some nice shots of the Fallout town i’m building, Starlight. So far I have a neat little bar with decking, a mechanic, and a chapel like the one in Diamond City. Also a bonus wet ginger cat Sole Survivor.
I found this Fallout Nick Valentine OC stuff on my computer and figured I should share it. It’s been sitting there long enough.
Fallout 4
Nick Valentine/OC
Unfinished
______________________
Ray grimaced, twisting his mouth into a thin quavering line. His eyes, big and bright, roved over Nick’s face and it was then that Ray kissed him.
Nick shoved him hard- harder than he meant to, and Ray collapsed on the debris at his back, his limbs limp like a marionette with cut strings. The swinging bulbs above them did nothing for Ray’s face, tired and gormless, nothing on it but a blank stare at a far wall.
Nick’s mouth still burned from the contact, his hands tightened into fists even as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Embarrassed and deeply betrayed, he thought of that smile, Ray’s smile, and imagined what it must have looked like when he figured out what made the clockwork dick tick.
‘You’re angry.’
‘Of course I’m angry,’ Nick ground out. ‘I’m mad as hell, but it doesn’t matter.’ And then as if he had come to some sort of conclusion, he said: ‘None of it matters.’
‘I love you.’
‘That especially doesn’t matter.’
The light swung above their heads, the shadows slipped and slid against the walls like a ship on the high sea, but Nick and Ray were motionless. The thrum of the generator from the roof was a bleary noise, muddled by the scrap walls of Home Plate.
Ray was leaving damp tear tracks across his own skin, but his face was still, pale and blank. He lay there like a meager fountain, dripping on the canvas covered boxes underneath him.
‘You always think--,’ Nick started, ‘--you always think you know exactly what to say, how to get anything out of anyone if you really want to. Is it all just a game to you? The way you play with Preston… he calls you General and he means it, but I see it- don’t think I don’t! I see the look you get when he does. It’s a joke to you. Am I a joke to you?’
For the first time Ray’s head did move, a sharp flick of his eyes, watery with the lashes clumped together from the wet.
‘No… Nick, you’re not.’
He had never doubted that voice before, but suddenly it felt one shade off of believable.
‘Nice. I bet you practice that in the mirror. You know you’re a real piece of work? Could probably charm your way out of a nuclear blast. Come to think of it, you probably did.’ He wasn’t being fair, he knew, but it was hard to be when he felt like his heart had just been kicked over. ‘And anyway, I didn’t come here to talk about me or about Preston. I came here to talk to you about Shaun.’
The silence was a ringing, loud silence. It was a deafening silence, like the kind you expect to hear before a catastrophe.
Ray licked his lips unconsciously.
Nick might have been angry, but Ray was pathetic. Sick and drawn, eyes suddenly bulging like someone caught in a horror show. Pathetic.
‘I can’t…’ Ray ground his teeth struggling with his words.
‘Can’t. Won’t. Either way it all amounts to the same thing if you keep up this silent act. I can’t keep coming back here and getting burned like this. We used to be partners. I deserve better than that and so does your son.’
Ray’s mouth twisted for a moment. Nick had said the ‘partners’ thing to hurt. Judging by Ray’s face it had. Then, when Nick was ready to turn away, Ray spoke up.
‘How is he? How’s Shaun?’ His voice croaked.
‘He’s alright. He misses you. Keeps asking when you’re coming back.’’
Ray looked at him again, then put a hand against his face and said: ‘I miss him too.’
It sounded real and painful. Nick was suddenly wrong footed. He looked away, pressed the heel of his hand against his eye socket.
‘You sure don’t act like it.’
‘It’s hard, Nick.’
‘Why? I know it’s not because he’s a synth, we went over this before. But what is it, Ray? What is it about him you can’t deal with?’
‘I… I don’t know. ’
Ray’s answer was hollow, but it was the most coherent conversation they had since the Institute fell. And that was it- the hard, uncrackable nugget that Nick hadn’t been able to wrestle out of him- the Institute. Ray never said a word about it. It was clear that whatever had happened there had involved the human Shaun. And he knew in his gut, the way a detective knows, that Ray was aching over something bigger than not finding him. It was a stab in the dark, but he hadn’t anything left.
Nick dropped his hand.
‘What happened to him, Ray,’ Nick asked. ‘What happened to Shaun?’
To say that Ray’s face crumpled would be like saying a building fell down. It didn’t justify the tragedy of the event.
‘I don’t know, I- Nick, I-’ Rays mouth screwed itself up over his teeth like whatever he was trying to say was choking him. Like an awful, heavy thing was crawling up his throat. And it must have been awful because what he said next was worse than anything Nick had imagined.
‘I killed him,’ he said. Ray was crying in earnest now. His face was a strained mess. ‘Nick, I killed him,’ he said again. ‘I killed my son.’ The agony of it said out loud, probably for the first time, was written in every line of him. He moaned and struggled against his own throat and he looked everywhere except at Nick like he might be able to escape the reality of his own words.
‘Jesus,’ Nick breathed.
Ray was trembling now, looking like he could shake himself to pieces.
Nick’s anger was temporarily forgotten as was the hard set of his jaw.
In sharp, decided motions, Nick pulled him up. Ray’s hands struggled over him. He grasped at Nick’s back and scrabbled for purchase. His grip was hard and desperate like a man gone frantic on a cliff’s edge.
‘He was- he was the best thing I- I ever had, that I ever d-did,’ he said between gasps. He rocked and swayed in grief with his mouth pressed into Nick’s shirt. The enamel of Ray’s teeth was dry and cold and strained the heat of his breath. ‘Sarah!’ He said suddenly. ‘I killed our boy. Oh god, Sarah! I killed our boy!’
They stood together for some time. Nick let Ray ride out his grief in the space between his shoulder and his neck and he thought about what he had said after they watched the institute explode and then crumble under its own decimated waste: It couldn’t have been easy.
Now those words seemed stupid, flimsy.
‘I’m sorry, Nick. I’m sorry for everything.’
‘Well, not all of it’s been bad,’ he teased, then held Ray a bit tighter and closed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry about your boy.’
‘I love him,’ Ray said.
‘I know you do, I know,’ Nick said, just to say. It felt right to say.
He rubbed circles against Ray’s wracking back.
There were still gaps in his understanding about what had happened, but now wasn’t the time for that. The hard, awful details about the past and their present could be sorted out later. Right now, with Ray in his arms, he concentrated on what was important.
He pressed his cheek against Ray’s hair. It was unkempt and oily, but it didn’t matter. Things like that don’t matter when you’re in love.
Eventually Ray gripped Nick’s shoulders indicating he was ready to let go.
Nick didn’t like to think too much on it, but the truth was he was starved for human contact and when he held Ray every point between them felt like a star; like every good thing anyone had ever said about a star.
Finally Nick opened his eyes and reluctantly let him go.
Ray kept his eyes down as his hands trailed over Nick’s shoulders and then dropped to hang uselessly at his sides. He sniffled and brought a hand back up to wipe away the damp.
Nick made a cursory sweep of the room. This was Ray’s home, but it never seemed like more than a collection of riff-raff and pinched bobbles. A corner of the noisy shack was littered with duct tape and wires, a screwdriver was carefully balanced atop the nose of a Giddyup Buttercup and a can of paint was tipped over, its contents seeping around the lid to become a tacky puddle against the floor. The bed was dumpy, the crates and burlap were dusty, and in the middle of it was Ray his eyes puffy and his nose leaking against his upper lip. Maybe Ray supposed that was where he belonged- amongst the dirt and junk, packed between garbage and put somewhere dark.
‘Why don’t we get out of here, get you something to eat. Give us a chance to have a proper talk.’
Ray looked up like he was surprised, his eyes were hopeful, but the rest of his face hung a bit closer to the floor.
‘Nick, before we go, I…I’m sorry… about the…’ Ray looked at Nick’s mouth, then away just as fast. He gestured like he didn’t know the word he was looking for.
Nick nodded, trying not to sound too disappointed or hurt when he said, ‘Yeah, well, you’ve been under a lot of stress lately and that’s liable to make a man do things. Even crazy things like taking a swing at his partner... granted, never had a man swing at me with his mouth before, but we can omit that if you want.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Wasn’t like what? Look, maybe you took a swing, maybe you didn’t. Maybe I pushed you because god knows everyone thinks you deserve it, or maybe you just fell. It happens sometimes.’
‘And maybe I said I love you.’
‘Yeah… maybe you did. Is that the way you want it?’
Ray nodded, swiping a hand under his eyes again. Nick was momentarily fascinated by the flush of Ray’s cheeks and the pores on the end of his nose. Maybe Ray wasn’t beautiful the way you thought of beauty. If the Minutemen ever got around to painting an oil of him they would probably skip his stringy hair, keep his big, dark eyes and forget the bags under them, but the rest of it- the nervous eyebrows and flushed cheeks and open pores- he couldn’t imagine Ray being half as beautiful without them.
‘Come on, I’ve got some caps and Takahashi has a bowl of noodles with your name on it.’
The two of them stepped out into the cool air of twilight and walked slow and silent to the noodle stand where the lights had already been switched on for the evening. The electric light glared brilliantly off of Takahashi’s plexiglass dome which was fogged over with thick, heavy beads of condensation.
A handful of other people, couples and some lonesome residents, congregated at the hut and chatted over warm noodles. Their voices made soft and bright rhythms in the near dark.
Nick flipped some caps onto the table and a few extra on the top.
‘My friend here’s had a rough day, Takahashi. Maybe fix the kid up something special.’
‘Nan-ni shimasho-ka?
‘Thanks, you’re a real friend.’
‘Nan-ni shimasho-ka?’
‘Yes, please,’ Ray said. He smiled with his mouth and no teeth.
‘Make it two,’ Nick said, two fingers up, then took off his hat and sat next to Ray. He lit up a cigarette and by the time it reached his mouth two bowls of noodles were already in front of them.
Ray stared at his food, while Nick let his bowl cool, drawing instead on his cigarette. They sat in silence.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ Ray admitted.
‘Usually you pick up the chopsticks first, then go from there.’
Ray looked at his chopsticks the way a broken man on a raft looks at a distant shoreline. Nick couldn’t help him. He just looked between the kid and the sticks and waited.
Slowly Ray slid his hand across the counter and pulled the sticks to him, his head down.
‘I was worried we were going to have to get you a fork.’
‘Sarah taught me.’
Nick studied his face seriously as Ray fiddled with the sticks like a child, placing them in his hands just so. When he was done, he carefully helped himself to his noodles and Nick finally relaxed, leaning against the counter.
‘Seems like she was a good woman.’
‘She was,’ Ray agreed. He sighed and stared into his bowl. A thought seemed to suddenly hit him and he teared up again. ‘I lost our wedding ring.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s my own fault,’ he shrugged.
Silence drifted heavily over them again and this time Nick wasn’t content to let it rest.
‘Can you tell me what happened at the Institute?’
Ray turned his face to him and Nick could see in the low light and the upward, defiant angle of his jaw that Ray wasn’t keen on it, but his eyes were tired. He looked away, his jaw tilted down and he opened his mouth.
‘I was in a room…’ he said.
I was just looking through my screenshots from the early stages of the game (just post-Unlikely Valentine, in fact) versus right now.
I think Ray tried so hard to do the whole Cool Noir Guy thing. He really did. He wanted to fit in, he wanted to run with Nick’s effortless hard-boiled aesthetic. In the end, though, there’s no denying your inner scruffball Nuka-nerd.
‘Nick didn’t like to think too much on it, but the truth was he was starved for human contact and when he held Ray every point between them felt like a star; like every good thing anyone had ever said about a star.’
-- @crimefighter-bae-b
