Fallout of the Heart

Chapter Thirteen

"Look at the fucking size of this place..." Hancock said softly, a few inches from my ear, but whatever else he was about to say was cut off by someone hijacking the announcements. We both listened in silence, my eyes narrowed while my hand flexed near my gun. He brushed my arm gently, and I flicked my eyes towards him before I let out a snort. The tram spilled us out into the station, and a quick tactical assessment told me that all direct exits from the place were blocked, except for this 'gauntlet' they expected us to run. The train shut down behind us, and I growled.

Popping my neck, I arranged my gear a little more comfortably, as I eyed the only open door. "I got your fucking gauntlet right here, assholes. Let's see who survives what when I'm fucking through with you." I muttered to myself, menacingly. Then I shook my head, and looked at Hancock. "Yo, you need any med-x or stims before we pop in there?" I asked, tone only a little louder. He just grinned widely, shaking his head. I snorted in response. "Welp, this is gonna fucking suck. Here goes nothing." I muttered, and off we went.

Listening to these assholes fuss and whine and moan and cuss me out over the intercom was giving me an almost sick kind of pleasure – then again, I had always enjoyed turning assholes' traps around so they backfired on their creators. There was one room filled to the brim with rad-waste barrels that forced me to take the only dose of rad-x I had brought with me, but I had mostly done it to shut Hancock up since his tone was quite worried. I could hear the pip-boy pinging but I hadn't even bothered to look and see how high the levels actually were – rads just felt like a hum along my skin now, instead of that burning, nauseous feeling that came with higher levels. I'd take stock of it later, when we weren't stuck running like rats through a murder maze.

"Not nearly as much as she is, asshole." Hancock murmured from my side, as we watched the asshole in the power armor go stomping away from the window after his little 'villain monologue'. I narrowed my eyes at him, eliciting a grin. "I know, I stole your line. Let's go show this motherfucker how it's really done." He quipped, and I barely contained my laughter as I followed him through the nearby door. For some reason, this conversation reminded me of our conversation just before we came here, when he said 'that's my girl'. That phrase had been bouncing around in the back of my mind ever since, and I wasn't sure how to feel about it.

"You know, I never thought I'd say this, but I get a real kick out of watching you string assholes along with that pretty smile of yours, just before you hang up by their toes and leave them out to dry." Hancock remarked as we stood in the Fizztop Grille, staring down at the now-lifeless body of Porter Gage. The darkness in his tone caused a reaction in my body that I absolutely was not expecting or used to, and I had to stop myself from wanting to yank him over to the nearest bed for a completely different kind of stress relief.

After about five heartbeats to bring myself back to center, I immediately started kicking myself for having that kind of reaction. There was absolutely no way he saw me like that – not even just the fact that I was a 'smoothskin' as he kept putting it, but I was a battered and broken 200 year old pre-war relic. He could do way better than someone like me. Thankfully, he was too busy examining the body and enjoying the view to notice my little internal crisis, and by the time he did look up at me I was able to give him a crooked, serene smile.

"Yeah, well, more flies with honey than vinegar and all that shit. You want a break after that moronic maze of motherfuckery, or you ready to hit the ground running?" I asked, and his grin grew wide at my deliberate alliteration.

"It's your show, overboss." He commented snarkily, as he checked his gun. The look on my face elicited another laugh, then he grew slightly more serious. Only slightly, though. "Seriously, whichever works best for you, I'm right behind you either way, sweet roll." He said, ending with a flash of a crooked smile.