Fallout Kink Meme Part IV: Closed to prompts, open for fills.

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FLW/Officer Gomez

[(Anonymous)]

As in, Freddie's dad. Because I'm pretty sick.
Can take place any time - either before she left the vault or when she returns for Trouble on the Homefront.
Maybe she harbors a crush on him throughout childhood and finally acts on it when she's of age?
Would prefer good!karma but neutral is cool too.

_{I just...am so glad these requests are anonymous...}

Criminal 1a/?

[(Anonymous)]

A!A: I'm tentatively posting this, and I say tentatively for many reasons. Mainly because I'm worried about my writing: it's not my best work and I really wanted to give you guys something great for this prompt, because I love some good, sexy angst. I'll let everyone be the judge of that, though, I suppose. Thanks to OP for the prompt! <3

Kink: Oral, Rough sex, Age (kinda?), Angst, Infidelity... Possibly more?

Characters: F!LW, Officer Herman Gomez, Freddie Gomez, Pepper Gomez, Butch DeLoria.

Relationship: Het




12:37 pm, Wednesday. Diner should get busy in a moment or so, kids’ll get out of class for lunch.

Wait, was that the day? Wednesday already?

Herman glances over his shoulder, squinting under the fluorescents to study the calendar behind his desk. Yup, Wednesday—he knew because tomorrow he had to go see the Doc about Freddie. The first Thursday of every month; ‘a check-up’ is what he told the other Officers.

He exhales deeply, staring at the circled date on the calendar as he taps his cleanly cut nails against the porcelain of his coffee cup. He wonders if Freddie will be at the diner with that girl—Doc’s kid. What was it, 4 months ago, that Herman finally squeezed the truth out of his son?

I love her, Dad. She’s great… She makes me feel…

Happy. Something Freddie hasn’t been in years. Good start.

Wow. That’s super, pal. Yeah, nice girl—she’s a pretty one, son.

Yeah, I know.

She feels the same way?

Oh. Dunno. I haven’t told her.

“Hey, John?” Herman pushes up from his desk, downing the last of his cold coffee and lifting the cup to his fellow Officer. “I’ll take the diner today—you want a refill?”

Kendall shrugs dismissively, barely looking over his shoulder before he’s turning back to his terminal. “Whatever’s left over.”

It isn’t that long of a walk before Herman’s entering the diner at a lazed pace, brushing past a giggling young couple who don’t have enough time away from one another to notice the Vault Officer they bump into on their way out.

That kind of stuff—lovesick teenagers, that is—usually makes Herman question what his son and the Doc’s kid do… alone. Would she even…? He’s heard rumors about John Kendall’s girl, geez, but nothing about Kate—that was her name, right?

When Herman thinks of the Doc’s kid, he thinks of James: good, kind… good. Good girls like that usually stay that way… till’ marriage.

Sounds like Pepper.

Herman snorts under his breath, thinking on a time when he was desperate like Freddie. When he loved girls so much it burned him and kept his body humming like jumper cables—he always needed to be on his feet, chasing Pepper, making her laugh and blush; anything to see that little spread of rose along a collarbone, beneath the teeth of a subtly unzipped vault-suit collar…

He wonders now, as he stands at the coffee machine, if maybe Freddie got the worst end from both parents.

Herman’s OCD, his hope, his aching heart—he never was too bright with school stuff either. And, of course, Pepper’s fits, her anxiety and unhappiness. Poor kid’s taking life pretty hard; his down-times are almost as bad as Pep’s—not quite, though. Thankfully.

“Hey, Freddie look!” Herman blinks, turning slightly at the waist and looking over his cup to see his son being dragged along behind a familiar dark-haired girl, a smile so big on her face that Herman has to blink once more. Doc’s kid. Kate. “Good Afternoon Officer Gomez!”

Herman swallows a hard lump at seeing the brimming desperation in his son’s eyes as Freddie flushes a dark red, an expression on his face that is often mirrored in his wife’s breakdowns. “Kate, lets uh… Lets just umm… go—,”

Criminal 1b/?

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe taking the diner today wasn’t a great idea… Freddie has been pretty down lately and having his dad, the Vault Security Officer, here might ruin something with the Doc’s kid and… Shit.

“Morning kids! Thought I’d fill ‘er up, get my daily fuel.” Herman chuckles lamely as he lifts his cup up in reference, nearly apologizing out loud upon seeing Freddie ducking down into his vault suit-collar. Doc’s kid just keeps on beaming up at Herman though, releasing her clawed grip on his son’s arm to cross her own over her chest. “How’s class going? Learn anything?”

“Sure.” She laughs, a sound that brings a smile to Herman’s lips without much effort. Seeing them together is cute, he thinks. Freddie’s a handsome kid, and this Kate girl looks like… well, like what he’s seen in the one picture of her mother that Doc keeps on his desk. Broad mouth with prominent white teeth, pert nose, and sparkling eyes that are a bit too big for her face. Like her laugh, she’s bright and happy looking—Herman thinks that’s what Freddie must love the most. “Say, Mr. Gomez! That reminds me… Freddie and I were actually wondering…”

Freddie nearly chokes then, shaking his head earnestly while she keeps chirping on. “Kate, let me—,”

“Wondering,” She lays heavy emphasis on the word. “If we might have a study night on Friday at the Gomez residence? I was going to proof-read his book report before he turned it in on Monday—,”

“This Friday?” Herman looks to his son, whose eyes quickly dart out of sight to stare at his shoes. The Friday’s after Freddie’s appointments are… the most uncomfortable days for Fred. A day after Doc’s sympathetic eyes and soft words, day after he’s excused from school early in front of the entire class for a ‘check-up’, a day after he’s been told he ‘has to want to get better’.

“I mean, I wouldn’t even have to eat dinner if that’s too much! I could leave whenever you’d like me to.” She talks like she’s bargaining for something, as if she were already convinced that this was some outrageous request that needed heavy persuasion.

Herman finds himself staring at Freddie suspiciously, wondering just what exactly he tells his friends about his home life. Or maybe this girl is just… this way. Maybe she knows these first Friday’s are the hardest for Freddie, and is trying to force him to push past it.

He has heard that the Doc’s kid is a bit of an overachiever—a bit of a busybody, really.

“Well, I’d have to ask Pepper…” He pauses upon looking to Kate, thrown off by the look she’s giving him. Loaded, deliberate—like she knows something about him, something like she watched him undress last night before getting into the shower, saw a birthmark or a freckle. Something like knowing what he sounds like when he…

Wait. What?

Herman blinks at her, lost for a moment when taking his gaze from her disturbing eyes. He shakes his head. “I… Guess. Sure.”

She grins, a pretty sight, and does something strange. She hugs him—warmly, tightly, pressing her body into his as if she knew him that well.

He almost squirms away from her, embarrassed and confused and ashamed, but there’s something about a hug from this girl that’s… wonderful. She’s soft and warm and small compared to him; and yet, the subtle strength of healthy 17 year old muscles and tendons and the warmth of her is a rush of familiarity. Like jumper cables, like dark closets, like nearly stale bubblegum.

And in a split moment, she’s gone.

“Thanks Officer Gomez, sir! I’ll see you Friday!”

Kate’s grabbing Freddie again, towing him along towards a table where Amata is watching the whole interaction with a frown; but not before the Doc’s kid casts that same look over her shoulder, that horribly disconcerting sparkle in her large eyes that makes his fingers squeeze around his coffee cup.

Criminal 2a/?

[(Anonymous)]

She comes every Friday.

Like a rush of stifling hot air she’s in the small apartment, sucking in the attention like an insect, oozing self assurance and draining the ease from his muscles.

She’s everywhere at once; her boisterous laugh intoxicating the Gomez family and her large smile swallowing them up in their stunned state. It’s impossible to look anywhere else but at her, even when Pepper mutters out the occasional conversational musing or Herman makes a lame joke. Everyone looks to Kate for her reaction—will she laugh? Will she go off on her own story? Kate, Kate, Kate.

Freddie’s crazy for her, following her about the house as if it weren’t even his, as if he were on a tour that he was afraid to get lost on. He isn’t doing any better in school, but that doesn’t prompt Herman or Pepper to speak up—Kate still helps him… study.

Herman thinks that Pepper must feel comforted by the strength that Kate has, the way she smiles for no reason, the way her son looks at her when he thinks no one is looking.

Herman just loves Kate’s noise: her impossible laugh, her constantly fluctuating voice, her purposeful stomping. Everything about her is so obnoxious and consuming that he often loses sight of Pepper. His wife sinks into the grey walls, barely able to smile, unable to slouch in her seat or release her fingers from their grip in her lap.

He doesn’t even look up now as Pepper and Freddie, mere mice in comparison to Kate—smaller, even—shuffle into the kitchen with piled dishes that clank with their unsteady grips.

Kate looks across the table as soon as the door hisses shut, straight at him, the heat still in her cheeks from her last burst of laughter and that same frightening look in her eyes that never fails to blank his mind. Her fingers curl like spiders’ legs from beneath her chin, red nails tapping at her lips, propping her strange face up into the light as the silence begins to darken and swell in the room around them.

Herman hates himself in that moment; hates the heat buzzing in his veins, hates the sparks in his fingers and toes. He wills himself to break her gaze, swallowing pathetically and fiddling with his fingers to ignore the urge to reach across the table to wipe the smudge of grease from the hollow beside her collarbone.

The grease. Talk about it.

“How’s workin’ with Stanley going?” Jesus, his voice nearly cracks from the nerves. From this too loud, too bright-eyed, too strange teenage girl. “Aren’t you working on the Pip-boys nowadays?”

Her smile is slow in its growth, making him feel like he asked something endlessly stupid and she finds it endlessly adorable.

Of course Freddie loves her; the kid’s a borderline masochist, apparently.

“I’m an engineer. Stanley isn’t my boss, you know.” She sloshes her orange juice about in her cup—it just reminds him of how off-putting it was that she wanted a breakfast drink at dinner time—and smiles at him from under a shadow of an expression. “And my work is going well, there is always something to fix in this tin can. Keeps me busy, hm?”

“I hear that.” Herman sighs, staring at the wine in his coffee mug.

There are no more wine glasses; I broke the last one the other day. Pepper told him this a few minutes before Doc’s kid had arrived, her face flushed and her eyes watering with the rush to plate Kate’s perfect dinner: mashed potatoes—the ones from the box, ultra-rare steak, and carrots with crimson juices from the steak poured over the whole thing like syrup.

Herman had only nodded, nearly laughed, and poured 200 year old wine into a vault-issued coffee cup.

“My knees are sure sore, though…”

Herman’s eyes shift up to her awaiting gaze, not nearly as taken aback by the heat in her eyes as he was the first time he saw it in the diner two months ago, but still a tad thrown off by the images growing in his mind.

Just a kid, Herman, Jesus.

Not really, turning 18 in two weeks.

Freddie’s girl. Your son.

Oh.

“Oh.” He says, swallowing uncomfortably once more and downing his wine in one go.

“Yeah,” She draws out the word, very obviously watching him. “Most days I feel like one of those dogs that you hear about in the books and such, y’ know what I mean?”

Herman blinks at her.

Criminal 2b/?

[(Anonymous)]

“I’m always on all fours, trying to squeeze into those tight spaces.” She laughs lightly as her hands flutter about in explanation, like she isn’t pouring all of this horrible innuendo out into the air. “You wouldn’t believe the kinds of things this gal has to tinker with; stuff you wouldn’t even think existed!”

“Hah.” His voice finally cracks, privately piecing together ‘dog’ and ‘all fours’ and ‘style’. That was what O’Brian had called it, right? Dog-style? Dogged-style? “You oughta… um…”

“Hm?” She interrupts, catching his eye as she chastely licks leftover orange juice from the cleft just above her upper lip.

“I was saying,” He pauses warily, glancing at the kitchen door as he hears Freddie groan loudly—the usual sound that follows ‘Do your chores.’ or ‘How is school?’. “You oughta talk to Wally Mack about borrowing some knee pads.”

It is her turn to draw a blank, though she manages to look confused in such a way that Herman feels idiotic and inadequate to the world. He nearly glares at her.

“He’s the uh… Well isn’t he the new couch for the Little League?”

“Yes.” She snorts in disgust, reminding Herman that Wally Mack isn’t very well liked by Freddie and Kate. “But what does that have to do with anything, Mr. Gomez?”

He curls his toes at the last note: Mr. Gomez. He likes the sound of it, or maybe the way she says it. Not like a teenage girl talking to her boyfriend’s dad, more like a young woman teasing a colleague.

At this point, however, the whole conversation has been upended by his odd way of approaching social interactions—perhaps it’s the married man attempting to befuddle this girl’s strange fascination with him, before she becomes embarrassed by rejection.

“Well, suppose you wore knee pads to your next fix-‘er-up,” He leans forward with a smile, his previous awkward manner lightening a tad as Freddie re-enters the room with a redness to his face that speaks frustration in it’s usual volumes. What a guy… “Don’t those ballplayers wear kneepads Freddie? Well, anyway, don’t you think that if you wore some, you could end a work day with less pain and… more gain!”

Freddie groans once more, leaning over to let his forehead fall against the table loudly. “Pop, come on!”

“What?” Herman frowns, attempting to make himself heard over Kate’s booming laugh. “I think that’s a great idea, what do you think Pep?”

Pepper blinks upon her address, touching a hand to her neck and letting her mouth bob open in confusion.

“I think it’s marvelous.” Kate finally comes up for air, her face as red as her lipstick and her eyes watering. “Just swell, Mr. Gomez. Truly.”

“You think so?” Herman smiles back at her, raising his brow at Freddie. “See pal? She thinks so.”

“It’s just—!” Freddie looks to be about to bust a damn vein, he’s so busy whirling his head between his father and a giggling Kate that he doesn’t seem to be breathing too well. “Do you have to talk like that dad?”

“Talk like what?” Herman sighs, watching with a touch of disappointment as Kate stands up in a flurry and straightens her vault suit with plucks and tugs. Most things get fixed around her and Herman finds himself growing dangerously accustomed to Pep’s momentary calm and Freddie’s beaming face. It’s all fleeting right before his eyes, though: Freddie is getting overtly flustered by his embarrassment and Pepper’s getting meek and grey again at his side, her eyes following Kate’s movements with exact precision. “I was just saying—,”

“Well!” Kate’s voice is thunder as she throws her hands up in dramatics. “I’m off! I promised my dad I’d help him with the auto-doc; try to get it up and running again and all that.” She turns to Freddie before he can protest. “You wanna walk me home?”

Criminal 3a/?

[(Anonymous)]

She’s always on the edge of his thoughts.

His questions—all of them—are unending in their desperation and number; at his desk, on patrol, at dinner (when she isn’t sitting across the table from him, her socked toes brushing up and down his shin). He feels stupid and sluggish for not knowing what this girl is doing, for not understanding why he isn’t standing up for himself and his marriage.

Nothing has happened, of course. No. She merely makes eyes at him when no one is looking, touches him chastely beneath tables and in passing glances. She is toying with him and that’s what he hates the most. Because it’s working.

He hates her deeply, for she knows that he is married, knows that he loves Pepper and his son with all his heart. She knows that Freddie is mad for her; Kate can see it as well as anyone on the outside can, no matter how much she deflects his weak advances.

Yet she persists with Herman; Kate is always there when his thoughts drift to her—in the diner, around the corner, passing by the Security office with Amata, that darkly lupine look in her eyes.

Herman wonders why, why this good girl suddenly found an interest in him; a married and very much older man. He’s her father’s age, God damn it, and that only serves to spur her on more.

He wants to burn the images of Kate from his head, the ones he has conjured for himself in darker moments. He wants to only see Pepper in his mind—like he used to not so many years ago.

Now Pepper fades to grey even when beneath him at night, her breath in his ear and her body seething and pliant around him.

Herman began to think about Kate in those times, about how much stamina resides in those young muscles, of how she seems poured into her vault suit instead of stuffed in, of how her smile is real and huge and happy…

He has followed her tonight, waiting until she left Freddie and Amata at the diner before falling in behind her through the winding vault halls—he began taking the night patrols in a desperate attempt to avoid her ever-watching eyes during the day. It doesn’t work for long; Pepper blabs about his change in shift over Kate’s 18th birthday dinner at the Doc’s apartment.

Herman remembers Kate’s expression so clearly: the look in her eyes was so amused and heated and… predatory. They are the eyes he sees at night, when his wife is shivering beneath him.

He momentarily loses sight of Kate when she takes an unexpected turn towards the stairs leading down to the… is she going towards the Storage Room?

There is a brief moment, as he is ducking under the door and punching in the lock-code, that he wonders what he is planning to do with her.

To finally take her like she has been leading him to do? He wants to, desperately, to get the dirt and grime of her from his mind.

To confront her? He should, he wants that too, because he is tired. So tired of being confused and disgusted by the girl, by himself; of wondering what she wants from him and what will happen if he gives it to her.

To… Hurt her? He hates it, but yes, he wants that as well. She has hurt him, too deeply to say, and she will hurt Freddie. His son.

Criminal 3b/?

[(Anonymous)]

Herman’s hands shake as he squints in the darkness, his skin seeming to ripple over his strained muscles from anxiety and fear and anger—he is too on edge, has been ever since the dinner she…—

…can’t hear her footsteps any longer.

“Officer Gomez?”

Herman nearly yelps from fright, spinning on his heel with his hand instinctually going to his nightstick. He cannot see, not at first, for the voice came from the back of the storage room.

It’s her, he knew, of course. Her voice is distinct in its natural projection, in the rasp that makes his toes curl, in the constant underlying taunt in her tone.

He could just strangle her, throttle her, make her scream… He wants her, all of her at once because it’s dark and hot in this damn storage room and he can see the challenge in her eyes from here, even as he stumbles on his way over to her.

“What brings you down here?” She asks casually, lowering what looks like… A gun? “Another change in shift?”

“I…” He’s a few paces in front of Kate, her face becoming clearer now that he’s closer to her pip-boy light. It’s hot, too hot for his uniform, and he can see that her cheeks are delightfully pink and her sweaty hair is pulled back into a ponytail. “You’re…”

“Oh, don’t mind me.” She sighs, turning from him dismissively with an air of what feels like haughty disappointment. She sets the gun—most likely a toy, from the sound of its light weight—on an empty crate, keeping her back to him as she strokes her fingers along the barrel. “I go down here all the time. I even kill a few radroaches every once and a while; keeps the vault safer in my opinion.”

He frowns at her back before looking about the room, his mind too muddled to immediately find the targets directly across from his stance. They are weathered, very obviously abused by bullets frequently. He can tell even from his distance that she’s a crack-shot.

“That’s illegal, Kate.” He mumbles stupidly, turning to her as she inclines her head very slightly over her shoulder.

“Mm.” She hums, a bit of rattling catching Herman off guard as she fiddles with her gun.

“Is that a… BB-Gun?” He squints at the gun on the crate, studying the grinning cowboy branded into the stock. “Where’d you get that—?”

“There are other questions you’d rather ask.” She interrupts impatiently, whirling quickly on her heel until she’s facing him with accusing eyes, her back resting against the crates. “That’s why you followed me here, right?”

There is a flash of anger in him, cutting so deep that he nearly crosses the room and backhands her like the child she is. He pauses a few steps away from her, though, glaring into her insolent stare with restraint laced cautiously in his joints.

“A few.” He replies quietly, enjoying the small shiver he sees run through her spine.

They stare at one another for a moment, Kate chafing the rubber of her sneakers against one another in loud squeaks, Herman clenching and un-clenching his fists as he fights to pick the most appropriate question first.

Instead he begins to feel stupid in his helmet.

He yanks it off angrily, grunting in frustration when he forgets the buckles tucked under his chin, but it’s only a short pause in the removal before he lets it fall loudly to the ground.

His hair is sweaty and out of style, so he messes it up further with furious hands, working his jaw as he watches her eyes follow his hands with interest. He feels his resolve break when he meets her eyes.

…Herman decides he doesn’t want to know much. At least, not right now.

“I just…” He mutters brokenly, for she can already see the decision in his eyes. “Why me?”

Kate looks up at him as he drags himself pathetically to her, the triumph burning so vividly in her eyes that he is nearly sick.

A!A is sorry mods!

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like a wiener for not writing a summary for the story with the tags. I totally forgot until I saw the summary you wrote FOR me in delicious, which was actually perfect and to the point, but still! Sorry for being oblivious and thank you for the summary! <3

Re: A!A is sorry mods!

[falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com]

You're welcome :)

Criminal 4a/?

[(Anonymous)]

A!A note: I'm really, really in love with all of the anon's reading this story and giving me such amazing feedback. It really means a lot to this A!A, and I can't tell you how great it is to read all the new comments!



Kate pinches her cigarette tightly between her lips, eyes crossing to focus on pouring vodka into the water bottle emptied previously. She can feel the group waiting on her, impatient and wondering why she hasn’t got her father’s steady hands.

Give us some of the booze, Katie, Jesus.

Fact is, she does have dad’s precision—she just wants to see Christine cringe as she sloshes Daddy Kendall’s favorite breakfast drink over her fingers and lets it pool onto the floor beneath her.

“Katie, you don’t need that much.” Amata frowns at her as the party talk begins to pick back up, discussing jobs, relationships: bullshit. “Remember last time? How sick you were for so long? You have to be careful—,”

Kate takes a deep breath of cherry-flavored nicotine, setting down the vodka with blatant aggression. The sound of the bottle hitting the crate Kate sits on makes everyone jump, makes them look to Kate without doubt.

Outbursts are getting expected now, then…? She sighs in disappointment.

Kate meets Christine’s glare with an unflinching smile. “Whoops.”

“Are you listening?”

“’Course Amata, my world revolves around you.” Kate blows a smoke ring into Amata’s eyes with a sugary smile, drinking in her friend’s discomfort with something close to a self-satisfied leer. She takes a heavy swig of the burning liquid. “I need it tonight, I really do. Need to talk to him.”

Amata’s eyes narrow a fraction before she looks around the room, making sure no one is paying attention to the pair. No one does anymore, Kate wants to point out—not after they realized that Poindexter rides high on insults and jeers, and especially not after Poindexter broke Paul Hannon’s arm with a lead pipe after he called Amata fat at her seventeenth birthday party.

Kate told dad it happened when he got his arm stuck in one of the vault-ventilation fans. Paul never contradicted her.

It’s Amata’s eighteenth today, just a few weeks after her own. The official business was done already as far as Kate was concerned—she and dad had a sufficiently awkward dinner with Amata and Mr. Almodovar earlier in the evening, and shortly after daddy-overseer went to sleep, Amata met with the rest of the class of ’76 in the storage room.

Kate hated how fucked up it was to have all these sweaty, horny teenagers standing around waiting for her to put the key-code into the storage room door so they can get high on air fresheners and cheap pre-war cigarettes.

See, only she and Paul knew the codes to the vault out of the whole class, and Paulie-boy was with Butch and the rest, lurking the halls and being fashionably late.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself Katie.” Amata looks experimentally at Kate, following her large eyes to the door that hisses open for three leather clad figures. “You know he doesn’t really care, right?”

Kate’s eyes lift to Amata’s casually, though the challenge that radiates there shuts her friend up quicker than she can bother to blink.

“Okay, sorry.” Amata sighs. She pauses, looking up as the room’s conversation fluctuates in enthusiasm for the new arrivals, greetings and scoffs alike are exchanged.

Butch’s eyes go straight for Kate, of course.

Amata rolls her eyes. “Look, I don’t know why you two are on speaking terms again, but I know it can’t be good. You can’t let him manipulate you again, Katie, I mean it. Not after last time.”

“Huh?” Kate blinks as she is forced back into the conversation by Butch’s lapse in attention for her. She turns her eyes, intensely blue against the backdrop of grey vault walls, on Amata’s somber expression. “Oh. Fuck Butch.”

Amata’s brow rises in such a precisely doubtful way that Kate can feel an itch in her palm to slap her friend as hard as she can—

No. Never with Amata; not with Amata or Dad. Never.

“I mean it, sweet-cheeks.” Kate mumbles around her cigarette, cocking her head to the side as her eyes follow Butch’s movements through the party with unwavering exactness. “No one manipulates me.”

Criminal 4b/?

[(Anonymous)]

Kate waits until Butch will look at her once more, for he always does. Typical. He’s such a fucking dope that he just can’t help but do it when he’s hanging around Christine, glancing up from his heated flirtation to watch her reaction.

Kate doesn’t give him one, just keeps her head weighted to one side as she blows smoke rings in his direction lazily.

Only when he leers at her does she rise from a familiar crate, giving it a knowing smirk over her shoulder, before she saunters towards the Tunnel Snakes.

“Hey Junior!” Kate’s tongue darts out to lick her lip habitually at the sight of Paul’s stiffening spine—damned if she can’t just smell the fear coming off him. “How’s the old branch? Still in a bit of a bind, I see.”

Hannon turns from Butch and Wally to glare down at Kate, a wary swallow working his throat at the sight of the sparkle in her eye.

He gives her a shrug, looking down meekly at his wrapped arm. “’S fine, Katie. What’d you care?”

“Oh, you know… Daddy said that arm would always be a bit stiff.” She sighs casually, taking a drag before blowing the acrid smoke in Paul’s face. “I was just wondering how you jerk off with a shit arm.”

“God, Kate!” Christine gasps, drawing the lazily amused stare of Kate straight on her. “Could you be more disgusting?”

“Could, probably.” She flashes Kendall a sour sneer, flicking cigarette ashes at the girl.

“What do you want, Poindexter?” Wally interjects, obviously thinking that if he defends Kendall’s honor he’ll get his willy wet. Actually, he probably would, knowing dear Christine.

“Butch.” Kate answers bluntly, making Wally blink. She turns her gaze onto the aforementioned, flashing him the loaded smile she knows drives him up the wall. “I got a secret for you, DeLoria.”

“Screw you.” Wally spits, shouldering in front of Christine to tower over Kate threateningly. “Ain’t you got Freddie the Freak to keep your secrets company?”

Kate’s eyes light up as they meet Butch’s once again, her skin rippling in a pleasured shiver at the way his jaw tightens in anger. “Say, I guess you’re right Wally! Maybe I should go tell him… What do you think Butchie?”

Butch flicks his cigarette to the floor, mashing it irritably with his boot before yanking Kate roughly by the arm towards the empty back generator room, leaving the rest of the room to watch their disappearing backs in tense silence.

Criminal 5a/?

[(Anonymous)]

I’m, um, with Pepper now.

What?

I’m sorry I—… I just…

…You’re such a fucker Herman, I can’t believe it sometimes.

I know.

You know?

Yeah.

What about me? Hm? You think about me at all?

…

Fine. Just—fine. Why don’t you give Pepper a big kiss for me, eh Manny?


“Well?”

Herman blinks, looks up from his blank report and into burning blue. The black that is smeared elegantly around Kate’s eyes makes her look vaguely cat-like.

Her smile, however, is eerily lupine.

“Uh—hm?” He splutters out lamely, eyes darting between her gaze and her opened vault suit collar. He can see a swell of breast from beneath the white of her tank top, modest but firm. “What?”

“Hah. You remind me of someone, Manny.” She gives a short bark of laughter at her own horrible joke, pinching her cigarette between her fingers as she squints on a drag. “I’m wondering, Officer, if I’m in trouble.”

“Oh.” He swallows, his blood thrumming and his heart jittering about in anxiety from this girl before him.

Herman had been in the diner refilling his coffee earlier this evening when he got the staticky report that some kids were seen acting suspiciously around the storage room door.

Usually an officer would just send Andy over to ruin the mood and force the kids to leave from fear of a malfunctioning Mr. Handy. Though it was always different after curfew, and especially since the kids seen entering the storage room had parents or relatives in the Security department.

Herman had accompanied Officers O’Brian and Park to Storage, the collar on his armor tight and hot from memories of his last visit here.

He hadn’t seen Kate much after… that encounter—she stopped coming over for dinners and study sessions after graduation. Pepper’s devastated, of course; she keeps trying to call Doc’s apartment for visits and smiles, for loud laughter and sparkling eyes. Herman stops her, of course. He doesn’t think he can handle being in the same room with Kate and Pepper.

Herman knew before he’d even entered the key-code to the Storage room that the kids must be having their own private celebration for Amata’s birthday. He could hear the old—supposedly broken—jukebox playing softly amongst laughter and scattered chatter.

Upon entering the room Herman instinctually scanned the gathering of suddenly panicked faces for Freddie’s. He wasn’t hard to find—he was making a big show of spitting out a beer in shock of seeing his father standing in the door way, the amber liquid spewing all over Peggy Wolfe’s leg beside him.

It hadn’t taken long to clear the room with Park and O’Brian to help—they barked and shooed at the fleeing kids until one girl started crying for fear of arrest.

Herman didn’t exactly approve of frightening the kids in order to lay down the law, especially not with the two Officer’s present doing the job.

In fact, Herman seemed to recall a time when Officer Park had huffed nearly half a can of the vault’s hallucinogenic of choice, air freshener, at Pepper’s sixteenth birthday party. Long time ago, but the irony is still fresh in Herman’s mind.

It was when the room was empty, save for Herman, that he heard it: a muffled giggle cut off by a choking gurgle, followed by the very distinct sound of a body hitting against the solid vault wall.

He had realized then, with sudden clarity, that he hadn’t seen Kate or Butch amongst the group of the graduated class—even when Paul Hannon and Wally Mack had been seen bolting out before the rest of the crowd.

Criminal 5a(2)/?

[(Anonymous)]

It took but a moment to find them huddled behind a stack of crates, a dim glow of light from a dying fluorescent highlighting Butch’s bared teeth and Kate’s quickly reddening face.

Butch had her pinned against the wall with his hand wrapped so tightly around her throat that Herman could see the whites of his knuckles.

Herman has Butch slamming into a crate before he can think to speak, to call out to stop—maybe DeLoria would’ve if… no, he wouldn’t have—he’s just like his mother.

“What the fuck?” Butch cries, instinctually bucking and thrashing against the larger body that pushes and holds him down on the floor. “Get off me man!”

Herman can’t keep himself from forcing his knee into Butch’s spine, wrenching a huffed groan from the young man beneath him as Kate’s cough’s and gasps sound behind him.

His anger seizes, however, when Butch jerks his head back and fixes Herman with a look so coldly familiar that Herman’s heart skips a beat.

Come on, Manny sweetheart, you ain’t messin’ with just any DeLoria…

It hadn’t taken long to get Kate back to the Security office, merely telling Park that he should escort Butch DeLoria to his apartment while Herman volunteered to walk the Doc’s kid home. No suspicion, just a simple nod—Herman nearly had a panic attack, anyway.


Sorry for this short little post, character limit kills me.

Criminal 6a/?

[(Anonymous)]

A!A's note: Hello everyone, I just wanted to mention a few things. First, I love all of you and am just really encouraged and excited about writing something that my readers enjoy. So thanks for spurring me on! Second, I just wanted to let everyone know that this story will be wrapping up in maybe 2-4 posts, more or less. I'm sad. I hate these characters because they're evil, but I love writing them. Sigh. Lastly, I'm really sorry this post is so small. It's a stepping stone to larger parts, if you will. I'll stop rambling now! <3



“How are you feeling, Officer Gomez?”

Herman shrugs, tapping at the Vault bobblehead grinning up at him, before smiling mildly at the Doc across from him.

“Thought this was about Freddie.”

“Of course it is, do not worry Officer.” James smiles in return, genuine and handsome. “Freddie is doing well, Chlorpromazine usually works, though only to an extent, in my opinion—I’m glad that he has found his own happiness outside of his medication.”

Herman nods absently, seeing too much familiarity in the dark blue eyes that stare kindly at him. He stares at his worrying hands. “Call me Herman, please Doc.”

“Well Herman,” James relaxes back in his seat, motioning to the chair opposite his own; Herman sits down with a graceless plop. “While I know it’s none of my business, it has simply come to my attention that, over the past few meetings with your son, you have seemed…”

Herman waits patiently, eyes darting nervously to a picture of the Doc’s wife—Kate’s mom; she looks so much like her that a prickle of sharp, seething shame licks along his skin.

“Nervous.”

“Huh?” He blinks into the doctor’s steady gaze. “Oh. Really? I guess it’s the change in shift. I, um, haven’t adjusted yet…”

“Sleeping problems then?” James nods thoughtfully. “Well Herman, if this was an official check-up, I would advise that you arrange for a change in shift. Or, conversely, I could prescribe you—,”

“No.” Herman says a little too forcefully to go unnoticed. “No, I’m—Gosh… Sorry Doc. I just don’t want my entire family on pills, you know?”

James has a weary, knowing look in his eyes and they crinkle around the edges sympathetically as he smiles. “Of course, that’s understandable my friend.”

The two men are silent for a moment—the clock on the wall seeming to echo in the small office—before the sounds of animated chatter coming from the clinic outside draws James’ attention to the window beside him.

Herman would know that loud, boisterous laugh anywhere, and he nearly yelps out loud at the realization before remembering just who he is sitting with.

Jesus…

Kate doesn’t quite burst into the room with her usual theatric way—she simply peaks her head in, flicking at a curl that has escaped from the garish red bandana tied about her head.

“Hey Daddy.” She whispers apologetically, oddly calm and polite, before smiling without a hint of her usual mischief straight at Herman. “Good Afternoon Officer Gomez. I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“No, honey, we were just finishing.” James absolutely beams at his daughter, the expression so very like her own smile that Herman nearly forgets to breathe. “You’re right on time, actually.”

James turns to Herman with a good-natured shrug. “I’m hopeless with my terminal, you see.”

Criminal 6b/?

[(Anonymous)]

“Oh?” Herman snaps out of his racing, terrified thoughts as Kate prances into the room with loud, graceful stomps. She kisses her father chastely, admiration glittering in her eyes, before she begins her work with a forceful punch to the chassis. “Um, ah. Me too.”

“Ingenious doctor, they say…” Kate teases, biting on her tongue as she concentrates. “What if the terminal suffers a heart-attack?”

“Well that’s what you’re here for, dear one.” James pats her bent spine as she leans over the computer, then standing up and holding his hand out to Herman pointedly.

They shake hands. “Thanks Doc, for… you know, everything.”

“Don’t thank me, Herman. I care for Freddie and your family; you’ve done a lot for me and my girl.”

Herman blinks, swallows pathetically, and manages to catch the small spark in Kate’s eyes.

She has no idea how true that is; how much Herman fought for the strange family nearly 19 years ago. “Um, yeah. Of course. I’ll see you next month?”

“Oh, Officer Gomez!” Kate pipes up, yanking roughly at a wire in her grip before plugging a different one into a colorful slot behind the terminal’s monitor. “The Overseer wants me to have a look at the security cameras around the Vault; he said I’d need an Officer to help me find them. Would you mind?”

“Catherine.” James frowns half-heartedly. “It’s late.”

Catherine. Kate. Oh.

“Dad,” Kate whines around the screwdriver gripped between her teeth. Herman eyes the sharp canines that peek over the colorful handle. “Don’t even suggest that I ask Stevie Mack.”

“Well—,”

“It’s alright, Doc.” Herman clears his throat, drawing twin pairs of blue eyes. “I was about to go out on shift, actually. It’d be nice to have some company.”

“See?” She asks, voice muffled before she takes her tool in hand to refasten the frame of the machine back together. “I’m nice company; don’t you think so Officer Gomez?”

“Of course,” James scoffs instantly, thankfully, before shaking his head. He doesn’t even notice Herman’s pained swallow. “If not a little loud-mouthed, perhaps?”

“Oh, really?”

They joke and beam at one another—happily, jovially and lovingly. A father and a daughter, both beautiful and brilliant and radiant people, still as mysterious and exotic as the day they stepped into the Vault. How typical they seem now, acting the perfect pair—like a family straight out of a pre-war movie.

A rare love shines behind James’ eyes upon Kate’s loud cackle; Herman turns from the sight.

Criminal 7a/?

[(Anonymous)]

Some days Herman thinks he will confess to someone—Pep, Freddie, maybe even Kendall. The worry begins to whisper to him, attempting to coax him and frighten him into trying to end the relationship with her. Kate’s voice is always stronger though, her touch always hot and tangible in moments of doubt—he barely goes a week without her taste fresh on his tongue, now.

And now, with his back thumping against the wall of the inner storage room chamber—Katie’s favorite haunt for such things—he can’t help but pant and fumble and blush right along with her as they tug at zippers and buttons. Because he’s young again, happy and oblivious to complaints of bland tasting pills and suffocating walls, to Pep’s worried glances and Freddie’s heart-heavy sighs.

Yes, she is still horrible to him—slapping him, using him roughly, hissing insults so acidic he will still feel the burn for weeks—but there is just… something about Kate. He suspects it’s what her father sees, what Freddie sees, Amata too, even. There is a spark in her darkness, a speck of light that makes him grovel to reach it; to see a shine of regret in her merciless eyes.

When Kate is gone from his side, however—warmth and laughter and snarling smiles gone and long settled—Herman feels sick. Her very being makes him want to vomit, want to throttle her and kill her and take away that knowing glint in her eye. She alone has taken away his marriage, however cracked it was, and has broken it into irrevocably jagged pieces. He would always have Kate’s taste on the back of his tongue, even if Pep never did taste it.

But now, oh now, when Kate is curling around his body with strong limbs and blinding heat, he can’t possibly adore her more; her quick, observing eyes, terrifying in their intelligence and strength, pinning his breath in the depths of his lungs.

She is so strange looking without her dark eye-makeup, he realizes—not as pretty perhaps, though maybe a tad more delicate looking. Her impossible eyes stare up into his now, large and crackling with carefully leashed malice.

“How is your hair curly one day,” He whispers against her temple, wrapping a ringlet around his finger thoughtfully. “And completely straight the next?”

“Magic.” She hums, forcing her hand a bit too enthusiastically into his groin in a show of her absolute authority over him. He grunts, though doesn’t dare reprimand her—his memory isn’t so bad as to forget the last time he tried to resist her wild methods to get him hard. “And a bit of heat, bit of steam, bit of pressure, bit of mashing and pulling…”

“Kate… Kate wait—!” He gasps out desperately, wincing at the harsh way she attempts to rouse him.

It’s like this most days, he can admit. Sometimes she really is too young and fast; too eager to have him in any way she can. He realized very early on that while she wasn’t a virgin, she also wasn’t as experienced as he had initially assumed. Or, perhaps, whatever boy she’d had before Herman had been much more accustomed to pain.

He could imagine tolerating such raw, forceful passion at a younger age, when sex and fondling usually lasted a few minutes as opposed to hours. In fact, she often praised him in something akin to honest-to-goodness admiration of what he could make her feel over a course of an hour or two.

Kate was filthy, however, in what she would spit and growl at him when he fucked her. It was something he hadn’t experienced since his days with Ellen DeLoria, and he had discovered more than once that such things had been sorely missed. The slice of red-painted nails, the stickiness of lingering lipstick, the rousing, warm smell of feminine youth, heated like a furnace and jumping like a livewire.

There isn’t much foreplay, now, before Herman’s shaking with the need to have her bare against him, to fill her up just like she’s begging him to. He pulls and tugs pointedly at her work-suit, sealing his lips momentarily over a smudge of grease on her cheek.

It tastes nearly as soiled as she is, and Herman keeps that thought in mind as he is spurred on by ghosts of memories; closing his eyes and thinking of an earlier time, a hint of vodka and bubblegum and deep sky blue.

Criminal 7b/?

[(Anonymous)]

It’s an hour or so later, lying on one of the many mattresses she has planted through-out the vault for late night jobs—a habit he found cute while also being equally convenient—that he slips up.

While he is no mastermind like she, Herman has managed to train himself into keeping emotions and hurts to himself. If he were to truly lay out his worries and fears before this girl, she would rip and tear at them until they were gaping, festering wounds.

Though it’s now, warm and sweaty and lulled by the sound of vibrating gears and whirring machinery, that Herman let’s his biggest hurt go: he tells her that he loves her.

Kate’s body is a ripple of stiffening muscles upon the low rumble he emits, three words that sound half-hearted and weak from an overly strong orgasm minutes earlier.

He wishes it hadn’t slipped, that she had been asleep when he’d confessed. Even Herman didn’t truly believe that he loved her, though it was close enough to what he truly did feel that… well, he couldn’t just let her think that this wasn’t intensifying for him.

Every time he saw her he felt another part of him breaking.

She finally moves, raking her fingernails pleasantly, gently, through the dark hair at his chest. Kate shifts on top of him, pealing her sweaty cheek from his stomach to stare up at him in an astounding show of pure, untainted curiosity.

Kate’s face devoid of spite is breathtaking, quite literally, for Herman holds his breath as he observes the girl before him.

She looks equal parts exhausted and delicate—deep running circles gaunt her eyes, eyes that shine dully with giant, almost inhuman pupils. Her lips are bitten and swollen, throbbing a deep pink in the soft swell of light shining from behind Herman, where a machine purrs ever wakeful. Her hair is wild with curls, a drop of his semen clinging to the end of a shining ringlet.

Herman reaches for this, pinching the ringlet between a thumb and index finger before brushing the wetness across her chewed bottom lip.

Kate hardly reacts, instead opting to bore her eyes into his in such a way that he stills all movements in a split second.

“Do you really?” Her voice is hoarse and it spreads an eruption of shivers down his spine. She reaches up to trace the line of stubble on his cheek, her expression kind but not lacking a certain strength that captivates him into utter silence. “Or do you see someone else, Manny?”

Herman blinks at her, barely feeling her icy fingers that soothe along his features with chaste care.

“I… Don’t know…”

“Yes, you do, Manny.” When she is not sneering filthy insults and secrets, her voice has her father’s faint, intelligent lilt. It’s beautiful that she allows Herman to hear, the very thought making his eyes sting and cloud with unfallen tears. “Do I truly frighten you?”

He nods, letting his head fall back onto the mattress limply as his heart goes numb. “I don’t think I can… tell you. You already know.”

“I do.” She whispers, kissing at the tears that finally do fall, smoothing his hair back from his sweaty forehead in slow, lingering glides. “I need to hear it, though.”

Criminal 8a/8

[(Anonymous)]

She didn’t even see him.

Just ducked under Andy’s metal arm, eyes darting about the clinic in frantic, very open confusion before jogging past Stanley and into her father’s office.

Herman swallows, nodding pointedly to Stanley, before making a move to follow her.

Stanley is at his side in a split second. “Hey, Herman, she’s a good kid… You don’t need to… well, you know—,”

“I know.” Herman sighs, holstering his pistol to reassure the promise in his eyes. “I know, Stanley. I have to talk to her, though; tell her what I know at least.”

He shuts the blinds upon entering the office, entering the keycode and locking the door in nervous, fumbling movements before he turns.

Kate is flying about the room, overturning filing cabinets, drawers, and boxes, glancing at sheets of paper briefly with flying eyes before crumpling it and throwing it over her shoulder. She stuffs various things into her backpack every once and a while: a framed biblical quote, a bobble head, a couple pencils and medical journals—things that seem silly and useless to Herman in a moment like now, but he doesn’t stop her.

“Katie.” Herman croaks, exhausted and anxious; disgusted with himself, mostly. The smell of blood is still heavy in his lungs. “Katie, come on.”

She looks wild as she jumps about the room, eyes wide and constantly searching, and Herman notices for the first time that she has blood splattered across her neck and face.

“Are you okay? Did… did anyone—?”

“I killed your buddy. John Kendall.” She says casually, finally turning to him as she stuffs a few Stims into the inner-breast pocket of her over-sized leather jacket. Herman blinks, opening his mouth stupidly before shutting it with a ripple of a shiver running down his spine. “He tried to, first, Manny. He wouldn’t leave me alone, even when I pointed my gun at him and—…” She stops, exhales, and forces a shrug. “Well, I don’t regret it.”

“Okay.” Herman takes a deep breath—tries to, more like. “Okay. Okay, Kate, you need to go. Now.”

“Fuck you, Manny, I know what you did.” She snarls, rushing forward in the blink of an eye to shove him roughly up against the door behind him. “Jonas was my friend. Eye for an eye, right? Ever hear of that, huh?”

“I didn’t—no Kate, wait, I didn’t kill Jonas!” Herman knows she doesn’t really care, not about Jonas or her friends or him; not about anyone but her father. He can see a feral glint in her eye, the same that shone in Stevie Mack’s right before he stomped Jonas’ face in. “I didn’t stop it, but I didn’t touch him. I ran—I—I…”

“Huh. As per fucking usual, then.” She spits, still holding him up against the wall, her eyes searching his face in a quick flash. “You gonna arrest me?”

Herman holds his breath, staring down into the eyes that have terrorized him for nearly two years. She’s here, right now, and he could kill her—silence her and move on with his life. Pep would never know, and even if Freddie would hurt over her loss, Herman thinks that they could all move on. Her hurts would disappear.

Then again, she would probably die just as quickly out there. Herman winces at the thought.

“No.” He gasps, the answer releasing a tension in her that he notices almost immediately. “You know I can’t, Katie, not you.”

“Lucky me.” She grins, the expression more of an animalistic show of her teeth and the pinkish, bloody tinge to them than a smile, and holsters her pistol in the pocket of her jacket.

He hadn’t even noticed the barrel sticking into his stomach until it is gone.

Criminal 8b/8

[(Anonymous)]

“You’re leaving.” Herman whispers, subtly blocking her way, and holding her gaze steadily when she looks up at him. “Following your dad?”

“Of course.” She scoffs, wiping the back of her nose on her sleeve. “I was getting a bit bored with this place anyway, you know? All my games are forfeit, now, and it’s a snore.”

“Games.” He repeats blankly. She nods.

“Sure. Yours was the most fun though, Manny dear.” She sneers, shrugging out of her jacket and yanking at the zipper of her suit until she’s standing in her under-things before him, looking entirely like a crazed, wild woman with her hair untamed with curls and a smear of blood on her collarbone. She smells like Radroach innards. “Took a while, though not as long as I expected—happily married man like you. Was a challenge still, and he always knew I loved those.”

“Who?” Herman swallows when she pulls her ratty grey sports bra over her head. She looks up at him once she is bared before him, giving her chest a bit of a lewd shimmy in his direction before reaching down to touch herself. “Wh-…What the hell are you doing, Kate?”

“I want you one last time.” She explains, breathless, and reaches up to smear her wetness across his lips. Herman almost begins to protest before she presses her long, warm body against his, her knuckles tapping at his armored cup pointedly. “It’ll be a shame to live without this cock, you know?”

He is silent for a moment, feeling a flash of anger seethe dully in his chest as she begins to remove his uniform with quick tugs and pulls—so different from her usual practiced movements that he knows, then, that she truly is quite frightened; she is human, after all.

Herman wants this, too, if only for one last time. He knows it, but he also isn’t oblivious to Stanley’s presence outside this office. It’s been long enough already to arouse suspicion. And was it not likely that some Officers and vault citizens might make their way to the clinic in search of aid?

But then she is whispering filthy promises to him, the darkness of her tone and the hatred in his heart cooing and coaxing him into kissing her, into ripping and yanking at her hair, into gathering her thrumming body up into his arms and shoving her up against the office door.

“Yes.” She hisses once he sets his pace, her voice broken and jostled with his furious movements.

Herman buries his face into her neck as he shoves his hips forcefully between her thighs—grinding, forcing, fucking her into the cold metal with all the ferocity she has forced into his heart. He loves her and is so absolutely convinced of this that he tells her, over and over as he plows into her.

She laughs at him, kisses his hairline, and gives a little finger wave at the security camera over his shoulder.

He doesn’t care, couldn’t care less, for there is a seething, raging heat in his groin and he can’t hear, think, or breathe until he is riding high on it. Kate knows this, knows to spur him on with her dirty words and pleads. She squeezes him, internally and with her thighs tight around his hips, bucking as best she can into his thrusts from between his over-bearing body and the door behind her.

“I’ll think of you.” He promises with a lick of his tongue over her nipple before he sucks her breast in his mouth.

He knows she loves it, she told him so a week after the first time he fucked her—so he doesn’t stop, not even when he can feel his orgasm tugging at the back of his spine. “Get on your knees.”

“No!” She hisses, urgently enough for him to slide his lips from her swollen breast to look up into her eyes in question. Kate reaches around him to grab at his ass, forcing his hips flush against her. “I want it inside me, Manny.”

Missed Me 1a/?

[(Anonymous)]

Hello again everyone! It took me a while to post this, yes, and it shouldn't have. I've been picking at it and picking at it, and I'm still a bit wary about this story. Still, I hope it satisfies. Also this first update is short mainly because I'm putting my feelers out and testing the feedback, I know the meme has been quiet lately. But anyway, it's good to be back with these characters! <3-A!A



He doesn’t recognize her—not even remotely, at first.

At first, she is a dirty, skinny, dead-eyed creature whose hair is shorn and dull in color, whose large eyes make her look harsh and wild.

Kate does not look joyful and vibrant, but blank and utterly barren of the vibrant happiness she once emanated—she is alert, like a feral animal thrust into a foreign territory. Herman has never been more unnerved by a sight in his entire life.

“…Kate?” Herman looks her over once more, unbelieving of her presence after so long—a year, maybe two?—and hovers his hand over his pistol.

Kate blinks at the sight of him, apparently equally as bewildered by the sight of him, and her hand drops limply from the large rifle adorning her back; Herman has the faint thought that the gun seems to make her hunch, as if the weight of it has bent her small body forcibly.

“Kate?—well… Gosh! I can hardly believe it! Is that really you?” He laughs, nearly hysterical from the suffocating air that she radiates, and continues to stare expectantly into those foreign eyes. No spite, no hidden laughter, no dark secrets, no confidence. Just… nothing.

“Kate?” Herman repeats, quietly now, for he can see the recognition flickering weakly in her eyes. He notices many ghastly scars as they stand there staring at one another, even with her baggy and largely concealing… armor? Clothing? He can’t quite tell. He thinks to a time when she was spotless.

“Manny.” She finally chokes out, the sound of her voice bringing a sharp pang to his heart—it is a voice he has strained to remember for over a year. Though, like the rest of her, the sound is small and wary.

It doesn’t take long until she is crossing the large space that has built between them. The wild touch to her eyes worries him, makes him back up a step or two, but his fear is unfounded in the end. Kate collapses into him in a fury of tears and dusty fabric, wrapping her arms around him with a desperation that steals his breath away.

She feels different, no longer soft and exciting and blissful. Kate is hard with muscle and bone, smells of unwashed human and death and dirt, and her body no longer fills his arms—which eventually wrap around her in return—like she once did.

Her sobs are so frantic in their nature that it isn’t long before she cannot breathe, that she begins to choke and claw at him in the need for aid.

An old supposedly dead part of him is roused, forcing him into action as he scoops her up—somewhat awkwardly around the uncomfortable jabs of weapons—and shuffles her quickly into the entrance area. It is there that she breathes, gulping down air and letting the strong breeze from the outside dry her eyes.

He watches her during these few minutes, brow drawn in confusion, hand gripping hers tightly as he tucks a strand of hair from her dirty face awkwardly.

Who is this?

Missed Me Tags

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, I forgot! Missed me is a sequel.

Kink: Non-con, Bondage

Characters: F!LW, Officer Herman Gomez, Butch DeLoria

Series: Criminal

Relationship: Het

Re: Missed Me 1a/?

[(Anonymous)]

Excellent sequel opening! I am very excited to see you again, a!a, and elated to look forward to more of your Criminal series!!

Re: Missed Me 1a/?

[(Anonymous)]

WOW

can't wait for more!!! Loved Criminal, can't wait to love this! :D

Missed Me 1b/?

[(Anonymous)]

“Shit.” Her voice breaks and it makes Herman wince. “Sorry. I just…”

She takes a deep, frustrated breath through her nose, wiping at the runniness before turning to him. Kate smiles, kindly and sincerely, and he blinks in shock at the sight of it. “I just can’t believe that I’m seeing you… That you’re the same.”

He doesn’t speak, simply watches her watch him, and nearly begins to cry right along with her when he realizes that the Kate sitting beside him is not the same that left him broken all those months ago. How could he even begin to be angry when this creature is merely a ghost of what once existed in that horrible girl?

“What happened out there?” Is what Herman finally whispers.

After a moment of her hiding her face in her hands, she exhales shakily and looks off to the bright light flooding in from the entrance. “Dad’s gone.”

She is suddenly a child, he realizes: nose red and running, eyes beautiful and large with the shine of tears, lips deeply flushed and puffy from fighting against the sobs that wrack her ribs.

“I just—… I just got him back, Manny.” Kate chokes on her words, battered agony radiating sickly behind her eyes. “All that time, looking and failing… All those people I—…” She pauses, swallowing audibly, and pushes her clenched fists against eyes. “He left me again...”

Herman’s heart drops from the sudden realization of what she speaks of, closing his eyes to erase the image of a motionless, paled James from his mind.

“Honey…” He can’t think of anything to say, doesn’t want to hear of any more tales of her scars or nightmares. “I’m sorry. I really am, Katie.”

Kate blinks a gathering of tears from her eyes, smearing at the grime coating her face, and looks to him underneath thin, wet lashes. She sniffs loudly, uncaring, and reaches a calloused hand up to his face.

He flinches away at the sight of dirt underneath her nails, though one look from her reddened, pitiable eyes makes his heart sore enough to bypass obsessive compulsions.

“You’re so clean.” She muses, almost as if to herself, and smiles in wonder as she meets his eyes. “You’re so handsome, Manny. It’s wonderful to see a face like yours, after all this.”

Her sudden change in mood is off-putting, enough to make him forget that she ever left—however momentarily that bittersweet feeling is; he feels as if this is another tryst, with her cackles still laced with malice and her sparkling eyes haunting him in their absence of pity.

He doesn’t trust her, he decides—not in the slightest.

Herman lets her explore him after so long; innocent, chaste touches and observations that make him feel like the outsider—though he supposes that if the people out there dress and look anything like Kate, than he must look strange after so long.

“What’re you doing here?” The question dawns on him after the initial shock begins to fade.

Kate’s fingers pause in their gentle journey down his cheek, her eyes looking confusedly into his for a brief moment. “Amata. She asked for my help, said things were fucked.”

Herman’s brow rises. “I’ll… pretend I didn’t hear that.”

Missed Me 2a/?

[(Anonymous)]

“I need a break”, is what Herman was informed of in a hushed whisper, and he had nodded dutifully. It was his responsibility to watch over Kate, to monitor her strange behavior for any cracks, and to show her around the halls she already knew by heart.

Reunions, fractured and stiff, were had and fought through uncomfortably. It was immediately noticed that Kate was not Kate, not truly anymore, and Herman wasn’t sure if anyone actually mourned that as much as he did. Perhaps Amata.

Amata almost cried, the tears were certainly there and seen by Kate, but the two were no longer close like they once were. There was some sort of resentment between them, a fissure in their bond, and Herman had to swallow the tenderness down his throat to keep from getting too emotional over that fact. He’d watched them grow up together—never did he expect it to end so abruptly.

“Wow.” Kate chuckles breathlessly—maybe on the border of hysterical—at the state of the diner, gripping her hair in both hands and staring wide-eyed at the destruction. “Uh… how?”

“Rebels.” Herman mumbles, not bothering to watch the way Kate’s face falls at the sight of a ruined piece of childhood. It’s been an exhausting few hours. “They figured it would get our attention, you know…”

“Did it?”

“Sure.” He doesn’t really feel like talking to her, especially after almost seeing his son get shot only a few hours earlier, but he knows this will be the only real time to speak to her. Kate won’t be staying much longer; he could tell the moment he saw that spark of a plan in her eyes. “But what can we do, right?”

Kate wordlessly slides into a booth, not bothering to glance up when a mug of coffee is set in front of her. Herman knows she doesn’t drink coffee—or, she didn’t before—but he figures it’s a sort of gesture of peace; he can’t imagine what she accepts as such out in the Wasteland. A white flag, maybe?

“Right.” She blinks, looking up from a cracked tile on the floor and noticing the coffee for the first time. Kate frowns in confusion, nodding to the cup. “I thought the vault’s supplies were—,”

“It’s from a powdered mix. I, um, keep ‘em in my pockets. Nothing fancy.” He shrugs, a bit sheepishly actually, and smiles upon her weak laugh. “You like coffee any better than you used to?”

She looks up into his eyes a bit amusedly at that little slip of information, mashing her lips together in thought before she takes a tentative sip of the mottled brown liquid.

Kate scrunches her face up and gives a heavy swallow. “Not particularly.”

They laugh, and even though Herman finds her much prettier with that familiar glow of merriment in her face, he still finds himself missing her gargantuan noises and her dazzling confidence. If only she were this grey three years ago—he would’ve never given her a second glance.