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Chapter Text

Cooper Howard had never labored under the impression he was a good man. A good man didn’t put a bug in his own wife’s Pip-Boy. A good man didn’t put aside his principles for a paycheck. And a good man certainly didn’t know the world was ending and let it happen. 

No, Cooper Howard hadn’t been a good man before – and now? Now there were some who would say he wasn’t any kind of man at all. 

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Lucy MacLean had always thought of herself as a good person. Being good was easy, after all. There was right and there was wrong, and all she had to do was follow what was right. 

It was the simplest thing in the world to present herself as the newest link in the genetic chain. Marrying someone from Vault 32, bearing his child, furthering the future America, it was the right thing to do. 

The Wasteland changed everything. All at once, things weren’t so simple. She had tried kindness and received only pain in return. She had tried to do what was right and this decaying world had thrown it back in her face. 

Worst of all were the lies. If real, pure truth existed out here, Lucy had yet to find it. 

Yes, the Wasteland had changed everything – and if she wasn’t careful, it was going to change her right along with it.

Chapter Text

Lucy wasn’t sure what to make of the dog. She knew, in theory, what a dog was, but she’d never seen one before. It made her a little nervous, if she was being honest. She could remember her father’s lectures on how scarce resources would be when their descendents returned to the surface, how they would have to grapple with whatever life had scraped through the radiation for control of them. No one in the Vaults was sure exactly what would have survived, but feral dogs had been one of the contenders. 

This dog didn’t seem so bad. It trotted beside them without much complaint, and its presence was almost comforting at night when the air chilled and the menace of the world seemed to press down on them. Some long-buried instinct told her the dog would protect them if it came down to it. 

Even so, she kept her distance. She couldn’t ignore the teeth or the low rumbling growl it sometimes issued when it heard something stirring beyond the boundaries of their campfire. 

The Ghoul did not seem to share her hesitation. He sat most nights with the dog’s head in his lap, his hand on its head. 

She reclined on the opposite side of the fire, watching his fingers float in and out of visibility through the haze of fur. Her fingers, she should say. Well, one of them at least, but that was one too many. 

She hadn’t believed it at first. The sun had risen on their first day, and she’d caught a glimpse of the patchwork stitching around his first digit. The realization had stopped her in her tracks. 

“That’s mine.” 

It had been a dumb thing to say. It had also been the only thing she could think of to say. 

The Ghoul didn’t slow a step. “What’s yours?” 

Lucy kicked herself into a jog to catch up. “That finger! My finger.” She pointed at it with her own corpse-made pointer and fought a grimace. The dead gray always turned her stomach a little. 

The Ghoul traced his finger – her finger – down his cheek, scratched at his jaw. “Feels like mine to me.” 

Lucy couldn’t stop looking at it. It had to be the one piece of unscarred flesh the Ghoul possessed, so incongruous with the rest of his body. “Look,” she said, shoving her other hand, the whole one, toward him. 

Their pointer fingers hovered near each other. Perfect mirrors. Undeniably hers. 

“You lose something out here, it ain’t yours anymore,” the Ghoul said simply. He shouldered past her and whistled for the dog. 

As it bounded up, she fell back. She couldn’t figure out what he wanted her finger for anyway. Weren’t his own parts enough for him? 

She was just as baffled now, days later, watching him ruffle the dog’s ears. Dogmeat, that’s what he called it. Turning away, she huddled under the thin, ratty piece of fabric that passed for a blanket and stared into the dark blankness of the rolling sands. 

The desert was cold at night – she hadn’t expected that. What was blazing, almost intolerable heat during the day dropped rapidly into a bone-leaching chill not long after the sun went down. Were it not for the fire, Lucy wouldn’t be able to get a wink of sleep. 

As it was, her back was decently warm while her nose complained at the sting. Craning her head, she gazed back at Dogmeat. All that fur… 

Though her throat was dry and her heart pounded, she scootched into a sitting position and held out her hand. Wetting her lips, she attempted a whistle. Nothing but a muted sputtering of her lips that caught the Ghoul’s attention but not the dog’s. 

Eyes narrowed, she ran her tongue around her mouth and tried again. And again. And once more, for luck. On the last she managed a slight wish of sound that might have counted except that Dogmeat only swiveled one ear her way and stayed right where it was. 

“The hell are you doing?” The Ghoul sat with his legs wide, elbows propped on his knees. The firelight gleamed eerily off his eyes, emphasized the deep hollows that surrounded them. It played off his scars in a way that almost made it seem like his skin was crawling – Lucy couldn’t look at him. 

Attention fixed solely on the dog, she reached her hand out further and made her best come-hither gesture. “Dogmeat,” she coaxed, as enticing as she could be when she equally wanted and dreaded its obeisance. 

That did the trick. With a quiet whine, Dogmeat shook itself free of the Ghoul and padded over to Lucy. Head cocked, nose snuffling, it made a thorough inspection of her open palm before lapping its tongue across it and flopping down at her side. 

Warmth spilled through her, and Lucy decided to take the risk – she rested a tentative hand between Dogmeat’s ears. Soft, so soft. She couldn’t help herself; she found herself grinning as she smoothed her hand up and back down its velvet ears. Warm and soft, a better blanket than any fabric could hope to be. Her grin faded when she noticed the Ghoul glaring at her. 

“You can’t be mad,” she said, snuggling closer to Dogmeat. “You lose something, it isn’t yours anymore, remember?” 

She heard the Ghoul snort even as she lowered herself back to the ground, the bulk of Dogmeat obscuring him from view. Hands twisted in the dog’s fur, body curved around its heat, Lucy slept peacefully for the first time since she’d set out on this ludicrous adventure

Chapter Text

Cooper shaded his eyes with his hand, squinting at the shape in the distance that could be nothing or could be trouble. It was a person, he thought, slumped against an old concrete pylon once used for an overpass. If he tried, he could probably remember the name of the interstate. He didn’t try. 

From this distance, it was impossible to tell if the person was breathing. They could be a corpse, they could be a ghoul, or they could be a smoothskin lying in wait for someone more foolish than him to approach. 

Oh, he’d be fine, of course. Bullets these days meant about as much to him as the blanks they’d used in his old films. Lucy, on the other hand… 

Cooper grimaced. It would be a shame to have dragged her all this way only to have her taken out by a stray shot. He eyed Dogmeat, thought about sending her in as a temperature check, but she’d been almost useless since Lucy had gotten her hands on her. Now instead of avidly tracking anyone down, she was content to trot alongside Lucy, tongue lolling, eyes practically limpid with devotion. 

Pathetic. 

“Wait here,” Cooper growled before striding resolutely toward the maybe-corpse. He kept one hand braced on the handle of his gun, ready to draw. 

As he got closer, the shape began to resolve. A smoothskin, not yet a corpse. Well on his way to one by the look of him, though. Blood made a waterfall of his neck, more bubbled at the corners of his lips. 

Odd thing, though. Those lips were moving. 

Cooper stepped closer, eyes narrowed, grip fixed around the gun. No way this guy was trying to talk to him. 

But when he saw Cooper, the man flailed his limbs and made harsh, gurgling sounds that would have been words if they weren’t shredded by the slash in his throat. 

Cooper had just decided he was never going to decipher whatever message the man was trying to convey when a bullet whizzed out from behind the pylon to bury itself in his shoulder. Ignoring the impact, he drew his own weapon, used it to gesture lazily at the man who had collapsed into a death slump. 

“Your bait is dead,” he said, loud enough to be heard but not loud enough for the sound to carry far. Other pylons concealing God-knew-what studded the landscape.

Dogmeat was at his heels now, lips peeled back in a snarl, fur on end. 

He glanced down at her, exasperated. “Now you show up.” 

Another bullet, this one embedding into his gut. It might have been fatal if he were alive and had a few hours to bleed out. This was beginning to get annoying. 

He made his way to the pylon, rounded the corner before whoever this idiot was had time to fire again, and seized the barrel of their gun. A quick yank was enough to disarm the attacker – more than enough since the attacker turned out to be a kid. 

Couldn’t have been more than twelve by Cooper’s estimate. Skinny enough to be invisible when he turned sideways. Ratty clothes and rattier hair, and even now he was going for a knife, as much good as that would do him. 

Lazily, Cooper flipped the kid’s gun around and took aim. No point wasting his own bullets if he didn’t have to.

“Stop!” Lucy, who had come around the pylon herself, practically threw herself between him and the kid. Her arms were outstretched, and her eyes blazed with righteous fury. 

This had just gone from annoying to fucking annoying. “Get out of the way,” he gritted. 

Lucy stayed exactly where she was. “You can’t shoot him. He’s a child!” 

Cooper ground his teeth together hard enough to crack a back molar. “Fine. Get out of the way or I’ll shoot you first, then him. That ease your conscience?” 

What he was beginning to recognize as her Stubborn Look shuttered over her face. Her jaw was set, her hands curled into fists, her brows lowered. She opened her mouth – probably to say something that would take the situation from fucking annoying to even-more-fucking-annoying – when her words broke off in a gasp. 

The reason why was clear: the kid had buried the knife in her back, just below her shoulder blade. And now he was running as fast as his legs would take him over the shifting sands. 

Barely pausing to take aim, Cooper lifted the gun, fired once, and watched the kid drop. 

Two bodies thudded to the ground. Lucy had fallen to her knees, pained whimpers issuing from her lips as she probed the handle. 

It was an awkward angle for her to reach, so Cooper batted her hand away and grasped the handle. “Maybe next time you’ll listen to me when I tell you I’m gonna shoot someone. See, I’m a man of my word, so they’re gonna get shot. All you have to do is not walk right in front of the damn gun,” he said. Then in one smooth pull, he yanked the blade out. 

Lucy let out a choked shout and pitched forward onto her hands. Blood welled to the surface through the skin of her Vaultsuit, began trickling to the ground in lazy drops. 

Scowling, Cooper discarded his bandolier and shrugged out of his jacket. For a brief moment he considered just using his waistcoat, but the leather would stain like a bitch, so he tossed that to the side too. He couldn’t think of the last time his shirt had seen water and it had plenty of stains he couldn’t identify, but it was better than nothing. 

He whistled as he folded the fabric into smaller and smaller rectangles. When he had Dogmeat’s attention, he jerked his head at their surroundings. “Kill anything that’s still out there,” he ordered, and waited until she took off to kneel next to Lucy.

Her eyes were screwed shut, her fists dug into the sand. 

“I ain’t gonna hold this for you,” he said, offering her the folded shirt. 

She opened her eyes just enough to see what he held. Stifling another pain-laced gasp, she eased herself onto her butt, accepted the cloth with a skeptical grimace, and pressed it against the shallow hole in her back. 

Cooper had a few holes of his own. The bullet lodged in his shoulder was easy enough to coax out with a few determined squeezes, but the one in his gut was going to take some digging. Bracing himself against the pylon, he clenched his teeth and drove his fingers into the wet tunnel of flesh. With a grunt, he grasped the bullet between his fingernails and began dragging it out, inch by inch. 

Lancing pain forced him to stop halfway through; his skull and back throbbed with how hard he’d pressed against the unforgiving concrete, and it felt like he was shredding his insides. Dimly, he registered Dogmeat pacing near the pylon and Lucy staring at him from under sweat-clotted bangs. He became suddenly, acutely aware of just how much of his ravaged flesh was on display. 

The scarring consumed his body, every inch of it except his new finger, courtesy of the coddled Vault-dwellers. Once, he’d been toned if not muscular. Svelte, according to the magazines. Now he was nothing but gnarled cords of skin and hollowed pits, and maybe the faintest trace of his old self was there if you looked hard enough but he never did. 

“I ain’t putting on a show here,” he snarled. 

Lucy turned her face away, but not before he noticed her grimace.

Fuck her. She was disgusted by him? She could join the club.

He tore into himself with renewed determination – there would be no stopping until the damn bullet was out. With a sucking pop, it came free and he tossed it as far into the desert as he could. Even as his flesh knit itself back together, he was standing, throwing on his waistcoat.

He didn’t bother looking at Lucy as he elbowed into his jacket and resettled the bandolier across his chest. “We’re moving.” And though he paused to make sure Lucy’s faltering footsteps started after him, he did not once look back.

Chapter Text

They were holed up in some half-buried heckhole, which Lucy didn’t even have the energy to be disappointed by. Segments of radroaches littered the floor, bloodstains decorated the walls, and the one thing that resembled a mattress had more gouges than stuffing, but if they’d had to go even three feet further, she was pretty sure she would have passed out. She’d experienced agony like this only once before, on the night of her wedding, and she desperately wished for a stimpak now. 

As it was, she had to resort to a needle, thread, and a mirror propped up on a rusted bucket so she could see what she was doing. Even if she’d had the courage to ask the Ghoul for help, he’d handed her the sewing supplies then thrown himself down on the mattress and tipped his hat over his eyes. 

Which turned out to be a small mercy when Lucy peeled her Vaultsuit down to her waist. Her tanktop was ruined with blood; it had chafed against her something awful, and she had to grit her teeth when she tugged it off. 

The wound had stopped bleeding a good two hours before, but it still throbbed as the ribbed fabric caught against its edges. She adjusted her bra self-consciously, though she was certain the Ghoul was asleep. She wouldn’t have been self-conscious except she knew what she’d thought when she’d seen him without his shirt. But she was steadfastly refusing to admit she’d felt anything at all about that. The guy was a monster – she’d been confused and in pain, and it had thrown off her judgment, that was all.

Positioning the mirror just so, she settled on the floor facing away from the Ghoul and threaded the needle. Now came the hard part. Staring at the larger mirror in front of her, she made her best attempt at getting the needle somewhat close to her wound. It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world; in fact, her shoulders were screaming at her not five minutes in, and she hadn’t managed a single stitch. Every time she got close, she would accidentally shift or the sun would catch in the mirror and half-blind her or Dogmeat would move and the sudden flinch would distract her. 

She faced her reflection and let out a long, slow breath. “You can do this,” she assured herself. 

Over the next ten minutes, she managed two stitches. Somewhere around minute three she’d started sweating, which didn’t help matters. Pain and exhaustion were catching up to her, and her arms were beginning to shake with the effort of maintaining such an awkward pose. 

“For Christ’s sake, we’ll be here all night at this rate.” The Ghoul jerked off the mattress and tugged her hand away from her back. Before she could protest – or even fully realize he’d been awake this whole time – he’d taken the needle and applied it to her skin. 

He was, she realized, surprisingly adept at this. Maybe it shouldn’t have been a shock given where her finger had ended up, but the stabbing spots of pain that had accompanied her own stitches weren’t present anymore. In fact, she didn’t even realize he was done until he bit through the thread and tied it off with a huff. 

“Genetically engineered super-managers, my right ass cheek. Can’t even manage fucking stitches,” he muttered as he stalked back to reclaim the mattress. Then, louder, “Who stabbed you the first time?” 

Lucy paused in the process of zipping up her Vaultsuit. “What?” 

The Ghoul tilted his head toward her abdomen. “You’ve got a matching scar on the front.” 

Automatically, Lucy’s hand fell to the puckered spot her late husband had left her with. She hadn’t realized the Ghoul had noticed. 

“My Vault was raided,” she said, doing up the suit and turning away from him. His observation made her feel unreasonably exposed. “I was meant to… I married one of them. He stabbed me after we had sex.” 

The Ghoul made a harsh rasping sound. It took Lucy a moment to recognize it as laughter. 

“That bad, were ya?” 

Indignation flared through her, sharp and unexpected. She had nothing to prove to this ghoul. Yet she found herself saying, “Just so you know, he said it was the best day of his life. So.” 

Again that nail-file chuckle. “I’m sure he did, sweetheart.” 

Lucy had enough self-respect not to dignify that with a response. Instead, she sequestered herself in the furthest corner of the room as she possibly could and took no small amount of satisfaction when Dogmeat ambled over to lay next to her instead of the Ghoul. 

He cracked an eye open, muttered, “Traitor,” then tugged his hat over his face once more.

Chapter Text

Cooper didn’t really sleep anymore. He fell into something resembling unconsciousness on occasion, but between the Jet and the constant discomfort of being ghoul, he spent most of his time at least partially alert. 

It didn’t make any sense at all to be jealous of the smoothskin curled on the floor about twenty feet away from him. She was vulnerable and too optimistic for her own good – it would hurt like hell when that was flayed out of her. She was the latest in a line of sociopaths, and she was ignorant of everything about her life that mattered. 

But she also looked completely at peace, hair that had spilled over her cheek fluttering in the wake of soft, dream-filled breaths. Stabbed only a few hours ago and now sleeping like a baby, not a care in the world. Cooper had to admit, he envied her that. 

He might have even felt a twinge of guilt when he toed her right beneath her stitches to wake her up. 

Her eyes flew open, and she jerked into a sitting position before almost immediately doubling over in a groan. “What is it?” she asked, voice blurred with sleep. 

“We’re burning daylight.” Turning, he pushed out of the broken window through which they’d accessed whatever building this had once been. Instinct had him scanning the horizon, but he saw nothing except jagged shadows cast by failing infrastructure. 

A cascade of sand said Lucy was following after him, and soon Dogmeat had taken the lead as usual. Her nose was to the ground, her pace steady as she trekked the untold lengths ahead of them. 

Mile after mile slipped away under their steady, relentless pace. There was the occasional silhouette in the distance, but they faded nearly as quickly as they emerged. In the Wastes, no one was eager to make new acquaintances. 

It seemed to take an age, but eventually the horizon yielded what he’d been looking for: an uneven outline of what passed for a city these days. Whistling, he brought Dogmeat to heel and changed their course. 

“Where are we going?” Lucy asked. 

Cooper didn’t bother to answer, just stuck to a path that would bring them directly to the city’s heart. 

Its familiar racket buzzed in the air like flies as they approached. Rough shouts, the squeal of the unfortunate, and the occasional gunshot – just the way he remembered it. Walls that could have been mistaken for trash heaps loomed above them; a snarl of wires pretending to be a gate stretched across the entrance. 

“Halt!” a harsh voice commanded, and a bullet thudded into the sand at his feet. 

Lucy fell back a pace and Dogmeat snarled, but Cooper broke into a grin. Tilting his head up, he pushed back his hat and met the half-clouded eyes of Donald Whitaker, one of the oldest ghouls he’d ever encountered apart from himself.

“Now you tell me why they’ve put a blind man on lookout duty,” he called up. 

“Half-blind!” Donald shot back, then, sticking his pinky in his ear and twirling it a couple times, “I recognize that whining. That you, Coop?” 

He heard Lucy mutter, “Coop?” behind him but ignored her. “It’s me,” he confirmed, hands on his hips. “Open the damn gate.” 

Donald tocked his jaw from one side to the other, the barrel of his gun drifting almost lazily to aim at Lucy. “Who’s she?” 

Cooper glanced back at her, considering. “Collateral,” he decided after a pause. 

For a long minute, Donald didn’t move, and Cooper shifted his hand ever so subtly toward the handle of his own gun. Donny might be closer to a friend than an enemy, but if he was going to be a problem, Cooper would not hesitate to solve it. 

But Donald only dissolved into a broken, wheezing laugh and slipped his gun back into its holster. “If you want to try to keep a hold of her in here, be my guest.” With that, he pulled a rust-rimed lever, the gates squealing open in reply. 

Cooper pushed forward, into the corridor of garbage and filth. By the look on Lucy’s face, he guessed they were surrounded by stench, but that hardly mattered to him. Tattered cloak swishing behind him, hand already resting on the butt of his gun, he emerged from the lane into the town center. 

The place was a chaos of ghouls. Rotten, sloughed flesh and skeleton teeth, eyes sunken or bulging by turns, strands of thinned hair clinging hopelessly to scalps. There were always a few smoothskins, of course, draped over one ghoul or another with an appetite he’d never understood. 

Some of them broke off as he passed, hovering like seagulls in his periphery, hoping to be noticed. Cooper ignored them, like he always did – there was no accounting for taste. 

Several of the ghouls tracked his movements, but none of them dared get in his way. He’d opened enough skulls in enough towns to earn their respect, begrudging as it might have been. 

The same could not be said for Lucy. The first time one of them reached for her, he blew its hand off. The second lost an arm. After the third – which he left without the top half of its head – he grabbed her upper arm to keep her close. 

“You’re more trouble than you’re fucking worth,” he muttered as she stumbled at his side, her shorter legs struggling to match his pace. 

Before Lucy had a chance to voice the offense she surely felt, he’d dragged her into a dingy shop whose entrance was half-obscured by a cascade of dirty fabric.

Chapter Text

Lucy took stock of her new surroundings as her eyes adjusted to the abrupt lack of sunlight. Her tricep ached with the force of the Ghoul’s grip, and her back was unbelievably sore, but she knew better than to let her guard down in a place like this. They appeared to be the only customers in the shop – a small relief. A faded sign near the entrance proclaimed this the “Home of the Bulletman.” 

The place looked like it had been raided: things were piled in haphazard towers, some of which had collapsed across the floor. None of it matched. There were canteens and clothes resting right alongside guns and lengths of rope. The roof threatened to cave in every second, groaning under the weight of the garbage piled outside. The one thing she didn’t see, it seemed, was bullets. 

The only sources of light were the occasional holes in the wall posing as windows, but even that was enough for Lucy to be careful where she stepped. Puddles of mysterious liquid – she didn’t want to know – pooled among the heaps of detritus. 

And the smell . It made her eyes water, and she couldn’t help but notice Dogmeat whining at the shop’s entrance. The dog refused to set so much as a paw inside. She would join it if she didn’t think she’d get swarmed by ghouls the second she stepped out on her own. Hopefully, whatever they were doing here, it would be quick. 

A counter sagged along one wall, its proprietor shaking himself awake as the Ghoul slammed his bandolier atop the rotting wood. 

Lucy’s mind had been stuck on the word Coop since the town’s guard had said it. Something about it had lodged in some memory she couldn’t bring to mind, and it was driving her bananas. Why was that name so familiar? There weren’t any Coops or Coopers in Vault 33, and yet… 

The shopkeeper’s voice broke through her musings. “Have you gone through them all already? Honestly, you might try pacifism every once in a while. It might make a refreshing change from the violence.” 

The educated cadence of his voice was at odds with his mangled appearance. He looked as ghoul as any of the other members of this town, half his scalp peeling off, open sores parading down his neck and past his collar. 

The Ghoul sighed. “I come here for the products, not the preaching. And I want double what I ordered last time.” 

The flesh above the Bulletman’s eyes wrinkled as he raised non-existent eyebrows. “How, pray tell, do you intend to pay for all that?” 

The Ghoul tilted his head toward Lucy. “With her. One night, uninterrupted. We have a deal?” 

Disgust mushroomed through her, though she couldn’t say she was surprised. He’d tried to sell her once before and look how that had turned out. Her dead finger twitched. “Hey, wait a minute-” 

The Bulletman turned thoughtful eyes on her. “Yes, yes, pretty face,” he mused as he stared first at her face then at her body. “Lovely figure. You’ll do quite nicely indeed, my dear.” 

“I am not for sale,” Lucy said, chin high, shoulders back. Maybe she could be convincing if she looked imperious enough. 

“Well, he don’t want me,” the Ghoul said. “So I’m afraid you don’t have much choice, sweetheart.” 

“Alas not.” The Bulletman shook his head solemnly. “There’s a city full of you out there. I need something more interesting.” 

Lucy curled her hands into fists. “I don’t consent to this,” she stated firmly. It wasn’t much of a defense, but it had always worked in the Vault. 

Frowning, the Bulletman turned to the Ghoul. “Then I’m afraid our deal is off.” He looked genuinely sorrowful, which was so out of place in this world she was coming to know that Lucy almost couldn’t comprehend it. 

The Ghoul bared his teeth in a grin devoid of amusement. “Give us a minute, would ya?” Without waiting for a response, he seized Lucy by the arm again and dragged her deeper into the shop. 

She protested the whole way, internally wincing as her foot splashed into one of the opaque puddles. He brought them to a halt with such force she almost lost her footing. 

His hands descended on her shoulders, strong as iron and with enough pressure to grind her bones together. “Do you know where we’re going?” he hissed, his face mere inches from hers. 

Never before had they been even a fraction of this close. It was so unsettling, Lucy struggled to put together a coherent sentence. Up close, his eyes – familiar eyes? but how could they be? – burned with intensity. 

“To find my father,” she said, overcoming her clumsy tongue. 

“That’s right.” The Ghoul pressed in even closer until he was all she could see. “And your father has gone to find his people. We’re going up against a machine that’s been in motion since long before you were even a twinkle in your mama’s eye. We need guns. We need bullets. I’d get ‘em from thin air if I could, but it don’t work that way, so you choose. Dignity or victory.” 

The name came to her in a flash – she remembered those eyes staring out at her from a screen as she sat mesmerized next to her father. “Cooper Howard. The old movie star.” She couldn’t believe it had taken her this long to place him; her father had shown her every one of his movies he’d been able to get his hands on, most of them more than once. 

The Ghoul released her so abruptly she rocked backward. “Jesus H. Christ, you weren’t even listening to me.” 

“I was listening!” Lucy blew out a breath and tried her best to swallow her disappointment. The guy in the movies had been a hero, standing up for injustice and gunning down the villains who stood in his way. The ghoul in front of her wanted her to trade her body for some bullets. It was a difficult juxtaposition to come to terms with – but she’d accepted worse over the past week. 

Her father’s betrayal, her mother’s death… she couldn’t deny she wanted them both to mean something, and she’d never get answers out here in the Waste. The one person who could give them to her was hiding somewhere she was smart enough to realize she couldn’t reach on her own. She’d ended her own mom’s half-life; one night of not-fantastic sex was nothing compared to that.

Straightening her shoulders, she marched back to the counter. “Fine. As long as it’s really just one night.” 

“I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” the Ghoul said, moving before she could change her mind. “For the girl and the bullets.” 

There were hours of daylight left, and Lucy spent them propped on a moldy cushion as the Bulletman focused on measuring gunpowder, pouring it into casings. He didn’t look so bad for a ghoul, she supposed. The sores were pretty gross, but if they did it from behind, she wouldn’t even have to look at them. 

At least he was polite. He chatted with her while he worked, about Cooper and his movies – which he’d never seen but was sure they were delightful because Lucy seemed like a woman of taste – and the hardships of the Waste and the decade the Bulletman had spent as a ghoul. By the time the sun had dipped below the horizon she was feeling, if not content with, more mollified by her choice. 

“The room is right over there, my dear. I’ll give you a moment of privacy to get ready.” The Bulletman gestured to a corner swathed with shadow, which Lucy realized as she approached was actually a doorway. 

Slipping through, she found a space as mussed as the shop. Sheaves of paper cluttered the floor and the bed – which was so bent in the middle she feared it might collapse on them. The sheets were drastic; perhaps she’d suggest using the floor as well as him taking her from behind. 

Quickly, without giving herself time to think about it, she stripped out of her Vaultsuit and tanktop, careful not to disturb her stitches, and rested her Pip-Boy atop the small pile. After a moment’s thought, she shimmied out of her undergarments as well. The sooner this was finished, the happier she’d be. 

When the Bulletman came in, his eyes widened and a smile lit upon his face. “A life drawing! How generous. I’ve not done one of those in ages. If you could just make yourself comfortable on that stool there.” He inclined his head toward a three-legged stool placed near the foot of the bed. 

Lucy could only stare at him. He wasn’t taking any of his clothes off – in fact, as she watched, he put on a blackened smock. “What?” 

“Your portrait! You can’t put a price on art, that’s what I always say, but I do all the same. Anyone who wants more than two dozen bullets must sit for a drawing. Didn’t he tell you?” 

Without waiting for an answer, the Bulletman tightened the strings of his smock. “Come, come, we’ve only got a few hours and I simply can’t do a drawing in less than five.” He gestured to the stool again, a tad impatient. 

Her portrait. Lucy took a closer look at the papers curled around the floor; they contained faces, bodies outlined in heavy strokes of charcoal. Nearly all of them were clothed. 

Flushed all the way down to her chest, Lucy lowered herself gingerly onto the stool. She fought the urge to hunch over and hide herself, instead doing her best to pick a position she could maintain for hours without pulling her stitches. At last, she settled for a pose she’d seen on one of Cooper Howard’s old posters: one leg pulled up, heel propped against the rim of the chair, elbow dangling from her knee. The other foot stayed firmly on the ground. It worked pretty well at hiding any embarrassing bits. 

“Wonderful,” the Bulletman murmured as he set up an easel and sketchpad. Retrieving a stick of charcoal, he took a moment to just study her, then, finally, set charcoal to paper. 

Lucy fidgeted – a lot. The bright blue of her Vaultsuit taunted her from the floor. The hard wood of the stool dug relentlessly into her butt. The night was far from what she’d expected, but she still wanted desperately for it to end. 

Though the Bulletman had been chatty before, he was quiet now, focused only on his strokes and lines. He murmured to himself occasionally as he worked, a “Look at the curve of her cheek,” or “What unusual lips.” They were compliments, she thought, but they still made her squirm. 

After what seemed an interminable amount of time, he looked up from his artwork with glittering eyes. “There! Would you like to see?” 

Despite her discomfort, Lucy nodded. She reached for her clothes even as the Bulletman turned his easel around. When she saw the sketch, she froze. For the briefest instant, she thought he’d captured her mother. Then the features resolved more firmly into hers, a perfect snapshot of the best of her pose. 

She looked oddly relaxed despite the fact that she hadn’t been for even a second of this unexpected session. Her nudity didn’t stand out nearly as much as she’d feared – it was merely another aspect of the drawing, the black lines of her bare arms carving out as a natural extension of her hair. 

“It’s… beautiful,” she said honestly. It might have been the first beautiful thing she’d seen since coming to the surface. “Thank you.”

The Bulletman carefully rolled up the parchment. “No need to thank me, my dear, you were the one providing the service. I only hope you feel you got your value out of it.” He paused for a moment, considering. “Would you like to keep it?” 

Lucy’s eyebrows rose. “Oh no, I couldn’t do that. It’s your payment, isn’t it? 

Smiling warmly, he held out the paper. “My dear, this is art. The joy comes from the act of creation, not the outcome. You have paid in full.”  

She accepted the drawing, baffled as she was, placing it carefully in her pack. She’d never met anyone like the Bulletman in the Vault, much less out here. 

“Thank you,” she said again.

“So polite,” he sighed wistfully. “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to stay here?”

The sour-smelling, puddled interior flashed before her eyes. Even if she didn’t want to find her father, she wouldn’t have wanted to stay. “Sorry,” Lucy said with a shake of her head.

“Ah, well.” He removed his smock and gave her a knowing look. “That old pessimist needs you more than I do anyway.”  

He left her after that, to gather up the bullets for the Ghoul. She dressed quickly and joined him just as the Ghoul pushed his way into the shop. 

Any good feeling the portrait had given her evaporated in an instant. Inwardly seething, she watched him accept the bulging sack. She kept stewing as he and the Bulletman had a hushed conversation, only half-paying attention to what they were actually talking about. 

The Bulletman leaned in, kept his voice low. “Do be careful, won’t you? There’s word going round of an unusual amount of missing ghouls. I’d hate to see you counted among them.” 

“I didn’t know you cared,” the Ghoul smirked. 

“Of course I care!” The Bulletman reached out to adjust his sign. “You’re one of my most prolific customers.” 

The Ghoul didn’t acknowledge Lucy beyond a quick jerk of the head to indicate they were leaving. She stalked after him, sticking close despite the hatred shimmering off her. As angry as she was, she didn’t want to get hauled off into a back alley by some amorous ghoul. 

The corridor swallowed them in its shade, and the Ghoul gave Donald a jaunty salute as they passed through the gate. 

“You bring that pretty girl back to visit ol’ Donny someday,” he shouted with a frantic wave. 

The Ghoul lifted a hand in acknowledgement then whistled to Dogmeat. Immediately, the dog set to work tracking. 

Lucy did not care that Donald was up there watching them; she broke into a run to get in front of the Ghoul, planted her feet, and slapped both hands onto his chest to stop him. 

He swayed back, looked at her expectantly. 

“That,” she snapped, “was humiliating.” 

The Ghoul didn’t seem particularly perturbed. “You’ll thank me for it when you realize it’s our only chance at getting outta this alive.” 

His apathy, his callousness, his emptiness hooked their claws into her skin. In that moment, all she wanted was to rid him of that dull nothing of an expression. She wanted him to be as angry with her as she was with him. Almost before she realized what she was doing, she’d lifted her hand and brought it swinging in a tight arc toward his face. 

He moved faster than she did, one hand flashing up to catch her around the wrist. There was the anger she’d wanted, bleeding through to fill every ridge and hollow of his face. “I’m only gonna say this once, so you listen close. This is not a partnership. It sure as hell ain’t a democracy. You do what I tell you to do, or you take your chances on your own, you understand?” 

Already, her wrist ached. She tugged at it to no avail; if anything, her attempts to get free only made his grip tighter. He was silent as death, made no sign of letting her go until she spat, “I understand.” 

Immediately, he released her. She waited until he’d gotten so far away his outline narrowed to the size of her thumb before slowly, reluctantly, trudging after him.

Chapter Text

They weren’t speaking. That was just fine by Cooper. He’d be happy if she never opened that spoiled mouth of hers again. 

The bullets she’d earned him clanked quietly on his back. The Jet tasted like battery acid. There was no sound besides the wind howling through abandoned ruins. This was the Waste as he knew it. As he wanted it. 

It was slow going on the outskirts. The sand piled in drifts here, up to his shins in some places. Dogmeat was light enough to pad on top of it, but he could hear Lucy struggling behind him. A quick glance backward confirmed she was sunk up to her thighs. Tough shit. If she fell behind, she’d be the one to regret it.

Every night, he watched the bags under her eyes get deeper. She slept nearly as poorly as he did now if her nocturnal thrashing was anything to go by. But she didn’t complain when they rose with the sun or throughout the long, slogging days. 

He’d expected something – he didn’t know what – when she’d discovered who he was, but she stayed silent as a grave. Until one night a few days after the stabbing when she asked, unprompted, “Why did you bring me out here?” 

He’d expected this question too. Settling back against his bedroll, he crossed his arms behind his head and met her gaze. “I saw you point that gun at your daddy.” 

She flinched, eyes skittering away. “I wouldn’t have shot him,” she mumbled. 

“You would’ve.” He noted the way her muscles tensed, but she didn’t deny it. “I could shoot him a dozen times and it wouldn’t hurt him as much as one bullet from you. And, sweetheart, people who do what your daddy did deserve all the hurt I can give them.” 

Lucy stared into the flames, eyes watering from the smoke or her own emotions, he couldn’t tell. “What are you talking about, what he did?” 

Cooper opened his mouth to explain the shitstorm Hank and his kind had brought on all of them, all the two-hundred-year-old secrets he kept buried deep, but nothing came out. She deserved this, goddammit. Whatever had broken inside him when he’d heard his wife speak those unbelievable words Lucy didn’t get to keep. Finally, he could rid himself of her insufferable optimism. Of her relentless need to make the world better. He could teach her everything was, and always had been, complete and utter bullshit. All he had to do was tell her everything. 

Instead, he only said, “Shady Sands. Your mama. That ain’t enough for you?” 

Tears slid silently down her face now, and she hurriedly dashed them away. “So I’m your revenge,” she said after a silence so long it might have been permanent. 

“Don’t fool yourself, sweetheart. I’m my own revenge.” He sucked his teeth contemplatively. “You’re just a nice bonus.” 

###

The heat out here, unhindered by buildings or trees or anything providing even an inch of shade, was intense even for him. He knew this life, though, began to self-ration his Jet and his water the minute it was clear they were getting into the deep sands. 

If the way Lucy was lapping at the rim of her canteen was any indication, she hadn’t been cautious enough. 

“This is what happens when you don’t pace yourself,” he said as she craned her head back in a futile attempt to dislodge even a drop more. 

She was quiet for another hour or two before she rasped, “Please.” 

Cooper stopped, turned to face her. She really did look terrible. The sun had burned its way beneath her skin in lobster splotches, and two dark smudges had taken up residence under her red-rimmed eyes. Her lips were so chapped they looked more like molted lizard skin than anything human. 

He tripped his fingers along his own canteen, considering. “I’ll make you a deal. Whatever you can catch, you can keep.” 

Her eyes tracked his every move as he unscrewed the lid, tilted the canteen, and let the water cascade in messy rivulets out of his mouth. He didn’t actually expect her to lurch forward, her forearms colliding with his chest as she opened her lips to catch the drops spilling off his chin. And he really didn’t expect her to stretch onto her toes so she could place her tongue against his jaw and lick away what was left. He stood, immobile, as she ran that same tongue up to the corner of his mouth to collect the droplets that had gathered there. 

When she dropped back to her feet, she was panting, scanning for any trace of moisture she might have missed. 

Slowly, deliberately, Cooper raised his canteen again. This time he took a sizable sip and held it in his mouth. Didn’t swallow. A challenge. One that, despite what she’d just done, he was undeniably surprised she accepted. 

Hooking her arms around his neck to drag him down to her level, she pressed her lips against his and used them to prise his mouth open. 

Cooper hadn’t been kissed – this wasn’t a kiss – in a long, long time. His body responded before his mind could tell it not to. He slid an arm around her waist to draw her closer. Pulled her in until they were pressed flush against each other and he could feel every one of her soft curves. 

They stayed that way until Lucy had swallowed down every drop she could, until she’d swiped her tongue over the line of his lips to make sure she’d left nothing behind. Only when she extricated herself from his grasp did he realize the canteen he’d been holding was now in her hands. He wasn’t entirely sure when he’d let go of it. 

She took a long, savoring pull, her eyes fixed on him as she lowered it. Then she swiped an arm across her mouth, turned, and began walking. 

“Come on,” she said as she slung the canteen over her good shoulder. “What is it you like to say? We’re burning daylight.” 

It took more effort than it should have for him to get his feet moving again. He made no move to reclaim the water; a deal was a deal, after all. 

Try as he might, he couldn’t stop staring at the canteen bobbing against her back as she walked in front of him. Cooper had not had a heartbeat for over two hundred years – so why did it feel like she’d just stopped it? 

Chapter Text

One and a half hours. That’s how long it had taken Lucy to get desperate enough to do what she’d just done, according to her Pip-Boy. One and a half hours without anything to drink and she’d… well. 

She’d needed the water. The fact that she’d had a gigantic crush on Cooper Howard when she was a girl – had, in fact, dreamed of kissing him more than once in the charged space of adolescence – didn’t factor into her actions at all. And now she had a canteen to show for it. 

When the sun reached its peak, she paused to trickle some of their extremely limited water supply into Dogmeat’s mouth, though it pained her to do so. She couldn’t just leave it to die of thirst. It hadn’t asked for this journey through hell any more than she had. 

The moment she straightened, she knew something was wrong. Pain radiated from the wound in her back with every step she took. The past few days it had kept her from sleeping; now she could barely stumble forward. That wouldn’t be happening if she were healing. 

The landscape blurred in front of her. Blinking did nothing to clear it, nor did a vigorous shake of her head. In fact, she was having a great deal of difficulty determining up from down. Turning, she squinted at what she was pretty sure was Cooper Howard, golden cowboy of the silver screen. 

“I think I need your help,” she said. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she pitched face-first into the sand. 

###

She came to with the taste of grit in her mouth. The first sensation was that of not-warm. She wasn’t cold exactly, but she knew she wasn’t baking under the sun anymore. That was enough for her to take her time peeling her eyes open. 

Her surroundings swam into view around her. She lay on a metal gurney, no padding beneath her, and her Vaultsuit was tied off around her waist, leaving her in just her tanktop. A ceiling hovered only a few feet over her head. Concrete, she thought. The dampness of it made the space feel distinctly cave-like.

Turning her head to one side, she found an IV stand equipped with a bag full of something sickly green she thought she should recognize. It was too hard to think at the moment. Flopping her head to the other side, she spotted the Ghoul. 

He was sprawled in a chair too small for him, eyes shadowed by his hat, legs sticking almost comically far past the cushion. His chest rose and fell more steadily than she’d ever seen it do before. 

“Are you…” Her voice cracked so heartily she had to clear her throat and try again. “Are you awake?” 

An amused snort came from somewhere beyond the gurney, and Lucy sat up sharply. Immediately, hands were on her shoulders, guiding her to lie back again. 

“Calm, calm. No harm here.” 

Lucy found herself blinking up at a human woman’s face. 

Gray hair fizzed about her head like Nuka-Cola bubbles, and her eyes were barely visible past a patina of wrinkles. When she smiled, she revealed a mouth full of rotted, broken teeth. 

“Enough Med-X, even he sleeps,” she said, indicating the Ghoul with a jerk of her chin. 

The stranger had an accent Lucy couldn’t place. Something Eastern-European, she thought. 

“Where… am I? Who are you?” 

She tapped a hand against her ample chest. “Mechanic. You break, I fix.” 

Only then did Lucy realize the dull ache she’d gotten used to over the past few days was gone. Mostly. She reached careful fingertips around her ribs, prodded at the flesh of her back. Pinpricks of warning poked under each pad, but there was no trace of the agony that had plagued her. 

“Ssst!” Mechanic swatted her hand away. “Very bad infection. If you had not come when you did, dead for sure. Do not disturb Mechanic’s work, stupid girl.” 

Lucy folded her hands over her stomach. She had been stupid not to keep a better watch over herself. There could have been anything on that boy’s blade when he’d buried it in her. Then again, it’s not like the Ghoul had any mercy she could have thrown herself on. If she’d begged for a rest, he would only have kept walking.

This time when her eyes lit upon the IV bag, she was able to place the substance dripping idly into her arm. “Rad-Away?” 

“Is for radiation poisoning. Comes from being too close to the ghouls, yes?” Mechanic lifted her eyebrows and flicked her gaze between Lucy and the Ghoul. Her grin was downright lascivious. 

Lucy could only hope her sunburn hid her blush. “What?! No, I haven’t… We’re not…” She dissolved into incoherent spluttering as she desperately tried to look anywhere but at the Ghoul. They weren’t, but she didn’t think she could have been less convincing if she’d tried. 

Mechanic lifted her hands in surrender. “What is old Mechanic supposed to think, eh? He come in, always alone, always for the sleeping. Now he carries you in like bride with the blood and with the infection, with the special work. Very hard to fix. Threatening me if I don’t help.” She clucked her tongue. “Should have thrown him out with his disrespect.” 

Lucy furrowed her brow as Mechanic started clearing up the room, muttering spitefully to no one. Despite herself, her gaze slid over to where the Ghoul still slept, undisturbed by their conversation. Just how far had he carried her that she’d gotten radiation poisoning? 

Moving carefully, she sat up and slid the IV from her arm. Already, she was feeling well enough to swing her legs over the edge of the gurney and stand. Whoever this Mechanic was, she worked miracles. 

Mechanic bustled past her with a wad of bloody bandages to deliver a swift but powerful kick to the Ghoul’s ankle. “Wake up! Is time you pay.” 

The Ghoul was slow to open his eyes, and when he did, they settled immediately on Lucy. “So you survived.” With a groan, he hauled himself out of the chair. “Wasn’t sure you would.” 

Lucy said nothing, too stuck on the fact that he’d carried her like bride if Mechanic were to be believed. It could have been a scene from a Cooper Howard movie, the brave cowboy trudging over the unforgiving sands, helpless damsel dangling lifelessly from his arms. Maybe he had more mercy than she’d given him credit for. Maybe she was an idiot for even thinking that. 

The Ghoul dug out a handful of caps and tossed them to Mechanic, who caught them more deftly than her aged movements would imply. She spread them out in her palm, counted them quietly. As she flicked the last one over, she spat at the Ghoul’s feet. 

“Ten caps he gives! Mechanic brings his woman back from death, she does his special work for him, and all he has is ten caps. More.” She thrust her other empty hand practically into his face, fingers wiggling meaningfully. 

A muscle flexed in the Ghoul’s jaw, but before the argument Lucy sensed was brewing could break out, she lurched forward and made her wobbling way to the bag hanging from the Ghoul’s back. She missed the subtle flinch of his arm, as if to catch her should she fall. 

Digging into the sack, she retrieved ten bullets and offered them to Mechanic. The Ghoul reached for them faster, but Lucy closed her hand before he could snatch them. 

“Those ain’t yours,” he snarled at her. 

Lucy didn’t back down, though she had to dance out of his way as he made another attempt to grab the ammo. “Technically, they are. I paid for them, so if I want to use some of them to pay now, I will.” 

Quickly, she handed them to Mechanic, whose iron grip closed over them so forcefully Lucy could tell it was a lost cause trying to get them back. Chuckling gleefully, Mechanic stashed them down the front of her dress and cocked her head at the Ghoul, as though inviting him to try.

For a moment the Ghoul seemed to seriously consider his options, but after a beat he turned away and curled his lip. “We’ve wasted enough time here.” 

Mechanic hurried in front of them, waving her hands. “Wait, wait, wait. The sun, is not good for her.” She pointed at Lucy’s steaming, peeling cheeks. “I have cloak, good protection, only three caps.” 

“She’s fine,” the Ghoul broke in before Lucy had a chance to say anything. Then, ignoring Mechanic’s grasping hands, he ducked out from under the low ceiling of her ramshackle clinic.

Lucy couldn’t help but think she actually would have liked that cloak as she emerged into the oven heat of the day. Shielding her eyes, she noted the sun was almost directly overhead – had she really been out for almost twenty-four hours? And if she had, had she spent more of them in the Ghoul’s arms or on the gurney? 

As she lowered her hand, she felt something settle over her head. Reaching up, she found a hat. The Ghoul’s hat, as it turned out, large enough to cast a shadow over most of her shoulders as well as her face. 

He whistled for Dogmeat, called over his shoulder, “You better keep up. I ain’t carrying you again.” 

Well. Lucy would figure out this tangle of emotions later. One hand clapped to her head to keep the hat from sliding down over her eyes, she hurried after him.

Chapter Text

Bad things happened when Cooper got distracted. Like waking up from the last of his Med-X sleep to find himself staring down the cold steel of a barrel. He followed the line of the gun upwards to the unsavory looking man holding it – and that was coming from him . 

It was impossible to tell if that was a real mustache or just dirt, and his clothes were practically rotting off him. His skin was sun-blistered and pustulous; his lips had swollen from where he’d bitten them raw; his scalp was matted with dandruff. Yet, somehow, he’d managed to catch Cooper off-guard. 

“Hands,” the man barked. “Slow.” 

Cooper lifted his hands as slow as this motherfucker could want. Even he couldn’t come back from a bullet between the eyes. 

When his arms were parallel to his face, the man turned to address someone Cooper couldn’t see. “Lemme kill him.” 

A world-weary sigh sounded even over the snapping of the fire. “How many times, Gerald? How many times will you force me to explain this man is now our prisoner. We can’t sell him if his brain is leaking out of his skull, now can we, Gerald?” 

Gerald’s eyes narrowed as he turned this question over in his head. “No,” he decided after a period of deep thought. That didn’t stop him from keeping his gun trained right where it was. 

As subtly as he could, Cooper tried to peer around the encampment. He saw no sign of Dogmeat, no sign of Lucy. What really chilled him: no sign of his weapons. The bullets were gone, along with his bandolier and gun belt. 

Familiar buzzing anger began eating at his reason. These people, whoever they were, had they killed Lucy? More importantly, had they looted him? 

The unseen person – a woman, judging by her tone – spoke again. “All right, Gerald, get him up.” 

He’d have one chance; as Gerald reached for him, he saw it. The gun dipped just for a second – if it fired, it would hit his jaw. His hand snapped out faster than thought, seizing the barrel and wrenching it, and the man’s arm, to one side. 

Gerald pulled the trigger reflexively, and two shots zinged into the ground. 

Cooper was on his feet in seconds. One firm kick to the kneecap saw Gerald collapse into a shrieking heap, and Cooper plucked the gun right out of his hands. A single shot silenced Gerald. 

Spinning, he took aim at the woman. 

She was scrambling to pull her own weapon out of her belt; it had snagged on the loose threads of a patchy, oversized shawl slung across her shoulders. 

Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, a report echoed from somewhere behind her. It hit its mark: which was, apparently, his wrist. Nerves dead, the gun slipped from his fingers, and the woman scrambled away, abandoning her efforts to shoot back. 

Cooper turned burning eyes in the direction the bullet had come from. There must have been a third on lookout – didn’t matter. He’d learned to shoot just as well with his left hand for Circle the Wagons. 

Before he could retrieve the gun, Lucy jogged out of the shadows. In her hands was his trusty shotgun; the barrel was still smoking. With a snap of her fingers, Lucy sent Dogmeat haring in the direction the woman had disappeared. 

Cooper knew what he was seeing, but he couldn’t believe it. “You shot me?” he asked, uncomprehending. 

“They’re taking prisoners!” she called as she ran past him. “They must have supplies, right? We have to follow her!” 

Goddammit, she was right. If they had people, they had to be feeding them. And they had people – this clearly wasn’t their first rodeo. With a frustrated growl, he set off after her. 

He caught up with them on the gentle swell of a hill, beyond which burned a fire big enough to cloud the sky with smoke. Lucy was huddled next to Dogmeat, doing her best to peer over the top without being spotted herself. 

Cooper crouched next to her, making a silent inventory of their supplies. She had all of it, the bullets, the guns, the bandolier (which hung off her so ungracefully it was a miracle she’d been able to run at all). 

“Give me that.” He reclaimed his gun from her unresisting grasp. 

Lucy shrugged out from under the bandolier and handed that over as well. “I tried waking you up,” she whispered. “But I don’t think you could hear me.” 

No, he hadn’t heard her. Because he’d taken the fucking Med-X when Mechanic had offered and he shouldn’t have done it, but the harsh red streaks on Lucy’s back had been blood poisoning, and most people didn’t come back from that. His arms had ached from hours of bearing her weight. He hadn’t taken enough Jet because every minute he wasn’t at Mechanic’s was a minute he was watching her slip further away. All he’d wanted by the time they’d gotten there was to rest. 

Life just couldn’t be that easy, could it?  

Standing, he planted one foot on the hilltop, held out the gun, and started shooting. Anything that moved was a target, prisoner or captor, he didn’t give a shit. 

The people in the camp scrambled like ants below him. Some of them managed to mount a resistance, but their shots were hasty and ill-aimed. Most of the bullets didn’t even make it up the hillside, burying themselves impotently in the sand. Still, every time Lucy made an attempt to see what was happening or, God forbid, to help, he shoved her back down. 

There were, he saw as he buried slug after slug into body after body, more ghouls than humans. Humans, he noted, were the only ones holding the guns. 

As their numbers dwindled, he strolled down the slope and picked off the last of the runners. Soon the only sounds to be heard were the roaring flames and the moans of the dying. 

Lucy half-walked, half-slid down the ridge to join him in raiding the supplies. Dismayed, she took in the carnage of the campsite. “Did any of the prisoners get away?” 

There was way too much hope in her voice for his liking. “Not if I could help it.” 

Lucy rooted aggressively through the pack she held, taking stock of the supplies. “You know what your problem is?”

Cooper cast his eyes heavenward. “Oh, please enlighten me, Miss MacLean.” 

“You think the rest of us are expendable, like you’re the only one with problems. Well, guess what, Cooper? I have feelings.” She threw out her arms to encompass the mess of bodies surrounding them. “They had feelings. We’re all just as real as you are.” 

Cooper stopped what he was doing to pin her under his stare. Took in the way the firelight turned her cheek to gold and her hair to black flame. Took in the way her shoulders hunched around her ears as if she were braced for a fight. Took in the desiccated gray of the finger he’d taken from her. 

“All right, you’re real,” he finally said. He watched a bevy of emotions flit across her face – shock that he’d actually agreed with her chief among them – before adding, “A real pain in my ass.” 

She chucked the pack at his head. 

###

The camp proved to be a mystery. His first observation had been right – there were disproportionately more ghouls than humans. Even more bizarre, it appeared the ghouls were the only ones who were prisoners. All of them had chains around their wrists or collars around their necks while the few humans were unbound. 

Some kind of chattel drivers? Bigots looking for a good time? They’d mentioned selling him – maybe they were some sort of fetish supplier. 

He searched the humans thoroughly, even stripping a few of their clothes, much to Lucy’s dismay, but he found nothing that might explain what they had been up to. The only sign this wasn’t a run-of-the-mill group of jailers was the extraordinary amount of caps in their possession. Someone was paying them, and paying them well. 

But what the fuck for? 

They returned to their own campsite once they’d divested the strange group of all the resources they were capable of carrying. The bonfire was too large a signal to risk staying close by for too long. 

When they got back, he examined his wrist. The bullet Lucy had buried in him was still there, lodged firmly somewhere near the bone. He could feel it grinding every time he flexed his hand. 

The hole was already beginning to close, was too small for him to work with. His eyes lighted on Lucy where she sat sorting the supplies. This was her fault – she could fix it. 

He whistled, catching both her attention and Dogmeat’s. 

“Need your help,” he said, waving her over with his good hand.

“You do?” She sounded utterly disbelieving, but she drifted over with a curious – if slightly suspicious – tilt to her head. 

He lifted his wrist, black maw of a wound visible in the dancing flames. “You put it in. You get it out.” 

Immediately, Lucy wrinkled her nose. “I don’t want to do that.” 

“Well, sweetheart, maybe you’ll think about that the next time you decide to turn a gun on me.” He shook his hand. “I ain’t getting any more patient.” 

Though she still looked thoroughly disgusted, Lucy knelt, took his arm, and pulled it closer to the fire. She spent a few minutes examining it before visibly bracing herself and poking in a finger. Gagging, she managed to hook the bullet under her nail and draw it out inch by inch. 

When at last it fell into the sand, she made to move away. Cooper grabbed her before she could. He gripped her chin, kept her face close to his so she’d take in every word. “You ever so much as think about shooting me again, we’re gonna have a problem. Am I clear?” 

She met his gaze steadily. “Then don’t do anything stupid enough to make me shoot you.” 

He tightened his grip briefly – then released her. “You’re sounding more like me every day,” he chuckled. Maybe she had a chance of making it through this after all. 

Looking slightly shaken, Lucy retreated to her bedroll. 

She dropped into an exhausted sleep almost as soon as she settled down – Cooper wasn’t so lucky. What he should have been thinking about was the puzzle he’d just been handed. They weren’t anywhere near Ghoul Town, but the Bulletman’s warning echoed in his mind. Ghouls were going missing, there and in the deep desert. 

But the words of warning were constantly drowned out by something else: Lucy, her lips shaped around his name. The more he tried not to think about it, the more it was all he could hear. Cooper, Cooper, Cooper. 

His eyes landed on the sleeping girl lying peacefully across from him, unaware of his scrutiny. Bad things happened when he got distracted. So he was going to get rid of this distraction.

Chapter Text

It was amazing, the difference Mechanic’s work had made. Lucy felt downright sprightly when she woke the next morning despite their busy night, and she was up and about before the Ghoul could wake her with his boot like he usually did. She was even able to keep up with him and Dogmeat as they made their way over the sand dunes. 

As the sun sank to the horizon, they came across one lone structure, the first they’d seen since leaving Mechanic’s. Its roof was partially rotten, and one wall had a gaping hole through which the sand blew in, but it was large and, for the most part, sturdy. 

The Ghoul made her wait outside while he went in to clear it. She tried to protest that she was perfectly capable of handling herself, but when he’d asked her if she were bulletproof, she’d had to concede she was not. By the time he pronounced it clear, a stiff breeze had spun up, and she was only too grateful to get behind shelter. 

The house was warmer than the desert, but not by much. It was also, she discovered as she made an exploration of her own, practically massive. There were four bedrooms; two of them even still had beds. 

She chose the one furthest from the collapsed wall, hopping onto the mattress with an excited bounce. It was softer by far than any bed she’d encountered since leaving Vault 4. 

Another rarity the house offered: a large mirror over a dresser in her bedroom. She took a quick look at her face, grimacing at what she saw. The sunburn was fading, but slowly, and her hair could best be likened to a radroach nest. 

Just as she was about to check how her back was healing, something flickered in the reflection. A figure filled the doorway behind her. 

Turning, she tilted her head. “Cooper?” 

He lingered there for a moment, as though struggling with some internal decision. 

“Are you okay?” she asked after a minute when he still hadn’t moved. 

The question seemed to snap him out of whatever debate he’d been holding with himself. In three quick strides, he’d crossed the room and stood towering over her. Reflexively, she took a step back. He took one forward. 

She flicked her gaze toward the bed where she’d left her gun. Too far away to reach. She slid back another step, her spine bumping up against the wall. 

“You’re scaring me,” she said quietly, honestly. 

She flinched as he reached for her – only for him to run his fingers through her hair. Her brow furrowed as he slid the strands between his fingers; he seemed fascinated by the way it tangled around them. His nails scraped along the back of her neck as he combed it upwards, watched it fall. 

Swallowing, she stood her ground. She should hate this, his touching her so intimately, but she couldn’t bring herself to. No one had touched her this gently in days, at least not while she was conscious enough to feel it. She hadn’t realized how lonely that had made her. Lonely enough not to push him away, at least. 

As if he’d heard her thoughts, he brushed her hair from her neck and skimmed his hand up the curve of it instead. Finally, he spoke. 

“I’m tired of you taking up so much space in my head. Wondering what you feel like.” He cradled her face with one hand, thumb smoothing over the flat plane of her cheek. Slowly, he trailed his hand lower, back down the way it had come, until he grasped the zipper of her Vaultsuit. Notch by notch, he pulled it down. 

Lucy felt like she could barely breathe. This wasn’t really happening – was it? She decided it was when, without warning, he dipped his head and laved his tongue over the hollow of her throat. 

“What you taste like,” he muttered. In one sharp pull, he undid her suit the rest of the way. Each half peeled outward, the petals of a synthetic flower. He smoothed his hands over her shoulders and down her arms. Took the suit with him. 

She should stop him. She should stop him right now. She’d done enough cousin stuff to know where this was going.

Her breath hitched in her chest as he put one hand to her stomach and followed its soft swell down until he was below the end of the zipper, below everything. A shudder ran through her as he found her core. 

He let out a slow exhale as he ran his fingers through her damp heat. “How alive you are.” 

He said it reverently, like it was something she’d done just for him. She sucked in a breath as he slipped a finger inside her. He watched her closely – maybe to see if she would try to pull away. She didn’t. He added another, his thumb making slow circles around her clit.

There was something she’d meant to say to him – it became impossible to remember as he pumped his fingers in and out of her in a delicious rhythm her hips automatically matched. 

This was beyond cousin stuff, beyond the one hindsight-regrettable night she’d shared with her raider husband. He worked her skillfully, soon had her slumped against his chest and panting, on the verge of something she desperately wanted to tip over. 

Unfortunately, that was when she remembered what she’d meant to say. “This…” she mumbled. Her tongue felt unusually clumsy. “This is a mistake.” 

He paused. For a moment, Lucy thought he might ignore her, but then he began to withdraw. 

“Wait!” She almost plastered herself against him, hand clamped around his elbow to keep him from moving away. “I don’t want you to stop.” 

She could practically feel him smirking against the top of her head, but she didn’t care. If she seemed desperate, it was only because she was. It took an eternity before he resumed, and now he was twice as determined to bring her to climax as before. 

He brushed over a spot inside her so utterly overwhelming she had to cling to him or risk her weakened knees dropping her to the ground. Once he’d found it, he was relentless; she couldn’t tell if she wanted to get closer to him or run away entirely. 

The walls in the Vault had been thin enough that when she knew she was close, it was a habit to bring her hand up and bite down on her thumb. 

“No.” With his free hand, he drew it away from her mouth, even laced his fingers through hers to keep her from bringing it back. “I don’t wanna have to wonder what you sound like.” He pressed their joined hands into the wall above their heads, forcing her back to arch and her to sink deeper onto his hardworking fingers. 

When she came, she gave him exactly what he wanted. Her gasps of pleasure broke into a short, keening cry, which she made no attempt to stifle. 

He did pull away then, the absence of him making her shiver. He watched her intently as he brought slick fingers to his lips and took his time cleaning them with his tongue, which made Lucy feel like he’d lit her on fire. 

He leaned in to skim his teeth over the shell of her ear. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “I don’t learn from my mistakes either.” 

Then he left her there, shaking and half-naked and wondering what she had to do to get that to happen again. 

###

Over the course of the next day, it became clear Lucy was going to have to take matters into her own hands if she wanted anything more. The Ghoul mentioned nothing of what he’d done the night before, so neither did she. Good thing she’d never been shy about getting what she wanted. 

She waited until nightfall, when he lay unsuspecting with his arms propped behind his head, maybe asleep, maybe not. Lucy wiggled out of her Vaultsuit and left the rest of her things piled atop it. The chill desert air made her skin come alive with goosebumps. 

Resolute, she marched around what remained of the campfire – by now, it was mostly coals. Confidence. Confidence was key. 

The darkness made it easier. Planting her hands where she estimated his chest to be, she slung one leg over his hips. Almost before she’d fully settled, he’d grabbed the tops of her thighs. When he didn’t push her off, she reached below her to free him from his slacks.

As she wrapped her hand around him, he groaned. “Barb?” 

She didn’t bother correcting him, though she did wonder who Barb was. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t him to her either. 

Her eyes fluttered closed as she sank onto him, and for a moment she let herself sit and savor the feeling. Then, slowly, she began to move. She imagined the husband she should have had, the one she’d always wanted. Someone strong and gentle and kind. Someone uncomplicated, a good father to the children she was sure to give him. 

The Ghoul took hold of her, and those fantasies evaporated. One of his hands gripped her hip; the other wrapped around her ribs, right underneath her breast. In this position, she’d expected to be in control. He disabused her of that notion. 

Feet planted, grip firm enough Lucy could already feel the bruises forming, he thrust sharply upward. Stars swam before her eyes as her head fell back and she gave herself over to him. It was easy to do; all that was required of her was to lean back and brace herself against his thighs. 

This was all new to her – and she loved it. How he filled her so completely. How in control he seemed and yet so out of it with the mindless, pleasured sounds he made. Screw fantasy. She wanted to bask in this reality. 

Her hands found his shoulders, her thighs tightened around his hips. Now instead of letting herself be moved by him, she moved with him, their bodies coming together with a force that bordered on painful. She dug her fingernails into his flesh; he responded in kind. 

They left the same marks on each other as she came, suddenly and wildly. Before she could gather herself, he lifted her off him and dropped her unceremoniously to the sand. 

It was too dark to see his face, but she heard the rasp in his voice. “ You should be sleeping.” 

Lucy sat for a moment, disoriented, before she managed to climb to her feet and make her way gingerly back to her bedroll. She dressed in silence, laid back down in silence. Instead of drifting off, she kept thinking about the man she’d pictured for herself. 

It made less sense to her now than ever. Had everything she wanted really been that… simple? Eventually, sore and satisfied and more than a little confused, she managed to sleep.  

###

He still didn’t acknowledge what they’d done despite Lucy’s pointed comment the next morning about how even getting stabbed hadn’t made walking this difficult. So she didn’t bring it up either after that. Really, there wasn’t anything to talk about. She’d gotten what she wanted, and there was no need to revisit it, at least not for a while. 

Except that night, when the fire was nothing but embers, she woke to find him peeling off her Vaultsuit. Rucking up her tanktop, he ran his hand down the smooth expanse of her stomach. 

Humming appreciatively, she rolled out the soreness in her shoulders the bulging sack of supplies had left her with. “Thought you wanted me to sleep,” she murmured. 

He ignored the teasing lilt of her voice. His was nothing but steel command. “Turn over.” 

She’d barely had time to obey before he was grabbing at her, hiking her hips up and pressing one hand between her shoulder blades to keep her pinned against the bedroll. Immediately, she came awake. Her body flooded with anticipation as he used his knee to push hers further apart. 

She couldn’t remember ever feeling quite this exposed before, even in the Bulletman’s studio. Embarrassment didn’t seem so important when he put his mouth on her. He was ravenous, devouring her with the sole-minded purpose of leaving her a dripping, shuddering mess. She might have managed to beg him; she wasn’t sure of anything but the waves of pleasure slowly flooding her. 

When she came, she didn’t even have breath enough to make a sound. The best she could manage were broken gasps and a series of panting inhalations to convince herself she was still capable of breathing. 

He didn’t let her recover, either, lining himself up and pushing inside her with a grunt. 

Lucy clutched the bedroll hard enough to make her knuckles ache. He was going deeper than before, faster, harder. Now she knew she was begging, but she didn’t even know what for. For him not to stop. For him never to stop. 

Just when she thought her legs were going to give out and she was going to drop to her stomach, he removed the arm that had been holding her down and slid it around the front of her chest instead. 

“What are you-,” she mumbled, but she got her answer before she’d finished the question. In one firm move, he pulled her up so that her back rested against his chest. The shift let him get impossibly deeper, and Lucy’s head lolled back against him. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused; she was lost to everything but the way he felt inside and around her. 

Pain collided with pleasure as he sank his teeth into her shoulder in the same instant he reached his hand between her legs. Awareness slammed back into her as he coaxed her to a second orgasm. She clung to the arm banded around her chest while her climax filled her up and hollowed her out then, eventually, receded. It left her with a warm glow that didn’t fade even as he withdrew and went back to his own bedroll. 

She was capable only of getting her clothes back on and calling a soft, “Thank you,” over to the other side of the fire before she fell back asleep.

Chapter Text

This was working even better than Cooper had expected. During the day, he didn’t have to think about Lucy at all – any consideration for what he wanted to do to her and how he could save until after the sun went down. 

When they first came upon the ramshackle hut consisting of only two rooms, he could focus on clearing it out. When it was dark, the walls were no longer an obstacle hiding potential threats but an opportunity. He fucked her twice before they left the next morning: once with her bent in half, palms flat to brace against the wall as he held her hair twisted around his fist and the other with her back pressed against the paint-peeling wood, legs wrapped around his waist. 

Now they were half-jogging through the desert to keep up with Dogmeat as she quickened her pace. Her ears and tail were up; they must be getting closer to whatever rathole Henry had hidden himself away in. 

They heard the fight before they saw it. Screaming echoed over the barren landscape, and Cooper immediately brought Dogmeat to heel. The harsh crack of gunfire inspired caution. 

As soon as they came within eyesight, however, Lucy gasped. “Vault dwellers!” 

Their bright blue suits stuck out against the sand like blood on snow. There were two of them, and they looked desperate. When Cooper spotted a third body on the ground, he realized why. A group of raiders advanced on them, weapons drawn and larger in number. 

“I have to help them,” Lucy breathed. 

Cooper didn’t even have time to protest before she darted forward; Dogmeat followed right after her.

“Goddammit, Lucy! Get back here!” he shouted, but she showed no sign of stopping. Cursing, he unhooked the launcher from his gun belt and loaded it up. This virtuous streak of hers was going to be the fucking death of him. 

Keeping his distance – he wasn’t dumb enough to run into the middle of a firefight – he dropped to a knee and aimed as carefully as he could. Lucy had reached the Vault dwellers by now; she was trying to herd them back toward the door while a snarling Dogmeat lunged at the nearest raider. 

He watched her fire a warning shot that didn’t do much to deter the bloodthirsty attackers. “Oh, just kill them,” he muttered. He took his own advice, peppering the raiders with a rain of mini nukes. They ripped through flesh and bone mercilessly, left the sand spattered with blood.

Most of them turned and ran after the first bodies dropped. Clearly, they hadn’t counted on any real resistance. Cooper quickly dispatched the stubborn ones before racking his gun and stalking toward Lucy. She was going to get an earful about this. 

As he approached, the Vault dwellers scurried back to their Vault, disappearing into its black maw. 

“Hey, wait!” Lucy called after them. “Don’t you want to-? I guess not. Well, you’re welcome!”

Cooper grabbed her by the shoulders and wrenched her around to face him. “Don’t you ever do something that goddamn stupid again, do you hear me? If you had been hit–” He cut himself off as he noticed movement coming from the Vault. 

Noting the direction of his stare, Lucy furrowed her brow and half-turned to see what he was looking at. The Vault dwellers had wheeled out what looked like a large, open-mouthed cannon to which they were even now making hurried adjustments. 

“What is that?” she asked. 

And that was when they shot him with a big fucking net. 

###

Cooper seethed around his gag. This, him standing here with his wrists secured firmly in front of him with rope, stripped of everything but the clothes on his back, was on Lucy. She just had to step in and offer her oh-so-fucking-helpful assistance, even though he’d been the one to take out the raiders in the end. He hoped she was getting all this through the hole he was boring in the back of her skull with his glare. 

“Are you all right?” the Vault dweller with big hair and deceptively kind eyes was asking her. “Thank goodness we got to you when we did! He looks like he could do some damage.” She regarded him with naked disdain.

Lucy rubbed her arms as if she were cold – or afraid. “I’m fine, really. I think I could have taken him.” She offered her new companion a weak smile. 

Cooper’s scoff came out mangled around the fabric shoved in his mouth. 

The second Vault dweller, a slight man with glasses and a nervous set to his mouth, prodded him in the spine with a gun. “Get moving,” he said. The guy was probably trying to sound intimidating, but his throat was tight with apprehension, which ruined the effect. 

“You too,” the first Vault dweller, who had introduced herself to Lucy as Caitlin, said. She slung a far-too-familiar arm around her shoulders. “The least we can do to thank you is offer you a warm meal and a good bed.” 

“What are you going to do with him?” Lucy asked as Cooper was ushered toward the Vault doors. 

“Not to worry.” Caitlin patted her reassuringly. “You won’t have to deal with him again.”  

Lucy let out a sigh of gratitude that sounded real even to Cooper’s ears. 

What a little actress. He would almost have been proud if it didn’t leave him being paraded down the corridors like a prized trophy. The last he heard of the outside world was Caitlin firmly stating Dogmeat wasn’t allowed inside. 

He took in the Vault around him – it looked exactly like all the rest of them he’d seen, and it made his stomach churn with memories. He and Vaults didn’t get along. 

Jump-suited smoothskins shrank away from him as Mr. Nervous guided him through the maze of corridors. Any time Cooper so much as slowed, the guard shoved the barrel of the gun into his back deep enough to leave a mark. 

“Don’t even try it!” he barked, voice shrill. 

They were deep in the Vault before the guard allowed him to stop. A ghoul lounged against one of the sliding doors, dressed inexplicably in a Vaultsuit. She pushed herself off the wall when she saw them approaching and saluted Mr. Nervous. 

“Got another one, then? Brilliant.” She patted the gun at her hip and gave Cooper a cracked grin. “You aren’t going to make me use this, are you?” 

His expression must not have been convincing because her smile quickly faded, and she tugged it from the holster. “Right, I’ve got it from here.” 

Mr. Nervous scrambled off as soon as she’d trained the gun at Cooper’s temple. 

“Name’s Jesse.” She held Cooper by his bindings as the door whisked upward, then hauled him through. They were in a long, completely empty corridor with a single door at the end. Frowning, Jesse towed him along behind her. 

With every step, Cooper’s unease grew. He wasn’t sure what lay behind that door, but he sure as hell didn’t want to find out. Jesse didn’t let up for a second, though, her gun never wavering even as she brought him to a stop and undid his gag. 

“Sorry about this, mate,” she muttered, unable to meet his eyes. “But it’s better you than me.” 

Jesse hastily opened the door and shoved him through, not bothering to undo the ropes. 

Cooper stumbled into the room, immediately taking stock of his surroundings. It was packed with ghouls, the few meager bunks stacked with bodies, more curled on the floor or perched in scattered chairs. Most of them didn’t even stir as he came tripping into their midst.

Quiet whispers filled the air. They were a thicket of overlapping voices, too dense for him to make out any of them at first. When he did, it had him turning and throwing himself at the door. It shuddered with his every impact but showed no signs of yielding. 

“Let me the fuck out of here!” he shouted. No response. No one was listening. 

Breathing heavily, he turned back to assess the situation. The whispering crowded around him, insidious and promising. 

“James. I’m James.” 

“My name is Leigh.” 

“Mar-Margaret? Yes, that’s right, Margaret.” 

It wasn’t happening to all of them, not yet. But it would. It was only a matter of time. 

For once, Cooper didn’t care about the why – all he knew was he had to get out of here, out of this room, out of this Vault. The people here were farming ferals.

Chapter Text

Caitlin reminded Lucy of Steph. She had the same smile, inviting and friendly, but Lucy got the sense that something deeper lurked underneath it. She’d been on her guard since the Vault dwellers had nailed Cooper with their net cannon, had figured it was to her best advantage to go along with it when they’d identified him as an enemy. 

Now, however, she was on her own in the midst of Vault 15. She hadn’t forgotten the sordid story of Vault 4 – she was certain there was more to this place than met the eye. And she wasn’t an idiot. By now, it was clear her own Vault was hiding a trove of secrets. 

Caitlin prattled on about hospitality and the room they could offer her, at least for the night. Lucy smiled and nodded in all the right places, but the better part of her attention was focused on the other Vault dwellers milling around her. 

A heart-rending shriek echoed through the common space, and Caitlin trailed off with a frown. Lucy turned in her seat to see several of the Vault dwellers hauling in the body from outside: a woman with ginger hair and a spattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She looked more asleep than dead, or at least she would have if it weren’t for the rose-blossom of red stamped around her heart. 

Another wail, from a woman who lurched forward and bent herself over the body when the people carrying it laid it on a clear patch of synthetic lawn. 

“Wake up,” the woman begged, tears landing on the dead woman’s cheeks. “Please, wake up.”  

The man who’d walked off with Cooper hovered at the edge of the room, clearing his throat and waving for Caitlin’s attention. When she spotted him, she gave him a small nod. 

“I’d better go deal with this,” she said, pushing back from the table. “You obviously know your way around a Vault – you’ll be okay getting to your room by yourself?” 

Lucy tore her eyes away from the grieving woman and nodded, mouth dry. Her mind was full of Vault 33’s own dead, but she couldn’t let herself get sidetracked. She needed to find Cooper, wherever they’d taken him. So she watched Caitlin from the corner of her eye as she joined the nervous man and the pair of them disappeared down a corridor. 

Trying to look as casual as she could, Lucy slipped off after them. She kept a fair distance behind them, an excuse – I’m sorry, I’m new and just looking for my room? – ready on her tongue in case anyone stopped her. The echo of their footsteps guided her around a series of turns, then Lucy heard the mechanical swish of a sliding door. 

She poked her head around the corner just in time to see it slide down and hide them from view. Heart pounding, she crept to the door and pressed her ear against the metal. Dim outlines of voices floated out to her. She caught only a few words, but they were enough to make her sweat.

“...be here… delivery soon.” 

“Good. We should… what’s the percentage?” 

“... not as much as we’d hoped… it be enough?” 

“It will have to be.”

The voices grew louder, and Lucy threw herself away from the door and back down the corridor before they could spot her. She’d heard enough to put together pieces: someone was coming, and they were coming soon. For what, she didn’t know, and she doubted she could come straight out and ask. 

Lucy returned to the common area, chewing her lip. What would Cooper do? Probably shoot anyone who didn’t give him what he wanted, which wasn’t really an option for her. Barring that, he’d see everyone around him as an opportunity. 

Her eyes landed on the woman still sobbing over her dead friend. Though it made her heart twist, she forced herself to approach. 

Silently, she crouched beside her and reached out to pat her a little awkwardly on the shoulder. “I’m sorry about your friend.” 

The woman wiped at her face and shook her head. “Friend? ” she rasped. “Laurel was the love of my life.” 

“Oh.” Lucy had never really considered anyone other than a man and a woman loving each other before. If it wasn’t pushing America forward, it wasn’t relevant, or so she’d been taught to believe. Then again, a lot of what she’d been taught was turning out to be complete bullshit. 

It made her feel just that bit worse when she said, “I recently lost my husband too. It’s… hard.” She declined to mention how said husband had died. 

Sniffling, the woman finally looked at her. “Who are you? You don’t live here.” 

Shaking her head, Lucy shifted onto her knees and leaned in closer. “Your people rescued me from outside; I saw who did this.” And she gestured to the tear-specked ginger. 

The woman furrowed her brow. “They said it was raiders.” 

“It was,” Lucy hurried to say. “But they were led by a ghoul; he was trying to kill me when they took him.” 

An unnatural stillness settled over the woman. Her shoulders stopped shaking, her eyes froze into slits. “Took him,” she repeated. 

Lucy inched closer. She felt awful, using this woman’s loss like this, but she didn’t know what else to do. There wasn’t time to search the whole Vault, and she couldn’t have killed all these people even if she wanted to. 

“He’s in here somewhere,” Lucy practically whispered. “Caitlin said I’d be safe, but…” She trailed off with a meaningful look at Laurel. 

The woman swallowed thickly. 

Before Lucy could talk herself out of it, she said in a rush, “If you tell me where he is, I’ll take care of him. I know I’ll sleep better if he isn’t around.” 

For a second, she didn’t move and Lucy wondered if she’d misjudged the situation. Revenge had almost driven her to shoot her own father, but what if this woman was better than she was? 

Then the Vault dweller shifted forward to press her lips to Laurel’s forehead and got shakily to her feet. “Follow me,” she whispered to Lucy. 

She led Lucy to one of the lower levels, stopping at the top of a set of stairs leading to a dim hallway. “You have a gun?” she asked, nodding in satisfaction when Lucy tapped the one on her hip. “I won’t go with you – we aren’t allowed to disturb the ghouls. But you wipe that piece of shit off the face of the Earth for me.” Reaching out, she clasped Lucy’s hand with such an earnest look that Lucy almost blurted out the whole truth right there. 

Managing to swallow it down, she nodded. “I… I will.” 

With that, the woman turned and hurried away. Lucy was left to descend the stairs alone, gun drawn and at the ready should she encounter anyone down here. The sole occupant of the level seemed to be a ghoul rolling a vial between her fingers. 

Lucy took advantage of her distraction to sidle as close as she could. She cleared her throat, finger resting alongside the trigger. “Please don’t make me kill you.” 

The ghoul closed the vial in her fist and raised her hands. “All right, steady on. There’s no need to get violent.” 

“Right,” Lucy agreed. “I’ll just need you to open that door for me.” 

The ghoul reluctantly did so, revealing another stretch of hall with a single door set at the end. 

Lucy took a few steps toward it, careful not to get ahead of the ghoul. The last thing she needed was to be stabbed in the back. Again. 

“That’s where the ghoul they brought in earlier is?” At the other’s nod, she fixed her eyes on it. “Open it.” 

Immediately, the ghoul shook her head. “No, no, I can’t do that. It’s full of ferals in there.” 

The blood drained from Lucy’s face. The terror of the mindless horde in the old Super Duper Mart washed over her anew, and she gripped the gun harder to keep her hands from shaking. “I still need to open it,” she said. “So you should probably warn the others.” 

The ghoul did not need any further encouragement. She took off up the stairs, already calling for help. 

One foot at a time, Lucy advanced. The ghoul guard had not mentioned how many ferals were in there, and she doubted she had enough bullets to take on all of them, but she only needed to keep herself alive long enough to make it back up the stairs. The Vault dwellers weren’t going to lay down and let themselves be consumed. 

“Okay. Okay,” she whispered to herself as she undid the lock. “You survived one group of ferals. You can do it again.” 

She threw the door open. Two dozen feral ghouls snapped their heads in her direction. 

Lucy swallowed. “Shit.” 

Snarls filled the air as they practically fell over themselves to get to her. Not giving herself time to think, she blasted the first one that scrambled into her sights between the eyes and hopped backward just fast enough to avoid the clawing grasp of another. 

She was forced to drop two more before she had the chance to pivot and begin running. She couldn’t risk looking back; if she tripped or even slowed, they would be on her before she could recover. 

Just as she reached the stairwell and grasped at the railing, something slammed against her back. Yelping, she plowed into the wall below the stairs, barely managing to keep ahold of her gun. Before she could react, the thing – a person, Cooper – was spinning her around and crowding her even further below the stairs. 

“Don’t move.” He pressed her into the wall with his own body, head bent over hers, arms splayed as wide as they could be with his wrists still bound to cover as much of her as possible. 

She stilled as the ferals who had been hunting her chittered in confusion. Some of them edged closer to where they stood in the shadows, but the sound of gunfire and yelling from the next level caught their attention. With rattling shrieks and gnashing, eager teeth, they clattered up the stairs. 

The ghouls who hadn’t turned were slower to make their way upward, but eventually even their footsteps faded. Only when it was clear no one else was nearby did Cooper draw back. 

“Didn’t I just tell you not to do anything that goddamn stupid?” he scowled, but he didn’t seem nearly as angry as he had before. In fact, if she didn’t know better, she’d think he looked almost relieved. 

Lucy lifted her chin, defiant. “It worked, so I’m not apologizing.” She was about to explain what she’d overheard when he swayed back, nearly collapsing onto one knee. “The drugs are wearing off,” she guessed. 

All she got in return was a weak nod. 

“Okay. Hold your hands as far apart as you can.” She hefted her gun, pressed it right against the thick knot of the ropes. “This doesn’t count as shooting at you, by the way.” 

The bullet chewed through the bindings, and Cooper shook the remnants of them off with a grimace. 

“Come on.” Ducking under him, Lucy lifted one of his arms and draped it around her shoulder to take some of his weight. “Let’s go get your stuff back.”

Chapter Text

Cooper resented everything about this. The fact that all of his weapons were locked up somewhere. The fact that he couldn’t even walk on his own. The fact that he was so dependent on the Jet in the first fucking place. He had no choice but to let Lucy lead him through the halls, crowded as they were with Vault dwellers blasting away at feral ghouls. 

A few of them were less focused on defending themselves than corralling the more lucid ghouls, which struck him as some pretty poor priorities. 

“What are they doing?” he asked. Felt like he was talking through glue. 

“I guess they must be the delivery,” Lucy grunted. Her face glowed red with sweat and effort as she dragged him forward. “I heard Caitlin and one of the guards talking about it.”

Cooper would have loved to pick that apart, but it was all he could do to keep his eyes open and his feet moving. He had no idea how much farther they had to go; every ounce of energy had to be devoted to forward momentum. 

That resolution dissolved in the face of a feral lurching unexpectedly in front of them. It went for Lucy’s face with a gaping mouth, and Cooper moved without thinking. He thrust his arm in front of her, wincing as the ghoul bit down and began tearing. 

“For Christ’s sake, shoot it,” he snapped even as Lucy fumbled for her gun. 

She jammed the barrel against its head and squeezed the trigger. 

The ghoul dropped, bringing Cooper down with it. His arm slid off Lucy’s shoulder, and he crumpled to the floor, unable to support his own weight.

Lucy tried to lift him up, failed. He did his best to help her, but his limbs weren’t cooperating. 

“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll be back.” 

Cooper’s attempts to push himself up were nothing more than a weak twitching of limbs. Soon he was only capable of registering dim shapes moving about him in shadowed movements. A question drifted lazily through his mind; it suddenly seemed very important that he answer: Who are you?

Thankfully, he didn’t have to puzzle that out. A vial was jammed between his lips, the contents slipping down his throat in choked gratitude. He spluttered back to lucidity. 

Lucy was ready with another vial, but he pushed it away and hauled himself to his feet. She’d grabbed the rest of his supplies as well, and it was a relief to feel the weight of his weapons as he slipped them on. Ghouls and Vault dwellers still pounded through the hallways in a crush of disorganization.

Cooper blocked out all of it. There was only one thing he cared about now: finding the fucker who’d dragged him into this. 

Lucy trailed him as he cut through the corridors, putting down any feral unfortunate enough to get close. When he caught sight of Caitlin, he didn’t hesitate to send a bullet ripping through her thigh. 

With a stuttered cry, she collapsed to the floor. Horror dawned on her face as she watched their approach, and she threw her hands up in surrender. “Don’t kill me,” she begged. “I don’t want to die.” 

Cooper placed one boot atop the bullet wound, leaned his weight on it until her shrieks reverberated down the halls. “Start talking.” He could feel Lucy tugging at him in an attempt to get him to back down, but his mind was still cloudy with wisps of ferality – this bitch had earned what he gave her. 

Tears streamed down Caitlin’s face, clogged her voice so she was barely audible. “It wasn’t our fault!” she babbled. “The Vault door, it broke. Raiders started getting in. We aren’t fighters! Management, they sent us a message, they told us they’d help if we got them some ghouls. They wanted them feral – we just did what they asked.” 

Management. Cooper knew what that meant. “Why?” 

“We never asked.” Caitlin scrabbled at his ankle, pushing feebly against him. “Please, I’m sorry.” 

“Cooper.” Lucy was glaring at him, Stubborn Look firmly in place. 

His fingers itched for the trigger, but even now things were beginning to settle. The Vault dwellers were dispatching the last of the ferals, and the other ghouls had been rounded into the common area where they swayed nervously, waiting but not knowing for what. 

“When are they coming?” he asked. 

Caitlin swallowed thickly. For a moment, he thought she’d smarten up, refuse to answer so she at least had a bargaining chip, but she told him, “Tomorrow morning,” through trembling lips. 

With a disappointed sigh, he backed off. She wasn’t worth the ammo. 

Immediately, she pulled her leg to her chest and curled over it with a sob. “Wh-what are you going to do to us?” 

Only then did he realize they held the attention of all the Vault dwellers. A few of them still had their guns out, but they seemed unsure whether to aim them at anything; most of them were eyeing the ghouls warily. 

A plan was slowly piecing itself together inside his head. Vault-Tec was coming the next morning, expecting to collect a bunch of feral ghouls. He raked his eyes over the group of corralled non-ferals milling confusedly around. 

Smirking, he turned to Lucy. “You’re going to make your daddy a delivery.” 

###

Cooper’s first order of business after getting the ghouls and Vault dwellers holed back up in their rooms was to step outside and whistle. Dogmeat’s ears flicked up, and a moment later, she trotted over the sands with a lolling tongue and eager eyes. 

He ushered her in with a jerk of his head and hauled the door closed behind him. No dogs in the Vault. He’d always hated that rule. 

He wouldn’t have slept that night even if he could. Instead, he roamed the halls like a ghost, partially to plan, partially to convince himself he was wholly him – whoever that was – no longer threatened by the seductive pull of ferality. There was only one thing on this scorched waste of an Earth Cooper was afraid of – that he might actually like losing his mind.

One of the doors swooped upward as he passed, and he stopped when he saw Lucy leaning against the frame. “You’re making me nervous,” she said. Then she stepped back and tilted her head. “Want to come in?” 

Eyes narrowed, Cooper stepped past her into the neat facsimile of the 1950s. His lip curled automatically. 

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked with those big, sincere eyes of hers. 

He could tell she actually cared about his answer, which was enough to make him drop, sulking, into a chair. “We ain’t having this conversation.” 

“Okay. Then let’s have a different one.” Lucy lowered herself onto her bed, the tips of her toes the only thing touching the ground, her hands curled around the edge so she could lean forward as if to draw him in. “You never let me see you.” 

Cooper gestured to where he sat, clearly visible. 

Rolling her eyes, Lucy let one foot swing. “You know what I mean.” 

“I assure you I don’t.” He shouldn’t have come in here. She was dragging up all sorts of things that were better left undisturbed. 

Before he could rectify his mistake, she stood and walked over to him, slid her fingers under the lapels of his coat. “Take this off.” 

He reached up, took her hands in his, and pushed them back. “Trust me, sweetheart, there ain’t anything worth seeing.” 

“I think there is,” she said quietly. 

This time when she placed her hands on his shoulders, he let her take the coat off. She worked her way through the buttons of his waistcoat and his shirt; soon he was sitting in a puddle of fabric. 

He’d been used to being watched, once, but that familiarity was long gone, and he found he couldn’t look at her as she traced her hands down his body. But he couldn’t ignore it when she slid into his lap and cupped his face. His gaze flicked briefly to her lips; he forced it away. 

Christ, but she was tempting. The last spark of decency inside him sputtered, threatened to extinguish entirely. “You don’t want this.” 

She leaned in to brush her lips over his. “You don’t get to tell me what I want,” she whispered. 

Well, who was he to argue with that? With a groan, he brought their lips together in a true, searing kiss. She opened to him with an eagerness that was undeniably thrilling. This beautiful, trusting woman with her doe eyes and stubborn mercy; this naive innocence he was going to ruin. 

She wanted him to be someone else – not the Cooper the Wastelands had made him become but the Cooper who had once thrived under the lights, cameras, action of Hollywood. He’d spent decades being that man. A few hours now wouldn’t kill him. 

Ladies and gentlemen, for one night only: Cooper Howard! 

Scooping her up, he guided her legs around his waist and locked one arm around her as he carried her over to the bed. He eased her down, that gorgeous hair spilling over the pillow in a dark halo. 

She was wearing too many clothes. He took his time getting her out of them; every new inch of skin he uncovered was another opportunity to lie to her, and he took them all. He remembered what it was like to love, to be loving. He gave her that with his lips on her collarbone and his hands on her ribs and his tongue on her hipbones. The harshness of the Wastes hadn’t taken her yet – she was as soft and inviting as clean sheets. 

Still, he had to fight the urge to pull away when she undid his belt buckle and tugged the beaten leather through the loops. 

“Look at me,” she murmured, hands busy divesting him of the rest of his clothes. “Only at me.” 

So he watched her as she cast everything aside. Watched her as she saw for the first time what a parody of humanity he’d become. He wasn’t ashamed of what he was – guilt would have killed him quicker than any bullet – but when the difference between them was laid out so plainly, he couldn’t believe Lucy wouldn’t draw away. 

She didn’t. In fact, she acted as though there was nothing unusual about him at all, for which he rewarded her by running his tongue down the length of her body then dipping between her thighs. Hooking his arms around her legs, he dragged her closer and refused to let her so much as shy away from his mouth. When she dug her heels into his back, he nipped her inner thigh. When she arched her back, he slung an arm across her hips in an unyielding bar. When she came, he used his fingers to coax her into a second orgasm before he finally let her go. 

Lucy lay beneath him, boneless and whimpering and as radiant as an explosion. Wordlessly, she smoothed her hand between his shoulder blades and pulled him in. 

For once, he was careful with her. Her blooded flesh bruised so easily – she was still marked from the night before. He braced himself on the bed instead of her body, settled between her legs and entered her with a slowness that was as satisfying as it was excruciating. He moved in long, powerful waves that had Lucy’s eyes fluttering closed, her mouth going slack with sensation. 

Later he would blame his brush with ferality for the way the edges of him blurred. The old Cooper seeped through in the way he rested his forehead against hers. Hands he hadn’t used for centuries skimmed down her body and over her face. Something long-buried appreciated the beauty in her sighs. 

This wasn’t him getting rid of a distraction – if anything, he was giving himself a whole new one. He doubted he could forget the way she shuddered against him or the eagerness with which she pressed her mouth to his. He knew there was no letting go of the way her eyes sparked as she hooked one leg over his arm to take him deeper. 

Cooper wasn’t going to last like this. He waited until there was no more waiting before pulling away and grabbing a fistful of the sheets. This was the one part of his new self he couldn’t forget: he’d poison her if he finished inside her. 

He sat, shoulders heaving, sheets draped across his lap as he pieced back together what he was usually so good at keeping in place. A pair of feet crept into his lap, and he looked over to see Lucy luxuriating in the afterglow. 

“You should stay,” she murmured. She looked half-asleep already, eyes low-lidded and pleasure-hazed. 

No, he goddamn shouldn’t, and if she had an ounce of self-preservation inside her, she would know that. Lifting her legs, he slid out from under them and resolutely put his clothes back on. He hated that he even noticed the disappointed pout tarnishing her lips.

He paused in the doorway, hesitated. He could tell her. He’d been about to, before, when they’d been interrupted by an inopportune net. She might not hate him for it. But in the end, he only said, “You just focus on tomorrow,” and walked away before he had the chance to put everything – everything – he’d worked for at risk.

Chapter Text

Lucy sat in the near-deserted common space, one leg pumping up and down with nerves. She went over the plan for what had to be the fifth time in as many hours – she hadn’t managed to get much sleep after Cooper left. 

Vault-Tec was coming. Lucy would provide them a horde of ghouls, their ferality as fake as their bindings. This was, Cooper had explained, their ticket to wherever her father had fled. She didn’t entirely understand, but she trusted he knew what he was talking about. 

Her half-eaten breakfast languished on the table in front of her; the few bites she’d managed to put down sat like concrete in her stomach. Somewhere deep within her, she hoped the plan failed. If they never found Hank, she could keep ignoring his betrayal. 

But that wasn’t true. Mouth dry, she pawed through her meager sack of belongings and retrieved the Bulletman’s portrait. Rose was still in there, lurking in the shape of Lucy’s face, in the litheness of her limbs. A gunshot echoed in her ears – black blood pouring from a punctured skull – and she shoved the drawing to the bottom of the bag. Nothing, not even running forever, would change that her mother was gone.

Caitlin, her leg bandaged and expression sullen, was one of the few Vault dwellers waiting with Lucy. If Cooper had had his way, they would have murdered the lot of them, the better to keep their plan from getting out, but she’d convinced him it would be far more suspicious to have an almost empty Vault. 

Two loud, reverberating thuds echoed through the Vault. 

“That’s them.” Caitlin pushed herself to her feet with a wince and jerked her head in Lucy’s direction. “Do your thing.” 

The nervous-looking guard nearly jumped out of his skin as he scurried off to grab the ghouls. 

Squaring her shoulders, Lucy eased the Vault door open. A contingent of well-armored soldiers flanked a giant, treaded machine idling on the sands. The woman who’d knocked was dressed less like a combatant and more like a scientist with wire-frame glasses sitting crooked on her nose and blinding white teeth, which she flashed in a smile. 

“Greetings, Vault 15! So good to be here, yes, it really is. I’ve always found the Vaults to be just so charming, haven’t you?” Clearly not interested in an answer, she peered into the depths past Lucy. “You have the subjects?” 

“Uh…” Lucy could only hope ‘subjects’ meant ‘ghouls.’ “Yep!” 

She beckoned to the Vault dwellers, and they shuffled forward with sideways glances at the woman whose smile had grown unnaturally wide by this point. They corralled the ghouls, who had ropes twisted around their wrists and were doing a decent job at pretending to be mindless, killing beasts. 

Reflexively, Lucy looked for Cooper; it sent a chill down her spine to see him snap at a Vault dweller who got too close. An amused smirk flitted across his face, and she thought he might be enjoying this ruse a little too much. That suspicion was only cemented when Lucy stepped aside to let them file out of the Vault and Cooper lunged at the scientist. 

He clamped his teeth around her ear and didn’t let go even as one of the soldiers shouted a warning. With a sharp wrench of his head, Cooper ripped the woman’s ear right off, swallowed it down, and bared bloody teeth at the advancing soldiers. 

The scientist clamped a hand over the empty space where her ear had been and waved them down. “Put those guns away!” she shouted. “We’re taking them in alive.” 

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked as blood trailed over the woman’s fingers. 

Wincing, she prodded at the twisted nub of flesh, which was all that remained of her ear. “Occupational hazard. I’ll be all right.” She accepted a cotton bandage from one of the soldiers and dabbed at the shredded flesh. 

Licking her lips, Lucy braced herself for the next part of the plan. The part she wasn’t sure she really wanted to do. It was too late now – if she didn’t get herself to speak, Cooper and the rest of the ghouls would be bundled off to Vault-Tec for who-knew-what and she’d be stuck here. 

“I need to go with you,” she said all in a rush. “My father, he’s… he’s looking for me.” She didn’t strictly know if this was true, but some traitorous part of her hoped it was. 

The scientist wasn’t paying attention to her anymore, focused instead on getting all the ghouls into the belly of the tank-car-thing. “Mmm, what’s that? Who’s your father?” 

“Hank MacLean. Henry,” Lucy tacked on for good measure. 

She paused, fixed her eyes on Lucy, and drilled into her with a hard stare. “You’re Lucy MacLean?” At her nod, the scientist called over one of the soldiers and muttered, “Get her in the front and watch her. She gets away, it’s your head.” 

Lucy swallowed. She hadn’t known what kind of reception to expect, but this wasn’t exactly promising. Still, she allowed herself to be escorted to the bulky front compartment of the sand tank. Cracked leather protested as she sat down and the soldier settled in beside her. 

No one spoke as more soldiers climbed in, then when the last of the ghouls had been gathered inside, the scientist joined them. With a flick of her hand, she gestured for the driver to get them going. 

Then she turned to Lucy, sterile smile firmly in place. “A pleasure to have you, Miss MacLean. I’m Dr. Jennifer Shroud. Your father has been very worried about you.” 

Lucy searched the woman’s features for any sign of a lie, but she saw nothing beyond careful calculation. Dr. Shroud was as unreadable as the shifting desert sands. 

“I’ll be glad to see him,” she finally said. 

Silence descended upon them, broken only by the rumbling of the vehicle’s treads. Lucy felt every passing minute like it was a year – how had she let herself get talked into this? She had no idea what awaited them at the end of this; Vault-Tec was largely a mystery to her. 

Whatever was going on there, it somehow involved Hank. She’d lain awake struggling to think of what she would say to him, and despite the hours she’d pored over it, she hadn’t come up with anything that felt adequate. He’d ruined everything, he was an unforgivable monster who’d taken her mother away from her – and she still loved him. What more was there to say? 

For a while, there was nothing to see out the windshield but sand dunes. The unchanging landscape warped gently before her tired eyes, and without realizing it, Lucy slipped into a fitful sleep. She came awake with a jolt when the vehicle lurched to a stop. 

A man was peering into the front window, lips pursed as he scanned their faces. His eyes lingered on Lucy, but when Dr. Shroud murmured, “MacLean,” he simply nodded, withdrew, and waved them forward. 

Heart in her throat, Lucy watched a city unfold in front of her. It gleamed with neon and silver, mirrored buildings reflecting back the desert as camouflage. Many of the buildings were whole. Some were even towering. Lucy had to crane her head back to see the tops of them, and a wave of hopelessness crashed over her. They couldn’t do anything against all this. Nothing had ever made her feel quite this small before. 

By the time the sand tank pulled into an underground lot, she’d half-given up. The soldier tasked with watching her prodded her between the shoulder blades, and she climbed down from the cab, glancing toward the tail of the truck where they were unloading the ghouls. Before she could spot Cooper, Dr. Shroud was steering her toward a thick steel door. 

As they walked, she tapped furiously on her Pip-Boy, paused at the entrance. Her screen lit with a message, and she furrowed her brow as she scanned it. “Okay!” she said suddenly, brightly, flicking off the display. “I’m to take you straight to him.” 

Nervous anticipation itched through Lucy as she passed through the door. Lights flickered to life above them as they walked the length of the corridor, featureless rooms lurking on both sides. 

Dr. Shroud set a brisk pace that didn’t give Lucy much time to take in her surroundings. She stabbed a button, and a set of elevator doors whisked open in front of them. When they were inside, she pressed a button simply labeled “D.” 

Lucy plucked up the courage to ask, “What’s that stand for?” 

Dr. Shroud made to tuck her hair behind her ear, dropped her hand when she encountered only empty space. At some point during the drive, she’d affixed a bandage more permanently around her head. “Detention,” she said. 

Detention? There was no need for clarification as the elevator came to a stop with a quiet ding announcing their arrival. Open doors revealed another hallway lined with thick steel doors, though these had small, barred openings and an oval slit barely the width of a hand set into them. 

Lucy’s heart sank as she and Dr. Shroud entered the detention level. She peered at the cells as though she could tell, somehow, which one contained Hank. 

Dr. Shroud held up her Pip-Boy for the inspection of one of the armed guards who had approached. He let them pass only after he’d confiscated Lucy’s pack – so much for the bullets they’d taken such pains to procure. 

Lucy didn’t even have the energy to be disappointed. From the moment they’d entered the city, she’d known this was a lost cause. 

The click of Dr. Shroud’s heels against the floor lodged itself in Lucy’s chest, her pulse jumping to match the rhythm. Steadily, they walked the length of the hall until they’d reached a seemingly innocuous door. Dr. Shroud used her Pip-Boy to unlock it, then gestured for Lucy to enter. 

She felt like she was in one of the old horror movies, about to peer into an abyss she couldn’t come back from. Swallowing, Lucy forced herself forward. 

The gloom of the room resolved into recognizable shapes as her eyes adjusted. There was a misery of a bed, a toilet hunched apologetically in one corner, and her father with bruised eyes and a split lip huddled on the floor. Chains circled his wrists and ankles; they rattled as he looked up. 

“Lucy?” His voice was such a rasp she couldn’t truly make out what he said – but she knew it anyway. 

“Dad.” All the resentment she’d been clinging to vanished in the face of his condition. It was suddenly too difficult to think of a reason she shouldn’t throw her arms around his neck and rest her head on his shoulder.

Hank pushed her back, fearful eyes fixed on her face. “You can’t be here, Lucy. You need to leave.” 

Confusion muddled through her. She’d just gotten here, and he was pushing her away again? “Dad, I–” 

She never knew what she would have said – an apology, maybe, or an accusation – because a soft voice interrupted them from the doorway. 

“Well, isn’t this touching?” 

Hank stiffened, something like panic flickering across his face, and Lucy turned to find that Dr. Shroud had been replaced by a wisp of a woman. She was like a candle flame viewed through a window: more a vague impression than anything substantial. Her hair and eyes lacked color; her skin was impossibly pale. The only spots of color were her veins, which stood out in threads of blue-green lacing through her arms and neck. When she blinked, purple veins patterned her eyelids. 

“Hank,” she said, unnaturally reddish pupils fixed on Lucy. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

Chapter Text

The taste of iron lay heavy on his tongue, and Cooper savored it. He’d take a chunk out of all these people if he could – every one of them was complicit in making the world a cesspit. A mission they seemed determined to continue if this maze of corridors was anything to go by. 

The soldiers herded him and the rest of the ghouls through a series of glassed-in cubicles, a giant laboratory full of – what else? – ghouls. There were endless numbers of them. Some were strapped to tables, half their skin peeled back in living anatomy diagrams. Some paced around the rooms, muttering to themselves, seemingly oblivious to the new arrivals parading outside. Some were piled on the floor in stacks six-deep: mass graves above-ground. 

Scientists swarmed like radroaches. White lab coats dotted the cubicles, examining the ghouls, cutting into them even as they protested, shepherding ferals with chained wrists and leashes. 

Cooper dug his nails into his palms. He could feel the others behind him murmuring, unsettled at the sights around them. If he waited too long, the ranks would break and then they’d all be fucked. Just a little longer, he mentally urged them. The timing had to be right. 

After another interminable minute or two, the soldiers led them into a space that could have once been a public pool. Tiles infected the floors and walls; there were a few drains studded into the ground. For the blood, some dark instinct told Cooper. 

A panel of scientists huddled in one corner, crowding a table covered in surgical instruments. Unease rippled through the ghouls. 

The lead soldier cleared his throat as the door slid shut behind the last of them. “Got the latest batch for processing. Ferals, so watch yourselves.” 

One of the scientists – a man with dark skin and nothing but bored detachment in his eyes – flicked a syringe. “Med-X,” he explained to the soldier. “We’ll have them out in seconds.” 

Cooper growled a warning as the man approached. It wasn’t his fault the scientist didn’t take it. As the man felt the side of his neck for a vein, Cooper shot him a grin. “Howdy.” Then he shook loose of his false bindings. 

The man had only enough time to realize something was wrong before Cooper wrapped his hands around the back of the scientist’s head and pulled him down, slamming his kneecap into his nose. Blood poured from his nostrils as Cooper planted a boot in his chest and sent him careening backward into the soldier. 

The other ghouls responded in a startled, terrified wave. They fell on the scientists and guards with all the desperation of people who didn’t want to be turned into lab rats. The smoothskins never stood a chance. 

The second Cooper wrenched a gun from one of the soldiers, he pushed his way through the crush. Lucy was in here somewhere – finding her was all that mattered now. 

He emerged into the sterile corridors with a vengeance. Anyone not fast enough or smart enough to get out of his way met a bloody end. At one point, he encountered what he could only call a holding pen: another large, tiled room full of ghouls who pounded on the door when they saw him. 

“Help us!” Their voices came out muffled, but their distress was palpable. “Please!” 

He ignored them – their capture wasn’t his problem – but his footsteps faltered as gunshots rang out. More soldiers had been called; it couldn’t hurt to have more of his own on his side. 

Stripping the Pip-Boy off a dead scientist, he plinked around with it until he figured out the door. Once open, the ghouls surged forward, flooding the corridors with an added layer of chaos. The gunfire only increased; Cooper had to get out of there. 

New horrors awaited him around every bend. He saw ghouls, their veins distended with some black substance; it streamed from their noses, ears, and mouths. Most of them were beating themselves senseless against the glass. 

Others dug at their own skin, screaming loud enough to echo through the halls. As Cooper watched, strips of flesh sloughed off underneath their clawing fingernails. New skin lay below, mottled and red – and smooth. 

He slowed, curious despite himself, but half a minute later the new flesh had withered and rotted as much as the old. Shaking his head, he forced himself onward.

At last he found the exit, though it deposited him into another set of featureless corridors. Scowling, he turned to the Pip-Boy. There had to be something on this thing that could tell him where Henry MacLean was. It took a few minutes and more than a few curses, but eventually he had a blinking location labeled “Detention Block C.” 

Cooper started off on the path laid out for him. If that’s where Henry was, that’s where Lucy would be.

Chapter Text

Hank clung to Lucy, his hands trembling around her wrists. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged; she’d never seen him so out of his depth, not even with Moldaver. 

The woman sighed and folded her arms over her chest. “How disappointing.” She turned to Lucy. “It seems we’ll have to make our own acquaintance; I’m Professor Willow DeRaine. And you are?” 

“Lucy MacLean,” Lucy said even as her father’s grip around her tightened. People were deceptive – she’d learned that much in the Wastes – but even knowing that, she couldn’t understand the sway this Willow woman seemed to hold over her father. She looked like a stiff breeze could knock her over. 

“Lucy MacLean,” Willow echoed. “Tell me, are you familiar with non-disclosure agreements?”

Frowning, Lucy shook her head. 

“How about corporate sabotage? Non-compete clauses?” At Lucy’s silence, she sighed. “I thought not. I don’t want to bog you down in the details, but suffice to say, thanks to your father, we are now competing. He broke contracts when he gave his codes to that woman. Important contracts. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” 

That woman could only refer to Moldaver. Lucy glanced down at Hank; he was pale, sweat beading along his brow. 

Willow clicked her tongue. “We don’t encourage religiosity in the Vaults, but I want you to know, Lucy, I’m a Biblical woman. I believe whole-heartedly the sins of the father are borne by his offspring. I’m sorry to tell you Hank has many sins.”  

This conversation was starting to make Lucy feel off-kilter, like the ground she stood upon was uneven. She glanced down at her feet to make sure nothing had shifted. 

Hank broke in, his voice cracked and pleading. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll do anything.”

If Willow heard him, she made no indication. “I also believe my wrath is righteous, and I can justify a lot for that righteousness. Which is why you will return to Moldaver’s stronghold, and you will retrieve the intellectual property your father so carelessly gave away. You will do this, or I will kill your entire Vault.” She spoke as monotonously and apathetically as if she were discussing the desert heat.

Lucy furrowed her brow. “What do you know about my Vault?” she asked. She’d never seen this woman before, had never even heard of her. “Dad? What’s going on?” 

Hank had his eyes closed, was muttering softly to himself, begging uselessly. 

“Of course we put a contingency plan in all the vaults,” Willow said, examining immaculate fingernails. “We would never leave these things up to chance. Vaults 31 to 33, nerve gas to be vented through the oxygenation system in case of total failure. I would call this a total failure, wouldn’t you, Hank? Who knows what socialist ideas you’ve been spreading in that hellhole? Who knows what poison has taken hold?” 

Lucy had about a million questions – she didn’t get a chance to ask any of them. The sound of gunfire erupted from the direction of the elevator. Pained screams echoed throughout the corridor then cut off into abrupt silence. 

Willow produced a sleek, snub-nosed gun from a holster hidden underneath her coat, checked the chamber and shut it with a satisfied click. “I detest interruptions,” she muttered. 

When the source of the shots stepped into the doorway, she turned and fired without even looking. 

Cooper probed the new hole in his rib cage. “Good shot,” he said. “If I’d been a few inches shorter, you’d have killed me.” 

Relief jolted through Lucy. She’d worried about sending him into the heart of whatever Vault-Tec was doing with the ghouls, and it made her lighter to see him (relatively) unharmed. 

Willow’s frown deepened, and she chambered another round, took more careful aim. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Cooper drawled. 

“I don’t see a good reason why I shouldn’t,” Willow said. 

“Because there’s enough explosives in that fancy bracelet of Miss MacLean’s to bring this whole place down around us. You wanna bet your bullet travels faster than mine?” 

Lucy followed the line of Cooper’s gun, which until now she hadn’t noticed was aiming at anything in particular. Now she saw it was fixed on her. More specifically, on her Pip-Boy. 

What? 

Willow narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “You don’t know enough about Vault-Tec’s tech to make those kinds of modifications.” Even so, she held her fire. 

“You’re right, I don’t. But we made a little detour to an old friend of mine who’s intimately familiar.” Cooper bared his teeth in something like a grin. “You might know her. Old Russian expat, got a grudge against Vault-Tec as wide as Texas? Well. What used to be Texas.” 

He was talking about Mechanic; he had to be. Lucy glanced down at her Pip-Boy and thought about just how long she’d been out during their visit to the clinic. Plenty of time for someone to tamper with it without her noticing. All this time, she’d thought the special work Mechanic had referred to had been healing her. All this time, she’d thought Cooper was protecting her when he’d actually been protecting his assets. 

Feeling a bit sick, she yanked the Pip-Boy off. 

Cooper reached for it. “If you could just hand that over, sweetheart.” 

The way Willow eyed it said she knew exactly who Mechanic was and fully believed her capable of turning a Pip-Boy into a bomb. 

Lucy narrowed her eyes. “What are you going to do with it?”

Cooper’s hand did not waver. “I’m going to find wherever they’re keeping all of their infinite energy and set it on fucking fire. You’d best be out of here before I do.”

In other words, he was going to blow up the entire building. End whatever was going on here – it was too much for Lucy to fully comprehend. The only thing she was certain of was that this place was responsible for the destruction of Shady Sands, Rose, and the life she could have had outside the Vault instead of this awful one she’d been handed. 

“I thought you were better than this,” she told Cooper even as she relinquished the Pip-Boy. 

He paused, a split second of genuine regret on his face. “Yeah, I wanted to believe that too.” Then he was gone, disappearing back the way he’d come with the improvised explosive clutched firmly in one hand. 

Willow reholstered her gun, sent out a long message on her own Pip-Boy, and turned back to face the two of them. 

“You’re just letting him go?” Hank spluttered in disbelief, the first thing he’d said since Cooper had shown up. 

“That man is none of my concern. He is a child focused on childish things, and I trust he will be handled. Now.” Eyes framed by frosty eyelashes settled on Lucy. “What will you do, Lucy MacLean?”

Chapter Text

Two hundred years of resentment and cultivated capability were about to come to a culmination. Two full centuries of drugs just to keep his body going and his brain functioning. In that place, in that moment, Cooper was nothing but a vessel of twisted justice. Nothing could stop him. 

Except for the woman who stepped smoothly into his path, a clipboard tucked under one arm, blouse pressed and crease-free. She looked a little older now, wrinkles perched in the corners of her eyes and silver hairs glinting amongst the black. 

He slowed, stopped a few feet away from her. 

“Cooper.” Barb smiled, actually smiled, and what was left of his heart contracted. 

He hadn’t expected her to be here in this sadistic lab of a building. She’d always been the type to be in the center of things, hands clean of the dirtier work. 

The Pip-Boy he held wouldn’t go off without a code, but it suddenly felt as unstable as dynamite. His gaze drifted past her, but there was no head peeking out from behind her legs, no little girl standing back a few paces waiting to be acknowledged. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

Barb tilted her head in the direction she’d just come from. “Walk with me? I have something you should see.” 

As he fell into step beside her, he noted her eyes landing on the Pip-Boy. No chance she didn’t know what he had it for. Everyone in the building probably did thanks to that albino woman. His ribs still ached where her bullet had scraped through them. 

Barb pursed her lips, though she said nothing. She didn’t seem overly concerned about it either – but then, Cooper thought sourly, she was used to bombs. 

For a while, the only sound was her heels clicking against the linoleum, and he found himself wondering if her arches hurt. She’d always used to complain about it. That was the kind of thing he’d thought about forgetting over the years, but he’d never quite been able to. 

Barb cleared her throat. “I get it. What you want to do to this place.” She placed a hand on his arm to guide him around a turn, and her touch burned more than the radiation ever had. “You think Vault-Tec has taken everything from you, but you’re wrong, Cooper. Look.” 

They came to a stop in front of a glass cubicle nearly indistinguishable from the rest of them. There was a gurney-like bed with a body strapped to it. A scientist or two checking monitors. The main difference between this and the bevy of others was that Cooper recognized the person huddled in that bed. 

She was older too, the baby-roundness of her cheeks slimmed out, her limbs edging toward gangly teenage proportions. Cooper noticed none of that. It was her skin that stood out to him: rough and crinkled and scarred from a thousand needle pricks. One was stuck in her forearm even now, the drip bag full of a familiar drug. 

Parts of her were just starting to dissolve; the bone-white tip of her nose, the tops of her ears, the flaked lips. Her hair was patchy and uneven. She’d been a ghoul for a few years at least. 

Cooper had to brace himself against the wall to keep from crumbling. “She was supposed to be safe,” he rasped. 

Memories crowded his thoughts, and in all of them, Barb assured him none of this would touch Janey. Of course it wouldn’t touch Janey, she was their daughter, and what kind of mother did he think she was? 

“She was.” Barb gazed steadily through the glass, her knuckles pale with the force of her grip on the clipboard. “You took that from her.” 

“Don’t,” he drove his fist into the glass hard enough he was surprised it didn’t shatter, “put any of this on me.” 

She was quiet for a moment, but only a moment. “We’re working on a reversal process. You’ve seen the experiments.” And she gestured to the warren around them. “We’re close; I can feel it. The radiation is difficult to work around, but…” 

She kept talking, but her words faded into a tinnitus ring. That small, scarred form on the bed was all he could see. He’d pictured so many scenarios over the years, all the awful things that could have befallen Janey once he’d lost her. Somehow, he’d never considered this. That she could take so much after her father. 

“Cooper?” Barb rested her hand on his shoulder. “We could fix you too.” 

Vault-Tec didn’t fix things. It broke them. Thoroughly and irreparably. Even so… 

Cooper touched fingertips to his own ravaged skin. He’d forgotten what hope felt like a long, long time ago, and the spark of it now was nauseating. The freedom of a life without chems – he could almost taste it. If he looked like he used to, could he get back to that man? 

But how many would have to die – had already died – for it? All those ghouls, all those bodies, his own daughter hooked up like an experiment. He’d lost so much of himself, but not enough to pay that price. Not enough to repeat Barb’s mistakes.

Pushing away from the glass, he strode off resolutely in the direction they’d come from. This place had a beating heart somewhere; he just had to find it. 

“You can’t do this!” Barb was half-jogging to keep up with him, panic welling in her eyes. 

He gave her a scathing look. “Because of her or because of your career?” Imagine being the woman with the cure for radiation. Imagine the profit in a nuclear world. 

Barb’s voice was cold steel. “I won’t give up on Janey.” 

Cooper ground his teeth. “There ain’t a Janey to give up on anymore – just something wearing her face.” It might look like her, sound like her, even act like her for a while, but he knew how this ended. She’d lose the Jet and lose her mind, or she’d lose herself trying to keep it. 

Barb edged in front of him, spread her arms to take up the corridor and force him to stop. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” 

Who needed belief? He was unliving proof. 

“Get out of the way,” he growled. When she didn’t move, he sighed. “Barb, please. Get out of here. Get her out of here. Do what you should have done at the start of all this and forget about Vault-Tec.” 

Barb’s throat worked as she swallowed, and slowly, finger by finger, she released her hold on the clipboard. It clattered to the ground. She stepped aside. 

With one last look at her face, Cooper brushed past her. At least he could remember her this way, brave enough to finally break away from what had ruled her for so long. 

He’d only gone a few steps when he heard the click of a hammer. When he looked back, it was to find himself staring down the barrel of her gun. Barb’s hands didn’t even shake. 

“I need you to put the Pip-Boy down, Cooper,” she said. “I’ll even let you walk out of here, all you have to do is leave that behind and let me handle it.”  

He stared her down. “You and I both know that ain’t gonna happen.” 

Barb pressed her lips together until they went bloodless. “Then I’m sorry about this.” 

It wasn’t much of a warning, but it was enough for Cooper to throw an arm in front of his face. The slug drilled into his forearm; he hardly felt the pain – at least not from the bullet, but he sure didn’t like it when he crossed to her in half a stride and reached for the gun. 

Barb’s survival instincts didn’t allow her to let go of it. She kept her fingers wrapped around the handle even as Cooper ordered her, then begged her to give it up, he’d survived for so long out there and it wasn’t an accident, he would kill her long before she killed him. She was still holding it when he wrenched her arm up so that she threatened her own life, the barrel carving a dent into the bottom of her jaw. 

Her eyes gazed steadily back into his. “I can’t let you go,” she promised. 

God-damn it. “Barb…” 

In the end, he wasn’t sure which of them pulled the trigger. All he knew was the iron scent of blood – must have been a memory – and a wash of heat spattering his face. Cradling her body, he slid with her to the floor. He sat there for what could have been hours, memorizing all the new lines time had carved into her face; he’d always known she’d age more gracefully than him. 

Eventually, there was nothing left to do but close her eyes and make his unsteady way down the corridor. He’d finish this and die trying.

Chapter Text

Lucy squared her shoulders; a lifetime of conflict resolution had prepared her for this. The priority was staying calm and steady in the face of adversity – this was most certainly adversity. 

“I’ll do what you want,” she said, praying her voice wouldn’t wobble, “but you have to let him go.” And she gestured to her father. 

Willow cocked her head to one side, a dog trying to make sense of what it saw. “Let him go?” 

“You’re telling me I have to do this to save the people of my Vault. He’s one of them.” She risked a glance down at Hank only to find his head hanging low. Clearly, he wasn’t going to be any help. 

There was a long, contemplative silence, which Willow eventually broke with a sigh. “I suppose you have a point. He may go.” She retrieved a shining key from her pocket and tossed it carelessly to Lucy. 

She was so surprised she almost didn’t catch it. 

Hank peered at Willow with stark disbelief as Lucy undid his chains. “You can’t go back to Moldaver’s,” he said. “They’ll never trust you.” 

That was a problem for future Lucy. Right now, her only focus was on getting the two of them away from this woman. Cooper was out there planting a bomb that could go off any minute – with any luck, Willow would be caught in the explosion and this would all go away. 

Hank allowed himself to be hauled to his feet, though he never stopped watching Willow. As they walked past her out of the room, he practically flinched. 

Lucy wouldn’t look back. The world narrowed to the elevator doors and the solid presence of Hank beside her. Vaguely, she registered the bodies of the guards Cooper had left strewn around the hallway; she was careful not to step on them. 

Red misted across her vision as, beside her, Hank’s head exploded. He dropped, one eye completely blown out, the back of his skull a mangled mess. 

Harsh, ragged gasps ripped through Lucy’s lungs, and she stood frozen, her hands still outstretched to catch Hank as he fell. 

Willow gestured to the blood oozing from her father’s head. “You didn’t honestly think I’d let him walk away from this?” 

Lucy’s limbs went numb with rage. There wasn’t room inside her for anything but violence – she was moving before she knew it. Some part of her registered the shot to her shoulder, but adrenaline ate away any pain, allowed her to launch herself at Willow with a single-mindedness she’d be frightened of later. 

She seized Willow’s twig-like wrist in both hands and drove it as hard as she could into the wall. The snap of bone was immensely satisfying. The gun fell – if Lucy wanted it, she could take it. But it was impersonal, and what Willow had just done was obscenely personal. 

She’d orphaned Lucy and her brother. Took away Norm’s chance of ever saying goodbye, her own chance at satisfaction. There was nothing Hank could do to make up for Rose now. He’d gotten off easy for all of his lies, and maybe she was okay with that or maybe she wasn’t, but there was no changing it now. 

Willow fought back with a strength that surprised Lucy given her diminutive size. Even with one hand dangling grotesquely from a broken wrist, she moved like a demon, her good elbow snapping up to catch Lucy in the jaw. 

Agony lanced through her, enough to make her eyes water. Lucy stumbled back, nearly slipped on the gun, and hastily righted herself just in time to catch Willow’s punch on the curve of her cheek. Blood pooled behind her teeth; she spat it into Willow’s face. 

With a disgusted shout, Willow swiped frantically at her eyes. 

It was the smallest advantage, but Lucy didn’t hesitate. “Seriously, fuck you!” she shouted, sweeping her legs out in a low kick that connected solidly with Willow’s shins and brought her crashing to the floor. Lucy was on her in an instant, clawing and biting at anything she could reach. Skin lodged under her fingernails – it felt good. 

Until Willow jammed her thumb into Lucy’s bullet wound and pushed, pushed, pushed until so much blood had oozed out it was dripping over them both. 

Lucy jerked backward, hand clapped to the open wound, lightning bolts of agony zipping down her spine. She couldn’t turn and run; she wouldn’t be gunned down like her father. But black was pushing at the edges of her vision, and she knew she was reaching her limit. 

Fortunately, Willow wasn’t much better. She’d scrambled away, awkward on three limbs, her face and neck a mass of welts and teeth marks. One eye was still obscured by sticky, cloying blood. 

“There’s no point running,” she seethed. “You won’t have anywhere to return to.” Lips clenched, she lifted her broken hand and tapped painstakingly at the Pip-Boy. 

Ice flooded Lucy’s veins – the contingency plan. She cast her hands about, searching for the gun and coming up with a lumpy, misshapen sack. Her bag, confiscated by the guard and now guarded only by a corpse. Reaching in, she grabbed a haphazard handful of bullets and staggered toward Willow. 

Lucy stomped down on her broken wrist with a jagged yell. Then, as Willow reared back screaming, she brought her fist down as hard as she could, bullets bristling from her fingers. Over and over again. Her knuckles bruised and cracked and bled, and still she didn’t stop until Willow wasn’t so much as twitching. 

At last her hand throbbed too viciously to keep ahold of the bullets, and she let them scatter on the floor. Chest heaving, eyes clogged with tears, she dragged herself over to Hank. 

“Dad?” Her voice was small even to her own ears. Dreadful silence was the only reply. With a sob, she rested her forehead on his chest and curled into the still crook of his arm, like she was a kid again, like they were on the couch watching those stupid old movies and he’d fallen asleep. “I’m sorry,” she whispered over and over again. It seemed like the only thing she could say: sorry for failing him. Sorry for becoming exactly what she’d promised never to be. 

When she ran out of tears, she used the wall to haul herself upward. Every muscle she had ached; it would be a lot easier just to lay back down and wait for the explosion to take her. But she couldn’t leave Norm like that – he’d lost the rest of his family and he didn’t even know it yet. 

The elevator doors taunted her with her reflection: bloodstained and bruised. A murderer. Groaning, she leaned her head against the cool metal and concentrated only on the whir of the gears as the machine hummed to life. She couldn’t remember what floor she’d come in on, so she picked one at random. 

She emerged into a series of cubicles populated sparsely by ghouls and scientists. Some of them stared as she passed, but no one made any move to stop her. A familiar shape caught her attention, and she stared dully at Cooper. 

He was in one of the glass boxes, his back to her. She watched as he traced the finger he’d stolen from her down a younger ghoul’s cheek. 

Resting heavily against the doorframe, she cleared her throat. “Who is she?” 

He lifted his head, took in her ragged appearance. “You look like hell.” 

“I feel like it too.” She moved further into the room, glancing down at the sleeping figure. There was a little bit of Cooper in her face, and the pieces clicked into place. Cooper had been looking for his family – he must have found them. 

Cooper looked past her. “Henry?” 

Swallowing thickly, Lucy shook her head. She couldn’t bring herself to say he was dead out loud.

There was a chair shoved up against one wall as though it had been vacated in haste; she dropped heavily into it. “I wish I’d known you’d given up on the bomb. I would have gone easier on myself getting up here.” She clutched at her shoulder, which throbbed in time with her heartbeat now. 

“Lucy.” Cooper waited until she met his gaze. “You should go.” 

Her heart seized. The clock was ticking – he just wasn’t moving. “How much time do I have?” she rasped. 

He was quiet for a moment, mentally calculating. “I’d say about ten minutes.” 

Pain flooded her as she lurched to her feet, and she started looking for exits. It should have been easy to walk away from him – he’d turned her into a walking bomb, and it turned out she was capable of some pretty heartless things herself – but she found herself lingering in the doorway. “You could show me the way out,” she prodded gently. 

Cooper hesitated, then removed the various tubes and needles from his daughter’s body and scooped her up. “I ain’t got any right to ask this of you, but will you take her? You’d be good for her. Janey. Better than I would be, anyway.” 

Lucy blinked, unwilling to believe what he was asking of her. “Come with me.”

Cooper stared down at the girl in his arms as if he meant to memorize her. “Don’t suppose she’d even recognize me now.” 

Lucy took his face in her hands and forced him to see her. “I did.” 

Despite everything he’d done to her. Despite how hard he tried to deny it. There was good in him. After all, he hadn’t had a bomb to watch out for when he’d carried her all the way to Mechanic’s in the first place. Or when he’d kept the ghouls from laying so much as a finger on her in Ghoul Town. And she hadn’t imagined that night in the Vault – he hadn’t needed to do that to get her to Vault-Tec. 

“You were wrong,” she said, desperate now. Every second that ticked away was an alarm going off in her mind. “I couldn’t shoot my dad. When I saw him, all I wanted was to hear that he was sorry. She’ll forgive you. Whatever it is, she’ll forgive you.” 

Silence. 

Lucy took him by the shoulders and shook him. “You’re worth saving, Cooper, so let me save you. Please.” She let out an exhausted, breathless laugh devoid of humor. “I kind of need the win.” She was already leaving Hank behind – she couldn’t handle anyone else.  

For a short forever, Cooper didn’t move. Then, cradling Janey against his chest, he marched out of the cubicle. “We’re taking the tank.” 

Breathing a sigh of relief, Lucy hurried after him.

Chapter Text

This world just wouldn’t let him die. Cooper had braced himself for it more times than he could count, but always, always there had been a way out. This time it was a bedraggled girl with a bleeding shoulder and a haunted look in her eyes he knew only too well. Whatever had happened to Henry, it hadn’t been pretty. 

It was also a girl he’d never thought to see again and who – despite Lucy’s assurances – was probably not going to thank him for saving her. Eventually, the drugs were going to wear off. Eventually, she was going to wake up. Eventually, he was going to have to hold himself to account. If they made it out of there in time.

The maze of cubicles had emptied out significantly since the ghouls had started wreaking havoc, giving them a mostly clear shot at escape. Cooper counted down the minutes as they left the lab behind and emerged into the garage. The sand tank was right where it had been. Good news for them as they were down to four minutes. 

Even so, he was careful lifting Janey’s limp body into the backseat, made sure she was secure before he climbed into the driver’s seat. It was strange to have his hands on a wheel again; how many dozens of years had it been since his license had expired? 

The second Lucy shut the passenger door, he started up the machine and pressed the pedal to the floor. The tank lurched forward, barrelled through the garage door like it was a sheet of paper, and growled its way down the streets. 

Two minutes. 

Cooper forced himself to look at the road ahead instead of constantly watching the rearview. When the bomb went off, he told himself, he would know it whether or not he saw it. 

And know it he did. His internal timer had been nearly three whole minutes off, but right as they drove through the gate – guards screaming and bullets peppering the sand tank judiciously – a wave of light bleached the road ahead. Heat hit them first, cloying and almost unbearable even with how far they’d driven from the lab, then the sound. A deafening rumble of thunder-that-wasn’t-thunder fading into an ominous echo. 

Only then did Cooper let himself look behind them. The lab had been utterly leveled; the only sign it had even existed was a thick column of smoke. Every building around it had shattered into chrome-and-glass wreckage. Structures three streets over had been reduced to blackened huts. 

A cramped, bitter smile graced his lips. 

“Which way is Vault 15?” he asked Lucy, turning his eyes back to the vast expanse of the Waste. 

Lucy took a minute to answer, and he glanced over to find her face pale, her breathing quick. “We’re going back to Vault 15?” she finally managed. She pointed to a smudge on the sand, the track of the treads left behind from their first passage. 

“I want my dog back,” he muttered. Then, when he noticed her starting to shake, “You doing all right?” 

She shook her head and dropped her face into her hands, shoulders trembling, a steady pulse of blood oozing from the bullet wound. 

Cooper let the sand tank roll to a stop, dropped his hands from the wheel, and half-turned toward her. Fuck. He’d probably been good at this once, but like hell did he remember what comfort was supposed to be. That was something he’d managed to forget. “Hey-” 

She saved him from having to muddle awkwardly through a pep talk – which would have been pretty rich coming from someone who’d been ready to blow himself up a few minutes ago anyway – by pressing her face into his chest and dissolving into sobs. Hesitantly, he rested his arms around her; when she responded by sinking further into him, he tightened his hold. 

They stayed that way until eventually, Lucy let out a shuddering breath. “Sorry,” she mumbled, still squashed against him. “I’m really glad you’re not dead.” 

Cooper didn’t like the feeling that gave him – it was something vulnerable, and that was dangerous out here. “That on account of all my charm and good looks?” 

She let out a startled, sob-soaked laugh, pulled back, and scrubbed at her eyes. Then she frowned. “I got blood all over your coat.” 

Glancing down, he saw a soaked patch in the leather; her shoulder was still bleeding. “We need to take care of that,” he said, nodding to it. He rummaged around the sand tank in search of a first aid kit while Lucy winced her way out of her Vaultsuit. 

She sat perched on the edge of the passenger seat, breath hissing through her teeth as he coaxed the bullet out. He’d done it to himself enough times to know where and how to squeeze – though she bled more prolifically than he ever did. By the time the slick bullet dropped to the sand, she was starting to look pale. 

“This’ll sting,” he warned, lifting a bottle of antiseptic. He didn’t give her time to worry about it much, clapping his hand on her good shoulder to hold her in place and drenching the wound. 

She yelped and tried to squirm away, but he kept a firm hold of her until the alcohol ran clear. She was still grimacing as he set a couple of stitches to finally close it up. 

“You should have told me about the bomb,” she said while he repacked the kit. “What happened to honest exchanges?” 

Cooper slung the kit onto the floor of the truck. “Sweetheart, there’s a lotta things I should have done.” His eyes landed on Janey – she twitched as if she felt someone staring at her, but her eyes stayed closed. With a sigh, he turned back to Lucy. “If I start listing regrets, we’ll be stuck here for years. But keeping that from you is one of ‘em.” 

She was still glaring at him. 

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “It ain’t like I planned it. Mechanic wasn’t gonna help unless I took her deal. She heals you, we walk her bomb into Vault-Tec, or we sit there and wait to see if you die or go ghoul.” Given how long he’d carried her, he’d figured the latter was a real possibility; it had scared him more than he’d like to admit. “You weren’t conscious enough to pick, so I did it for you.” 

“And after?” Lucy challenged. “There was a lot of time between Mechanic and Willow.” 

Another sigh. “You might have said no, and I had scores to settle.”

“That’s what I thought,” she muttered.  

Silence settled between them until Cooper broke it. “You know, I killed my wife in there. Ex-wife. Her mother.” He tilted his head in Janey’s direction. “Really think she’ll forgive me for that?” 

Lucy was quiet for a while, her arms wrapped around her waist, her eyes narrowed in thought. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “But I can tell you one thing. It’s better if you don’t lie to her about it.” 

Well, he supposed he deserved that. 

With a small shake, Lucy tied off her suit around her waist and turned to climb back into the passenger seat. 

“Lucy.” Cooper reached for her hand, held it gently for only a moment. “Maybe it ain’t worth much, but I am sorry.” The words tasted dusty – he hadn’t apologized for a damn thing in… fuck, he couldn’t remember how long. He thought he saw the barest hint of a smile flit over Lucy’s face before she pulled her hand from his, then hauled herself into the sand tank.

They weren’t far from the Vault when Janey stirred. Cooper’s hands tightened around the wheel – he didn’t stop until Lucy glanced back and murmured, “She’s waking up.” 

As the sand tank slowed, Janey’s eyes opened. 

Cooper told himself to turn around and check on her, but his body had stopped listening to him. He sat locked in place as he listened to Janey scooting around on the seat. 

“Who are you people?” she asked. She didn’t sound like he remembered, her voice deeper, more mature. “Where are we?” 

Lucy dug her elbow into his side.

Joint by joint, he peeled his fingers off the steering wheel and forced himself to turn. “We’re on our way to pick something up,” he said, opting to answer the easier of the two questions.

Janey opened her mouth, then closed it just as quickly. Narrowed her eyes. Scooched closer and stared so hard at him Cooper swore he could feel the weight of it. “...Daddy?” 

So Lucy had been right – about her recognizing him, at least. 

“Yeah, darlin’. It’s me.” He barely had time to register the way she scrambled out of the backseat and wrenched open the driver’s side door before she was hauling herself into his lap and hugging him with all of her strength. Fuck, he would have been the biggest idiot in the world if he’d stayed behind in that fucking lab. 

He clutched her with all the force of a man who was never going to let something this precious get away from him again.

After a long minute, Janey peeled back, eyes shimmering as she peered first at Lucy then around the rest of the sand tank. “Where’s mom? Is she the one we’re picking up? Who are you?” This last she directed to Lucy, her head tipped curiously to one side. 

“Lucy.” She offered her hand. “It’s very nice to meet you.” 

Janey shrank back against Cooper warily. “Are you going to study me too?” 

Cooper turned her to face him. “Nobody’s gonna study you anymore, you hear me? I ain’t gonna let that happen.”

Shame colored her expression as she swiped the backs of her fingers over the raised line of scars in the crook of her elbow. “Mom said we were helping people, but I didn’t like it very much,” she whispered. “Does that…” She faltered, fixed her gaze on her lap. “Does that make me a bad person?” 

“Janey.” Cooper put a finger under her chin and tipped it up until she was forced to look at him. “You don’t feel guilty for surviving. Ever. I want you to promise me that.” 

It took a minute, but eventually Janey gave a small nod and an even smaller, “I promise.” 

Cooper lifted her up and settled her on the front bench beside him. “All right. We’ll talk about mom later, okay?” Christ if he knew what he was going to say when they did. 

By the time the Vault came into view, he wasn’t any closer to an answer. As they disembarked, the giant door rumbled open, Caitlin standing in the entrance. Dogmeat rushed out past her, barking a greeting. 

She immediately approached Janey with curious sniffs, and Janey hesitantly put her hand on her head. When Dogmeat swiped her tongue over her hand, she broke into a smile and rubbed her ears more enthusiastically. 

“Hello, puppy,” she crooned. “Who are you ?” 

“Dogmeat.” Cooper was watching Caitlin warily, ready to jump the fuck out of the way if she hauled out that net cannon again. 

Janey crinkled what was left of her nose. “That’s an awful name. It sounds like you’re going to eat her.” 

Cooper reached down to rub through Dogmeat’s scruff. “Darlin’, I can honestly tell you I’ve never eaten a dog.” The skeptical look Lucy gave him made him smirk, and he drew an X over his chest. “Cross my heart.”  

Still keeping one eye trained on Caitlin, Cooper opened the back door of the sand tank and whistled Dogmeat inside. “You too, kiddo,” he said, lifting Janey above the treads. When she was settled, he closed the door, hauled open the one on the driver’s side, and paused. 

Lucy was staring back in the direction of the Vault, her eyes narrowed. 

She could, he supposed, want to stay. There would be no more selling feral ghouls, at least not for a long while, and the people here had otherwise seemed normal. Or, more likely, she could decide to go back to her own Vault. Hard as he’d tried to rid her of it, she clung stubbornly to that savior complex of hers, and they were devoid of an Overseer now. 

He’d take her there, of course. He owed her more than he could ever repay. But she’d be well within her rights to never want to see his face again. 

He cleared his throat, waited for her to look at him. “You coming?” 

###

Lucy pivoted, took in the girl snuggling the dog in the back of the sand tank and the ghoul gazing at her expectantly. She could make it on her own in the Wastes – she knew that now. The ache of Willow’s death still throbbed in her knuckles. Somewhere in the depths of Vault 15, Laurel’s lover waited for a retribution that would never come. And Moldaver’s balcony was always going to haunt her.

She didn’t have to be alone. Finding hope out here was like trying to squeeze blood from a stone – but Cooper made it seem less impossible. He wasn’t the same person who’d stood on that balcony with her, despite having spent countless years convinced he was unsalvageable. No matter what the Waste did to her, what it took from her, there would always be a way back. He was unliving proof.

Besides, despite her better judgment, she actually kind of liked him. Even with all the tumors and cannibalism. Norm was going to throw a fit. 

She gave him a smile, the brightest one she could muster given how damn draining this day had been. “Okey dokey.” 

Chapter Text

It was dim in the back of the sand tank, owing to the fact that most of the light filtered in through the windshield, which Cooper had draped with curtains. Ochre and shadow characterized the small space he’d carved out for himself. It wasn’t much, only enough room for a mattress and the few dingy belongings he’d scraped together, but it was better than living in that fucking Vault.

It was perfectly safe now, Lucy assured him, and he believed her – he wouldn’t have let Janey stay there otherwise – but that didn’t mean he wanted to spend his life burrowed underground like an insect. Besides, he’d gotten used to the sand tank being his version of home. He and Lucy and Janey had spent plenty of time there, just the three of them, while they’d worked to clear Vaults 31, 32, and 33 of the rot Vault-Tec had infected them with. 

The first order of business had been dismantling the nerve gas distribution system. The second had been exposing the whole, sordid truth. Most of the Vault dwellers had taken it remarkably well, a fact which had aroused Cooper’s suspicions at first, but he’d ultimately realized that Lucy’s optimism was a common disease around here. Good for Janey, he supposed, but intolerable to him. 

So he’d settled into the sand tank instead. Its utility had evaporated the moment it ran out of gas anyway, and no one else seemed eager to lock themselves away in blissful isolation. He had the place all to himself. Most of the time. 

The back doors squeaked quietly as Lucy hauled them open and hefted herself inside. With a sigh, she yanked off her shoes, dropped them carelessly to the floor, and let herself topple onto the mattress with a low groan. 

Cooper glanced over at her from where he sat patching one of Janey’s shirts. She’d snagged it on Lord-knew-what while crawling around who-knew-where; he’d forgotten how much trouble kids could get themselves into. 

“Long day?” he guessed. 

Lucy let out a muffled, grumbly sound he decided to take as a yes. After a moment, she squirmed into a position where she could see him better, her eyes squinting in the one slant of sunlight bravely shining through the curtains. “And the second I walk back in there, I’ll have to take care of a hundred other things. Can I sleep here tonight?” 

He pushed the needle through the fabric and glanced meaningfully at the sun. “It ain’t nighttime.” 

Levering herself onto her elbows, she arched her eyebrows. “Oh, darn. I guess we’ll just have to pass the time until then somehow. You know. On this one bed of yours.”

Cooper paused in his work. “Careful there, sweetheart,” he warned. “Or I might take you up on what you’re offering.” 

Lucy bit her bottom lip, drew her legs up, and let them fall open. 

Every time. He tried telling himself he could resist her, that what he felt for her didn’t go beyond surface-level, but all she had to do was look at him the right way and he found himself doing whatever she wanted. Every. Goddamnn. Time. 

Abandoning the shirt, he lowered himself to the mattress in the space she’d left for him between her thighs. 

She ran her dead finger along the rim of his hat. “Why do you keep this on when you’re inside, anyway?” she asked even as she lifted it from his head. 

“To allow you the pleasure of taking it off,” he smirked. 

Lucy rolled her eyes, but they shone with amusement. “How considerate. Or not, since it takes me longer to get you out of everything.” 

“Oh, sweetheart.” Cooper took her chin, placed his thumb on her lower lip. “We’re gonna have to work on that patience of yours.” 

“Noooo.” Lucy fell back with a dramatic groan and an even more dramatic pout. “I don’t have time to be patient.” 

Cooper half-rose to tug the curtains completely closed and flip the latch on the back of the doors that acted as a lock. No one was getting to them until he was done with her – he didn’t give a shit how dire things got in that Vault. Sinking back onto the mattress, he took Lucy’s face in his hands and kissed her so thoroughly she was gasping for breath by the time he pulled away. One advantage to being a ghoul: he didn’t get winded as easily as she did. 

Over the many, many nights they’d spent together, he’d learned not merely to ignore the differences between them but to appreciate them. Even enjoy them. The flush of blood in her cheeks and chest, the heave of her lungs, the uniformity of her skin. Her heart was his favorite. Sometimes he listened to the beat of it and marveled that his had ever done the same. 

Sitting back, he took one of her hands in his and lifted her wrist to his lips. Her pulse fluttered gently against them. He heard her breath catch as he bit down gently, held her heart between his teeth. Then, running his tongue over the marks in apology, he took her other wrist. This too he devoured. 

She exhaled softly as he buried his face in the curve of her neck; her pulse came faster now. He was a cannibal, swallowing down the pieces of her heart everywhere he could find them. 

Lucy clutched at his shirt, tugging insistently. “Off,” she murmured. 

“We ain’t even started.” He pressed kisses to either side of her temple before taking her hand and pulling it away. “And if you don’t keep your hands to yourself, I’ll be obliged to take them from you.” 

Huffing, Lucy let them fall to the mattress. “You’re no fun.” 

He gave her a skeptical look. “Then tell me to stop.” When she didn’t, he inclined his head. “That’s what I thought.” 

Her scowl quickly melted in the face of him winding his fingers in her hair and guiding her head back. Her throat lay exposed to him – he ran his tongue up the center of it and hummed in appreciation. She tasted so undeniably human. 

He licked over her chin and into her mouth, kept his hold on her hair so she could do nothing but sit there and let him claim it. Her spit was his. Her breath was his. She was his. 

Warmth ignited low in his gut, and his hips moved before he’d fully registered what was happening. Lucy was palming him through his pants, her hand rubbing slowly along his rapidly growing erection. 

He drew back, captured both her wrists, and forced her back onto the mattress, pinning her down. “Thought I told you to keep your hands to yourself.” 

“Sorry,” Lucy said, looking supremely not-sorry. 

If that was the way she wanted it, he was happy to indulge her. He unzipped her Vaultsuit to the waist and slid it off her arms. Her bra came next, and he couldn’t help but pause to admire her. Stunning, every inch. Of course, he couldn’t tell her that the way he wanted to if she was going to insist on distracting him.

He undid his belt, folded it over itself, and looped it through the buckle. Then he captured Lucy’s wrists and slid them into the makeshift cuffs. He was careful not to tighten it too much – she had circulation to worry about – but he wasn’t gentle with her either. 

Lucy hooked her bound hands around his neck and tilted her chin upward, as though daring him to kiss her.  

And damn it all, he did. He should have more control than this, but she’d always been pretty good at wrecking it. Catching her bottom lip with his teeth, he bit down until he tasted blood. The copper tang of her was intoxicating, the whimper she let out even more so. He savored every sound she’d ever made because of him. 

“Now.” He pushed her hands above her head and pressed them into the mattress. “Behave.” 

Lucy lay pliant and obedient as he retraced his earlier steps, from her temple down to her collarbone. He littered her with evidence, from the indentations of his teeth in her breasts to the flowering bruises on her hips where he sucked hard enough to break capillaries. Inch by inch, he pulled the Vaultsuit the rest of the way off, and his lips trailed it all the way down to her ankles. 

She rested one on his shoulder – giving him a frankly fantastic view between her legs – and lifted her head to glare at him accusingly. “Have I been patient enough yet?” 

Snorting, he ran his hand up the length of her calf. “If you have to ask me that, I’d say the answer is no.” He grabbed first that knee then the other and tugged her toward him.

It was more difficult to ignore his own arousal with her like this, near-completely undressed and so obviously ready for him. The thin skin of her inner thighs begged him to break it, so he took his canines to her.

With a yelp, she closed her thighs around his head. 

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. He almost abandoned his resolve then and there, but he managed to keep his composure enough to push her legs apart and free himself. “That,” he growled, “ain’t behaving.” 

She lifted her head, one brow arched. “You bit me.” 

“And you liked it,” he retorted. Like he couldn’t see her leaking through her underwear. Like he hadn’t learned to read every word her body told him. 

Smiling sweetly, innocently, Lucy let herself fall back. “Maybe. Try it again and find out.”

Cooper knew a trap when he saw one. Instead of walking into it, he levered himself above her and turned his attention to her breasts. He took his mouth to one and his hand to the other, catching at her nipples with his nails and his teeth until Lucy was whimpering beneath him. She arched her back, pushing insistently into his touch. Agreeably, Cooper tightened his grip. 

He grabbed handfuls of her: breasts and hips and thighs and ass. The one place he avoided was the one place he knew she was most eager to feel him. Eventually, she took to rubbing her own legs together to find any small measure of relief. 

Finally, he took pity on her, skimming his fingertips down between her ribs, over her stomach, and between her legs. He touched her over the thin, damp fabric, savoring the warmth she exuded. 

Lucy’s eyes fluttered closed. “Don’t stop,” she pleaded. 

And he didn’t – until she was right on the edge. She made a strangled, betrayed noise when he moved away. He didn’t go far, only pulled back to give himself enough space to tug her underwear off and shrug out of his own shirt, but she never took her eyes off him. It was a relief to get out of his own clothes; his cock was practically aching by the time he tossed his pants aside. 

“Flip,” he told her. 

Her bound hands made her a little ungraceful, but Lucy rolled to lay on her stomach. Glancing back at him over her shoulder, she wiggled her hips. “I hope this means you’re done teasing me.” 

He covered her with his body, pressed a kiss right at the nape of her neck. “I get the sense you really ain’t taking this lesson to heart.” Not that he could blame her – he was starting to lose his own patience now they were skin to skin and his cock was pillowed on her ass. 

Lucy’s laugh reverberated through him. “Haven’t you heard that teachers make the worst students?” 

Cooper was too busy nuzzling between her shoulder blades to answer. For a second he lay with his cheek pressed to her, lost in the delicious warmth of her body heat. Exhaling, he finally lifted his head and took her in. She was all soft lines and tempting curves. All blushing invitation and belt leather. 

Lucy was right. Patience was overrated. 

Guiding himself to her entrance, he pushed inside her. His moan mingled with hers, and he watched her shoulders tense under the strain of the belt. One arm he braced against the bed, along her ribs. He used his other hand to grab her bound wrists and hold them to the mattress; she wasn’t moving unless he wanted her to. 

He snapped his hips, drove into her hard enough to send her sliding forward with a gasp. The muscles of her back twitched against his chest – this had to be hell on her arms. As he thrust into her again, he lowered his chin to rest on her shoulder, his lips brushing her ear. “This what you wanted?” he growled. “To burn for me?” 

She dug her nails deep into her palms. The skin of her wrists went white and red by turns as she braced against his belt. “Yes,” she panted. 

She looked utterly wrecked already, her lips swollen and glistening and half-open as she gasped for breath. Thick clumps of hair were plastered to her forehead with sweat; errant strands stuck to her mouth and fluttered with each inhalation. Her skin was red and abused, the traces of him overtaking her whole body. 

This right here, this was why Cooper didn’t give a shit about living in the Vault. She wasn’t this in there. Behind that door, she was poised and intelligent, the perfect picture of an Overseer. Behind his door, she fell apart. This was a version of her that only existed with him, and he preferred it by far. 

He ran his tongue over the shell of her ear. “Who do you belong to?” 

A full-body shudder ran through her, but she mumbled, “The patriarchal concept of ownership is outdated.” 

Cooper rolled his eyes, though she couldn’t see it. “Remind me to gag you next time.” She shuddered at that too, and he made a mental note to find something that would fit the purpose. In the meantime, he resolved to fuck her hard enough she wouldn’t think of talking. 

Not a difficult thing to do from this position. He put his whole body into it, her ass rippling with the force of his thrusts. Careful not to collapse onto her completely, he shifted his arm under her instead of beside her so he could lift her hips and drive himself deeper.  

Her sharp inhale told him that was the right move. A minute later and she’d gone completely incoherent, frenzied, desperate sounds spewing from her mouth. Much better than a lecture.

Lucy shifted beneath him, her breaths taking on a stuttered quality he knew well. It wouldn’t be long before she – 

He groaned as she spasmed around him, bending to press his forehead against the sweat-slicked skin of her back. Thank sweet Christ for Rad-X. That was the one thing the Vaults had going for them, in Cooper’s opinion: a steady supply of the drug. It allowed him to stay buried inside her as he gave in to his own release. 

He would have liked to take his time about pulling away from her, but the tips of Lucy’s fingers were starting to go white, a sure sign she’d been cuffed too long. Withdrawing, he undid the buckle and carefully drew her wrists out of the worn leather. 

“Good?” he asked as she sat up and stretched first one arm over her chest then the other. 

She turned a beaming grin on him that filled up his whole body. “Amazing,” she corrected. “But I’m going to be feeling it tomorrow.” 

Propping himself up against one of the sand tank’s seats, he beckoned her to sit between his legs. “C’mere.”

With one last stretch, she settled herself between them. And promptly melted forward when Cooper dug his fingers into the offending muscles. “Mmm,” she hummed. “This might be better than the sex.” 

He didn’t believe that for a second, but he dutifully pushed his palm around her shoulder blade. For a while he was quiet, the only sounds Lucy’s appreciative moans. When her skin had turned red and heated from the pressure, he dropped his hands and she relaxed against him with a contented sigh. 

Resting his chin on her shoulder, he took her earlobe between his teeth and tugged. “Someday,” he promised quietly, “I’m gonna eat every last piece of you.” 

One corner of Lucy’s mouth lifted in a knowing smile. “I’m looking forward to it.”