Chapter Text
“So you’re telling me, 100%, genuinely, you’re not sick of that jumpsuit, Vaultie?”
Lucy laughed, shaking her head.
“You went all the way into that settlement at the ass crack o’dawn and spent caps you’d been hiding away over there on…sausages, and didn’t get yourself something to wear, instead?”
“No!” she laughed, pulling her fingers through her hair and working out the knots from the previous night. “Anyway, you’re one to talk - you wouldn’t even wash what you’re wearing, and I’ve not seen you in anything else”
He shook his head, smiling and tutting. “Difference is” he argued, looking at her from over his battered tin mug. “I happen to look cool. And you stick out like a sore thumb. Literally - you think I didn’t hear that radio presenter you’re always listening to jabbering on about how a Vaultie from 33 had been spotted wandering around topside?”
She had, and had smiled when she’d heard it. Had wondered whether her father had heard it too, whether he’d been pleased to know she was alive. Whether he’d been annoyed when the message was followed up with ‘in the presence of a notorious ghoul bounty hunter’
It was petty, but both made her smile. She loved her father, but…it was complicated. How were you supposed to feel, hunting down someone so important to you to potentially kill him?
“It has lots of benefits, you know” she countered, pushing thoughts of her father from her mind, as she usually did. “I’m protected against radiation - there’s all sorts of sensors in the suit too, it’s breathable, and…familiar. And I happen to like Blue and Yellow! I think it suits me”
“So you’re telling me you’ve never worn anything else? Even those pajamas you put on in that vault looked like those, you’ve never once just worn a pair of jeans, or a dress?”
She smiled at that one. It had been such a happy memory, at first.
“Once”
“There we go, let me guess, some sort of cardigan a vault grandma made for you? Blue and yellow from birth?”
“Oh well everyone had those as kids” she chuckled. “No, this was a dress. Beautiful, shared, obviously, but…it felt nice. I’d seen it again and again, growing up, and always dreamed of my day to wear it”
She could hear the wistfulness in her own voice, remembered all the times she’d just…looked at it, growing up. How many times she’d watched other vault-dwellers don it, walk down the same aisle she did. Marry the man they loved, the one they’d be with forever and ever.
She didn’t correct him on the colour. Knew it would give too much away to reveal it was white.
“You just had one?”
She nodded, blowing on her own cup and forcing her melancholy down. It went into a little box in her mind. ‘Failed, deadly marriage’ tucked carefully beside ‘thoughts of my dad, who nuked a thriving town to get me and my brother back’
“We kept it pristine, sealed away and preserved from the day we entered the vault. It was repaired anytime it got even the smallest tear, and we’d all write our names down on the inside, in tiny letters. I was so proud to see my mum's name on there, to add my own”
He scoffed, and her little bubble of thoughts popped. “Good thing you’re all the same size, what would have happened if you weren’t? The vaults just got a wardrobe department, taking up space? Powdered mash potato, next to sizes S through L?”
She laughed, shaking her head. He did make a good point, even if she hated to admit it “You know, I’m not sure. We do keep rooms of vault suits though, cleaned and stuff. I bet there’s maybe another, in a bigger size…though I’d only ever seen this one. Never really thought about it before. I suppose I’d have had to lose weight, or we’d have fixed up something else. Or a corset, I guess”
His eyes met hers at that one, and she bit her lip as she sipped the coffee they’d carefully brewed over the embers of breakfast. It had been a good one; charred meat dripping great globules of fat onto the white-hot embers, the Brahmin sausages a surprise she’d presented him with - courtesy of a small settlement they’d passed through before going to sleep the night before. She’d run back before he’d woken, trusting Dogmeat to handle the watch - a quick half-hour trip made entirely worth it as he’d eagerly staked them, tearing into his with gusto.
Would he like that? Lingerie? Would he look at her with that heat in his eyes again, intense and longing?
He was a man from a bygone world after all, and frilly underthings felt like something the world had forgotten. Something she’d gasped over, as a kid, when she’d found images in one of the old catalogues they had around the place. She was suddenly very aware of her standard issue white underwear, the bra turning grey and brown around the edges now from wear.
There was no abraxos, out in the wilds, after all.
He cut through the tension, tilting his head towards the sky and giving her a sly smile from the corner of his mouth. “What was this anyway, to warrant such ceremony? Little underground sweet 16 parties, some sort of coming-of-age thing? Fancy Blue and Yellow outfits, frills and bows?”
She chuckled, though could feel how fake it sounded. “Something like that, it was right before I left…” she flopped back, staring up at the morning clouds. “Gosh darn it, I felt pretty as a picture. It was nice, you know, to feel so…pretty. My brother laughed, but my dad looked at me with so much pride… my mum had worn the same dress, for her…and yeah, it was nice to feel close to her like that”
She’d come so close to the truth but wasn’t quite ready to unpack that yet. To admit it was the day she’d always dreamed of, the day she’d been thinking about with Steph since they’d been old enough to watch those old romances and see those pretty dresses and wonder if they’d feel the same, when they got married.
She’d never pictured glassing her new husband, shooting raiders, or watching her dad drown said new spouse in a pickle barrel.
Across the fire he watched her too, intently - he knew there was something he wasn’t saying, but didn’t push. Fair was fair, after all, and he kept himself impossibly secretive most of the time. “Come on” he groaned, standing up and handing Dogmeat a bite of sausage that she hadn’t seen him save. “Let's get going, we’ve got a long walk ahead, and I wanna double back through that settlement”
“Oh!” she’d gasped, quickly throwing her excess dregs of coffee on the sand and packing up their things - the pot hanging off her bag to cool. “If I’d have known, I’d have picked stuff up when I went through this morning. Though that would have ruined the surprise, I suppose”
“You didn’t need to go surprisin’ me anyhow, Goose. It was appreciated, though”
She’d wanted to kiss him then, but he’d head off too quickly, gesturing for her to keep up with a wave of his hand; Dogmeat winding around her legs, licking the lingering fat from her fingertips as she’d giggled.
A half hour back to the settlement, one hastily scribbled shopping list and him pointing her in the direction of a trader; arms full of junk she hadn’t even spotted him grabbing, and they were on their way. He’d needed ammo, he’d explained, but he was being…shifty, and he’d never separated them before.
He was planning…something, and she just smiled to herself and set off, second pair of socks easing the rub of her boots, vault-suit tucked around her waist, neck beading with sweat.
She’d find out, soon enough.
It took three days, by which time she’d chalked his little excursion up to something either man-related, or ghoul-related. Something private, that he didn’t want to share with her. It was hardly a hot-towel shave, so…she’d let it go - too focused on escaping the numerous perils of the wastes, on keeping one foot in front of the other, on trying to conserve precious moisturiser as much as possible, smearing it on her burned skin at night with a wince.
She’d woken up to it, folded next to her. Blue and yellow on one side, dingy brown on the other, a large triangle of fabric; with goggles neatly placed on the top. She turned it this way and that, face scrunched with confusion, wondering where he’d-
The underwear.
She’d slipped clean underwear into his pack after their excursion into the vault; both chuckling at the idea of him finding the standard issue boxer shorts in their blue and yellow glory and desperately hopeful that he’d have something…clean against him. She wanted to explore those regions, and would be far more comfortable doing so knowing they were nestled, nay, surrounded, by clean, breathable cotton fabric.
But why had he turned them into a triangle?
She looked up at him, turning it this way and that, confused. Was it…half a flag? Had he left the top open, to store things in?
“What?”
He hadn’t mentioned it, packing up their little camp opposite - obviously looking away from her purposely.
“Thank you”
It was obviously a gift. One he was apparently…shy about. Was it underwear? Had he turned the boxer shorts into some sort of triangle-shaped undergarment women up here wore?
She tried it, wrapping it around her torso and humming as she realised it would cover her, somewhat, but…
Was this wasteland lingerie? She tried to picture some of the wastelanders she’d met wearing it and tilted her head in confusion. Maybe? If it was the other way up, perhaps, and she put some kinda necklace on it it could fit alright, maybe even look…cute, but he’d have included that, surely, if that was how she was meant to be worn…the goggles maybe? Was she supposed to tie one end to the nose of the goggles and wear those around her neck, then tie the back bits where her bra strap would be? Now that she could picture some of the wasteland ladies she’d met wearing, especially the goggles, but-
“What in God’s name are you doing?”
He was staring, and…looking at her like she was an idiot, snapping her from her rambling train of thought.
“I…I mean thank you, but I don’t know what this is? Is it lingerie?”
“It’s a bandana, vaultie! You can put it 'round your face, in your hair, cover your neck with it, your shoulders and stuff. It’ll stop you breathin’ in as much sand, as we get into the desert”
“Oh”
She lifted it, holding it up against her nose and realised it was perfect . She’d already found herself coughing as they hit floating sand in the wind, and this was…and he’d made it.
He could sew.
They were on scrubland now though, and she looked up at him - looming over her, face impassive as always.
“Can you put it in my hair?”
He dropped down into a crouch, sighing. “Do I look like a goddamn hairdre-”
She kissed him, one hand holding the bandana and the other delicately cupping his jaw. A short affair, really, compared to what she wanted to do, but this wasn’t the time for that.
No, this was the time for sweetness - to show him just how much the gesture meant to her. A slow, loving press of lips against lips, a whispered “thank you” as she pulled away.
His complaints were left unsaid - no, he just pulled her hair back out of her face and slid the bandana into place, tying it behind her nape and tugging a few baby hairs in the process. She didn’t care though, beaming and fastening the goggles around her neck.
“How’d I look?”
“Good. You look good”