Work Text:
Time passed. Events intensified.
Arcade Gannon remained faithfully and steadfastly Arcade Gannon though, a lone figure in shirtsleeves at the far end of a long dining table, bare feet planted on a chair and a book artfully propped against a salt cellar and a half-disassembled Powerfist. His meal was being treated in a desultory fashion at best, his fork serving more to push rapidly chilling food around the plate than as an actual device for eating. Steadily he turned the pages forward, occasionally pausing and looking heavenwards, mouth silently moving as though he was tasting how a word sounded, feeling the weight of a sentence on his tongue.
He looked as relaxed as he had ever looked. It was just a pity there wasn't anyone else around to see and remark on it.
Time had passed. An evening spent in a dirty single-room shack had been just that, an evening. There had been a slightly awkward conversation in the cool light of dawn, a suggestion of vague understanding and then nothing but one foot placed in front of the other until dirt gave way to highway to road to concrete to the bright concourse of the Lucky 38 and then, well, to normality.
He hadn't been particularly flustered by it. You didn't make it to your mid-30's – and he'd blinked and had a moment of oh god, it's my 36th next month, surely I should've stopped at 30 and called it a day – without developing a certain laissez-faire attitude to pleasurable acts snatched when the opportunity presented itself. Arcade didn't deny that it would have been... well, interesting didn't seem quite an adequate word to describe the mind-boggling complexities that would have woven around the entire act of – and here he'd paused again and searched for the right word, eventually settling on the entirely inappropriate 'deflowering' – deflowering Craig Boone. That thought, along with a fertile imagination and a good memory, had provided him with a more or less infinitely changing fantasy life – nothing was as good as the real thing, but in the absence of suitable company (an on-again off-again partner, once situated so conveniently close at the Old Mormon Fort, had left to go back west not two months prior), he at least had his hand and his imagination to keep him company.
That was then and this was now, and right now Arcade was so engrossed in reading he didn't hear the elevator chime or the soft thud of booted feet on carpet. It took the solid weight of a heavy dufflebag hitting the wooden table to get his attention, and he looked up owlishly before nodding a cordial greeting to a dusty, travel-weary Boone. Not actually expecting any response beyond a measured look and maybe something that approximated a hello, he returned to his book, delicately licking a fingertip to turn the page.
He wasn't ignoring Boone as such, rather just applying a month of practical experience into an accurate prediction of the future. Boone saying 'hey' when he entered a room was a red letter moment - walking into the kitchen to stand in front of the fridge and mechanically shovel cold leftovers into his mouth was more the usual pattern of behaviour.
Even meals were predictable - Boone would sit at the far end of the table in the chair closest to the oven, either for quick access to food or to soak up the ambient heat of the cooktop after someone had recently used it. The chances of him initiating a conversation were low at best and god knows Boone's semi-horrifying table manners didn't exactly allow for sparkling repartee over a meal.
Arcade glanced up and fought the urge to smirk. Two empty bottles of water lay discarded on the bench and what looked like a slightly elderly bowl of desert salad was in the process of being demolished. Veronica would be pleased, he thought. She'd made it from a recipe Courier absentmindedly left in the kitchen, the scribe only taking three bites before declaring the addition of cactus meat made the entire salad taste like a foot.
He rolled his neck a little, wincing at the loud audible pop it made. He'd always had terrible posture, something else Veronica had passed judgement on. Despite her pointed observations (accurate, but nonetheless pointed), he was quite enjoyed the rare time Veronica spent at the Lucky 38. Loquacious and charming, she was a welcome antidote to days of silence punctuated by short walks outside to be stared down by Securitrons. Unfortunately she'd deployed out with Courier yet again only the previous day which, after a moment of consideration, explained why Boone was back and looking like he'd walked all the way across the Mojave and back again.
Arcade slouched in his chair a little, getting comfortable all over again, and turned his full attention back to his book. He didn't notice when the sounds of eating ceased and Boone quietly left the kitchen, footsteps fading away into soft carpet.
---
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,
Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,
qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,
quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.
Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est;
qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,
si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici,
et quod pruriat incitare possunt,
non dico pueris, sed his pilosis
qui duros nequeunt movere lumbos.
Vos, quod milia multa basiorum
legistis, male me marem putatis?
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.
---
Arcade re-read the poem and let out a whoop of laughter. It was a completely unexpected addition in the collection of otherwise dry verses and essays Courier had given him just a few days earlier, bartered away from a trader for far less than it was worth. He couldn't help himself as he sniggered like a schoolboy, reading it for a third time and mentally filing away a few choice phrases.
“What're you reading?”
It took Arcade a moment or two to realise Boone had returned to the kitchen, cropped hair slightly damp and his face flushed from the heat of a hot bath. Arcade felt it was probably a little soft of him to think so, but as much as Boone in a state of raw sweat-stained filthiness was attractive, Boone straight from his bathing routines was worth a thousand mental dirty movies. Boone attacked bathing as he would dispatching an enemy, treating it as a task to be undertaken with ruthless efficiency and maximum effect. The result usually meant that Boone emerged from the washroom scrubbed pink and shining like a newly pressed bottlecap, and it was possibly the only time Arcade could ever attribute the adjective 'fresh-faced' to him without laughing.
He marked his place with a finger and indicated that Boone should, if he wished, take a seat. Boone didn't take him up on the offer, instead choosing to return to a deep examination of the fridge. He shifted restlessly from foot to foot, and Arcade knew he was experiencing the kind of twitches and muscle quirks one could only experience after a long day of sweating out your soul under the scorching desert sun.
“Just something that Courier left for me. One of the poems, uh, caught me by surprise.” Arcade pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Nothing but serious treatises on the nature of man, then wham, that.”
Boone looked over his shoulder, a plate of Brahmin meat balanced precariously on one arm and a handful of carrots precariously wrangled in his free hand. “Go on. Read it.”
He hipchecked the fridge door closed and ignored Arcade's immediate sounds of rebuttal as he set about methodically preparing a more substantial meal than a bowl of days old salad. “Not worth being coy over, Gannon.” He glanced down the length of the table and shrugged, and Arcade wondered where this sudden burst of chattiness was leaking from. “Might as well educate me, right?”
“Fine,” muttered Arcade, swinging his legs to the floor and sitting up a little straighter. “Prepare to be educated whether you like it or not.”
He cleared his throat a little, and, set to the rhythm of Boone precisely slicing carrots, orated forth in the still air of the kitchen.
“Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo...” he started, and if he'd been alone he would have dined out for weeks on the delicious irony of such a superficially domestic scene being overlaid with the sound of him telling Boone, albeit quite unintentionally, that he'd rather quite like to furiously fuck him into the floor.
---
“So,” said Boone, managing to both chew and speak at the same time, “It's not a love poem.”
Arcade chuckled. “Definitely not. You could probably pull a few choice phrases from it though.” He crossed his legs and allowed himself a long look over the top of his glasses down the length of the table to where Boone was doing hideous things to a steak. Table manners didn't make a man, but in Arcade's opinion a bit of polishing wouldn't do Boone any harm. It's not like he was planning on taking him home to meet his mother, but still.
Silence reigned and, after a long moment Arcade shrugged and went back to reading. Conversations with Boone tended to be short and end abruptly, and it had only taken him a few days to realise it wasn't exactly a comment on Arcade's own somewhat uneven ability to hold a discussion without dominating it. Boone just used words with the kind of sparing economy someone out in the wastes would treat their scant few caps. A discussion with him usually ended up with him laying his opinion down like a blunt instrument, making Arcade's normal ability to use words to tie someone up somewhat useless.
He'd already had a terse discussion with Boone about the whole Latin thing. Weeks ago he'd made some terrible pun to deflect Courier away from asking yet another prying personal question and almost before Courier had even stepped into the elevator, Arcade found himself backing along the hallway as Boone advanced with fire in his eyes and a spitting interrogation volleying from his mouth.
Arcade had protested loudly that he was just a Follower, not a Legion sympathiser, and for gods sakes Boone, do I look like the sort to run around in leather skirts, and only when his heel had connected to the far wall did he draw himself up to his full height and use every cheap trick in the book to turn on Boone and push any thoughts of unsteady sympathies out of his head.
Now Boone just seemed to accept the quips and phrases and occasional hours of reading dense wordy texts in a dead language with a kind of vague acceptance. He was sure deep down in Boone there was a seething twisted mess that needed to be unpicked by hand, but on the surface at least, Boone was an uncomplicated person to be forced to live with.
Time passed and pages turned. Arcade walked around the apartment once or twice to stop his limbs from seizing and his back complaining too stridently, not really seeking out company or wishing to engage Boone in another brief stab at discussion. The guest bedroom door was half closed and, seeing as Arcade had unilaterally decided to take over the master bedroom during Courier's long and frequent absences, he had no reason to go in there anyway.
Anyway.
A glass of water later, Arcade installed himself on the slightly springy sofa in the master bedroom, a pillow from the bed jammed under his neck and his bare feet hanging over the far end. He was nearing the end of the flimsy paperback and despite the increasing heaviness of his eyes reminding him that it was late and he should retire to bed – one must get a full night of sleep to prepare for another day of idling around a dark tomb of an apartment, after all – he was determined to finish the last few dozen pages.
So absorbed was Arcade in a monograph about the assassination of Alexander Severus the faint creak of his bedroom door opening barely registered, and it took a pointed clearing of Boone's throat for him to startle into attention.
“I was thinking,” started Boone, and if it had been anyone else Arcade would have immediately backhanded with a cheap, slightly mean joke.
Instead he stayed quiet, dropping his book onto his chest and patiently waiting for Boone to take a seat on the coffee table. He'd obviously been in bed, dressed in soft cotton pants that were creased and rumpled, and not for the first time Arcade privately thought how much younger he looked without the protective talismans of his beret and glasses. It was hard to think of Boone being nearly a decade younger than him, to the point where the first time they met he'd immediately pegged him as being maybe a little older than himself.
“Was thinking about that poem.” Boone honest to goodness fidgeted, eyes darting around the room before he settled on looking at Arcade, an almost challenging look on his face. “Got a question about it. Answer it for me?”
–--
If some of the others were to drop by at the moment (and Arcade hoped to god they wouldn't; he had a sense his evening was about to get interesting for once and nothing ruined the mood quite as quickly as Lily demanding he wash his neck) and looked into the master bedroom, they could be forgiven for thinking Boone was somehow psychoanalysing Arcade.
Perched on the edge of the coffee table, Boone leaned forward, hands clasped loosely between his knees, bare feet digging into the carpet as he listened intently. All that was missing was a notepad and a concerned look.
Arcade, however, was mentally squirming in delight. Boone's innocent question – 'What does putatis mean?' - had, at first, spun him for a loop because he genuinely didn't think Boone had been paying quite that much attention, which then led to all sorts of mental alarm bells ringing in regards to exactly how good Boone's memory was. A couple of isolated cracks about his upbringing combined with a good memory and the younger man's surprising – and annoying – ability to doggedly follow every slight thread of suspicion right to its unfortunate end would leave no love lost between the two of them, and that was putting it mildly.
It didn't take long for a more pressing realisation to arise which was truly delicious in its simplicity – Arcade realised that he could say absolutely anything he wanted to Boone. Anything .
At first he'd been coy, making silly little cracks about his appearance. How he looked good like that, all sleep-rumpled and soft. That he should skip the shirt more often, go unshaven more frequently.
Then, confident that Boone really had no idea what he was saying in response to his schoolboy Latin questions - “How do you say 'red' then? What about 'red blood'?” - he let fly, suddenly grateful that even classical Latin was lavishly peppered with enough gutter terms to give his descriptions colour.
He described how he'd like to have Boone drop onto his knees right now, unzipping Arcade's fly and sucking him off. Another question was answered with a description of how he'd envisioned an evening spent keeping him on the knife edge of orgasm until he couldn't handle it any more and that stony facade would crumble into so much dust as he begged Arcade for relief. Something that deserved an innocuous reply was instead turned into a vivid description of stealing into Boone's bed at night and jerking him off, keenly aware of their friends and companions soundly asleep in the same room.
If the answers seemed a little long for the questions, Boone didn't seem to notice or care. He just listened and nodded, Arcade's words pouring into him like water into a glass. Arcade, however much he kicked himself for being so weak about it, was getting horribly, horribly turned on. The fact that he got such a giddy thrill about so bluntly listing out his masturbatory Old Faithfuls to the person he most often pulled himself to thoughts of, albeit under the dressing of a language barrier you couldn't leap over, probably said more about his own state of mind than he'd ever care to discuss. Nonetheless he shifted on the couch, willing himself not to ruin a perfectly good – strange and mildly unsettling, but still perfectly good – evening by developing an erection you could cut glass with.
After a while he nodded as if satisfied, and with a look in his eye that was a little too sharp for Arcade's tastes, asked if Arcade's translation for 'your blood stains your armour a better red than dye' would incite a rise from Caesar. Arcade considered for a moment, well aware that the answer he'd given was actually 'you'd look good with my cock in your mouth', and truthfully replied that yes, it would indeed incite a response from Caesar.
Normally Arcade stuck to Plato's trope that conquering one's own nature was the greatest of victories, but to hell with it. Conquering his own nature meant living like a monk, and although Arcade Gannon knew he could be accused of being many things, living a chaste life was not one of them.
---
It's only when he says something silly in English and Boone makes a kind of half-aborted chuckling sound that he notices the tiniest tremor of something unpleasant, that Boone is favouring his left side just the slightest little bit. If you didn't know how to read Boone – and Arcade considered himself only elementary level at best in that particular skill, but he was learning rapidly – you'd never notice it, but that hitch to his laugh and the slightly off way he was sitting overrode any more plans Arcade was spinning to keep front-loading Boone with his own particular brand of elegant Latin filth.
He sat up, neatly folding a page to mark his place and swinging his feet to the floor, fixing Boone with a questioning look. He fired off a blunt where are you hurt?, not even entertaining the fact that he might not be. It explained Boone's sudden arrival home and Veronica's quick absence, because if there was one thing Courier hated more than working alone, it was working with someone who wasn't 100% fighting fit and hungry for blood. Arcade suspected that was why he seemed to be banished to the Lucky 38 and everyone else allowed to roam back to their homes, the instruction implied that it was his job to be on-call and keep the meat machine grinding efficiently. He wasn't sure why Boone spent so much time here though. Maybe he didn't have a home to go to, a state of being that Arcade knew all too well.
Anyway.
“It's fine,” Boone was saying, staring at Arcade's own hands. “I'm fine. I wasn't fine but I am now. Don't worry about it.”
Arcade frowned. “How not fine was 'wasn't fine' on a scale of one to ten? One is a light headache, ten is fountains of blood.”
Boone muttered something that sounded suspiciously like fuss like my mother before reluctantly saying three. Three and a half. He'd been spelunking with Courier in some godforsaken cave somewhere south, chasing some package or cache or who knows what when the ledge he'd been perched on broke away and he'd landed on some discarded barrels, bruising his kidneys.
Arcade's frown ratcheted up a notch and Boone cut him off before he had the chance to talk. “Two days on my back in Forlorn Hope. I'm fine. Stopped pissing blood two days ago.”
“And you walked back from Forlorn Hope? Wait. Wait. You walked back by yourself? Courier went ahead back here without you? That's just ridiculous. I hope you drank enough water. I should give Courier several pieces of my mind...”
He ground into silence when Boone ineffectually waved his hand in a kind of annoyed will you please stop it motion. Oh, on an objective level Arcade knew he was fine and on the mend. He'd drunk at least two bottles of purified water as soon as he'd arrived home, he'd eaten plenty of fresh vegetables with his meal, he'd taken a hot bath and gone to bed early. Craig Boone was, after all, a Big Boy and didn't need to be doctored like a squalling infant. It made him more than faintly disgusted with himself when he realised he was exhibiting more of a kneejerk reaction to the fact that Courier had nearly broken one of his toys before he'd got a chance to actually play with it. With him.
God help me, thought Arcade, pushing up his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose, suddenly feeling very tired again. The previous ebbs and flurries of excitement that had flip-flopped his stomach had well and truly vanished. This is a new all-time low in selfishness. Well played, you cretin.
He smiled wanly when he settled his glasses back into place, well aware that Boone was watching him with that perfectly blank expression that usually meant that he was paying extra attention and mentally filing away every little twitch and quirk for closer examination.
“Humour me then,” said Arcade and tossed aside his book, indicating that he should lean forward and let him look at his back. Boone obediently obeyed and shuffled forward a little to make it easier for Arcade's questing fingers to explore him. Arcade vaguely wondered if Boone realised quite how intimate this would strike an impartial set of eyes – caught between Arcade's legs, head bowed, the broad expanse of Boone's back being examined with eyes and fingertips.
There was a quiet inhalation of breath when he struck a sensitive spot, and after a moment Boone pressed his forehead against Arcade's shoulder. If he knew he was in a recreation of an existing moment - anyone else and I'd make you suck me already – he gave no indication of it.
“What's the Latin for 'doctor',” he asked, voice muffled slightly.
“Doctoris,” Arcade replied automatically, and pressed a little harder on a spot that felt warmer than the surrounding skin. No superficial bruises, presumably due to Courier being over-reactionary and wasteful with Stimpacks at the best of times. No lacerations. Light activity and sleep, chew a few sage leaves, drink a lot of water.
“You'll live,” he proclaimed, and permitted himself a little indulgence in sweeping his palms up Boone's spine before branching out over his lightly freckled shoulders and finishing along his forearms.
“Doctoris Gannon,” said Boone, more into Arcade's shirt than anything else, then sat up just enough that he was face to face with Arcade. “Your bedside manner needs work,” he said, and simply silenced any retort by clumsily pressing his mouth to Arcade's own.
---
As far as first kisses went, it didn't make Arcade's top ten. The briefest press of dry lips chastely to his own, a faint whisper of warm breath against the side of his mouth. It wasn't unwelcome by any means but as far as precursors to a passionate fumble go, well, there had been greater moments in his personal history.
Arcade pulled back a little, his lip still sending back nerve impulses where Boone's stubble had prickled against it. He paused, willing himself not to put his foot too far into his own mouth. The guarded look Boone was starting to develop was a pretty good indication that he needed to choose his next words with care and grace and tact. The first he could manage easily, but Arcade himself freely admit that he had more than a little trouble with the latter two.
Eventually he settled on a neutral that was somewhat unexpected paired with a lopsided smile and a hand stealing onto Boone's knee. The cotton was soft under his thumb as he absent-mindedly rubbed the edge of his kneecap over and over again.
“Just been mulling some things over,” muttered Boone, deliberately avoiding meeting his eyes. He appeared to be committing Arcade's feet to memory. “Had a lot of time to think lately. Spent all that time staring at a tent roof, can't stop the mind from wandering. Getting a bit tired of living in my own head, I guess." He paused for a moment, pressing a knuckle against his temple as he marshalled his thoughts together.
"Anyway. Got discharged and Courier said I should just go home to Novac and sleep it off until I was fit enough to be useful."
Arcade blinked. Novac? He went to Novac once or twice a year to visit Daisy and do those sorts of faithful almost-son things like attempt to fuss over her and then be patiently lambasted for not settling down with a nice man who'd spoil him rotten. Had he seen Boone there before? Had Boone seen him? Daisy was a little loose-lipped about her career as a pilot at the best of times and was about as good as lying as he was, and if Boone managed to put two and two together… oh god. This sisyphean task of keeping his background under wraps was really enough to wear a man down.
Arcade roused himself and pasted on an appropriate expression of thoughtfulness, hoping the sheer surge of panic wasn't visible in his eyes. It didn't take a genius to work out that a fearful look at this point in time would no doubt send Boone back into whatever morose shell he usually inhabited, and like hell he'd let this opportunity slip through his fingers.
"Go on," he said levelly, immediately regretting sounding like Dr Usanagi.
"And I nearly did. Go back to Novac. But," and he paused again, his expression indicating that spitting this out was like pulling his own teeth. He muttered something that sounded awfully like this seemed so much easier when I was drunk and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Couldn't see the point. There's nothing for me there."
"And there's something for you in this tomb?" Keep it smooth, Gannon. Try not to suave him out of the room. Try, oh, not talking.
"Something like that, yeah." There was a faint smile in the words if you know just how to listen for it. He took a breath and let his words tumble out like he was going to immediately regret saying anything at all. "Guess all I could think was that I'd rather be here listening to you speak fancy shit than hide out in that miserable pit."
Arcade took his time to pick through the sentence, parsing out the subtext from the backhanded insult. He played for time for a moment, careful to say the right thing. Eventually he decided that a simple answer was probably the best - leave no space for confusion, make enough room for clarity.
"I'm glad you came back here as well," he said, and decided this was the appropriate moment to cup the back of Boone's head, close-cropped hair prickling Arcade's palm, and kiss him properly.
---
The term 'making out like a teenage boy' is best prescribed to teenage boys simply because they're the only one's flexible enough to bend and twist in awkward, neck-break angles as they go for the All Comers Core Region Sloppy Kisser Championship titles of 2281. In other words, Arcade's neck was killing him.
It was honestly just hard to say oh, stop, we mustn't when a.) he really didn't want to, and b.) after what looked like a moment or two of visibly psyching himself up, Boone had taken the initiative and let a hand drift up Arcade's leg like they were on a first date and seeing how far he could go. The more experiments you make the better, as someone long since dead had pithily remarked, and who was Arcade to quash the spirit of exploration?
His neck though. God, his neck. Who knew kissing a man seated on a coffee table required such contortions of the spine?
"So. You appear to be-" despite himself, he couldn't hold back a throaty groan as Boone experimentally palmed him through the thick canvas of his trousers, "-gauging my interest.
Boone made a sound of agreement and repeated his actions before Arcade, glaringly mindful that there was a reversal of actions in play, caught his wrist and stilled his exploring hand.
"Not that I don't want to," he said softly, still close enough to Boone that their lips grazed as he spoke, "but what I have in mind for you, you can't do when you're still healing from internal bruising." There was a pause before he added an 'unfortunately' onto the end of his statement.
"You sending me away?"
Don't you sound so amused at me, thought Arcade, and gave his wrist a squeeze.
"I am," said Arcade firmly, yet not stopping himself from capturing his lips in another greedy kiss. "It is my expert opinion that you should rest and not undertake strenuous exercise for – seriously, if you don't stop doing that, I'm going to make quite a fool of myself - at least three more days." He kissed him again, tongue slipping past teeth. He tasted like the infusions of birch leaves traders bought down from Jacobstown, a quick and efficient way to clean your teeth on the move.
"Delayed gratification," muttered Boone, by now rosy-lipped and looking faintly flustered himself.
"Exactly," he replied and, mindful of not overtly pushing his erection into Boone's face as he stood up, as tempting a childish display as it would be, disentangled himself and got to his feet. His back protested loudly after so much time spent on a soft sofa and he looked on with undisguised jealousy as Boone stood up with only the vaguest hint of discomfort, and after a beat let his gaze morph into naked admiration.
"What're you looking at," said Boone defensively, looking as if he was a breath away from girlishly covering himself up.
Arcade took off his glasses, aware that his body saying rest rest rest much louder than it was saying fuck fuck fuck. Biology was a harsh mistress at the best of times, and the desire to sleep had trumped the desire to get his end away more or less ever since he slid past age 25.
"Just admiring the view. You should... you should skip the shirt more often." Smooth.
He looked Boone over from toes to ears and was thankful when the response he received wasn't to shy away, but rather stand up straighter.
---
Arcade emerged from the bathroom as he finger-combed his wet hair into something akin to order, the arm of his glasses clamped between his teeth. He had slept well, there had been ample hot water for his morning ablutions, his clothes had finally arrived back laundered and pressed, and – best of all – he was leaving the apartment for the day to go and be useful down at the Old Mormon Fort. By anyone's measure it was a red letter day, complete with capital letters and underlining and a long array of exclamation points.
Pushing his glasses up his nose as he stepped into the kitchen, Arcade tossed a cheerful morning to Boone who merely grunted 'eggs' in reply, pointing his fork at the bench where, yes, a plate of scrambled eggs was going cold.
"Deathclaw, gecko or crow?"
The look he was given indicated that he should stop asking pointless questions. Good to know that's still the same at least, thought Arcade, feeling oddly pleased. If Boone had come over all affectionate he'd suspect that there was something deeply, deeply wrong. This though, this he could handle.
There was a book and a pencil next to Boone's plate, and as tempting as it was to interrogate him about the sudden elevation from dog-eared copies of Milsurp Review (and, only glimpsed before it was stuffed under a plate, what looked suspiciously like an edition of Meeting People), he let it pass in favour of inhaling the unexpected gift of food.
"I'm just going to put this out there," said Arcade, not bothering to dish the eggs out and instead just taking the entire plate, "If this is your idea of romancing me, it's appreciated but probably not needed."
Boone looked up from the book he was painstakingly leafing through and gave a shrug that indicated that eggs may indicate a romantic gesture or they might just mean breakfast.
"Got a question for you," he said, marking his place with his finger.
Arcade arched an eyebrow in what more or less looked like a go on motion. His mouth was far too full to speak, and god help him if he ever sank down to Boone's standards of table manners.
"What did you say 'blood red' was? In Latin. Last night, you gave me a Latin phrase for blood red."
Arcade swallowed his mouthful of eggs, a faint suspicion that he knew where this was going. "Cruentus. In the way you mean it, that is. The bloody, paint-thine-armour way."
"Huh," said Boone, pushing aside the book to reveal a sheet of notepaper sporting a few lines of careful handwriting.
Oh god, thought Arcade. Oh, have mercy on this weak man. He smiled wanly, turning a fairly impressive shade of rosea himself.
"It's just that what you said last night-" and here Boone rattled off a line of somewhat ugly sounding Latin, attacking the pronunciation like it was an opponent to be beaten, "-doesn't mention it at all. Doesn't mention armour either."
"Ah," said Arcade, and in lieu of having anything else to say, said 'ah' again.
Boone gave him a long look. A look that spanned entire periods of time, even. Fossils were made during that look. Only when Arcade was right on the very edge of exploding into a flurry of face-saving did he finally break, closing the book with a snap as rocked his chair back on two legs.
Arcade swore that for just a moment he looked like an impudent schoolboy, pleased as bunch that he was able to catch the master out.
“Hey, Gannon.” He looked up, expecting to hear the worst. Instead Boon gave him that half-grin, so rarely seen, and rocked back on his chair a little further. “You'd look good with my cock in your mouth as well.”