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Boone sat by the campfire, a rag in one hand and his rifle in the other. The muzzle gleamed bright in the orange glow yet he kept polishing it, eyes trained on the gun but his mind a thousand leagues away.
Sage was in the tent. Her shadow danced across the canvas walls in the weak light of a lantern, and he could see her every movement. There was a rustle of fabric when she took off her armor, the click of her rifle as she reloaded, reset the sights. Faint music played from the radio along a chilly breeze. They had done this every night since she picked him up. It was routine, and in their uncertain world Boone had clung to these few hours after they set up camp to not feel the itch in his trigger finger.
Yet tonight unease gnawed at him. He’d tried to get his mind off the wheels. He counted supplies, recounted, set up his own tent, scored the perimeter even though there wasn’t much use to that since they were in Nelson, NCR territory. Nothing had helped. So he sat by the dwindling fire, polished his rifle until it practically glowed, trying hard to fight the urge to go to Sage.
He couldn’t remember how long it’d been since the courier had swept through that dingy little tourist town. His life had been so stale, so full of anger that his time in Novac seemed like a raging nightmare. It was only after Sage had whisked him off on a path of blood and bullets against the Legion that he felt he was finally waking up. That had been…however many years ago. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember when.
He could remember the look in her eye when Sage had told him she needed to settle a score. It was the first time he had seen a kindred flame in that stale nightmare, and better yet, she had been offering a lit match to him. A way out for them both. A promise of revenge.
But that was over. Caesar was dead. The Dam was in NCR hands, safeguarded against the greater evils of the world. It wasn’t perfect – Boone knew far too well that the Mojave was far from perfect, but it was safer than it had been in the last fifty years and that was enough. At least, it should have been. The world was slowly becoming the place he had wished it had been when he’d married Carla. All it took was a fire burning in the heart of a screwed-over courier.
A ripping sound caught his attention. He looked down to see the rag had caught on the barrel of his gun and tore. He had been rubbing too hard. Boone sighed in frustration and tossed it aside, burying his face in his hands. Caesar was dead. The Legion defeated. New Vegas was safer. And Carla wasn’t here to see it.
Her name didn’t make him grit his teeth anymore. Didn’t cause him to feel that rage bubble beneath the surface. He thought putting a bullet in every Legionnaire head would do the trick but it hadn’t. It had been at the Dam, up on the ridge with the 1st Recon, staring down an army ten-times the size of the whole NCR. He’d counted the heads of every red-skirt bastard and knew that was what he had abandoned Novac for. Boone was fine to die that day if it meant he could take as many Legion bastards down with him.
And then there was a hand on his shoulder.
He knew it would be Sage even before he looked. She had her cap pulled down over her eyes, lips drawn in that tight line, and he was suddenly back in Novac, in the mouth of that stupid fucking dinosaur and Sage was looking at him with that exact expression.
Ain’t nothin’ but blood to make up for what we lost. She’d said.
He’d believed her. He’d believed her so quickly, so viciously that they had cleaved through the desert like they were the hounds on the devil’s heels, only bodies left in their wake. They destroyed camp after camp, wiped out Legion towns, taken the shackles off hundreds of slaves, chased death all the way to the shore of the Colorado River. All of it had felt like he was serving his sentence, giving back to the universe what he had taken in the first place. And when they arrived at the Dam, Boone was ready to walk into the dog’s black jaws. He’d known since he first picked up his bloodied rifle at Coyote Tail that it was how he was made to pay off his debt.
So when Sage placed her hand on his shoulder, her fingers squeezing, he knew that she had the same resolve as him. They were both staring down the same tunnel, towards the same light. If they were going to die in the war, that would be enough.
Then, all at once, it wasn’t.
Boone didn’t want her to die. He didn’t want her to die as much as he didn’t want to die. The thought had appeared so suddenly it suckered him in the gut and stole his breath. He had been prepared to die for so long that he hadn’t considered if someone else felt that way. He’d seen it, that kindred hellflame searing across the desert, their bullets staining the sand red. Sage was the one to track down trading camps, to keep watch at night with one eye open through the makeshift scope of her rifle. There was no thought for safety – they both knew they aimed to kill. Each time they cleared Legion territory, the fact that it could very well be their last hadn’t stopped them. What was the point? The courier had promised him blood, and they took it whenever they could. If they died, they would have died doing the right thing.
But that thought made his chest hurt.
He’d tried to shake that feeling off, reminded himself that he couldn’t do shit about anything except pull the trigger but it wouldn’t go away.
Everything, from Carla to the ambush at Nelson, all of that had been the will of the fucking universe, the due penitence he had coming to him. Death would not stop for him, but Sage didn’t have to go down the same path. She was the courier, she was the goddamn sun, burning off the evils and kept everything good about the Mojave, everything he had tried to be and where he had failed, she had succeeded. How many slaves did they free? How many towns did they pry from Legion claws? How many soldiers would stay home with their families, instead of fighting in a useless war?
She couldn’t die. He wouldn’t let her. He hadn’t let her.
Every bullet that left his rifle had a mark and he hit every single one of them. No Legion dog got past the barricade.
Then the sounds of war died. He had blinked, and it was done.
The weight of it all had shrugged off him in that moment, standing at the Dam, watching the Legion retreat. It had happened. After countless nights where sleep evaded him in pursuit of Caesar, the nightmares he did have when exhaustion caught up to him, the fraying hope when Sage took him on and the pure need to have everything he ever wanted and then it was there, with brush burning and smoke in the night sky and copper tang on the Nevada wind, and Sage standing in the red-stained sand, wounded, bruised, but alive.
She had looked up in that moment, her face to the greying sky. Boone had thought she was looking for him on the ridge but she didn’t face him, didn’t acknowledge him. He watched through his scope as she took a breath, the tears cutting tracks through the gore on her face. Sage was alive.
That had felt like his victory. That had felt like he had finally, finally signed his name on the last check of his fucking loan and he was free. Free to see Sage, beautiful, insane Sage basking the afterglow of a war that they had won, and know she would live on.
When they returned to the outpost, Sage had grinned at him, small and sad. Said that they’d accomplished what they had sought out to do, and they could rest now. Told him he’d been a good partner.
The best, she’d sighed, I’m going to miss you. Then she’d gently wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She smelled of sweat and ash, and when Boone held her, he felt the steady beat of her heart against his, and knew that when he let go, he could live as a free man. When he let go, he would know he had done what he could. When he let go, it would be the last sacrifice he would ever have to make.
Then, somewhere, from heaven or the back of his mind, Carla’s ghost echoed to him.
You can keep going. For her.
Sage was, by far, the most insane person he’d ever met. She’d be completely fine on her own now that the Legion had been driven out. But he didn’t want to leave her alone. It didn’t feel right. And where would he go? Stay in New Vegas, clinging to the wisps of a life he could’ve had? Return to the dead-end job of mercenary work, trying to forget about the women he’d only crossed paths with? Wait for his next debt?
There, holding Sage, he realized that all the good he had in him meant nothing without her. Sure, he put down Legion animals, caved the heads in of slavers and warmen. But he’d done it for the sake of doing it. Sage had put purpose in his life by finally freeing the Mojave. Without her, what would he become? No, he couldn’t leave her.
He never said as much. Only when she turned to leave, he followed her right out of the NCR and into the Mojave – and she hadn’t stopped him.
Boone knew it wouldn’t fix everything. He had been a broken man for so long he wasn’t sure how to be anything else. But they were alive. He had been raised from perdition and though he couldn’t see a straight path forward, he had the hope there was one.
Moonlight glowed across the sand. The fire had died down to embers and Boone sat still, staring at the shadows in the tent. The war was over, nobody really had any need for vigilantes yet they continued to travel from town to town, heroes in their own right. Settlers had fallen to their knees for Sage, gripped his own hand with a warm shake. They were thankful. They were grateful. And he had accepted it.
That was why the unease clawed at him. Things hadn’t been the same since the Dam. It hadn’t mattered that they had settled into their routine almost immediately because now even complacency felt foreign. No longer were they faceless mercenaries grappling over a cap, they were saviors, they had kept the evils at bay and brought not just safety, but hope. It was that hope that clung to every shred of humanity still living in the wasteland, that there were better paths to take, a way forward that they could now see without the ghosts of war looming over them.
And Boone knew it far too well for comfort.
When they returned to the road, he felt like something had cracked open and wriggled free. He noticed the sway of Sage’s hips. The sharp instinct to push her hair back when it fell free of her cap. The way her soft gaze pinned him to the ground whenever she looked to him. The world had changed to have hope, and to Boone’s discovery, so had he.
He thought he would never love again, not the way he had loved Carla. Part of him still believed that. No one could replace her. He wouldn’t let it. But when he had decided to continue his life with Sage, when he took that first step forward in her direction, it was…simple, maybe not easy. Easier than he’d realized. No more was it the anger that had first bonded them, fury and vengeance that glued them together, only doing it for the sake of a common goal. Fate had chosen her. And she had chosen him. Over everything else, he had wanted to be with Sage. For once, it felt like the universe would let him have what he wanted.
But for how long?
Boone wiped his face, then stood up. A cold breeze chilled him down to the bone. The fire was down to the crackling bones of the wood logs. The light in Sage’s tent had dimmed, too, her shadow still on the canvas. He took a step around the firepit, then hesitated.
How long, truly? It was the barbed thought catching him every time he dared to bring it up. That anxiety would never go away. He went into each day knowing perfectly well it might be his last, and that alone made him constantly remember everyone he had ever lost. He always woke before her, checked to make sure she hadn’t disappeared on him, be it dead or taken, that the great universe decided he wasn’t worthy of her. The Legion might not be the threat as it once was, but any stragglers would certainly have made time for them. Vengeance went both ways. How long did they have until those bloody hands caught up with them? How long until Boone woke up to find her cot cold?
And how long until it was too late?
Boone clenched his jaw, then marched to the tent before he could stop himself again and threw open the flap. Sage was cross legged on one of the bedrolls, clad in a stained tank and cargo pants. She was freshly washed, by the scent of yucca in the humid air, and was midway through plaiting still-damp hair. The radio sizzled faintly in the corner. She paused, raising her brows.
“Everything okay?” Her voice was honey-soft, a slight twang gripping the edges of her words. The lantern was a flicker, shining green fluorescent light on the strands of brown bangs framing her freckled face. Her rifle was propped next to her.
Boone said nothing. All of his thoughts, everything he had wanted to say, clung to the back of his throat and refused to budge. Instead he stared at her, his angel of the wasteland, his saving grace, and tried to have faith that if he could speak, if he did tell her exactly what he was feeling, the universe wouldn’t snatch her away. Some part of him wished she just knew, like the way she knew when exhaustion dragged him down, or when his anger took the reins.
The silence dragged on for too long. Sage dropped her hair and snagged the gun.
“Where did you spot them? The north?” She started towards him, checking her ammo and turning off the safety. “Goddamn it, I knew we shouldn’t have taken the highway. Too easy of a spot to get jumped.” She looked up to see Boone still hadn’t moved, still hadn’t said a word. He stared at her, knuckles white on the tarp of the tent. She was wasteland trained, ready to spring into action the moment it called for her. A courier molded by the violence of the desert. A woman who knew the need for blood as much as he did.
Nothing like Carla. But he didn’t want her to be Carla.
Boone stepped into the tent, letting the flap close behind him. Sage backed up, her rifle held between them.
“Boone? You’re scaring me,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
He reached for the gun. Confused, Sage handed it to him, only to watch him toss it on the bedroll. She began to protest but then his hands caught hers in a tight grip and she went quiet. Her skin was calloused, rough and dry. Old and fresh cuts marked along her fingers, and he traced one with deliberate idleness.
He wanted to say something. Anything, to get her to believe all that he thought but the lingering terror that the universe would overhear him and stop whatever charade he was getting at simmered deep below. How could he find the right way to tell her he needed her? Wanted her. Would do anything for her, if she would stay.
If she would let him stay.
Sage slipped from his grasp. Boone froze, his heart thundering as she took off his sunglasses, forced him to meet her gaze. Lantern light spilled across her tanned skin, pooling in the leather-brown of her eyes. Her hand stalled in the air for a moment, and when his expression didn’t change, she tentatively stroked his cheek. Once, twice. He waited for the universe to respond, to shower them with bullets or warheads or have the Legion trample them to hell. He waited for her to snap out of whatever it was that hazed their heads, to untangle herself from his arms, force him to return to the campfire alone.
Nothing happened. Nothing, except for the faint song of crickets outside the tent, the soft caress of the woman he loved, looking at him like he deserved to be touched like that.
Boone sighed into her palm, driven by the warmth of her and when she leaned to rest her forehead against his, closed her eyes and breathed a gentle smile, he knew.
His hands snaked to her waist, pulled her into him and he caught that smile in a half-breathless kiss. It was a lightning strike catching gunpowder, a bullet through his stone heart, the pure crushing relief of her in his arms, alive and safe, and alive, alive, alive. She tasted of the desert, sugar pear and yucca and salt. Her fingers slid upwards, knocking his beret to the ground and into the fuzzy growth of his hair, not quite long enough for her to tug on yet just her touch sent electricity ripping across his nerves.
It was a goddamn flood to the drought-parched plain of his soul. Boone hadn’t realized the emptiness that consumed him until he was filled with her taste, her touch. Suddenly it was all he ever wanted. All he would ever need was her.
Sage tried to pull back but he chased her, greed fueling the need to drink her in, to steal each heavy breath as she whined into his mouth. It had been too long for Boone to operate on instinct alone but that, he decided, was a blessing. She was too important to be treated with anything other than reverence. He would take his time, because at the very least it was what Sage deserved. At most, he was terrified that as soon as he looked away, the universe would realize what they were doing.
His hands, thick skinned from years of handling rifles, slipped under her shirt and along the curving planes of her body. Scars, raised and pock-marked, tapered across her skin and he gently traced them. He had seen them a thousand times before, when he’d bandaged her, stimpaked her yet he never allowed himself to think what they would feel like. The wasteland had never been kind to her, never treating her differently than any other survivor who tried to make it out. Each one was a testament to her resolve, her absolute bighorner stubbornness. He followed them as they dipped into her spine, crawled across her ribs, used them as a guide to the expanse of her stomach. Sage shivered, and when his thumb brushed her breasts, she arched into him.
“Boone,” she murmured.
“Mh?”
She didn’t reply, just fisted his shirt and tugged up. Boone immediately obliged, needing only a second to peel off the shirt, then deftly doing the same to her. He kissed her again, and Sage pulled him down to her bedroll, her movements edging on almost frantic as she shifted so his body bracketed hers. Without the last of the cotton barriers he could feel how warm she was, the way goosebumps appeared wherever his touch landed.
The lantern was almost out. Light trickled from the dying glow and Boone couldn’t see her face, but he could feel her nip at his jaw, his abdomen tightening as her hands trailed over his stomach, threading through the thick hair line of his navel to his chest and he could feel her grin when he let a soft groan against her lips. She roamed his body, dug into the ridges of his biceps, kneaded into his muscles, disregarded any notion of gentleness to repay what he had done to her a thousand times over. It was as if she needed to know he was there with her, as tangible to her as she was to him.
It was becoming difficult to contain himself. Years of wanting without him knowing it had him too open, too exposed. Boone wanted to take her, wanted not only to replace the heavy loneliness that had cemented into his very being with someone real, but for it to be her. There could be no one else.
Sage must’ve heard him or read his thoughts, as she unbuckled his belt and pushed the cargo pants down. Boone kicked them off and kissed his way down her neck, between the valley of her chest and her stomach. His hand, his bloodstained hand, his killer’s hand, caressed her hips with feather-light regard. He hooked a thumb into the hem of her shorts and yanked them off, his murderous hand settling against her slick entrance. Something about that bloomed a little more than pride in his chest, even more so when Sage hissed as he pressed a digit into her core.
It was like touching fire, how warm she was, and when he looked to her shadowed face, eyes fluttered close, her lips parted in soft, shallow pants, radiating in the dark, he firmly settled with himself that she was no less than the sun itself.
Boone slowly began to pump as his other hand tangled in her soft hair. Her mouth fell open and he caught her lips between his teeth, dared to bite as her breathing became ragged. Her hips moved in time with him, her nails pressed into the muscle of his arms. He kept his pace, watching the small ticks in her movement to press him on further. She keened when he dragged against her tight walls and swallowed her stifled moans when he curled his fingertips, his palm finding purchase on her clit. He was careful to not press his weight on her, but even then the jerking kicks of her legs had him convinced that he wouldn’t be able to pin her down completely, not if he wanted to keep his hand where it was.
Her hips bucked as he grazed her clit repeatedly, her groan quickly muffled by a hard-pressed kiss. That was when he realized that he was in a losing battle with himself. The more she writhed, the more she chased his touch, the greedier he became. He wanted her to call for him, to grind herself into his hand, to take whatever she needed from him. He could feel himself pressed against her thigh, throbbing hard and insistent and he forced himself to remember that this was for her. All of it was for her.
As if on cue, Sage choked out a whisper.
“Boone-”
He heard the whine in her voice – god, he’d go to hell just for that sound – then one of her hands clasped his wrist and he willed himself to slow down to an agonizing drag. His forehead rested against hers as she struggled for air. The lantern had gone out, and he could see the dim outline of her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.
“Boone, please. Too much," her words came out quick and desperate, “I’m too close. I need you, please, I’m so close.”
Boone immediately removed his hand, the night air biting his drenched fingers. He had wanted it to last longer, to savor the way she felt beneath him but his restraint was being held by paper-thin resolve. He straightened, grabbed his throbbing cock to gently ease into her when Sage leaned forward and pressed her mouth to the exposed skin of his throat, right on his pulse.
Something feral shot through him. Whatever reigns he had held, whatever dam that he had been building to hold back the most vicious parts of him shattered, snapped, immediately forgotten.
In one motion Boone grabbed her thigh, pushed her leg until it was even with her head, tilting her hips up and he balanced himself with his forearm ground into the tent floor. She gasped, nails scratching his broad shoulders but he barely felt it as he positioned himself. Sage’s hands slid from their perch to his face, halting him for only a second as she whimpered.
“Please.”
And then he could take no more. He pressed inside her, composure failing as a moan slipped from him at the sunlit warmth of her, the melting heat tearing apart the very last threads of restraint. He looked down to find his pelvis flushed against hers and he stuttered, half bewildered at how perfectly their bodies locked together, half angered at just how long it took him to find out. He paused again, frozen by his want to stay like that, sheathed inside her and his overwhelming need to fuck her.
Sage pulled him from the trance with a roll of her hips, driving him deep enough to coax another moan from them both. It took a few more to get him into a brutal pace, satisfying the warring sides of himself. His grip on her thigh tightened when her fingers resumed caressing his face, following the sharp lines of jaw to his nose, across his brow then back again. His chest caged her in, trapped her beneath him, giving him the perfect angle to watch her dazed expression as he rutted into her.
He wanted to memorize her face then, to have it burned to his mind with a branding iron. He wanted to never forget how she sounded, how her hair splayed across the ground, how she tightened around his aching cock. He longed to have this forever, for them to go wherever she wanted to go, wherever they would find, in a bed, a home, to call their own. His chest felt too full, too tight, like his heart might explode if he stopped, like the world would burn down if he dared to leave her.
He settled for the next best thing. Boone released his hold on her thigh, gripping her jaw and crashed his mouth on hers. Her startled groan sunk into him, her back arched and he ground harder as her legs kicked. He thrusted faster and she mewled against his teeth, spurring him on.
Sage’s breathing quickened, palms raking down his chest, and she choked out something he couldn’t quite catch. He pulled back, and realized tears streaked down her face, her eyes desperately searching for him in the darkness, his name on her swollen lips. When she found his face, she gasped, and a sob cut through the night.
“I love you.”
It was a gunshot. His breathing hitched, his thrusts halting with him halfway buried in her as the words sunk in. Some part of him lit up in fear, like they had just crossed some unknowable boundary of the universe, while the other half felt his chest overflow but she didn’t give him a chance to respond, pulling him down to meet her mouth, urgent and needy, as if to cover what she had just said. She devoured him, her legs coming to lock against his hips and dug her heels into his back to move him again, to bury her confession in tangled limbs and breathy moans.
He stopped her, reaching inside himself to find the gentleness he had discarded. It guided his hands to cradle her head, to lean forward and kiss her with the reverence he had silently promised her. She softened, only then, kissing him back as he wiped the tears from her eyes.
“I love you," he whispered. Sage choked out a laugh that melded into a squeal as his hips resumed their work. Boone buried his face in her hair, nipped the shell of her ear as he rediscovered his pace.
“I love you.”
Her legs clung to his waist, and she clutched him as close as possible as his voice echoed in the blackness.
I love you.
He carved a way for them through the sea of want, finding the waves for her to crest on, his mouth licking the sweat off her throat, murmuring into her.
I love you.
It became too much. He could feel her tighten around him and it sent shockwaves up his spine. His thrusts turned sloppy, unsteady, and her moans escalated into a scream that he muffled with his mouth, swallowing her pleasure. He didn’t stop, not when she pulsed around him, not when she raked her nails down his back, not when she cried against his tongue. She came around him and he followed her, knowing that he would spill into her, fill her, come inside her and indisputably make her his but there was no fear, no apprehension.
I love you, I love you, I love you
They descended together, wrapped in sweat-sticky embrace. He laid his head next to hers, panting. When she nuzzled him with her nose he gave in, letting her dot soft pecks along his jaw, the corners of his mouth. Her lips came back wet and salty and suddenly he could feel the tears, cutting a river down his neck and onto Sage’s chest.
She didn’t move. She didn’t push him off. She only pulled his head forward to rest against her, and they listened to the quiet night, the heavy takes of their breaths. Boone held her close, no longer scared to close his eyes as he found the steady beat of her heart, echoing his own.
I love you, I love you, I love you.