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Doors Unlocked and Open (1/?)
Date: 2012-10-19 06:40 am (UTC)Pairings: None
Kink: Rescue
Relationship: Gen
Summary: She had a habit of saving him. Then one day he returned the favor.
(Authoranon says: This is a little fluffy…but I think that’s what you were asking for? Anyways, I’d like to think this turned out okay and kinda different than my normal stuff. Hope it's everything you wanted!)
There had never been anything short of immediate understanding and mutual acknowledgement between them. He was thirty-something and she was barely a woman, but in the end that had mattered little when it came to Wasteland roving. He’d hitched his boredom to her wandering star, and together they’d skipped away from the neon of the world for a while. Then, their momentary universe became different and new and infinitely daunting, if only for a time.
There was nothing about it he regretted.
She never asked much of him, never questioned his snarky comments but laced them with more of her own. The Courier’s wit was quick, and her rifle was swifter, and it made up for all of his combat failings and made him feel awkward and young all over again.
He would nervously tell her that perhaps, maybe, what they were doing would only end in pain, yet she never listened. Her fists connected with cazadores and Chem Fiends, and she didn’t know the meaning of the words ‘unlikely to succeed’. She laughed quietly but never at anything stupid that he did (unless they could both find it funny), even though he caught himself sometimes snickering at her. Her questions to him were always endless but never annoyingly repetitive, even when his venom was so easily accessed by everyone else that he knew. Her cooking, it was such a rapturous surprise that he thought several times it would kill him, for she had a habit of making more than enough and then telling him he was free to finish the rest. He could not refuse her.
There were sharp edges about her, like all Mojave beasts, but they were blunted by his presence, and by that fuzzball of a cyberdog she never let out of her sight. He caught her talking to the dog often, and Rex would listen, or look like he was listening, and he would see her face soften. There was a hidden part of her beneath the grime and the leather that burned so brightly when she was alone and she felt there was no need to guard her expression. She never let anyone else see it, but it was intriguing to him.
He remembered when he had found out she couldn’t read. Oh, sure, she had memorized place names by rote and she had this funny little ability that if she told herself the name of a courier destination aloud, thrice, she would never forget it until the package was there. But when she handed him the same book a second time one afternoon, even after he had mentioned the title to her, first absentmindedly then slightly sarcastically, he’d realized, and then felt abhorrent when he saw the look of ashamed defeat on her face.
It was so rare, and it was so earnest, that it hurt, that look. He’d taught her as much as he possibly could about reading and writing as the days stretched into weeks and they saved their small world from itself. As a result she had brought him more books whenever she was out in the Mojave, until the small room in Novac was heaped with piles of them that sometimes spilled under the bed and every available surface contained at least one. It wasn’t love that made her do this, well, not romantic love, anyways. It was a sort of bold declaration, that he was her companion, her friend, and she chose to find him all of the things that he delighted in because he helped her. And some part of him, in a warm, slowly-unfurling latitude, cared for her more with each one delivered in confusing ways, ways that were not cold and defensive and fearful of her opinion.
Doors Unlocked and Open (1b/?)
Date: 2012-10-19 07:24 am (UTC)The Courier, really, she didn’t love. Well, she said she didn’t want to. At least not romantic love, supposedly. Yet she’d built up fantastic walls anyway that it only took him moments to tear down, because he liked the look she gave him when he flashed her that stupid smile and they exchanged something witty and scathing, even as he peered in at her soul.
His hands on her, when she was broken by battle, they were always gentle. She told him once that if she’d ever been prone to a lover, which would never happen, may God have mercy on the Mojave, that she would want that lover to have hands like his. He had large hands, but his fingers were long, and swift, and always warm against her flesh when he pieced her back together. He occasionally managed to get the upper hand when she would make some dark comment about how his bedside manner needed work, but he had the sneaking suspicion that all of those times he had thought himself the victor, she had really just been handing it to him.
She could also lie like nobody he had ever seen, though she did so rarely and never to him. He remembered her caressing Benny’s cheek once, telling him how badly she wanted his body. They had slipped upstairs as two, but only she had returned a few hours later, smiling, the muzzle of a .9mm with the likeness of the Virgin Mother herself on the grip, slipped into the belt of her pants like a prize. Even then, he was sure she had simply killed him, not slept with him. She loaned so few intimate parts of herself out to people, even when she helped everyone she could.
At times, he often wondered what it was she wanted from him, even if they did respect one another and feel the call of companionship. The Courier was prone to worrying about little things he didn’t understand, even when he was absent from her side. She would leave him notes sometimes at the Novac hotel room, occasionally in Latin, her spelling atrocious (the Latin actually better than the English, which he never could understand), about stupid things that she expected him to do before she got back. He normally did them, she did so much for him.
When he inevitably told her about the Enclave, about his father, about the Remnants, she had gotten very quiet. They had been skirting the ruins of Boulder City, Rex running on ahead and sniffing at everything as if he owned the world. She had just killed House that morning, and didn’t feel much like talking.
“So, is this a dark secret,” she’d finally asked when he’d become sullen and sad at her insistence that they not talk, “because I always thought you had one.”
The depth with which she knew him, with which he understood her, was instantaneous and rare and soon far better than any sort of romantic love life he’d ever had. And friendships, he wasn’t the type to create many of those on his own, so he had no words for what they were. The Courier, though, she made friends everywhere she went unless it was with the Legion. She entertained the ideal that there was nobody in the universe that didn’t deserve a moment of her time, and most everyone and thing interested her, even the native wildlife. She was enamored with night stalkers and bighorners and the giant rats and rabbits that the Co-op in Westside raised for food, and the first time she had seen a seed she had planted, a slip of maize, rise up toward the sun, she had thought it was a miracle.
Doors Unlocked and Open (1c/?)
Date: 2012-10-19 06:23 pm (UTC)He didn’t know what this was, this thing between a man who liked men and a women who craved nobody. She favored him, she delighted him and though she wasn’t possessive he couldn’t help but want to be close to her. He felt odd about it some nights, when they would occasionally book an actual hotel room and curl up together under the same sheets, but he didn’t want to be alone. He wondered, as he lay spooned against her or felt her trying to shift into a comforting position against his long back, if she wanted that closeness as well.
Time passed, and the hell that was the Mojave changed seasons but either they were imperceptible or else neither noticed. The Joshua trees were in bloom when she finally parlayed with Caesar, far more scarred than when they had started but still infinitely wild and beautiful in an alien way that the Wastes made all who traveled the most barren stretches.
He had watched her climb aboard the ferry bound for Caesar’s camp with Lucullus and Rex and strongly protested when she asked him to stay behind.
“No, it’s better this way,” she’d told him, “I’m only going to see what he wants, and I know how you hate him. I’ll be right back.”
Arcade’s questions about what she would do if attacked fell on mute ears.
“I’m taking Rex,” she had said, “and you know I’m better even with my bare hands than you are with your plasma defender.”
It had stung, the truth, in that moment. He knew she hadn’t meant to hurt him, to break down his pride beneath her boot when so often pride was all a man had. But it still burned, cold and bitter, like the feel of a favored sister’s rejection. But he trusted her, believed that she truly wouldn’t need him and for once doubted that she ever had.
So it came as some small surprise, but a surprise none-the-less, when she didn’t return from the Legion camp and hours turned into a day and a half.
At first he had been frightened and anxious and he’d paced the floors of the Lucky 38 cocktail lounge and considered packing. Because Arcade Gannon thought about running when things became too frightening, and he had a lot to run from by now. Then that fear had turned to confusion, and that confusion to anger. She had said she would be right back, and she always meant it. Was she even okay?
He had donned his metal armor and was headed for the elevator when she met him in the hall.
“Caesar,” she told him, never needing an introduction when they spoke, “Caesar’s my father. He knew, Arcade, he told me things…things that only my father would know and I had no answers for until now. He used to own Rex…it’s, since the beginning it’s been rigged and-”
He couldn’t help thinking what an awful irony it all was. The Mojave’s very own ‘Wasteland Messiah’, fighting against the one man who held all of her secrets but she hated more than anyone. The first man to ever hold her, squalling, as she came into this sad, ruined world. It had been Edward Sallow, and Arcade wondered at the perversity of it all.
He let her have her silence, her moment to mourn for the father she could never have. He wondered then, glancing at her, putting an arm around her shoulders as she sank against his ribs, if having a father that was present but unreachable, or a father that was gone and one could never reach were not one in the same.
“I don’t have time for this,” she finally said, pulling away, “I have that meeting with Cachino about the NCR, and I’m already late. Come on, Gannon, get your suit on we have to go.”
Doors Unlocked and Open (1d/?)
Date: 2012-10-19 10:35 pm (UTC)The Courier came out fifteen minutes later, different, and a woman. Her hair was no longer in its messy tight bun, but falling down to her shoulders in rippling waves like a bronzed sea. The scars on her cheek and temple were absent, covered by liquid foundation and soft powders. She smelled of lavender and ancient roses and the warm, good earth though the dust had been wiped from her knuckles. Her cheeks were rouged and her eyes painted. She was wearing glittering silver heels, and a shy expression of confusion at the feel of something soft upon her skin.
Arcade had seen her as a thousand different things, but never as a woman. He thought she cut a rather nice figure, artistically, and in another place and time perhaps she would have been only ordinary, though not here. He was reminded briefly of Helen of Troy, the woman who sent a thousand men to war by merely living, and he wondered if history didn’t just spiral out endlessly into the darkness, repeating itself like the stuck needle on a gramophone.
“You’re not dressed,” she’d said.
He’d told her that he would be ready soon, he needed a minute. Told her to go on without him and he would catch up. He was good about finding her, after all.
And then she had, leaving Rex to whimper in her wake.
Cachino was a beast, and not in the way that Arcade liked to think about some of his old flames. The Courier helped him to power because she realized that she didn’t want to run Gomorrah, but somebody had to. It was a catch-22 of the poorest sort, and Arcade also knew she remembered Joana every time she looked him in the eye. Eventually, he reasoned, the Courier would be the one to kill him.
He had arrived at Gomorrah a little late but hardly aware of anything sinister. The Omertas man at the door asked him for weapons, but he only had two and they were far too hidden for the thug family’s door mongrel to find. He waved the question away and asked for Cachino, only to be told by the greeter that the Courier never arrived.
But he found her, oh yes, for Mr. Gannon was very good at the games the Strip was wont to play. He’d found her with Cachino in the sub level of the Zoara Club, hidden away in one of its darkened private rooms. Cachino was gloating, his voice a purring whisper, having locked her in one of the gilded cages so frequented by his strippers so she could not ignore his words. He was trying to convince her to cave to some demand, and she was trapped, never mind that normally she was far too clever and skilled to be cornered in such a way. In his left hand he held a leash, and at the end of it struggled a centaur, watching her, waiting, unbelievably subdued and the true reason for her inability to run. Perhaps it had been the dress, or perhaps the trip to Caesar’s, or perhaps she was just too worn out to care, but she looked trapped and terrified, pushed as far back as she could go against the bars from the monsters before her.
Arcade did not question the absurdity of the situation, for he could only see the fright in her eyes. His ripper buried itself in Cachino’s back before the man could even turn around, and his plasma defender blinded the centaur before he sliced off its head in one clean blow and a growl of exertion.
The cuff on his suit had been singed by plasma, his hair was no longer perfect and his pants painted crimson with centaur blood when he threw the Courier the key to open the cage. But her look, and then the way she had run to him across the room, forgetting she was in high heels and that elegant pre-war dress, it was burnt forever into his mind. The Courier had hesitated only a moment before throwing herself, shaking and sniffling softly, into his arms.
He had lost his plasma defender then, and they’d ended up on the floor and she’d completely curled against him, like a small child, her head resting over his heart and her sobbing audible as she hugged him fiercely. There were no words to exchange, and none worth remembering anyhow.
Doors Unlocked and Open (1e/1)
Date: 2012-10-20 12:19 am (UTC)And he kept walking, until they were in the warm confines of the Lucky 38 and she was hunched up with her arms around her knees on one of the love seats in the lounge, realizing what a mess everything was all over again. He had brought her some tea flavored with agave syrup, and also strong black coffee for himself and they sat on the couch and listened to the radio for a while as she composed herself.
Then, she’d scooted closer to him in the dirty dimness, and their sides had touched like nervous youths at their first pre-war prom. She laughed then and called him something crass but playful, and her hands had squeezed one of his much larger ones. When he had reached down to pull her close, she had let him, and his sigh of pleasure at her touch had been far more real than any time he had ever touched a lover.
That feeling, in the end, was what he had really wanted all of his life from this dried up husk of their world. Lovers, as he had told her, made poor confidants. But he could always confide in her and she never loved anybody in such a way, only lent herself to the winds and asked them to clothe and shelter her, as if this was the only romance she would ever care to know.
He remembered her whispered ‘thank you’, and the warmth of her tears on his lapel. And when the morning sun rose, he half expected her to be gone, only to find her nestled innocently against him as if nothing had happened to frighten her there. Her dress had been rumpled, and his suit had been a mess, but it felt so perfect in the first rays of warmth through the grimy windows that he had merely remained, watching her breathe until her eyes had opened and she had smiled.
Their trek for the fate of the bear and the bull continued, and he no longer questioned these feelings. Together, they were like nothing, were nothing, the Mojave had ever seen.
And in truth, it no longer mattered. Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero, he reasoned. There was little meaning in the how and the why, the distance or the mission. He simply wished it would never end.
Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero- Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.
(Authoranon says: Well, I tried to think of something original for her to be saved from (as opposed to the overused 'rape' theme I seem to pull out of my hat wayyy too often), hope if wasn't too outlandish for you. I remember the first time my LW saw a centaur...the result wasn't good for anybody involved, so I hope the sentiment is understandable. Captcha says 'remnant save'...my God captcha, you are too good at this!)
Re: Doors Unlocked and Open (1e/1)
Date: 2012-10-20 12:32 am (UTC)Re: Doors Unlocked and Open (1e/1)
Date: 2012-10-21 04:27 pm (UTC)Re: Doors Unlocked and Open (1e/1)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:23 pm (UTC)Re: Doors Unlocked and Open (1e/1)
Date: 2012-10-21 04:39 pm (UTC)OP is so frickin' late.
Date: 2012-11-19 12:18 am (UTC)This was fucking beautiful, anon. Your style is beautiful, the originality of the rescue was beautiful, and YOU are beautiful.
"That feeling, in the end, was what he had really wanted all of his life from this dried up husk of their world. Lovers, as he had told her, made poor confidants. But he could always confide in her and she never loved anybody in such a way, only lent herself to the winds and asked them to clothe and shelter her, as if this was the only romance she would ever care to know."
That line right there sums up exactly the relationship I envision between Arcade and my Courier. Also, it made me legitimately weep. So gorgeous.
I love you so much right now! Thank you for sharing your wonderful writing.
Re: OP is so frickin' late.
Date: 2013-01-13 08:35 am (UTC)Re: Doors Unlocked and Open (1e/1)
Date: 2013-10-16 04:20 pm (UTC)Re: Doors Unlocked and Open (1e/1)
Date: 2014-01-17 02:42 pm (UTC)Re: Doors Unlocked and Open (1e/1)
Date: 2016-09-15 04:00 pm (UTC)And the rescue was very original and relatable (i never stop getting scared when I see those things), definitely a pleasant surprise. And that ending. Oh gosh, my heart.
Thank you very very much, A!A <3