Chapter Text
The first time Elder Maxson saw Danse’s new charge, he almost doubted that she was the same woman he’d been reading about from the Paladin’s field reports. Danse had nothing but praise to say about the woman he found in the wastes, but.. as he spoke to all of the new recruits he couldn’t take his eyes off of the little lady who was rocking on the balls of her feet and adjusting something on her Pipboy. The clicking of the buttons was the only other sound in the room beside his own voice.
All the other new recruits stood at attention, many were mirroring his posture with their arms folded behind their backs, but one head was bowed down. Maxson could see the Pipboy’s display reflected on the woman’s glasses and he couldn’t believe that Danse’s new charge could be so.. disrespectful. Was this really the same person who cleared out Arc-jet and found the missing squadron? Why was she wearing a dress..?
As he finished his speech, he called her over and introduced himself though it felt unnecessary to do so.
“You can call me Dottie, but my friends call me Dot.” She curtsied with a smile, and Maxson was momentarily astonished to think that he’d never seen anyone perform such a thing before. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
When she smiled Maxson took notice of her perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. Just from her teeth alone, he concluded she was not from the Commonwealth. Her dress looked carefully pressed and if it weren’t for the Pipboy on her arm he would’ve thought that this person was incredibly lost and a woman like this had no business being aboard a vessel like the Prydwen. She was small, almost ridiculously so. She was dwarfed in his shadow and the top of her head barely reached his shoulder. The woman extended her hand with a limp wrist, curling her fingers downward and Maxson simply.. stared, his jaw tightening while he tried to make sense of the gesture.
“Oh, I suppose you’re not the sort to kiss a woman’s hand hm? Should I be kissing yours instead sir?” She cocked her head to the side, her eyes were wide and inquisitive. He didn’t detect an ounce of insincerity from her tone.
This woman was to be a knight? This was the same person who’d rescued Paladin Danse and his squad? Maxson cleared his throat to ask her as much, but before he could get a word in, Dottie pulled up something on her Pipboy and stood on her tiptoes to shove the screen in his face.
“So, Elder. Here are my qualifications. I hope you’ll find my resume adequate.” She spilled out her words as if she’d been holding them in. “I’ve read all of your Tenets and Danse has been a dear with getting me up to speed with your organization. I have excellent typing skills, along with an undergrad degree in particle physics, I was pursuing a PHD in nuclear science-” Her nail tapped the screen, underlining the tiny text on her Pipboy with her finger. She spoke quickly enough that Maxson held up a hand to stop her.
“That’s more than adequate recruit, though I suppose I should call you Knight. From here on out you’re expected to continue your training under Paladin Danse’s attention as a Knight of the Brotherhood of Steel.”
“Oh!” She slapped her forehead with a self-deprecating smile. “-and here I thought I’d be interviewing for the position.” She laughed and self consciously rubbed the back of her neck, “I wore my nice dress and everything!”
Something about the way she spoke to him was both refreshing and unnerving at the same time. Arthur was unused to such a conversational tone, especially with a near stranger. She stood rather close to him and he realized that she smelled like perfume or something. The scent was almost like vanilla. Such frivolity was near unheard of in the Commonwealth and such a thing would be seen as a joke amongst the Brotherhood rankings. He felt as if the more he looked at her, the more off-put he felt.
He noticed the way her eyelashes near brushed the inside lenses of her glasses that hung around her neck attached with a dainty silver chain. Her frame was small and nothing about her seemed as if she’d last a single day out in the wasteland. There was nothing about the curves of her body that could come from a lifetime of starving in the wastes. To put it simply, Dottie was.. fascinating. Everything she’d done since arriving in the room was completely out of the ordinary and there was something about her that was so different than anyone he’d ever seen before.
“Sir? I asked if you’d like a copy of my resume?”
Arthur blinked, his throat felt strangely tight. He didn’t have much experience speaking to women other than professionally and nothing about the way he found himself pondering the way her dress hugged her body was professional in the slightest. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a pair of stockings before besides the ratty things he’d seen raider women wear.
“You can give any files you’d like to share to Proctor Quinlan. He can have them uploaded to my personal terminal.” He hoped that whatever she gave to the proctor would help him with any information on her background.
“Will do,” Dottie nodded with a smile, she looked around for a moment and when she met his gaze she looked away to shyly look at her shoes. Her cheeks colored pink with embarrassment and Maxson found it to be strangely cute. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever thought anything was cute before. The resulting silence was somewhat awkward. Dot cleared her throat, “Uh.. is that all you need sir? Am I free to go?”
Had he not dismissed her? Maxson nodded, he gestured toward the door with an outstretched arm, when he stepped forward, his boot scuffed against the floor. The noise made the situation somehow more awkward than it already had been. “Have Danse outfit you with a proper uniform. From here on out, I expect you to look as your title befits.”
“Sir, yes sir!” She giggled before mumbling under her breath, “Jeez, I always wanted to say that!”
Maxson watched her scamper out of the room and he had to forcibly tear his gaze away from her retreating form. The pencil-like fit of her dress’s skirt left nothing up to the imagination and once again, he found himself absolutely floored to realize that this tiny, ridiculous woman with her hourglass body was somehow the same gun-toting hero that had been in Danse’s reports.
Arthur Maxson was the sort of man who did not have time or patience for such thing as regret. As Elder, any decision he made was done with utmost confidence because it was his duty to make tough decisions for the good of the Brotherhood and by default mankind. But once he was finally alone in the room, he breathed out a heavy sigh through his nose and momentarily wondered if banging his forehead into the window would alleviate the way he couldn’t stop thinking about her stockings that disappeared into her dress. He wondered if they were held up with garters like he’d seen in an old-world magazine once before. The more he thought about her damn stockings the more inviting slamming his forehead into the glass window sounded.
Maxson decided that it was time enough to retire for the night. He felt like he needed something strong to clear his head. Whiskey maybe. He made his way to his quarters and nodded toward the polite salutes he endured from passerby.
He’d never felt so tongue-tied around anyone before, at least he hadn’t in a handful of years. He often felt aged beyond his years but right now he was painfully reminded of his actual age. He hadn’t felt like this since he was an awkward pubescent boy. Maxson hoped that those days were behind him.. but as he pondered over his conversation with Dottie, wondering if it was as awkward as he remembered or if he was overthinking things.. He felt as if he was fourteen and following at Sarah Lyons heels again. No one had dared to stand so close to him since he’d become Elder, Dottie smelled like fucking vanilla for god’s sake.
Thinking about Sarah was often difficult. Arthur did not often care to reminisce because all that mattered now was the future. His devotion to his cause left no room for all of the fluttering feelings and awkward compulsions he used to feel. Sarah was a ghost in his psyche, he couldn’t forget her even though he often wished he could. Growing up, he always assumed she was to be his one day.
Though he liked to think he wasn’t a slave to desires of the flesh, he was still a man. His cock rose like any other’s did even though he often was annoyed with such fact. He did not have time for women, and some part of him didn’t want to consider anyone else besides his childhood crush who still haunted him. When he touched himself, the only person he thought of was her. Sarah would’ve been his wife one day. It felt wrong to think of anyone besides her. She was the perfect example of everything the Brotherhood should be, she was an untouchable hallowed image in his mind. She was perfect.
Arthur entered his quarters, somehow feeling more muddled than he had been previously. He sank onto his mattress and rested his elbows on his knees before blindly reaching toward the footlocker at the foot of his bed. He’d meant to find the whiskey he kept there, but his fingers grazed over something soft. His hand recoiled for a moment and he felt his ears burning at the realization of what he just touched.
Sarah haunted him in more ways than just her presence in his memories. He was often bitter about the fact that the world had taken her from him and the Brotherhood. Ruling alongside her as partners would’ve completed him. He felt like he would’ve been a better man if she was here with him as a guiding voice. Perhaps she would’ve already had this Commonwealth under her control, perhaps the Brotherhood would be seen as the wasteland’s savior if she was still around to guide their cause.
Debasing her to sexual imagery in his perverted fantasies felt wrong, it always did. But as he pulled her panties out of his footlocker and pressed the familiar fabric to his face.. His guilt faded to a sense of comfort. The guilt was still there, as was the discomfort from his reaction to Danse’s charge, but Sarah’s old panties made him feel a little more grounded. He’d stolen these from her laundry when he was a teen and he honestly did not have an excuse or an explanation as to why. His hormone-addled mind had simply seen Sarah’s things in a pile, and then the next thing he knew he was taking her panties and stuffing them into his pocket with nothing besides impulse driving the action.
He’d been skittish around her for weeks afterward, Arthur remembered thinking that she’d somehow know what he did and then he’d never be able to look her in the eyes again. Especially not after what he started to do with her panties in the comfort of his bunk at night.
Though he was trained from birth to be a leader, it was impossible to discipline all aspects of being a teenage boy out of him. Sarah’s panties had been his only comfort in the years since her death. He often slept with them clutched in his fist and pressed against his face when he needed a reminder of who she was and what she meant to him. The garment was the only thing he had of hers besides his title as Elder. Her scent had long since faded from the fabric, but he still brought them to his face and took a deep breath, wishing that he could still remember what she smelled like.
The more he reminisced about Sarah, wishing that there was some hint of her within the fibers of the damned cotton, he began to think about the perfume the ridiculous new Knight wore. Vanilla and something spicy underneath. She smelled like a pastry and she looked as if he could lift her in one arm without breaking a sweat. What he used to feel for Sarah was reverent, he wanted her to be his wife, he wanted her to look at him with those pretty green eyes with love in her gaze. He used to fantasize about Sarah kissing him, treating him like a man rather than a boy. He’d spent many nights with his face in her panties, touching himself to the idea that she’d one day greet him as her husband.
His crush on Sarah had been fairly innocent besides the fact that he used her panties to masturbate. But Dottie? When he thought of the ridiculous, tiny woman with her glasses and her stockings, he thought about how her height would factor into getting on her knees before him. He thought about pushing her against the glass window in the room she’d stood in today and fucking her against it. He thought about her painted lips and her curled eyelashes that were so different compared to Sarah’s.
The two women were incomparable and it was baffling to consider the way his body reacted to thinking of her when he’d thought of only one woman for as long as he could remember. Sarah was tall, her body was lean and muscled.. She lived, breathed and bled for the brotherhood. She was perfect and she should’ve been his.
Dottie was short, her body was curved and her thighs looked like he could sink his face into them like pillows. He’d spoken to Dottie for around ten minutes and in that time he’d learned that she was a chatterbox with little respect for personal space, she rudely ignored his welcome speech and she looked as if she’d been plucked from a pre-war gentleman’s magazine. The sort of magazines that he’d always been too disciplined to look at even though the other squires would hide such things beneath their bunks.
The way Dottie so clearly wanted to impress him with her resume and her formal wear was.. cute. Dottie was.. for lack of a better word, cute. She wasn’t at all graceful and authoritative like Sarah. Femininity was an anomaly that Maxson had never considered to be attractive until Dottie was standing on her tiptoes to show him the display on her Pipboy. She offered her hand for him to kiss as if such a thing was commonplace after curtsying for god’s sake.
He’d just met her and she’d already found her way into his most personal, most treasured thoughts. Thinking of another woman while holding Sarah’s panties felt shameful, it felt wrong.. He growled under his breath as he fought with the zipper of his jumpsuit. When he wrapped his hand around his cock, he hissed a groan through his teeth while his other hand rubbed the fabric of Sarah’s panties with his thumb. His eyes closed as he nuzzled his face into the bunched-up fabric.
Sarah was long gone. There was nothing of her left. He’d reshaped the Brotherhood to fit his own perfect image of what they should be and the Lyons model was a thing of the past. He’d already defiled her legacy and so it felt right to wrap her panties around his shaft and defile the last piece of her that he had left. He’d never done that before, he’d always kept the piece of fabric pristine but..they no longer smelled like her, the fabric was worn and thin because of him touching it over the years. The panties could’ve been anyone’s at this point. The realization was both disheartening and freeing at the same time.
He stroked himself over the fabric and found that there was no guilt left within his thoughts. Sarah’s image faded and he imagined sliding his hands up Dottie’s ridiculous dress, riding up the fabric to see her lace-gartered thighs that were soft beneath his touch. He wondered what her panties looked like, were they black like her dress? She struck him as the sort of woman who liked her things to match. She looked.. put together, her hair looked carefully styled with a bun atop her head, her bangs were perfectly straight as well. From the top of her head all the way down to her heels she looked orderly and pristine. He imagined pulling her bun free and holding her hair in his hand as he pressed his cock against her lips to smudge her lipstick.
The thought had him groaning low in his throat and he tossed Sarah’s panties to the side to pump himself with more urgency. He swiped over the precum that accumulated at the tip and he wondered if his new Knight could even fit him inside of her.
He’d spent years obsessing over the damned piece of fabric, worshipping them like he worshipped his fantasy of Sarah Lyons. Maxson eyed the panties with disdain, he felt pathetic for keeping them as long as he had. He shut his eyes and bit his lower lip, his thoughts became a blur due to the primal urge to get himself off. He imagined sitting Dottie atop his desk and spreading her legs to bury his face between her thighs, he imagined nuzzling his face against her panties and feeling them damp against his skin.
Imagining what she tasted like had him seizing up with a groan, with his last moment of clarity he wrapped Sarah’s panties around his cock with his free hand. His hips jolted as he came, pumping jet after jet of his come into the fabric that had once been hallowed. By the time he stopped coming his balls felt drained and empty. The panties in his hand were soaked with his spend and he was more than satisfied to see them ruined. He felt as if he’d finally gotten over worshipping a ghost by ruining the last piece of her he had left. Sarah may have been a paragon, a shining example of everything the Brotherhood should be, but she died because of her optimism. Because of her own weakness.
He had made the Brotherhood the pinnacle of strength and control in her wake and Maxson was not the little doe-eyed boy he once was. There was no point in obsessing over her. Putting her on a pedestal in his mind enough that her old panties became his prized possession was a flaw that he was glad to put behind himself. The satisfaction he felt in coming in her panties, permanently marking them with his essence as he’d done with the Brotherhood was indescribable.
He tossed them to the floor and laid back on his bed, breathing hard. He felt as if he’d never come so hard before, nor had he thought of anyone besides Sarah Lyons in his fantasies. Some part of him was sad to know that his dirty secret was soiled, he couldn’t keep her panties now that he’d ruined them. He wasn’t going to have them laundered or anything like that. He’d have to have them thrown out.
Perhaps he might need a piece of his new obsession after all. He was not the same boy who once stole a girl’s panties from her dirty laundry, but- he wanted a pair of Dottie’s. He tried not to think about what that could mean psychologically, lest he ruin the catharsis he felt.