Chapter Text
I get to work loading the boat while they sleep, carting out weapons, ammo, clothing. Some food and liquor. Johnny said something on the ride back about needing rare building materials, so I fill my pockets with screws and copper wiring and bits of crystal. A few Minutemen see me digging around in the workbench, but by now, they know better than to try and stop me. I stick some lightbulbs in a grenade box, pad them with an old t-shirt, and toss them in the boat, too. I even snag a few extra mines and traps from the armory for good measure.
John’s excitement for this place has become infectious, and I do want to get moving. By 9:00 am, I’m scooping a still-drowsy Nora out of bed and carrying her to the boat, too. She’s still wearing Maxson’s coat, but I know that taking it off would wake her up, so I reluctantly let it go. John skips along beside us, extra peppy after his morning superhit of coffee, drugs, radiation, jet fuel, virgin blood, fucking whatever it is that keeps him running.
If he’s in such an energetic mood, his ass can row this time. I set Nora down on the floor and lean her back between my legs, where I can hold her. The sea is calm and she dozes, hungover, for about half the trip. It’s a fact for which I’m exceptionally grateful when we pass the Prydwyn ruins. In this world, you must cling to even the smallest of mercies.
John bitches. A lot. Before we’ve even reached Fort Strong, he has to stop to remove his frock coat and roll up his sleeves. I’ve never been more smugly satisfied in my life.
We’re coming up on Nahant when Nora wakes up for good. She blinks and stretches, shivering back into my warmth. I run a thumb down along her scarred cheek – a clumsy attempt at reassurance, I think, but she seems grateful for it.
“Well, look who it is,” John remarks, cool as he can be while he huffs and wheezes to keep us moving.
“Did you put me in the fucking boat?” she struggles through a yawn.
“Charon put you in the boat.”
She rubs at her eyes, disgruntled. “Where the fuck we going that you had him put me in the boat?”
“Don’t you start that already,” John is quick to scold. “You’ll see soon enough.”
She cranes her head back to look at me. “Charon, where are we going?”
“You’ll see soon enough,” I parrot.
She lights up a cigarette, takes a drag, and then passes it up to me. I lay a hand on her throat, tilt her head back, and kiss her.
“Hey, give it here,” John demands.
“You’re busy,” I remind him.
“Fucking head hurts,” Nora groans, rubbing at her temples.
“Addictol’s in the left pocket,” John says, nodding to his coat on the floor.
“Look at Mr. Prepared,” she teases weakly.
“Hey, that’s Mayor Prepared, to you.”
With shaking hands, Nora digs the inhaler out and huffs it down. Her eyes clear almost instantly, and I clatter around in the supplies in an attempt to find some bottled water for her. All I can find is alcohol.
She pulls up the map on her Pip-boy, centering the marker on our current position. “Oh, we’re not far from Salem,” she says. “This is up where I got the—” She clicks her tongue, swiping three fingers along the ragged scars on her cheek.
“Not going anywhere near that place,” John reassures. “Don’t you worry.”
It sort of annoys me how quickly she’s back to normal. Fucking Addictol, piece of shit cowards’ way out. While I don’t want her to be in pain, it removes many of the consequences that would convince her to stop this on her own. It makes me worry that she’ll never really learn, since she can spend every night drinking herself blind, stuffing her veins with Med-X, and then just…wish herself better in the morning.
Still. I’d rather have this than have her dead.
We’ve rounded the last corner, still hugging the Nahant coastline, and the lighthouse comes into view. Nora seems not to notice, even as John re-orients us to the northwest. His smile is beginning to grow.
“I’m gonna figure it out, you know,” she says, still scrolling around on her map. “Fuck, we’re so far north. Wait, you’re not dropping Charon and me off at Sandy Coves Convalescent, are you?”
I roll my eyes, but John stamps his feet and laughs. “That wasn’t the plan, but plans can change.”
She leans in even closer to her Pip-boy. “John, the only things up here are craters, raiders, and Deathclaws. If you don’t—”
With a huff, I finally give in. “Nora—” I palm the top of her skull and lift her head up towards the lighthouse. We’re close enough now that we can see the Glowing Ghoul lurching back and forth in the lamp room.
Realization dawns on her– “Oh, that’s Kingsport. Are we…?” –and then realization takes hold. “Hey, we can’t be this close! What are you thinking? We don’t have Power Armor! I don’t have a Hazmat suit!”
She makes a move like she’s going to do something incredibly stupid. Launch herself out of the boat maybe, or try to wrestle the oars away from Johnny and stage a mutiny.
John starts yelling, desperately trying to keep the boat level despite her frantic struggling. “Nora, sit your ass down! You want to lose all the guns? Charon!”
“Hey!” I grab her by the waist, hauling her into my lap. “Knock it off!”
She keeps squirming, trying to twist around and look at me. I buckle when one of her bony elbows sinks into my solar plexus. “No, you’ve never been up here before! It’s suicide going anywhere near this place! The Children of—”
“We cleared it!” I finally bark at her.
She freezes, thank fucking God. “You what?”
“Where the hell do you think I’ve been runnin’ off to, these past few days?” John asks, resuming our journey.
Nora looks between us, clearly still dubious. And then it hits her. “Oh, the smoke we saw yesterday.”
John gives her a playful wink. “Told ya we were takin’ out the trash.”
“But why?” she asks.
I scoff, wrestling her into a less-dangerous position and clamping my arms around her. “You hate the Castle.”
She loves it. I knew she would, or at least I’d hoped. We tie the boat up on the dock and make a quick pass through the compound with weapons drawn, before ascertaining that the turrets, traps, and Glowing Ghoul had done their jobs. The place is still secure.
Nora gets right to work, clattering around with the workbench, trying to rip up clusters of trees, dragging concrete blocks and splintered beams all over the damn place. All the while shouting thanks and praise and stopping to kiss us every chance she gets.
I think I’m smiling. I think that’s why my face has started to ache.
She fixes the front door of the house first, digging it out of the sand and re-hanging it on its rusted hinges. I give her the box of lightbulbs, and she strings a few of them up around the end of the dock. There’s a bench down there. Then it’s up to the top of the lighthouse to do God knows what, then back down again, into the house to look at the roof, then across the yard, down to the beach, back and forth.
John busies himself stocking the kitchen with the food, liquor, and chems we brought, and I’m more than happy to leave him to it. Nora hasn’t asked for help, and I know better than to offer. So, I sit on the porch with a cigarette and my gun, and keep an eye on her. No one gave me any orders, but I feel like this is what I’m supposed to be doing right now.
As she flits frenetically between half-finished projects and fleeting distractions, she wears an expression I’ve only ever seen on her face a handful of times. There’s something sharp in her eyes, some extra brightness. I think it only happens when she feels strong, in these moments when she’s conquering this world rather than being conquered by it. It's a merciful form of forgetting; the shedding of a memory’s weight, rather than the confused miring in a fog.
It won’t last. It never does. But it’s here with her now.
She’s piling wooden pallets by the workbench when I notice it - the knock-down, drag-out fight she’s having with that unwieldy fucking battlecoat. The sleeves won’t stay out of her way, the collar is blocking her view, and every time she kneels down, she steps on the hem.
Then, with no ceremony whatsoever, she just…takes it off. She takes it off like it’s nothing, hanging it up by the workbench inside the lighthouse, and then it’s back to work. Like the act of shedding Arthur Maxson wasn't such a monumental thing after all.
She doesn’t see me watching her, and I’m grateful for it. My involvement in the little moment she’s having might change things for her. Maybe someday I’ll be able to tell her how much it healed me, too.
John and I eat. Nora doesn’t, not really. She blows through the kitchen like a tornado, kissing us and swiping some food off the table, and then she just runs back outside and keeps going. I don’t know how the fuck. The automatic lights are starting to click on by the time she finally settles the fuck down.
“So much more to do,” she tiredly announces, trudging back into the living room. “That damn roof. Got enough wood, I just don’t know how the hell I’m gonna…” Her words fade to a soft groan.
“It’s a nice night,” John reassures. “She’ll be fine for a few days.”
She heads to the kitchen, mumbling to herself, and I’m pleasantly surprised when she returns holding a bottle of water rather than a bottle of liquor.
John beckons her over to the couch. “Come here, gorgeous.”
She sits sideways between his legs, leaning limply into the crook of his shoulder. “You did good, gentlemen,” she says genuinely. “I’m impressed.”
“Well, we left you the hard job,” he chuckles, rubbing a hand up and down her back. “Hell of a lot easier to take a place than it is to make it your own and hold it.”
“We did it before, we can do it again.” She smiles across the room towards me. “Besides, we’ve got the toughest son of a bitch north of the Delaware on our side, now. Boston’s own Angel of Death.”
Fuck, I like that. I like that so much. But not Boston’s. Only hers.
“Yeah, I don’t know about all that ‘we’,” John heeds playfully. “What did I just say about easy job, hard job?”
“Whatever,” she laughs, squirming out of his grip and standing. “I don’t want your help anyway, you’d probably just fuck it up.”
John whispers, “And that’s how ya get out of puttin’ up a roof.” He mimes shooting me with a pistol.
Nora makes a move towards my chair, and I can’t help but reach for her. It’s a pathetic-looking gesture, I know – palm upturned, supplicant. But she takes my hand and I open my mouth to say something to her, say anything, but then she’s kissing me and it doesn’t seem so important to speak right now.
First night in the new house. Got a queen-sized bed upstairs. Rather, we pushed two twins together into a makeshift frame. Makes me wonder.
“Thank you,” she whispers. There’s a smile in her voice.
“You’re welcome,” comes my utterly inadequate reply.
“Well, I’m going to sleep,” she says, slipping away from me. “Long day today, got another long one tomorrow. You two gonna be able to take care of yourselves?”
John gives her a crooked smile. “Not likely.” He takes her by the wrists, trying to coax her back in to straddle his lap. “Hey, where do you think you’re goin’?”
She laughs. “No, don’t you even think about it.”
“C’mon,” he begs, still tugging on her. “Say you love me.”
She takes his face in her hands, whispering against his lips, “You’re the love of all my life.” With a wry laugh and one more kiss, she slips from his hold and makes for the stairs. “Goodnight, John Hancock.”
“’Night, beautiful.”
It’s all rather…unceremonious. Considering. John seems unbothered though, standing and stretching lazily. “Well,” he says, producing a bottle of wine from God knows where. “That’s last call. Don’t have to go home, but we can’t stay here.”
I roll my eyes, because that metaphor of his is as inexact as it is overused. “I’m going to check the perimeter,” I announce.
John barks out a laugh, strolling out onto the lawn. “Whatever lights your fire, old man.”
I give the place a once-over, checking all of the turrets and traps and spotlights. I keep an eye on the second story window until the light from Nora’s Pip-boy finally shuts off, and then I set out to find where Hancock wandered off to.
I find him sprawled across the bench at the end of the dock, clinging to that damn bottle of wine. The lights strung up behind him cast a warm sort of glow over everything, laying gold into the edges of the peaks and ripples in the black, wind-blown water.
“Well, big guy,” he says, scooting over to make room for me, “we did good.”
I nod briskly, sitting down to his right. “I heard.”
He smiles wryly, offering me the bottle of wine. I take it and drink deep.
“Attaboy,” he chuckles, clapping me on the back.
I hand the bottle back, grimacing slightly. But I have to admit, at least to myself, that once I get past the taste, I do enjoy the line of warmth it draws down my center. I enjoy the easy lightness that I know will come soon enough.
“Everything locked down tight?” John asks, looking up over his shoulder towards the sprawling compound. “Turrets and traps?”
“Turrets and traps,” I confirm.
“How about our new friend?” He gestures towards the lighthouse with the wine bottle, where the bright spot of green is shuddering and lurching back and forth.
I roll my eyes. “Wish you’d let me kill that fuckin’ thing.”
“Aww, c’mon,” he groans, sinking down in his seat. His leg hooks around beneath mine and he jostles me a little. “It’s fun. It’s funny.”
“And if it was your ass up there?” I parry, taking the bottle back again.
He rasps out a laugh. “Fuck, I guess I’d just be glad someone was puttin’ me to good use.”
I roll my eyes again, taking an oblivion-seeking swallow.
We lapse into comfortable silence, passing the bottle back and forth. Silence is a rare luxury in John’s company, and that tells me he’s exhausted. Gradually, the wine takes hold and the sharp edges start to wear away for me. I’m new to this still. Drinking. It was never allowed of me before. But I know I’m safe here. I don’t need to worry.
“Thought she’d fuck us,” I rasp, looking out over the dark water. The admission catches me quickly, and I’m momentarily horrified that I’d said it aloud.
But John just laughs. “Right? Shit. If ever there was a night.”
“Does…?” I shift uncomfortably. “Does she bleed?” Is that the reason? Does anyone even care about that anymore?
He takes a drink, features falling slightly. “No. And I’m pretty sure that one’s on me. All the rads I’ve shot up there, ya know, just…wrecked her.”
My stomach lurches, and I think about that night in the General’s quarters, when I set her Geiger counter off.
“Not like she wanted any more kids,” John murmurs, a little sadly. “Couldn’t have given ‘em to her anyway.”
So, what’s the excuse tonight? “Must be tired, then,” I muse aloud.
“Yeah. But nah, you know. She’s never under any obligation.”
I bristle, defensive. “I know that.”
“Still…” He sinks closer. “Man, I get ‘ya.” His hand drifts lazily between his legs, squeezing. “We put a lotta work into this place. Woulda been nice.”
I muster a smirk, shaking my head. Because never in a million years would I ever have imagined that this is where I’d end up.
Beside me, I hear the whisper of a stifled grunt. A quiet, breathy, “Fuck.”
Something like anxiety mixed with a guilty thrill squeezes at my brainstem. I keep my gaze fixed in the distance. “What are you doing?”
“Nothin’ you haven’t been a party to before.” I hear the rustle of fabric beside me, followed by the sound of a zipper. “Fuck, I’ve been carryin’ this thing around for days.”
“John.” Half caveat, half plea.
“Hey, no one chained you to this bench.”
Goddamn John Hancock. He just had to say that, didn’t he? Had to add that extra little edge of a challenge. Now I can’t leave. But I don’t have to look, either.
“Gimme that shit,” I grumble, taking the wine away. Drinking.
His breathing has gotten heavier. “C’mon, then, big guy,” he coaxes, voice all confident grit. “Ante up.”
I feel a rush of shame when I realize I’m half-hard, which doesn’t even make sense, because I sure as shit had not been attracted to men last time I checked. But here I am.
“You move too fast, Johnny,” I grumble, utterly dismayed. But I do it anyway. I unbuckle my cod plate, unzip my leathers, and ante up.
I hear him laugh triumphantly beside me, but I still won’t give him the satisfaction of glancing over.
“Happy?” I grumble, just sitting there with my dick in my hand like an idiot.
“Wil be,” he grunts, sliding down lower, closer.
I can feel his eyes on me, expectant, so I start to move my hand.
I never used to enjoy this. In an ideal world, with an ideal body, I would have the luxury of just blanking out, thinking about nothing, and moving my hand until it’s over. That was always my intent in the past. Breathe in and out, shuck my hand over my cock, come. Physical needs met. It should be simple. But this is not an ideal world, and I’m not that man anymore. John and Nora saw to that.
His voice is sudden and jarring, pulling me out of my own head. “Why’s yours different?”
I pause. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know, different.”
I grip my cock at the base. “The word you’re looking for is ‘bigger.’”
He barks out a laugh. “You got jokes, old man.”
That forces a smirk to my lips.
“You’ve got less…I don’t know, skin.” Then, all at once, he’s touching me. I jump hard, looking down to see his finger dragging around the edge of my cockhead. “Here. Is that a Ghoul thing? Haven’t fucked enough Ghoul men to know.”
I shudder a little, unsure if I should press into his hand or recoil. I know what he’s talking about. And I already know what his dick looks like, both soft and hard. I don’t need to look for the sake of comparison.
“Well,” he chuckles, “haven’t fucked enough Ghoul men sober and in well-lit rooms, anyway. That guy on the Watch, Stanley-whatever? He has the same thing. I think Deegan does, too.”
My answer is clipped. “Not a ghoul thing. Pre-War thing.” And then, with a touch of cruel delight, I add, “Ask your wife.”
“Ask my wife,” he chuckles, amused. And then his fingers are wrapping around me, giving a few tentative strokes. “Feels different.” His voice has gotten low and husky, and I know this tone quite well. I’ve just never heard it outside of Nora’s company before.
Finally, I muster a glance in his direction. He’s got one hand on himself, one hand on me. Shirt unbuttoned to expose his scarred chest. Just because John’s gets off on being taken like a woman (In the past, I allow. According to rumor.) doesn’t mean he could ever be mistaken for one. He’s all lean, wiry muscle. Solid shoulders, small, tapered waist, narrow hips.
Definitely not what gets me hard.
Then again, it is.
I snap back to attentiveness when he squeezes. “Sportsmanlike thing to do would be reciprocate,” he prods, just a slight edge of annoyance in his tone.
Swallowing all my shame and reticence, I reach across the gulf and take him in my hand. His cock jumps and he groans, pressing into it eagerly.
He was right. Uncircumcised feels different. Smoother, looser. Easier.
That, and he’s a lot smaller in my hand than I’m used to.
He exhaled a broken, “F-fuck,” sinking even closer to me. He’s practically leaning on my shoulder now, staring unabashedly.
I have no idea what to do. No amount of practice on myself will ever teach me how to make another man feel good. But I must be doing something right.
He starts to squeeze harder, move his hand faster. It’s a dry, chafing sort of bite, skin tugging, but it’s not bad. Precum beads on the tip of my cock and he doesn’t miss a beat gathering it on his fingertips and spreading it across the head. I almost choke, it’s so good.
I don’t know what comes over me, whether it’s the alcohol, the exhaustion, or just sheer, worked-up desperation. But I let go of his cock, and before he can protest, I’ve grabbed hold of his waistband, his hip, the crook of his knee, and then I’m dragging him over to sit astride my lap.
It’s not hard to haul him around like this. He can thank his Post-War nutrition for that.
“Yeah,” he laughs breathlessly, “Now we’re talk— Ahh!”
I wrap my hand around his shaft and mine, pressing them together hard, and start jerking us off in tandem.
This is somehow more familiar. We’ve done this before, inside Nora.
After that, it doesn’t take long at all. Our size difference is evened up by the fact that he’s sitting in my lap, and so his skin slides against the underside of my shaft. The catch and drag is painfully good.
He winds his fingers through the straps on my shoulders and starts to rut frantically into my hand. He’s looking down, watching our cocks disappear and reappear in my grip. The rim of that fucking stupid hat keeps banging into my forehead. And then I hear his breathing change like he’s close. I know what it sounds like when he’s close.
“Well?” I pant. “You gonna ante up, or what?”
He shudders and comes hard, striping my leather armor with glowing white.
“Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whines, oversensitive, trying to squirm away from me. But I hold fast. I’m not done, yet. “Charon—”
“Sit still,” I command.
He starts to shake violently, thighs tightening around mine like a vise. “Charon!”
“No, you’re not going anywhere.” I clap my free hand around the back of his neck, hauling him in against my chest, squeezing. “I like you right where you are. Right— Right fuckin’ here.”
He whines in my ear, succumbing to it, and I’m done for. Climax hits me like a train, and I come with one final thrust. My head is spinning, breath snatched from my throat. Maybe I’m making noise. I can’t tell. I’m caught up in the warmth pooling between us, and all that useless, irradiated seed dripping down my knuckles.
It – he – has no right to feel this fucking good.
“Well, then,” John laughs, breathless.
I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Some sarcastic remark, or one of his overused, post-coital jokes. But that seems like all he’s got.
I take immense pride in the fact that I’ve managed to, at least temporarily, shut John Hancock the fuck up.
“Up,” I command, popping him on the hip with my free hand.
He flops back onto the bench, limp and spent. I stumble to the edge of the dock and drag my hand through the water, grimacing at the sight of the glowing wisps as they dissipate and float away. Back still turned to him, I stuff my cock back into my leathers, and when I return to the bench, he’s already lit up a pair of cigarettes for us.
Hancock doesn’t miss a beat when I sit back down, leaning his full, dead weight against my side. He seems to grow heavier and heavier each time he exhales. Melting into me.
“You’ve turned me into a whore,” I grumble. It’s a joke. Sort of.
“Ahh, you love it,” he mocks. “Poor old man’s gotta get laid all the time. How will you ever survive?”
“It’s queer.”
He barks out another laugh. “Nothin’ wrong with finding a little comfort in a foxhole while your blood’s still warm.”
“This isn’t a foxhole,” I quickly dismiss.
“Whole world’s a battlefield, brother. If this ain’t a foxhole, then there aren’t any left.”
“You’re a pain in the ass.”
He chuckles. “Listen, all those fine sensibilities of yours died in the war along with everything else. Hallelujah to the apocalypse, I say.” He scoops his wine bottle up of the ground for a solitary toast, and drinks deep.
“I do not have fine sensibilities,” I sneer.
“Oh, yeah? Then why is it my full-time job tryin’ to convince you two dinosaurs that there’s more to life than Vaultie position in the dark?”
I don’t have any idea how he expects me to respond to that.
“Listen, you know, no one’s forcin’ you to stay,” he remarks, his voice as honest as I’ve ever heard it. “But you’re not a stray dog. Wish you’d quit trying so damn hard to pretend like you are.”
My own words thrown back at me. But those words had not been spoken to John. I whisper, “She told you about that, then?”
“Yeah. And you were right: I was thinkin’ it too, but woulda never had the nerve to say it to her. See?” He nudges at me with an elbow. “We need you, big guy.”
“No, you don’t.”
He gives me a dismissive wave. “Yeah, we do. And face it: you need us.”
I scoff.
“No, I mean it. Have you taken a good look at yourself lately?”
Yes, I think, bitter as I run my hand back through my newly-cut-and-styled hair.
John catches it, pointing. “A-ha, see? You know you’ve changed, brother. This ain’t the same wild animal I met in the Ninth Circle. And I’m not just talking about freedom, here. Look at ya - hair’s growin’ in better, skin’s sealing up. Eyes clearer. Hell, you even sound better.”
“Only because you make me talk all the time,” I grouse, dismissive.
“And we make you sleep,” he parries, “And eat. You’re out in the sun and the rads, gettin’ your wounds treated quickly. But hey – offer still stands. You just say the word and you’ll have a third of our caps, a suit of power armor, and all the weapons and ammo you can carry.”
My lips knit together tightly.
“Hell, Wiseman up at the Slog would love to have ya.” John yawns and stretches lazily, removing his hat and hanging it from the corner of the bench. “Not one fighter among ‘em, up there. They could use the muscle.” Without missing a beat, he reclines with his head in my lap.
I don’t respond, hands hovering over him in shock and annoyance.
“Old Wise-guy and I go way back,” he says. “Way back. If I told him to set you up, he’d do it. No question. And there’s a girl over there, Holly? She’d climb you like a fuckin’ tree and never come down.”
I roll my eyes. “John.”
“I mean it! Talk about the roughest tumble I ever had, and that was before I went Gh—”
“John.”
“Hell, we’d even help you take a place all of your own, if that’s what you wanted. Or,” he chuckles, “You know, we could put on blindfolds and count to a thousand while you walked away, and we’d never know where ya went. All I ask is that ya leave us breathin’, big guy. Not sure how well I’d cope with having my brains blown out.”
I exhale deeply, hands finally falling in resignation. One settles on his narrow chest. “I don’t plan on going anywhere,” I admit.
“Oh, no?”
“Not that I couldn’t hold my own, I just…” I sink lower into the bench and snarl, utterly defeated. “I guess this is just my kind of freakshow.”
John laughs explosively, stamping his feet against the bench in delight. “Yeah,” he sighs, “Yeah, that’s the spirit.”
“Easy! Jesus fucking Christ, Charon!”
Reality hits me in a series of rapid-fire flashes:
That was Nora’s voice. Nora is here.
I just woke up. It’s morning, and I’m still on the bench by the dock. Kingsport. Laying on my back. My back hurts.
John is laying on my chest. I’m holding him. Holding him tightly. Hand on the back of his head.
My knife is in my hand, and it is very near Nora’s face.
“What are you doing?” I demand, self-conscious and more than a little defensive.
“Well, that was the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” she appraises, leaning away from the blade.
“Knock it off.”
She just laughs brightly. “Put it back in your pants, Charon.”
She can be bright, because she slept in a queen-sized bed last night. How nice for her.
John starts to grumble, trying to squirm out of my grip, and I let him go. “Ugh,” he moans, swaying as he sits up between my legs. “You see the br—”
“—brand on the Brahmin that stamped my head last night?” Nora and I mock in unison.
“Ah, you can both shut up,” he mumbles, rubbing at his face. “Think I’m still drunk.”
I corroborate, “I think you are, too.”
“C’mon, you big baby,” Nora condescends, hauling him to his feet. She takes his hat from the corner of the bench and jams it haphazardly onto his head. “It’s time to greet the day.”
“What’s got you so cheery?” he asks, “You get into the good shit without me?”
“Call it the natural high of manifest destiny.” She leans him back against her chest and kicks at his ankles until he starts to shuffle limply around the dock.
“Can’t you turn that light off?” he whines, squinting into the morning sun.
She steers him to the edge of the dock. “What did you two get up to last night?” she teases, tugging at his unbuttoned pants.
“Nothin’. Mind your business, smoothskin”
She looks over her shoulder at me. “Charon?”
I sit up, back popping in protest. “Mind your business, smoothskin.”
“Uh-huh.”
Hancock jostles his wife lightly. “Hey, do the thing.”
“You’re a grown man, you do it yourself.” She tries to step away from him, but he just leans back harder, arms hanging limply at his sides.
“Aw, come on.”
Nora huffs in frustration, hiking him up against her chest. “John Hancock, I swear…” She threads her arms under his, pulls his fly open, and takes his dick in-hand.
“Yeah,” he chuckles, head falling back against her shoulder as he starts to piss off the edge of the dock.
I groan and roll my eyes, because these two are the biggest fucking weirdos I’ve ever met, but I’ll be goddamned if they aren’t my weirdos. Johnny, with all of his chaos and fire, bucking and thrashing and daring the world to try him. And Nora. The only person he listens to. The calm in his storm. The calm in mine.
They wander back over the me, each grabbing one of my wrists and hauling me to my feet. My head hurts and I’m momentarily dizzy.
“Come on, big guy,” she says, slinging my arm over her shoulders. “Let’s get some coffee in you before you fall to pieces.”
I plant a kiss on the top of her head, for the effort.
John follows her lead, ducking under my other arm, and together, we make our way back up towards the house. Our house. Nora’s already chattering away, outlining all of her home improvement plans for the day. John and I listen. I haul her closer.
I’ve known guys like her before, guys who have seen too much and just check out. Time puts a cigarette in their mouth, a needle in their vein, and a bottle in their hand. Regret hangs on their shoulders like a dead man’s coat, keeping them down. After a while, they start to forget who they are, or maybe they become something else entirely. Something they don’t recognize. Maybe that’s the point.
Sometimes they get better, and sometimes they don’t.
I know that Nora will be one of the ones that gets better. She has me, and John, and enough caps and ammo to last her for the rest of her life. And even though she never wanted to be the one to fix this world, she did it anyway.
She fixed me.
It’s not perfect, not quite. Because I still get scared that I’ll wake up in the corner of that bar, jarred from sleep by a swift kick to my ribs. The fog rolls in and I forget, and I worry that I’m still living in a world where I’ll never know gentleness or compassion, or the kind touch of skin against mine.
Sometimes, I can still taste my death. It’s a piece of metal between my teeth, painful and complete and distracting.
But I know that those fears will fade with time.
I trust these people – John and Nora – more completely than I’ve ever trusted a thing before. More completely than I trust myself. They’ve helped more than they’ll ever know.
And she’ll get better. She’ll find purpose. John and I will be here.
I know that I am an obsolete tool, running ancient code on extinct parts; a relic from a time long since gone. I know that I am a living weapon. But I’m her weapon.
They say my name is Death, but they’re wrong. I am an angel of Death, and I am very much alive.
Not because it’s what I’ve been ordered to be. Rather, it is what I’ve chosen.