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“Hey, Hancock?”
“Hm?”
“I’m not a bad person, am I?”
He must have misheard her. Between the sizzling tip of a toxic post-war cigarette, the swirling sensual songs of a bygone era crackling over a jury-rigged gramophone (oh what little can’t be done with duct tape), and the echoing moans and groans wafting in from the belly of the beast and into the entry lounge of the swinger’s club.
“Just the worst,” his teasing earns him a sardonic laugh. Thick grey smoke seeps from his mummified lips to join the rest of the heavy cloud forming over the fellow loungers in the stagnant air. He dares a quick glance over at her: the usual cheery, if not a bit vacant, resting expression replaced with one Farenheit would claim she's seen from him hundreds of times.
“Now,” Hancock taps the recessed end of his cigarette against the communal ashtray on the coffee table, “what’s got you all spun up in your head?”
“Maybe it’s… the ambience,” stressing the word ‘ambience’ garners a chuckle from Hancock. The haunting sounds of sex from down a long metallic corridor didn’t exactly set the mood, he had to admit, but hey - he wasn’t one to judge. Afterall, there was more than once when the sobering catastrophe that is world-shattering anxiety ruined the mood, and the damn fine high he spent all evening cultivating, “but I can’t stop thinking of Nate. Actually- Actually- Not Nate, but how I…”
A limp arm in azure spandex raised. Vaultie indulged only once before in his presence, and to Hancock such an indulgence was a gift to watch. He passed the cigarette into her chipped manicured grasp. Hancock never thought he’d be envious of burnt paper and discount leaf, but the way her lips wrapped around that cigarette like it was the only thing keeping her on the planet- Yeah, Hancock felt a little envious.
Her smoky exhale joined his in the cloud of pollution in the poorly renovated subway terminal.
“I think I’m over Nate.”
His cataritic eyes widened.
“Ov- Over? Your husband?” Hancock grips the edge of the couch as he leans over to get a better view of Sole in the muted pink lighting of the swinger’s club, “Like… Sorry- You’re over your husband?”
Her solemn nod shakes off some ash from the crumbling, burnt out tip of the cigarette. He watches carefully for any signs at all, but not so much of a twitch of a frown could be found on her face, somehow frightening Hancock more than anguish ever could. Right hand occupied with drawing the cigarette back she lifts her left hand, showing it off in the rosie light, “I haven’t worn my ring in weeks.”
That’s right, Hancock recalls. One very late night or very early morning a while ago, Hancock did make mental note of its absence. During long nights the ghoulish mayor couldn’t sleep, too busy plagued by the what-ifs of his avoidance-style life, a certain scent would pull him back from the cold of space and ground him back to where it mattered: the permanent aura of ozone from two centuries in a vault, but stronger than that was a fresh, sweet scent.
‘Lilac and sweet almond,’ she explained to him once, ‘My neighbour - Mrs. Fields - she made a killing selling perfume, cologne and lotion from this catalogue. I was getting a little stir crazy, pregnant and alone without Nate, so I just happened to end up at all of her Avon parties and uh, aha ha, haa… I may have spent way too much on lotion in that scent- but in my defense! It’s the only strong smell the baby didn’t hate, so I basically had to buy that much.’
Hancock wondered just how much was too much, but it must have been a lifetime supply, because even after two hundred years and months in the Wasteland, her pores remained overflowing with the alluring scent.
Her scent wasn’t the only thing to soothe him in the dead of night. Sole slept dead to the world, and in her temporary death Hancock couldn’t stop himself from diving headlong into her supple flesh. A relic of the past, Sole was the softest human he had ever laid hands on. It would start with tracing the veins of a stray hand that snaked its way to his chest as she unconsciously curled up against him, then in the autumn heat his textured fingertips would trail up to her shoulder, then eventually clavicle; he couldn’t will himself further. As a deterrent to his growing erection that seemed to follow not far behind his feather light touches, he would play with Sole’s golden wedding band.
“I thought,” he gulped, wetting his throat, “maybe you lost it.”
Sole shook her head again before returning the cigarette, “No. No, I-”
AUGHH, YES!! HARDER HARDER HARDER–!!
They might have held it back, but meeting each other’s eyes, Sole and Hancock burst out in laughter loud enough to rival the ecstasy down the hall.
Sole rubbed away the tears from her eyes, “Oh my god, why?” her laughter devolves into a giggle, much to Hancock’s slight disappointment. Anytime she laughed, genuinely laughed, it was like he was floating, “Just our luck we get out of the rain into a… what- what is this- a sex club?”
“Swinger’s club, actually,” rumbles Hancock, “I figured you didn’t wanna head downstairs where the magic happens. The lobby is… well,” and allows the lobby to speak for itself.
Couches and chaises line the walls of the ordinarily sterile white subway now bathed in abdomen tingling pink. Several vending machines towards the stairs below are filled with every drug and drink of choice to fuel the ferocious foreplay in its visitors, and judging by the stains in the furniture, even the waiting room has seen its fair share of action. Even the walls were lined with some stimulating stuff that would’ve made Sole burn red months prior. Despite the club sounding particularly happening downstairs, Sole and Hancock were alone, save for the receptionist who knew better to focus on their own work than the lurid conversations of patrons.
Sole can’t help but jest, “Been here lots, have you?”
“Oh, once or twice,” he caps it off with a nonchalant drag of his cigarette, unexpectedly drawing the final puff from the poor stubby thing. He snuffs it out on the underside of his boot, unaware of the way Sole’s eyes follow his hand to the butt of the ground, “Y’know how it is. There’s just some itches that can’t be scratched with good ol’ vigilante justice.”
Sole’s blush blended seamlessly into the rose lighting as the very act flashes in her mind. Hancock would never know how she sat flushed, but there was always a sensitive, burning feeling she associated with him in the back of her mind. His raspy voice, his roguish grin, the way his dexterous fingers idly played with his knife; more than once did she imagine his fingers put to better use elsewhere.
“Ladies man,” she bumped him with her shoulder and poked her tongue out at him. “Sexy King of the Zombies, was it, Hancock?”
He sheepishly laughed, “Geez, did I say that?” His laughter tapered off, and after a beat of silence, Hancock sighed something not quite wistful, but not quite dejected, “I don’t mean to circle back to it, but doll, your husband. You alright with that?”
Sole’s gaze fluttered to the ground. Truthfully? There was and will always be an aching loss in her chest, no matter how great or little it grows, but before the bombs - before his death - there was a lingering inevitability in their relationship she could never deny.
“Soldiers,” she started carefully, “aren’t home often. I met Nate when I was nineteen, we married when I was twenty four, and we- I had Shaun when I was twenty eight. Nate wasn’t there for the pregnancy, and he wasn’t there for the birth, but more than that, Nate just… when he could be, he wasn’t there.”
She lifts her gaze from the ground, willing to only meet Hancock’s stare in her peripheral, terrified by the pitiful look she knew he was giving her, “I think I was over Nate two hundred years ago.”
Shame flooded Hancock like never before. He was joyous - downright happy - to hear his beloved friend’s marriage was in shambles long before they had met, and yet he couldn’t deny himself that little bit of relief. He shifted closer to Sole on the velvet couch, his weight causing her to lean closer to him as he carefully toed the imaginary line with a graze of his pinky.
“Hey, being honest with yourself doesn’t make you a bad person,” he offers, “it makes you… honest.”
Painfully honest - a trait of Sole’s, he’s noticed time and time again, he can’t help but admire. Countless times in the dawn of Hancock’s fallible immortality he found himself unable to face hard truths; one way or another. It was all just a disguise to hide beneath, too afraid to face the cold reality of who he really is. Meanwhile, the two century old relic came crashing down his door to set him on a path even Hancock never thought he’d walk again.
Pausing, Hancock finally continues, fear hanging on his words as he admits, “It makes you a hell of a lot stronger than every person I know. Makes you hard to look at - terrifying to face,” he steals a look at the solemn widow from beneath the edge of his worn-out tricorn hat, “a real force to be reckoned with, and someone I can’t help but think the world of.”
Her pinky wraps around his in kind. Her finger shifts, lightly rubbing the rough, sinewy texture of what was left of his skin.
“You know-” she coughs away the crack in her voice until all she’s able to do is flush and giggle lightly about it, “-that’s rich, coming from someone whose first impression is to stab. Like love at first sight.”
“Like?”
Her head snapped towards the floor, skin thoroughly beet red from the slip, not that Hancock could tell. As far as he was concerned, Sole was deliciously pink all over.
She heaved a half-sigh half-giggle, “Well… be a little too much to come out and say it, wouldn’t it?”
“What happened to being honest?”
She laughs nervously and drags from the imaginary cigarette in her hand, only to falter the moment her lips meet bare fingers. Without missing a beat Hancock produces another