Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They were so fucking close.

The rancid smell of the city hadn’t even had time to settle into his decrepit nostrils before an angry hoard of charming locals, matted in dirt and foaming at the mouth, had rioted to run them off. Well not them exactly, though he had begun to catch himself in the bad habit of grouping her right on in. Lucy had been more than welcome into the trade tents and fire pits of disgusting smelling ‘food', but Cooper had made the mistake of raising his hat a bit too high in a “No Ghouls” zone and the only thing that’d stopped his gun from following was Lucy’s pleading side eye. A few bullets flying here and there wouldn’t have been an issue once upon a simpler time, but now he grit his teeth and deemed it not worth the waste of ammunition. 

So they’d tucked tail and run, far enough from the outer markets to no longer hear the clanging of metal or the curses and slurs that rolled right off him these days like the rays of sweltering sun. 

Lucy, however, was pissed.

“All I wanted was some stag cheese,” she said, slowing to catch her breath, and Cooper huffed near her side at the tragedy. Poor thing. “What’s the difference if it was you or me who bought it? Caps are caps.” She explained matter of factly, like it was news to his ears. “I still don’t understand the whole prejudice against functioning ghouls thing. You talk. You think. It’s not like you were in there growling or gnawing on the shopkeep.” 

But oh, how he’d thought about it after that bitch had called him a mutated monster and shoved Lucy’s hand away from the wares for nothing more than the company she kept. 

And with the way Lucy stopped to look over at him then, it was as if she realized her own words and knew it too.

“We’ve come a long way, huh?” She teased with a small smile before it fell like a drawn thread from her lips. “Probably tasted like shit anyway,” her hand waved dismissively. “Judging by the grime on her fingers, I bet most of the cheese wasn’t even stag based. But that’s not the point.” Lucy blinked her eyes away and moved on. “Point is, why have a ghoul classification system if it doesn’t mean anything to most people? Or why put up those signs in the first place as if a feral ghoul is going to stop and read them and be like oh heck, can’t eat here I guess …” 

“Lucy,” Cooper called her name, earning her full attention just as it did on every rare occasion he let it roll from his tongue. “It’s alright.”

“No it’s not,” she seethed quick and bright, her eyes taking on that fire that’d drawn him in like a bloodbug to its own fiery destruction. But it struck differently now that it wasn’t because of him but for him. “I could get it if we were always getting run off for your reputation or just your general,” and she gestured to all of him, “assholey-ness, but it’s- what - because of the way you look? That’s bullshit. That’s one thing we got right in the vaults,” Lucy nodded. “Your gender or race or looks didn’t affect how you were treated.”

“Unless you were fuckin’.” Cooper sent back to her as straight faced as he could, knowing the moment Lucy had decided to share the delicious tale of their little gettin’ ons back in the vault that he was stocked up with ammo forever and whenever he needed. “Vault Tec with their lab rat master race n' all…” 

“Don’t change the subject.” Lucy admonished without skipping a beat and goddamn was it still settling in so nicely, having a worthy adversary to bounce bullshit off of after centuries trapped in the echochamber of his own decomposing thoughts. “I just think those animals could use a decent history lesson is all.” And she spit the curse over her shoulder as if they could still hear her, miles back. “It’s not like they’re far from feral themselves.”

And Cooper stilled where he stood in the billowing sands, trying to remember the last time he’d been defended from anyone, much less a township full of wasteland trash. At the very back of his mind, even old smoothskin Coop himself drew a blank. 

It was nice. 

“So let’s go back there and show em how to do it proper.” He suggested, enthused.

“Cooper no.” Lucy said low.

And that’s when he heard it. From just over the ridge came a muffled wail that stole his mirth and had his fingers falling to rest around the grip of his revolver. Lucy’s head snapped in the same direction, full on drawing her own pistol between her hands and aiming it low toward the ground before her. And he could just about shake with pride. She was finally fuckin’ getting it. 

“Raiders?” She asked, looking over to him.

“Could be,” he shifted his hat higher on his head to scan the horizon. “Sounded more like supper to me though. C’mon.”

But of all the things he expected them to find as they crested the hill, weapons aimed and at the ready, a vintage Cardinal Jack single door refrigerator was near the very tail end of the list. It stuck upright but slightly skewed, a molded pale sore thumb, from the flat pit of rocky orange tar. The wailing echoed louder as they neared, steps smart so as not to be trapped right alongside whatever unfortunate beast hollered from within. 

“Are you really going to open it?” Lucy asked, stalling back some as he continued forward, and it was almost odd, her nearly never one to let common sense obscure her own curiosity, as he now knew on a much more personal, downright pleasurable level. 

“Naw, I was just gunna huff the chlorine out the back if that’s okay with you?” He asked with a glare over his shoulder, gripping the door handle and taking a moment to ready himself behind it for the inevitable fight that followed…

“Hello? Is someone out there?” Came a small answering voice that was most definitely not Lucy’s and it made him release his hold and take a full step back. 

“The fuck.” 

“Is someone in there?!” Lucy nearly gasped at the same time.

“I’ve been stuck in here for so long!” The refrigerator answered, and Cooper was already so very done with this day. “I heard the alarms and hid in here from the bombs but there’s not a handle on the inside…”

“From the bombs?!” Lucy asked. “How long have you been in there exactly?” 

“I don’t know, a long time,” the voice whined back. “There isn’t a calendar in here either.” 

And the fridge nearly got Cooper with that one until he realized just exactly how valid of a question Lucy’d asked. Because he too had been crammed away in a dark pit for a great deal of time since the bombs fell and the ones who’d dug him up had made their last grave mistake. Torture and its tolls on those who dole it out and all that. Now, from the outside, he knew a trap when he saw one.

“We’re leavin’.” Cooper said simply, turning to walk away until Lucy refused to budge. And he fought the urge to grab her by the forearm like he once would.

“He sounds like a kid.” She said soft in that voice she saved especially for diggin' beneath his skin. “We can’t -”

“You can’t,” he corrected. “I’m leavin’.”

“Please don’t leave me in here!” The fridge cried out.

And he really was trying to, getting all of five paces away before Lucy walked right up to the door herself, gun lax in her hold, and drew it open in a quick tug, tucking her small frame smartly behind its steel wall of protection just as he would’ve. 

“You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin' me.” Cooper drawled down the barrel of his gun, aimed right at the chest of a once young boy turned ghoul. A too big button up shirt hanging loose over his boney shoulders. Ill fitting ripped pants and bare feet. The gangly thing couldn’t have been older than ten before the rot set in, nose missing and skin flayed, and if he hadn’t had any meds in there since the bombs fell he sure as shit must be hungry.

Cooper cocked the hammer of his pistol.

Lucy stepped between them, her back to the barrel and Cooper let it drift to the side with a tormented sigh, shooting instead a forlorn glance up to the clear blue heavens. One day her bleeding fuckin’ heart was going to be the death of them and he was still not quite so fond of giving a shit either way. 

“Ow, the light hurts,” the kid cringed, straightening slow from his hunched position to stand on wobbly legs and squint up beneath his hand at Lucy. “Oh wow, you’re pretty. I’m Billy,” he said and Cooper couldn’t help but finish the roll of his eyes. “Thank you for letting me out.”

With the show of gratitude, Lucy sent Cooper that told you so look over her shoulder that reminded him she still had a lot to learn. Flattery hadn't done much good for him before the war and it was impossibly more dangerous now.

“Alright he’s out, let’s go.” Cooper leveled, and a pair of sunken yellow eyes leaned past Lucy to take him in for the first. 

“Oh, you’re not so pretty,” the kid said right fucking to him before looking back up to the decidedly fairer party. “You can’t just leave me here alone again, please, I have to find my parents.”

“Your folks are long dead boy.” Cooper bit back with a tilt of his head to see the little shit around Lucy’s shoulder. “But I guess there ain’t no sense or reflective surfaces in there neither huh?” And he gestured forward with his pistol toward the wide open, clearly empty fridge. 

“Seriously?” Lucy hissed, turning on her feet just enough to eye him with a look that had him recalling her mention of being a school teacher back in the hole. He hadn’t fully trusted it till right then. Now though, Cooper couldn’t help but be reminded of those stereotypical Mexican standoffs he’d grown so very tired of long before the cameras stopped rolling. Especially with the way the pair before him eyed him expectantly, unmoving. Waiting for exactly what though, he had not the fuckin’ foggiest.

But Lucy’s eyes had already taken that protective weight to them just as they had back in the market. It was a fight he would not win without runnin' or gunnin' but the latter still hung loose and lamely to his side. And when Cooper looked down at it like it’d personally betrayed him, the kid had taken the smallest step behind Lucy’s hip. Drew his chapped bottom lip in between his teeth. Tensed up at the sight. 

God dammit.

Lucy read Cooper's crumbling will like a preschool picture book, meeting his eyes with something like gratitude in her own before turning back toward the kid and kneeling to match his height.

“Where are you from, Billy?” She asked. “What do you remember about the bombs?”

“Nipton.” Little Billy said, letting his hand fall to rest near his side as his eyes adjusted to the glaring sun. 

“He’s lyin'.” Cooper growled. “Nipton’s a two day walk south and that don’t make a lick of sense.” 

“I’m not lying!" Billy cried out. "I wasn’t home when the bombs fell, I was at my aunt’s and this was -” the kid turned to look around at the tar pit behind him. The rolling hills of copper sand and scattered jagged debris. The lack of much else. “This was her house…”

“So Nipton,” Lucy piped up, resting a hand on one of the boy’s little shoulders to earn his attention again, and he turned up to her like a flower to the sun. “What else do you remember?”

“Umm, yogurt?” He said, scarred face brightening like a leech. “It was gross. And some kinda fruit soup or something... It was hard to tell in there… But there was bread in the bottom drawer and-”

“This ain’t happenin’.” Cooper glowered between the pathetic pair before him. “We ain’t got time for some pity-party-shot-in-the-dark waste of daylight when your daddy’s trail is coolin' in the opposite fuckin’ direction.” He jutted out the finger that just happened to be hers. 

“Then go!” Lucy yelled, throwing her own hands up in defeat toward him. “I understand! I won’t even try to stop you.” And her expression grew firm. Accusing in a way that shouldn’t have been able to reach him as it did. “But I can’t leave him here Co-” and she caught herself. Co raised a missing brow. She took a stalling breath. “Cody? Cody.” Lucy nodded and how the fuck had he gotten to this point in his life.

“And you’re Lucy!” Billy chimed in, chipper as a jay bird. “I heard you guys talking before you opened the door. Is he always this much of a jerk?” The little punk tacked on lower just as Cooper (fuckin' Cody, really?) turned to put all this behind him, holstering his gun before he did something stupid and focusing only on the hazy city ahead. Until:

“No.” Lucy said soft, just barely reaching his mangled ears. “No he’s not. Let’s go.”

And Cooper could make out the sound of her typing the new coordinates into her Pip Boy as the pair walked off in the opposite direction. Then he internally cussed the air, and Vault Tec, and Lucy, and his own goddamn guilt as he searched the sky again for some sort of guidance. Some semblance of sense in the jumble of rage and resignation and what if it was Janey you jackass. What would you do then, huh, you mutated monster?

It took him only a few minutes to catch back up to Lucy, the kid already a sound chunk of land ahead as he put his moxie and legs to good use. 

“If he so much as snarls I’m puttin’ a bullet in his fuckin’ skull. Clear?”

“Fair.” Lucy agreed quick, not even sparing him a passing glance. Because she fucking knew. “But if it’s for any other reason, you’re no better than them.” And she jutted a thumb back over her shoulder.

Cooper faltered mid step.

She may as well have gnawed away another chunk of flesh.

Chapter Text

Cooper had taken his self assigned stump opposite the campfire that night, as far away from the jabberin’ pair across it as he could be while still keeping an eye along the dark horizon. The fire itself was a mistake. Even Lucy had shot him a skeptical look as he’d struck the flint, but the ratio of bad decisions between the two of them still lay delicately in his favor. So now, a burning beacon was lit, signaling anything and everything near enough that food was warm and readying for the taking. Because they'd walked for hours but the kid had still been restless ever since the sun set and all Cooper could think about was those first few nights free of the grave. How the open, empty world had still felt so suffocating and dark, all the same. Just with a bit more leg room.

Dogmeat had shown up from gathering her own grizzly dinner shortly after sundown as she was wont to do, and just like Lucy, Billy already had her wrapped around his rotten little finger. The mutt chewed on what looked like a femur near the boy’s side, little traitor, while Lucy sat on the other, entertaining his fascination with that annoying fuckin’ Pip Boy. 

“It has games too,” Lucy said and Billy’s eyes went wide in the firelight. “Here, try this one. It just uses the dial and this button here.” She instructed, passing it over into enthusiastic hands. Then she looked right at Cooper, who had not meant to watch the transaction unfold, but had still caught the kid smiling for the first time since he’d earned his freedom. “I had to ban them in the classroom.” Lucy mused with a fond grin of her own, jarringly sincere considering his lack of asking. “We’d never get any work done otherwise.”

“Work huh?” Cooper said beneath the shadow of his hat and he bit down as hard as he could on the rest, lest he darken the dandy mood. Chewed on the fact that every single one of them second and third generation vaulties had never worked a goddamn day in their lives. And he wouldn't even know where to begin on the bullshit they were fed in the classrooms. 

“Yeah,” she beat back with a small nod, “a well rounded education is important.” And her flickering blue eyes thinned in warning. Dared him to unlock his jaw. “But so is a break every once in a while.” 

“That so?” Cooper asked, splintering a bit like the short fall of fine China, because old habits were a bitch. “Way you told it, sounded to me like ya’ll had all the time in the world down there for loungin’ about.” He crooned. “Or are the holes in ya memory as big as the ones in your lesson plans?”

And Lucy fucking laughed, knocking him off kilter with a skill she was getting far too sharp at. A side-effect lesson he couldn’t recall teaching her, though the wasteland sure had in spades.

“And what were you up to during those holes hm?” She asked. “Because if I recall your tale correctly, you were taking a little nonconsensual nap yourself.” And with the sudden scathing memory, he could still feel the ground trembling and quaking all around him, trapped in the pitch black confines of a too tight coffin as what he’d learned later was Shady Sands got absolutely fucking obliterated a second time. 

Had it been anyone else in the world sitting across from him, they would have lost the ability to speak. But her point had landed. Violent and tearing, but severely effective. Lucy hadn’t been able to control her time underground any better than he had, he knew that deep down, and he himself had clawed his fingers damn near to the bone attempting to fix his own fate. Those same maimed hands had discovered since then that the only visible scar she carried from her life left behind was a puckered slash on her stomach, hidden from view just beneath the knotted vaultsuit at her waist. But the ones the rest of the world couldn’t see were plastered so clear to him now all over her expression. Just like every time he brought it up. But he just couldn’t fucking let go.

“I’m hungry.” Billy chose right then to inform them, the Pip Boy growling out a raspy sound as his game came to an explosive end when he'd looked up from the screen. Cooper's groan nearly matched it. “Do you guys have any snacks?” 

Sometime during their lively discussion, the kid’s shoulder had come to lean just beneath Lucy’s with such a quick and easy show of trust that it almost had Cooper struggling for sense as the sight settled in his eyes, the small flame before him all of a sudden feeling too hot as the memories flooded his mind, of holding all seven pounds, eight ounces of baby Janey in his arms for the first time. How her tiny hand had felt like wrapping the entire world in his own. How he still wasn’t sure if he’d ever know such a feeling ever again. How it was his own fucking fault.

He almost missed being alone.

“Ya know what,” Cooper announced, pushing himself up from the stump and brushing dirt from the ass of his duster with a bit more flair than strictly necessary. “Now that you mention it, I’m kinda hungry m’self. Ya’ll rest up.” He said with a flat last look at Lucy. “Stay.” he sent down to Dogmeat.  

Then he left the fireside, chipper ol’ Billy, and Lucy’s uneasy stare behind him because the idea of killing and flaying and devouring something actually sounded downright sterling all of a sudden and it was better served elsewhere.

How he’d come to be the one cooking too, he’d never know. Lucy had gotten pretty good about keeping up her share of camp duties whenever they were lucky enough to have one, but when he’d got back, bloody handed and worn ragged, she was already long gone, dead asleep across the still sun-warmed ground, her hair scattered across her arm where she used it as a skinny little pillow. That damn Pip Boy doled out her oldies station softly in the sand beside her head. Mouth slightly parted and big eyes shifting beneath their lids. And all that self righteousness she’d been spewing since sunrise must’ve been damn near exhausting because when Cooper slapped down the field dressed carcass across a nearby log, she didn't so much as flinch. 

Billy, though, had been watching him carefully from the moment he appeared through the darkness, sitting hunched with his knees near his chest beside the dwindling embers of the only remaining light. And Cooper honestly hadn’t meant to take so long but where there was prime hunting ground, there were sure to be traps and raiders in search of bigger game. And, well, he hadn’t been lying when he mentioned he was hungry too. 

“Mr. Cody,” Billy said, voice wobbling up to him with childlike bravery. “Could you restart the fire please?”

And what a fucking trio they made, each separately tucked away from the horrors of the world only to come out just as broken together on the other side. 

Cooper said nothing, only staring down at the boy for a minute before he realized how he must look to him, gore staining the front of his vest and curve of his shoulder in the shadows. Still sticking warm to the sides of his lips. It had never much bothered him before. But now he moved slow, wiping his sleeve across his mouth, gathering a few fallen limbs from the brush and kneeling opposite to strike the flint. And with the way Billy looked up at him through the glowing flame, one would think he’d been the hero to slay the dragon, shield raised and sword hefted in victory, like in those old books Janey used to love... 

But he was so fucking accustomed to being the beast. 

“For the meat,” Cooper jutted his chin over to the dripping slab of brahmin. “Just till it’s done cookin’.” He explained with a harshness undeserved, but he still continued the attempt to reason with himself that he was too old a dog to care for any more new tricks. He only had to hold out a couple more days.  

The actual dog had raised up her head at the word meat and laid it back down once she’d deemed Cooper done talking to rest over Billy’s little raised knee, and something about it made him feel like he was being apologized for. A phenomenon that was happening at an ever increasing rate when it came to the women in his too-long afterlife.

“Thank you,” Billy said, opening up like a bloodleaf flower in bloom as the flames grew to billow in the soft breeze, arms uncrossing to press his palms forward toward the warmth and little legs going lax over the sand. Dogmeat herself resettled and shut her eyes between the kid and Lucy’s curled up slumber. 

Cooper, though, still warred with something not unlike a fight or flight response.

“Are you a cowboy?” Billy asked, effectively snapping him away from the racing of his thoughts. The tightening of his chest that made him want to reach in his saddle bag for whatever drug he touched first.

“No.” Cooper said.

“Are you sure?” The kid tried again with the tilt of his head, eyes scanning over him where he still crouched near the fire, from the brim of his hat, down to the gun at his hip, and finally to the very point of his boots. “Because you sure do dress like the ones in the movies.”

Lucy shifted in her sleep.

“Well,” Cooper pushed off his knee to stand, spurs jangling with the movement. “To be a cowboy, you gotta have cows.” He said, drawing his skinner knife out from his coat pocket to start slicing into the slab of its closest two-headed half radiation-rotted cousin. He gestured a broad swoop around them with the blade. “See any cows out here boy?” He asked. 

“No… but it’s dark out.” Billy informed him. “You never know.”

And Cooper rolled his eyes under the brim of his hat as he sawed off a hunk of gristle and threw it to the ground in front of Dogmeat before setting to work on two palm sized steaks for the other pair of strays. 

“Why do our faces look like this?” The kid asked then, and it stopped his knife mid slice.  

When Cooper looked up, Billy was staring over at Lucy’s Pip Boy on the ground, the device still rambling a song about too much rain fallin’ or some shit. But the black screen had caught the light just right and reflected the kid’s disfigured face right back at him, the flickering flames playing harsh in the cavern where his little nose should’ve been… Over the distended bones of his too hollow cheeks…

Cooper started stripping the last of the meat. 

“Radiation,” he growled, and he never wanted to break that fuckin’ piece of Vault Tec trash more than he did right then, and lord almighty how he’d wanted to, his knife sawing down the slightest bit harder through flesh and tendon. “Now if I could get a question in,” Cooper started through his teeth, pausing the thought just long enough to make his way back fireside. He tossed an old Corvega bumper down over the open flame to serve as a makeshift grill and set the meat over it to brown in what he knew was one of the stupidest acts he could possibly be doing in the open wasteland night. Might as well forge on. “How exactly are you not absolutely roilin’ to tear into us right now?” He asked, eyes thinning in watch as he took a seat across the pit. “Or were you lyin’ about how long you sat on ice too?”

The drilling only seemed to earn half of Billy’s attention, his face tightening in confusion but still fixed down between them on the sizzling meat.

“Tear… tear into you? Like, beat you up? You guys are nice, I wouldn’t do that,” the boy’s little head shook, looking over toward Lucy before finally up at him. Meeting his eyes as steadily as he could, all a private in training for war. “Is that something the radiation does out here too? Makes us act all mean all the time?” He asked quietly with such genuine, innocent curiosity that Cooper almost wanted to lie. 

He grit his teeth and sighed instead. 

“Somethin’ like that.” He answered, and what a fuckin’ cop out it was as he watched the weight of reality settle heavy across the kid’s boyish features, still there even beneath the jagged scars. “But you appear to be somethin’ of an anomaly.” Cooper tacked on, flipping the meat with a gloved hand and watching sparks spit out beneath the metal to halo across the ground, just shy of bared, boney toes. “Don’t seem to be a feral bone in your body.” 

At the reassurance, the kid smiled up at him. Honest and real and undeserved. And Cooper felt a shift in his chest that made past bullet holes seem sweet as cake. Made him almost feel bad for knowing himself well enough to be sure he’d still put little Billy right on down if he was wrong and sleep just fine despite it. But maybe it was okay to not want to have to.

“My mom would say you’re the liar.” Billy nearly giggled out with a mischievous shift of his mouth. “She always called me her little monster and hated the way I chewed... I wish she was here to see this.” He said eager, taking a strip of meat from the metal in each of his bare, already pre burnt little hands and tearing into them with yellowed teeth. 

And Cooper almost grinned at the small show of defiance. 

“Well, what mama don’t know won’t hurt her.” He said conspiritorially, though he was near certain mama was incapable of feeling much of anything anymore. Then he wrapped the spare steaks up in old bandaging to tuck away for later.

“Aren’t you gunna eat?” Billy asked him when he was almost done packing it, concern heavy in his voice as the kid's own dinner dripped in thick lines down his wrists and forearms, hands growing nearly as bloodied as his own.

“I’ma vegetarian.” Cooper drawled flat, belly full of raider and mood the slightest bit lifted. 

“A cowboy vegetarian?!” The boy laughed at him then, mouth full of meat, as if it was the funniest realization in the world. 

And Cooper chuckled short and low back at the forgotten sound. One that struck like music and misery all knotted together in his ears. Like he’d just told Janey the lamest joke he could think of and she’d never heard a better one. Like a children’s birthday party blown to hell. Like he may sure as shit be one hell of an old dog but he'd known the tricks all along.

“But what if it changes?” The kid asked between bites, brow scrunching up in a returning worry just as it drew him from his own. “Now that I’m outside where the bombs fell, what if I get worse?” Little Billy asked, looking up at Cooper like he held the answer to each of the million questions behind his rounded eyes. And for a moment, he reminded him of someone else. 

“Well Billy,” Cooper said, feeding a few small sticks to the flame and glancing over to check where Lucy lay. “We’ll just have to take it as it comes.” 

And her one watchful eye closed fast. But not fast enough.

Smug looked good on her anyhow.

Fuckin' minx.

Chapter Text

One spin of the lasso over Cooper’s head and the kid was done for. 

The wide stagnant river had been their first real obstacle in hours, Cooper using his rope to wrangle logs from the middle of it to try and help them get across without coming out the other side looking like swamp rats. Or worse, in Lucy’s case, as the silver sludge sent her Geiger counter going haywire when they’d stepped too near.

Now he was forced to find an amicable solution for the entirety of the ever growing travel party, it going a lot slower than Cooper’d hoped it would, and little Billy watched on in awe as he’d effortlessly looped a limb sticking up on the closest log, drawing the lasso tight with a twist of his shoulders to tug it to shore. 

Then of course Billy had wanted a go at it and, under the brutal midday sun, Cooper was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Choke up on the knot,” He pointed to where Billy’s fingers closed tight around the rope, eyes focused ahead on his target, little tongue held between his lips, “Your holdin’ that thing by the neck like it owes ya money. It ain’t gunna travel for shit like that.” He admonished and Lucy looked up from where she sat, sorting out what was left of their meds and chems to shoot him the same look she always did when he said some coarse thing or another in front of the kid. Like that was their biggest problem right now. So he sent the look right back at her.

“Like this?” Billy asked, letting his right hand slide up some and starting to spin it over his bald head, just high enough to not smack himself in the face. Again. But he was gettin’ there. 

“No.” Cooper sighed, walking up behind him and catching the flailing projectile mid twirl. He swiped Billy’s legs the slightest bit farther apart with the toe of his boot, a small bare foot sliding through the mud. Then he dropped the slack loop to give the line a gentle tug, watching as the lariat knot slipped right up against the tips of Billy’s fingers for better control. And finally Cooper took the boy’s shoulders in each of his hands, shifting them adjacent to the waterline instead of facing it directly as they had been. And they hadn’t tensed up at all under his hold, which was a rare occurrence for him these days, even Lucy still flexing the slightest bit whenever he was behind her though he would no longer label it fear.

“Now spin it like you’re the center of its world.” Cooper instructed.

And the kid looked up at him confused for a second before it seemed to click. 

“Oh, you mean like the sun?” Billy asked with the raise of a missing brow. Cooper did not answer. “The sun is the center of the universe.” The kid explained to his bewildered expression. “We spin around it, not the earth. So being the center of the world wouldn’t make any sense…”

Lucy breathed a, quite frankly, too entertained sound behind him at the lesson. All he got you there, asshole. 

And Cooper took a step back. 

“Shut up and spin.” He growled, watching as the kid raised his arms and readied himself to try again.

Then Billy wisely did as he was told, his looping already getting better in the air, wider and more sustained as he held the correct stance. And Cooper took the few steps to stand a safe distance near his right.

“Now just aim witcha’ hip and let it go when it feels right.” He said out to the waterline. “That log right there, see?” He pointed and Billy honed in…

The loop somehow struck the base of the rusted pylon that precariously held up a crumbling, impassable bridge, the foundation itself a good dozen feet to Billy’s left. Then the rope fell into the shallow slop that gathered near the shoreline and sank from view beneath it. 

“Again,” Cooper said, doing his best to keep the growing impatience he felt off his lips with a skill he hadn’t had to call on in so very long that it left him restless, wanting to snatch the rope away and get this show on the road. “And watch the splash zone, Moby.” He chided, stepping a bit more squarely in front of the smoothy sat behind and dog napping at his heels, lest their day get even worse.

“It’s Billy.” Billy said. 

“No shit,” said Cooper. “Again.” 

And the kid was developing this look that let Cooper know something astonishingly annoying was about to come out of his mouth. Billy turned to face the trio behind him with it thinning his lips, eyes lit up gold in the midday sun as he swung the lasso over his head again, the sodden rope spraying mist through the air around him like a fountain of youth.

“You guys ever see that old movie, 'Dude from Deadhorse’ or something like that?” Billy asked, his focus shifting up to the spinning hoop as it faltered in the air at his lapse of concentration. “My dad used to watch it all the time... Don’t I kinda look like him?! Ya know, from the part where he finally catches the commie guy?” 

Cooper looked down and pressed his fingers deep into the sockets of his eyes until they ached. 

Lucy was dead silent behind him for a long blessed moment.

Until she wasn’t.

“You know,” she pondered aloud, and Cooper tensed further, shoulders flinching up at her overtly quizzical tone. “I can kind of see it. Just missing the hat…”

And it earned her a fiery glare, Cooper turning to loom in a way that would once have had her trembling in her suit, but goddamn he must really be losing his touch because all it left on her face was something like victory, bright and blinding up at him. But then the meager spread of supplies before her caught his eye instead, his saddle bag empty across her lap, the dwindling pile of mentats and med-x on the ground between her outstretched legs. The even smaller stack of Radaway they had left… The pale of her skin behind the mask of her expression and the red blooming beneath her eyes. Not once had she ever complained about it, and she sure as shit wasn’t going to start now with a kid involved, stubborn as she was already. But fuck did he remember how it’d felt when the burning had first set in and now he was all too well versed at knowing what to look for.

Suddenly, none of this made any fucking sense. 

“Alright kid, that’s enough.” Cooper said, turning back to the boy just in time to catch another of his many failed attempts, the rope splashing down into the water just shy of its target. “Hand it over.”

And he watched a bit of the light drain from little Billy’s eyes as he rewound the rope and did so, head bowed and face long. Shot for shot the wasteland hissed in Cooper’s ear. Golden rule he, himself tried to reason. Feo fuerte y formal old Coop mocked, bringing up the rear, and fuck did he hate that god awful movie.

It all tasted like soot behind his teeth as he snared the log first try and got back to work.

The worn down inn was a shithole but their room had a bolted door, an actual waste hole, and a real straw stuffed mattress. And that was enough. Might as well have been a slice of heaven for the handful of caps Lucy’d persuaded the old geezer manning the front into accepting. Cooper and Billy had snuck in through the back without issue, proving just how necessary that bolt really was. But Cooper had strung up some old Cram cans, jammed a wedge of wood into the bottom crack of the door, and continued to take on the shit as steadily as it rained down, one fucking problem at a time.

Lucy sat on the dingy wood floor, vault suit arms piled at her sides. Her head rested back against the curve of the bed where the kid lay sprawled out fast asleep with Dogmeat, eyes shut and mouth closed for the first time in nearly two days. But that was to be expected after being holed up in a three by two box for just over seventy-three thousand…

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Lucy whispered, looking over her shoulder at the sleeping lump behind her as Cooper took her right forearm in hand, turned it up, and carefully stuck the needle in, line held curved between his teeth, into the bend of her elbow. The drip bag of Radaway hung from the half sunken blade of his pocket knife above his head in the bedpost. “He seems just like a normal ten year old boy.” She continued, watching his bare hands work as Cooper wrapped the needle down with a recycled strip of electrical tape around her arm. "Psychologically, at least."

“Coulda been the seal,” Cooper mumbled, letting the line fall from his mouth to check that the golden liquid flowed slow and steady down into her flesh where her skin was too hot beneath his bare fingers, even warm as he ran. “We may’a signed his death certificate the moment we opened the door.” He said and almost regretted it the moment it left his mouth with the way it worried her expression further.

“Wouldn’t be the first time I got bit in the ass for trying to help.” Lucy said, eyes glinting up into his with a forced playful fire for a heartbeat until it went out just as quick. “What if it was the rotten food?” She asked the air ahead more than him. “He was eating that stuff for years right? Moldy bread and fruit can create penicillin over time,” Lucy noted with a tilt of her chin, slipping back into her teacher roll like a well tailored glove. “Maybe it slowed down the effects of the bombs? I read a pre-war study once about how scientists were testing all different types of antibiotics on people before placing them under heavy radiation - could you imagine volunteering for that - and, from what I read the results were inconclusive… But you never know. His circumstances were… well, they were unusual.” She said, and Cooper could tell she wanted to look back over her shoulder again with the way her neck shifted. 

For a while he watched her mind work behind her eyes in her hunt for answers. The way frustration tightened the corners of her mouth. The thin sheen of sweat across her forehead that never quite went away anymore. The way her heart beat quick and hard through the veins of her arm. Conducting a study of his own and not particularly enjoying the results.

Cooper sat on the floor near her side. Dropped his hat into his lap. 

“What’s it matter?” He asked low. “Not like we’re doin’ him any favors droppin’ him off at some empty shack in the middle of raider territory. If the radiation don’t get em somethin’ else will eventually.” He said, turning. “And I think you know that.” 

"He just -" and Lucy paused, looking down at her mismatched fingers in her lap. Curling and straightening them. "He reminds me of my brother a little bit. Back in the vault." She admitted like it pained her, and Cooper spent a moment recalling the multitude of stories she'd regaled him with against his will of her one and only smartass little brother Norm. He didn't even have to look behind him to see the family resemblance. “And you say that,” She continued, her chin almost pressing against her own shoulder as she turned to eye him back. “But then I see the way you act around him,” she glanced down at her own bandaging before a soft smile curved her mouth. “And I think you’re full of shit. You’re doing all the favors you can handle.”

And she’d stuck him again, blade sharp and piercing, Cooper's eyes thinning over at her as a gnawing sensation grew in the pit of his stomach at just how right she was. How if he didn’t see this through to the end he would be failing again. And not just Lucy or Billy, but Janey too. Just like after he’d hopped off Sugarfoot’s back with a slap to her hind, sending his whole life, tasseled and teary eyed, in the right direction as fast as the horse could gallop without his dead weight to hold her back. Because Cooper Howard died the day those bombs fell.

“She’d be proud of you Cooper.” Lucy soothed then, as if he’d shared a lot more than just her finger, and he very nearly gasped his torment up at the roof. “So am I.” She took the pains to add, another twist of the knife, and let her head fall to rest light against his shoulder. Near enough the he could smell the sun baked florals of her hair. Near enough that it made the skillful banter and urgent sex absolutely pale in comparison. “Or, Cody, I mean.” She corrected herself with a small nudge of her forehead against his neck, bringing him back to right where they sat, and he was so very thankful his ass was already planted on the ground.

Their laughs mingled small and broken together like a short break in the wind.

Chapter Text

Too much. It was all too much. The silence. The memories that screamed out loud into the empty void. 

Tension crackled like licks of lightening beneath his skin and Cooper did everything in his power to not pace across the floor of the tight room. The sun was already high in the late morning sky, streams of light taunting him like jail cell bars through the one little window near the bed. The pair that laid across it were still gone, in the throes of a deep sleep Cooper could only wish for with the dwindling drugs.

Lucy’d fallen asleep against him earlier and he'd allowed it until he couldn’t take it anymore. Then he had deposited her frustrating ass on the bed beside Billy. Because it was so different from the times he’d close the distance between them just to fuck with her or from all the newer ways they learned to shed some steam with violent hands and teeth. But the latter was not an option currently and now the silence was crushing, Lucy’s soothing words from the previous night and the downright domestic sight before him creating a sort of panic beneath his ribs that rivaled feral hunger. Sparking in the very same spot as when it'd been too long between his carefully scheduled meds, leaving him choking and gasping for a grip on reality. 

And for a while he’d let himself be jealous. Deep and alone in the later hours of the night as the boy slept peacefully, not a single chem needed, even as the bed had shifted under Lucy’s added weight. And Cooper had eaten through enough rotten food during his time in the desert to know them studies Lucy spewed on about, hopeful and naive as ever, didn’t mean shit. Hell, these days it seemed like none of them had.

Because those other ones about torture and it’s dwindling effects were just as inconclusive in the long run, his own body a permanent shrine of suffering for two hundred years, give or take, in some variety or another. He just hadn't had a chance to really see himself yet. Torture, in fact, did do shit, because right now, the calm stifling air and soft vulnerable snores made his fingers itch and heart rate increase and it felt no different than being buried beneath the dirt. Stuck deep in a dark mass grave in one of the loveliest crypts he’d seen in a long long while. 

He’d almost jimmied the wedge free of the door with his boot before Dogmeat rose from the bed at the sound to join in his plight, shifting the mattress just enough to wake the kid... Torture, again, and its many fuckin’ forms.

“Where are you going Cody?” Billy asked, voice heavy with sleep, rubbing at an eye with the side of his hand. And Cooper clenched the sliding bolt and froze as if awaiting the pull of a trigger.

“Out.” He bit low. “Be quiet and go back to sleep.” 

“But I don’t want to.” The boy said matter-of-factly, rising to stand and stretching his arms high in the air above his head, little bones cracking in a way that was well before his years. Psychologically. “Can we go find some breakfast?” The boy asked. Too naturally. Too fond and familiar in a way that Cooper had already been rubbed so incredibly raw. “I’m hungry.” And he always fucking would be. Feral or no.

“We ain’t doin’ a damn thing.” Cooper bristled, turning, and he could feel the freeingly familiar razor sharp edge of sudden rage shape his expression. Burn in his chest and from the pits of his eyes. “So shut the fuck up and get back in the bed!”

Billy recoiled in on himself, confusion drawing in tight every feature of his mangled face at the sudden outburst. 

Lucy’s eyes startled open where she lay, her hand shooting down to her holster in reaction.

Out. He needed out.

“D- do you need your medicine?” Billy asked small after a moment, ever observant in the way that had Cooper clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides. The kid walked around the end of the bedframe toward Cooper’s own fucking saddlebag where it lay evenly split over the rail. Reached a hand toward the pocket where his vials lay. And how fucking dare himself allow this little shit to become so bold. 

Then he snapped, Cooper fading into the background of wasteland suffering and the survival it’d borne.

“Get your grubby fuckin’ hands away from my shit,” he snarled, moving forward, thrown shadow stretching long across little Billy’s gaping eyes as he closed in. Cooper reached out for one of the bed posts, breaking it clean through with ease, the rotting wood sending a shivering crack across the small space, and he did so just to watch the intake of air in the kid’s sunken chest. The prey-like freeze of his entire frame. Just to have a weapon to grasp onto that a part of him, deep in the pit at the rear of his mind, told him wouldn’t do near as much damage as his gun. But he could, if he really wanted to. Worse even, if he put his back into it. He stopped mid step. “That kinda move will get you killed out here boy.” Cooper pointed the jagged end toward the kid’s fluttering chest, just as he would his sawed-off.

“That’s enough.” Lucy said, rising from the bed to intervene in his lesson. Like she’d done every single fuckin' time from the get go. “He was just trying to help.”

“Do I look like I need any fuckin’ help?” Cooper growled, her distraction proving effective as he turned the haphazard weapon over on her, almost pressing flush and pointed against her sternum.

For a while Lucy only looked back at him over it. Eyes half lidded and too fucking insightful. His own heart raging in his chest at the pity he saw past them. 

“No,” Lucy finally breathed with a small, doubtful shake of her head, one hand rising between them in placation, as if he were the beast here though he held on tight to the training crop till it creaked. “No, I just think you need some air.” She said, gentle in that way that either worked or pissed him off further and he was already so long fucking gone. And if she could only see the way she looked to him right now. Guard only half up in a trust he couldn’t remember earning, belly open and pale where the line of her white tank top rose an inch above the hold of her tied up vault suit. One twist of the spike right there and he’d never have to put up with this side tracking bullshit or the soft burning touches or her getting in the way of every aspect of his goddamn life ever again. For a blinding moment he let that thought play out. Lucy’s lifeless eyes and hollowed out corpse tossed over his shoulder to be delivered first class to a one Hank MacLean. A final autograph, just as he’d asked for, carved hastily into his own flesh and blood…

“The fuck you think I was trying to do, scramble some eggs?” He threw the bedpost hard across the room where it crashed against the wall and bounced in splintering pieces to the floor. 

Billy flinched at the loud sound. Lucy did not. 

Cooper looked back over to the trembling boy. Met his eye and flashed his teeth. Loomed. “I know you been stuck in that ice box for a good looong while,” Cooper’s mocking drawl was drenched in honey. “So this time I’ll let it slide.” He tilted his head forward to let his hat shadow his eyes, ever the showman. “But you touch anythin’ of mine without askin’ ever again and I’ll wring that scrawny little fuckin’ neck of yours, you understand me?” He pointed with his finest gloved weapon. “You little fucking monster.”

Billy shrunk back against the wall.

“Hey-” Lucy called, closer to his side, pressing a rotten-fingered hand to Cooper's chest. “Go take a walk.” She ordered this time, a second firmer reminder. The final one, if he read her stance right.

And the ire in his blood still churned too violently for the lack of return fire in the room. For the light weight of her palm and the understanding look in her eyes. For Billy’s muffled tears in the shadowed corner… so he listened, ripping the door open and leaving the room, bolt lock be damned.

The bar had been a decent one for such a barren location. Five or six round tables with rickety wooden chairs. Bottle caps clinging down, masquerading as chips in a three man poker game at the rear corner. Blue fluorescents and metal signs draped along the wall, flashing like spotlights over the gang of Jet puffed punks that’d looked at him wrong from the moment Cooper had darkened the doorway, their pockets full and awful temptin' even before their first real offense. A “No Ghouls” sign hung crooked on the back bar mirror... And the rest, as Lucy would say, was history. 

Groaning bodies lay bloodied about the space now. Tables and chairs flung over and sheet metal sprawled like stepping stones, turned to hasty weapons when shit had almost gone a touch more sideways than he’d hoped for. He hadn’t needed much else though, favoring the use of muscle and his more than capable own two hands. 

“Gin.” Cooper said, ambling up to the empty bar, free of patrons or stools or any other obstructions apart from the keep herself, an older crone with silvery hair and rippled skin that rivaled his own.

She rose slow to stand from her shelter beneath the wooden counter. Took a look around at the truly impressive extent of the previous liquor he’d consumed and its grizzly outcome. Looked right into his chemical hazed eyes with disgust in her own. Made a move to reach down for something at her knees…

Cooper drew his rifle from round the back of his shoulder, setting it gently down across the bar. Not holding on but not really letting go either.

“Gin.” He growled a second time, and just as he’d become accustomed to at the display of power, the biddy froze up, thought better, and did as instructed. And that’s how it was supposed to work out here, his drug and liquor stupored mind leveled in agreement. This made sense. Beating the fuck outta a few neanderthals and robbing them blind for questioning his merit made sense. Drawing gun for gun made sense. Protecting what belonged to him made sense.

So why did he feel like a steamin’ pile of gulper shit for doing just so on that last one. 

He shot down his - twelfth? thirteenth. - thirteenth shot and tugged the bottle free from her shaky hold mid-pour of the next.

“You ever have any kids?” Cooper asked, smiling the dangerously saccharine sweet one that only a good high brought to his mouth. 

The woman’s eyes flared the slightest bit in a fearful affirmative, otherwise remaining still as the dead.

“Tiresome little shits ain’t they? Always yankin’ at yer chain.” He mimicked with a flash of teeth, earning a flinch, and he took a moment to properly appreciate it before he leaned his weight more squarely against the stock of his gun on the counter. “There was this one time,” he slurred, “where Janey kept yappin’ on and on about this one book she liked. Somethin’ bout a spider and pig makin’ it work - I dunno.” He waved away the fact that he did, gloved fingers curling tighter around the bottle neck. Arching it between them at the sense of comradery they were forming. “But I worked a lot back then. I was tired all the time, ya know, fakin’ it till I made it an’ all that and what a fuckin’ joke that turned out to be.” He hissed, shook his head down, took in all the little splinters and knife pricks across the stained woodtop between his elbows. “But anyways, it was late - a school night - and I’d been on set all goddamn day and when I got home she kept tryin' to tell me how good this fuckin’ book was, and I-” Cooper swiped a hand across his face, dried sticky with clotting blood. “I just kinda snapped, ya know? Told her to get her ass to bed, that I was tired and didn’t wanna hear it… and she…” 

Cooper choked on his laugh. Paused. Drained the last of his spirit up and into his mouth. “And this kid, fuck, he reminds me so much of her - so fuckin’ much,” he stuttered, gasped, slung the empty gin bottle just over the woman’s shoulder to shatter both it and the long reaching mirror that hung behind, the damning sign falling to the ground amongst the broken shards of glass. So suddenly that the barkeep’s shoulder rose with them still raining at her heels. Her eyes screwing shut tight. And it made sense. “I don’t know if I can do this again,” he said, hands held open wide out to his sides. “Makes no goddamn sense that I’m doin’ it now in the first place, right?! I mean, look at me!” The louder he grew, the tighter her brow knitted, but all he saw before him was a plume of orange flame. “Just gunna end up with more blood on my hands and less money in my pockets. Just like the first go round.” He laughed again, low and curdling and beyond saving. Bloodied gloves to boot. But the woman had cracked her eyes open at the admission. Looked at him like he was absolutely knocked off his rocker. And that suited him so much better than pity. Sobered him the slightest bit. 

“Speakin’ of,” he said, re-enlivened, reaching into his pocket so quick he’d almost lost his companion beneath the bar again. He drew out a small pouch of caps, dumped them out across the counter and tucked the drawstring bag back safely into his vest. “For the mirror.” He pointed. “And the gin,” he added after a moment, raising the empty shot glass up in salute. “Assholes can take care of the rest when they’re done nappin’.” Then he jutted a thumb over his shoulder in another of the many bad habits he was picking up. Turned to follow it for a short while, taking note of the chaos around him one last time and his first deep breath in days.

“Say hi to the kids for me, ya?” He asked of the bartender finally, real friendly like, with a long scathing look at her dumbfounded face and short dip of his head in farewell. Then he straightened, tucked away his weapons, and had just made it outside of the unhinged door of the establishment when he saw it. 

There across the way on the ‘WANTED’ billboard, right next to a few of the newly familiar faces he'd left unrecognizable behind him, and yet another anti-ghoul sign (with a rather offensive drawing of one etched across it, he dare say)… Little Billy stared back at him on his own piece of yellow stained parchment. ‘REWARD!’ screamed in bold letters across the top. 

But all Cooper could see was startlingly alive eyes, singing loud even through the hasty black and white sketch. Healthy round baby-fat face and smooth uncharred skin. A little button nose above a crooked toothed goofy ass smile at the camera, like his very own world stood behind it. Like his mama had just called him a little monster and tousled his unruly hair before taking the shot. 

Cooper stopped dizzyingly quick in the dirt, sought out shelter under his brim, and sighed every ounce of the liquor-warmed breath from his aching lungs.

He put a single stolen bullet through the head of the crude drawing with a snarl and tucked Billy's picture away in his vest pocket. 

Chapter Text

Cooper stepped slow up the dusky inn hallway, heels of his boots coming down with purpose to send his spurs singing out the warning of his impending return. The door hadn’t been fixed so much as barricaded, Lucy putting a few of his knot lessons to good use. He pushed his fingers against the slight give, hinges creaking open an inch where he could just make out an old, partially stripped power cord bound around the knob and cutting across the gap as a makeshift lock. Easily snappable with the correct amount of pressure but still allowing the patrons inside enough time to fill their hands if needed. The tin cans hanging from it chimed in warning as he added a bit more pressure.

He let up and nodded his approval. Took a step back. Then he knocked. Two quick rasps against the grainy wood door.

“Room service.” Cooper called flat.

“We’re not hungry.” Lucy said back from just behind the door, and at her tone he imagined the barrel of her pistol pressed flush against cedar. Cocked and in waiting.

He grinned in the shadows.

“That’s good, because I have fuck all far as food goes, but I do have somethin’ else you may find interestin’.” He goaded, knowing exactly where to strike for the results he sought when it came to this particular opponent. 

After only a few seconds the door shifted open an inch again. A single blue eye centered the crack. Watched him as if the fuse had already been lit and she awaited more of the fallout. But all the fury had been released from his muscles and he found it left him feeling the slightest bit hollowed out and filthy. Sorta like an asshole. 

Cooper carefully unfolded Billy’s worn poster from his pocket, holding it out between them for her to see. 

Her one eye went wide, looking it over before meeting his again past it. He cocked a missing brow in wait. Wondered what outcome that churning mind of hers was drawing up, because on the walk back he’d imagined through about five or six different scenarios depending on what faction had put out the bounty and none of them were all that jolly. 

“Put it away.” Lucy said. “I’m opening the door.” 

The room was as he’d left it, wood scattered about the floor near the entryway to the shitter. Dog meat wagged her tail at him from the middle of the bed but refused to raise her head up. Billy sat on the ground nearby, a metal scrap serving as a try by his side, though it looked as if he hadn’t touched the chokingly thick Instamash or pork n' beans that slopped across it. And Cooper didn’t blame him. 

The door hung wrong in his hold as he tried to push it closed, so he lifted it by the handle the slightest bit to get it to fit back into place. Reset Lucy’s lock in slow, careful loops. Took as long as he fucking could before he had to turn around and face the trio room. And what a thing to raise his hackles still stained as he was in splotches of scarlet from scarred face to boots.

Lucy moved across the space to stand near Billy’s left, as if feeling the need to physically show who’s side she was on, a trifling mystery indeed solved.

But at his entrance, Billy had closed back in on himself, curling up tight just the way he’d been found, legs bent like scrawny shields up to his chest. Head bowed almost to his knees as if he thought he could disappear behind them. But his eyes watched Cooper's every move like a hawk.

And for a reason Cooper could not place, the sight made him think back of the lead farmer’s sweet, soft spoken little daughter - Sara? Sandra. -  who’d unknowingly been a great deal of help at getting him his first real shot at Hank. She’d been scared at first, just like all the normal ones were when face to face with a nightmarish monster, but after a few sweet reassurances and heartstring-tugging laments, he’d earned her trust, a free meal, a place to wait and further set the stage... Then repaid her in kind by killing another of her brothers. An uncomfortably potent debt that’d left him reaching for his inhaler the second he was alone and the curtains had closed. 

Maybe now, with money to be made and the door bound tight, he didn't have to put on a show.

“You were right.” Cooper said, moving a stride to stand nearer to Billy’s bare feet. Stilling when they slid back an inch away across the floor. “I did need my medicine.” 

And the kid only stared up at him, still angry in the way only children could be, puffy eyed and pouty lipped and silent as the breeze. 

“Well alright then,” Cooper said after a beat, easing down into a crouch. “Now that that’s out the way, who else ‘sides your folks would be interested in knowin’ where you been camped out all this time?” He asked. 

Silence.

“Your family come from money?” He tried again. “Mix in with any of the wrong type of people before them bombs fell?” And that one hurt a little. Tightened his mouth.

Silence. 

“Any enemies or old bullies we need to worry bout?” He dug in once more with a glance at Lucy, doing all he could to keep the condescension from his voice. The one that seemed to slip on easy as pie these days, rounding his vowels and weighing his accent when his patience wore thin. 

“Just you.” The boy finally said, sharp as a whip. 

And Cooper was left instead to fight the fond smile from his lips.

“Good,” he nodded. “Never give away anythin’ for free. Make em’ earn it.”

Then Cooper dropped the small satchel of newly acquired supplies from the back of his shoulder. Drew out a pair of brown boots that would no longer be needed by their previous owner. And though he’d done his best, the shade still darkened in some spots near the toe to stains of gray. But the soles were still intact. A size or two too big, he gauged as he set them down on the floor in offering. But they would have to do.

Lucy’s eyes burnt into the side of his skull with something like disbelief. But business was business.

“Tell you what,” Cooper leaned a forearm across his knee. Set his expression. Readied himself to drive a hard bargain. “You tell me what you need to tell me and everything else goin’ on in that little head a’yours and you can keep em. But I ain’t takin’ a single step across the Nipton border till I know what I’m walkin’ into. So I mean, everything .”

And he watched the kid mull it over, little eyes thinning and looking up at him through what should have been thick eyelashes if the sketch typist was worth their salt. 

“Are you going to try to stab me again?” Billy asked accusingly, a spark of bravery masquerading as anger. “Or call me… names .” And his little voice cracked over that instead of the perceived threat of bodily harm, saying something almost reassuring about his own upbringing but proving again that only one actual monster currently resided in the room.

Cooper chewed on the inside of his calloused bottom lip for a moment. Allowed it to sting. Remembered profusely apologizing to Janey the very next fucking day, taking her up into his arms and listening to every word that poured from her mouth over a pair of steaming hot cocoas. 

“No.” Cooper gave with the slow shake of his head. 

Then Billy tugged the boots by their laces up between his legs and into his lap. Watched him warily for a moment longer to be sure he meant it…

“Promise?” Billy asked. 

Instead of rolling his eyes, Cooper glanced up to Lucy at the movement of her arms crossing low on her chest, watching him fixedly as if she was awaiting the answer herself, an intrigued captive audience. And it left him wondering if this was how disagreements were solved down there in those vaults too. Blind trust and pinky promises. He ran his thumb down along the side of his pointer finger and convinced himself this was just another honest exchange instead of anything so childish.   

“Sure kid.” He said, the confirmation loosening little Billy’s tight grip on the laces. 

And when Cooper stood slow to reach a gloved hand down to him, it was as if clouds parted instead of curtains and he could very nearly still taste the bittersweet remnants of chocolate on his tongue.

Nipton looked a bit different from the last time Cooper’d been in the area roughly a century ago. The small town stood next to the reaching divide of a once great river, now near empty of water and polluted with more debris than any actual liquid. The few homes and lodges still standing were scattered about, surrounded by the crumbling walls and skeletal frames of others not so lucky. And like most little outposts, small shops and eateries had started popping up along the main road here and there, the few patrons that walked the streets in the dreary late afternoon haze not even slowing to give them the time of day as they made pass. Not a bad place to park your boots nowadays as far as Cooper was concerned. 

That was, until the group of raiders blocked their path. Half a dozen of them unfurled from the alley just as Billy was telling him and Lucy about the ice cream parlor that used to be there, his favorite flavor cotton candy and parents butterscotch, boots near skipping across the ground ahead in his excitement at recognizing their surroundings… 

And then they had him. One of the raiders snatched Billy by the collar of his shirt. Drug him in front of himself like a tiny radiated shield. Dogmeat barked viciously at Billy’s sudden yelp. Lucy drew her gun at Cooper’s side. And Cooper, despite a calm exterior, hand falling to rest light over the grip of his gun, only saw red at the disruption of their peace.

“Looks like we missed a few.” The rightmost raider said, strapped up in enough belts and harnesses to be reminiscent of a crash test dummy. “And now they’re breeding.” He goaded on in disgust. Spat to the ground near his feet. 

And it was Lucy who growled at that, her gun rising up in a single steady hand. 

Cooper pushed it back down toward the dirt. Planted his boots and flashed his teeth, clinging faithfully to his manners when it came to being outnumbered and with something to lose.

“What can we do for you fine gentlemen?” He asked, deep from his throat and heady as aged whiskey. Burning nearly the same. “We ain’t lookin’ for no trouble, just tryin’ to get home.”

“Then yer going the wrong way.” The stout deadman holding Billy across the shoulders taunted a head above him, but Cooper was already partially distracted, looking for flaws in the fence-like armor he dawned. The crisscross pattern perfectly spaced for the blade of a knife or a well placed kick of his heel. “Searchlight’s that way,” the oaf pointed in flair before looking to Lucy. “Though you can stay here with us if you like sweetcheeks.” He winked. 

Lucy tensed further with visible disgust at his side and Cooper almost considered pushing her goddamn arm back up to watch the fruition of all he'd shown her in their downtime. 

His fingertips tapped against the rim of his own holster instead. 

“Ahhh, I get it now,” Cooper nodded, dipping his hat down just above his eyes. “Explains the lively atmosphere,” he drawled, looking around at the few townsfolk who still remained outside, tucked behind some shelter or another to safely catch the show. “A power vacuum always draws the suckers right on in, don’t it?” He asked of his audience.

But his answer came in the form of a taller man to his left. He pushed himself away from the crumbling wall with his elbow, adorned in a polished metal chest plate and leathers with long blonde hair that nearly reached the buckles at his shoulders. A sense of airy pride curved the set of his mouth as he strode out onto the dusty street, eyeing first Cooper then Lucy past his shoulder. 

“We’re the only law left in this god awful shitshow of a city.” Blondie said. “And that kinda work takes unbreakable bodies. So-” he gestured at Billy, stock still at all the attention. “How much for the boy?”

Lucy made a move to step around Cooper’s shoulder. He dropped his gear to the ground and stuck out a forearm across her ribs to block her path.

“What kind of a question is that?!” Lucy scathed before Cooper could answer, blue eyes spitting out fire like a twin pair of torches. “Do you even hear yourselves?! Claiming to be the law and slavers in the same breath. You gotta be kidding me.”

And just as Cooper had hoped wouldn’t happen, she drew every ounce of Blondie’s attention over to her, a wicked smile curving his mouth, Hollywood handsome in the fading sunlight, his eyes going darker as they met hers. 

“I guess you don’t know what your ghoul here did to the rest of my men back near Goodsprings.” Blondie said with a shift of his brow. “Putting beasts to work is one thing. Eating people’s another. But I think we should be debating caps more than the morality of monsters, don't you?” He looked back over to Cooper. “Two hundred for each?” He asked smoothly, man to man. “Seems like they both could use some training.”

And Cooper laughed at the irony of it all, Lucy pushing the slightest bit harder against his arm as he struggled to hold her back. “Blondie…”

“Bullet.” Blondie interrupted, and it took a moment for Cooper to realize he was being offered his even dumber actual fuckin’ name.

“Bullet,” Cooper corrected with a wavering voice and withering smirk, curled his mismatched fingers around his gun. “You don’t know just how right you are, son.”

Then he shot a reassuring wink over at Billy just before the real bullets started flying. Cooper drew quicker, aiming for the empty handed ones first, explosive shots rendering all four of them as heartless as the wasteland before him. 

Billy flailed at the rally cry of the injured and dying around him, kicking the heel of a boot backwards hard into his captors thigh and biting his forearm till he drew blood, distracting the goon just enough to break free. 

At the same time, Lucy’d ducked behind Cooper, her own pistol pointed directly at Bullet and Cooper nearly flinched at the loud shot as it went off near the back of his head. He followed it just fast enough to see Bullet’s rifle fall from his hands, clutching down in agony instead at a kneecap that was no longer attached to his leg correctly. And though the man screamed and wailed his torment to the sky, all Cooper could focus on was Lucy, wild eyes and chestnut hair tossing in the wind as she ran to circle back around him and tucked Billy safely behind her. Like a symbiont circle locking closed before his eyes that he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to escape from. Wasn’t sure he wanted to anymore. Curses flying and final breaths being taken all around her and all she gave a shit about was keeping his head free of shrapnel and the everlong life of one innocent, golden eyed little boy.

It rose something like righteous anger in his chest and he stalked forward slowly toward the man still hunched on his knees in pain that’d dared try to interfere with the loop. 

But just before he could reach him, Lucy yelped from behind, Bullet limping over in the mayhem, bad leg dragging behind him to belt Lucy across the face with the butt of his rifle. Then moved back to turn it over on her…

Cooper snarled, shifting to split his attack with his pistol in one direction and rifle in the other... But before he had a chance to pull it free, Billy had snared Bullet by the throat with Cooper’s lasso, form a thing of beauty and knot slipping tight against the man’s jugular as the kid twisted his shoulders and pulled with a force no child should know. 

Then Billy growled, an animalistic roar from his chest that had Lucy, wide eyed and bloodied, scrambling away with her heels and palms from where Billy descended upon Bullet with tearing bites and rolling snarls until the wailing stopped altogether. And with each one, Cooper's heart sunk farther and farther down into his chest in a way that reminded him, ever so rarely, that it still beat.

He made quick work of the final lackey, robbed of finesse and every ounce of showmanship.

“Vial.” Cooper called, and Lucy was already shuffling through his saddlebag in the dirt while he ran. 

Billy’s worn shirt stretched and tore in Cooper’s hold as he scruffed him by the back of the neck, yellow eyes glowing feral as they turned on him, jaw drooling and snapping inches away like a dog gone rabid as he braced the boy by the shoulders and held him at arm’s length.

“Cooper!” Lucy, called back, tossing the golden vial in a small arch toward him and he caught it with the turn of a shaky wrist, holding the boy back by the base of the throat lest he lose a second feature from his face. Cooper cracked the stopper off with his own teeth before shoving the open end between Billy’s, the chems mixing in with shards of glass as he bit down, festered blood and saliva running in streams down the boy’s chin.

“Your name is Billy.” Cooper said soft, drawing his head back the slightest bit as the boy pressed the heels of his boots into the dirt at the sound of his name and doubled his efforts. Cooper took his little face between his hands, thumbs pressing deep into the divots of his hollowed cheeks for some inkling of control. “You like that dumb fuckin’ Pip Boy,” he cocked his head toward where Lucy sat, horror plastered across the planes of her face. “And meat,” Cooper added with a depreciating chuckle that only left him fighting for air. “Those old terrible cowboy movies...” And something cracked irreparable inside him. Billy's raging face blurred before his eyes. He felt the weight of Lucy’s hand press down against his shoulder... a child's trembling form held tight in his grasp... Nothing more. “And are just generally a pain in the ass.” He gasped. Took a pair of pained breaths. “Your name - is Billy.” He repeated, and he would for as long as it took.

“Don’t forget dogs.” Lucy added gently at his side, kneeling beside him on the ground. “You love dogs, remember. And your mom and dad,” Lucy’s lips curved into a sad split bow. “And cotton candy ice cream…” she levied at last with as much false light in her blackening eyes as she could muster. 

“And your name is Billy.” Cooper bid him again, even as the shaking started to settle between his palms and the boy’s eyes had grown a bit more focused over his with every reminder. 

“That’s right.” Cooper praised soft. 

“And you’re Cody.” Billy whispered, swaying faint on his feet and falling heavier and heavier against Cooper’s hold as the meds took, further and further until the kid rested his full weight against Cooper’s chest, bird boned and tired from the fight for his life, little head falling to dangle against the collar of his duster, and for a long moment neither of them could move.

“That’s right.” Cooper praised again, eyes on the horizon, broken and elated and desperately relieved, as he released the boy’s face to loop his arms beneath him, rising to stand with his limp little body in his hold. “That’s right Bill.” He breathed a final time, just to keep himself from being inoperable, as he took a look around at the gore and body parts that haloed red around them. The blood oozing from Lucy’s nose as she rose to stand and rub at Billy’s back. Dogmeat having the absolute time of her life in the chaos...

Then the looks in the eyes of everyone else around them, withering and demeaning and some downright disgusted. 

And he couldn’t give less of a fuck about anything at that moment apart from the golden eyed boy in his arms, Lucy’s battered face, and she'd be proud of you Cooper as it weighed like molten lead in his tired muscles. 

The boy’s parents were still alive. Cooper had thought not a single damn thing that’d mutated its way into his path could surprise him anymore... But they had.

Ghouls, nonetheless, but alive to the greatest extent of the word, warm and welcoming and so incredibly thankful to see the son they would never have given up on. Still tucked away and waiting for him in the same exact disintegrating two story house for over two hundred years. The poster Cooper still had folded in his pocket was only their most recent attempt to locate their boy out of the thousands they’d claimed to carry out and Cooper knew, too terribly close to the chest, how suffocating such a thing could be. Because being reminded of Janey was one thing. Watching little Bill run into his mom and daddy’s arms with a boyish grin and not a care else in the world was another. 

Lucy leaned down to hug the kid goodbye with words of encouragement and a prize winning smile. 

Cooper couldn't.

So in the chaos of their reunion, he had instead remained back in the shadows. Brushed off the endless words of thanks and appreciation with only a short nod of his head. Tucked the small sack of reward caps they'd handed him beneath the arm cushion of one of their well loved couches when he'd effectively lost their attention... 

And left.

Lucy walked near his side now in the dusky evening, nose taped over and eyes treated with a bit of the salve he carried originally for Dogmeat’s peeling paws. She spoke light about whatever seemed to catch her attention, just as she’d done since they’d left the outskirts of the small town. And though he listened best he could, he found he didn’t have anything left in him to say. Not with the way his own memories still sat fresh like a stone in his throat and festered into something like envy at the repeated sight left behind them in his mind.

“It’s kind of interesting if you think about it,” Lucy continued. “All the different ways radiation can affect people based on their exposure and genetic disposition... And the resilience it builds in some people - it’s just kinda… it's incredible,” and she faltered under Cooper’s warning glare. Held onto it in earnest. “Look, all I’m saying is I’ve seen a lot of things since I left that we would have called miracles back in the vault. Things that would get me locked up in the infirmary if I tried to explain them out loud…”

“Lucy.” Cooper said simply. Accent free. “It’s alright.”

“Exactly,” she nodded, point driven deep like a spike to the belly. “I’d like to think it just might be.”

And her soft smile felt a little bit like hope. Bruised and weary, but still there at his side all the same.