Chapter Text
This was her life now. Skulking around her friend like a shamed puppy, and all the while trying to keep her legs closed enough to keep alive one more day. This was it - stuck once again in a cleared out building with the weight of that unspoken thing clinging to her skin.
John Hancock, ever able to appear calm and collected, just gazed at her through a smug, side-eyed glance.
“I don’t see any other way to go about it, Hancock. We’ll need to take the elevator…”
“Nah, that’s nonsense,” he saddled up next to her with that swagger of his that he normally saved for moments of his own genius. The ghoul was, surprisingly, a show off at times. But thankfully his ego didn’t go too much beyond requiring a bit more of her attention than usual to be satisfied. A stale cigarette hung off his lower lip; black eyes were half hidden under a sly look.
“Maybe there’s a backdoor entrance or something,” she said, willing him to ignore any double meaning in her words.
Hancock brushed her aside with an elbow that almost made her pout like she was a teenager again. “No sport to it that way. Hold this for me, Sister.”
Nora’s lips thinned, heart pounding but she took his shotgun off his hands, rested it back on her shoulder, her hip cocked out as he rubbed his scratchy palms in a show of preparation. As long as she bit her tongue he’d never know this time - so she locked her ankles, leaned back and got ready for the show. It was all about appearing calm; unaffected. That last time had been a slip-up…
She got her show and somehow managed to keep that dastardly moan in the back of her throat. Somehow.
Nora prided herself on keeping a cool facade even as she watched Hancock lift up the large cluster of a cement wall, held together by age and rotten iron supports. The only change she could feel in her was the slow leak of moisture between her thighs and that sudden, expected pull in her lower belly.
“G-get that smoke rack,” he growled, teeth snapping hard, somehow still looking smug despite the slight quiver in his thighs.
It took her an embarrassingly long amount of time to shove off the wall, throw the cigarette machine on its side and wedge it up under the impossibly heavy foundation. The middle of the machine crunched as Hancock lowered the cement wall onto the metal case, but it held. Surprisingly. What didn’t hold was her tongue.
“Holy fuck, Hancock,” she exclaimed, shaken. She must have looked like a fish out of water because his eyes glinted. That shine made her snap her teeth together. Silenced and embarrassed.
“Not too shabby for a ‘rotting corpse’, if I do say so myself,” he grinned at his own slight, in all his self-deprecating glory.
Nora frowned, “You shouldn’t say things like that…” and she left it at that, knowing he would just grin at her with that toothy, shit eating smile of his that both annoyed and flustered her. Never taking life as seriously as she wished he did. But that was his charm, wasn’t it? Charm also meant hefting things more than four times his weight like they were recliners or something only marginally heavy.
She handed him back his shotgun, avoiding his deep black eyes as she got to her hands and knees, popping the soft pip boy light on with a ‘bloop’ of sound. The bubble of arousal was still forming, but she had gotten good this past week at ignoring it.
The stairwell was open now. Downward she could make out a flickering light pinging off the back wall. Upstairs looked all pitch and dangerous, however. But they didn’t need to get to the second floor. Thankfully.
“I’ll go in first, wait for my signal,” she told him, already shuffling under the opening, praying to whatever God cleansed the world that it didn’t fall and split her in half. Above her she could hear him snort - the shot of an inhaler was followed up by a sharp inhale not long after. Hit of jet after that indeed, she thought, checking her plasma pistol with nary a sound.
Ready for anything, she chanted.
There was nothing, though. It was dead quiet and thankfully it was upstairs that had toppled; blocked off by chunks of fused cement and death-inducing iron poles. She gave the basement a once over with her eyes, not even stepping off the last step before tip-toeing back. She needed John with her just by looking at the scattered layout. It took two to clear a room with so many tight spaces spilling out into open darkness.
“Hancock,” she whispered near the opening.
No response.
Nora sighed, got back on her knees, ready to poke her head out and shout for him if he managed to dumb himself down in a chem-haze while she was gone all of five minutes, but a low chuckle struck her from behind and she gasped hard, twisted, pointed her weapon and felt an immediate cold sweat leak out of her pours when she was met with a grinning, smug-faced Hancock sitting with his forearms resting on his thighs at the foot of the stairs.
“Are you fucking insane,” she hissed, eyes wide and heart racing, “I could have shot you - you idiot.”
His trademark hat was tucked up, only exemplifying the casual tilt to his body. His lazy smile curled further up, “Not with that little thing,” he told her, flipping his freshly cleaned knife around his thumb and knuckle as if it wasn’t made of brahmin hide and steel, but pillow fluff.
“You’re high. You lifted this fucking thing like it was nothing,” she jabbed a finger at the cement wall as if to emphasize her point, even though he only seemed to grow cheekier, “and now you’re acting like you want to turn into a pile of green sludge or something.”
“Don’t tell me ya think I need some chems to lift up that little thing? Breakin’ my heart all over again,” despite his words she watched him smirk before taking a hit off the jet inhaler cupped in his other hand, exhaling the thin trails of vapor from his ruined nose. Those eyes of his seemed to glimmer in the light off her Pip-boy and that and other things were to blame for the tickle in her gut. Those eyes, even black, showed way too much for her to ignore the way he looked at her - and what they told her.
“We don’t have time for this right now,” it heated her cheeks to think about it, let alone say it. The flippant confirmation felt brutally open.
Hancock just tipped his hat down, rolled up on his heels and sheathed his knife with a thin expression, “Whatever ya say, Sister. Got all the time in the world, after all, not like somebody else I know.”
Nora swallowed, recalled the way he lifted that impossibly large wall just behind her and ignored the rest - ignored the way he lifted that Gunner off her six days ago or tried to ignore it at least. That fucking man - the size of a fridge and easily as heavy…and then he had just been…gone. She’d seen Hancock with his fists curled around the slack in the back of the Gunner’s fatigues, teeth bared and a heat in his eyes that made the black look red in the afternoon sun. She’d watched Hancock lift that man over one slim shoulder, hefting him into a rocky face that decimated the man’s skull. Dead before he knew what happened, she recalled.
He’d thrown him off of her. Killed him. Just like that - so easily it seemed.
And…now she’s thinking about it again. Just like she promised herself she wouldn’t.
Nora inhaled the musky smell of the stairwell, clearing her thoughts as she traced her steps down the stairs, Hancock at her back all the while, shotgun at the ready. They both checked the perimeter, meeting in the middle with a fleeting glance on her part when the place turned up empty.
“Nothin’,” John confirmed lowly, shifting ruined fingers in his coat pocket, pulling out two smokes and a flip lighter.
It wasn’t right, she thought, feeling eyes on her, but not seeing any. Hancock seemed to share her apprehension, eying the corners and open doorways with suspicion as he lit both cigarettes between his necrotic lips, sucking in the stale smoke. The simple pleasant moan he made when he spoke was absent as if he was waiting for a noise in the silence. Waiting.
They smoked in the middle of the basement, quiet and waiting. Knowing.
A scuttle above their heads was all the warning they got before the wails of ferals filtered through the cracks in the walls. One of them slid out like a damn spider from a fissure in the wall - that one was hers. The rest Hancock took out as they swarmed up from the drainage grates. With that shotgun of his, he was a force to be reckoned. The ferals were already still by the time she’d watched her thin, sprawling enemy liquefy into choppy green gunk.
The reek of gunpowder, smoke and plasma residue mixed with the scent of rotten flesh and putrid blood so perfectly that she found a support column, braced herself and heaved.
“Need to lay off that swill Cait keeps making,” she heard Hancock inform her through the stuffy cotton in her ears. She would have thrown a colorful comment back at him, but she was too thankful for the bottle of purified water he handed her to do much else but chug it down.
Something about him having a dad-voice, she figured. If she called him out on something like that it’d get him good - or he’d laugh her off and send her another playful jab. She could never figure out how to win with him, even when he lost she still felt like he got the last word.
His raspy voice drew her gaze behind her after a while, blinking away the wet film over her eyes to find him kicking limp bodies away from a hatch in the floor. Bingo, she thought, finally meeting his expression with a grin of her own, even if hers was less steady than his.
This time, he went first, arching a tattered brow at her when she opened her mouth to order him to stay back. The sick still left her stomach feeling raw, so she decided to take the last swallow of her water as he disappeared into the darkness.
“No ferals,” she heard him grumble, and then immediately click his tongue with a pleased sound, “unless ya wanna count this dashing ghoul down here amongst ‘em.”
Nora snorted, biting her tongue to stop from laughing.
“You know, some folks just can’t appreciate a good joke, glad you’re not one of them,” he sounded amused, but with a tang of bitterness that left her frowning. When he found the light down below, clicking away the darkness, exposing a dirt floor and some broken glass, she swallowed a breath and delved down.
She didn’t even get her feet on the packed ground before he was standing beside her, a hand on the stone railing, shotgun slung low in his red, white and blue belt, “There ‘aint nothing down here, Nora. We got time for it now.”
Nora felt her lips fall into a frown. He never used her name unless he wanted to break character and play seriously.
Her rear sank back on the step, cold and hard on her ass but a good distraction from the gleam in his eyes. She didn’t want to talk about it - better to leave it hanging awkwardly between them until one of them died. But Hancock was patient about everything else but her. It really wasn’t a good place to have this discussion. Might have been safer to have this talk before they left Hangman’s Alley, but she’d had a good enough excuse then too.
It would always be excused unless he cornered her, though, which was practically what he was doing. Smart move on his part.
“What part do you want to talk about?” she managed, finding her breath catching in her throat as his sinewy arm went straight against the railing, blocking off one means of escape.
“We can start at the part where you stuck your tongue down my throat,” he said low, not exactly patronizing but not with the usual warmth that she immediately missed.
“Yeah,” she swallowed, “we could start off there.”
Hancock’s eyes gleamed, something hesitant and eager beneath the black, wet film.
“…yeah,” she repeated quietly, “…sure, that part. Would you believe me if I said I’d just been happy to be alive?”
Hancock threw her a one-sided smile, enough of a gesture that she could finally breathe. When had she stopped? - sometime when he braced his arm on her side, she figured. He had a way of taking the air out of her lungs.
“Saved your pretty ass enough times to know that’s a dressed up lie,” he warned, eyes hot like black coal.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Hancock.” No reason to use anything more familiar like ‘John’ when he had her near pinned, waiting for a confession she was sure he knew without her having to tell him. It’d been going on like this for weeks prior to her common brush with death. The kiss was just belated if anything. He hadn’t seemed so opposed to it either…but perhaps that was the problem. No, that was the problem.
She couldn’t find the words.
“Tell me what I'm supposed to think then,” he said, a ragged edge to his tone - that soft slur she’d come to relish and despite making her stomach flip and topple like a rolling barrel set ablaze. Nora braced herself as he moved closer, an inch here and then another forward until she could smell the stale, warm musk of him. It’s a smell she rolled into at night when it was just the two of them hold up. A smell she couldn’t help but inhale with a flutter in her eyes.
Hancock breathed, hot breath ghosting over the side of her face, “Look me in the eyes,” and she looked at him, somehow, “and tell me I didn’t open up ah’ flood gates between those legs.”
If he were any other man she’d have slapped him. Before the bombs, she’d have given Nate an evil look and watched the fist fight ensue, but this was Hancock and he wasn’t lying. She was.
The smug accusation made his mouth work up in a smirk. What a beautiful bastard.
Six days ago, when John took a knee, reaching his hand out to heft her up after tossing that scum off her, the fading burn of violent fingers still on her arms and neck, she’d lost it. The moment she felt the heat of him on her front she was done for. Hancock groaned and stroked down her jaw after she tugged him on top of her, lost in a sea of desire and adrenaline. She’d never been so wet in all her life.
He had that right…
She couldn’t admit to that, “Y-yess…”, but she did anyway, feeling at once mortified and relieved to have spoken that one little word.
John didn’t seem as pleased with himself as she’d have thought. Instead, his lips turned down. He wore a look of reservation unbecoming his normal charming disposition. Instead, he looked a little…heartbroken?
“Then what’s the game here,” he asked, almost a whisper, “some kinda guilt - teasing me for shits and gigs - or is it my zombie stare that’s thrown ya off? I can handle the ugly truth if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
Neither, she wanted to say. But perhaps it was a combination of all three.
“I don’t know,” she said instead, feeling it was the truth if a bit of a stretch. She knew a part of it had something to do with Ol’ Nate, buried just a month ago. Those old memories still fresh at times when they shouldn’t be, but Hancock had stirred something harsh where Nate never even stepped and something about that felt like a betrayal.
Warm, scratchy fingers traced her chin, so softly it reminded her of strands of hair in the wind at first. She shifted, gasped without having the good grace to hold it in and watched a myriad of emotions pass like clouds over the depth of John’s eyes. No, it was too intimate. If he just wanted to fuck her and be done with it then that would have been one thing. Maybe that’s why she’d ripped her lips away from him when he’d sighed - that soft, relieved sound…so pleased and content. Too much.
“Dangerous stuff you’re playing with, Nora,” he muttered, injecting an ounce of humor into his tone she knew was only for her, “and ya know what happens when someone handles old dynamite.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“Least you know that much. Let’s keep our hands and feet inside the ride from now on then - unless ya really wanna’ ride the roller coaster.”
Nora nodded, flushed red and embarrassed more than she could ever recall, but Hancock took it all in stride. Always did, she realized. Slurs and jabs washed off him like rain and right now seemed no different. He was smooth, even when she could tell he didn’t want to be.
They smiled, both forced smiles and left it at that. At least that day.
The gear they brought back from the bunker was half-rotted away with time. But Smiling Larry could get most anything running with some duct tape and elbow grease. It didn’t feel like a complete waste of time, even if the stuff slung over their shoulders wasn’t what they expected, nor needed. Even though Hancock still watched her when he assumed she wasn’t paying attention, and even though she did the same, something about the trip back to Hangman’s Alley felt a little less strained than the one away from it.
It was about a week later at the Castle - days of blissful ease and forgiveness - that she stepped outside one overcast morning to find Preston shouting up instructions to a red lithe form at the top of the busted relay tower.
Nora stopped dead, mouth flooding with saliva that she nearly choked on when a strong gust of wind blew the red frock coat back, waves of crimson up high. Hancock looked like a bloody pirate, a wrench between his teeth, holding on to the support bar one handed while the other readjusted his tricorn in the dastardly winds...
He plucked the wrench from his teeth, still one-handed, “Hell’ava view up here, soldier!” she heard him shout, grinning from ear to ear.
“No time for sight-seeing, Hancock. You got that panel open yet?”
“Yea, yeah…”
Nora felt the moisture gather between her thighs, soaking her freshly cleaned underwear. Ruined. He’d ruined her panties. It had taken ages to find a decent pair and the last of the abraxo went to cleaning them. And now they were ruined.
Son of a bitch, she thought, curling her fingers into her palm. She watched him kick his boots into the support rails, bracing himself as he detached the panel box, lugging the heavy thing up on his shoulder with the wrench back between his teeth...
She didn’t want to stay around to see how he managed to climb his way down with one hand and a new fifty plus pound box of metal balanced on his shoulder. She had better things to do - like duck back from the cement archway and find her office, lock the door and find her chair with shaky legs...and…
It was the longest walk across the yard she’d ever experienced.
“If we do this there is no going back…” she whispered, laying her palms on the smooth, dusty wood of her desk, breathing hard and heavy and feeling the heat creep up into her cheeks for the thousandth fucking time this week.
No going back, she repeated. No going back.
It didn’t matter how much she chanted it, though, no revelation or crack of common sense shined through. She still unclasped her belt buckle, hefted herself up and shoved everything down to her ankles.
Her eyes raced to the lock on her door, momentarily at odds with which way the lock was tilted when it was locked. Was it locked? Yes, it was. She remembered…
Her inside we’re blazing, tight and slick and the simplest stroke was ecstasy. The last time she’d done this had been back in Diamond City, in a bed at Piper’s. She'd been all alone, at night...miles away from John Hancock and his dastardly humor and rugged looks - looks that somehow she found more appealing than any of the smooth-faced men and women who'd shown her interest before.
The lack of good support on the desk made her side ache, but it felt too good to stop now.
A bed would have been better, she realized, half-way to an orgasm that was making her knees quiver and shoulders shake, but she was out of sorts enough that just finding her quarters at the other end of the settlement would have spelled certain failure. Besides, she could be quiet.
There were only a short few seconds where she heard the commotion outside the thin door of her office - stopping her fingers briefly on the brink. Nora’s heart stammered. Her breath paused and then the scuttle of feet fled and she swallowed a moan as her fingers swathed quickly across her clit.
Hancock...
Ghastly grinning, bathed in sunlight. Knife dancing between his fingers. Those crude jokes; always a hair away from vulgar. His mouth, expressive and roguish despite the lack of plush lips - the taste of ash on her tongue. Heat...his thankful groan when she slipped her tongue inside his mouth.
The orgasm that came was harsh but short - lackluster for all the eager, sweet sensations.
Nora sighed, her knee giving way for her legs to swing down over her desk. The gentle waves weren't as powerful as they ought to have been, but they were pleasant all the same.
It would have been different with him...
Alone, by herself, it was oddly unfulfilling, though, she thought mindlessly, still in a daze as the soft contractions inside her fluttered around nothing. She thought of Hancock - of him grinning rakishly in the wind, holding a hand to his trademark hat. Looking for all intents like a dangerous buccaneer.
Her knees still felt useless by the time she felt stable enough to appear from the doorway as inconspicuous as possible. The wind on her cheeks was biting, proving her fears that her cheeks were hot and most likely pink still from her orgasm. Not even that worthwhile of one either.
She could lie if anyone commented on the blush, the drying sweat or general lazy way she found herself strolling back into the yard. Just feeling under the weather, she'd say. Bad Brahmin the night before. Tired from the journey. She could think up a dozen excuses.
Back outside the air smelt like meat. A fire was glowing along the western wall just off the left of the corn plots. The sun was starting to set. A late end to the light now that the summer months were in full swing.
Nora looked down at her wrist, blowing a stray damp strand of hair out of her eyes. Her pipboy read just shy of 7:30 pm and only now was the horizon going pink...
“Where’d ya run off to?”
Nora jerked, turned with a cold chill to find Hancock leaning on the stone wall behind her, right by the archway she walked out from.
She'd never felt so exposed in all her life.
He was smoking a cigarette with the kind of easy living she suspected only he was capable of - hands stuffed heavily into the pockets of his coat, one leg crossed over the other and a smooth smile wrapped around his smoke. She envied him most times, but now she was finding that emotion overshadowed by lust. An emotion she was getting just as tired of in all honesty. Why did he have to exude the thing that, for all intents and purposes, was leading her astray?
There was no time for what she wanted with him, nor any time for what he wanted from her.
Hancock arched a bare brow at her hesitation.
“Papers,” she offered quickly, only realizing when his smile turned mischievous that it was a terrible cover.
“Contracts,” she continued, “I forgot about them for the new trade routes from Bunker Hill,” he looked none convinced so why she kept on she couldn't figure, “real bureaucrats...they won't even strap down a Brahmin without...”
The glimmer of teeth appeared around his smoke and she frowned, shaking her head hard enough that she found it in her to be annoyed, “What is it you wanted again?”
“Ah, who said I wanted anything? Can't a ghoul take a break from hard labor every once in awhile?” He looked far too pleased to catch her slipping around her own tongue.
“I didn't mean-I just...never mind. The heats just getting to me.”
For a moment he looked convinced. A shade of concern taking over the amusement, but then his eyes narrowed, lips curling as a gush of smoke leaked out his nose, “Only gonna get hotter, you remember the ruins in July. Could have cooked me a slab of Vaultie Pie if I'd tripped you on the asphalt.”
God, that had been a brutal month and worse yet she'd only been traveling with him a couple weeks until that point. John had his first good glimpse of her with sweat soaking her like a monsoon.
“Yea,” she winced, “Not looking forward to that again. Maybe we'll head further up north. I know of a nice cabin across the border.”
Or she did.
Nate and she had taken spring break up there when all their friends had gone south. The snow in March always reminded her of Christmas as a little kid, the first snows there were like clouds before the dirt from the roads turned it into gray slush.
Hancock flicked his cigarette butt in the ragged patch of rocks at his feet, but he was watching her. Knowing.
Nora couldn't help the old memories. Could not look at John now and wonder what Nate would have thought had he known what the future would bring. If he'd known his son would become what he did - if his wife would forget about him, would lust and long for someone like Hancock…
Would Nate be ashamed of her? Would he be sad? Or maybe he'd always known something like this could happen.
The war had, after all, left him careful about her future. Perhaps she was worried about nothing. Nate would have wanted her to keep living. To be happy, as brutal as that sounded.
John thrust himself off the wall, took two strides forward and there, slammed up against her, was the stale musty smell of him that she just wanted to rub her nose in. Forget the sad world and embrace John's version of it.
“You alright, Sister? Wanna take a walk or somethin’, that or I could high-tail it outta here.”
“No,” she managed a smile, “I'd prefer it if you'd come help me cook some food. Smells like Garvey’s burning whatever that is on the spit.”
He followed her in good spirits, clapping her on the shoulder, but Nora wasn't naive, John was worried about her. That was what she really loved about him.
Loved...
She nearly tripped on her way to the fire, covering her brief mental lull at the realization by cursing a rock that wasn't there.
She spent the whole evening avoiding his black, obvious eyes, eating with her head down and finding a good means of escape when one of the Minutemen pulled John aside for some help with the generator.
The night was peaceful despite her static thoughts and that one guilty notion that just wouldn't leave her whenever she thought about reaching out, leaning into him and...and shoving him down on her bed with a hard kiss and one hand pushed up under his dress shirt.
“I'm screwed,” she admitted in the morning. Unable to not smile at herself despite the way her heart raced.