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The raiders had come out of nowhere, really.
The two of them should’ve known better by this point, a couple weeks of travel under their belt. She’s become more and more hardened against the world, and he’s gotten used to watching three backs instead of one (though they’ve learned that Dogmeat can easily fend for himself).
A pack of adversaries approached, hungry for flesh. It was instinct that moved her and her unlikely traveling companion, back to back, bullets flying, knives raised, adrenaline pumping so hard and fast her vision nearly went blurry with it.
But instead, she is sharper. More ruthless. And the feeling of him at her back, protecting them both, mowing down the threats in front of them—it’s more than adrenaline that pushes her heart faster, faster, a heavy thud she’s been trying to ignore.
It’s a high. Better than RadAway. Better than the moonshine she snuck sips of on their journey from where his mouth has touched (and she tries not to think about it, really she does, but there is little else that comes to mind when she imagines she can taste him).
The dead bodies are strewn around them, full of stab wounds and bullet holes, one man with a notably crooked elbow and neck, courtesy of her own combat skills, fine tuned in the wasteland.
It’s over. The closest call they’ve encountered so far—only their panting breaths remain, and the faraway sound of a dog with a meal, at the edge of their mess.
The smell of gunpowder and gore hangs in the air, thick and putrid and so unlike when it had been thrust upon her in the vault. This time, the carnage is hers, hard won. She saved herself this time. She was strong enough, this time.
Triumphant.
Their own bodies should certainly be assessed, but she cannot feel a thing except victory and vindication and—
Want.
Oh, she wants. An allowance she has never allowed, until now. Until him.
In the privacy of the dust cloud they made, she turns to face her partner in combat, and her body moves on instinct, just as it had in the moments before—duck, shoot, stab, protect, kill.
But there is nothing left to kill.
There is only their hard won survival, and the crush of her mouth against his.
The shameful dreams that have haunted her few unconscious hours are hurtled into reality.
In the privacy of her own mind, she thought he might taste…bad, in some way, but he doesn’t—no more than she must, after so long spent in the dry heat without reliable water. And yet, it doesn’t bother her. Nothing bothers her in this moment. Not the injuries that surely litter her body, not the blazing sun, not the overuse of her limbs or the hunger in her belly. It all fades, leaving nothing but this, the feeling of no more space between them. Connection, the likes of which she has nearly given up on finding. She tilts her head, a mimic of his fascination all those weeks ago, and sinks deeper into this moment she has stolen.
She feels him pull in a breath against her cheek through his not-nose, and he is even closer, now. She presses harder against him, tugging at his lapels.
He lets her. For a few, rapturous moments, he lets her. Her body sings.
It is almost a relief.
Until his hand grips her shoulder hard, pushing, and their lips separate.
Barely.
A gasp, and her feet stumble.
For a moment, silence. Terror. What has she done? Fueled by something perverse, she’s done the unspeakable, the unfathomable, the un-undoable—
She can’t read him, his face still only inches away, cards too close to the vest, but something unrecognizable washes over her, the words bubbling out, unbidden—
“We—we survived!” She barks out a laugh, foreign to her own ears, half exhilarated, half embarrassed. What now? What does the expression on that marred face mean, the crooked eyebrow, the tilted head all too familiar and yet unknown?
His lips shine.
She looks away from the mystery, down at their shoes, at his gun, both caked in the remnants of their battle, and she can’t face him, can’t face the consequences of her own unjustifiable actions.
But the quiet beckons more words she cannot stop, just a few, to satiate the need.
“We did it.” A whisper, quiet but fierce. Assurance, to herself, that she has not imagined this thing between them. “Together.”
Silence engulfs them again, and not the comfortable type they’d taken days to carefully find out in the waste, a break between her incessant questions and his frustrated half answers. A truce of sorts. A necessity, on certain occasions, to pretend at the illusion of privacy.
She chances one more glance upward, at a hat blocking the sun, at a face disfigured, not just by violence, but by so much unending time.
A thought occurs to her, hilarious and terrifying: All that fighting, and now he’s going to kill her for kissing him, for upsetting the tenuous balance.
She wonders if she could stop him.
Before, she would’ve naively thought—of course! And then, doubt, once her eyes were opened to the ways of the surface. But now she knows what she is capable of. She knows with certainty that she would have a fighting chance, no naivety left.
Their breath intermingles with the unsaid.
She’s never known him to be without a quip, some turn of phrase that’s an insult or half impossible to understand, or both.
A sudden jolt rips through her, shocking and disorienting. She barely registers that it is her own body, hurtling through the miniscule width of air between them.
She thought her kiss had been forceful, but this—
She has never known a kiss like this. A dam broken, he ravages her.
Consumes her.
Invades her mouth with so much hunger, another flitting thought—perhaps he might actually eat her.
When he licks past the barrier of anything chaste, all she can think about is how unlike any other kiss this feels—not just passionate, but ferocious, unhinged, as if he hopes to find everything he’s ever needed at the back of her teeth, the roof of her mouth, the fleshy center of her bottom lip.
She gasps, and he swallows it down. Hungry.
They both are. Constantly.
A dull thud echoes in the wasteland as he drops his gun, and then not only is his mouth on her, but both of his hands, roaming, searching, squeezing, and it hits her in this moment, how little thought she put into her actions, how ill-prepared she was for his savage exploration of her body.
She has never felt so much.
She has never felt so incredibly, acutely alive.
There is no time for the unending questions that have been collecting in her mind as he pushes her down, toward the dirt, the perpetual expanse. She goes with him willingly, as she has for days, weeks, and he with her.
She wants to know so much, everything, like she always has, but even without words, she is learning. She is learning so, so much from him, with him, as their knees hit the ground, as his hands pull at her, at the zipper of her jumpsuit, always getting exactly what he wants done. He is only slightly gentler with her than he is with himself, and yet that feels like something to tuck away and explore and mull over endlessly when this is, inevitably, all over—while she lays on the ground, not under him, but across from him as he keeps watch, and she pretends to sleep.
It is strange to know with certainty that he wants her, too.
His mouth is on her neck, now, as he frees her arms, yanking at the fabric until she is left in her white, stained undershirt, back in the dirt, jumpsuit bunching around her waist. He grips her jaw, tilting her head so he can suck a mark into the tender flesh that she knows will last days.
She won’t be able to see it, but he will.
She shudders at the thought of a mark. Of belonging.
It’s so much. It’s not nearly enough.
She reaches down, needing her legs free, more, more, so much more. She tries to twist and kick, but he presses her down harder, stilling her movements. She lets out a frustrated huff.
“Shh, shh, okay, sweetheart,” he murmurs into her neck, so quietly she wonders if it is even for her to hear.
And then he pulls away, hovering over her body, legs bracketing hers. He stares at her as he reaches for her suit, grips the blue fabric with his gloved hands, and pulls.
It barely makes it past her bottom, but at least it’s progress. A step in the right direction, but too slow for what she needs.
She reaches for his belt, efficient as ever, and he has the audacity to look surprised for a moment, before he schools his features into something more neutral.
“You sure about that, Vaultie?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” She’s never been more sure of anything. “I want to have sex.”
He laughs. He actually laughs, a short, amused sound, and she’s almost angry that the first time she’s heard it is like this.
“You want to have sex? Is that right?”
Later, she will wonder if she truly did see a flash of something vulnerable in him before she laid herself bare. She will wonder if it was worth it, or an unnecessary risk, to be this honest. But in this moment, she says what she feels he needs to hear. The truth.
“Yes. With you.”
Too much, maybe. But what isn’t too much, these days?
A flicker of something in his expression, and whatever her subconscious sees—it’s enough.
She reaches for him again.
“Eager, are we?”
A taunt that might offend, except that a moment later, her hand is wrapped around his length, hard and thick, with only a single layer of fabric left between them.
Undeniable.
“Yes,” she states simply. “We are.”
He smiles that near-lecherous half smile again, and it almost looks proud.
She needs him because of it.
There is more beneath, more to explore, more to know, but for now, this is what they have. And she will take it.
Before she can free him entirely, he pulls at her jumpsuit again, until it is down by her ankles. His frustrated noise when he encounters her shoes is endearing—a thought she keeps to herself, lest she divulge too much too fast of what she sees beneath all of the bravado.
He was once a man, after all.
In the end, he makes quick work of it, and when she is left in nothing but her undershirt and basic cotton briefs, he looks at her again. He keeps looking, like he expects her to disappear or stop him or tell him it was all a joke.
There will be time later, she tells herself again, for assurances. For now, she just waits for him to catch up to what is being offered.
She’s not surprised, really, when he flips her over—it’s only logical, she thinks, to avoid too much debris getting in the way. But she doubts his reasoning is the same.
A moment passes. And another. And she is on her hands and knees with nothing but a wasteland in front of her and a mystery behind.
And she grows impatient.
She reaches back, pulls down the worn fabric until it is halfway down her legs. Only then does a hand clasp around hers, stilling her movements.
He taps her thigh with his other hand, and on instinct, she lifts her knee until he can pull one leg free of confinement.
That is enough.
She is bared to his gaze, and a million more questions come to her mind, not the least of which is are you crazy, turning your back on a Ghoul?
But she knows. Instinct drives her.
Instinct has never proven her wrong.
She lets him see exactly what she wants.
Finally, something rubs at the seam of her, just barely separating her lips, and even that—she whimpers. She needs him inside of her, and she is not ashamed. There is no room for such a trivial thing as shame here, not even in the unending waste.
“Fuck,” she hears, another whisper, and then—her body opens, yielding to something so new.
Has she ever felt such a terrifyingly remarkable thing?
She’s been curious about his anatomy. It’s natural, she’s told herself as each inquiry came to her, to be curious about the unknown, especially with little else to occupy her time on endless hikes through nothingness. Curiosity is how we learn, and grow. Her inquisitive nature was often indulged in the Vaults, but now, upon reflection, she sees some answers in a different light; dismissals, topic changes, well, what do you think, Lucy-loo? But she needs to know everything.
She knew he must have something down there, given the unselfconscious standing bathroom breaks he’s been taking on their journey.
But she had not yet had the courage to ask—is it yours? Does it work?
(Can I see it? Touch it?)
Well, whatever it is, it works.
It absolutely works.
Because before she can make a single one of her long held queries exit her mouth, he is cramming his way inside of her with far more ease than she might have expected.
It’s not that he’s small—oh no.
It’s that she is almost unbearably wet.
A waste, she thinks—except that it isn’t.
Because she needs it.
Needs something to allow the slide of him so deep, she swears she can feel him in her teeth.
No one, nothing has ever filled her like this. Not her own fingers, not a man, nothing. She had not known herself capable of holding so much of someone else within her.
The sting in her palms fades away, because she cannot focus on anything except the sensation of him inside of her, stretching her beyond the point she thought possible, and the sounds he makes as he somehow gets even deeper: a low, guttural groan, followed by a hiss. Downright inhuman.
It should be too much, too fast, except everything that came before was already too much too fast, and this is just…the rest.
“Oh—oh goodness,” she gasps, overwhelmed.
“Ain’t none of that here, I can promise you that.”
“Y—yes, there is,” she insists, determined, breathless, full. “It feels—so good. D—Doesn’t it feel good?”
He doesn’t respond with words, just moves in and out of her, and each time he nearly leaves her body, she thinks she must have imagined the stretch. And then it comes again.
And again.
Better than anything from her dreams.
“Is this what you wanted, sweetie?” She can hear the way his mouth curls around the endearment, and more precious moisture blooms to allow him deeper. “To be fucked into the dirt?”
“Yes,” she gasps, before she can consider the implications. The truth is torn from her by his insistent movements, crowding her, taking up space inside her like no other.
He fucks like he’s trying to prove she shouldn’t want this—selfish snaps of his hips, too tight grip, fingers absent from anywhere near her clitoris.
It’s intoxicating.
The fact that he is heedless of her needs is almost flattering—that he must have her, just as she is, exactly as he wants her.
He fucks like he wants to make her regret it.
She won’t.
His gun remains close, and she wonders—if a survivor emerged, would he even stop what they’re doing to kill them?
She hopes not.
A moan she’s never heard before escapes her throat. This is already better than any sex she’s ever had, cousin or not, and maybe she should feel wrong about that, but it only spurs her on with how good it feels, to be not just wanted, but needed. To have a purpose greater than herself.
His grip on her hips is punishing, and it all feels so very good, but it’s not quite enough, and she reaches back for—something, she doesn’t know what, but she reaches, scratching, clawing as he pushes himself into her, over and over again, full, but still somehow incomplete.
Her uncoordinated moves make little difference to him, and she cannot seem to convey the urgency with which she needs more.
She pushes through the haze of arousal as much as she can bear, and on his next thrust, she catches hold of the tender, exposed flesh of his hip, and she sinks her newly ragged nails into the skin.
He nearly slips out of her entirely at the shock of the sting, and his frustrated growl would be terrifying, were it not so tinged with need.
With an ease she should have expected, he catches her wrists, pins them at her lower back with a single hand, the other reaching to wind itself in her hair, brittle and bloodied.
Her efforts were not enough.
She’s suspended in the air by dual grips, impaled on him.
And he pulls with both hands, just a bit, his hips never ceasing the crash against her bottom.
“Don’t start somethin’ you can’t finish, little killer.”
Oh.
Newfound confidence floods her, as does the slightly immature desire to prove him wrong at every possible turn.
She very much intends to finish.
This time, she kicks out her leg, foot colliding with his thigh, catching him by surprise (another accomplishment to add to her list), forcing him out of her in an instant. He loses his hold on her hair, but not before her scalp starts to smart, her neck pulled taut, her shoulders painfully extended by his now lost grip on her wrists. And then, she crashes down, momentum overtaking her before she can right herself.
The emptiness between her legs is haunting, like her body finally found what it needed, only to have it stolen away. But it does not last long as she scrambles toward him, uncaring of the filth, fingernails already caked with blood and who knows what else.
She turns to see him flat on his back, cock the only part of himself exposed below the neck, and a new expression on his face that will surely occupy her thoughts later.
Both of their chests heave.
The fact that he doesn’t reach for his gun right away fascinates her.
He tilts his head to the side once again, studying her. What a sight she must make, carnage covered, bottom half exposed, crouched like an animal, inches from the ground. More like a surface dweller than ever before, and her body sings with it.
His mouth moves as if to speak, but before he can get the words out, she advances, spreads herself over his lap, bracketing his thighs.
“Like this,” she says, before sinking down on his length without further preamble, easily, and yet it’s so different like this, in his lap, her knees around his back, and his hands moving to grip her waist on instinct, holding his own body up under her.
He accepts her with little more than a grunt—and a gleam in his eye.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you, Vaultie?”
Now, when she moves up and down, it’s exactly how she wants it.
“Of course.”
He meets her thrust this time, a sharp edge that drives him impossibly deeper, and yes, this is what she needed, to see him and feel him and climb him.
To give as good as she got.
To watch him fall apart.
“Golden rule, mother—”
His mouth swallows her quip, hot and insistent once more, and she’s struck by how strange it is to have no other nose to wrestle with as he mouths at her from every possible angle with ease.
Just a strange emptiness that puts them closer than any two people have ever been.
Her hands wander now, too, over his skull, his back, searching, rocking her body against his, pulling him deeper and deeper with every push of her hips.
He hits something new inside of her and she throws her head back at the force of it. His hand winds its way back into her hair, keeping her anchored there, on the precipice of bliss.
“Fuckin’ fascinating, ain’t you, sweetheart?” He says it like an insult and compliment all at once, and she doesn’t know what to do with it other than slam her hips down harder, selfish, like he was before.
He lets her, which might be the most shocking development so far. Even props her back against his thighs, giving her all the leverage she needs to take and take and take.
Eventually, she looks down at where they meet, hot and filthy, the squelch of decadent moisture echoing around them as they each near their end (she can feel it, the way he swells more and more inside her with each thrust, as she bears down, tightening, squeezing, and something in her needs this—togetherness).
She kisses him again, reaches for his gloved hand, yanks it toward the apex of her thighs, desperate, determined to achieve a mutual undoing.
When he pulls it away, she growls into his mouth. Actually growls with how badly she needs it and frustration at being denied, but he doesn’t leave her in suspense for long.
Instead, he brings his hand between them, bites at a gloved finger, and pulls, pulls, until his bare skin is exposed—no blood, no remnants of their tryst, just clean(ish), leathery skin.
And something familiar. Smoother than the rest. A nail, slightly dirty, but rounder, femininely curved. Almost…well kept.
And black thread at the base of it.
“Is—is that mine?” Near breathless, near falling. She doesn’t stop moving. Couldn’t, even if she wanted to.
He spits out the glove and smiles again, and she’s closer to coming than she ever was.
“Not anymore, sweetheart.”
It’s not graceful, the way he makes sure to use the finger he took from her to rub at her clit—surely, his thumb would be more effective—but the depravity of it makes up for the inelegance.
To be touched with something that once was hers, something he stole—the orgasm creeps down her spine; the thread attaching what was once part of her body to his catches at the wiry hair between her legs, both of them so deeply unkempt.
He pulls her ear to his mouth, and these words are certainly meant for her to hear.
“Go on then, you little killer.”
And she does.
The violence of her pleasure matches the fight that brought it, so intense she can hardly keep up the movements of her hips.
But that is no matter—not when he takes over, using his full strength to lift her up and down, fucking her through the euphoria, matching it will his own, doubling the pleasure as she feels him fill her with—well, she doesn’t know what, exactly, but it’s warm and it’s his and now it’s inside of her, and that is enough to send her eyes rolling back, her torso going limp. She falls against his chest as they both lose their strength, and he lets her body push his into the ground, another puff of dust, shrouding them in a place to hide.
Together.
She closes her eyes and allows herself a moment, just a moment, to imagine another life—a mattress under them, instead of dirt. A clean, cool pitcher of water on the bedside table. A hopeful, knowing look at her stomach in the afterglow. The life she thought she would have.
A life so far gone, she wonders if it was ever a possibility at all.
She comes back to this life, eyes wide open, wholly unknown and yet, inevitable. A grunt as he pulls out of her. No damp cloth, no tender smile. But—a lingering touch, as he guides them to their feet. A heavy look, as he brushes a stray piece of hair out of her eyes.
He finds her shoes, she finds his hat. She places it on his head with a soft smile before accepting his offering, turning away to get dressed before he can think too hard about the gesture.
He’ll come to realize what they have soon enough. And he will allow himself to have it. She knows that, now.
And it’s even clearer to her later that day, after about a mile of silence.
“That was good work back there, Vaultie.”
She turns to face him, forcing him to look at her as she asks, “Which part?”
Another smile, though he doesn’t answer.
Progress.
As they continue their journey, she senses the way her hair is bent from where he gripped it.
Her underwear becomes more of a mess with each step that they take.
There is a torn seam in her suit. She cannot stop her fingers from fiddling with the undeniable proof of his need. And she presses at the blooming mark on her neck when she’s sure he isn’t looking.
It’s a good thing there are no mirrors in the waste.
She doesn’t think she’d recognize herself anymore.