Chapter Text
“Uh, hey, Pipes..?”
She smiled up at her lover from where she'd been repairing a small hole in her favourite coat. He was a beautiful little thing; a few years younger than her, buff in all the right places, sun-kissed with freckles framing his dark green eyes, and ginger hair that fell in waves to his shoulders. He still had that young coltish look that not many people hung onto nowadays but that could've just been a holdover from when and how he was raised.
She'd hit the jackpot with him; gorgeous, funny, kinda shy. Not to mention that this man was currently the General of the Minutemen and had wiped out the Commonwealth’s bogeymen not five weeks ago. It had been rough on him, he'd been distant and mopey, but he was bouncing back as time went on, as they all did.
“Hey, Blue,” she stood to step into his usual waiting embrace. When it didn't come, she shrugged it off, “so, ready for that interview?” She wanted him to tell her everything that had happened in the Institute so that she could inform the people. She hadn't gone along for the fight, Blue saying that Nat would be alone if the worst happened, so he'd taken MacCready and Hancock along instead. The logic didn't fully track with her with Mac's son literally scream laughing across the street with the other kids and Hancock having a whole town plus Fahrenheit to look after, but she let it slide. He'd talk about it with her all in due time.
He awkwardly scratched the back of his neck. It was so endearing, he still had the awkward I-don’t-know-how-to-talk-to-people vibe that most people left behind in the dust the first time they set foot outside their house nowadays, “No, listen. I really need to talk to you…in private.”
“Ooo,” she popped her gum between her teeth with a wink, “in private, is it?”
“Um. Yeah.”
She laughed and grabbed his hand to lead the way. It was fun, most of the time, teaching this young man how to be in bed. He had a son, yes and that fact sometimes blew her mind because how?, but he was so beautifully hesitant and awkward when naked it was almost funny. Mostly it was just cute. His fingers would skim her skin as though he were afraid of breaking her and his eyes would squeeze shut in absolute concentration when he was inside her. As though he were solely focused on wringing out an orgasm from her or learning some new way to make her squeal. He'd told her that he just never had much practice before the bombs and that his wife got up the duff the first try. So, it made her exceptionally pleased that it was her that got to teach him all the new tricks and how to get better at it.
His kisses were the same. Kinda awkward. Kinda new. All the way cute.
She pulled him into her bedroom and turned to face him as her fingers flew to the buttons on her blouse. His eyes did that cute little frightened widening they always did as she slowly began to unbutton.
His hands flew up and, for a moment, she thought that he was actually taking initiative for once. But, his hands merely gently grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands away from her shirt.
“No! No. Sorry, no.” He bit his full bottom lip, “I just really actually need to talk to you.”
“Oh,” she'd listen to anything he had to say. Maybe he was proposing and, like everything remotely related to relationships with him, it was coming out awkward. She'd say yes, of course. Who wouldn't? She still couldn't believe that this man had given in to her advances all those months ago. Before that, she hadn't even seen him touch anyone else. Because he was hers and he was about to be forever, “I'm listening, Blue.” She sat demurely on her bed, the absolute picture of an attentive girlfriend-maybe-fianceé.
He was wringing his hands and wrists down by his belly, “Right, yeah, uh.” He took a deep breath as he flickered his eyes over every surface of her room before finally landing on her. The deep forest green pinned her in place. Their children will be so pretty with her black hair and those gorgeous eyes, “Piper, you're great and all and I really like you. You're funny, charming, so so kind, and patient with me.”
Oh my God, it's actually happening.
Her eyes lit up and she shifted in her seat as he continued, “Really, I mean it. I think the world of you and you were one of my first friends in this place when I…y’know,” he flapped his hand in the general direction of that blasted Vault up the hill beyond their little graveyard, “and, well, I gotta be straight with you like you have been with me.” He took a deep breath, “Piper -”
“Yes!”
“I'm gay.”
His eyes widened at her interruption and his face turned tatoe-red. She felt her fingers clench in her pink bed sheet before she forced them to relax, the gum popped in her mouth, “What did you say?”
“Did you think I was proposing?”
“What did you just say to me, Blue?”
He looked down at the floor, eyes squeezing shut and, as he spoke again, it came out wavering and watery, “...I'm gay…I kinda wanna…” he left it hanging with a shrug.
“You wanna what?”
Gay?
How?
When?
What!?
“I wanna break up. It's not fair on you…or me. It's not the same now as it was back then and I was talking with -”
“Months!” She stood, a sudden tower of fury and hurt looming over the young man, “Months! Over a year!? We've been together and you didn't think, not once, to tell me you were gay!?”
“Well…uh, like I said, it's all different now and -”
“And now you want to break up? With me!?” She was pretty sure she was screeching now but she couldn't help it. How dare he!? All this time! All the things she had taught him, all the times she had gone on some hair brained slapdash mission, the people she'd introduced him to! Nick, Hancock, MacCready.
It all made sense. All the shyness, the frigidness, his inexperience with a woman's body. The ways she had had to coax him into bed every single time. The times she had to be the first to start a kiss. He wasn't shy! He was batting for the other team. He was squeezing his eyes shut to pretend her pussy was an arsehole and that her tits were pecs.
He needed reminding of just who she was and where he stood with her.
“Piper, I'm sorry, I -”
She couldn't help it. She screamed bloody murder and slapped him hard across his stupid perfect pretty little face, before spitting, gum and all, over his chin, “After everything I've done for you, this is how you repay me?”
He rubbed his cheek even as the fingers on his other hand twitched for his knife, “What? I don't -”
“And now what, hmm? Gonna go off and let some guy fuck you? Slut around a bit?”
“No, Piper! I can't help it if I'm gay. I was born -”
She flapped her hand and he flinched, “Yeah yeah, you were born like this. Right. And I'm Cleopatra.”
There was banging down the hallway and the next moment her bedroom door burst open to a heavily breathing MacCready and Cait. They looked over them both; Piper angrily panting with her hand still raised, towering over the General who looked about five times shorter than usual, his hand still holding his reddened cheek with actual tears in his eyes and spit dripping from his chin.
Cait grasped the situation first, “What the fuck, Piper!?” She budged a little to the side as MacCready came into the room and carefully stepped between the irate woman and their General. Cait hissed through her teeth, “What the fuck did you do to him?”
Piper was incensed. Why wasn't she being backed up? She was the wounded party here, “He's decided he's gay.” She snorted at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.
She glared at the steely gaze of the Merc before her, hiding Blue from her view. He actually tutted his tongue at her as though she were a bratty child, “He didn't decide, it's who he is. Did you hit him?”
She tilted her chin up, she wouldn't be spoken down to by a boy ten years younger than her, “What's it got to do with you, Merc. This is between him and me.”
Cait sidled further into the room, fists clenched and green eyes dangerous, “No' when yer goin’ around slappin’ and spittin’ at him it ain't.”
“Oh, fuck off, Cait! Like you're any fucking better.” She was shouting again but she didn't care. These were meant to be her friends. They were meant to back her up when she was wronged! Not come to the defense of the guy that hurt her.
“I don't smack ma friends. Or judge ‘em fer things they can't change.” She crossed her arms and Piper spied the old track marks there.
“I won't be spoken down to and lectured by a jumped up single dad and a fucking junkie about what me and my partner do!”
“Piper!” Blue stepped around MacCready then, recovered from the slap in full, and stared at her with wide, beautiful, tear filled eyes, “Are you being for real? You can't fucking talk to people like that! How are you even being like this right now?”
She scowled at them all, “Get the fuck out of my room. All of you.”
“Piper, I really didn't mean to hurt you. I just wanted to be honest with myself. I know it seems -”
“Get out! Take your fucking murdering junkie friends and your faggot self too!”
Then Hancock was at her door looking in, then Deacon and Nick, Curie and Danse, Preston and the fucking dog with Codsworth. The Mr Handy had the nerve to say: oh, my! under what counted as its breath, before Blue turned away from her and bustled the others out. As he was closing the door he meekly and quietly said into the air between them, “We'll give you some time.” And it shut with a soft click.
How dare he. They were meant to get married. They were meant to have children to take his mind off of Shaun. He was meant to be hers. Forever.
She seethed and raged. Her pink bedding was ripped. The typewriter Blue had found her in bits beneath her heavy boots. Pictures scattered. Window pane broken.
He was meant to be hers. Forever.
***
They sat around the fire in Jesse's back garden. Mac sat on his left as Deacon sat on his right with a damp cloth held out to him. Jesse took it in shaking hands with a quiet thanks sent the spy's way before he wiped the spit and shredded gum from his still stinging face.
Hancock, from where he sat across the fire, whistled low and cracked open a beer, “Well, can't say I saw that shit storm comin’.”
Jesse shrugged as Cait answered the Ghoul Mayor, “Feck, if that ain't tha truth. What did you say to her, Jess?”
He shrugged again. He felt raw and flayed open. He'd never seen Piper like that before. Had never even thought her capable of saying the things she'd said. It wasn't even the slap that upset him the most, she'd always been a bit handsy and rough. It was the judging. It reminded him so much of his mother that it has opened up scars he once thought kind of healed.
His voice cracked as he spoke and he hated it. He was the General of the fucking Minutemen! It was embarrassing and painful for people who technically worked for him, his best friends, his family, to hear and see that. Hell, all of fucking Sanctuary had heard her yelling, even the children!
“I just…I just told her the truth. I tried to be calm about it and make sure she knew it wasn't her personally I didn't like! I just…” He dropped his head in his hands and flinched only a little at the warm palm running down his back to soothe him.
“It isn't your fault, Jesse,” Danse said from somewhere to his left, “you didn't know she was going to react that way.”
Codsworth tutted from nearby the cooler as his long appendages pilfered more drinks for people, “I believe it has brought some bad memories back to the young sir.” He was so much like a weird robot dad.
“Codsworth! Please, I'm twenty-five! Or six? I'm not that -”
Preston interrupted, “What bad memories?”
“Oh, here we go.” Hancock rumbled as he lit a cigarette and handed it over the fire to Deacon for them to share.
“‘Ere goes vat?” Curie asked.
Cait cracked her knuckles, “Nothin’ good. I shoulda fuckin’ laid her out! The fuckin’ nerve!”
“Wouldn't have changed what she said and did, sweet cheeks.” Deacon rumbled from his side, “What bad memories we talking about, Whisp? Be good to get it off your chest, yeah?”
The warm hand on his back continued to draw soothing lines as MacCready took the offered beer from Codsworth. Jesse cringed. He couldn't talk about it again, not so soon after he'd already laid it all out to someone else. Not so soon after he'd worked up the courage to come clean about it all and decide to go after the people that actually piqued his interest in that way. He waved a hand at Hancock. If Codsworth was his dad, Hancock was his cool laid back uncle who didn't give a shit what you did so long as you didn't get yourself killed doing it, “Please, John, can you do it?” Hancock snorted from around a Mentat, “Please! I can't do it again.”
He caved like wet tissue paper at the sight of his watering green eyes and little form smashed between his ever watchful merc and spy, “Fine, Sunshine, I'll spin the tale.”
“You don't have to spin -”
“Naw, you've asked me to do it now, haven't ya? So I get to tell it.” He pulled himself up straighter and the others actually leaned in to listen, “Let me tell ya the story of General Jesse Perrin: Life Before the World went to Shit.”
“John -”
“Hush, Sunshine, I'm getting there.” Danse snorted and Mac and Deacon leaned a little closer into him, smooshing him in a little cradle of heat and warmth, “So, the year is twenty-fifty-three ish and our little gay General graces the planet with his presence. Times are real smooth sailing, if you don't account for the looming nuclear war, and little Jesse gets raised like all good people do; mum, dad, schooling, good food, grandparents, all that Pre-War jazz, ya feel?”
He took a sip of his drink, black eyes sparkling like liquid night sky as he made sure his audience was captivated, Curie had curled up a little with a dreamy smile on her face to listen, “Now, little Jesse was a good boy. Golden. Sunshine. Always has been and always will be.”
He winked at Jess from where he too sat enraptured in Hancock's story telling, “He helped his ma in the kitchen, his old man in the garage, the other kids with their scraped knees and street games. He went to school. Top of his class! A real whizz with maths and science and could recite the Gettysburg from memory. Yeah, he's a real good kid.” He paused for dramatic effect and took a drag on his cigarette with a hum, “Except, one day and just as, as it happens to everyone, puberty kicks in, a little light flickers on in little Jesse's head. His friends start to notice girls. The way they're growing, the way they sound and smell. They start to posture and peacock around to get the prettiest girl to notice them, yeah?”
Everyone nods, “Jesse though? The little hero of our story finds a flaw in himself. He doesn't notice the girls of the neighbourhood the same way the other boys do. No. He notices the boys the same way all those pink-cheeked little lassies do, instead. Now, Jesse being the good boy he is, runs to his ma and pa to find out what's wrong.”
Jesse winces. For all the spinning and weaving Hancock is doing, he's hitting the nail on the head, “He says: ma, pa! Is this normal? Is this right? And his ma and pa say: no, Jesse! Not our sweet Jesse! What did we do wrong!? It's the devil that did it! And little Jesse is confused. He didn't meet a devil. Nah, what Jesse had done was find an old skin rag and discovered that muscles and manly faces were interesting.”
Cait nudged Danse with a grin and Jesse rolled his eyes. He really didn't have to tell them that part, “Got a real little chub on for it, he did. He was ashamed for upsetting his folks. He wanted to be a good boy for ‘em, yeah? So, he does what he's told to do. His ma, in all her righteous fury, takes him to get fixed. Ain't no kid of hers gonna be a little shirt lifter, no sir.”
Another pause as Preston whispers out: what then? Then Hancock continues his tale, lit up by the fire pit like an avenging angry angel “Back then, folk didn't live like we do. They had rules and regulations. Things people had to follow to the damned letter. Red tape and injustice and sorrow for all. Not like now, nah, now you can flit about and do what ya like so long as you don't cross the wrong people or get the kids involved, yeah?”
Everyone nodded along to this golden rule of the Commonwealth: Don't go around like a murderous lunatic and you'll mostly get by with friends and a safe place to lay down at night, “Back then, everyone gave a shit about what their neighbours did. They'd peek over your fence, knock on your door, rat you out to the police, if they thought you weren't part of the flock. And what's outta the flock, my friends?”
They all shiftily looked around at each other. They were all weird in their own way: a ghoul, synths, mercenaries, spies, cage fighters, dog. None of them really fit in in what you'd call society. Nick hummed, he knew just as well as Jesse how things used to be, “Being different. Ain't anything more ostracising than being different. We get it,” he waved a finger between them, “us, who have all had shit to crawl through to get where we are with our ray of Sunshine. So, his ma takes him to get fixed, like I said. A special little summer camp for all the little boys and girls like Jesse. And what's at this camp I hear you ask
Nothin’ fuckin’ good, is the answer. Some fucked up weirdos pretending to be men of whatever God they thought they believed in. Taking kids in and trying to change them by force. Our little hero was:” he started ticking things off on his fingers, “whipped, beaten, screamed at, forced to watch porn till he was sick, and fucking electrocuted.” Jesse still has scars hidden beneath his hairline and one on his chest, “Just so his mum could take him home and show off her normal kid. And? Did it work, Jess?”
Jesse shook his head from behind his fingers. Green eyes wide with horror as though this story was about some other poor kid and not himself. Mac's arm wrapped over his shoulder as Deacon's found his lower back, “Didn't think so, Sunshine. His ma was horrified! All those caps spent on nothin’. So, what's next? What can she do to take the gay right outta her precious little boy?
Easy. Good old fashioned, behind closed doors, abuse. Everything the camp did but at the hands of the people who shoulda loved him the most.”
He was getting angry now, his body stiffening and rearing up further even as Nick placed a hand on his knee, “Well, I'll tell ya the truth, Jess. Ain't no one love you like we do. Don't give a damn where or how you get your dick wet. None of us do. You've done too much for too many to be scared about what strangers think of ya. We're your family and ain't nothin' that's gonna change that. And if someone even tries, they'll have a hard time getting past me.”
“Or the rest of us.” Mac said as his arm tightened over him like a shield.
Jesse let out a shaky breath, “Finish your story, John.”
Hancock tilted his head a little bit and nodded with a small frown on his scarred face, “Where was I? Oh, right. Good old fashioned abuse: beatings, neglect, washing your mouth out with soap and abraxo. Jesse's pa was just as bad. Jesse's dad was from the army, you see? And Jesse was meant to follow in his footsteps but the army didn't allow little poofs into their mighty ranks, oh no. So, what did he do?”
Danse rolled his neck and squinted into the fire. His background in the Brotherhood was a rough one, the bounty on his head for being different was massive, but no one had ever cared who someone slept with or got married to, so long as the Brotherhood came first, “He forced little Jesse to lie. Keep this big secret. Hide away this huge part of you that makes you you. Push it down. Hide it away. Don't ever mention or act on it. Definitely don't act on it! The police will come around and take you away. And, just so that no one definitely never finds out, you gotta get married.”
The arms around him tightened further and Jesse dropped his head once more into his palms, “His dad's friend had a girl Jesse's age and it seemed like a match made in Heaven. A dark haired beauty, clever, training to be a lawyer while Jess works his way through boot camp. Nora was thrilled at the prospect of marriage to our Sunshine. What's not to love? He's smart, pretty, well built, best grades outta college, and a well known family with connections all around Massachusetts for her to get to know. They get all bundled up in white and shoved down the aisle to a funeral dirge. Or, a dirge in Jesse's mind, anyways.”
Curie, dreamily and so out of pocket as always, wrapped her hand around Preston's thigh and sighed, “Oh, I bet it vas beautiful, oui? Jesse in an old fashioned suit with flowers in his hair.”
Hancock laughed, “Think you've had enough to drink, sister. Anyway, they get hitched except Nora doesn't know that this is all lavender to everyone else. She's confused when Jess doesn't want to fuck her silly on their wedding night. She waits months and months and months for him to make a move until she just…does it for him.” Jess flinched beneath the arms holding him to earth and sniffled as a calloused thumb gently brushes against his neck, “That's all it took. This one time. And then pop! Jesse is gonna be a dad himself.”
Hancock paused again and looked directly into Jesse's tear filled green eyes, “The year is twenty-seventy-seven and war…war never changes. The kid's born, Shaun Perrin, and the bombs dropped across our world like a fucking catastrophic firework show. Everything and everyone little Jesse knew is dead, feral, or stolen from him and he's locked away to freeze in a Vault-Tec fucking experiment for two-hundred years. Twenty-two-eighty-seven and Jesse is released like some fucking sideshow attraction for a bored and sick old man who Jesse once called son. And what does Jesse find? In the dirt and struggle and pain that life has become?”
The others looked around at each other, they knew the answer, “He finds himself. He finds that he can be exactly who he is exactly the way he was meant to be. No more experiments. No more trying to change for others' gratification. No more hiding in the dark where those that love you can't follow. He finds purpose, friends, new family, and simply…himself. You're gay, Sunshine, and that's one hundred percent normal and fine by us.”
Curie sniffed, “I just love a ‘appy ending, monsieur. That vas beautiful.”
“Did you even get who he was talking about?” Preston asked from above her.
“Of course! Ze General! All ze best stories have 'im involved somehow.”
The others chuckled as Jesse finally straightened himself up even as the arms didn't remove themselves from him, “Thanks, John. I think you told it better than when I told you.”
“Anytime, Sunshine.” He stood and stretched, “Welp, I'm gonna go get some shut eye, long day tomorrow.” As he went to swagger away he met Jesse's eye again and winked, “Don't do anything I wouldn't do.”
Everyone started to peel off after that, good nights happily said as they passed the three who still sat on the overturned tree log, some nattering about the story they'd just been told.
Mac shivered a little as the fire started to get put out by Codsworth before he spoke, “Jess. I know it's been a long day,” Deacon's arm coiled tighter along his lower back, “And I know everything with Piper is still…uh…fresh?” Deacon snorted and avoided the light jab from Mac's fist from where his arm still sat over Jess’ shoulder, “But, um, me and Deacon were thinking that -”
“Ah, come now sirs! I must insist you let the young master retire for this eve. He is practically dead on his feet!” Codsworth floated over after letting Dogmeat into the house, he waved his sharp appendages at Deacon and Mac, “I believe you are on mission tomorrow, yes? Can't go after those Reds without a solid eight hours and a hearty breakfast.”
Jesse was pulled to his feet from between his Merc and Spy, “Night, guys. I guess you can tell me tomorrow, Mac? You know how he gets if I'm dawdling.”
Mac looked up at Jesse as Deacon slid into Jesse's spot and looped his suddenly empty arm around him. They both watched the General leave and slip into his house through the backdoor. Deacon snorted in Mac's ear as he lay a gentle kiss there, “What a fucking cock-block.”
“Deek.”
“What?” They stood to go to their own house across the street to where Duncan was waiting, “It's true.”
Mac hummed and nodded but nudged him with an elbow anyways, “We don't want just his pr…uh…penis, Deacon.”
“I know, doll. Just sayin’ is all.”
The lights went out in Whisper's house as Deacon looked over his shoulder, “What a fuckin' day.” He pushed his sunglasses up his nose and stepped over the threshold into his own home with MacCready.
***
Hope people like this or are at least interested :)
Like I said, this has been in my drive for a while now and I wanted to give it a shot.
Ideas and hopes welcome <3