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Laundry duty. Arcade hated laundry duty.
What was originally a short trip to Camp Gold turned out to be a three day hike all over Creation, the entire cast of companions caught out with only an overnight change of clothes. Between the front-back-inside-out recycling of increasingly rank cotton, a rare spell of cloying humidity hanging in the air and Boone gutting a Lakelurk two days ago, Arcade considered himself especially cursed to have drawn the short straw of laundry duty.
His protests at being bad at doing the laundry were admittedly true – part of the reason he'd been able to move uncontested into Courier's unused master suite at the Lucky 38 was his chronic inability to treat the floor as anything but than a wardrobe – but, regardless, it was his turn to banished off to the nearest source of clean water to prune his hands with Abraxo until the shirts were clean and his mood was dirty.
Raul had elected to join him in his misery, big raw hands clamped around a box of Abraxo and a stick of willowbark firmly clamped between his teeth.
"Women," he said by way of explanation, falling into step beside Arcade as they made their way down to a little shallow stretch of sandy beach. A week ago Beatrix had been quite forthcoming in her assessment of Raul's potential personal skills, and Veronica wasn't inclined to let the subject drop. I don't have any books with me , she said. What else am I going to do to amuse myself?
--
"You stare a lot."
Arcade blinked, snapping back to attention. "Pardon?"
"You got a bad case of the stares, niñero." Raul uncuffed the sleeves of his coveralls, a haze of dust falling from the creased cotton. "I know I'm dashingly handsome and all, but keep that up and you could give an old man a complex."
"Sorry, sorry," he said, stashing his clean change of clothes on a slab of stone before stripping off his own dirty coat. "It's a bad habit. I was lost in my head."
"Thinking about anything important?" Raul unsnapped his coveralls to the waist, unconcernedly pulling his stained undershirt off and tossing it into the pile of dirty clothes resting in the shallows of Lake Mead. "The state of mankind? Independence struggling against the tyranny of stability? Where we'll all be in ten years?"
"Nothing quite that deep," Arcade replied honestly, his own shirt joining the reeking sweaty pile. "I was mostly thinking about dinner."
"Wise," said Raul. "Focus on the important stuff, Blondie."
"I haven't eaten since midday and neither have you. If Boone doesn't kill something on his little hunting trip then I'm going to suggest we fry and eat him."
"Hmm," said Raul. "Not Craig. He's too tense. Too stringy. You'd have to stew him slow and low." He toed off his boots and peeled off his socks, wriggling his toes in the warm sand with a pleased sigh as he tried to ignore the doctor unconcernedly shucking his trousers and kicking them into the shallow water. Being part of Courier's crew meant you got used to privacy being an optional extra and Arcade had injected, bandaged, patted and prodded just about every square inch of every single one of them, but it was still disconcerting to see the big doctor abandon his pants in the middle of nowhere.
Arcade crouched at the edge of the water, tipping a generous pour of Abraxo into his hands before grabbing a random sodden piece of clothing. He worked the powder into a lather and started scrubbing at a dirty shirt, pausing only to shuffle aside as Raul settled beside him with a grunt and a muttered complaint.
"You're quite vocal about your knees," Arcade ventured, scooping up more fresh water and scrubbing hard at a mark that might've been rust or blood or a combination of both. "You don't have to wallow around in the mud if it's painful."
Raul just gave him an arch look, his milky eyes reflecting back the syrupy afternoon sunlight. "You calling me a charity case now?"
"Can I lie and say that I'm expressing professional courtesy and concern?" Arcade sat back on his heels, rolling his shoulders until they popped. "If they're giving you trouble though..."
The ghoul just pointedly wrung out Arcade's coat. The effect would have been more imposing if he hadn't almost immediately had to stop and flex his fingers, a curse slipping out from his brown teeth. The skin along his knuckles – or what remained of it – was swollen and flushed red, distended and painful after an afternoon spent clambering over every last godforsaken sun-scorched parcel of land Courier could possibly find. That he didn't immediately snap back a disarming comment when Arcade tossed Veronica's shirt back to the shallows in favour of gently inspecting his gnarled hands was, in Arcade's eyes, carte blanche to take a medical liberty or two.
Arcade's hands were cool and damp, chilled fingertips pushing at Raul's swollen knuckles with a gentle touch that almost made up for his less than stellar bedside manner.
"Hmm," he said, testing how far his wrist could bend before the ghoul made a warning noise in the back of his throat. "It's not too bad," he said eventually, warming Raul's fingers between his hands. "You're carrying a bit of fluid in the joints but it doesn't feel like you've got bone spurs or any major arthritic growths. I could arrange for a session under Usanagi's AutoDoc if you wanted your knuckles to move a bit easier. She owes me more than a few favours, so... you know. On the house. The offer is there."
"These old bones are my livelihood, niñero. An ache or two is better than letting a robot dig around my insides and wire me wrong."
Arcade tsked and briskly rubbed his palms, the friction sending a flood of warmth through Raul's torn up skin. "And here I thought you liked robots."
"I like radios," countered Raul, enjoying the sensation of warm fingers too much to mind what they must look like to the other companions high up the hills, nestled comfortably in their camp for the night. The doctor and the ghoul standing around in their skivvies by the lake, tenderly holding hands in the golden afternoon sunlight. A picture of romance for the ages, or at least comedy material that Cass would undoubtedly feast on for days.
"I know what I'm getting with a radio," he added. "Robots, I don't know. Too many of them go loco."
There was a glint of sunlight on glass from high up on the foothills and, the sound softened by scrubby grass and distance, a shot fired high in the air.
"Señor, I am pleased to announce that dinner is dead," said Arcade, letting Raul's hands go with a last brisk rub. "How amenable are you to a trade?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Take some time off and sit in the sun as I finish these shirts, and in return you can fix my wristwatch. A break will do you good, or at least much better than scrabbling around in the water with me."
Raul considered the offer, catching the corner of moustache and twisting it between thumb and forefinger as he mulled it over. "I've got no use for being useless."
"Then we'll say that I'm incompetent at the most basic of household tasks and require adult supervision lest I suffer an acute onset case of drowning," said Arcade airily. "Fine then. Fix my watch and repair Julie Farkas' coffee machine before she makes my life any more miserable, and in exchange I'll use my washer womanly charms to force you to relax."
"You drive a hard bargain, Blondie."
Arcade handwaved away his concern. "Do you want me to inform everyone that you wanted to ogle me? I'll tell the girls you got fresh and forced me to my smalls."
Raul laughed at that, admitting defeat as he took a seat on the bank. The late afternoon sun felt good on his back, warm and comforting enough to send him into a light doze. He might not have a use for being useless, but it felt good to rest his old bones for a short while.
--
"Last shirt," said Arcade eventually, rousing Raul to wakefulness. He glanced over his shoulder, not hiding his smirk as Raul yawned and rubbed at his eyes. "Have I been appropriately supervised?"
"Supervised all the way to a sunburn, Blondie. You're redder in the face than Cass at the Gomorrah."
He made a tsking sound under his breath, glancing at his pink-flushed shoulders. "Already? I can't take me anywhere. Can you ruin the view and throw me my clothes?"
Raul obliged, casting around for his own fresh coveralls as well. Belatedly he realised he probably should've at least put on a clean change of clothes when he was banished into a state of relaxation, but if Arcade thought it in any way odd that he'd snoozed off in just his faded old undershorts, then he didn't show it.
"What a dysfunctional family we are," said Arcade as he tugged warm cotton over his head, the collar snagging on the arm of his glasses. "Boone is sulking up in the foothills killing us something to eat, Courier and Veronica are playing house at camp, Cass is…"
"Asleep," said Raul, handing him his trousers. "She had the right idea."
"And we're being modern men and doing the washing."
"Wouldn't go that far, niñero. I'm the modern man. You're the stereotype."
Arcade just let out an undignified snort of laugher, buttoning up his fly and scooping up the pile of wet laundry. "I'll bear that in mind next time you need a big handsome doctor to kiss your bumps and scrapes better."
--
The repaired watch ran like, well, clockwork for nearly ten years, needing only a new battery somewhere around year six. It only stopped after Arcade accidentally dropped it into the creek that ran sluggish and slow at the back of his house, water seeping into the case and stalling the hands at twenty past the hour. Luckily there was a repairman in New Canaan who fixed it up as good as new, politely not saying a word after he saw the name 'RAUL' neatly engraved inside the casing.