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There is an exhale from the place that was once a nose, one smug lungful out. "That doing anything for you?"
Her reply comes before the slow drawl can even leave his mouth. "No." She rasps – and the frustration laced in the word is thicker than the arousal coiled like a snake in her gut. There is a flash of her pretty white teeth, bared bravely in the face of such a pathetic display. He wasn't even touching her anymore. He wasn't doing anything but looking at her with that stupid, mean grin of his.
Was he going to make her do this all by herself? Chase her end against his denim? Something in his eyes sparkled back with familiar, patronizing cruelty and she already knew she should not have expected anything more. Still, the look is enough to send a ripple right to her core, a fresh wave of rolling heat. He was so hot beneath her, radiating through her jumpsuit and panties like a dying star. It was good on wasteland nights when the sky seeped every last scrap of warmth from the sand and left it bone-chillingly cold.
Not that he ever let her get close enough to share it, on purpose, that is. But he still somehow found her curled body close to his in the morning, quiet as a mouse, those big brown eyes watching him struggle out of a disquietingly deep sleep. Taking from him. Neither of them ever said a word of acknowledgment and that was as close to a favor as he would give her.
He says nothing, now, as she rips at the zipper of her jumpsuit with a sudden jerk of her hand. Too hot. It stops just at her navel, metal glinting in pink-orange sunset, daring him to finish it off.
"When I imagined this I always expected a little more enthusiasm from you." Lucy swallows, gaze distant, fixed to the horizon, and her mouth parts in a low gasp when his fingertips pull her chin back to focus. He watches her dilate just so, just perfectly. The easy admission is startling, the smugness at knowing this pretty little thing fantasized about him washed away by the initial shock.
A little flicker of his eyelids is all she gets in reply to that, small and sickeningly encouraging.
You'd have to threaten something worse than death to get most humans to admit they'd want to fuck something like him. That was something normal folks took to their grave unless forced otherwise. Not even a brothel whore would do this, not for a million caps.
But here she was, nearly begging for it, sweet and simple. Jesus. Nobody ever taught her better.
He shifts the thigh beneath her, spreading his legs to accommodate the uncomfortable bulge at his groin. The motion makes her breasts jump beneath her top as she is jostled into a new position, and it takes everything he has not to bite right through his own tongue.
"And I imagined we'd be doing this at night." She murmurs, dreamy eyes hooded. "When it's cooler, and I don't have to worry about getting a sunburn on my–"
She stops, shivers, and finds a good seam that hits against her clit just right when she rocks forward again. It's good timing, too, the unfocused friction was starting to tip into irritation. Now she can grind against him and ramble without consequence. "More romantic too, I think, the stars are nice. And nobody would be able to see us, not that I care really, but I'd like to not get caught off-guard with you inside me. Not particularly safe."
“Don’t bullshit me.” The tattered edges of his duster splay out on the sand like feathers. He nearly tosses her to the ground. "I know why people fuck in the dark."
There's real genuine hurt in her eyes. This is not an insinuation she meant at all and her spilled backpedaling begins and ends in the same breath.
Another baring of teeth in an uneasy smile. Wasteland handsome. “My taste in men has changed dramatically since I left my vault."
He barks out a laugh, the wheezy vibration of it shaking her where they touch.
"I think you're handsome." She bats her eyelashes, elaborating, the hint of a mimicked southern drawl there. "Good-looking."
The absurdity of her compliments settle his bruised ego just long enough for the rest of her words to hit like a gunshot to the heart. So much for all that fucking naiveté. The image of her bent over on full display for anyone stupid enough to play voyeur, inside her, inside her - Is that really what she said? It is enough to take the already limited breath from his lungs.
He tilts his head to the side and groans. And she is blissfully oblivious to the fact it is not her flattery that is affecting him until he murmurs out a stricken "You're fulla' shit."
She blinks those wide eyes in confusion, dark and trusting, like those of cattle led to slaughter. He couldn't find any insincerity in the depths of them and that honest-to- god scared him. What else could she hide in there? Nothing good. They made his trigger finger itch.
She huffs and, with a surge of indignant bravery that outclassed the one it took to saddle herself on his knee, she takes his right hand and pulls off his glove in one fluid motion. It isn't free for a second longer before it is shoved into her jumpsuit, her own hand guiding him until he's finally touching where she wants him to.
"No I'm not." It would be plenty easy for him to wrench his hand free at any point.
But he doesn't. That alone makes her grin, his muscles pliant to her guidance, the Ghoul beneath her gentled. "No, I am not." She repeats just as soon as he catches the tip of a finger against the wetness dripping from her, through her panties, nearly through her jumpsuit. They've walked miles today without finding even a mouthful of water, but, oh, she'd still given him this precious, abundant waste.
He tilts his head back and mutters to the sky. “Fuck."
There is a wet noise, teeth-through-muscle squelch that comes when she urges him from stunned stillness and pushes herself down onto his fingers. Of course he curls them into the cramped confines of her stupid vaultie regalia to get the nicest angle. Of course she notices one digit too soft and smooth to belong to him by any stretch of the imagination. Another push and pull, in and out just for good measure and the realization sinks like a lead weight in her gut.
"Thaaas-" She slurs into the leather at his shoulders, a string of drool following her cracked bottom lip when she pulls back to look him in the eyes. "-that's my finger."
"Well it's sure as hell not yours anymore, sweetheart." He croons, laughing, scissoring the digits until he feels arousal coat all the way down to his knuckles, "It feel familiar?"
A real, honest whine rattles out of her chest as she flings her arms around his neck. Oh, how long has it been since he's heard such nice a sound? It's music to his ears. It makes his cock hurt.
He wonders when this all started. Surely she didn't have anything but hatred for him in her heart when he used her as bait, when he lassoed her and sold her for vials. Or maybe, like all lab rats, her brain had a few screws loose and the waterboarding got her all hot and bothered. God knows it's not the worst perversion out here by a long shot. It's tame, really. It'll just help her along out here.
He does not buy that it's truly because she thinks he's handsome. That's the biggest load of bullshit anyone has tried to sell him in centuries.
"I think this little predicament of yours is really all because you want to feel anything other than hurt." He murmurs soft, his hand on her hip keeping her in a slow rhythm of fucking herself on his fingers, "You ain't got your daddy, your vault, or your knight anymore, do you?"
She keeps her face buried at his shoulder so he cannot read her expression, but the way she stills tells him all he needs to know. What did she have except a dead man and a dog?
"I'm happy to oblige." He coaxes, a new gentleness to his tone that feels uncomfortably genuine. “Or take advantage.”
But when she pulls back, there is a surprising amount of anger in her expression, not the weepy doe-eyed sadness he expected. "You never want to talk about feelings." Her nose wrinkles in a way that is startlingly endearing. "Can you pick another time?"
That gets a real hearty laugh out of him, his mouth pulled into a wicked grin. "That's the nicest way anyone's ever told me to shut the fuck up."
She only narrows her eyes in response. Telling him to shut up did feel justified at this particular moment. Serves him right for telling her to stop yapping or he'd cut out her tongue yesterday. She was just trying to make friendly conversation, help with making the two of them hate each other a bit less like all emotionally-mature adults should. Conflict resolution was important if they were going to survive each other's company for this long. She didn't know bringing up his family would result in that particular outburst.
The fact he's choosing to carry this conversation now, tease her, when he could be fucking her until she can't think is confusing, to say the least. It is not what she was expecting.
She shoves her hand back in her suit and exhales with a new weariness, pulling at his thumb until it's pressed against her badly-neglected clit like she wants. There. There, keep at that and don't remind her she doesn't have anything or anyone left anymore, pretty please.
She knows she is not in any position to make demands. This is precarious enough as it is, one wrong word away from him leaving her all worked up and alone. She's still not quite sure what he's getting out of keeping her with him, letting her slow him down. Thankfully, he just chuffs and circles the nub wearing enough smugness to power the whole damn country - cold fusion be damned. This lasts a few blissful seconds until the noises she's making and the fact he can't get a good look of where he's got his fingers buried to the hilt all culminate in a growl of frustration.
"You know, Lucy." His voice drops its newfound lightness, drawling. "I was one of the first people to wear one of these costumes."
She is almost too busy reeling from the first use of her actual name to really let his words sink in. But when they do, everything else just kind of falls into place in startling revelation. She stammers.
"And I still haven't figured out–" he interrupts, and two hands grip either side of the zipper-seam at her hips, "-why they chose to make these so fucking tight."
There is a sickening rip, so loud and forceful that for a hysterical moment she is sure he's torn open her very stomach.
But when viscera doesn't spill, the realization of what he's done sends a shock of arousal rolling through her. She should be furious. Now she has to stitch this back together, or pray they somehow stumble across a pair of pants her size - burdensome tasks she really doesn't want to deal with in the middle of the desert. What she should not be feeling is more desperate than she can ever remember being.
She fingers at the frayed edge for a moment, letting him think he's upset her for a tense second. She imagines what he would look like wearing it, and with a quick glance at his eyes she concludes that, yes, blue and gold are his colors. And if she tries hard enough she can almost see it, smooth skin, white teeth, nicely combed hair. A nose.
Her mouth parts, questions waiting at her lips that are swallowed before they can escape. The choice between interrogating a two-hundred year old man and fucking him is a hard one. She chooses the latter, if only because some part of her isn't quite ready to find out just what else she's been misled about centuries of history. That felt insignificant in the face of learning her father was a liar and a mass murderer, as selfish as that was. She was learning that sometimes being selfish kept you sane.
She bows her head and laughs softly, sadly, into the shrinking space between them. The Ghoul had started kneading at newly exposed flesh, pulling her stained tank-top up until as much of her skin was exposed to waning light as he could get. His breathing was getting rougher by the second, a wheeze rattling low in his chest on the inhale. One hand between her thighs and the other on her breast, the places where the contrast between their skin was most felt. A drag of a callous feels like the scrape of teeth.
He shifts his feet to ground himself, squirming. The occasional clinking of his spurs feels like it is meant to trance her.
There were no horses in the wasteland but they were always sharpened, hide-ready, oiled to perfection like the pièce de résistance of a real western cowboy.
Somewhere, Dogmeat whines. The realization shudders and falls around her.
"Cooper." She says, and before he has time to process those god-awful syllables she adds a finishing, "Your name is Cooper. Cooper Howard."
Some baked, parched part of her brain expects to see credits roll. Instead he half-grins, half-winces, withdraws his fingers and shoves them into her mouth in one swift motion.
"You're smart, vaultie." He says, and it is not a complement. The digits are sweat salted and musky, pushed back against her throat just enough to threaten her gag reflex. She finds the landmark-seam of their index finger to trace her tongue against in victory, then presses the edges of her teeth. But Cooper knows she will not bite, not a second time. No, she wants him to keep this part of her sewn to him. To mark him as a changed man, to golden-rule brand him. "Wish you were smart enough to keep your mouth shut."
The thrill of knowing his name is lost to a swell of melancholy that makes her heart ache. Maybe she's just fallen asleep on the couch to The Man from Deadhorse, and her father is watching her slumber beside her.
Around them the sky darkens a dusty cobalt blue as the sun dips nearer to the horizon. The low light casts strange shadows, wasteland outcroppings tailed by long stretches of pitch black. Scar-tissue contours on his face mimic them like a chameleon. The edges between his body and the desert blur.
He watches the gears in her head turn and says nothing.
Lucy wonders if they can finish this up before the radscorpions come out, wonders if they'll find water tomorrow, wonders if this makes her his pretty western maiden. The new moisture in her mouth is welcome, even if the pressure of his fingers was making her feel like she might wretch.
He licks his lips.
"Suck."
She does, sweetly, obediently, curl her tongue around the mouthful and swallow. It is nearly as good as a swig from his canteen.
He does not remove his fingers even as he caves in and finally, finally palms at his cock through his pants. Leaves one part of him rooted in the warm, wet cavern of her mouth while he smears precum off the head with a thumb and forefinger, slicking the glide before he even gets himself out fully.
Lucy says something when he finally does, but all it comes out as is a half-choked vibration. But it sounds a lot like finally. Her eyelashes flutter. Her face is red-hot.
Now it’s an easy exchange, he had a reason to take from her. She’d taken his name, burned it back viscerally in his head, the least she could do now was take it. Take him inside her like she already wanted, until she learned to keep her revelations to herself or got fucked hoarse. Whichever came first.
He takes his fingers from her mouth and uses the string of spit that follows to get his cock wet. She watches with all the desperation and hunger of a starved man, her lips parted and her eyes gently curious in a way that makes his skin itch. He almost shoves himself back in his pants before a twitch of her hips distracts him, draws his attention deliberately back to where she wants it.
She shifts, fabric of her ripped suit shuffling in the quiet, and stays uncharacteristically silent save for a harsh inhale-exhale. For the first time he can ever recall, he wishes she would yap her head off. Ruin this before it happens. To flood him with empty praises, whine, beg for a cock he knows is ugly as sin.
But she does not. She purses lips that are miserably, appealingly swollen from her chewing on them and extends a hand towards him until her fingers just brush the shaft. Then she trails them up until they reach the tip, and giggles deliriously when it twitches against her.
“Put it in me.” She says gently, not asking. “Come on.”
Cooper bares his teeth, half smile, half grimace forming. It was all so fucking intimate. Stupid. Her eyes glitter starlight back, a mirror image of his own. And he swears tomorrow he won't do this again, swears that he’ll get all he needs and leave her here in the desert, swears he’ll never feel that old familiar gunshot-pang in his heart again. For as long as he lives.
“Do it for me, sweetheart.” He tilts his head to his shoulder, exhaling wearily, reclining until he’s got the view he wants of it all. “I’m feeling a little tired.”
Despite what he says, he grasps himself and taps his cock against her pussy like he’s teaching her where it goes. Or reminding her. Lucy wrinkles her nose, vaguely amused and entirely fed up with his play at nonchalance. His measured inactivity.
“Okie dokie.” Is all he gets before she spreads her legs and takes him in her hand and positions one easy slide down until he’s in her as far as she can get him. Easy like getting in a saddle.
It’s quick enough to have him cough and sputter, hands shooting up to grab at her hips. Precisely the vivid reaction she wanted, his wheezing breath enough to make her muscles shiver and squeeze around him with a self-satisfied rush. She wonders how long it's been. A couple hundred years of experience, not nearly as unaffected as he pretends to be.
It is good on the ego.
He pulls on her halfheartedly, trying to ease her tight cunt off of himself. “You a virgin?” He hisses through his teeth. It’s a stupid question, he knows the answer but feels the sharp pull of imagining nonetheless. He should have been her first. Really introduce her to the wasteland inside and out.
The thought makes his balls ache. Lucy smiles all soft and sweet. “No.”
Her hands go to his shoulders, supporting herself as she works out just how to do this. She was not used to doing the work, more keen on getting fucked into a mattress, but that was a lifetime ago, and this was one of a million new things to digest. And this was definitely not bad, so far. He was beneath her for once, she had the height advantage, the ability to look right down into his eyes like he just loved to do to her. And the strangest part was he was letting her.
“The first guy I did this with tried to kill me afterwards.”
She says with a nonchalance that almost makes him laugh if it didn’t happen the same instant she rises and falls on his cock, impaling herself again. His fingers dig into the meat of her thighs, then around to grab a palmful of her ass.
“I can see why.” He bites out.
“Do you not want to do this?” She asks, stilling.
His answer comes in a wheeze. “Course I fucking do.”
Lucy grins condescendingly gentle, and, with consent confirmed, she is off to the fucking races.
It takes a moment for her to build a rhythm, but as soon as she does she forgets the ache in her muscles, the thirst for water and rest all abandoned just to feel him hit deeper than anything ever had. Anyone. It is a delirious and unquenchable yearning. Over and over until the man beneath her pulls at her hips and slams her back down like a reward. Just to help her get it that much further, the kindest thing he has ever done.
She keens, sounding wounded. Her face says otherwise.
“Fuck, vaultie.” When she corrects him, he’s unsure if it's spoken or if it’s just her voice in his head. He complies either way. “Lucy.”
It almost hurts. When’s the last time he came? He can’t remember. He considers turning her around so he can’t see her face, see her looking at him with too much intimacy. Like she’s seeing something in him for the first time. He could. Kneel her down, fuck her like an animal. He could very easily.
But each roll of her hips keeps him disarmed and shaken with desire, and the light touch of her hands on his shoulders keeps him pinned.
Dehydration was starting to make her thoughts race wild and incoherent.This was so different from her wedding consummation – when she had nearly injured herself trying to join with the body of a man she thought she would raise a family with. Now, she was a woman scorned by a world she had only known a few weeks.
She’s rambling something about genetic compatibility, her eyes wild with anger as she rides him and curses and swears. He somehow catches on to this ranting, murmurs “breeding mare,” gnashes his teeth, rubs at her clit hard and fast until her body trembles.
“Couldn’t knock you up even if I wanted to.” He spits. “Lord, do I want to.”
Lucy cries out at that, a long, pitched moan. She couldn’t want anything less, but it sure is a nice thing to hear him say. Awfully nice. “Do it inside me then.”
The thought of ruining his bloodline, getting her all swollen and heavy with the hellspawn of whatever he was now? Well, it was the nicest fantasy he’d had in a long time. And he didn’t even have to come up with it. Here she was, ready and begging for it, living temptation herself. No other man would’ve held out as long as he did. Not after hearing that from goddamn Lucy MacLean.
Fucker bats her eyelashes at him, finishes with a startlingly genuine, “Please?”
It is impossible not to oblige her.
He drags her body down onto his cock with a rough grunt, and grasps harshly into her hips. She knows she’ll have bruises where his fingers leave divots. And when he’s as deep as he can get she feels it, the pulse of him within her as he comes. A rush of warmth. He keeps his face buried into her chest as he does it, snarling like an animal into the sweaty skin between her breasts.
It lasts longer than she expects and she soaks in every second of it. This was the most vulnerable she had ever seen him, his defenses down all for a brief moment of surrender. She knew that’d be a terrible observation to point out. It’d only piss him off, knowing he had let her really get under his skin. So she holds her tongue and rocks gently until there’s nothing left for him to give, coaxing him to fill her as she shudders and squeezes around his cock. Victorious.
By the time it’s all done he’s wheezing again, gasping for air, tasting blood in his mouth he isn’t sure the origin of. It wouldn’t surprise him all that much if he’d taken a chunk out of her while coming harder than he had in decades. It was a miracle he hadn’t, really.
He pulls her off of him without meeting her gaze, feeling too raw for eye contact. Instead, he lowers himself with a grunt of effort, ignoring her questioning as he brings his face to the apex of her thighs. A shock of arousal and fear shivers through her. Not his mouth there, not the mouth she’s never kissed and only remembers blood-soaked and chewing.
“Easy, easy.” He pats at her, the fear in her eyes nearly enough to get him hard again. “Just returning the favor.”
She remains unconvinced, tense and ready to escape devouring, until the first touch of his tongue against her. No one had ever done this to her, been so close to her here. She would have found it funny that it was him of all people doing this to her. How chivalrous. Reciprocity was still something he understood – good! That was a good starting point. If she wasn’t too busy moaning to the high heavens as he sucked hard on her clit, she would have found this all very insightful.
If he was really eating her, she didn’t care. As long as he kept going she didn’t care.
He hums as she thrusts her hips and pushes into his mouth. Her denied orgasm comes violently rushing back. “Don’t stop,” His eyes shine where they watch her writhe between her legs, “Pluh-eese. Fuck.”
It almost hurts when she comes. It’s less of a blissful release and more akin to something torn out of her by force. Her moans turn guttural and delirious, ripping through her. He claps a hand over her mouth, knowing damn well crying out like a dying animal would only attract scavengers. His other hand works at her through convulsions with a vicious, surgical precision until she feebly pushes at him to stop. He laps at her release like a starved man, groaning appreciatively. He wonders how she even managed to produce anything at all, really, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
She hears him speak over the ringing in her ears.
“You don’t want this in you.” He murmurs, fingers circling her entrance as he mouths at her, sucking the wetness left. Her muscles shiver weakly. He cleans her out from the inside, flicking his cum from his fingers and onto the sand. This was as close as aftercare as she would get.
Lucy hums, then sways. Her vision darkens around the edges.
“Rads?” She asks hoarsely.
He wipes at his mouth. “Yup.”
She sinks down beside him, eyes wide and perhaps startled.
For a long second he debates the decision to stay next to her, or walk off and never come back. Post-coital clarity was making his skin crawl. Was she always this pale? She looked like a ghost. A ghost that was probably now deeply regretting fucking a monster.
He reaches into the pocket of his duster and pulls out a flask. He shoves it towards her like an apology, not looking her in the eyes as she takes it suspiciously. Water is not the first thing she thinks it is. Alcohol first. Drugs second. And it does smell like whiskey when she opens the lid, but the first sip of it is sweet and blissfully refreshing.
It’s just muddy water, but it might as well be ambrosia.
She downs it in two quick, desperate gulps.
He stops himself from killing her for drinking the whole flask. Instead, he smirks at her selfishness, the lack of a ‘thank you’ after she finishes, the wild look of survival and desperation in her eyes as she gets the last drop. Maybe he was rubbing off on her.
Marking her this way was better than the sex. Just a little. He could train her like a dog, if he really tried.
Lucy, looking much more alive, hands him the flask with a smile. Their fingers brush in the exchange, a quick reunion of her missing piece. “Round two?” She says, eyes sparkling in the moonlight, and he struggles to reply.
He didn’t have anything left in him for round two. She was going to bleed him fucking dry – and for some reason he was letting her.
“Okie dokie.”