#i really went from being down horrendous for heatwave now I want to be like him n be a firefighter

[sarai-the-furry]

AUUUU SO THIS PAST SATURDAY I FINALLY WENT ON MY RIDE ALONG WITH THE FIRE DEPARTMENT THATS OUTSIDE MY NEIGHBORHOOD AND IT WAS FUCKIGNFN AWESOME

I was there from 8am to 8pm and we only got 5 calls the entire time I was there

First call: fire at a local fast food place

Second call: structure fire but we were called off en route, ended up going to Walmart to buy some stuff for dinner and breakfast

Third call: some crazy burning plywood in a burn barrel behind a gas station

Fourth call: lift assist

Fifth call: another lift assist

I REALLY WANT TO DO ANOTHER RIDE ALONG TO REALLY SEE IF BEING A FIREFIGHTER IS MY CALLING AAAAA

So sad that their main rig (ladder truck) was outta commission and we were using a pumper that belonged to a different station i think. I still had so much fun tho!! Im hoping I'll be able to do a ride along with the same station and shift when they get their normal rig back from the shop auauauauaua

[believerindaydreams]

Valentine fluff and stuff, Benny/Arcade <3 post the events of Raging Against the Machine

"Permission to court Arcade? My my, that's a trifle old fashioned, isn't it?" Daisy props the sniper rifle over her back, gives a little wave to Boone as they exit the dinosaur's mouth.

Benny shrugs. "He's welcome to ask my mother if he wants to...we're like that in the Boot Riders is all. Fucking is one thing, but where marriage is concerned you ask the matriarch."

"You could hardly consider me the matriarch of anything. And I didn't raise that boy to just take orders from anyone, especially one of...us."

"Orders about what?" Arcade's left off his coat in the Mojave heatwave, and his lover down to sharp black trousers and a blue shirt rolled up to the elbows makes him momentarily wish that Daisy wasn't here, or indeed the rest of the population of Novac.

Lover, heh. The thing he most regrets about all this is giving up that fond familiar term for a new and alien one.

"Anything," Daisy says mildly. "I won't spoil the surprise if Benny hasn't told you yet."

"...if he hadn't told you- uh, okay. I can wait." He throws Benny a confused look, gets a cheerful stonewall of a response.

Really, there's no need to inform Daisy that he let famously laidback Arcade Gannon be the one to propose first.

***

*one week earlier*

"I'm prescribing you a break. Medically."

"House had a point plugging himself into a mainframe," Benny growls, tossing yet another clipboard into the ever-growing stack besides him. "It would save a lot of trouble to do this all mentally- do you know how many pages of negotiations I'm dealing with for the sharecropper farms alone?"

"No, and that isn't the point. You need to stop acting like we're in perpetual crisis mode, the war's been over for a month-"

"The crises don't stop just because of a sudden outbreak of peace."

"You've got Swank. You've got a room full of clerks back there," Arcade says, gesturing. The Tops presidential suite is almost unrecognizable now from its earlier iteration as a swinger pad; there are charts on the walls, hurrying subordinates, and the bar has been cleared of liquor in favor of a shiny new terminal for Benny's private use. "You have responsibilities, yes, but you need to ease off at some point. Unless you actually want everyone to start thinking you're another Mr House in the making."

Not only has the thought occurred to him, now wasn't even for the first time today, but- you can hardly say that to Arcade.

"I couldn't relax here if I wanted to. Look at this mess. There isn't a place in New Vegas where I could go without having a lot of hangers on trying to get my attention, at least I can hear myself think in here."

"True. That's why I bought a house."

"The fuck- you what?" Squatting is one thing. Actually, literally, owning property, putting in for an official deed claim with the antiquated RobCo property machinery...not only is it an incredible pain, it's incredibly expensive. Even the Kings didn't bother with that, and the Old Mormon Fort is technically rented.

"Well. I had a few gold bars burning a hole in my pocket...and some free time, since the horrendous bloodbath of a New Vegas conquest singularly failed to happen."

"I thought you were donating that to the Followers."

"I thought it'd be good to use it for purposes that advance a Follower agenda. Such as insuring that our newly independent city-state has the opportunity to demonstrate it can exist without its interim dictator." Arcade leans over the bar, kisses his forehead in a gently, oddly chaste way.

It seems odd to Benny at first, until Arcade pulls back and he realises they have an audience. There is no way everyone from the back office needed a pencil all at the same time.

Well, if there's an audience he might as well live up to it. Benny flicks them a smile, adjusts the folds of his collar. "That's different. If you wanted to sweep me off my feet for a long dirty weekend, why didn't you start with the lead?"

He pulls Arcade close for a much more enthusiastic embrace, lips and tongues interlocked, until the doctor actually overbalances. For one terrifying moment he thinks he'll lose control, helplessly watch Arcade go falling headfirst into the wall or the floor or something equally painful.

It doesn't happen. He sustains the weight, until Arcade manages to pull back and stand up again, apparently unaware that anything could have happened. It's all right. They're all right.

"The things I'll do to advance a healthy socio-political agenda," his lover retorts, rather pink-faced, to general clapping and cheers.

***

Phoenix Point, the house is called; and Benny almost regrets it.

It's right across the street from an old tools factory, one of the places he'd resorted to while hunting up Lucky 38 access codes, heart in his mouth every minute. It hasn't been long before he'd known that Arcade's gambit with the Fiends had ended with his rescue by the courier; it had been considerably more worrying, that she had him than they. Fiends being killable.

Marilyn...he still has nightmares, justified ones.

The mistrust eases as Arcade opens the small barbed wire gate, though- it's pre-war security, with a physical and electrical lock. The outer door offers a hefty piece of metal plating, impenetrable to two centuries of decay.

This better not be like a vault. Arcade knows his opinion on those-

but then his lover unlocks the door and lets them inside, and it isn't like that at all.

Light, that's the first thing he notices. Real sunlight, glinting off the water in an open courtyard- a reservoir then, water to waste. That's an immediately soothing sight right there, unmitigated luxury for anyone raised to Mojave dust.

He makes for it immediately, tasting its sweet clarity- no rads, the Pip-Boy silence confirms that. In place of a Geiger counter he can hear Mr New Vegas, endlessly ruminating about love; and the faint whistle of a stewpot on the boil.

And his lover's quick breathing, behind him.

Benny turns, grins at Arcade's self-conscious pose; lying down but with an elbow propping up his chin, all that height shown off even horizontally as compared to the array of ferns and broc flowers behind him. "Is the rest of it this nice?"

"I certainly hope so. I went to more trouble than I needed to, perhaps- the Lucky 38 has been, uh, liberated of a number of books. Brought out some supplies for the workshop, that kind of thing...put together a wardrobe for you," Arcade says, looking very nearly pained. "Even articles that I do not have any comprehension why a sane person would wear."

Benny laughs, but can't sustain it; too much at once, too deeply meant to him. "I love it. I love it already, I love you."

"You haven't even seen it yet."

He draws his lover close, the scent of herbs and animal warmth and the brightening light of the Strip all melding together into one glorious sensation. "I will. Because..."

He doesn't know how to say how a home is holy to him, or how there's no one else in the world he would trust to shape it for him. Or how to say anything at all that means what he needs it to, when words are his worthless stock in trade.

"Because it's you," he says eventually; because that's honest.

Arcade laughs, strokes his hair. "Glad to hear it. Imagine trying to woo the Chairman of the Tops without a reasonably impressive dowry."

That rings false, he almost pulls away. "You don't need to buy me."

"I thought you appreciated that kind of ironic backchat."

"I do, but...not from you. Not with that sincere Followers face of yours." With that ready impatience for the truly immoral, the willingness to speak truth to power. "You're my moral center. Keep on keeping me honest, please."

Arcade favors him with a distinctly stunned expression. "Oddly, I'm rather in the habit of thinking that's what you are to me. You're braver than I am, as far as accepting the risk of failure to try to steer towards better outcomes. There are times when indecision itself can become paralysing."

The sunset isn't visible from behind the high fencing, but there's a rich blueness fading to purple above them. "In that case...carpe diem?"

"Seize the day?"

"Is that what it means? The impression I got was that it meant something more like 'jump my bones'. That'll teach me to listen to ex-Legion prostitutes."

"...you have a profoundly terrible sense of timing," Arcade murmurs, and rolls over on top of him.

"Uh."

"Carpe diem, then?"

Maybe his voice does fail him; but he kisses his way into a yes.