Radioactive Romance

It's a sin to tell a lie

Cooper stared slack-jawed at the girl in his home...

The dog was barking out of control. She reached down and petted its head as she stared frozen back at him.

"Who's there?" she said again, more quietly than the first time.

This time, Cooper snapped out of it, and he felt himself walking through the door towards the table where she was sitting.

His eyes devoured every inch of her, taking in her rosy cheeks, unchipped fingernails, and her teeth so white in the dark room, sparkling in the moonlight, as she repeated the question at him. He did all this in a matter of milliseconds that felt like minutes in his brain.

"My fucking house," Cooper said slowly, pointing with both guns around the shabby kitchen.

"My fucking house, who?" she continued, looking around the room.

"Are you some kind of stupid?" Cooper retorted.

"That's not a very nice joke," she snapped back.

"This ain't no fucking joke, lady."

"Y/N," she responded softly. "Are you going to kill me?"

"Well, see, I was kind of planning on it," Cooper said, using the barrel of his gun to tip his hat back on his head.

"I'm looking for my dad."

"Is that so?" Cooper leaned against the door frame. His eyes settled on her jumpsuit. "Did you recently come by that jumpsuit?" he asked.

"It's an issued uniform," she finally put the spoon and tin down and smoothed out the jumpsuit over her chest and arms, looking proudly down at it.

Fuck me, Cooper's internal monologue is whirring... she might be a genuine bona fide vault dweller or a complete chem head. He takes notice of her full form as her hands slide over her chest and down her waist. She's too pristine to be from the surface.

"Which vault?" Two words Cooper fires at her, but the answer is more important than she realizes.

"Vault 33," she says proudly.

"Vault 33..." Cooper's brain is firing. "You come from Vault 33. Your primary crop is corn. You have a Telesonic projector in your farm. It loops images of the Nebraskan countryside. You've been brought up in a meritocracy where people pride themselves on doing the right thing."

The girl stares wide-eyed at him in awe.

"Yes, you know it!" she beams, beautiful white teeth shining.

"I think I know enough to know you need to go home."

"What's your name?" she continues.

"Death," Cooper holsters his guns. "Death is what you can call me."

"I'm not calling you that."

The initial tension of their meeting has abated now that Cooper knows she's no more of a threat to him than a cup of purified water. However, he's still not comfortable with her being here.

"Cooper," he says as he pulls out a kitchen chair and sits in it. He rubs his fingers over his eyes and the bridge of his nose, perhaps thinking that whatever the fucking doctor had given him had induced some hallucinogenic-type state, and he was, in fact, going mad. When he opened his eyes again and she was still sitting there, he leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet onto the table, taking off his hat and throwing it onto the worktop behind him.

"I think I've been very hospitable to a young lady," Cooper nods at the beans on the table. "I think you and your friend have had enough adventures above ground and plenty of stories to tell."