“Left!” Ruby almost skidded on the pavement as she followed Deacon’s barked directions, veering sharply into an alley. It was a dead end, and she almost slammed into the wall before she managed to stop herself.
“Deacon - “
Deacon was behind her, yanking a fire escape ladder down from higher than she’d ever have reached on her own - he had to jump to grab the bottom rung. It screeched on the way down and she felt it in her teeth even as she bolted back up the alley. Deacon motioned for her to go up first, practically running over her as his longer legs propelled him higher with each step, and when they were both crouched on the narrow catwalk he pulled it back up and started fastening it back in place.
There was shouting in the distance, the sound of many, many boots on the asphalt, and Ruby looked between Deacon and the entrance to the alley with wide, panicked eyes.
“Window,” Deacon said roughly, finally getting the ladder hooked back onto the ledge, and Ruby wriggled out of her pack to shove it into the narrow opening ahead of her, crawling through after it. Deacon’s bag was right behind her, then Deacon himself, whirling around to replace the boards over the entrance to the little room.
The shouting and the boots got closer, and Deacon pushed Ruby against the wall, away from the light that still filtered through the planks. He crowded himself against her, trying to make their silhouette in the room as small as possible with two grown adults wearing layers of cloth and armor.
“There’s still a downstairs door.” Deacon’s voice was barely more than breath against her hair. “Don’t have time to block the stairs.”
Ruby nodded minutely; they were pressed together so closely he probably felt the way she swallowed afterwards.
Ruby had known that Deacon was bigger than her. He had at least a foot of height on her and he was built more broadly, not that either of those things were difficult to achieve. But having him cover her body with his own, her face pressed into his chest, was a little bit more of a practical demonstration than she’d been expecting when she woke up that morning. He was wearing his denim coat that day in deference to the growing chill in the air, and the zipper scratched her cheek as his chest rose and fell with his breaths. She tried to block the sensation, squeezing her eyes shut and fighting to hold her breath in defiance of the way her body demanded air after how far she’d run with Gunners on her tail.
A floorboard downstairs creaked and both of them tensed. Deacon’s arms on either side of her head flexed, and she watched his jaw work in the dim light of the room.
“Right hip.” He breathed it against the top of her head. “Silenced pistol. Carefully.”
Ruby’s hand crept towards the holster, her hand meeting Deacon’s leg and having to slide upwards until it reached the grip of the pistol. She drew it slowly, trying to avoid the sound of metal leaving leather, gritting her teeth as it took so much longer to draw due to the silencer lengthening the barrel.
The stairs started creaking under careful footfalls.
“One shot. It has to be one shot.”
Ruby swallowed hard as she nodded against his chest. He dropped one arm slowly, trying not to let his weight shift on the floorboards. She lifted the gun in the newly created sight line as a head started to crest the stairs. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, matching the tempo of Deacon’s jumping in his neck.
The head came fully into view. Ruby took a deeper breath than she’d dared to so far, finally calming the screaming of her lungs and settling her shaking hand.
The Gunner’s eyes met hers in the same instant she pulled the trigger, and she watched them roll back as a hole appeared in his forehead.
His body fell backwards down the stairs, every impact sounding like thunder in the small space, and both of them froze. Ruby strained her ears for any sound of the Gunners returning, barely daring to breathe.
When there was no evidence of the Gunners returning for their missing man, Deacon finally relaxed. Or “collapsed” might be a more accurate term, as he rested his head against the wall just above Ruby’s and his shoulders slumped with relief. She was smothered against his chest, feeling his pulse pounding against her forehead as that damned zipper pressed a toothed pattern into her cheek.
She finally had to push at his side with her free hand, getting him to move so she could draw a full breath. There was a brief feeling of loss as air moved between them for the first time in what felt like hours, and she pushed it down as she looked up at him. He hadn’t moved fully away, one arm still propped against the wall as he met her gaze. There was no way he should have been able to see her in the dark room with his sunglasses on, but she felt the weight of his eyes on her nonetheless.
His free hand came up almost hesitantly, hovering over the side of her face for a long moment before he settled his fingers along her jaw, his thumb brushing over the imprint on her cheek.
“Zipper,” she murmured as his thumb came to rest under her eye.
“Sorry,” he responded in kind. His hand didn’t move.
“It’s fine.” She was whispering now. Not in an attempt to be quiet, now that the danger had passed, but because something seemed to be lodged in her throat to block her voice. Her heart, perhaps, as it seemed to be beating hard enough that she felt it through her entire body.
She felt his fingers tense - and then they fell away, Deacon shoving himself off of the wall as if it had suddenly burned him. “Gotta - gotta deal with that body,” he said, heading for the stairs. “In case they come back.”
”…yeah.” Ruby was suddenly freezing. Standing alone after so long with the heat of Deacon’s body against hers and his pulse against her cheek and - she shook her head, then shook it again when it didn’t clear immediately. They were hiding. He was keeping her safe - keeping them safe. That was all it was. That was all it ever was.
The ghost of his thumb against her cheek meant nothing.
Deacon was downstairs for a lot longer than it took to pull a body back up, and she was about to go looking for him when he finally returned, dragging the dead Gunner up with him.
”Hell of a shot,” he said. His voice had returned to normal, like nothing had ever happened, because it hadn’t. It couldn’t have. “Right above the eyebrow.”
“Thanks,” Ruby said simply. Deacon dropped the body flat onto the floor, shaking his hands to relax his fingers. Ruby did not stare at his hands. “Here - your gun.” The barrel had cooled in the interim and she wrapped her hand around it to hand the pistol back to Deacon grip-first.
“Thanks.” He took it, sliding it back into the holster. There was a moment where they both stood there before he spoke again. “Seriously, thanks. You saved both our bacons.”
Ruby shrugged one shoulder, dragging her eyes away from where she’d pressed her hand against the line of his leg and up to his eyes. No, not his eyes, that was too much. The general vicinity of his eyes. “Just lucky he had such a big forehead.”
A grin split Deacon’s face and Ruby had to look away. “Hey, help me get his legs.”
She moved, glad to have something to do with her body rather than just stand there and be uncomfortably aware of all her nerve endings. Deacon had her maneuver the body to the chimney at the far wall, the bricks fallen away after centuries of decay.
“Isn’t this just putting it back on the ground floor?” she asked as Deacon stuffed the Gunner’s head into the opening.
”Nah - flue’s shut.” Ruby guided the Gunner’s torso and legs into the hole, the weight of his upper body pulling the rest of him down. ”Hopefully it doesn’t start stinking until we leave.”
”Won’t it stink the next time you’re here?”
”Won’t be back here.” Deacon headed for the sofa near the top of the stairs, heaving it into the stairwell until it lodged itself there. A dresser came after it, filling the rest of the space, and a dining room chair lodged into the remaining hole certainly made it look like one of the hodge-podge barricades in every other building they came across. “Burning this bolt-hole.”
“Why?” Secretly Ruby was a little glad. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to stand in this room again and not feel a zipper pressing against her cheek.
“…if one Gunner can find it, others can.” There was enough of a hesitation before his answer that Ruby spotted it for a lie. She never spotted Deacon’s lies. He’d made that one up on the spot, in enough of a panic that it was a really bad lie.
Or maybe she just wanted it to be a lie. Maybe she wanted Deacon to be afraid of this room for the same reason she was, afraid of the memory of fear and closeness and the absolute trust that one of them would save the other.
Fear of what all those things made when you put them together. The tightness in her throat and the beating of her heart, too loud and too hard to be adrenaline alone.
No. This was Deacon. He was probably just exhausted, and tired of waiting on her to move.
”That’s probably best,” and moved to the bed to start going through her pack, just to look like she was doing something as her mind and her stomach churned in concert.
They shared the bed that night, as they often did. But Ruby didn’t usually try to meld with the wall, and Deacon wasn’t usually hanging halfway off the edge of the mattress, in danger of landing in the floor. Ruby thought dryly that Dogmeat would have loved this, so much extra space for him to squeeze himself into, but he was off with Nick solving some crime or another. So there was just empty air between them. Inches that felt like miles.
Ruby wanted to slide over. To fill the space and lay with her back against Deacon’s like usual. But the prospect was terrifying at the same time. She wasn’t sure she could share Deacon’s warmth without wanting to bury herself in it, and she wasn’t sure she could resist the wanting at this point. She hadn’t known there was wanting, but now it felt like that was all there had ever been.
And that was the one thing they didn’t do. They saved each other’s lives, they kept each other safe. But they didn’t share in each other. They didn’t want. They didn’t…they just didn’t.
Ruby was really starting to wish they would. But Deacon would never, so she would hold her peace - and pray her grip was strong enough.