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Arcade Gannon had felt like a king today.
He'd been walking since the small hours of the night, the heavy click of his metal feet striking asphalt becoming almost soothing. He let the armour do the walking for him, and tuned his mind out to focus on the powerfully intoxicating memories of confidence and adequacy.
He'd felt... powerful. Vicious. Any fears of being a useless little boy playing dress-ups in his father's clothing were eradicated the moment projectiles started weakly peppering his armour, their kinetic energy dispersed into snaps and arcs of electricity flaring around him. He'd returned fire without thought, mechanically reloading his rifle with cells and thrilling at the hot surge of bellum letale that pumped through his veins. Tomorrow could be set aside for regret and introspection. Today had been a celebration of the animal within.
His busily tumbling mind aside, the thin air and unnatural stillness of the desert allowed all but the faintest of noises to travel vast distances, and a faint sound of footsteps kept prickling at the edge of his hearing. There was someone trailing him and not being quiet about it, maybe two or three hundred meters behind him. Arcade had more than a faint suspicion as to who it was. If he was mistaken, well, that's what his still-loaded rifle was for. What was another splash of blood on the desert floor – on his conscious - after today?
Courier had caught him by the wrist, face drawn tight and shoulders tense in the dim light of evening, and urgently hissed that Arcade needed to vanish. NCR Rangers would easily see him for who he was, and Courier didn't want to see an execution committed under the flexible auspices of war. Arcade would be sheltered within New Vegas but here around the dam, amongst the throngs of soldiers and top brass, the chances were just too great someone would see the logo glinting on his breast and immediately claim his head for a generous bounty. He knew should've left with the Remnants, but ego and adrenaline had made him stay.
Only when a cry went up that more Rangers were entering the area to eradicate the Fort did he heed Courier's warning to make his escape. Arcade had walked into the night, skirting clear of Ranger Station Delta and striking past Boulder City under the protective cloak of darkness. For the sake of anything else to do, he walked towards the glow of New Vegas. He had things he could do there. He could slip into the Lucky 38 and shed his armour, pretend that he'd never worn it and go back to being a mildly prickly resident at the Follower's compound. It wasn't the most elegant solution to his situation, but it was good enough for now.
Without thinking he rubbed his gloved fingertips over the anodised logo on his breastplate, the click of metal against metal syncing with the heavy weight of his mechanical footsteps. Fact of the matter was that someone hadseen him for what he was, and that someone was Boone.
Objectively Arcade knew that Boone would discover his background sooner or later. Someone, somewhere, would let slip, or Arcade would make one pointed joke too many, and eventually all the threads of suspicion would get combed together in that mysterious mind Boone sported. After all, you didn't need intelligence when you had sheer bloody-minded tenacity, and Boone followed suspicion like a dog on the hunt.
Months back Boone had already suspected Arcade of being from the Legion and that'd almost ended in a fistfight. Revealling he was of Enclave stock would lead to... what? An arm wrenched behind his back and delivery to the MPs at McCarren if Boone was feeling generous and being level-headed. A lifetime of checking over his shoulder for the glint of a scope if he was deeply unlucky. Maybe cutting off my left hand is the happy medium, he told himself.
Boone was easy to dismiss as just a simple man who appeared to take everyone at face value. Arcade knew he himself was endlessly guilty of both underestimating him and writing him off as sad, simple Craig, the man with a black cloud in his head. Still waters run deep, etc etc etc as he'd loftily said to Veronica after she'd made a particularly unkind comment about her roommate.
There was no way of dressing it up: comprehensively upending Boone's world view would end with nothing positive for anyone. The Enclave was the sworn bitter enemy of the NCR, and no amount of abeunt studia in moreswould be enough to convince Boone otherwise.
Not being a fatalist, Arcade told himself. Just being a realist. It didn't make himself feel any better.
All this was a moot point anyway because Boone had been a shadow at Courier's heels when the Vertibird had landed, part of the crush of people surging backwards from the downforce of air as the Remnants stepped onto the Dam. The faded red beret stood out like a beacon and their eyes locked for the briefest of moments before Arcade had pushed down his helmet. It had enough for him to see the profound look of upset flash across the younger mans face, and that was what cut at Arcade the most.
Through all these months he'd seen raw anger seething under Boone's surface, he'd seen brief moments of unadulterated pleasure before they'd been quickly wiped from his visage, half-grins and crinkle-eyed amusement well hidden behind dark glasses. For the first absolutely naked burst of emotion Arcade had ever seen pass Boone's face to be one of crushing disappointment and distress was deeply, deeply disconcerting in a way Arcade didn't feel equipped to understand.
There hadn't been time to worry about it though. After that there was just adrenaline and blood and the tang of ozone seeping in through the broken seals in his father's armour, and he hadn't given Boone any more thought.
For now Arcade didn't feel guilty about that. For once the fear of exposure had been lifted, the freedom of just not caring feeling like a brief moment of sunlight experienced by someone who spent their life cowering in a dim room. He wanted to hang onto whatever shred of that he could manage without tainting it too badly.
Arcade kept walking towards the glow of the city, the soft hum of the power system at his back not enough to mask the sensation of footsteps doggedly trailing him.
---
Arcade made good time, the rolling gait of the suit almost soothing him into a trance state as he steadily put one foot in front of the other. He had skirted wide past the sleeping 188 trading post, unwilling to catch the attention of the heavily armed troopers still garrisoned on the overpass.
It was only when he started down the highway, his eyes gritty and thoughts turned to a singular need for a hot bath and for sleep, that he heard his shadowy follower speed up to close the distance between them.
He kept walking. Let them - him - run.
The first shot was high, the thin crack of the rifle itself a warning that he duly ignored. Arcade knew exactly who was behind him now, knowledge coloured by a vague memory of sitting at the dining table and coaxing out a discussion of how units out of radio contact signalled with rounds fired into the air.
One shot is a greeting. A second shot means danger.
And the third shot?
Heh. There is no third shot. If you can't pay attention by two, you deserve whatever you get.
The second shot was closer, a kick of broken tarmac spraying up only a few feet away. As tempting as it was to push on and delay whatever was going to happen next for as long as possible, Arcade came to a stop and waited patiently, helmet braced on his hip, listening to the creaks of his armour as it settled and cooled in the weak pre-dawn light. A moment of calm before the dust storm, he thought, and inanely wished he'd had the foresight to bring something to eat.
It was barely a minute before Craig Boone stood before him, streaked with sweat and dirt. He shrugged off his rifle and pack, carelessly dropping them to the broken tarmac without a second thought and doubled over, bracing his hands on his knees and sucking back greedy lungful after lungful of air.
"How much Turbo have you taken?"
Boone didn't answer him, but Arcade guessed his hands were shaking like leaves and his mouth was like cotton. How long had he been walking? Arcade had left Hoover Dam around seven last night, and going by the colour of the sky it was getting close to five AM. Ten hours, no breaks, at a rate of maybe half a canister an hour. His blood pressure would be sky high and he'd be dangerously dehydrated. He made to reach forward and catch Boone's hand to check for tremors and was startled when Boone reared backwards, avoiding his touch like Arcade was poison incarnate.
And so it begins.
"I wanted to tell you," Arcade said plainly, not bothering to dress up his words. "I really did. I just…"
"You just what," said Boone flatly. "Just thought I'd be too stupid to know? Christ, Gannon." He scrubbed at his eyes with his forearm and Arcade paid more attention to the fact his hands were shaking like they belonged to an old, old man. He wondered how he'd been able to fire his rifle with any accuracy, or if he'd really been aiming at him on that second shot.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Because I didn't want to. Because I knew this would happen. Because I know you. "Because I knew you wouldn't be able to handle it."
The impact of his blunt statement was matched - exceeded - by the force of Boone's fist connecting with his jaw, knuckles skittering across and tearing at the soft flesh of his lip. If he hadn't been wearing power armour designed to keep itself upright and stable, Arcade would've staggered backwards at the sheer explosive power delivered straight to his mouth.
He touched a gloved hand to his mouth and looked at it in a daze, blood and spit glistening wetly on the dark metal. Beside him Boone was shaking out his hand, crimson red already trickling down where his knuckles had caught the edge of Arcade's teeth.
Arcade settled for pressing his metal fingertips to the ragged edge on his lip, controlling his breathing and fighting the primitive urge to strike back twice as hard. Just because someone was convinced you were a nightmare was no reason to act like one.
They glared at each other, tense and on edge, a kind of Brownian motion of seething anger swirling between them.
After a moment Arcade muttered a slightly snide well, that was perfectly reasonable and turned his back on Boone, resolutely making his way towards Vegas and the first dim blush of dawn. He didn't want to brawl like a tavern drunk out here in the middle of nowhere, and he didn't want the honour of beating down someone who was already on the ragged edge after hours upon hours of punishing their system with repeated hits of chems. He was drained and hungry and his skin itched where sweat had pooled under the skin-tight recon suit slowly squeezing him under this godforsaken armour, and if he gave in to his impulse to punch Boone square in the gut there was a good chance he'd give him a heart attack. A Phyrric victory wasn't exactly the salve needed to lift his mood.
Instead he walked, helmet bumping against his leg as he covered the ground towards his goal of a bath, a meal and the inky blackness of sleep. For the moment he permitted himself to rant and scream inside his own head, angry at Boone, angry at himself, his thoughts coalescing into a steady stream of puerile curses.
Arcade actively didn't swear. As a child it was considered something only suitable for the enlisted classes, then as a boy Judah would twist his ear half off any time he repeated a phrase felt to be too flavourful for his mother's ears. As an adult Julie Farkas instituted a draconian policy of mandatory coffee duty for anyone caught swearing in her presence, no matter how winningly they smiled or how many excuses about research obligations they made. Despite profanity being a habit long groomed out of him, somehow all he could hear was a long unbroken chain of fuck bouncing around his head.
He wasn't terribly surprised when Boone caught up to him, blocking his way and pushing Arcade in the chest. "You keep going this way and you're going to run into morning patrols."
"What do you care?" He was exhausted and it showed, regressing to sniping at Boone like an overtired child. It was below him and Arcade knew it, but he didn't exactly care, not with a split lip and a ringing headache.
"Because you're going to get hauled in. Gannon. They'll bring you in as a war criminal. They're watching out for that armour. Snipers will spot you in no time." Despite the soft dawn light he still had those sunglasses on and Arcade wished, not for the first time, that he could just see his eyes.
"What am I supposed to do? Hide? There isn't exactly a comfortable hotel nearby."
Boone hesitated. "Repconn. Go hide there until dusk. No one watches that direction and you'll make it there before daylight."
"And do what? Isn't that just taking me closer to McCarran?" Arcade debated whether he could easily take his gloves off so he could scratch at his neck. "Just… go away, Boone. Thank you for hunting me across the desert all night and not shooting me in the back and an extra thank you for loosening my teeth, but I would really, really prefer it if you'd just fuck right off and leave me alone." His voice cracked a little on the last word and it made him even angrier.
"If you go that way the traders will turn you in for the bounty. They'll track you down to Freeside." Boone's voice was completely emotionless. "Rangers are patient, Gannon. They'll question every last person here and someone is going to remember a goddamn Enclave suit walking past. Just use some of those brains you're so proud of and think."
---
As much as his mood made him loathe to admit it, Boone had been right. Arcade had already tipped his hand by stepping into a nest of NCR vipers dressed in his father's finest, but travelling into the city in broad daylight in a suit of black power armour festooned with electrical capacitors would be a recipe for slow, painful suicide by interrogation, or at least swift death by firing squad if he was lucky. The prospect of being rounded up and made to spend the rest of his days locked away and forgotten solely for the crime of being born into something he had no part in made his skin crawl.
Thus Repconn. He'd tried the outbuildings first, thwarted at first by locks and bunker doors then by the sun boldly licking along the desert floor and painting him in golden daylight. There'd been nothing for it after that but to slip into the main building proper, all the time feeling that one of the all-seeing scopes along the high walls at McCarran was going to catch him in its sights and start a chain of events that either lead to a cell or a bullet.
The pile of Fiend corpses inside the doors hadn't exactly given him great hope, but then again very little did lately. He'd knelt over them and rummaged through their pockets, lucking out with a wizened apple in the bag of the third Fiend. He hadn't even stopped to wash it or even give it a cursory wipe to free it of dirt, just held it in both hands and greedily shoved it to his mouth. It'd easily been twenty-four hours since he'd last eaten.
Arcade briefly wondered what his father would think if he could see him now; his legacy hiding from the daylight like a roach, crouching over the bodies of junkies and eating their scraps as if he was a half-starved junkyard dog. He discarded that thought in favour of wondering where Boone had gone, and the prickle of his torn lip had made him abandon that line of thought as well.
He'd amused himself by picking locks across the ground floor, and what he couldn't jimmy open with patience and the practical application of torque, Arcade kicked open with a hydraulics assisted foot like a star in an old pre-war crime film. Over-exhaustion made everything funny and he made a gun from his forefingers and pointed it at a robot, asking it how lucky it felt. Instead it cheerfully offered him a guided tour and he'd accepted, finding himself staring slack jawed at a model of the solar system spinning against a backdrop of delicate stars.
Arcade fell asleep on his feet, not even noticing the suit automatically locking itself into place to prevent him from pitching over. He snored softly, glasses pushed askew as his head slumped against the deep metal shoulder of his power armour. The planets silently danced over his head and he dreamed about nothing at all.
---
He slowly swam into wakefulness after what must've been hours, the soft sounds of someone closing and locking a door mingling with the last vestiges of dreamless oblivion. He blinked and fumbled with heavy, indelicate arms to push his glasses squarely onto his nose. Boone came into focus as he turned slowly and leaned against the brass railing, distant on the other side of the room, his eyes examining everything but Arcade. Pulling his beret off, he twisted it between his fingers, pinching and reshaping the leather band over and over again.
He nodded at the orrery, watching a tiny rocket pass over his head. "Planning your escape?" It wasn't a joke, not really.
The electrical fizz of Arcade's armour discharging filled the room with a hiss of white noise.
"You look like a nightmare," said Boone softly, still intently worrying at the soft red wool between his fingers.
"I'm sorry." Arcade meant it, genuinely meant it as much as he wondered why this was weighing so heavily on his heart. Boone wasn't a lover or a confidant. He was a warm body when the need got too great, when stress got too much, a willing bed partner to teach and take pleasure from. Nothing more, nothing less. Arcade wasn't sure if he was really trying to convince himself of this.
"Huh. Sorry doesn't quite cut it."
A flare of annoyance sparked up Arcade's spine, eradicating any last vestiges of sleepiness. "Getting angry at me for keeping secrets isn't fair, Boone. Craig. You haven't exactly been forthcoming yourself."
Boone clenched his fists, crushing his beret and visibly struggling to control his anger. When he spoke his voice was tight. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
The words were out before he could stop himself. "How many men, Boone? How many children and women? What about the sick? The old?"
Arcade Gannon wasn't a Psyker, but even he could see where this conversation was heading. He wondered if Boone knew where this was going as well. He wondered if he even cared.
"That's none of your goddamn business." Boone pushed himself off the railing, jamming his hat into his pocket and taking one, two steps closer.
"What about your wife? Were you ever going to tell me about that?"
Kill shot.
This time the gyroscopes in his knees weren't enough to keep him upright, not when Boone surged forward and darted behind him, catching Arcade around the neck and pulling, piling all his weight on that pale column of meat and tendons. The choking pressure on Arcade's throat only slacked off when his balance was leveraged to the point of tumbling backwards, the weight of his armour turning his fall into a cascading inevitability. There was a brief moment of respite, gasping and sucking back air through a throat that didn't want to open. Arcade barely had time to process the flash of sour embarrassment at being dropped so easily before Boone was across his chest, fist flashing backwards in the dim light.
The Tesla armour might've made Arcade strong but it also made him slow, and Boone landed a couple of glancing blows to Arcade's face and knocked his glasses off completely before he was able to catch his forearms with a lucky, blind grab. He squeezed tightly, and deep inside a black part of him relished the pain that registered on Boone's face.
"Don't."
Boone tensed even more, muscles drawn taut under skin that had the sour tang of old Turbo seeping from every pore. Arcade waited, patience overriding resentment, holding him there until Boone's breathing slowed. He counted to ten before he chanced relaxing his grip.
"It's none of your business," Boone repeated, sounding defeated. The sparks and discharge on Arcade's armour lit his face from below and he looked both older beyond his years and utterly, completely wrung out.
Arcade sighed, dropping his head back onto the high collar of his armour with a heavy thump. The whine of the fan on his back cut through the silence and he let go of Boone's arms completely, hoping that he wouldn't immediately launch himself at his face. Boone's right hook was brutal and Arcade had already kissed it too many times in the past day. His lip throbbed as a reminder and, judging by how the world seen through his eye was going rose-coloured and murky, a split eyebrow would also serve as a painful aide memoire for days.
He sighed, the rise and fall of his chest constricted under layers of asbestos and metal. "So what are you going to do now?"
"Don't know," he said, voice low. "Standing orders are to turn in all Enclave personnel."
If Arcade had looked up he would have seen him absent-mindedly tracing the Enclave logo emblazoned on his chest, his expression blank.
"Standing orders only apply to active troops." The long pause that greeted this was enough for Arcade to raise his head enough to look Boone squarely in the eyes. "You're reenlisting, aren't you?"
He didn't say anything. He really didn't have to. The silence stretched out long and taut and Arcade let his head drop back, suddenly feeling exhaustion all the way deep into his bones.
---
He'd tried to get up – tried, because getting up from your back onto your feet when you're wearing a few hundred pounds of metal and mechanics requires a certain amount of assistance and luck, and Boone seemed more inclined to watch with a dispassionate eye than give Arcade anything even remotely like a helping hand – and, halfway onto his knees, thought why even bother? He sat back, the bulk of cooling systems and the dragging weight of his power supply neatly jammed against a brass railing, and did his best to relax. If he could tune out the noise in his head, excellent. If he could think about what he could do tomorrow after he'd finally peeled himself free of his metal shell, even better. If only he had the ability to ignore Boone staring at him as he slowly ate an apple, his gaze feeling like lasers burning a hole somewhere above Arcade's temple.
Obviously I need to beg for forgiveness a little more, he thought. Crawl across the floor on my knees and supplicate myself until I earn a little piece of absolution. Briefly he entertained a memory of being on his knees in the middle of a dirty one room shack, kneeling between Boone's naked legs and not petitioning for forgiveness but offering up pleasure. Or Boone, rosy-lipped and his dick hard, hesitantly taking Arcade into his mouth for the first time. He'd been drinking – for courage, he called it – and the faint traces of ethanol in his mouth had made Arcade's cock twitch against his inexperienced tongue.
Arcade dismissed the memories entirely. No point in wallowing in the past, and especially no point in getting carried away thinking about a source of simple sexual pleasure that was now locked down and unavailable.
He smiled wanly at Boone, not particularly caring that he only received stony nothingness in return.
"What time is it?"
Silence. He tried again. "How are the hands?"
Boone held out his half-eaten apple. It took Arcade a moment to realise he was letting him see the feather-fine twitches that ran down his wrist, and if Arcade was a softer man he probably would've been touched by the unusual display of weakness from someone who practically redefined the term buttoned up.
It was an understatement to say he'd been taken aback when Boone silently consented to a lecture about recovering from prolonged Turbo use. Arcade realised halfway through, right at the point where he said and your history of Buffout misuse means you'll have difficulty recovering your fine motor control for at least twenty four hours, plus you need to watch your circulation for a few days that he'd slipped into the dispassionate tone he used on Freeside junkies and stumbling drunks. It was surprising how quickly he could turn himself on and off like that. Only a few days ago he'd rented a room in Vault 21 and spent the afternoon excising his fear of impending violent, angry death by turning his considerable focus and energy on the task of making Craig Boone come as close to begging as he could push him. Now he was as formal and shut off as if he was at work, giving a tired lecture to a stranger who didn't care enough about themselves to think beyond their next score.
There was a weak analogy about his love life in there somewhere, but Arcade didn't care to make it.
---
Arcade had frequently been told that one of his most striking character defects was that he just couldn't help himself sometimes. When he was a boy that had been in the form of never missing an opportunity to display his knowledge and wave his education around like a truncheon, making him both unpopular with other children and tiresome for adults to be around. As he'd grown up, that had gently morphed into the ability to needle people long past the point of a joke, or harangue someone far beyond the limits of just getting his point across. It was one – one of many – reasons he'd been banished into research by the Followers. Sure, he'd learnt to temper his pointed attitude with a fairly convincing self-effaced veneer, but as Julie had so often commented after yet another complaint from the other doctors, he could be quite unpleasant when he let himself be.
He was letting himself be rather unpleasant right now.
"Bitter Springs," he said, one hand idly turning a capacitor on his helmet, looking for all the world like he wasn't trying to make Boone explode. "So that's why Courier bought you that anti-materiel rifle back then."
Silence.
"It could be just me and my crazy notions, but if someone rewarded my tiny little breakdown about shooting innocent men, women and children by buying me an even bigger gun, I'd have a complete cognitive break. Although—" The capacitor squeaked as he screwed it back through the threads, so he did it again and again, "—from what Courier dumped onto me later, it wasn't such a tiny little breakdown. It's somewhat of a wild understatement to say you're messed in the head, aren't you?"
He waited for a rebuttal and didn't get one. "Suicide by Legionary, right? You're not going to be up nice and close to the hot flash of knives when you reenlist."
"What would you suggest then?" Boone sounded like he was talking through gritted teeth.
Arcade shrugged expansively, the gesture entirely lost under his armour. "That's not for me to decide. You're the one out to fulfil your own destiny, remember? I'm just some lying fascist in a great looking suit. Bet you wish you'd known that the first time you asked me to fuck you."
Cheap shot. Didn't even earn a flicker of reaction. Arcade thought he was losing his touch.
"You fought with the Enclave."
Not for the first time he thought arguing with Boone was like arguing with a child. He could surprise Arcade with the occasional flash of brilliance and grasp of nuanced subtleties, but on other topics he was the worst kind of black and white literalist.
"Technically I didn't. I fought – fought to protect your beloved NCR at the dam and never mind that they want me dead, by the way – I fought with some people who have been extremely good to my family and myself of the years, and who just happen to be former soldiers in…"
"In the Enclave."
Arcade grinned, his teeth bared. "Well, of course it doesn't sound good when you put it like that."
Boone didn't smile. Rather he crossed the room to sit on the brass railing opposite Arcade, one foot neatly hooked around a pole to keep himself balanced and the other slowly swinging back and forth. From Arcade's angle the planetary orbit of Venus looked like a halo behind his head, and he randomly wondered what Boone had looked like as a gangly teenager growing up on his parent's farm. He opened his mouth to make another smart comment but was silenced by Boone deliberately rocking forward and planting one boot firmly on Arcade's chest, right above his heart.
"You should stop talking," said Boone softly, and stamped down hard enough to make Arcade's head collide with the handrail behind him.
---
The blow hadn't been hard enough to knock him out, but it was enough to send him into a fuzzy, half-formed world for what felt like a long, long time. He was still groggy when he became aware of a hand cradling his head as fingers gently combed through his hair, stopping and lightly tracing over the considerable egg forming high on his scalp.
"Blunt force trauma to the parietal bone," said Arcade, less to show off and more to hear if he was slurring or not. Once a doctor, always a doctor.
"Sounds fine to me." Boone was closer than he'd expected and Arcade blinked, his vision fuzzy without his broken glasses. He made to scratch at his nose and discovered Boone was in fact kneeling across his thighs, his knees pinning down Arcade's hands. If he was more inclined to fantasy he would've said that he could feel his body heat radiating through to his own, but that was a fanciful notion at best.
"You sit on me like that and people will gossip," he said, not really putting any rancour into his tone. "Do me a favour and check my pupils, please."
Boone slipped his hand down to cup Arcade's chin and turn his head to catch the light better. If he noticed Arcade sighing as he pressed his cheek into his palm, hot breath skittering down his still-shaking wrist, he didn't show it.
"Looks fine to me. Shame about the glasses."
Arcade sighed again. "And what about the rest of my face? I feel like some maniac has beaten me senseless in the past few hours."
"You've looked better," said Boone, and pressed a thumb to the scabbed cut on Arcade's lip. The pressure broke the knitted surface and his raw nerves sparked and flared as they came into contact with the salt and oils on Boone's skin. "Split lip. Black eye. You'll heal."
He fought the urge to roll his eyes, wisely deciding that disconnected intimacy was infinitely preferable to making another misstep and setting Boone off like a cluster of frag grenades. The downside of having a disagreement with Boone – he left it as a disagreement for the sake of understatement, deciding that being any wordier was far beyond someone nursing a probable mild contrecoup injury –is that he did his fighting with his fists instead of his words. Short of beating him with a dictionary, he'd always have the upper hand over Arcade in sheer physicality. Being physically bigger than Boone didn't matter a jot. You needed to know how to move and, despite his advantages of height, weight, reach and (maybe) strength, Arcade just didn't have that kind of lithe grace to best Boone physically.
"I hope you're going to send flowers as an apology later." He let his eyes drift closed, his skin prickling hot underneath Boone's stare. It was hard to ignore that he physically reacted to Boone's presence, muscle memory reminding him of sitting together like this in a rumpled bed, lazily stroking himself and patiently waiting for Boone to take that familiar halting breath and sink onto him inch by pleasurable inch. Mentally he was still seething, the urge to kick Boone's teeth in as petty revenge for his treatment a temptation that was increasingly difficult to avoid. The split between head and heart was giving him more of a headache than the brass railing or Boone's fists ever had.
"Just flowers?" The amusement in his voice didn't dampen Arcade's urge to hit him.
"You can kiss it better if you want to debase yourself that much." He didn't bother opening his eyes, yet the brush of dry lips against his split eyebrow completely failed to surprise him in any way. As unpredictable as he could be, in a thousand other ways Boone was as dependable as the rise and set of the sun.
---
There was no romance to Boone's mouth pressed to his, nothing wonderful about the tip of his tongue darting across his teeth or the faint smear of blood from Arcade's lip feathering into Boone's stubble. It wasn't passionate, it wasn't sexual, it was just… a thing. These past few months have just been a thing, he thought, and wished he could move his arms without tipping Boone off his legs.
He'd made some snide comment after the chaste kiss had been pressed to his brow, trying to needle a reaction and break the sad, quiet weight of tension that filled the room. Arcade had no patience for being toyed with and had never bothered hiding his frustration and irritation with anyone before, so why start now? Boone's hot and cold temperament, particularly after he'd just spent an entire night hunting him down just to confront him, was unsettling at best and felt like a personal affront at worst. If bringing him back to a state of curt anger was what it took to get some equilibrium, then so be it.
He honestly didn't know why Boone was still here. He didn't know why Boone's response to being called a sentimental idiot was to mash his mouth to Arcade's hard enough to make his lip bleed all over again.
Arcade took control of the kiss as best as he could, biting Boone's lip hard enough to elicit a pained grunt. It was a kiss full of anger and sadness, teeth clashing against teeth, violent and bitter. He wanted to catch Boone by the jaw, scrape his nails across cropped hair and let him know with his mouth, with his hands, that this was the end.
The suit restricted his movements though, made fine motor control difficult at best and impossible at worst. The way the back of the armour was wedged against the handrail gave him almost no ability to move, not without drawing up his legs and pushing Boone away completely.
Boone rapped his knuckles on Arcade's shoulder plate and said to take it off. In most mouths that would sound like a prelude to pleasure, but to Arcade's ears it was a demand and a warning all mixed together.
He wanted to shove him away, knowing the motors along his arms would lift Boone like he weighed nothing. He could push him hard enough that he tumbled backwards, and he could lie there and watch the planets spin overhead as Arcade left. He could easily pull his hands out from beneath Boone's knees and let his resentment flow from his fists until Boone had bled twice as much as he'd taken from Arcade. He'd be a liar if he didn't say they were all incredibly desirable options.
It was just a louder part of him, a more selfish and base part of him, was demanding he stay still and wait to see where this was going. Sometimes good things, pleasurable things, could happen to people who were patient and at least pretended to be meek.
Arcade settled for tilting his chin a little. "You're going to have to trust me enough to let me get up."
Boone didn't move, instead running his hand down Arcade's flank and thumbing the uppermost catch open.
"Boone..."
He was ignored in favour of the remaining clasps being carefully opened. Arcade made to stop him, to at least warn of the network of wires and tubing hidden behind blank metal, but his chest was unceremoniously split open with a screech of unoiled hinges and the snap of wires being ripped from their safe soldered homes. The bulbs along his left shoulder flickered and died.
"Good riddance," said Boone tersely.
Arcade sighed, the rise and fall of his chest bold against the skin-tight cover of the thin asbestos suit he wore underneath the power armour. "I can't move like this."
"Fine." Boone's voice sounded completely foreign. Arcade was used to sadness and anger and complacency tinting Boone's voice, but this spit of venom was a stranger to him. "Best you can't give me any more surprises."
Hot and cold, hot and cold.
He made to catch him and stop him from breaking anything else important; rationalizing that it was worth protecting this tiny connection to his father over infuriating even further the unstable ball of barely repressed anger kneeling over his thighs. Arcade had often flippantly joked that Boone scared him, alluding to the snarled knot of anger and fear and resentment that seemed to churn deep below Boone's granite surface, but this was the first time he'd genuinely had that little sliver of fear curl in his belly. The fact that it was tempered by an even stronger twisting spark of thrill was, for the moment, irrelevant.
Boone shuffled down Arcade's thighs a little and unclasped the collar of the thin undersuit, pushing aside wires and connectors as he tugged down the zipper to reveal pale flesh and the start of a soft trail of fine blond hair. He made a noise of frustration and roughly pushed away the trim that covered the rest of his stomach, peeling away fabric until Arcade felt like he was a beetle on his back, underbelly being neatly sliced open under Boone's impatient hands. He felt utterly vulnerable, open and exposed.
Only when questing fingers made to pull apart the smooth curve of metal protecting the last shreds of his modesty did he make to defend himself. His left arm was rendered electronically dead thanks to Boone's ministrations and the weight of ceramic and metal left him struggling to even lift it clear of the coarse carpet. His right arm was still very much alive and capable, and it wasn't much effort on his behalf to capture Boone's hand in a crushing grip.
"If you want what I think you want," he said, searching for a delicate way to address an indelicate topic, "I'd suggest you close your eyes or turn your back or something."
"What do you m… oh. Huh." He looked faintly disgusted.
"Yeah," said Arcade, not even bothering to be embarrassed any more. "It's pretty amazing for ruining the moment. Just give me a bit of dignity and look away or something." Just because Boone had seen every inch of him before was no reason to make a spectacle out of one of the more awkward aspects of wearing power armour.
He was hoping his brief moment of ignominy would be enough to cut the tension. Instead just Boone stared intently at his face, looking for all the world like he was trying to imprint him to memory. Maybe he was. Maybe the feeling that this was the last time was mutual.
There was a brief clink of metal against metal and a faintly pained look, and then Arcade exhaled and relaxed. He closed his eyes again, his able arm braced to the ground, and tried to put thoughts of being exposed and defenceless out of his mind. He didn't attempt to justify to himself why he was half-hard already.
---
He supposed he should find the silence unnerving. Or he should be taking more of an interest in Boone's hand wrapped around his cock, pumping him to hardness with a grip that was just on this side of painful. Instead he kept his eyes shut and turned his face to the ceiling, trying to keep his expression as neutral as possible.
"You want me to stop?" Boone, somewhat surprisingly, sounded genuinely concerned.
He stared at the ceiling, his blurred vision rendering the toy rocket into a soft smear of colour as it silently tracking amongst the planets. "Are you going to let me get up?"
"No," he said simply. There was a long pause, the silence punctuated by the sickly snap of discharging electricity sparking next to Arcade's right ear. "I don't trust you," he added eventually, and it was only long experience of what passed for pillow talk between them that let him hear the faintest shade of regret behind his words.
Arcade propped himself on his elbow and squinted hard, trying to get a perfect image to file away in his memory. The heavy metal encasing his legs and wrapping around his back gave way to a shallow bowl of pale skin, a dark frame highlighting the indistinct sight of Boone's hand wrapped around his straining cock. It might not be his ideal way of saying goodbye, but despite the lack of clean sheets, cool air and washed skin, it was better than earning himself another round of punches to the face. He said so and Boone allowed himself a humourless smile in return.
"I thought we already said goodbye," said Boone, neatly twisting his wrist and dragging a ragged groan from Arcade's throat. "At the hotel. The other day."
"That – oh Christ, keep doing that – that was a fear of death goodbye." Deep in a quiet win of Vault 21, Boone had slipped out of bed to bath away the scent of sex and sweat from his skin before he slunk back to the Lucky 38, the tidy up all part of the veil of secrecy that surrounded their little assignations. He'd stood at the edge of the bed, hair still wet and skin pink from scrubbing, and after a uncertain moment bodily dragged a still satiated Arcade out of bed and desperately sought out his mouth. His grip on Arcade's forearms had been strong enough to bruise, his kiss bold enough to leave his lips flushed.
It wasn't like kissing was a new thing – once the tentative hesitations about being that intimate with a man had been overcome (and only after Arcade had bluntly pointed out that he'd had Arcade's dick in his mouth not five minutes before, so he was far beyond the point of worrying about what was and wasn't an acceptable level of appropriateness) he had been an intense yet sloppy kisser as they fucked face to face, demanding and untutored all at once – but this had felt different. Sorry, said Boone as he'd pulled away. I'm acting like a woman or something. It had been a just-in-case kiss though, and they both knew it.
Boone let him go and got to his feet, his movements awkward after kneeling for so long. Arcade watched him methodically undress, the contrast between his free-moving nakedness and Arcade's virtually immobile imprisonment suddenly made sharper. He decided to push his luck.
"I could get up right now, you know."
To his credit Boone barely shrugged. "And?"
"And I could leave."
He leaned against the handrail and lazily stroked himself, a movement-perfect recreation of a moment months ago in a dirty miserable little fishing shack when Arcade had been greeted by a rosy-cheeked, vodka-mellowed Boone hard and waiting and oh-so keen to get himself sucked off.
"You could leave," he said reasonably. "But I put mines outside the door. In case someone decided to investigate the Enclave soldier seen this morning nosing around the Repconn outbuildings."
The simmering little pool of anger Arcade had been carefully tamping down suddenly boiled up again. "This is starting to feel awfully like I don't have much of a choice about this."
Boone raised an eyebrow, practically a triumph of facial expression for him. "I didn't say I wouldn't remove them. Didn't say I put them there to keep you in, either." He made a tsking sound and went to rummage around in his rucksack, eventually throwing a tub of Bighorner lanolin more or less at Arcade. He couldn't move quickly enough to catch it with his one working arm, and the bang it made as it collided with his open chest plate sounded frighteningly loud in the small, silent room.
"Like I said," he repeated, returning to lean against the railing and look down at Arcade. "I put them there in case someone decided to come and look around." There was a faint ghost of a smile on his face. "I might not trust you. Might not like you very much at the moment either. In fact it makes me pretty sick to look at you dressed in that shit."
It was probably the most Arcade had ever heard him say at one time.
He took a careful step forward and knelt over Arcade's thighs once more, wincing at the cold metal as it came into contact with his skin. "Guess you're right as always, Gannon. I am a sentimental idiot. Would rather not have some recruit puke try and collar you."
"I suppose that's going to be your job?"
"Don't know yet." Boone ignored Arcade's flagging erection, instead unscrewing the tub of lanolin and scooping out a generous fingerful. Arcade swallowed, his throat bone dry. "Close your eyes."
"I've already seen you naked," Arcade pointed out, deciding that if he couldn't reset the balance between them he'd at least be as prickly as possible. "You're not about to do anything I haven't seen. Or done to you," he added as an afterthought. "Repeatedly."
"But you don't get to see it this time. Shut your fucking eyes, Gannon."
The bitten-back grunt Boone made as he prepared himself was torture enough, never mind that Arcade was so efficiently trapped in his shell of armour that he couldn't even flex his hips to try and encourage him to shuffle forward. He attempted to reach out with his working arm but was stymied by Boone's quiet threat that he'd pull those wires as well. It wasn't the fear of total immobility that he feared. It was the prospect of not being plugged back in afterwards.
Boone's breathing was ragged by the time he finally took pity on Arcade and crawled over his stomach, his body heat feeling like a raging furnace against the slice of bare skin visible under Arcade's opened undersuit.
"You can say no, you know." His voice was close to Arcade's ear, cheek pressed against his own.
Arcade wasn't able to muster up the spite he really wanted. "Do you want me to say no?"
"No." Simple and blunt.
Arcade let out a full body sigh. "Go on then," he said, feeling frayed around the edges and completely, totally unable to handle any more mind games. "I'm yours. Use me as you see fit."
He could've sworn he heard a whispered thank you, and then there was nothing but tight, hot pleasure and Boone's half-formed sounds of satisfaction mixing with his own.
---
"I don't suppose there's any point in me telling you yet again that I'm not Enclave." He picked at the symbol on his chest, the metallic click of his fingertips loud against the faint background thrum of noise from New Vegas. Arcade wondered if anyone was watching them, wondering why a soldier was speaking to a towering mechanised man backlit by the weak glow of the parking lot lights.
There'd been no soft moments afterwards, not that he'd really been searching for them. He'd laid there exhausted and slack under the uncaring eye of a plastic sun, a cool slick of semen drying on his belly, when Boone had reappeared in his field of view looking completely unruffled. He'd stood over him, hands busily rethreading his belt, and blandly advised Arcade that it was dark enough to travel.
I can't exactly make good time with one dead arm and my chest hanging open, you know.
Boone had zipped up his undersuit without cleaning off his stomach and made some offhand comment about it being a friendly reminder, and Arcade had tried to smash Boone's nose across his face with an almost well-timed headbutt. Boone just chuckled and said no love lost, and after a few false starts found the Molex connector to power up his left arm. He'd left Arcade to finish getting himself into working order and left the room, mumbling something about clearing the mines and having a drink.
Arcade found him outside in the parking lot, chugging a Sunset Sarsaparilla and bouncing pebbles across the concrete. He hadn't been able to hide the instinctual recoil when he looked up and saw Arcade walking towards him, electricity sparking into the night air like a child's nightmare made incarnate. Arcade had expected him to do so, but it didn't stop the twist in his stomach when he saw it.
"I'm honestly not Enclave," he repeated, shifting from foot to foot.
"Could've fooled me." There was no humour in it.
"Born to it, not raised in it. Abeunt studia in mores. I am not the sum total of my background." Arcade exhaled heavily and pushed a hand through his hair, wincing when a rough burr of metal snagged and tore at his scalp.
"The outfit says otherwise." He pulled his beret off for a moment to scratch at his head, and Arcade dearly wished he was able to see the irony in all this.
"The outfit is just an outfit. One day you might understand that." He didn't particularly care that he was being patronising.
"I wouldn't be able to handle it, remember?"
Arcade laughed, a short bark of sound without a trace of joy behind it. "Well, you haven't really proved me wrong so far."
They looked at each other, cautious and cagey. Any more tense and Arcade felt they'd be circling each other like dogs, hackles raised and teeth bare. The tension only dropped when Boone adjusted the rifle hanging low at his side, the soft creak of leather straps barely audible over the electric whine of servos adjusting to Arcade's movements. In the distance a recording of Taps drifted on the night air over from McCarran.
"I guess that's your sign to leave." He adjusted the heavy plasma rifle slung over his back, so painfully aware of Boone's flinch as his hand reached to the weapon.
"Guess so." Boone hesitated for a moment, absently opening and closing one of the pouches on his bandoleer. "Gannon…"
Arcade waved him silent, taking the easy way out. "Don't. It's… it's a done thing. Don't worry, you won't see me striding around Freeside spruiking about pre-war purity." He permitted himself a wry smile. "I'm good at keeping secrets, remember."
"So I've discovered," Boone muttered. He fidgeted again, and once more Arcade opted for the simple and quick pain free solution. The end of a relationship, romantic or sexual or other, was best treated like removing a bandage. One short, sharp moment of teeth-gritting pain, and then you're free to never turn your mind to it again.
"I'll see you around." Arcade paused, unable to prevent his lopsided smile. "Or I won't." He opted for a cordial nod and turned his back on Boone, his heavy metallic footsteps rapidly fading into the deep darkness of true night.