Chapter Text
The world was dying all around them, but that knowledge could barely even touch Clarissa right now. She welcomed the cold wind and the stinging rain as she and Amos trudged north along the deserted highway. Even the unpleasant sensations on her skin were a sign that she was outside, and free. Today she wasn’t even letting herself wonder if she deserved it. She would be dead if she and Amos hadn’t dragged themselves out of the Pit, and that’s as far as she was going to think about what it meant for her to be out here, gulping down big lungfuls of fresh air on the Earth’s surface. Just focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, and enjoying this undeserved chance at freedom.
She would have called the thin light that made its way through the boiling clouds “gloomy” in her previous life. Today it was heavenly, just knowing that it originated at the sun. Though, it was starting to run out. The pale disc wasn’t very close to the horizon, but the clouds were so thick it was barely stronger than a full moon anymore. It wouldn’t be much longer before it was too dark to see where they were going.
“Should we start looking for a place to hole up for the night?” Clarissa called to Amos, who was setting a merciless pace in front of her. Truth was she was exhausted, but Clarissa refused to ask him to slow down. Their journey was going to take a long time, but the more quickly they got to Baltimore, the better.
Amos looked at the sky, then turned back her. She tried to stop her limbs from trembling, but failed. “You’re right,” he said. “Shout out if you notice anything that looks good.” Then he turned and kept walking, at a slightly slower pace.
Everything around them was flattened. They hadn’t traveled far enough to get out of the impact zone. Wherever that third rock had fallen, it had been very, very close to the prison. The best shelter they were able to find was a pile of fallen trees that blocked most of the wind. At least it had stopped raining.
Neither of them knew how to start a fire. Clarissa barked out a laugh. Amos raised an eyebrow at her. “Just thinking about how fire was like, the most primitive human technology. And here we are, in an apocalypse caused by people that literally have spent their whole lives in artificial life support, and you and I don’t even know how to rub two sticks together the right way.”
Amos gave a chuckle. “Back to the beginning for us, I guess.”
In the last dim glow of the choked-out sunset, they cleared debris off two patches of ground and tried to settle in for the night. They had found a cache of packaged snacks that were only somewhat flattened in the rubble of what must have once been a convenience store, and two flannel blankets that weren’t completely soggy. They wolfed down a few bags of brightly-colored corn syrup and starch products, then lay down when they could no longer even see their hands in front of their faces.
It was getting terribly cold. Clarissa thought she had been doing a great job of being tough all day, ignoring the weather and her own physical exhaustion. It hadn’t been too difficult to push her atrophied muscles into maintaining a steady pace. She had been reveling in the freedom and the clarity that was coming to her mind now that the prison’s sedatives were fading from her system. But as she tried to close her eyes and sleep, there were no distractions from the aching in her legs and the cold that seemed to be penetrating right into her bones. Her limbs were trembling, overworked muscles making a valiant effort to generate enough heat to keep all her tissues alive. She wrapped the thin blanket around herself more tightly, but the trembling started spreading to her jaw, setting her teeth to an audible clattering. She pressed them together in a sudden spurt of shame. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t like the idea of Amos hearing, and knowing she was shivering out of control. Maybe it was because he had already done so much for her; she didn’t want him doing something chivalrous like giving her his blanket.
Then she almost laughed at the thought of Amos Burton being chivalrous. Why had she thought of that? Maybe she was getting delirious, some kind of withdrawal from the drugs that had been dripping steadily into her bloodstream for the past five years. Either way, she was very conscious that Amos was only trapped in this hell on Earth right now because of her. Because he had decided for unknown reasons to show an afternoon of compassion and kindness to a girl who didn’t deserve it. She realized her teeth were chattering again.
“You trying to chop down some trees over there?” she heard Amos’ voice call from the pitch dark.
Clarissa responded with a weak laugh, tried to burrow harder into the unyielding ground. “Not very successfully,” she joked back.
She heard Amos shift in his blanket. “Okay I know how this is gonna sound, but I don’t mean it that way. Why don’t you get over here, Peaches, let me warm you up. You don’t have enough meat left on your bones to handle this cold.”
Clarissa’s first impulse was to say no, martyr it out. But the image of his warm body curling around hers went straight to her reptile brain and there was no hesitation in her limbs as she shot up and took the few steps separating them in the dark. She knelt down when she thought she was close and reached out to find Amos in the pure black of the clouded night. Her hand hit his knee and she crawled quickly up by his side, blanket still wrapped over her shoulders. She lay down a few inches away, feeling tentative about imposing on his space. His arms came out to receive her, however, and he pulled her right in against his body.
Amos took a moment to arrange their blankets to cover them without gaps, then began rubbing her back and arms briskly and efficiently. His hands felt burning hot to her, even through the paper-thin material of the hospital gown that was the only clothing she had ever needed in the Pit. She burrowed into his chest and let his warmth seep into her face. The friction of his hands began to slow the shivering of her body. He curled over her to reach down and tend to her legs, respectfully gliding down only the outer edge of her hip as he did. She pulled her right leg up over him so he could more easily reach the big muscles of her thigh and increase the blood flow there.
Her body unconsciously sought the warmth of his. She was pressing herself into him, straining to get closer, wrapping her upper leg around him tightly. Every instinct was telling her to cling to him. But after her shivering stopped, she started to become embarrassingly conscious of the intimacy of their bodies. It felt exactly the same as the way she might embrace a lover just before she asked him to plunge inside her.
Clarissa relaxed her grip on Amos and turned in his arms, pushing away the sexual images suddenly crowding her brain. His chest was blissfully warm against her back, and his upper arm pillowed her head. She released a long breath and gave herself over to sleep.
*****
The next day they resumed their dogged pace, headed steadily north along mostly-abandoned roads. They were clearly moving away from the center of impact, signs of damage lessening in the landscape as they passed. Around here the stronger trees and a handful of gutted-out building were still standing. They came across fellow survivors on occasion, faces slack with loss and shock. Amos and Clarissa both avoided engaging them by silent agreement.
There was no priority greater than putting one foot in front of the other, to get to Baltimore as quickly as possible before Clarissa’s strength really gave out or conditions got worse. They stopped to rest as little as Amos judged she could get away with. Occasionally one of her atrophied muscles would cramp under the unaccustomed activity and they would be forced to halt while she stretched it out. Clarissa found yet another strange reason to be grateful that her paranoid father had pushed her so hard to train her body in her former life; she was drawing on all the discipline she had gained in those endless hours in the gym and at the dojo. And she still couldn’t figure out why she didn’t want to appear weak in front of Amos.
She realized she was staring at his hands again, watching him sort through the wreckage of a fuel station by the road while she rested her legs. All day she had been fixating on the latent power in the grip of his fingers, the movements of his arms as he lifted rubble or gestured as he spoke to her. She was trying very hard to keep her thoughts appropriate, but she just kept going back to the feel of those hands all over her last night. She flushed, remembering their bodies pressed together in the night, then sighed and shook her head.
“You ok, Peaches?” Amos asked, pausing in his work.
She suppressed an embarrassed laugh and nodded, got up to help. The thoughts were crazy. This was not the time or place to start a romance, and Amos was not the guy to do it with. Except… except no one had laid a friendly hand on her in five years. She was realizing how much she had withdrawn from all her senses in that grey and dingy prison, every sight, smell and feel generally unpleasant. Now even this cloudy, post-tsunami landscape and taciturn, vaguely anti-social companion were bringing her body back to life.
And of course, she did have good reasons to be fixating on Amos. She had thought of him often in her confinement; the last human being that had ever looked at her with respect, rather than open disgust or pity. When she wasn’t too groggy or depressed to feel like touching herself during those years in the Pit, Amos had often ended up in a starring role in her wandering fantasies, probably for that reason. He was the only man she could believably imagine looking at her with love.
But now she was free and he was standing right in front of her, and all she felt was embarrassed. This man was not exactly the fantasy that she had built up over the years. His face was mostly expressionless; not exactly cold, but it did not hold the warmth her imagination had given it. His eyes fell on her only when they needed to, and at those times she could see him calculating her physical status: remaining strength, core body temperature. Still, when she could summon the energy to come up with a joke, his face would crease in a friendly smile, and suddenly she felt like she had the strength to go ten more miles. He gave her encouraging touches throughout the day, and when he reached out to steady her it felt like his hands lingered a moment longer than necessary.
That night they decided to camp out in an abandoned home that was only halfway demolished by the elements, and thankfully absent any corpses to evict. There was one bed left that wasn’t soaked by the whipping rain, in a room that still had three standing walls. Clarissa felt inexplicably awkward about the assumption that they would both be sleeping in it. They sat together in silence and ate the food they had scavenged that day. The facts were the same as last night; she was already starting to shiver. Of course she needed Amos’ body heat. But there was a difference between accepting his unexpected offer last night, and trying to make conversation knowing they were about to end up in bed together now.
Clarissa looked over at Amos, chewing on a cookie placidly and staring out at the horizon. He didn’t seem to be feeling awkward at all. Clarissa wasn’t sure if she had ever seen him awkward, or nervous, or tentative… except for maybe when he had reached out and taken her hand at her bedside in the Pit. His eyes had widened with that face he made when he was being careful in a delicate task, and the rhythm of his words had slowed for a moment. Clarissa felt a rush of tenderness at the memory.
“Don’t think anyone’ll be moving around much out there after the light’s gone,” Amos said, eyes darting between ruined buildings and collapsed trees. It was probably a pretty nice little town, once. “Still, I’m gonna put some of that brush over by the door, and the opening in the wall here. That way if anyone tries to get in, we’ll hear them.” Clarissa just stared as Amos got up and started his task. It was smart. She wondered if she would have thought to be prepared for intruders if she were on her own.
If she were on her own, she’d have suffocated in her cell in the Pit by now. Clarissa gathered up what dry linens she could find and made their bed, tried to ignore the rushing excitement at the thought. Their bed. When she had layered and straightened the blankets to her liking, she went out to help Amos drag tree branches filled with rustly leaves. The night was already turning bitter cold. Even with the hard work, she felt the chill creeping into her arms, the back of her neck. The long coat they had found for her today wasn’t enough. Her neglected body didn’t have enough insulation to regulate her anymore.
When Amos judged that their task was finished, they went back to the most sheltered corner of the house, where they had dragged the bed. Clarissa thought she could see Amos’ breath as he sat down on the edge and took his boots off. It was hard to tell in the rapidly-fading light. She waited until he laid down and held the covers up for her before she shed her own coat and shoes; she was so cold she almost forgot to feel shy stripping back down to the thin prison gown and climbing in beside him. She settled in with her back to him; she was afraid of what her brain might do to her if they were face to face again.
“You’re ice cold, Peaches,” Amos exclaimed when her legs touched his; he rolled his body into her and wrapped his big arm over her torso, hand cupping her shoulder. He was blissfully, maddeningly warm.
Clarissa exhaled slowly and tried to focus only on the need to sleep. She found to her dismay that she was feeling more awake than she had in years. Without the drip of mandatory sedation drugs, perhaps her body didn’t know how to fall asleep on its own any more. She was hyper aware of every sound in the deserted landscape around them. Her nose was full of the smells of wet leaves, recently broken lumber and drywall, and the musky sweat of the man beside her. She still could barely believe she was here with him; she had counted Amos among the last of the people she would ever see again.
She shifted against him, unable to stop her body from burrowing for warmth, and her bottom came in contact with an unmistakable hardness. Amos acknowledged it immediately. “Sorry about that. Like I said last night, sleeping like this wasn’t an excuse to put my hands on you. Just couldn’t seem to stop the hard-on. Don’t worry about it, get some rest.” He shifted so she could no longer feel him and patted her arm in an empty reassuring gesture.
Clarissa let out a long breath. She felt something that was both cold and warm spiraling through the center of herself in response to his erection, arousal and nervousness and desire and sadness all welling up together. It was entirely impossible to ignore. She rolled onto her back, found Amos’ hand. She pulled it up underneath her medical gown, guiding him to her belly. All she knew for certain was that she wanted his touch on her skin. She pressed his warm hand right against her navel, and just breathed.
Amos was silent, motionless, letting his fingers relax completely. Letting her know she was in control. Clarissa felt herself coming together, becoming more grounded, more real under the stabilizing stimulus of a human touch here at the center of her body. His touch. She forced herself to breathe slowly and evenly, though her pulse was starting to race. She was ready to confess. “I want you to touch me, Amos. Everywhere. I didn’t think anyone would ever touch me again.”
She heard nothing but his quiet breathing for a moment, slightly heavier than it was a moment ago. She wished there was even a little light, so she might be able to see something in the expression on his face. Then she remembered Amos hardly ever showed anything that way. Nor through his words. But his hand started to move. Slowly, carefully, just making small circles over her belly. Her own hands were still pressing down on his, like he might fly away if she let him go. She released her pressure slowly, pushing him ever so slightly outward as she did, encouraging him to explore. He ran his palm down over her ribs, curled his fingers around her waist, then dragged slow figure eights over her belly. Clarissa started to feel warm and tingly all over. It almost wasn’t even a sexual feeling; too full of deep joy and long-awaited comforting. Amos slid his hand up her chest, carefully staying between her breasts, and then paused on her sternum while his fingers played over her collarbone. He caressed her like she was some beautiful, breakable sculpture; touched her like he had been dying to get the chance and now he was going to savor it.
Amos drew Clarissa’s hair off her neck with gentle fingertips and then lifted her head to slide his other arm underneath it. His fingers ghosted over her cheek, then he ran his thumb over her bottom lip and she sighed. He played with her jawline for a while, then drew his fingers lightly down her throat and explored over her shoulder, down her arm. Clarissa felt a moment of self-consciousness for her atrophied body; she must be as sexually attractive as a bag of sticks right now. But Amos was touching her like she was holy and that was good enough for now.
He was drawing his palm in circles over her belly again. The side of his thumb brushed the bottom of her breast, and a more erotic need awakened in her. So far Amos had been incredibly respectful, but there were certain places she was starting to hope he wouldn’t avoid indefinitely. Her breath started to quicken as his hand ran up her ribs, paused just below the swell of her breast. She felt her nipples harden in anticipation of him. “Here, too?” he breathed in her ear.
“Yes,” Clarissa whispered with joy, and his hand opened to slide eagerly over the peak. Then he paused a moment, cupping her in his palm. It felt like they were both appreciating that this moment was the turning point, they were now definitely connecting sexually here in the dark. Then his grip closed, twisted in a kneading caress and Clarissa’s breath caught, came out in a tiny little whimper as his thumb brushed across her nipple. He teased her a little, squeezing and pulling at the sensitive flesh. He must have liked the way her body twisted in response, because he made an appreciative noise in his throat and started teasing her more than just a little. She burrowed her head into his shoulder and tried to hold still as his fingers made her squirm and sigh. He stroked her hair with his other hand, like he was comforting her.
Just as she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, Amos’ hand relaxed, open palm stroking her reverently again. Clarissa fought to catch her breath. She wasn’t cold anymore. She rolled her body under his exploring hand. There was a rushing in her ears and a sense of electricity all around them. She had jumped into an oasis in the center of the desert. Everything was perfect.
Amos’ hand started a slow slide down her hip, swirling over the top of her thigh and returning to her belly, repeated the move on the other side. Everything was not perfect. She needed him in that spot he was deliberately avoiding, that whole neglected world between her legs. His hand crept down the center of her belly, past her navel, stopped just as his fingers brushed the curls on her mound. “Do you want me to touch you there, too?” he asked again. Her assent came out in a low moaning “please.” He resumed his steady course, sliding his palm over her pubic bone and then coming to rest. He let his hot hand lay lightly over all the sensitive flesh between her legs, letting her get used to the intimacy of his touch. She realized her breaths were coming so quickly he might have thought she was afraid.
It wasn’t fear Clarissa felt, but it was something almost as overwhelming. She hadn’t been this keyed up and in suspense over sharing herself since her first time with a man. It had just been so long, and she had thought she had already had her last time, in some barely-appreciated tryst before she changed her identity and began that crazed quest for vengeance that landed her with a life sentence, no chance of parole.
Amos waited for Clarissa’s breathing to slow before he started moving again, rocking the heel of his hand against her gently, stroking the outside of her labia with gentle fingers. Clarissa made an encouraging noise and snuggled her forehead against his chest. He drew one finger across the wetness between those lips, and she spread her legs to receive him. He stroked his finger along her without entering, then rolled it against her clit. Clarissa moaned into his chest and he stayed there, sending deep pleasurable pulses through her core. He tried out several angles before finding the one that felt best to her, which she guided along with an assortment of sighs and soft groans. Then he settled into a steady rhythm, rocking his finger over her clit untiringly. She felt that swirling energy inside her coiling toward climax, but she wanted something more.
Clarissa arched her back, thrust herself up into his hand, trying to remember how to use words in this midst of all these overwhelming sensations. Amos’ finger stopped, slid down her folds. “Do you want me inside?” he asked.
“Oh God yes,” she said, writhing in anticipation. His fingertips swirled in the wetness escaping her labia, then she felt him slide one in. It was a sensation both foreign and welcome, to be penetrated by another person after so many years alone. He moved slowly, letting her relax as he dipped in and out. When she started bucking against him, he added another finger, then started moving more forcefully. His big hand stretched her where she thought she’d only ever feel her own fingers again. And it wasn’t just loneliness fulfilled that was bringing tears to her eyes; those fingers belonged to him, the last person to ever treat her like a human being. Amos, who gave her something to hold on to during the long journey back to Earth, who gave her days dignity and meaning when she was sure that she deserved neither. He was curling his fingers against her g-spot and enthusiastically fucking her with his hand now, and her mind kept repeating he came back for me, he came back for me.
She came, holding her breath to keep from crying out into the lonely night. Her whole body shuddered with the force of it. Amos’ upper arm cradled her as she rode out the ecstasy that seemed to keep coming forever, his lower hand slowing at the same pace she did, not withdrawing from her until she finally sighed and relaxed completely. He started stroking her hair again as Clarissa slowly came back to reality. She rolled her face into him, slid her hand down his belly toward the erection she knew was still waiting for her.
He trapped her hand with surprising force. “Nah, Peaches, you don’t have to do that,” he said.
“I want to,” she whispered.
“Don’t,” he replied, a trace of irritation in his voice. He took her hand firmly and tucked it up against her chest as he wrapped his arms around her. “Just go to sleep now.”
Clarissa was confused, and a little hurt, but most of all she wanted to respect his boundary. She curled her body into his. She did finally feel like sleep was going to come for her soon. “Thank you,” she breathed into his chest.
He tightened his arms around her in reply.