sixteencrows

[sixteencrows]

I watched quietly as he worked away, sharpening the blade of his kukri in front of the crackling campfire. Gone was his regular vest, pockets filled with who knows what for any possible situation, and left behind was his rumpled button up - sleeves rolled haphazardly to his elbows and the neckline noticeably lower than usual.

There was something hypnotic about it. Something in the steady movement of the whetstone against his blade, the tinny sound it produced, the flicker of the light in the sunglasses that hung on that too low neckline. It all felt oddly domestic.

We hadn’t spoken much since the sun had set but we didn’t really have to. That was something about Mick that I always enjoyed - the comfortable silences. Besides, I found with him that words weren’t always required when you had a point to make.

Setting my drink to the side I rose from the log I had been sitting on, a faint popping of joints following as my tired knees voiced their disapproval. We had done a lot of walking today and I definitely was not as accustomed to long hikes as he was. Slowly and carefully I made my way over to his side of the campfire, mindful of where his cooler sat, more duct tape than plastic though still very capable of keeping our drinks cold.

His actions slowed as I came to stand in front of him, our knees nearly meeting as, in an unusual twist, he looked up at me. 

I couldn’t help but reach out and thread my fingers through his short hair. Softly, at first. He looked so cute like this, silently watching me from behind his lashes, knees drawn up at an awkward angle thanks to how low his seat was to the ground, the light of the fire reflecting against his sundamaged skin as I caught the slightest hint of his Adam’s apple bobbing against his throat. 

Clearly he had some idea of where this was going. We knew each other well at this point. 

I raised a knee to rest between his legs, lowering myself until our bodies were nearly flush. Mick placed his kukri off to the side, one hand coming up hesitantly to rest against the back of my thigh - not so much for support but just for the comfort of touch. I felt his breath catch in his throat as I drew closer still, my grip in his hair still soft but firm, tilting his head back. 

He also looked cute like this.

I couldn’t help the wry smile that came to my lips, earning another gulp from Mick as his Adam’s apple gave away feelings far better than his words ever had. Leaning down I placed a small kiss against the corner of his lips, then a second along his jawline, and finally a third to his throat. This third kiss was the one to earn a gasp from him, his head tilting away from me in invitation. 

I grinned against his pulse point, my previously unoccupied hand trailing up his chest to just below his jaw, holding him securely. 

The next kiss was followed by teeth from me, and a delighted hiss from him. 

[sixteencrows]

Duct Tape and a Wish

There are a lot of benefits to using power armor in a fight, but you don’t really need me to tell you that. Take one look at any raider or gunner who’s managed to get one up and running and you know you’re going to be in for a bad time. Even the Brotherhood, with all their pomp and self righteousness, make a pretty intimidating image charging into battle. I guess you could say that they aren’t that good for stealth but I’ve certainly never had any trouble sneaking around while Wilhelm drew fire with his creaking tin can.

The only fault I can really, honestly give them is that they’re pretty slow.

Especially when they have a dead fusion core.

Like right now.

“You alright back there, Tin Man?” I called back to Wilhelm, waiting for him at the top of a small hill that, to him, probably felt like a mountain. His fusioncore gave out half a mile back, not long after we had a run in with some Super Mutants. We were so close to one of his settlements where we could ditch the hunk of metal in safety but with how hard he was breathing even that seemed impossible.

He finally trudged up next to me, the frame of the armor kept him pretty upright but I could still sense the way he slumped inside while he tried to regain some strength. Eventually he responded, glancing down at the Pip-Boy on his arm that he could barely lift. “Not much … farther.” A rattling cough seemed to echo around his helmet. “I can do it.”

“You sure?” I mean what other options are there? We can’t just leave the thing out in the open. Who knows who would find it, and with how powerful it was we couldn’t exactly risk some guy with a spare fusion core making off with it.

Wilhelm took some slow, shaking breaths before responding, “Yeah, let’s go,” and continued on his route. I followed along behind him, rifle in hand, his own strapped to my back (not that the absence of fifteen pounds would really make that much of a difference to him), keeping an eye out for whatever the Commonwealth decided to spring on us next.

It took another forty-five minutes or so for us to arrive at the Abernathy Farm and when we did I volunteered to do most of the talking for him. The guy we spoke to, I think his name was Blake, directed us to a shed where we could store the suit temporarily and handed us some cold-ish purified water before getting back to his family. By this point I was getting a bit antsy to get Wilhelm out of that thing, his heavy breathing never really let up and his coughing had become more persistent even if he tried to hide it around the settlers.

“Alright, man, get outta there before we have to crack you open like an egg,” I said, jokingly rapping my knuckles on the back panel of his armor. Before I had the chance to step back the panel opened with a loud hiss. Wilhelm more fell than stepped out of the back, stumbling on unsteady feet and nearly crushing me to the ground when I tried to catch him.

He’s a big guy, I know this but there are still times when it catches me off guard. He’s already a good head taller than me and when I tried to wrap my arms around his chest from the back it was like hugging a barrel. I knew it wasn’t feasible to help him to his feet so instead I awkwardly hauled him, or at least controlled his falling, to sit with his back to the wall of the shed. Even out of his armor and in the (slightly) fresh air his breathing sounded terrible and I noticed immediately that he is drenched in sweat. His hands were shaking as he tried to remove his glasses, fumbling with them as he leaned his head back.

Something’s wrong.

I’ve been around people when they are out of breath. Heck, most of the commonwealth, including myself, smoke and that definitely doesn’t help when you have to book it away from an angry Deathclaw. This sounds different though.

“Hey uh,” I crouch down in front of him, giving him maybe a foot or so of breathing space, “You holding up okay?” No MacCready, obviously not. With every cough I half expect him to spit out a lung, and his breathing sounds more like a wheeze than anything else. I see the way he’s trying to keep his knees up (well one knee anyway, the other never really seems to bend properly) to support his posture so I scoot forward a little to try and hold them in place. Eventually he’s able to look at me, his eyes have always looked pale and bloodshot but they somehow look worse in this moment. More watery and hazy.

He pats a shaky hand to his chest. “My lungs,” he mumbles hoarsley before reworking his words to something more efficient, “Asthma.”

Okay, asthma, that makes sense, I can work with that. Yeah, totally.

Crap what am I saying, I don’t know anything about asthma. Sure I know the basic gist of it but what am I supposed to do? Are his lungs collapsing? Does he need to see a doctor? I’ve heard that people used to treat it with something that kind of looked like Jet but I don’t see how that would help in this situation.

He must have noticed my moment of panic because I felt him patting my hand on his knee. I look at him again, still holding his chest, and I can hear him trying to steady his breathing. It starts off as the same shallow wheezes but gradually, almost imperceptibly, they try to get a bit longer. Not knowing what else to do I breathe with him, in through the nose, as deep as you can, then back out again. It feels a little bit like the breathing exercises people do to calm their nerves, the kind you do to steady your rifle before taking a long distance shot.

I don’t know how long we sat there for. We were still out of sight of the Abernathys so none of them seemed to notice what was happening. At some point it hard started to get dark, and I reached over to turn on the light on Wilhelm’s Pip-Boy. His breathing was more or less settled though it still seemed to rattle around his lungs on every inhale. Had it always been like that?

His eyes were closed as his head rested against the metal wall behind him. I took this moment of quiet lucidity to just watch him… which sounds creepy but I promise it’s not.

We’ve been travelling together for a couple months now, he’s even set up a bed for me in The Castle (which is a name far grander than three and a half walls really deserved). I kind of treat it like a little vacation whenever he drops me off there, and while Garvey never really seems to enjoy my presence he does at least tolerate me, and I have come to enjoy getting under his skin a little whenever the opportunity presents itself. Still, we don’t have a ton of downtime together when we’re not travelling or sleeping.

His colour looks a lot better. Even in the yellow light of his Pip-Boy his face looks a lot less red than it did and his hand, still resting on my own, feels less clammy than when he’d first staggered out of the power armor. With his glasses still discarded next to him I can see some scarring around his face. I’ve always known that he had a couple scuffs and dings but behind the wire frames and all the hair I never really noticed how bad it really was. I can count maybe three separate scars, all on his left side. One near the eyebrow, another below his eye, and a third, less linear one on his temple mostly covered by black hair and beard.

God I wish I could grow a beard like that. Might not let it get as bushy but I would kill to be able to grow anything on my cheeks that wasn’t patchy peach fuzz.

My mouth opens before I can think, a common problem for me.

“So when you left the army, did you swear off barber shops too?”

He chuckles, at least. It’s the first noise I’ve heard him voluntarily make in what feels like hours. There’s silence for a moment, though this time it’s a more familiar kind. “We had to be clean shaven when I served, even our hair was regulated,” he said, voice still hoarse. “I remember shaving twice a day sometimes, it would grow so quickly that I would have stubble before dinner. Got in trouble for it a few times too.” He chuckled again, head lolling forward like a man who just woke up. “Swear I spent so much time shaving that the last thing I wanted to do after leaving was so much as look at a razor - not that Nora seemed to mind.”

“Hm, can’t relate,” I said, self deprecatingly rubbing my goatee. This seemed to draw another chuckle from him that ended in a small cough. I prickled at the sound but Wilhelm settled just as quickly as it had come on.

“I’m uh, sorry if I worried you with all that,” he looks down to the ground, patting a hand in the dirt until he found his glasses again. Instead of putting them on right away he fiddled with the arms as though checking to make sure they weren’t damaged.

“I mean I doubt you did all that on purpose,” I joked, leaning back on my hands after finally releasing the grip I’d had on his leg.

He was silent for a moment again.

“Have you always had asthma?” I asked, maybe foolishly but what else is new. “I always heard that the Pre-War military was pretty stingy when it came to who joined. Even heard a few stories of guys who would cut off a toe to get out of deployment.”

“Well that is even older than I am,” he responded, thankfully lighthearted. “Military didn’t really care how many toes you had when I joined, you’d have to get more creative than that.” His tone seemed to shift a little. “Still, they wouldn’t have let me join if I had asthma, it developed later. Just another souvenir, I guess.”

Well that casual chat didn’t last long, don’t know what I expected really. “Along with those scars I’m betting?” I tapped a finger against the side of my face. “Shrapnel?”

“You got it,” he rubbed his beard like a cartoon of an old man waxing nostalgic. “Also got a bad knee, some back problems, astigmatism... Had some problems with my blood pressure for a while too. Got some medals out of the deal at least.”

I wanted to give a nervous laugh but it never really came. “Christ.”

“Sorry,” he sobered, returning his glasses to his nose, “Guess that was a lot to drop on you all at once.”

“Nah, it’s uh. It’s all good.” I gave him a friendly pat on the (good) knee while I got ready to stand. “Just didn’t realize you were held together by duct tape and a wish, is all.” He laughed.

Wilhelm made an effort to stand up, but even with the help of the wall he seemed unsteady so I reached down to give him a hand. The sounds of his joints cracking and popping as he got to his feet echoed in my head but I tried to ignore them. “God I’m tired, hope the Abernathys won’t mind if we crash here for the night.”

“They better fricking not,” I replied, situating myself under his arm as we walked back to the farmhouse. “Otherwise we can take those turrets of yours somewhere else.”

[sixteencrows]

Chemical Consistencies

 It’s been nearly four weeks since I first started travelling with Wilhelm and I gotta say, there are some days that it feels a little bit like babysitting. I didn’t know at the time just what his situation was but I really should have known that anyone who takes the first offered price for a mercenary just isn’t from around here. That’s not totally fair, I guess, technically he’s been living here longer that I have. Longer than caps as currency. Longer than most of the population.

 Still, his Boston was a lot different from our Commonwealth, and it felt like not a day went by that he didn’t ask me something about an otherwise mundane fact of life here. 

What are the Gunners?

Mercenaries, jerks too.

What is a deathclaw mutated from?

Jackson’s chameleon.

What causes rad storms?

I don’t know, radiation?

 “What’s that?”

 I peered over at him while we did a sweep of a raider hideout. Well, former raider hideout. Credit where credit is due, Wilhelm could plow through a group of those guys without breaking a sweat. Even without the power armor he was huge, probably twice my weight and taller than any human had any right to be. He looks pretty threatening provided you don’t realize how freaking nice he is.

 “Looks like Psycho, you’ll see that a lot when you’re dealing with raiders.” I mentally braced myself for the onslaught of questions that I was sure would be bubbling to the surface right about… Now.

 “Huh, didn’t think that stuff still existed.”

 “What?”

 What? Wait no, I didn’t mean to say that outloud. Wilhelm had my full attention now, and I watched how he nudged the offending chem on the table with the muzzle of his shotgun. He didn’t seem nervous per se, more concerned. It was as though the highly addictive, rage inducing, and slightly rusted syringe was a small animal that may or may not be playing dead.

 “We had it before the war,” he said, not seeming able to tear his eyes away from it, “though I’m sure it has changed a little since then… Never really learned what went into it, but I know most of what we saw was made in pretty strict government labs. Can’t imagine it’s something that could really be recreated now.”

 “Wait wait wait.” I tried to rewind what I just heard, what does he? How does he? “Why do you know what Psycho is? You’re saying it’s Pre-War? And what do you mean you ‘saw’ it, did you used to take that garbage?” Okay maybe that last part was a bit harsh, the guy is paying you to have his back maybe don’t trash talk him directly to his face.

 Wilhelm got quiet, did I piss him off? I swear for a guy who seems pretty simple there are times when I just can’t figure out what is going through his head.

 “They gave it to us when I was in the service,” he finally said. There was a hint of something in his voice. Not sadness, more that feeling you get when you are trying to recall an old memory. Not a happy one either, more something you’d gone numb to a long time ago. “Our higher ups, I mean. Said it would boost our performance, make us stronger and more resilient. The doses were always pretty small and the whole experiment seemed pretty controlled but as it went on there were… problems, I guess you could say.”

 He paused, God I hate his pauses. Sometimes I wished he would just cut to the chase, but he always seemed to mull over every sentence in his head like he just couldn’t string the right words together.

 “At first they would give you a little and you would feel your heart start to race. You’d throw yourself into a fight without thinking and some primal part of your brain would take over. Eventually, when the doses got bigger, it would get to the point where you felt like your blood was on fire and the fluorescent lights of the barracks would burn your eyes even hours after the drug should have worn off.” He finally took his eyes away from the table, pushing his wire glasses a little further up his nose while he tried to find something, anything else to look at. Eventually he turned his gaze, always a little bloodshot, towards me and I tried not to audibly gulp.

 “It only really became a problem when we started fighting amongst each other. There were side effects, sure, but those could easily be waved away as “pre-existing”, the brawls off the battlefield were another thing.”

 I’d never really heard Wilhelm talk about the war before this. Sure, I knew he was a soldier and I knew he was familiar with, and even prefered, power armor but this felt like something else entirely. I’ve heard a lot of people wax poetic about Pre-War times, how simple and clean things were, but I knew it was garbage. There’s no way some perfect world could result in a place like this, they must have had their own crap to deal with.

 Before I could ask him any questions, maybe dig a little deeper into just how screwed up the world really was back then, his manner shifted. He looked away, back to searching the room for usable supplies, and his voice got a little lighter.

 “I don’t remember what the guys in the lab called it, oxy-something, or maybe it started with a B. I don’t know,” he stooped for a second to pick up a couple caps that had fallen to the floor during the earlier fire fight. “We called it Psycho, just thought it was funny to hear that name stuck around.”

 “Hahah yeah,” I replied, trying to keep my tone light. “Real funny.”

[sixteencrows]

One for My Baby

  I didn’t really know what to expect when the courier came up to meet me at my look-out at the top of Dinky the T-Rex.

  At first I thought they were some prospector or thief, taking advantage of the night to search for forgotten scrap, but they didn’t seem surprised when we ended up nose-to-nose on that four foot by five foot platform. On the rare occasion anyone aside from myself or Vargas went up there the steep drop and creaking dinosaur was usually enough to send them high tailing it back down. Not this one though.

  They started asking questions, very pointed questions. Sure, there were the regular pleasantries of “hey how are you, are you Craig Boone?” but just as I expected them to start chatting about the weather their tone shifted. They watched me from under the brim of their hat with squinting, red rimmed eyes and started asking me about my wife. About Carla.

  Looking back on it, I don’t know why I didn’t kick them out right then and there. It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly why I humoured their questions, but I felt like I could have spilled my entire life story to a stranger I’d known (barely known, didn’t even catch their name until the second time we met) for all of five minutes. There was something about those eyes, and the careful way they seemed to choose their words. They could have asked me for all the caps in my pockets and I would have gladly handed them over.

  I told them about Carla’s disappearance. They offered to look into it. I kind of assumed that was going to be the end of it.

  That morning, when it was time to switch places with Vargas, I asked him in passing if he had met them as well. He said he had, and described them to the letter. Tall, unassuming, and frightfully easy to talk to. He also mentioned a few things I hadn’t noticed in the harsh shadows cast by my lantern that night. They wore sunglasses, so dark you couldn’t make out their eyes, and had a small but dangerous looking scar barely hidden by their hair. He said it kind of looked like a bullet wound but there was no way someone could take a shot like that and walk away.

  I returned to my room at the inn to sleep off the night’s events. I tossed and turned a lot, thinking about the promise I had made to the courier that if they found who was responsible for Carla’s kidnapping and brought them in front of Dinky during the night I would take care of them. I offered them caps, of course, nothing in the Mojave is free after all. Not that it mattered, I really didn’t think I would see them again.

  Though I hoped I would.

  The following night I returned to my post. It was nearly 23:00 when I spotted movement down on the ground. The night had been quiet and surprisingly cool but aside from a couple ants far in the distance of my scope there hadn’t been anything to speak of.

  Peering down the length of my rifle I saw them. On the left was the courier, an easy stride in their step and their own hardware held loosely in their grip. They had the kind of posture you would expect from a guard on an easy patrol, one who tries to give the illusion of preparedness even when they knew there was nothing to be concerned about. On the right was Ms Jeannie May Crawford, looking antsy and carrying a pistol she did not look ready to shoot.

  Really? Jeannie May? Why her of all people?

  I tried to rack my memory, connect whatever dots there could be to link her to the kidnapping of Carla. I know the two of them never really got along. Carla never really adjusted to living in Novac, she was always more comfortable in the city. Jeannie May, being Jeannie May, could be the sweetest thing in the world provided you had nothing but kind things to say about Novac. They were both stubborn, and while I understood why they’d never be friends or anything, the idea of Jeannie May taking it upon herself to do something to Carla just didn’t sit quite right with me.

  Then I saw those eyes again, watching me from under the brim of a hat, staring back through my scope. I thought about the times when I would mention Carla only for Jeannie May to insist that she had just wandered off. I steadied my rifle, waited for the wind to settle, and took my shot.

  I leaned back in my chair, not bothering to watch if the stranger chose to rifle through her pockets or just leave the body to the geckos.

  They rejoined me in my look-out a few minutes later, or it could have been hours I can’t really say. I gave them their payment, which they wordlessly accepted, and I asked how they knew. They explained the safe behind Jeannie May’s desk and the bill of sale sending Carla to the the fucking Legion of all places. I noticed the sudden pause, the crack in the otherwise steady facade, when I asked if there was anything else they found but they ultimately said no. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to know whatever they were hiding.

  At the end of it all I didn’t feel like a handful of caps and a pat on the back were really enough payment for what they had done for me. Sure, I still didn’t have Carla, and the knowledge that she likely died in Legion ownership definitely kept me up for the next couple of days, but this was still more closure than I ever could have hoped for. I offered them my help, should they ever need an extra gun, but they just gave a crooked smile and wished me well. I couldn’t help but notice how they squinted in the harsh light of my lantern, or the faintest hint of a scar that just barely peaked out of their hair.

  I’m sure I’ll see them again, and I hope I do.