Chapter Text
This was beyond ridiculous. RJ had been standing in more or less the same spot for nearly fifteen minutes while his employer rifled through cabinets and rummaged through boxes looking for junk. He’d been doing it since they first left Goodneighbor together, combing through nearly every room in nearly every building they went into and picking up almost everything he could carry: from chipped, faded dinnerware, and utensils; to useless electronics and watches that stopped working decades ago. He even took clothes if they were in good enough shape — men's and women’s, all sizes, patterns, and occasions. RJ didn’t know what the hell he was doing with any of it, either. He wasn’t selling it, or at least he didn’t try to pawn any of it off on Daisy. He just seemed to be… collecting it. He’d already filled all the pockets of his dog’s tactical armor, but this did little to deter him.
“You’re not gonna make me haul any of that useless crap, are you?” RJ asked, unable to stop himself as the man shoved an empty glass bottle into his rucksack, which was already nearly bursting at the seams. As soon as he said it he realized he shouldn’t have; he’d been fired for less attitude before. But when his employer turned to face him he was smiling good-naturedly and seemed unaffected by the remark.
“Nah, just the useful crap,” he said with a wink.
RJ felt a wave of relief but reminded himself to be more careful anyway. The scavenger was the first client he’d had in weeks. The last thing he needed was to screw it up with his big mouth, even if it was one of the stranger jobs he’d ever taken. Four days had gone by since the stranger showed up in the Third Rail with a charming smile and a lowball offer: two hundred caps for three weeks of work. Under normal circumstances, RJ would’ve told him to piss off, but he happened to be a little short on options at the moment. Besides, it wasn’t the worst job when it came down to it; so far it consisted of little more than watching the guy’s six and making sure he didn’t get his head blown off as he wandered through the ruins of Boston doing odd jobs and picking up junk. They started with clearing out a bunch of wannabe mafiosos from the warehouses in Goodneighbor for Whitechapel Charlie. Next (and despite his un-voiced reluctance), it was collecting some sketchy-looking canisters from a group of Gunners at HalluciGen for that dealer at the Rexford. His worries turned out to be needless since their opponents were all too high to get out a coherent thought even if they did recognize him, but it didn’t exactly go smoothly, either.
“Ow! Ow!” RJ snarls, shoving the attending hands away from his tender, smashed nose and covering it with his own. He’d taken a particularly flexible Gunner’s boot to the face in the final skirmish, and blood and tears were both streaming freely. “Whud da hell are you doing?” he demands. Boss gives him an infuriatingly patient smile.
“I have to set it before I stim you unless you want it permanently pointing east,” he says mildly.
RJ scowls despite the pain. “Whud are you, sumb kinba dogtor?” He means it as a wise-ass remark but to his surprise, the other man makes an amused noise.
“Field medic,” he corrects, “but I guess it’s close enough at this point.” He doesn’t sound bitter exactly, but there’s a definite sour note to his voice. If RJ cared more he might ask about it. But he doesn’t. “Now quit being such a baby,” Boss insists, reaching again for his face, and this time RJ lets him. Somehow he both hears and feels the grinding of his cartilage as it realigns, and it all seems to reverberate through his skull. He can’t help a grunt of pain, accompanied by another fresh wave of tears.
“There you go,” Boss says, using his thumbs to quickly swipe away the wetness on RJ’s cheeks before giving him a light slap, “Good as new.”
Sure, it was nice knowing he was traveling with someone competent for once, but he could’ve done without all the humiliation…
Most recently was a trip to the Boston Library to return some books and clear out the super mutants living there, the last of which was lying a few feet away. The job was for Daisy though, so he couldn’t bring himself to mind too much.
“Speaking of useful, can you put these in your pack? Don’t want them getting messed up in here.”
“Huh?” He turned from staring out the window into the courtyard to find his employer holding a small stack of magazines out to him, the top of which caught his attention. Was that… “ Grognak? ” he asked incredulously. He hadn’t seen one since he left the Capital Wasteland, and he couldn’t remember the last time he read an issue he didn’t know by heart. The other man frowned at him.
“Not a fan?” he asked, misinterpreting RJ’s tone.
“Are you kidding? I love Grognak! I have a whole collection back in—” he just managed to catch himself as he reached out to take them. “Back home.”
He left his beloved comics with Duncan. His son was too young to read, but the kid loved looking at the pictures, especially as RJ read aloud to him. He was planning on using them to teach Duncan when he got older, but… now he wasn’t certain he’d get the chance. Not if he wasn’t able to—
He saw his boss move out of the corner of his eye and looked up, realizing how long he’d been standing there staring silently at the worn cover. The other man was watching him curiously, like he was trying to work something out in his head. There was a snappy retort ready on RJ’s tongue for when he asked if there was a problem, except he never did.
“You want it then?” he asked instead.
RJ’s brow furrowed. He really shouldn’t, but… it would be one heck of a souvenir. “How much?”
A shadow passed quickly over the boss’s face, but it was gone in an instant, replaced by his usual easy smile.
“No charge MacCready, just keep it.” He said it just a little too casually and then turned quickly to survey the ruins of the museum once more time, leaving RJ to stare at his back with narrowed eyes. He didn’t trust it — no way the guy would just give something like this away for free, not with the way he hoarded everything else.
No one did anything for nothing.
“Whatever you say, Boss,” he muttered as he tucked the issue of Grognak and the rest of the magazines carefully into his bag, wondering when he’d be required to pay up.
He didn’t end up waiting long.
“You know,” the man said a while later as he browsed the contents of a nearby book return terminal, still in that too-casual voice, “Now that I think about it, there’s something I want for that comic after all,” he said.
RJ eyed him warily. “What’s that?” he asked, already resigning himself to giving it back.
“Wouldn’t mind knowing your name.”
RJ stared at his back, frowning. His name ? Out of all the things he could’ve asked for, that was what Boss wanted? He hesitated. What was he missing? What was the punchline here?
“Or I’ll just keep calling you MacCready, if you prefer,” Boss said, misinterpreting his silence for refusal.
“No, no, it’s just… been a while since anyone asked,” he admitted somewhat cautiously. And then, after deciding he couldn't see any harm in it, “It’s RJ.”
“RJ, huh? That short for something?”
“Er, Robert Joseph. But no one’s called me that in years.” Of course, no one had called him RJ in quite some time either…
“But I can call you RJ?”
“Uh, sure. If you want, I guess,” RJ replied with a shrug. It seemed like a fairly innocent request so he couldn’t see the harm in agreeing. Besides, it wasn’t like he never agreed to far less innocent things in the past.
“You can call me Emmett by the way,” Boss offered, “or Em, if you like.”
RJ frowned. It was not the first time “Emmett” reminded him of that… As quickly as he seemed to catch on to everything else, RJ figured he’d have taken the hint.
“Boss is fine,” he said shortly.
This was a job, after all, nothing personal. He couldn’t afford to let it be anything else, even if this boss was a heck of a lot more pleasant to be around than most of the ones who came before him. Boss made a noncommittal sound and shrugged, taking a step away from the terminal.
“Fair enough, RJ.” He said it so easily, and with such familiarity that it caught RJ a little off guard, but he didn’t exactly hate it, or at least it didn’t seem like a hill worth dying on, anyways.“Well, I think we’ve managed to find just about anything worth finding,” Boss finally conceded, beginning to pick his way towards the exit.
And a bunch of shi- stuff not worth finding, RJ thought to himself.
“Ready to head out?” Boss asked from the doorway.
“You lead, I follow. That was the deal, right?”
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Emmett led them out into the dim sunlight and pulled up the map on his Pip-Boy, trying to decide where they should go next. They could go back to Goodneighbor and let Daisy know her books had been safely returned, but it was getting close to sundown and they were a little far to make it before dark, especially given how much he was carrying. They were actually closer to the raider encampment Preston asked him to clear out, and it would be awfully nice to have a friendly settlement so close to Diamond City… He glanced over at RJ who had pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and was about to light one up.
“You know smoking is bad for you, right? Causes cancer,” he commented.
RJ scoffed. “So do two-hundred-year-old Fancy Lads, but that didn’t stop you demolishing half that box the other day,” he shot back around the cigarette held between his teeth as he lit it up anyway.
Emmett grunted. “Touche.”
Maybe he was just hungry (starving, more like considering they hadn’t eaten properly since dinner the night before), but when he spotted the unopened, undamaged box of snack cakes he couldn’t help himself. He’d snatched it off the table and tore it open, ripping into one of the snake cake packages and shoving it into his mouth as though RJ wasn’t staring at him like he’d just sprouted another limb. The effect was immediate; as soon as the too-sweet, artificial vanilla flavor hit his tongue he was transported back in time.
He and Nora are sitting on the couch in his living room in college. It’s way too late, and if they’re up at this hour it's because they should be studying. Instead, they’re watching low-budget horror movies (the one on now is a campy post-apocalyptic flick in a nuclear wasteland) and eating all the junk food they were never allowed growing up. The table is littered with empty Nuka-Cola bottles, potato crisp tubes, and sweets wrappers. They're halfway through a box of Fancy Lads and a pot of coffee. Things are easy and uncomplicated between them; they’re just two people who have a lot in common and like being around each other. For the first time ever, Emmett thinks he might really be happy. Nora checks her watch.
“Oh my god is it really almost three?” she asks with amused disbelief. “I’ve got class in a few hours.”
“So what?” Emmett asks, around a yawn, stretching back onto the couch. “You can play hookey for once,” he says. “Just finish this one with me. Pretty please?” He sees Nora smile at him in the glow of the television.
“Okay, but then I’ve got to go to sleep,” she insists as she snuggles back against him. They cuddle like this a lot. Emmett isn’t exactly sure how Nora views it, but for him, it feels like the sibling he never had. Someone who understands him, who he can share things and just have a good time with. Someone comfortable, and safe.
The wind shifted and a cloud of cigarette smoke drifted past, making him cough. He could almost hear RJ roll his eyes.
“Where to next, Boss?” the sniper asked, anxious to be on the move again, like usual. And maybe his refusal to use Emmett’s name stung a little (he thought they’d been getting on quite well), but he couldn’t really blame him. They’d only known each other for a few days; it was a stretch to call them anything other than associates.
So they might as well get back to business.
“Want to go take care of some raiders?” he asked, flashing RJ a grin.
RJ shrugged. “I’m always down to put raiders in their place,” he replied, snuffing his cigarette out against the brick and putting the unsmoked portion back in the pack.
“Uh-huh,” Emmett drawled. “That place happen to be the grave?”
“Could be,” the sniper replied with a wicked grin, and they set off down the street.
They made short work of clearing out the alley — there were only about half a dozen raiders camped out, and they were woefully unprepared for someone to pick the lock and sneak through the back door. The one who should’ve been keeping watch was the first to go; he was slumped against the inside of the guard post, his head lolling from side to side as he followed things that weren’t there with huge, glassy eyes. Emmett wasn’t sure he even saw him raise his knife.
Next was the one who had his back to them while he took a piss against the brick wall several feet away. Emmett plunged the knife into his kidney first, and then into the side of his neck and sharply outwards to sever his windpipe and carotid. The raider crumpled to the ground with near silence, and Emmett turned to see RJ creeping up the stairs of the lookout post to take aim at the one sitting in front of the cookfire. There was the sharp crack of a gunshot and he slumped forward, spilling the contents of the pot he’d been stirring all over his corpse. The shot drew the attention of another and Emmett watched with macabre amusement as the left side of her skull exploded almost as soon as she wandered out into the open. Emmett emerged from his place crouched beside the stairs and looked up to catch RJ’s eye. The sniper feigned a yawn. Emmett rolled his eyes.
Cocky little brat , he thought with an unexpected touch of affection.
Emmett found the last one more or less cowering in the corner of a stilted shack and took care of him as he ran out and away from his well-aimed “frag grenade” (it was really just a rock, but the raider was too panicked to notice). It was almost fully dark by the time they finished carrying the bodies out of the alley and Emmett finished cleaning the blood from his face and hands. He placed a few mines at each entrance and then set about making their dinner using the well-stoked fire the raiders had been using. Whatever was in the pot originally was tossed into the river with the bodies.
Emmett cooked dinner again, dicing tatos, corn, and hunks of mongrel meat to toss into the skillet with a healthy scoop of the brahmin fat he and Jun had rendered before he left Sanctuary. He snuck glances across the fire at RJ who sat cleaning his rifle by the light of the coals and Emmett’s Pip-Boy. It wasn’t the first time he’d been impressed by the ease and familiarity with which RJ handled a gun. Emmett had a growing suspicion that the young man could field strip and clean it blindfolded without any trouble, and that was nothing on his aim. Just the other night he’d stopped them on the road, brought up his rifle and dropped a feral hound from at least a hundred yards without hesitating. Emmett wanted to ask where he learned it; did one of his parents teach him? An older sibling maybe? He must’ve started young to be so skilled at his age, whatever that was. He was sure RJ was at least a few years younger than himself, but it was clear that he wanted things between them to be strictly professional, so Emmett decided he’d be better off steering clear of both subjects, sure it would only be taken as prying.
Instead, he listened to RJ hum along quietly to the radio in the Pip-Boy (“Easy Living” by Billie Holiday) while they worked, and it wasn’t long before Emmett was handing him a steaming plate of hash. RJ took a bite and groaned.
“Man oh man, forget running all over the Commonwealth scavving, you should start a restaurant or something. Everything you cook is awesome,” he said around a mouthful. Emmett chuckled, pleased with the rare compliment.
"Glad you like it," he replied earnestly. He’d been a dismal cook for most of his life, with even simple meals beyond him. But Nora insisted on changing that. She was mostly patient, if not a little strict sometimes (especially with her family’s traditional dishes), and it wasn't long before he was looking up new recipes to try for himself and making changes he liked (except with her family’s traditional dishes). It was coming in incredibly handy these days, especially given the limited and unfamiliar ingredients he usually had on hand. But RJ didn’t know about Nora. More than likely, he wouldn’t even care. In fact, it would be easier not to tell him, the same way he planned not to tell him about Shaun.
But Emmett could still feel the ghost of his wedding ring on his finger, even though it had been sewn into the breast pocket of the flannel beneath his chest plate for weeks. He was the only person alive who remembered her. Sure, the synth detective Nick Valentine knew about her, but he wasn’t exactly alive, and he didn’t know her like Emmett had. He didn’t know that she made amazing braised pork, or that she loved gardening, or that she had a sister named April, and that she was allergic to dogs. That she loved to travel but hated flying, and regretted not learning her parents’ language better. That she’d been a real, live person, not so very long ago (in his mind at least), and that he loved her as much as he knew how. No one knew those things but Emmett, and no one would if he didn’t tell anyone.
Nora deserved better than that, no matter how things were at the end.
“My wife, Nora, taught me how to cook.”
RJ stared at him.
“You’re married ?” he asked around a full mouth.
Emmett raised a brow at him. “Don’t sound so surprised kid. I was quite a catch, you know."
“Well?" RJ said, ignoring his attempt to make light.
"Well what?"
"Where is she? Why aren't you with her?"
Emmett couldn’t quite put his finger on RJ’s tone. It wasn’t quite angry but it seemed close to accusatory. Whatever it was, and whatever the reason for it, Emmett didn’t appreciate it and it soured the mood a little. He gave the sniper a level stare.
"She's dead,” he said flatly.
RJ's expression changed, shifting briefly into something uncomfortable before it settled into a mask of indifference.
"Sorry to hear that, Boss. That's really shi— agh, terrible." He couldn't quite hide the sincerity in his voice though — or the almost-swear. Emmett cocked his head and looked at him curiously. He must’ve thought Emmett was going to ask about it, because he went on hastily, "Anyways, the food’s good, thanks again.” And after a moment of somewhat awkward silence, he offered, “Want me to cook tomorrow?”
Emmett laughed good-naturedly, a little surprised at how easily it came. Thinking about the past usually left him in a dark place, but he couldn't help remembering RJ’s attempt at dinner a few days earlier. It was edible, but only just. He’d definitely need some guidance if he was going to cook anything for them in the future.
"Don't worry about it kid. Just eat up — you look like a few hearty meals could do you some good."
RJ rolled his eyes but took another spoonful of his hash instead of replying. Emmett smiled to himself and started on his own dinner.