Chapter Text
There was a time when The Ghoul slept with anyone who would have him.
He’s not sure how many decades ago it was now. He doesn’t even remember it very well - there are flashes sometimes of stumbling around the New Vegas strip, of getting kicked out of musty motel rooms by boyfriends or girlfriends, of waking up robbed and alone.
It never cured the lonely ache he felt deep in his bones.
But one day, he just resigned himself to the ache. He let it in like a permanent house guest. It became as much a part of him as the radiation.
And it was easier that way. It was one less wasteland battle to fight.
Since then, he’s done his best to not indulge in the yearning. Yearning’s how they catch you with your guard down.
But it’s been creeping up on him lately.
***
The two of them stumble into a small strip mall somewhere in the middle of the Mojave Desert, as a radstorm starts to sweep in. Lucy’s got her arm thrown over his shoulder and he’s pulling her along as her right leg hangs limp behind them.
“Can’t we just stop here?” Lucy asks in a strained voice as they enter the front.
The Ghoul rolls his eyes and huffs out a sarcastic laugh. “Yeah, sweetheart. Let’s just stop in the doorway for anyone to find.”
She groans in pain and even though she’s got a big knife slice through her thigh, he decides she’s being a little dramatic. It was just a little raider skirmish, and they’re lucky they got out when they did.
All things considered, the strip mall looks pretty good for three centuries old - still had a roof, and some locked up shops, and only a few radroaches to take care of on the way in. He hauls her through the hallways, looking for a safe spot.
Shooting the lock off a clothing store, he pulls up the metal cage door and pulls it closed again behind them. He lowers Lucy to the linoleum floor and starts walking towards the back of the store.
“H-hey!” Lucy shouts.
The Ghoul doesn’t stop, he just looks over his shoulder. “What?!”
“W-where are you going? I’m bleeding out here!”
“Checking the back for a first aid kit. Don’t be a fuckin’ baby.”
He hears Lucy mumble out an “okie dokey” and scoffs. He goes through a checklist in his mind, starting from the far back of the store: he barricades the door that leads to the staff corridor, grabs the first aid kit and a needle and thread from a dilapidated break room, and picks up a few old batteries for the little lamp they’ve been carrying.
When he returns to Lucy, she’s got her leg propped up on an old shelving unit. She’s got her eyes squeezed shut as she tries to focus on anything but the pain and the blood.
The Ghoul takes a stimpak out of the first aid kit and drops to his knees next to her, and before she can so much as open her eyes, he injects it above the cut on her thigh.
Lucy gasps and shoots her hand out to grab his arm. “Holy sh-shit! You could’ve- you could’ve warned me!”
“No time,” he says with just a little bit of a smirk.
They’d been traveling together for so long, since a few weeks ago when Lucy’s reality shattered and her father left in the power armor, but she still didn’t really have a good read on The Ghoul. He could be such a brute, and other times he was... A little soft.
Her pain starts to subside and she lets out a breath of relief. “Thanks, I guess,” she grumbles. She lets go of his wrist and relaxes.
“Now, uh...” The Ghoul gestures vaguely to her, her leg, her vault suit. “I can’t really stitch you up through that.”
Lucy sits up and starts to roll up the leg of the suit, but it’s no use - it gets too tight right around her knee. The Ghoul leans forward and moves to rip it at the thigh, but she stops him. “No! No.”
“Vaultie, c’mon-”
She vehemently shakes her head. “This is the only thing I have!” She cries, pushing his bloody hands away. “I’ll just take it off. I’ll stitch myself up.” Lucy holds her hand out for the needle and thread.
The Ghoul raises his eyebrow. “You? You’ll stitch yourself up. You sure about that, sweetheart?”
Lucy looks offended at his insinuation. “I can handle myself, thank you very much.”
Raising his hands in mock offense, he gets to his feet and backs up. “Alright, vaultie. Be my fuckin’ guest,” he says, sounding all too amused.
She rolls her eyes and starts to unzip her vault suit, slowly, waiting for him to leave.
The Ghoul’s about to make fun of her for this when his eyes trail down to the sweaty, exposed skin of her collarbone, the low neckline of her undershirt... He awkwardly ducks behind a display case.
What the fuck? He mouths to himself. His heart is in his throat and he doesn’t understand why. He idly pretends to go through some piles of clothes and tries to keep himself from picturing how far the suit is down her torso, or maybe it’s off already, or...
Lucy’s making little grunts of pain on the other side of the display case.
He shakes his head to clear his mind when his hands land on something lacy. The Ghoul pulls it up between his hands and realizes what it is - a pristine pre-war nightgown. It feels like the softest thing he’s touched in years. Unbidden, he starts to picture her in it, and then maybe she’d be the softest thing he’d touched in years, and--
“Ow!” Lucy suddenly shouts, making The Ghoul jump.
“You still handlin’ yourself, vaultie?” He asks.
There’s a long silence from her side of the display case. “I need some help.”
“What’s the magic word?”
Lucy begrudgingly sighs. “Please?”
The Ghoul, smug, mindlessly shoves the nightgown in the pocket of his duster coat. He comes back around the corner and takes a look at the state of her.
Her vault suit is pushed down around her knees, and she’s hunched over herself with the needle and thread. Her undershirt is tinted a clayish red, and he assumes at some point it was the same white color as her plain, high-leg-cut underwear. Swaths of her scarless skin - her arms, her shoulders, her thighs - are exposed to the air.
She looks so soft.
Mentally, he feels like he’s holding on by a thread. Physically, The Ghoul calmly takes his spot on his knees next to her, and takes the needle and thread from her. He goes to set his hand on her thigh above the wound to steady himself, but flinches back, and sets his hand on the floor instead.
“You’ve really botched this here, sweetheart,” he grumbles. Her stitches overlap, her throws are all over the place.
Lucy bites back a retort and lies back. She yelps when he goes in for the first stitch. “Careful!”
He just rolls his eyes. The slice across Lucy’s leg isn’t as deep as he thought, and he’s surprised when he feels relief in his chest. He lets his hands follow muscle memory and lets his mind wander a little bit.
They don’t bicker. They hardly say anything to each other. Lucy’s breaths are deep and concentrated. Her eyes are trained on his face, and he’s doing his best not to look at her.
It’s quiet. It’s intimate. He doesn’t let himself read into that.
As he finishes off the last stitch, he sets his hand on her thigh, and he lowers his mouth to the wound.
Lucy props herself up on her elbows. Her voice is still shaky. “H-hey, what are you-”
The Ghoul turns his eyes towards her, meets her gaze. She cuts herself off. His lips are centimeters away from her wound, from the skin of her thigh. He feels the warmth radiating off of her. And then he takes the end of the thread into his mouth and bites it, cutting it off.
She lets out a slow breath and keeps his gaze. “I- You-”
“Do we have a problem?” He asks, in a low voice.
“N-no,” she whispers.
“Good.” He’s still agonizingly close to her, to the softness he can only imagine between her legs, and it feels like torture.
The Ghoul looks back to her stitched up wound, and presses a single kiss to it. “Good as new, Lucy.”
When she calls her by her name, her heart skips a beat. Lucy sets her hand on top of his. “Thank you,” she says softly. She means it in a way he feels in his heart.
He lets the silence linger for a little too long.
That ache in his bones feels heavier than ever.
***
Lucy’s asleep on the floor, with his duster coat across her body. She’s on her good side, facing him, back to the door. Her Pip-Boy sits next to her head, quietly playing the radio.
The Ghoul sits on the floor, next to their little travel lamp. He’s got her vault suit in his lap as he stitches up the cut across the thigh. It’s not pretty, but it’s fixed. It’s functional. It’ll hold up. After he finishes that cut, he finds other little holes and patches them. He even found the closest colored spool of thread to “Vault Boy Blue” that he could.
And it feels like caring . It reminds him of a more domestic time. “Gettin’ soft...” He grumbles to himself.
As he listens to her little snores, he realizes he’s been caught with his guard down.