Chapter Text
Even as one of the sharpest shooters in the Wasteland - not a brag, just a statement of fact - Cooper Howard had missed the biggest possible threat to his survival even as it stood in front of him.
Brown doe eyes that would have lulled a lesser man into safety, a bright smile that offered a glimpse of pearly whites unheard of on the surface, and clean Vault-tech suit that made his gut clinch painfully as he took in the colors that had once been his trademark.
Like he said, a lesser man would’ve taken one look at those pouty lips and button noise and let their guard down, but he was no lesser man. He hadn’t been a man for a long time now. Those wide brown eyes had glared at him with a sharpness and fury as that beautiful smile ripped his trigger finger from his hand, covering those full lips in his blood. He knew then, even before stepping into the carnage of the Super Duper Mart, that he was dealing with someone like him. Someone who survived. A killer.
He tells himself that’s why he covered for her over the sacking of the Super Duper Mart to Sorrell. A tip of the hat from one survivor to another. Anyone who fought that hard to survive didn’t deserve to be strung up by a man who had clearly never missed a meal, had never known what it was like to drink liquid off the ground in the middle of the desert, not caring if it was water or god knows what. Besides, she had done him a favor by clearing out the Super Duper Mart and getting him access to a much needed chem stash. He convinces himself that he’ll do her this one courtesy before dropping her from his mind, leaving her to become dust and ash like everything else had in his life.
He finds, perplexingly, that he can’t, and replays the moment of her leaving him alive on the ground over and over again in his head.
……
The offer to team up escapes his lips before he’s had quite enough time to think it through. He tries to reason to himself that teaming up with the girl to find her no good son of a bitch father made sense, even though he knew very well that traveling with a smooth skin would slow him down immensely. And of course it had nothing to do with the flash of irritation he felt at seeing her groveling on the ground next to an unconscious member of the brotherhood, presumably the same one whose ass he had kicked all up and down Filly. That useless tin can wouldn’t be worth shit out there, and the girl would get killed trying to keep him safe, being the bleeding heart she is. Not that he cares, of course. He also doesn’t feel a small flare of pleasure when she takes him up on his offer.
…
His mental gymnastics finally fail as he takes her in as she sits across from him in their makeshift camp. The building had too many holes to really qualify as a shelter, but something was better than nothing and he had learned long ago to take what you could get in this forsaken world. She’s quiet, her head hanging between the arms perched on her knees, but he can almost hear the cogs in her brain turning as she tries to process the last 24 hours. He knows the look on her face because it’s one he had often, in the beginning. Of feeling like the only person left in this whole shithole. Loneliness so overwhelming that it almost kills you. Or, at least in his case, kills all the good parts of you.
She sighs and looks up quickly to meet his gaze. He doesn’t look away, he’s far too old to be coy or pretend like he’s not assessing her just like she’s assessing him. Those sharp brown eyes drill into him, drinking him in with a desperation he had not seen since she was on her knees and begging for water.
He takes a slow puff of his cigarette without looking away and her eyes zone in on his hand, specifically the pale finger with dark stitches that doesn’t quite match the rest of them. The finger he had sliced from her hand in retaliation for the one she had taken. He can see her internal struggle and slowly raises his eyebrow, almost daring her to say something. He wants her to say something.
He wants her to be enraged, wants her to scream and call him a bastard because he is a bastard. He wants her to know that he is a monster, that he is irredeemable, that the man he had once been had died in a blaze of radiation and only this charred husk remained. Because if sunshine and rainbows here, Ms. “Golden Rule”, can give up on him, then he really truly knows that he was gone the moment those bombs fell, or when he found out who his wife really was, and he can keep living and keep killing however he likes because it means he survives.
For the rest of his life he’ll remember the moment when she does exactly opposite of that. When she lets out a disbelieving scoff and leans forward towards him with an outstretched hand and runs her own index finger over her old one, feeling the bumps of the stitches that made the finger his own. Her finger is cold compared to his skin, but gentle in a way he thought human kind had lost a long time ago. Goosebumps rise on the scarred flesh on his neck. His breath catches and for a moment he is speechless as those eyes move from their hands to meet his gaze, a small smile forming on her face.
“Guess you’ll always have something to remember me by, huh.” That’s all she says before she sits back and leans her head against the wall, staring up at the moonlight making its way through the many holes in the roof. He feels her absence immediately and misses the cool feel of her finger on his scarred skin. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since someone had touched him like that, like he was still a feeling human being, and not the monster he was.
He knows then that he’s fucked. Absolutely fucking fucked. Because looking at that smooth skin vaultie - Lucy, his mind murmurs - he feels something. A flash in nerves that should’ve long been dead from radiation, a flip in his too empty stomach, a spark in his dead heart. Feelings he hasn’t felt in a long, long time. Feelings he didn’t think he still had. He doesn’t quite know what he feels for this little vault dweller, his little killer, but he knows it’s there and it happened without him even realizing. And for the first time in over a century, Cooper Howard feels a spike of fear. Because when you don’t care for anything, then you can’t lose anything. And he knows right now, as the beginnings of something flower in his chest, the little remnants of himself would not survive losing her.
That night he is too distressed to sleep, and stands watch over their humble, albeit temporary, abode - gun in hand and dog by his side. He tries to reason with himself - that this isn’t reasonable, that he used her for bait for fucks sake, that he is going to find her daddy and kill him and she would just hate him anyways when it was all over. He thinks of his first marriage and what a fucking disaster that was, and how Lucy and Barb fail to have a single thing in common. He thinks and sighs and lights another cigarette and thinks some more. He hasn’t gone through a pack this quickly in a minute, and he knows he’ll regret it later. But for now the nicotine is the only thing calming his nerves, and so he pulls another from the pack and lights it in one fluid motion. This continues until the sun starts to rise on the horizon and he switches from his lit cigarette to take a long puff of his chems, the only thing keeping him from going feral, reminding him of yet another reason this, whatever it is, is a terrible idea.
He knows, rationally, that he should leave before he is in too deep. That he doesn’t need her to find Hank MacLean and the other Vault-tach bastards. She would be safer going back to that Vault. But the idea that she would wake up abandoned in the wasteland and have that terribly lonely look on her face because of him was too much to bear. Nor did he want to leave her, a revelation he came to begrudgingly. This annoying, naive, caring, utterly human woman who had looked at the worst this world had to offer and stood her ground. He wanted to protect that, protect her. Even if he knew that she would likely never feel something for him. He scoffs at his wishful thinking - she would never feel something for him. His previous actions and his appearance guaranteed that. And so despite the rules for survival he had long ago made his code, and every inch of self-preservation in his body screaming otherwise, he wouldn’t leave her. He couldn’t. He’s in too deep.
His pack of cigarettes are empty by the time she begins to rouse. And when those beautiful, deadly, terrifying, doe like eyes flutter open in the morning and meet his, he can’t help but smile.
And she smiles back.