Fallout of the Heart

Chapter Fourteen

If I thought mirelurks were annoying, the nukalurk varieties were downright out of this world fucking me off. They were tougher, they took more hits to go down even with hitting their weakest points, and they glowed in the dark. Every time one of them lunged after Hancock I felt an irrational rage swell inside me – how dare they go after him?! It finally intruded on my battered mental state that it really was bothering me that things were attacking him, and it wasn't just my exhaustion, or a buildup of all the shit we'd been through in the last couple weeks.

When had this started, though? I remembered there being a bit of fear when he got attacked when we first started traveling together, but after a couple days it seemed to dissipate, after I knew he could take care of himself in a fight. Or, at least, I wasn't noticing it. Now, it seemed like every swipe seemed to cause my heart to want to leap out of my throat, and when he stumbled and went down once I almost openly burst into tears. Even if he hated me now, I still felt the drive to protect him with my own life. Wait. Oh, no. Fuck me.

I felt my entire body going numb as the realization hit me, and it took everything I had left in me not to just sit down in the middle of the fucking nuka-river and give up. On top of everything else I had going on, I'd finally actually fallen in love with someone for the first time – and it was someone I'd apparently hurt badly enough I'd be lucky if he ever spoke to me again. Even if he did, he'd never feel the same about me. We came from worlds that were way too fucking different to ever be compatible, and I was pretty sure there wasn't enough left of me to be any good to anyone in a relationship anyway.

As we wormed our way deeper into the factory section, I noticed him hiding several yawns. I was pretty exhausted myself, but I didn't really matter right now. After some careful scouring and a little bit of luck I found a defensible area I could barricade briefly, and a single sleeping bag and makeshift pillow. I contained my sigh as I set things up, blocking us in and laying out some food for both of us to eat, perhaps. "I'm sorry I don't have any noodles left, but there's still plenty of other food to pick from. If you need something to drink..." I gestured to the bottles of nuka laying everywhere, without looking at him.

"I'm not hungry right now." He said, very softly. I blinked a couple times, then nodded and put the food away. I was the polar opposite of hungry right now.

"Okay, well, it's not going anywhere. I'll take the first watch, you go ahead and get some rest before we switch off." I replied, voice almost as soft as his as I settled down in a position I could hold that wouldn't cause me undue pain, but wouldn't let me fall asleep either. I had no intention of waking him up for his half of the watch – I could go for days without sleep if I needed to, though I preferred not to. There was only the one sleeping bag however, and I just couldn't right now.

I heard him rustling around behind me, then things fell silent enough that all I heard was the place's ambient noises, and his breathing. When he broke the silence several minutes later, I almost screamed and jumped, but I managed to hold myself still – only just.

"Ness." He said simply, and I turned my head to the right, looking at the floor over my shoulder to indicate that I was listening. His tone was neutral, but I could still hear something like irritation in it. "Nothing's getting through that barricade. You need sleep as well, fuck the watch." I closed my eyes and shook my head, but he spoke again before I could reply. "I'm serious, we both need some uninterrupted sleep. I'm not going to sleep until you do." He finished, the irritation in his tone a little warmer than it had been before.

"There's only the one single sleeping bag, Hancock." I said, tone way more even than I had expected it to be. He let out an exasperated snort, then sighed heavily.

"Godsdamnit, Ness – we're both grown adults here. We can share a fucking sleeping bag while respecting each others boundaries, you know. It's not like there's anyone around to deem it scandalous or give us shit over it, if that's what you're worried about." He spat out, and I just barely contained the flinch his tone and words caused as they hit me. He sighed again, and his voice was much softer when he spoke next. "I know you're just as tired as I am, if not more. Please, come get some sleep – I'm really not going to be able to fall asleep if I know you're awake when you're about to fall over." He trailed off, then I heard the sound of something hitting the fabric of the bag. I turned and looked at him fully, hearing the sound again as he patted the bag with his hand.