Sorry, you guys. I suck and so does writer's block. In an effort to make up for the half year wait (SORRY. ;-;) here's the longest chapter I've written yet!

Thank you guys so much for all the amazing reviews. I got so many last chapter and I was so ridiculously happy about it (Mother of God, I'm dull. ;-;). Thank you for making writing so much fun. :3

Also, I'd like to give a very public thank you to xXthecatalystXx for being such a big help to me with this chapter which, honestly, I had a hell of a time writing.

Consciousness barreled into Norah with all the subtlety of a chainsaw to the face. Pleasant, dreamless sleep all but disintegrated under the full force of the massive hangover she'd subjected herself to. For what felt like the thousandth time, she vowed to never drink again and for what felt like the thousandth time, she knew deep down that she was full of shit and that she'd be out making bad decisions again by the end of the week.

None of that mattered right now, though. Right now the entire left side of her face felt like it'd been bitch-slapped by a deathclaw—or a fucking fossil with a rolling pin—her legs ached from running from one end of New Vegas to the other, her body felt like one gigantic bruise and her mouth was feeling extremely dry. Alcohol was the last thing on her mind. She blindly stretched her arm out toward the bottle of water she vaguely remembered setting on her bedside table at some point in time, thirst clashing with a complete and utter unwillingness to open her eyes.

Her table felt weird today.

Wait. No. Not her table. Something on her table. That made sense. Tables weren't warm and they sure as hell didn't feel like skin. She furrowed her brow. What did she put on her table that was warm and felt like skin?

Her mind eventually took pity and pieced it together for her. An arm, you stupid twit. It's an arm.

Her stomach dropped. She knew that arm.

Fuck.

And so it was with great reluctance that Norah finally cracked an eye open, simultaneously confirming her fears and fucking somehow making her head hurt even more. She was now hurting in parts of her skull that she didn't even know existed. Her aching stomach twisted into nervous knots as she took in Boone, who looked slightly more displeased than usual today. He'd pulled a chair up next to her bed and looked like he'd been sitting there a while, sans-sunglasses—he wouldn't be able to see out of them with how dim her bedroom was, the only light coming from the small, weak desk lamp sitting on her desk across the room—left arm cocked at the elbow and resting on her nightstand—right next to her fucking water. She took a moment to glare at the bottle like it'd done something wrong before slowly, almost involuntarily, shifting her eyes back over to the stock-still statue of a man less than two feet away from her.

He studied her face, his ever-present frown as prominent as ever. Not for the first time, she felt like if she ever saw a real, genuine, honest-to-God smile on his face, her internal organs would cease to function from the sheer shock of it all. Two bullets to the face? No problem. Boone showing some form of a positive emotion? Nope. Her poor brain wouldn't be able to handle the shock. The universe would implode.

After a long, tense moment, she forced a smile. "Good morning." She was aiming for chirpy but the greeting came out sounding gravelly and maybe just a little bit pitiful. Smiling hurt, so she stopped. Her throat felt like sandpaper. She wanted to make another grab for her water but she stopped herself, almost afraid to move with Boone looking her like that. He remained stubbornly quiet. She couldn't tell for sure with how dark it was, but she could have sworn that his frown deepened a bit more. Silence reigned. Somewhere in the suite, a clock was ticking. She couldn't hear anybody moving around. They were completely alone. For a brief, fleeting moment she felt uneasy, but she forced the feeling away. There was nobody in the world she trusted more than Boone.

He moved. The arm that had been resting on the table came up, towards his face. He pinched the bridge of his nose with a weary sigh before finally—finally—opening his mouth.

"What did you do?"

She sat up, ignoring the way her body screamed at her as she did so. Her eyes moved of their own accord to look down at herself, and even with the limited lighting, she could tell she looked like a mess. Her arms and what she could see of her legs were covered with an impressive array of scratches, cuts and bruises. There was a bite mark on her upper right bicep too perfectly straight to be caused by anything but dentures. Her knee had a nasty looking scrape on it that she didn't remember getting. It wasn't very long but it looked deep and caked with dirt and other assorted horrors. Maybe she'd have Julie look at it for her. Lifting a hand to her aching jaw, she winced as her fingertips grazed across a layer of crusty, dried blood. She was afraid to look at a mirror.

"Would you believe that a deathclaw materialized in the middle of Freeside and I had to fight it off with my bare hands?" she tried. Feeling emboldened, she made a hasty grab for her water because damn it, this was her room in her snazzy presidential suite and she was thirsty and was not going to be kept from sweet, sweet hydration by sour facial expressions. No sir.

She took a tentative glance his way as her fingers closed around the bottle. His expression—passive, with a steady undercurrent of what she perceived to be irritation—told her that, no, he would not believe it. It was worth a shot, anyway. She had a whole cache of backup excuses she could have tried; "I was at The Wrangler—drinking water—when all of a sudden Fisto developed a taste for human blood!", and so on, and so forth, but she had no doubt that he wouldn't buy any of them. Their only purpose would be buying her some time and she risked finding out exactly how long of a fuse Boone had. Defeated, she sighed as she struggled with the lid. "I got mugged."

Victory. Off came the lid. The feeling of cold, refreshing watery goodness on her parched throat was almost orgasmic; almost enough to make her forget about everything that had happened in the past twelve hours or so.

Almost.

"Who did it?" Boone was talking again. He'd spoken seven whole words in under five minutes, and she was sure that he was well on his way towards a new record.

"Pardon?"

"Who mugged you?"

Ten. She was keeping count involuntarily by now.

Norah pursed her lips. "I have no idea." He already thought she was inept. There was no way in hell she was going to add fuel to that fire. She wasn't even sure why the 'who' mattered, anyway. There were hundreds of faceless thugs in Freeside. As far as he was concerned, she had no way of knowing. He wasn't going to just guess that a rogue group of antique grade-A cunts in matching pre-war finery had bludgeoned her nearly to death with rolling pins. Not unless she told him.

Her thirst was more or less quenched but she kept the bottle tightly clasped in between both hands. It gave her something to look at besides him, who looked like he was trying to stare a more elaborate answer out of her. He didn't believe her, and for a second she was afraid he'd press her. He didn't say another word about it, though. Boone did a lot of things, but he did not nag.

"Where was your gun?"

"Here, in my room." She had an entire arsenal under her bed.

Boone leaned forward, forearms coming up to rest on his thighs. He was now close enough for her to see him with one hundred percent clarity. His mouth was set in a thin line, jaw clenched, shoulders tense.

"I told you; never go out without a gun." He said it slowly, like he was trying to explain a simple concept to an invalid. A small voice in the back of her head told her that that's exactly what he was doing. She gripped the bottle a little bit tighter.

"Even if I did have a gun, what good do you think it would do? I'm a horrible shot. Letting me walk around with a gun in a highly populated area with lots of buildings and shit to get in the way is irresponsible." It was a weak protest, but some distant, stubborn part of her wasn't willing to admit that she'd made a big, stupid mistake in failing to bring some form of protection with her. Maybe she should invest in a guard dog.

Boone didn't say anything for a while. The clock that was ticking God-knows-where seemed to get louder and louder as time progressed. She wondered where everybody else was. The air felt thicker and the longer they sat there, the more uncomfortable she got. She took a breath, ready to clear her throat, or talk, or do something—anything, when the legs of Boone's chair suddenly scraped against the floor. He was moving away from her, pushing the chair back in order to stand up. He looked huge standing over the bed like that, the general lack of light fucking with her perception the way it was.

"Get up." He held a hand out to her.

"That's not funny."

"It wasn't supposed to be."

Norah frowned, set her water back on her table and crossed her arms over her chest. "No." she pronounced, knowing she looked like a five-year-old gearing up for a temper tantrum and not giving a damn. "I'll die."

"You've been asking me to teach you to shoot since we met. Here's your chance. Get up."

That got her attention. It wasn't that he'd been procrastinating all these months when it came to teaching her to defend herself, they just never got a break, in between the Legion raids and the deathclaws and the mutants and the feral ghouls and the goddamned everything else that had been trying their damndest to kill them almost every day, on top of what seemed like hundreds of errands she'd agreed to run from one end of the Mojave to the other. In time, they'd just gotten used to Boone doing all the killing and defending while Norah made a valiant effort to contribute, occasionally getting the odd lucky shot in. She sat up a little straighter, ignoring the way her entire body screamed at her for it.

"You're going to teach me to shoot?"

"Not if you don't get up."

She didn't need further coaxing. She grabbed his proffered hand and hoisted herself up, swaying a little on her feet at first and feeling, for one horrifying moment, that she was about to throw up all over Boone. It passed though, and off they went, Norah snatching her water back up on her way out.

Meanwhile, Boone was putting all of his willpower towards not saying or doing something to her that he might regret later. She was a mess of scrapes, cuts and bruises from head to toe and she was acting like nothing was wrong. More importantly, she was acting like she'd done nothing wrong, running off on her own, without a weapon, at night, in Freeside. She was lucky she'd just gotten mugged and she didn't seem to understand that. He led her far away from The Strip, into a lifeless bit of land just east of Fiend Territory. The only thing that broke up the flat, sandy monotony of the place was the odd cactus or tumbleweed and the high, steep cliffs hovering way off in the distance. A soldier ant's carcass was crumpled in the sand a ways off. The quiet was unnerving to someone who had been in the heart of New Vegas not even an hour ago, but Norah paid it no mind. She was practically bouncing up and down where she stood, all previous ailments long forgotten.

"So, where do we start?" An ear-to-ear grin was splitting her face in two. She'd been looking forward to this for a long, long time. Boone handed her a gun, and her face fell. She'd been expecting a shotgun. Maybe even a rifle. Something with some force behind it. A weapon with balls, so to speak. Norah had come all the way out here to do some damage, and here she was, holding a 9mm. She looked at Boone like he'd sprouted an extra head.

"This is adorable but I thought I was learning to defend myself, not tickle my enemies into submission."

He took his sunglasses off. "Pistols are light," he explained, hiding his frustration well, save for the glare he was giving her. "It's easier for beginners to aim with them."

"My aim is fine. Give me a shotgun."

"I've seen you shoot with a shotgun. The recoil knocks you on your ass. You'll get a bigger gun when you're used to the pistol."

Norah grimaced down at the puny gun, distaste radiating off of her in waves. Then, reluctantly, and with a scowl at Boone, she pointed the damned thing. He moved to stand next to her, on her left hand side, taking a moment to critique her stance. "Legs apart," he instructed. Norah snorted, but complied.

"And here I thought you hated talking dirty."

He didn't take the bait. "Straighten your right arm."

"Why don't you come stand behind me and do it for me?"

His mouth tightened into a thin line, and Norah could tell that he was neither amused nor seduced. "Killjoy," she grumbled, straightening her arm like she was told.

"Aim for the ant." He inclined his head towards the dead insect and she obeyed, without comment this time. Small blessings. "Relax your grip," she did, "and squeeze the trigger."

The shot went high and several yards to the right of her target. Unfazed, she finally turned her head to look at Boone straight-on. Her lips curled into a wry, infuriating little grin.

"So how long before I can graduate to a BB gun?"

The pistol was gone from her loose grip and before she could even process what was happening, cold, sickeningly familiar metal was being pushed against her temple—hard.

Her stomach dropped, clenching painfully all the way down, and her breath caught in her throat. "What are you…" She couldn't finish the sentence. Her voice came out sounding small and shaky. She couldn't move, couldn't blink. She looked straight ahead through eyes the size of dinner plates, trying to see Boone through her peripherals but unwilling to actually turn her head towards him. Her lungs wanted her to hyperventilate but she was afraid moving too much would, for whatever reason, make him pull the trigger.

"You're dead." Her breath caught in her throat. His voice was low and controlled, but she was sure he'd finally snapped. There was something about the way he spoke—some menacing air to his tone that made her almost as uneasy as the gun currently poised to blow her brains out. This was it. After years of pain and stress, Craig Boone's seemingly everlasting patience had reached a brutal end. For some reason it didn't surprise her that she of all people had driven him over the edge. After all, she had a knack for it. He leaned in close to her, speaking directly into her left ear. "Just like that, you're dead. You got lucky once. You really think you can take another bullet to the brain?" He pushed the barrel of the gun harder into her skin, as if to punctuate his words. She wondered what the bruise would look like—or if she'd ever get the chance to find out. "Is this still some big joke to you?"

"No." she croaked. She was quaking in her boots now, wanting desperately to stay perfectly still but unable to stop, no matter how hard she tried and some part of her just knew that she was going to start crying in a minute, if she wasn't dead first.

And just like that, it was over.

Boone lowered the gun, took a step back and just stood there like nothing happened. She turned to gape at him stupidly, mouth opening and closing, trying to formulate something that might sound remotely like the English language. That was it? She wasn't dead? Her stomach began the slow process of unknotting itself and holy shit, did the air taste sweet right about now. The dull ache in her temple might as well have been a kiss. She tentatively put a hand up to it as the metaphorical gears and cogs in her head whirred and buzzed themselves into oblivion.

"What the fuck was that?" her mouth moved of its own accord and she almost cringed, distantly wondering about the health benefits that came with snapping at the man who'd just held a gun to her head. Regardless, she glared at him, a slow rage beginning to burn through the relief, replacing it little by little. She took an unsteady step backwards, away from him, and then another, trying to put some space between them in case he tried to pull that shit again. "Jesus Christ, Boone," the anger and confusion turned her into a sputtering mess, even as she tried to—what? She didn't even know. Get an answer? Swear at him some more? Call him some names in a poor effort to make him feel bad? In any case, her mouth kept moving, voice getting louder and higher by the second. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Boone met her gaze, clearly not giving a flying fuck about how many daggers she was glaring at him. He looked just as unsympathetic as ever, and her mind conjured up pictures of a no-nonsense father figure type—pictures she would rather not associate with somebody whose pants she regularly got into. She pushed the pipe-smoking, unattractive pre-war sweater-wearing , stern but loving life advice-giving imagery away with immediate and extreme prejudice and by the time she'd effectively cleared her mind, he'd started talking.

"It's not hard to die out here."

"You've established that, you prick."

"That was the point."

The explanation did nothing to diffuse her temper. "You decided to demonstrate by pulling a gun on me? One bump, one nudge, one accidental twitch and you would have killed me!" she was outright yelling now, betrayal and hurt starting to seep in along with the anger and confusion. She closed the gap she'd originally made between them in two quick steps, fear and all previous notions of self preservation long forgotten, and punched him in the arm hard, not hurting him in the slightest but probably bruising her own knuckles. That set her off even more, and her irritation with getting even more banged up than she already was got added to the mix. She stopped yelling, lowered her voice to a tone that she hoped would have more of an impact. "Are you fucking crazy or do you just hate me so much that you'd just risk my life to prove a fucking point?"

He held the gun up without another word, and she couldn't stop herself from flinching. He kept it flat in his palm, though, so one side of the gun was facing up, and moved it close enough for her to see. Despite herself, she leaned in to take a look, and when she saw what he meant for her to see, she didn't know if she wanted to laugh, punch him again or hug him.

The safety. The son of a bitch had the safety on the entire time.

All malicious feelings left her, and she suddenly felt drained. And extraordinarily stupid. She glanced up at him, shoulders slumping.

"You're an asshole." She said, half heartedly. He stayed infuriatingly quiet and her anger welled up again for one last hurrah. She punched him again in the same spot, hoping it'd be enough to cause him at least a little bit of discomfort this time around.

She snatched the pistol from him. "Keep my right arm straight, right?"

So, to top off the A/N fest that is chapter 8, is there anybody out there who'd be interested in beta-ing for me? I think I'm pretty good at the whole spelling and grammar deal (not to say there isn't always room for improvement) but I'd love a soundboard of sorts so I can show you what I have so far in whatever chapter I happen to be working on, beg for ideas, get some constructive criticism. I think it would do me a world of good to have somebody riding my ass to get these chapters out faster. I know there's a beta forum for this very purpose, but I'd really rather have somebody who's actually interested in the story helping me out. Let me know if you'd be interested. I'd be eternally grateful~