#craig boone x oc

[snail-eggs]

The Descent (prologue) | Circles of the South

synopsis: Six has been having dreams. Dreams that feel like something else entirely bleeding through.

a/n: I have had this knocking around in my noggin for way too long. Here you go.

tags on ao3 | read on ao3 | playlist | divider by @/coolcatsgraphics

She is somewhere and nowhere. An intangible space that she finds herself trapped in every time she closes her eyes. Six knows it all now—knows it like the back of her hand. This is a dream, or at least what her rational mind knows it to be. Sometimes it feels like prophecy, like a call. The ground is crumbling under her feet and still, she is standing on it solid, the wind whipping around her, kicking up dirt and debris that assaults her skin, digs into her eyes. Little pinpricks that feel familiar. Like the memory of pain but not quite pain itself.

In front of her, there is the vague shape of a town, out of focus like when she zones out while walking the expansive Mojave wastes. Houses, at least what she thinks are houses, a church, maybe. Tulsa, sounding out in her mind like it has every night for months. A tug in her chest tells her this is home but Six does not know what home is anymore. Not since she took two bullets to the head in Goodsprings. She can hear discordant voices but not words, far away and yet almost exclusively in her ears. Loud as if they were right there beside her. There is laughter, what could be pleasant conversation, but above it all, there are screams. A cacophony of them growing not in volume but in intensity. Six hears a distant hopeless and pained moaning. The wind is louder; a rumbling starts within her head, deep inside her ears in tandem with the buzzing of millions of flies. They are in her eyes, in her nose, her mouth—her throat. It hurts. Her hands are shaking, she walks but the world, the spot in which she has been standing, follows her. Six breaks into a sprint, gets no closer to the town. A siren sounds. Old and weepy, like it’s crying in agony. She knows this sound, knows it means danger. 

The dull, ambient burn of radiation in the air stops her. A storm, she thinks. Always a storm. To her right, she sees it—the only tangible, real thing. As real as her. Thick, gray clouds tinged with a sickening green, a vortex swirling down and down until it touches down in the dirt. Her heart pounds, she feels a wetness in her hands. Blood. Never hers, never allowed to find out who it belongs to. Six balls her fists, feels a squelch. Cannot take her eyes off the storm—the vortex. It looks like it’s swirling in place. Stagnant. She feels a pit forming in her stomach, the feeling of impending doom that she knows so intimately not only here but in her waking life. 

Tulsa. It worms itself into the forefront of her mind. Tulsa, Tulsa, Tulsa. Maybe this is Tulsa itself calling to her, beckoning her away from the home she’s found on the West Coast. Maybe down south is where she needs to go. 

A second vortex emerges from behind the first. They dance together—one in front of the other, like walking. The storm is walking—

Six tries to run again. Away from the town, away from the storm. Her legs are trapped knee-deep in the dirt, there is blood in her mouth. She screams and there is nothing, save for the scratching pain in the back of her throat that tells her she’s already screamed her lungs out thousands of times before. The storm is getting closer. Walking towards her. She’s cemented in the ground, as much a part of it as the buildings in the distance that she cannot reach—can never reach no matter how hard she tries. 

The storm is here now. Six shields her head with her arms, hears a child’s distant cry, and braces for the end.

She starts up in bed, a cry threatening to escape but stifled by the clenching of her throat. She’s always choked up when she comes out of these dreams, can hardly breathe and her chest feels like it’s about to cave in on itself. The room around her is dark, save for the green glow of her Pip Boy in bed at her side. Six looks ahead of her to Boone, asleep on the couch—won’t sleep in that bed anymore, no, it’s forever tainted in his eyes but Six thinks it is just fine. Through the blinds, the dying light of dusk tries to fight its way through. Almost time for his watch, she thinks. 

They’ve been holed up in Novac for months, sleeping in Boone’s old room, falling into the old routines of what feels like an easier life. And it is easier. Easier than dealing with their effects on the wasteland, on New Vegas. Here in Novac, things are forever untouched. Six likes that. They both like that. 

Six stares at him. Watches the rise and fall of his chest, traces the outline of him in the dark even though she has to strain to make it out. There are tears in her eyes but not enough that they threaten to fall—just enough to make them burn, though. She stares unblinking, thinks of the dream that’s somehow more vague and intangible now that she’s awake. Tulsa. She’s had enough of goddamn Tulsa. Wants her mind back but, thinking about it now, she isn’t sure she ever had it to begin with. 

It won’t stop. She’s tried night after night to resolve this—whatever it is—once and for all and she can’t. It has been bleeding over, taking control of her waking mind until all she can think about is fucking Tulsa. 

He’s staring back now, she notices. Is a little embarrassed but not enough to look away. Six wonders if he’s trying to read her now like he always does. Trying to figure her out. He’s gotten good at it. She wishes she had half the skill he does—would really like to take a stab at cracking him open and making sense of him. Boone props himself onto his elbow, groans as he pinches the bridge of his nose. She can’t really see his eyes in this light; the color of them. It’s a shame. 

“I thought you had better hobbies than watching me sleep.”

Six shrugs, “Sometimes I smoke.”

“Fun,” Boone swings his legs over the edge of the couch, reaches out ahead of him to turn on the lamp. Six winces at the light. But she can see him now, and he can see her. Can see her swollen, red eyes that are sinking further and further into her skull after every restless night. And she sees the worry that flashes over him, gone the second she clocks it. She doesn’t watch him as he heads to the bathroom, doesn’t stare thoughtlessly at the door after he shuts it like she has more times than she ought to admit. 

No, she lays back, Pip-Boy resting on her stomach. Six fucks with the dials a little bit in a way she never has. Tries seeing what it has mapped outside of the West Coast—outside of the only world she’s ever known. A minuscule world, really. She’s looking for Tulsa without really looking for it; trying so hard to not admit to herself that, that tiny spot up in the corner of Oklahoma is what she is so desperately trying to find. There’s a knock at the door. Six shuts off her Pip-Boy like a kid getting into things she shouldn’t.

She doesn’t join Boone on his watch tonight. Instead she lays on the floor, burning through her last cigarette next to Carla’s bloodstains on the carpet. She finds a strange solace in them, as if she’s there, keeping her company. Sometimes Six feels bad for him, bad for not insisting that he stay in another room. But she resolves that he’s a grown man and if it really, truly bothered him, they wouldn’t be here at all. 

When she closes her eyes, she sees it. The vague approximations of what Tulsa might be swirling in her mind with all the dirt and debris and the screams. The cigarette burns out between her fingers, scorches her a little and she lets it. She thinks of Joshua when it does, and isn’t that ironic. He’d know. Have an answer for her somewhere within a sea of bible verses and metaphors. Six knows she couldn’t ask around about this, about the dreams, without sounding like she’s going insane off some bad chems. She takes a drag, feels a little like she never made it out of the dream at all. Feels hazy—wouldn’t at all be surprised if phased through the ground at any minute. If she saw that tornado walking outside the window right now.

Her skin crawls with unease and she pulls at the dead skin on her bottom lip idly. She has to go. Has to make the dreams stop. The Pip-Boy is across the room, bleeding that same green light it always does. 

[letalis-psyche]

Skill issue, Ophelia

[lelelego]

boy and his watchdog

[viperra1]

THEY TOOK BOONE.

The floor of his room in Lucky 38 was littered with bolts and screws, just waiting to be fixed into something more tangible. The Courier furrowed his brow, distracted by the frantic noises from the hall. Again. He had to hop through the trash to get to his door. "Hey, y'all, quick question – can a man have some fucking silence in his own damn house?" The noises stopped. Veronica looked at him, eyes wide and gaping from some sort of a mix between panic, pain and worry. "Six..." Ah. His guts felt like they were put in cold Siberian water. "No. Where's Boone? You were with him." The Courier paused, heartbeat quickening. He did not breathe. "He's still at McCarran?" Veronica could not utter another word. "Six..." The other people in the hall were quiet, standing around the corners, just... watching. Waiting, maybe. He did not know, and neither did he care. Finally, Gannon took the lead, laying a hand on devastated Veronica. He took a quick look at the back of her head. Injury? "McCarran was attacked by the Legion soldiers, Six. They... took captives. A captive." "...I see." Even though his palm now turned hot and sweaty, was still holding the door handle. He stood still, looking at every single person in this room – the people who's gone to battle with him, who took care of him, took care of each other and of the people that they all were oh, so tirelessly trying to save, day after day after day. The rage that he felt got nothing to do with them. He already has the crimson red look, so, well. With the level of burning, scorching, bloodlust rage he felt, this famous God damned Bull might as well be him right now. "Okay," he took a deep breath, exhale long and shuddering with anger. "Right... Get ready, folks. We're going to fucking war." He turned to Veronica, then. "You did good." If his smile was more murderous than thankful, well. His people would not hold a grudge.

details and grayscale!! i'm really proud of this piece :)

hewwo!! if any of you got to the end of the post – i am writing a fic with this courier oc x boone!! let me know if you'd be interested in reading it 🥺 i'm still too easily discouraged when in comes to writing, so support will be MUCH appreciated!!!!

[thapunqueen]

[redraw :3] draggin her ass out the bar just to go back into the desert is crazy PUT HER BACK !!! . . redraw of this down below, my art from 2 yrs ago is so terrifying and the goofy blocky leather armor era was wild thank god its over

[grimbothefool]

I like...him

[crimebunny]

...happy pride month

[jarold-rat]

thank god im normal

forgot to tag julies @jugularibbon's courier far left

thumbnail for youtubte . videoe yeap

cringe under cut

au with the lest a best julies

ugly fuck . god i ahte this bitch so fucking bad

[moristarcakebonk]

OKAY I FOUND A SUPER OLD FALLOUT NEW VEGAS ANIMATIC I DID AND ITS SO FUCKING FUNNY I WILL NEVER FINISH IT BUT GOD

[ufologyexpert]

I've been trying to get drawings done instead I've just been ending up with incomplete sketches.

[artikmonkiz]

[necrophatic]

Get hoisted idiot

[letalis-psyche]

The amount of times this guy jumpscared me with a cinematic kill is crazy

[lelelego]

misc boone/eli (?) doodles!

[viperra1]

a rare moment of reprieve

a closeup:

[thapunqueen]

he will learn to love the shirt dammit !!!!