seas, being shaken and rattled down to its very bones. The frame was abused with blunt force, banging against the wall.
Someone loudly knocked at their door.
"Will ya keep it down!? Rest of us are trying to sleep!"
The dense concentration of mortification plunged from a syringe straight into her heart would have killed her if not for the ghoul's quickened pace, his hands wrapping around her hip bones to slam her home.
"Fuck, fuck!" she cried. She wanted to beg, to plead, fuck me harder do me faster ruin me Charon, ruin me-
It all left her lips even though she did not hear herself speak. Charon obeyed, pressing himself closer to drill his cock right through her as though he couldn't fit enough of it inside. She kissed him, sloppy and uncaring. He rammed his tongue in and nearly choked her. The hard outline of his muscles continuously brushed her clit, plowing it from the fields straight up to the mountain peak.
He made damn sure the entire ship could hear her.
And then he stopped.
When he finally finished, he pulled off and sat on the edge of the bed, his dick growing limp and eyes trained on the door. She laid there, dreamy and dazed, not knowing if this was real or just another night of falling asleep to the stars. Her fingers brushed down the length of his exposed spine; he turned his head to look at her.
"You can stay in bed," she whispered, shy, hopeful.
He turned away. "I must take care of something. I will return."
She watched him get dressed, hide away his scars and burns and face, and then leave. She kept her back to the door. She wished she hadn't said anything.
He was seated in a chair in the corner when she eventually came to, the time on her Pip-Boy reading rise and fucking shine! She yawned, rolling through her tangled sheets until an arm dangled lazily off the side, her eyes catching his.
"Sleep good?" she joked, blowing a wavy curl off her nose.
His eyes slowly roved over to her exposed ass. She wiggled it.
"So, do I want to know what you did last night?" she inquired, trading her birthday suit for modesty. "How did you even get around the ship?"
"I took care of something," he rasped indifferently.
Mind your fucking business. It couldn't have been more perfectly stamped on her dumb forehead. With a duck of her head from his toasty glare, she fastened the straps of her Pip-Boy to her wrist and went for the door, holding up a hand as he went to disguise himself.
"I'm going to take care of something," she said coolly. "You can wait here."
She then slammed it in his face before he could reply, with his stupid scowl, stupid shotgun, and stupid lack of hair. The lobby for the Weatherly Hotel had a new face representing it that morning. All the conversation stopped. She was stared at, all alone in a crowded room.
"Are there showers anywhere on this boat?" Evelyn politely asked, trying to ignore the hawk-like eyes of the gossiping women at her side.
"Right down the hall on your left," the receptionist replied just as plainly. "Here's the key for the door. It's for hotel guests only."
Halle-fucking-lujah.
The taps were spun, the water was blessedly hot, and she stood underneath the scalding spray until she felt like her skin would melt off and clog the drain. Clumps of tangled, knotted hair were pulled out and curled around her fingers, (she made a picture with it on the wall) and she brushed at the prickly sensation down her once-smooth legs (if she even gave a damn anymore). Her pussy was still a little sore. The vault suit was scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed free of the sewage smell that had leeched into the threads.
The spray was shut off. A constant drip from the showerhead.
Drip drip drip
Do you even like boys?
What? She's drunk. A little more than usual. It's not like Amata. Her once prodigal, on the straight and narrow, best friend was now a little bent. Some days, the days she'll never confess to, she wants to just finish snapping her in half. Crack that pretty face, the one prettier than hers, right in two.
I mean, I'll obviously still be your friend!
Says it like a badge of honor to wear. Performing the Vault a golden community service. She's taken the G.O.A.T and received her lifelong duty- Be Friends with the Weird Girl, Forever!
So…do you?
She's thought about it. Heard enough of the small-brain rumors drifting around the halls of this tiny community to not not question it. The doctor's daughter might like the girls. A skirt chaser. Problem for the gene pool. But she's not. She's in love with Amata, but they're something closer than simple kisses and holding hands, so she likes to still think.
You can always tell me. I promise I won't tell anyone else.
And she looks up, but doesn't see her face. It's plain, just like everyone else's. An anonymous entity, just another 101, and she thinks she might start to cry.
Big baby Evelyn, she's always crying.
The hatch was spun shut. She raised her head; Charon was still in his chair in the corner, his expression no less dour than usual.
"Sorry," she said quietly.
She had trailed water down the hall and into the room. Her hair was soaked and scraggly, and the vault suit had been wrung out until she was afraid it would somehow disappear into an invisible pocket of space. A little puddle formed at her feet. Her boots were wet. The Pip-Boy screen was fogged.
"There's showers," she tried again, a little lamely. "There's a key…it's private."
He didn't say anything but stared at her. She knew that look, the first of many she would come to recognize, the first page amongst the multitude in the Grumpy Ghoul's Pop-Up Book- now with interactive grumbled audio for all your translating fun!
"Are you ready?" she finally asked.
Ding ding ding!
He stood and holstered his shotgun on his back before beginning the tedious task of wrapping himself until he became a walking toilet paper roll.
"Do you want some help?"
He paused in covering his arm; he only slightly raised his eyes. With a faint nod, he held over the strip of fabric for her to take. She grazed his fingers with her own and it somehow made her knees shake. When the disguise was complete and the door was opened, she turned to find his hand already, just barely, reaching out for hers.
She pulled him past the reception desk, heard the sniggering behind her back.
"I see why she keeps him around."
"More like hear."
"Guess something works under all of that."
They passed a duo of security guards.
"He was always a drunk- it's no surprise, honestly. Lucky they retrieved what they could before the mirelurks got to him."
"Yeah, but you didn't see the body when we slabbed him up. I'm telling you, there's no way a fall like that could-"
They snapped their mouths shut as they passed. One gave them a terse nod and generic warning as a way of greeting. "Staying out of trouble?" The two then dived into details once they were out of earshot.
The Rivet City Marketplace was much busier than she would have expected. Charon was helped down the stairs, one step at a time, into the throng of people milling about. More than one strange glance was sent their way. The vendors were hectic chasing caps while their customers were shrewd with their deals. She stepped up to the first stall that wasn't completely swamped, a swatch of ruby-red fabric catching her eye.
"Ooh." She went to caress the pretty dress before a sudden snapping made her withdraw.
"Ah, ah, ah." A twiddle of a finger. Naughty naughty. "Please do refrain yourself from sullying the merchandise, thank you." He then held out a hand, most expectantly. "At least until you have paid."
Fully embarrassed at being schooled like a snot-nosed child, she bowed her head and automatically reached for her caps stash. It thankfully wasn't anything to break the bank, and the man smiled an entirely different tune after he counted it into a register.
"Here, let me get that off the rack for you…a most…interesting piece, indeed."
Evelyn lifted the dress- no, not a dress- the lacey, racy, could barely keep her tits from spilling overboard-
She sputtered and quickly stuffed the sexy nightgown inside her bag before anyone else could notice. "Um, thank you," she meekly choked out, and then she almost flung her shoulder out of its socket by how hard she tugged the big guy along to the next stall.
A weathered man leaning against a gun cabinet gave her a weird look as they approached. "I heard about the 'Mummy Man' in town…seems they just about let anyone in on this tub nowadays." He eyed her head to toe. "Course, not always a bad thing…"
"I'll spend my caps somewhere else," she promptly responded with a pivot on her heel.
"Whoa, hey now." He hastily came around the side, unaware of the faceless head swiveling along with his every step. "I didn't mean anything by it…you looking to do business, girl? I might even give ya a discount."
She squeezed Charon's hand. Two fingers tapped her in return. She would take that as a yes.
"What sort of discount are we talking?"
With a grin, he bowed and waved an arm over to the assortment of guns on the rack. "What catches your eye?"
She didn't have a single fucking clue. They all did. Shiny, deadly, and out of her league in terms of skill. A bite of her lower lip, and she shrugged. This was Charon's area of expertise, and he had been castrated of any opinion on it all.
"Got any bullets? For a shotgun?" she asked with a touch of heartfelt innocence and overflowing ignorance.
"Shells? Sure." He again gave an overbearing grin as though he were ready to take a chomp out of her. He turned to retrieve a few shoddy boxes and stacked them on a knife-nicked countertop. "That's three a shell…just for you."
"Thanks-?" she started, but then Charon reached up and blindly felt for the boxes, opening one to then trace a bandaged finger along the inside over every single piece of ammunition.
The man across from them snorted. "What's he doing?"
A damn good question.
"Uh." She blinked, watching the ghoul continue with the second set. "He…likes to touch things, sometimes, like…to…uh, touch…them."
The man's eyes stayed glued to her tits. "I bet he does."
"Okay." She slapped some caps down. "Here-" She went to finish with pervert, but a thing on the wall stole away her insult. With wide eyes and a single finger, she pointed to it. "What is that?"
He turned, loudly snuffing snot up his head. "Oh, that?" He pulled it off to clunk it down between them. "This here's a power fist. Packs one hell of a wallop. Now, unfortunately, this one is a little shot on the hydraulics, so I ain't too inclined to-"
"I'll take it," she interrupted. It was no sooner a sad little scrapheap on the counter than it was a sad little scrapheap tied to the side of her bag, clanking along for the ride. If it was broken, Moira could fix it…she hoped.
Gary's Galley was her last stop- she wrapped away the mirelurk cakes with a watering mouth. The hostess leaned on the end of her broom to openly stare at them.
"So, are you together?" she asked, a strange lilt to her voice.
Evelyn nearly fumbled with zipping away the delicious treasures at the implication. She cleared her throat, keeping her eyes down and taking her time. Ziiiiiiiiiii-
"Uh, I guess. Kind of? It's…"
What kind of question was that? Together? Why did she ask it in that way? She knew what she was asking. No one else had asked it like that. He was her…
-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-
What exactly was he?
-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-
"Complicated."
-iiiiiiiiiiip!
The young woman sighed. "I wish my life were complicated."
I got a ticket just for that, Evelyn thought bitterly. She briefly pictured this woman having her world turned upside down, having this murdering tank of a ghoul stalking her every move, telling her it is fine and very well and maybe fucking her senseless and growling in her ear and sucking her tits-
She held on to his hand a little too tight; tight enough that he tapped her with his fingers until she released him. They were soon crossing the bridge back out into the wastes, the thick haze shrouding them from all eyes.
Her hand dropped from his. "We're clear."
He reached up and began to unravel himself, every bit of cloth wound into a tight ball to then be shoved into her pack. (Who knew when it would be needed again).
"We're going to the Jefferson Memorial," she said. He gave her a hard stare. "Oh my God, what?"
Charon turned his head to the domed building just beyond their scope. "I do not advise it. It is not-"
"Not safe," she finished, shouldering her bag. "Well, it's where my dad went, so-"
"He is dead," the ghoul rasped matter-of-factly. "Super mutants patrol the grounds."
"He's not dead," she bristled. "He hasn't been here for weeks, that's what Dr. Li, that woman, told me. If it's been that long, then I doubt he's over there, too. I just need to find out where he fucking went off to next."
Charon paused for a few minutes, then said, "Is it worth your life to find him?"
She automatically went to answer with a yes…but…she looked down at her feet, gripped the straps of her backpack. To say any of this had been worth it…
"I…" She felt that tremendous surge of pressure building inside her skull, the prickle of hot tears in her eyes.
She's always crying.
"…he's my dad," she said thickly.
It was all she had left. He was all she had left. She couldn't say anything more, lest her throat constrict and her eyes begin to bawl and her nose gets stuffed. Those big sky-blues, so ugly in the rain.
Charon released a deep sigh. "Very well."
At first, she protested, loudly. He had to snap at her to be quiet. Then, she begged…that was a first, outside of sex. He again snapped, shushing her sniffles and whiny fucking voice until he once again asked her if her father was worth it. She said yes. He didn't ask why. He had pointed to the bridge that was still extended. She had shaken her head. She wanted to find her father; Charon wanted her alive. This was the easiest solution. She would die, otherwise. He wasn't invincible, and she wasn't very bright.
"But, Charon-" she blubbered, her fingers worming into his armor. "-what if-what if-"
"Super mutants are of no concern to me. You will be safe, and I will return."
"You promise?" she breathed.
He looked her straight in the eye. "No." With a gentle push on her lower back, he directed her back to the ship, and he only turned his eyes away from her retreating form once she had safely walked across, that blue vault suit disappearing in the swirling mist.
He gave his attention back to the Jefferson Memorial.
The walk was short. The super mutants were healthy in number and roved the complex in a disorganized fashion. The quicker he approached, the louder they became. Completely stupid beasts, but extremely troublesome. There were far too many for a single combative and sole liability- clearing the compound would take days, maybe a couple of weeks, to properly prep for minimal risk and come away with all limbs intact, but he wasn't granted that sort of time. This was the most sensible solution.
One was at the base of the giant metal catwalks that surrounded the memorial. It gnawed on the leg of a yao guai, its bulging eyes roving in their sockets to watch him pass. It grunted. He ignored it, his boots clanging up the footpath. The mutants just clambered on by, shaking the entire platform like a miniature earthquake rolling on through. Only a few so much as turned their head and breathed swamp-like gas at his passing, others, merely gnashed their teeth and shouted single-syllable words.
He found an entrance leading inside. She may be right. Perhaps her father was still alive. The super mutants appeared more recent than he would have initially assumed- no hints of piled carcasses or bags of wet gore. He would still have to be thorough, just in case. A centaur slowly watched him enter the main section of the gift shop and begin the tedious task of searching for clues as to her father's whereabouts. He knew nothing of this man. Not what he looked like, or what his habits were…it may take some time. There were minimal signs of life. Empty coffee mugs, the crusty rings inside telling of more recent abandonment rather than decades. Paperwork not completely illegible, but scattered about and trodden underfoot. He kept out of the general way as he combed through the spaces, eyeing the blinking machinery. Mutants did not have the intellectual capacity to operate any of this. Someone had been here, at one point. He stepped into the rotunda and found a few holotapes in a pile that had not yet had the chance to accumulate much dust.
He pocketed those and kept searching.
A carton of cigarettes was swiped from an opened drawer. He drowned out the mindless, obnoxiously loud babble buzzing around him as he proceeded down to the lower basement level, a smoke at his mouth and a cloud of tobacco lingering at his heels. Two mutants were duking it out in a brawl. He sidestepped around and crushed the spent cigarette under his boot. There were a few nets filled with assorted limbs: feet with no toes, chewed-up hands, a few heads with their hair matted and black, their eyes empty. Not good.
More holotapes, all labeled with the same handwritten signature as before. Project Purity. Maybe her father. He came upon a single closed door and stepped through. A bed, a desk, a scattering of the prerecorded disks just about everywhere. Better Days. That's what one had read. They had all been neatly organized for the trip back to her. There was no sign of a body. Maybe she won't be so upset.
A holotape player was poking out from a box full of strewn paperwork, half-buried. He stared at it. The chair sighed under his weight. Another cigarette was lit at his lips as he leaned back in his seat and folded his arms, the pile of holotapes now stacked beside him.
He then picked up the first disc, and hit play.
Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. Forty. Two hours.
The vendor back at Flak N' Shrapnel's gave her a wink as she stormed right up to the counter. "What'll it be this time? Where's your-"
"Shut up and give me something that'll make you think twice about talking," she bit out with all the venom of a striking cobra. Her pile of caps was dumped between them. "And make sure it's fucking loaded."
He chuckled and pulled a Chinese assault rifle off the wall, clicking the magazine into place. "Don't hurt yourself, darling."
The bridge became a giant tambourine, beating along with every pounding of her boots as they marched right down the platform and straight into the person she had been too cross to even fucking see.
"Oof!" she yelped, stumbling back to glare up into the face of whoever was standing in her fucking way.
Charon was eyeing the rifle shaking in her hands. He raised a brow and placed a hand over it. "What is-"
"Where the fuck have you been?!" she snarled. She threw the gun to the ground; his face was drawn in distaste. "I've been waiting for over two fucking hours for you! What the hell happened?!"
He bent down to retrieve her weapon of choice but didn't offer it back for her to take. He replied coolly, "I apologize for my absence. I did not mean to inconvenience you."
"Inconvenience? Inconvenience?!" She laughed, loudly and brashly. She directed a knife hand back the way he had come. "I thought you had fucking died! Oh my God, really?! I don't have any way of knowing if you're hurt, or if you're waiting on me, or if something horrible happened." She was getting too thick with her emotions, and she took a deep breath to get herself in check. "I was going to come and find you," she finally warbled.
Charon's face had slowly gone from mild displeasure to nasty ire. With a clench of his jaw, he took a step back. His fingers were twitching.
"Do not do that again," he rasped, a veiled but promised threat. He then angled his body away from her, his leather gloves creaking from the pressure they held on to the rifle with. "He was not there." When she didn't say anything, he reluctantly continued with, "He is in Vault 112. It is where he said he would be going."
"And that was it?" she asked, hollow and uncaring. "Nothing about…me?"
He briefly looked at her before throwing his gaze away. "No."
Her lower lip trembled. She spun on her heel and planted her hands on her hips before she could make that face he hated so much, the one that reminded him that he was stuck with an absolutely pathetic, lonely, vaultie reject that couldn't even fend off the time of day.
"Charon," she faintly sobbed, her throat in pain from how hard she tried to fight it. "Do you know where Vault 112 is?"
"No."
"Okay, okay, I guess that's…um." She brusquely rubbed at her snot-bubbled nose with her sleeve. "I don't care. Fuck it. I really don't care." Her hands slapped at her sides. "I want a drink. Do you want a drink?" She eventually turned around. She couldn't place the look he was giving her. "Oh, come on, I swear I won't make a repeat of Dukov's. Unless…" She winked her wet lashes at him. "You want me to?"
He instead answered, "He is not worth it."
It was a couple runaway tears, then a flood, then a hysterical mess of chaffed eyes and a ruddy nose and cracked lips and a hoarse throat. Charon didn't offer comfort, dole out chastisement, or do anything at all, really. He stood there, staring down at her with no expression on his nightmare of a face. She dry heaved. He watched. She cursed and shrieked and he remained still and gazed on and didn't react in any way.
"I fucking hate him!" she screamed, snatching the rifle back and suddenly looking down the barrel of a gun.
It's the taste of hot sand, dry salt. It's sudden. It's everywhere. There's no escaping it, for she's already made it. The Alpha and The Omega. The Beginning. The End. This is where it's led to. She's tried the door, pushed all the buttons, cried and cried and cried. Please let me in. I'm sorry. Don't leave me out here. Don't leave me here alone. It's so lonely. I don't know where to go. Dad isn't here. Have you seen my dad?
She only has the gun. It's loaded. She couldn't pull a single shot.
But now she can.
"Evelyn," a single utter of her name. A thick, deep rasp, not something entirely human, but something wholly alive. "Please…come here."
She's curled in a ball, shoved tight, tight, small, so incredibly small, inside a little hovel she had managed to squirrel into. A hand, scarred and ugly and stained with every shade of red, holds out. She takes it, feels the curl of his fingers around her, and lets him pull her up and away.