Right when he can't afford any more trouble, Cooper Howard dives into it head first.
Or, an ill-advised affair as the world goes to Hell.
Pre-War! Cooper Howard x Reader
General tags: Adultery, younger woman/older man, smut and depictions of sex, drinking, smoking, canon-typical discussions of war, angst, suspicion and paranoia, "era"-typical Hollywood behavior.
Each chapter will have more specific tags listed, list here will be updated as chapters are posted.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Introduction | Ao3
Chapter One | Ao3
Chapter Two | Ao3 *
Chapter Three | Ao3 *
Chapter Four | Ao3 *
Chapter Five | Ao3
Chapter Six | Ao3 *
*Smut or sexual content. Other chapters may allude to sex, but only marked chapters feature depictions. Will always be tagged at the beginning of every chapter.
how would the Ghoul react to Thaddeus’s desperate attempt to flirt with the reader. (I feel like Thaddeus doesn’t get enough love in my opinion lol)
anon I loved this idea I literally stopped working on everything else to write this. Also Thaddeus' actor will randomly view my Instagram story every once in a while so this one's almost personal.
So I feel like it would be similar to how he treats Thaddeus in the show, just ignoring him except for side eye. I think if he was going to say anything, it’d be to you after the fact. And don’t expect any real communication; you’re getting a snide comment, or he’s going to make a jab at the poor guy’s expense. // I ended up writing this with the idea that the reader kind of let Thaddeus flirt but kind of shared in that silent teasing with the Ghoul. This also got away from me in that I started vomiting plot into it.
word count: 2.2k
“So, where’s a girl like you from?”
His voice lacked any bravado, sounding far more unsure than suave. You looked up from the metal trunk, casting a glance at his friend — who was looking at a suit of armor with the Ghoul — leaving you alone with the young man with the concerning appearance.
“Bullhead,” you answered, grabbing ammo and restocking your bandolier. “Just east of the River.”
“Oh wow,” he nodded along. “You know, I’ve never met anyone from Arizona.” You hummed passively, letting the lid of the trunk fall shut once you were done emptying it. “Is every gal from Bullhead as pretty as you are?” You sighed, turning to look at him.
“Well, they’re mostly slaves, so...” You said with a sardonic smile, testing the weight of a new rifle on your back before walking past him. You heard him stammer as you went over to rejoin your companion, who had found an ammo box of his own.
“You uh—“ he went on, following your path. “You look good for uhm—for having gone through…that.”
“I didn’t,” you said, setting your bag down on a workbench near the other two. The man’s friend, Max—you’d overheard—looked up as you began emptying your bag.
“Well, then that’s really great! You know stuff like…stuff like that-that’s just...” He scoffed. “You know it’s just really shitty.”
“Thanks,” you said with a raised brow, then returned your attention to the handgun you’d pulled from your bag.
“What’s shitty?” Max asked, looking between the two of you and throwing his friend a silent ‘what are you doing?’
“Slavery,” he said, furrowing his brow in sympathy. “Did you know that’s what’s happening in Arizona? I mean, gosh, we should be doing something about that.” His gaze found you again, angling his head to see your face, hoping you’d be impressed with the gumption.
“Arizona?” Max repeated, now both their eyes were on you. “That’s all Legion territory.”
“Yep,” you confirmed, keeping your focus on the weapon.
“You got out?”
“Yep.”
“I mean, a girl like you, how could they keep you?” The other chimed in again. “They took one look at you and said ‘well you just go wherever you want, sexy lady’.”
You turned your head slowly, your brow raised again as you looked at him. “I was seven.”
“Right,” he nodded, finding somewhere else to look. “Probably uh…probably didn’t say that then.”
“What’s your name?” You asked, holstering the newly modded gun on your hip.
“It’s uh, it’s Thaddeus,” he answered, almost reluctantly. Before you could say anything, you heard a shifting behind you.
“Go find something to shoot with, kid.” The Ghoul spoke, short and clipped. Thaddeus nodded, scurrying off. You cast a glance over your shoulder, speaking without words to your companion. You smiled, a barely there, teasing smirk before pulling your bag over your shoulder.
Back on the road, it was Max who had matched your pace to talk to you first. “How’s a seven-year-old escape the Legion?” He asked, genuinely curious. You let out a long breath through your nose, keeping your eyes on the remains of the highway.
“It was 2281,” you said. He shrugged, and you let him sit in the silence for a moment before he eventually caught on.
“That was-“
“Yeah,” you nodded. “It was a lot of back and forth, really. That week, Caesar was on the short end of the rope. Sent more Legionnaires across the Colorado, left Bullhead a little less…patrolled. One night, my mom snuck us down to the river, stole a dinghy, and we left. We landed in Nevada, outskirts of Legion territory. But there was an NCR camp close enough we could see the flag.”
“You made it?”
“I made it,” you said, working your jaw for a pause. “During the Battle, the Legion didn’t have time for all their peacocking. No crucifixions or bizarre torture. If you did something wrong, they just shot you.“ You pulled your water out from your bag, taking a long drink as you walked. “Nearly got me, too. A trooper caught it instead.”
Max nodded along, his wide eyes giving you an empathetic look even as you kept your gaze straight. “I lost my parents too,” he said. “Shady Sands.”
“Jesus,” you muttered, finally turning to him. “Good thing it’s not a competition.” You smiled as you capped your water, returning the canteen. “How’s someone survive that? We settled on the other side of the old state line and we had to evacuate to avoid any radiation.”
“My parents put me in the icebox,” he said. You chuckled, looking forward again.
“Our house had this old fruit cellar,” you heard after an awkward jog to join your pace. “Yeah, my mom would put us in there if we didn’t make enough food. My brothers were always kind of scared, but,” Thaddeus clicked his tongue with a nonchalant shrug. “Wasn’t really much to me though, y’know?”
“Yeah,” you agreed with a sigh, fixing your gaze on the Ghoul who now seemed to be almost unsteady on his feet. Thaddeus kept prattling on about how that same bravery probably would’ve made him a good Knight, but you tuned him out.
“I mean it was kind of crappy to put the dog in that cooler, but—“
“Give us a second,” you interrupted, jogging forward after watching the Ghoul off his usual stride.
“You done boostin’ troop morale?” He asked, not sparing you a glance as you fell into his pace. His voice sounded more tired than its usual rasp.
“Are you out?” You asked, ignoring the comment as you began to rifle through your bag.
“No,” he snipped.
“Then what’s up with you?”
“I’ve been alive for two hundred years, sweetheart. Some days a fella’s just a little sore,” He said. You huffed, narrowing your eyes at him.
“Don’t give me that shit, Cowboy,” you hissed back. “Stop being a pain in the ass and tell me what you need.”
“I need you to quit playin’ nurse,” he clipped.
“The Strip’s got more deathclaws than it’s got poker chips right now,” you said, stopping in your tracks. You grabbed him by the sleeve of his duster, making him stop too. “I don’t know what you got yourself into after we separated, but you’re messed up, and going in there tired as a racehorse won’t do anyone any favors. Stop being a fucking tool and let me help you.”
He jerked his arm out of your hold, turning to glare down at you. You matched his stare, the two of you at a standstill until Thaddeus and Max were about a yard behind you.
“Fine,” he growled, stepping back. He looked back towards the two men, jerking his head in a silent keep going. The two of you walked until you found the two-walled remains of an old house.
“Keep going straight,” you told Max. “We’ll catch up in a minute.” You and the Ghoul ducked behind what bricks were left of one of the walls. He sat down on the few planks that still made up the front staircase. He pulled off the bandolier and saddle bag, letting you see the state of his clothing. His vest was buttoned on the top and the bottom, but the middle was torn, as was the blue shirt underneath. The middle of his abdomen was charred and not yet healed; around it, newly scarred skin twisted and snarled toward a point in the center. You got closer, straddling the edge of his lap before gingerly reaching out to touch the fabric of his shirt, stained darker with now-dried blood.
“Jesus Cowboy,” you muttered, running a finger along the jagged edge of the tear. “You catch the business end of a Fat Man?”
“Not quite,” he muttered, wincing as your hand moved to graze over the healing wound, the skin of which was hot to the touch.
“Whatever happened,” you said, stilling your hand on his side. “Looks like you’re almost healed.”
“Looks can be deceivin’,” he said. You hummed, shrugging your bag off your shoulder and setting it on his legs between your bodies.
“StimPak, then?” You asked. He nodded, watching as you pulled a smaller bag of different chems and medications out. “I need to get more when we get to Vegas.”
“Last one?”
You hummed, pulling the cap of the syringe.
“Shouldn’t go wastin’ it on me, then.” He said, but didn’t stop you as you pressed the needle into his abdomen.
“I’m a little more careful than you are.” You smiled back, but kept your focus on the syringe as the medication auto-injected. He hissed, his jaw clenched tight as he leaned his head back. When the pressure gauge clicked empty, you withdrew it, tossing it haphazardly behind you. He let out a long breath, one gloved hand finding your hip to rest on. You put your own back against the now healed skin, frowning to feel it still felt feverishly hot. “Any better?” He nodded, closing his eyes for a heavy moment.
“Got anythin’ else in that bag of yours?” He asked. You shook your head with a soft smile.
“So needy,” you tsked playfully, grabbing an inhaler and a vial of the yellow, viscous chem. “You’re still hot,” you noted, handing him the inhaler.
“I suppose there’s somethin’ for everyone.” He said, straightening up before taking a deep inhale of the medication.
You rolled your eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“Uranium,” he said, giving the inhaler back. You instinctively pulled your hand away. He chuckled, a small and almost undetectable noise at your reaction. “Hope you took your Rad-X today, sweetheart.”
“Maybe I should take another,” you hummed archly, putting the medications back in your bag. You shifted your attention to the torn leather of his vest with a small frown. “I can try to fix this when we get settled.” His other hand reached up, holding your chin and guiding your gaze back to him.
“Don’t think we are,” he said. “Might be it.”
You nodded, fidgeting absentmindedly with the frayed fabric. “He knew, then?” He nodded. “You think he’s telling the truth?”
“Stakes were pretty high. Didn’t have a reason to lie.” He said.
“How’d she take it?” You asked.
“You’re lookin’ at it.”
You sucked your teeth, raising your brow. “I told you,” you hummed.
“Get it out of your system.”
You gave him a quick smile, raising your head a hair out of his hand, which mirrored the other on your hip. “You think they’ll take it okay?” You asked in earnest. He nodded after a thoughtful moment.
“She will,” he said eventually. “She’s the kind of kid who’d smile at the boogeyman.” Your smile turned warm.
“What’s her name?” You asked, the question a proverbial toe in the water.
“Janey,” he answered softly. You nodded.
“It’s pretty,” you said, your hand stilling on the fabric as you silently stammered. “What’s yours?” You watched his face, and it looked for a moment as if you might get an answer, but you wouldn’t get the chance to hear it.
“So we’ve been going straight and-“ You heard the awkward pitch of Thaddeus’ voice as he rounded the corner. You leaned back on instinct, and the Ghoul moved one hand from your hip. “Oh…sorry.” He blurted out, and you looked over your shoulder.
“Sorry,” you sighed. “We’ll catch up here in a second.”
“Yeah, no, that’s fine there’s just like this kind of fork in the road…” Thaddeus said, running a thumb along one suspender. You heard the Ghoul let out a graveled sigh of his own. “…and your dog keeps wanting to go the wrong direction, and we think she’s just confused because you’re back here.”
“Your dog’s confused,” you said, turning back to the Ghoul with a small smile. He rolled his eyes.
“Your dog’s incessant,” he shot back under his breath. You rolled your eyes, standing up and allowing him to follow suit. You let Thaddeus gather himself, then the two of you followed him back towards the highway.
“What’re you going to do?” He asked, his voice lower so as not to gather the attention of the other men.
“Don’t know yet,” you shrugged. “Maybe settle in Freeside for a while.”
“Ain’t what it used to be,” he said. “Might be smarter to leave Vegas altogether.”
“Don’t really know where else I’d go.” You admitted. “Gotten so used to traveling I haven’t thought much about where else I’d go. Maybe I’ll keep at it, things are feeling uneasy again. Only a matter of time before they’re at it with each other again.” He hummed, looking forward to the two men who seemed to be trying to keep their own voices down.
“Don’t stray too far,” he said eventually. “Just in case.” You nodded, a small smile wanting to pull at your lips.
The Ghoul eventually made his way back to the front of the small campaign, and you were content to keep your own pace a few feet following him, Max and Thaddeus behind you. Eventually, you noticed the taller of the two next to you in your peripheral.
“So you uh…you like ghouls?” He asked. You turned to look at him with a raised brow, but said nothing. “I’m a ghoul. Ghoul in progress, really.” You gave him a skeptical once-over, then fixed your eyes straight ahead again. “So right now is great because I’m a human with all the ghoul benefits. Or the other way around, whichever works best for you, really.”
You saw the Ghoul’s head turn slowly as Thaddeus went on, the young man seemingly oblivious to the movement as your eyes met with a shared small smirk.
Some quick little Boone/Courier hcs and musings bc he's been on my mind these last few days. He's like a friend I worry about
I love the idea of a fem Courier reminding Boone too much of Carla, which is easy to work with because we never have any in-game appearance of her.
Even if there weren’t physical similarities between you and her, I think that a Courier who acted like Carla would be an even harder punch to the gut for him. Someone confident and talkative, self-assured and takes up their own space because they know it’s theirs.
I think for the first while he’s with you, he’d have a hard time looking at you. If nothing more than because of the scar on your temple. When you’d come through Novac, you weren’t quite healed all the way, and the still-angry blemish and few remaining stitches fucked with his head. If it wasn’t a reminder of the bullet he’d sent, it was a whisper of a ‘what if’?
He kept his distance. He keeps his distance with everyone, but he finds himself falling an extra pace behind when in your company. For a while you kept trying to push even just casual conversation, but threw in the towel not long after. Part of him felt bad, but he knew it was better that way. The closer people got to him, the worse it would wind up for them.
Settling in for the night is when you’d get the most antsy. Maybe there was just something about the dark that made you a little more eager to fill the silence. To Boone, it was noise pollution. Covering up any sound that could alert him to whatever the next thing was trying to kill you.
“Do you ever sleep?” You asked once, trying to find a comfortable position on a scrap of cardboard. He didn’t answer, cleaning his rifle while his ears picked up the faintest sound of footfall. Far away where they wouldn’t see you, but still too close for comfort. You must have been in a sour mood, refusing to take his silence this time. “It wouldn’t kill you to talk, y’know?” “Sh,” he hushed. He got what he wanted for a tense moment, then: “Did you just shush me?” He gave you a look over his shoulder, one you couldn’t make out through his glasses, before reassembling the rifle and getting up. “Where are you going?” You asked, sitting up. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, slinging the gun over his back and leaving you in the ramshackle of the old gas station. He set up atop the garage for the night, keeping an eye out for anyone or anything with the smallest bit of ill intent.
He would spend that night thinking of her, how quick she would be to call him out on his mood or his brooding, especially after they found out. “Only one of us has an excuse to be hormonal,” she’d tell him. He tried not to wonder what they would’ve been like. Before everything, he had wanted a daughter, imagined her to be a little carbon copy of Carla. A demanding but darling little thing, his little girl he would want to give the world to, even if there wasn’t much of the world left.
The next morning he’s back down, ready before you’re even awake, watching you almost impatiently as you get yourself put back together.
“You forgot this,” he said. You turned on your heel, taking the small pouch from him with a pursed lip. “Careful,” you said, shoving it into your bag. “Don’t want to use up all your words this early.”
He didn’t have it in him to go back and forth with you, not when you could sound so much like her.
He’ll sometimes wonder if he’s making things up, imagining parallels that aren’t quite there. There’s plenty of differences; you were assuredly your own person, but maybe grief had made him so desperate he was seeing ghosts in the fog.
He worries about you. He’ll never say it aloud, likely doesn’t even admit it to himself. But until he knows that the Legion’s been brought to its knees, his days hinge on your safety. He tells himself it’s because he owes you for what you did for him in Novac, and that eliminating the Legion — for whatever reason — has a lot to do with you. Maybe at first it was like that: he’ll watch your back, help you out when you needed to reload. But now he finds himself reaching for his rifle even at the rustling of a tumbleweed.
Things only complicate when you get to Vegas. Once you got past the gates, even you couldn’t hide your amazement behind a wary sneer. For how well you handled the Mojave, you allowed yourself the spoils of thriving in Vegas when time allowed, especially once you got settled into the Lucky 38.
You’d given him the rundown as you brought him up to the suite. “So, what’re you going to do?” He asked, giving the room a skeptical look. Carla, just like everyone else in the city, always wondered what was behind the doors of the 38, he wished he could tell her.
You dropped your bag onto the bed, turning to him. “I’m going to take the longest, hottest fucking shower anyone’s ever had,” you grinned.
“No, about—“ he cut himself off, knowing you knew what he meant. Then before he realized what you were doing, you were stripping down to your socks. Boone turned like he’d been ordered to in a march, showing you his back and some privacy that you clearly hadn’t planned to take for yourself.
“Jesus, are you twelve?” You teased, tossing your clothes onto the mattress, your good mood translating into the jab.
“It’s just some respect, Six,” he muttered, his eyes fixed on the wall in front of him as if willing it to either turn into a mirror or swallow him whole.
“Always so rigid. We’ve been on the road for how long?” You tsked, throwing the rest of your garb on the bed. “I’ll save you some hot water, maybe it’ll loosen you up.” The playfulness in your tone was gone, replaced by that same disappointed lilt you always had when he shut you out. He felt bad pushing you away. For as blasé you tried to be bout it, he knew it had to bruise to some degree. But he’d made it his job to protect you, keeping you at arm's length was the safest thing he could do for you.
You had found some nicer clothes in one of the suite’s wardrobes, and decided you wanted to spend a night out in the city. He told you that was a waste of time and money, but you waved him off. Stepping into the elevator, he got in behind you. You turned, using your arm to block the door from closing. “You’re coming?” He nodded. “Do you have a new personality in there somewhere, or are you going to ruin my night?” You cringed, hearing the words only as they came out. The elevator hit your arm before sliding back. “Look, just…” You sighed, trying to mush together a nicer-sounding plea for him to leave you be. “If you think you’ll be able to relax, then by all means,” you gestured with your head to the elevator cab. “But maybe it’ll be better if you stay here. Keep an eye out, watch our stuff y’know?”
Maybe it’s that he couldn’t relax. More likely, he never let himself relax. Denying himself simple ease was the smallest penance he had to pay. Either way, both of you knew that while unwinding may be part of your agenda tonight, it wasn’t even approaching his radar.
He wasn’t sure when you came back, having been able to catch some sleep in one of the armchairs in the suite. Neither of you exchanged a greeting as you kicked off your shoes. You seemed tired or drunk, maybe a little of both.
“You good?” He asked as you stood by the bed. You set your handgun on the nightstand, and it was your turn not to answer, your body hitting the mattress with a huff. After a moment, he got up, grabbing the gun from the nightstand to examine it, one bullet missing from the chamber. “What happened?” He didn’t need to know, and he knew his own elusiveness left him entitled to nothing. “Was this Benny?”
“No,I didn’t shoot him,” you shook your head against the pillow. “That Legion guy — the one from Nipton — found me outside the casino when I was done.” Boone was silent for a moment, the idea of a Legionnaire managing to slip past him undetected and getting to you making his skin lurch.
“He try something?” He asked.
“Nah,” you answered, shaking your head. “Told me I’ve got a clean slate with the Legion, that the mighty Cae-sar requests an audience,” you said.
“And?” He asked, idly spinning the chamber.
“And,” you sat up, leaning against the headboard to meet his gaze. “I thought about that paper I found in the motel office. The one I showed you,” you shrugged. “And I shot him,” you reached up, pressing a finger against his forehead. Boone went stiff at the touch, unsure whether to recoil or to move closer. “Right between the eyes.” You finished, dropping your arm onto your lap. Boone reached into a pocket, grabbing a .44 and filling the empty chamber before setting it back down on the desk. He moved to the foot of the bed, looking at the duvet as if he might sit down. He didn’t.
“Did it hurt?” He asked. You gave him a look, lulling your head against the headboard behind you.
“I don’t know, Boone, you’ll have to ask him. Don’t think you’ll get an answer, though.”
“No,” he shook his head, raising a finger to his temple, mirroring the scars on your own.
“You’re asking me if getting shot twice in the head hurt?” You scoffed. His jaw worked, and he found somewhere else in the room to look. “Honestly, I don’t remember.” You went on with a sigh. “I heard it, then everything went black, then I heard another one. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in some Doctor’s house, he’s telling me a robot dug me out of a grave.”
He nodded, turning back to you as you spoke. “That’s good.”
I also got this req that's going to be a longer form work that I've been working on and am excited for (I probably haven't written for Hancock since I was a teenager) and just wanted to drop a little preview here while I keep at it. Also yeah I write Hancock a little more like his concept art bc it's near and dear to me.
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The plain, symmetrical walls were all you’d ever known. All you needed to know, you were told. Life outside was unworthy, unpredictable, a waste of the life that was out there. Everything you could ever need — that anyone could ever need — was sealed inside sanitary, pristine walls of the Institute.
Work varied, but day-to-day life was always routinized. You wake up in a bed with sheets that were never creased and always fitted, slip into a span-new green and white lab coat, then find your way to the commissary. The food was fine, predetermined ratios for caloric needs. But it was fresh, or as fresh as food could come these days. You never had to savage for it, to rip it out of the hands of another, or any other campfire tails others would tell you about the surface; not that they had been up there to experience it anyway.
As far as the actual work did, it wasn’t as heavy hitting as some of your colleagues in BioScience, but you never complained. You’d rather spend all day breeding flowers and batching medications than cleaning the gorilla cage. Though, there were some instances, few and far between, that your work became interesting.
It was seldom that anyone other than a Synth went to the surface, let alone came back limping in bloodstained clothes. And as callous as it sounds, you were always excited to see it. You’d be pulled from your desk, and sat in front of the injured man as the Synth was carted off to Robotics. Every wounded stitched, broken bone set and StimPak administered was a glimpse into a world you’d only heard urban legends about. A world that was broken, undeserving and desolate.
You’d drop the needle into a sharps bin, dispose of bloodied gauze and made you way back to that burnished cubicle, always wondering what was so needed in a forgotten world that people would risk injury to try and find.
Then, you were given the opportunity to see for yourself. Brevity marked the details, the only thing you would need to know was how to fix a wound and which medications worked the best, and you’d gotten the reputation for being the best in your division at it. Which only made you more curious as to why they’d be willing to send you out when they had a plethora of synths capable of doing your job. You decided you weren’t going to waste too much energy dwelling on it, instead content to see something new.
The Molecular Ray gave you a migraine, that was the first sensitivity the surface granted you. Then, it was awe; jagged edges of decayed buildings and the remains of a once arboraceous landscape. The polished metallics of the Institute walls looked like the painted face of a clown compared to the rusted rebar and crumbling brick facades that marked your path. A clipped tone told you to keep up, and you found your pace between the coursers and SRB officer.
You’d spent the morning in their shadows, observing the man observing the Synths; one tracked the path and the other patrolled for any potential disturbances. You had tried to ask your questions, everything about this mission seemed so routine. The only information you managed to pull was that they were tracking down a group of escaped synths, that they were likely en route to a group known for “taking things that aren’t theirs”. You didn’t pry, but your eyes kept wandering, taking every possible step further from the group to the world around you that had been sold as nothing. With every ruined building and scurrying creature you came across, you found it to be everything but.
The lead courser had beckoned the officer over with a nod of his helmet, raising a gloved hand. The man didn’t spare you a glance as he made his way over, leaving you a good measure behind the rest of the group. You watched them for a moment, observing the interaction. Their voices were undetectable at the distance, your ears filled instead with pregnant static of the wasteland around you.
You looked up, your eyes tracing notched corpse of an old tree into the skyline. You squinted, using a hand to block out some of the sun. That’s when you felt it — not that it hasn’t been there since you first came up — but now you were truly feeling it, appreciating it. The warmth of the sun on your skin, how the gentle heat held your face like a mother cradling her child’s cheek.
You looked back to the rest of the group; they may have been finishing up their discussion, changing their course, readjusting their plan. You could barely hear, and what you could hear you haven’t bothered to remember. You took a tentative step back, making sure the movement wouldn’t get their attention. Then another, and again and again until you’d turned around and your cautious stepping had bloomed into a run.
You’d heard the officer first, shouting in your direction as if scolding a dog for getting off its leash. Then there was gunshots, fire from the pistols and rifles landing around you. Eventually, one cut through your arm, tearing through muscle but avoiding bone with a gracefulness you could only thank luck for. Your flee didn’t waver at the first hit, but more followed in rapid succession.
The first one went through your shoulder, and you made the mistake of looking down just as the bullet surged out above your chest, shattering your collarbone it’s it wake. Your stride faltered, your hand flying to the exit wound as you clenched your teeth, swallowing a scream. Your pursuers didn’t grant you a moment for reaction, another shot echoed through the air, traveling through your thigh before finding its home in the broken ground in front of you.
You buckled, falling to the ground with a cry you couldn’t conceal. Using your good arm and unwounded leg, you tried to push yourself off the path, to maybe find some semblance of shelter among dry bushes and dead flora. But they were faster, the sound of their footfall on the broken pavement was louder than any of the shots that had been fired into your body.
A black boot landed in your peripheral, and a hand pulled you up by the strap of your bag, wrestling it over your shoulder with no consideration for the crying wound.
“It’s soiled,” said one courser, and you craned your neck to see him present the bags contents to the officer.
“Leave it,” he ordered, and the synth dropped the bag next to you, glass vials of medication crunching as they hit the ground next to you. The bag, once a crisp white, was now blotted red.
The voices above you went fuzzy, but your focus remained on the bag. You could’ve been sick, if you’d had the energy left in your body to do so. The sheer amount of blood — your blood — on the bag was a crimson painted tell of your state. Your mind, even hazy, tried to consider how much blood you’ve lost, how to best treat your injuries assuming the medication in the bag was ruined. Maybe, just maybe, you’d get through this.
Then, you heard the final gunshot. The sound rattled your brain, but it was nothing compared to the pain that followed. You couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t feel anything but white hot pain. Black dots began to flood your vision, like thousand of ants crawling on your eye. Your head fell onto the broken ground. The last thing you saw before the rest of your sight failed you, was three sets of boots getting smaller and smaller.
Your throat was raw when you woke up, sore from screaming you couldn’t remember doing. It was dark, and until you were able to focus on what little light the moon provided, you were sure that you’d been blinded by your injury. Your hearing returned not long after, just in time for you to hear scuttling and the wet tearing of flesh. You screamed again, looking down to your leg.
The size had you assume it was a coyote, maybe a wolf, until an antennae brushed your face. You whimpered jerking your head away, but it only encouraged the creature to take another bite, ripping meat from your thigh. Another scream, and you instinctively tried to beat the thing off of you. It matched your cry with a screech of its own, lurching forward on your body. Using the uninjured arm, you beat the giant insect off of you. Riding whatever adrenaline you had left in your body, you turned over, pulling yourself up onto your knees.
You raised closed fist above you, bringing it down onto the creature. Repeating the motion until it’s head split and yellow gunk splattered all over you. You let yourself collapse again, each heaving breath a labored groan as your body finished waking up to the pain that seared at every fiber of your being.
Your head lolled the side, allowing that stained bag to come back into focus — a blood sullied angel in your time of need. A pained howl made its way through clenched teeth as you forced your body up again. It was only when you’d gotten up, holding yourself on one folded knee, that you realized you could only see out of one eye. You raised a hand to your head, trying to map out the damage done. Your eye was still intact, you thanked whatever God was still left out here for that much, but it must have done enough damage to wreck the nerves. Your touch ghosted over to the side of your head, the pads of your fingers ghosting over the bullet’s trail through skin and bone. It almost made you gag. It was one thing to treat such injuries on another, but the thought of your body being in this state was nauseating.
You leaned over, grabbing the bag. Even the small movement felt like pulling your body in impossible directions. Undoing the fasteners, you dug a desperate hand in, pushing through blood soaked gauze and glass vials until you pulled out a Stimpak. You closed your legs, letting out a haggard breath as the pain in your shoulder and chest registered, then you looked down the mangled remains of your thigh. With a steadying exhale, you decided that the latter would be the injection point.
Your head met your arm half way, and you took the strap of the bag between your teeth. You pushed the medication into your skin, biting down on the cloth to muffle the scream that crawled desperately from your throat as you waited for the painkillers to take effect. Once the syringe was empty, you pulled it out of your leg and tossed it haphazardly onto the broken asphalt, watching as the torn and tattered flesh of your thigh began to knit itself back together.
The painkillers hadn’t been enough, or at least hadn’t worked as fast as you needed them to. The ants began their swarm on your sight again, your head feeling light. You collapsed onto your back, staring aimlessly at the sky as broken bones mended and torn skin worked itself whole again.
Hunger, not pain, had woken you the second time, your eyes blinking open slowly to see the sun rose with long lost intention into the sky. You were content to just lay there, basking in its indifference and relishing the relief your body felt. You felt the warmth on your face again, and if for a moment, you were okay for nearly bleeding out on some abandoned street, just to be somewhere new.
——————
You’d found Goodneighbor on your second day of being out. You’d made your way to other groups of settlers, people making an effort of normalcy in a world you found to be anything but. Though, the minute they saw your blood stained clothing, the cycling of a rifle sent you on your way. The blood wasn’t the problem of course. You’d discovered that during your first honest attempt of explanation when the oily grey barrel of a shotgun landed against the Institute seal on the breast of your coat .
Your arrival in the settlement had gone pretty much the same. Hands up, pleading to a gun for a few days shelter, or for someone to just tell you even an inking about the world you found yourself in. You were walking backwards, ready to throw in the towel of desperation, when a gravelly voice of reason entered the proverbial ring their town square had become.
“Now, that doesn’t look very welcoming does it, Mr. Field?”
You snapped around, eager to either thank your knight in shining armour, only to be greeted by anything but. His skin was charred from radiation, textbook photos of ARS looking back at you with foggy blue eyes. Though, however sick you may have assumed him to be, he carried himself with the relaxed swagger of a man with more vivacity than the earth still spinning beneath his boots.
He stopped a few feet away from you, a curious but respectful distance. The thin blond strands that were left of his hair hid their determination to hold on under a tricorne hat. The headpiece the finishing touch on an ensemble pulled from an oil portrait that predates the ruins of the nation you stood on.
“Well don’t you look like a Christmas Day massacre, all red and green?”He said, the cigarette bouncing in mouth as he took in your appearance in turn. The stream of smoke whisked out of his nasal cavity, swirling around your head before scattering off into the setting sun.
“Those are bad for you, you know.” You offered meekly. A smile pulled at his burnt face, and then a laugh; a soft-as-rocks sound that breathed back into the life that had been slowly siphoned out of you during your time in the wastes.
may I please request a cooper howard (ghoul) x reader, cooper is always checking the reader out when she’s not looking and lucy notices and finally calls him out on it. please
Okay so I have an issue where I start writing something and then it gets away from it and then I'm headed towards 10k words for a short form request so I stopped and made myself just do it like this.
I am a firm believer that the Ghoul believes he's the most nonchalant mf in the entire Wasteland, and if he gets called out on something he's just going to act like a kid whose been put in time out. Will he stop? No, but he's going to A.) deny and then B.) be in a bad mood for 1-2 business days.
a/n: also sorry I've been MIA I had surgery and just started replaying NV which has given me Benny fever so look out for that. Also! I realized 3/4 through this that I forgot about that damn dog so pretend she's there.
The Ghoul had been alive for centuries. Lucy had taken up very little of that time. But the more the girl filled every silence with chatter and drivel for the sake of her own comfort, he began to wonder if there was ever a time he walked with only the company of silence. Part of him was annoyed with her, it was hard not to be, but he understood; it’s how she was raised. Didn’t mean he had to like it.
They’d only just crossed the border when they found you — straddling a suit of Power Armor, the Knight and its squire dead on either side of you with their blood muddying the sand.
Lucy had surged forward. To her, the suit meant either her father or that puppy-eyed knight they’d left in Griffith. He let her, she had to learn eventually. His pace stayed steady behind her, but his hand found the pistol at his hip.
As you tore apart the suit for scraps, Lucy had tried convincing you that stealing was wrong, but you ignored her. She lowered her tranq gun to your head, and with an unimpressed look, you fired a warning shot to back her off. By then, the Ghoul had appeared in your peripheral. You’d sized him up as a bigger threat, holstering your gun and going back to your business.
Lucy gave him a look, a silent plea for his intervention, but he ignored her.
“We’re looking for a man,” she blurted just as Cooper walked next to you. You sighed, looking up at her. “He was wearing one of those. Have you seen him?”
You turned your head, meeting eyes with the Ghoul first before blinking slowly back to the girl. “These two,” you gestured with a handful of scrap, “Were talking about some “stolen suit. Headed north.” You shoved the metal and wires into your bag before tearing at another bunch.
Cooper had given Lucy a stern look and a quick jerk of his head, a silent get moving, then he gave you a small tip of his hat before he turned.
A day out from Nipton, you had managed to get tangled up with a group of Kahns. It looked like you were handling yourself, but not for long. For his part, Cooper was glad for the distraction, made it easier to get through. Little Miss Golden Rule had other ideas.
“Keep walkin',” he warned, watching as she grabbed her rifle from her back. She didn’t listen, firing a wide shot that didn’t do anything but get attention. He cursed, pushing her down by her shoulder as he grabbed his own rifle. “Get useful or get out of the fuckin’ way,” he growled, shooting at the two that had turned their sights onto them.
They were down before they’d even crossed the old highway. You weren’t sure who was firing, but you were thankful. Two fewer bodies meant an easier fight for you. You emptied the rest of your chamber into the man in front of you before running back to put space between you and the last machete-wielding Kahn while you reloaded. The man was faster, the blade slashing across your arm before you could slam the chamber back in. You cursed, your arm twitching and causing you to weapon into the dirt. You decided the gun was a loss, reaching to unsheath a knife. However, before you could charge forward, a bullet tore through the man’s head.
“I had it,” you glared as the body crumpled, revealing the Ghoul standing on the other side.
“Didn’t look like it,” he drawled as Lucy dug out water and gauze from her bag. You snatched them, keeping your eyes on him.
“Didn’t ask,” you shot back, wrapping the gauze tight around your arm.
“We’re heading towards Vegas too,” Lucy tried. “Maybe we—“
“I didn’t say I’m going to Vegas,” you interrupted, chugging from her water before capping it and thrusting it back into her hands. You picked up your gun and the spilled bullets before heading back towards the road.
“What are you doing?” You asked as Lucy fell in a few paces behind you.
“Me and my…companion here are going to Vegas,” she said. “You don’t own the road.”
You let out a restrained breath, a steely glare shifting from her to the Ghoul behind her. “Walk quieter,” you clipped before turning on your heels.
You outpaced them the next day, though that didn’t save your ears from overhearing all of the girls’ chatter. That night, you set up camp outside an old gas station. It wasn’t long until they set up on the other side of the pumps.
“No, fuck off!” You snapped, gun drawn. “Find somewhere else to squat!”
Lucy stepped back, hands up. Cooper, however, had seen the outburst coming. He drew his own revolver, pointing it right back at you with the ghost of a smile pulling at his face. The two of you stood like that for a minute, eye-to-eye and gun-to-gun until eventually you holstered yours. You huffed, going back to your own side of the imaginary line.
Neither you nor the Ghoul slept. You sat by your camp; he was leaning against an old pump next to his own extinguished fire. Eventually, he sauntered over, and you had a glare ready before he was even ten feet away. He tossed a pouch onto your lap, and you opened it, finding a small assortment of food inside.
“I’m not looking for your fucking charity,” you said, pulling the pouch shut.
“Ain’t charity, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s bargainin’. Been hearing glass rattle around in that bag o’ yours all day.”
You narrowed your eyes up at him with a scrutinizing look before reaching down into your bag to dig out a case of vials you’d pulled from a raider a few towns back. “Gonna take you more than that,” you said, pulling the tin back before he could grab it. With an added StimPak, you handed them over.
He took another swig of the canteen before offering it over. You took a heavy pull, only to realize it was vodka, not water. “Fuck, man,” you sputtered, and then laughed. A small noise, and given the sunny disposition you’d shown so far, Cooper almost didn’t believe his ears.
It wasn’t small talk, just a shared silence as scorpions scuttled from a safe distance and the building continued to settle even after centuries of standing.
You fell into his pace the next day, catching Lucy off guard, who found herself in a reluctant and outnumbered silence. While she had grown accustomed to filling silence and the occasional grunt or hum from her companion, the two of you had an almost silent way of communicating; sharing a quick look before firing off at some threat she was yet to pick up on. Then, there was the occasional soft chuckle. Most always from you, but if she turned her head quick enough, Lucy could sometimes see the small pull of a smirk on his face.
Lucy had stopped on the path ahead, standing on the top of a hill and looking out towards the silhouette of a town in the setting sky. “We should stop here,” she declared, turning to face the two of you, who were standing shoulder to shoulder sharing a canteen of water.
“We’ll make it,” you each said flatly, but the jinx humored both of you. You turned with a smile and a soft laugh, capping the water and returning it to your bag.
“Aren’t you two just…peas in a pod.” Lucy huffed, looking back towards the small town’s silhouette before stomping onwards. You followed her path, and Cooper let himself enjoy walking behind you.
The time you spent with them on the road to Vegas showed that you more than pulled your weight. You were sharp, quick with a gun, and for all your spikes, you knew how to turn on the charm for a trade.
Lucy would try talking with you, and any answers you gave her that were longer than five words were vague or sarcastic. “Kill them with kindness,” she reminded herself, and would keep her head held high as if her attitude was her own suit of armor.
From a distance, you all could make out a pack of Geckos crowding the road ahead. Hardly worth veering around, and you’d been itching to shoot something for a few days now. “Your turn,” he said. You rolled your eyes with a small smile — already intent on taking care of the problem — and peeled off the road.
The Ghoul had watched your stride longer than he needed to, the sway of your hips holding his attention long enough that Lucy picked up on his wandering eye, scoffing into her canteen.
The longer you traveled with them, the more his eyes kept finding you. You were a spitfire who carried more weapons than most folks would even know what to do with — which did more for him than any one physical feature could. He seldom, if ever, gave any thoughts like that to the women he came across in the Wasteland; never had any reason to look. And on the rare occasion he got that itch, there was always some saloon whose waitresses worked two jobs.
You didn’t notice. If you did, you didn’t care. You didn’t have time to pay attention to wandering eyes when your own were scanning for whatever was looking to kill you that day. Lucy noticed instead, and it didn’t take her very long to get very tired of noticing.
The heat of the Mojave was always unforgiving, but the day had been a different kind of brutal. Lucy had pushed her suit down, and you’d ditched your jacket for a for a shirt that rode up a few inches above your belt. It wasn’t distracting; it was just something new for Cooper to look at. His eyes fell to the pinch of your waist, to the muscles of your arms and the lines of your back. Lucy had caught him mid-stare, biting her tongue and opting instead to roll her eyes.
Camp went up early that evening, you and Lucy overtired. He watched meat cook on a skewer while the two of you sat on the husk of an old car. Eventually you excused yourself over the hill, and he made a point of watching you go. Lucy watched him, half expecting him to follow you.
“You’re not going fetch?” She asked, her chipper tone plagued by annoyance. He didn’t answer, and she turned the spit, ever unimpressed by his silence. “Might be able to catch a peek if you hurry.”
“What’s your fuckin’ problem?”
“Your eyes have been Wonderglued to her butt for a week.” She scoffed.
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” He clipped out, finality clear in his tone. She held his gaze, not buying it — not one bit — but she had also learned not to push it. She went back to the fire as if she’d made her point.
You came back over the hill into a thick silence, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care about whatever had caused the shift. The Ghoul had said maybe three more words — grunts, more aptly — the rest of the night before he tipped his hat low with his eyes watching the campfire die out.
Summary: You've always liked a fight, but only when you come out on top. | Black widow perk reader because I'm fatigued of Ghoul fics with virgin infantilized vault dweller reader.
WC: 4,855
Tags: where do I start? Smut, fingering (f! receiving), oral kinda, gun play, fighting as foreplay, bondage, blink-and-you-miss-it hematophilia, minor injuries, physical fighting, violence, chem use, drugging but nothing nefarious, hair pulling, shifting power imbalance, theft. I think that's it lmk if I missed some.
a/n: So I really don't have anything to say for myself about this one :/ But tbf I think the only complaint I'm going to get is that there wasn't enough sex but I left this one open for a pt. 2 should I feel so inclined.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
STAR R VE- EAT R
Those were the only letters left on the marquee to greet you when you approached the long-abandoned drive-in. Ancient speaker poles stuck out of the ground, serving as grave markers for bodies that hadn’t been buried; instead, entombed in centuries-old cars. Their skin turned to rotten leather, nearly indistinguishable from the seats they had decomposed into, save for the few hairs that had managed not to fall out. You angled your face closer to the window, a full set of teeth. You were surprised no one had gone after that yet. Easy money.
You straightened, surveying nearly a dozen cars scattered around the lot. Many of their doors hung ajar; as if their occupants had intended to outrun a falling sky. But in others, the silhouettes of mummified remains were discernible. Pulling teeth from each of them, you could get a good couple hundred caps in the next trading post. Your lip curled involuntarily; it would be messy work. You hated getting your hands dirty when you didn’t have to, and your back hurt from days of carrying all the coin you had.
You gazed upwards as the sun began to fall from its peak, shielding your eyes with a raised hand. You still had plenty of daylight left, but you’d been on your feet entirely too long. You’d put enough distance between you and the Tops in the last few days. Once more, you surveyed the lot; your only company had long stopped posing any danger, but you had no intention of spending your rest out here.
Headed towards the small, two-storied projection booth, you paused, your gaze drawn to the colossal screen ahead. Missing panels showing only the lackluster film of the Wasteland behind it. You regarded one of the vacant, corroded cars next to you, wondering if whatever these people had been seeing was worth it in their last minutes. You didn’t even have to give it a moment of thought. Had it been you, you wouldn’t have even bothered opening the door; you would have just seen how long the movie would have kept playing.
The remnants of blue paint left on the exterior were the only reminder of the pre-war vibrancy you would hear so much about. The inside was lackluster. Most of the ground floor was taken up by the staircase and boxes that had been ransacked long before you were born. The upstairs, while similarly decayed, was a little more promising. A dingy loveseat was pushed against the wall opposite two expansive windows. In front of them were the remains of two projectors. One cannibalized for whatever scraps it could provide, the other largely intact save for a missing fusion core.
You had the curiosity to pop one back in, see if it would work. More importantly, you had the sense not to. You opted instead for simply examining it, trying to figure out how it once worked. You grabbed onto the dust-coated film reel, hauling it out of the machinery.
Attack of the Spider Woman
Maybe you would’ve chosen to watch the sky fall instead.
You settled into the space, pulling out a canteen and what was left of your food. You shouldn’t be more than a half-day's walk from the next settlement, and your supplies were more than enough to last you until then. You sighed, looking over the rations with discontent; the last of the food you’d brought from Vegas. The wastes had been far from a vacation, but you hadn’t been thrown through the wringer. However, the idea of restocking with whatever you could find made your stomach churn.
You could get what you needed to and hold out for better, more expensive food. But even with your nose in the air, you knew it’d be a frivolous waste of ill-gotten caps. You’d pinch your nose and swallow; that’s how you’d gotten this far up the ladder. But as you looked around the dust-blanketed room, you wondered if you’d jumped off the top rung trying to find a higher footing that wasn’t there.
You stashed the bag of caps underneath the couch, better safe than sorry. Tearing a strip from a throw pillow, you attempted to wipe the windows of some of their grime. You leaned against the antiquated equipment, taking another sip of the lukewarm water from your canteen.
As the sun cast bruised shades of violet across the wastes, you looked down at the cars below, wondering how many sunsets those bodies had seen as they rotted into the leather. You hummed, setting the canteen down on the projector's surface.
Click
You stiffened, the metallic noise not coming from the metal bottle meeting near ancient aluminum. No, this was a sound you knew all too well.
Measured footsteps entered the room, punctuated by the faint jingling of spurs. You felt frozen in a frame from an old-world movie that could have flickered on that decayed screen centuries ago.
You cursed yourself before the intruder. You were perceptive, acutely so. How could you let someone just waltz in with your back turned? Didn’t matter now. You knew that the best-case scenario was just one gun pointed at you. You couldn’t afford the time to imagine what else awaited your attention.
By your ears’ estimate, the footfall had stopped maybe a few feet behind you, doubtlessly blocking the only exit—unless you wanted to try your odds with broken glass and a two-story fall. You were lucky, but even you knew when not to push.
You squared your shoulders, proud and defiant. The barrel of a gun had become a familiar sight, more akin to looking a jilted lover in the eye than a genuine threat. Maybe this stranger had shaken your security, but he wouldn’t shake your confidence.
You turned, meeting the man’s eyes without giving the weapon a second of your concentration. The dark, clinical eyes that locked with yours were unmoved by your poise, and they were the only unblemished part of the face confronting you.
His skin was seared, not from flame but an unburning fire far more cruel. Pitted and scarred, and years of life under a poisonous sun had hollowed in the flesh, causing it to nearly cling to the contours of his skull. Of course, it was all accentuated by the absence of a key feature in the center of his face.
You felt a brow raise, and the corner of your mouth itched to smirk. This was hardly the first ghoul you’d seen, but you’d never been held up by one. A fight with a ghoul was a game of roulette, at least according to the stories you’ve heard. Looking at the man in front of you — with his radiating assuredness and plethora of arms — you’d likely be pulling the bad shot. He didn’t tower, but he stood over you. Your strengths lie less in the physical; you won fights with a silver tongue, not welded steel. Even if your agility outmatched his and you could snake past him to the exit, you worried you would somehow sink into his outstretched shadow that inked the doorway.
“Well, hello, cowboy,” you greeted, chin tilting upwards in defiance. His eyes narrowed, the revolver held. unwaveringly steady. He regarded you, tilting his head nearly imperceptibly — a silent appraisal. Already anticipating your next move before you even thought of one.
You tsked his silence, brows arching as you exhaled slowly through your nose. “Silent but deadly, huh?” you remarked, advancing a step. He mirrored you in a predatory rhythm, the gun’s muzzle pressed against your sternum, its oil threatening another stain on the once-pristine dress you’d hacked into a top.
“You’ll move when I tell you.” His voice was low, the words drawled and unhurried.
“Not the first fella to tell me that,” you hummed with a wry smile. You finally looked down at the gun, then your eyes slowly climbed their way back up to his. “But maybe you’re the first to mean it.”
You were again met with silence. The two of you stood there, eye to eye, unmoving, nearly breathless, as if the simple rise of a chest would be cause enough to pull the trigger.
But he hadn’t. Not yet, at least. And while you could feel iron kissing cool against your chest, it was no more than a visual threat. A thief would’ve sent lead flying through your back before he’d finished ascending those stairs; had he just been after your life, he wouldn’t have wasted so much time on preamble. Maybe the reason was unknown to you, but you were willing to bet he needed you alive.
With a quick movement, you reached behind you, intending to snatch the canteen from its resting place with no intention other than to test his intention. Before your hand could graze the metal container, a shot rang out, followed by shattering glass. The bullet pierced the center of the canteen, the remaining water spraying out before it fell on its side like an aluminum stiff. You smiled, a cat-like grin that reached for your ears as you turned back to face him. You’d called his bluff, but you were far from in the clear.
“Don’t you listen?” he said bitingly.
“Of all my supposed talents, listening’s never topped the list,” you said with a wink. You drew a steadying breath and raised your chin; the muzzle tracked your movement, coming to rest at your Adam’s apple. “Benny send you?”
“Missin’ you real bad, it seems,” he drawled.
“He’s got a romantic streak, that one,” you quipped.
“Well, sweetheart, I’m not here deliverin’ flowers.”
You glanced down at the gun and rolled your eyes. “Thanks for clearing that up.” He gave you no reply, but the muzzle settled more firmly at your throat—a silent testament to his thinning patience. “How much?” you asked.
He raised a hairless brow, letting out a dry huff that sounded like it wanted to be a laugh. But it was your time to keep straight. “More than you ran off with,” he answered.
“I’m flattered,” you purred with a slight smile. “Make sure you tell him that when you go back empty-handed.”
“You’re a confident lil’ thing,” he said, chin lifting. “ ‘specially for someone in line for a tracheotomy.”
You scoffed, flashing a sneer. “Then shoot.” You leaned into the barrel, the tension humming between you. After a taut beat, you clicked your tongue and leaned away, freeing your windpipe. “No, you need me alive,” you said, lifting a hand to adjust your hair. He didn’t flinch, and the gun never faltered. “Otherwise, I’d already be face-down with a belly full of lead.” He let you strut, silent.
“So, why don’t you tell that greasy bastard,” you continued. “That I’ll make my way back to Vegas once I’m bored spending his money.” You turned your back on the man, confident in calling his bluff. You sucked your teeth in disappointment, looking at your canteen bleeding out atop the projector.
“And that if the big guy has a problem, he can send one of his droids after me.” You bent down, pulling your bags from underneath the worn sofa. “Not some Cooper Howard wannabe.”
Another gunshot shattered the air. The bullet tore through the bag, lodging in the rotted floorboards. You huffed, shooting him a glare he couldn’t see from behind. As you lifted the bag, caps spilled from the newly seared hole, clattering across the warped boards.
“Sorry,” you tossed over your shoulder. “John Wayne?” With a final sneer, you tried to stuff the ruined sack into your other bag, to no avail.
“I’m sorry, are you under the impression you’re going somewhere?” he snarled, one gloved hand yanking you back. The barrel pressed into your spine, nestling between vertebrae as if intent on prying them apart.
“You seem to be under the impression you’re in charge,” you shot back.
You drove your elbow back into his ribs with everything you could manage. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. The exhale that left him was sharp and involuntary, but you didn’t have time to savor it. You felt the barrel pull away from your back, and you moved. You whipped around, using one leg to swipe at his own. You didn’t have the strength to send him to the ground, but you had thrown him off balance, causing him to buckle down onto one knee.
You lunged over him, hand finding the rifle slung across his back as he scrambled for leverage. Your fingers curled around the muzzle and yanked it free. The stock came down against his head with a dull crack—enough to send his hat flying, not enough to put him out. He braced with one arm, clutching at what composure remained.
You staggered back, racking the rifle’s action as you shifted your grip. He didn’t stay down—not that you’d expected him to—lunging to grab your ankle and yank you off balance. You fired before you’d even decided to; the shot went wide, blowing a hole through the stairwell wall.
“Now you’re just wastin’ my fuckin’ ammo,” he ground out. He was on his feet with an unsettling ease, a gloved hand finding your hair in his stride. It wasn’t a yank, but an unyielding pressure that forced you to rise with him. He walked you until your back collided with the wall, your head craned back by his grip. His grip forced your head back, exposing your throat to the cold and intimate kiss of the revolver.
Before he could encroach on any more of the space between your bodies, you straightened the rifle, pressing the muzzle against his ribs. The only noise in the room was the staggered breathing from each of you. Your eyes bore into his with matched intensity, both of you daring the other to pull the trigger.
“Benny didn’t say you’d be this much work,” he finally said, but the gun never wavered from where it was latched against your neck, so you didn’t sway either.
“What did he say about me?” You asked.
“Enough,” He clipped.
“That’s surprising,” you said, your voice low enough to feel. “He so rarely was.” You changed the angle of the rifle against him so that it was pointed towards his belt. He drew in a measured breath through the hollow where a nose had once been, narrowing his eyes with both scrutiny and curiosity.
“Most folks beg,” he noted as he tested his grip on your hair, forcing your neck further into the uncomfortable angle. You didn’t so much as wince.
“I’m not most folks,” you shot back. The atmosphere thickened, settling against your skin like dust from forgotten rafters. “Do you always work this close?”
“You always fight back?”
“Well,” you managed a shrug. “This isn’t how I usually end up against a wall.” The corner of his mouth twitched; muscle memory, not quite a smile.
“Oh, I’m sure,” he replied, and his eyes fell on your lips. The movement was so quick that you would’ve missed it if there were even a few more inches between you. But you’d caught it, and it sounded like the victorious ringing of a slot machine in your head.
His hold loosened on your hair, but the revolver didn’t budge as he kissed you. The movement wasn’t warm, but a physical bridge of each other’s curiosity and begrudging respect. His lips were dry against your own, wasting no time to push his tongue into your mouth. You fought against him, shoving him back and staking claim between his teeth. You push against him, forcing yourself off the wall. The rifle pokes harder against his hips, and the only correction you got was a reminder of his other weapon as he notched it below your jaw.
You made your defiance clear, pressing the muzzle into his hip. He growled—a sound rumbling deep in his chest—as his hand found your wrist before you even registered its departure from your hair. The gloved fingers coiled around your arm, twisting it back and up in a single, practiced motion, breaking the kiss as the rifle crashed to the floor.
You sucked in a breath through your teeth, in reflex rather than pain, and drove your unpinned arm back into him. A weaker blow than the first, more spite than any real strategy. He absorbed the hit, his grip on your twisted arm tightening to make a point. You tried to throw your weight forward, a weak attempt at pulling free, and succeeded only in dragging both of you a step towards the projectors before he hauled you back against him. The revolver stayed against your neck, riding the movements like a raft on water.
Your next attempt to pull free was wrong. His boot hooked behind your ankle, and the floor came faster than you thought it would. Your knees hit first, cracking hard against the floorboards, unable to fully brace yourself with only one arm. You winced as the one in his hold was pulled at a sharper angle by your fall, and he made no effort to let up until he was sure you were down. One final wrench upward had your back arching against the sharp bloom of pain before he let go entirely.
He walked slowly around you, the jingle of his spurs echoing in the room and settling into your veins. The end of his revolver lifted your chin, raising your head as you looked up at him. You pulled your head away, lowering it until the cool steel was pressed against your mouth instead. With your eyes burning into his, you parted your lips around the barrel. At first, a challenge — daring him to finish the job, to put an end to posturing — and then it was a show. He changed the angle; a gentle, testing pressure guided your head back upwards as he let the gun slip deeper past your lips.
Iron clicked against your teeth, mechanical and intimate. The barrel was still warm from the shot that ruined your bag. As he eased it deeper, you caught the subtle shift of his breathing—so quiet you’d have missed it if there were any other noise in the world.
You leaned forward on your haunches, taking the barrel deeper before he could move it. He hummed, stepping closer. The new angle pressed cold steel against the back of your throat. His knee nudged your chest—firm, not brutal—pushing you back. You grabbed his thigh, anchoring him in place. He eyed your hand, wary but tolerant, allowing the contact.
With your gifted inch, you took a mile. You let him grow accustomed to your touch, then once his focus was back on your face, your hand moved to the knife on his hip, pulling it free from its sheath. Feeling the swift movement, he pulled the gun from your mouth without courtesy, the sight scraping the roof of your mouth on the way out, replacing the taste of iron with the similar metallic one of blood.
You braced yourself, wiping blood from your lip with the back of your hand. As if anticipating your next move, he retreated a step, enough to force you to lunge, but not enough to stop you. He let you get the move in; the blade slashing through ruined pinstripes and cutting shallowly into his skin.
On the follow through, he grabs your arm, using your own momentum to send you back onto the ground. He twists you from your side onto your back, one leg between yours and the other on your side as one gloved hand envelops both your wrists. The other pulls the knife from your hold, and he raises the arm. You follow the blade as it cuts through the air and lands on the floorboard, not even an inch away from your neck.
Your eyes move up from where the weapon was now lodged in the wood, meeting his own gaze as a smile pulled on your face, revealing teeth still blotted with blood. Your free leg moved up, wrapping around his waist and encouraging him down. He took the guidance, his body meeting yours, and not a second later, your lips found his again.
Neither of you had any pretense of gentleness. Open-mouthed kisses that were hot and heavy as his tongue swept against the top of your mouth, lapping at whatever blood was still weeping from the cut. He withdrew enough for you to bite down on his lip, drawing just enough blood to feel the score was even.
He pressed his thigh firmly between yours, and you rolled your hips up to meet the movement. He pulled the rope from his belt, tying it haphazardly around your wrists so that both of his hands could find your hips, guiding you while you grind against his thighs.
His hands slid down, kneading your ass through denim with greedy intent. One last grind and he pushed you off, shifting on his knees before flipping you over. You let him, steadying yourself on your knees and reaching your bound wrists in front of you like a stretching cat. You were happy to play along, not to give him the satisfaction, but for your own enjoyment.
He forced your legs wider with a knee, drawing an indignant huff from you as you buckled. When you tried to look back, his gloved hand held your head in place.
“A peach like you got, sweetheart,” he mused, the hand trailing from the back of your neck down your spine. “No wonder you got the Tops all bent out of shape lookin’ for you.”
“Maybe you should be more grateful you caught me,” you purred, pushing your hips back. He caught you, hands roaming with open appreciation.
“Is that what you’re lookin’ for?” He asked, his hands meeting as they snaked around your front, undoing the button and fly of your pants. “Gratitude?”
“Would it kill you?” you shot back, as he dragged your jeans down to catch above your knees. Goosebumps prickled your skin, not from cold, but from the thrill of exposure.
“Takes a lot to kill me, sweetheart,” he said, his words muffled as he used his teeth to pull off one glove. The hand found your ass again, massaging the flesh and letting you feel the leather of his skin. His thumb lifted the elastic of your underwear, letting the rest of his hand follow underneath the fabric. You were prepared for teasing — for more back and forth until something finally gave — but he wasted no time, gravitating to the heat of your core in an almost magnetized motion.
His fingers parted you with practiced ease, exploring, a single digit gathering your slick before he brought it to his lips. He hummed, relishing the quick taste of something sweet in a land long rotten.
“And it’s not goin’ to be some trigger-happy, sticky-fingered show girl with an attitude problem to put me in the ground.” His hand returned, a finger sliding slowly, almost reverently, into your heat, another circling your clit with maddening restraint you silently demanded more from. You pushed your hips back in his hand, and the other slowed the movement with a steadying presence on the back of your thigh. He tsked, the sound of him sucking his teeth competing with the lewd wetness from him working your sex.
He added another finger, changing his angle, scarred tips searching for that hidden spot and pressing with intent. He worked your clit not to compete against the sensation, but to complement the feeling of everything else: the abrasive ropes tied loose around your wrists, splintered floorboard against your cheek, the fullness of his fingers curling inside of you. You sighed, contentment spilling out as you let your eyes flutter shut.
It swept through you, a rare, full-body unraveling: a knot coiling tighter at your core even as the rest of you floated free, adrift on sensation. You clenched around his fingers, a velvet vice wringing out your pleasure—and to your surprise, he gave it to you. As you came, an unrestrained moan escaped your lips, letting even the air around you know just how much you enjoyed letting a ghoul finger-fuck you in the ruins of some old building.
You were half-melted into the floor when he finally withdrew, wiping the evidence of your climax on your thigh. At the rustle of fabric, you arched your back, adjusting expectantly, only to flinch as a sharp pinch landed on your ass. You hummed, blinking in confusion at the strange, spreading coolness.
“You a biter?” You asked, trying to push yourself up on bound limbs. “I’ve heard that about your kind.” You added, looking over your shoulder. Contrary to your assumptions, he was still dressed and tucked in. His hand, again gloved, returned to your backside, and only when he withdrew a needle had you realized what he’d done.
He lifted the vial, examining its emptiness with a narrowed gaze. At the same time, your arms wobbled beneath you, sending you back down to the unwelcoming floor. You tried to get them underneath you again, but the only result was landing with one cheek against rotten wood. He tossed it, the empty glass landing inches away from your head.
You were still able to feel his hands land on your legs, and you used what strength you had to try to kick him away, screaming slurred curses and names at him.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” He said, unamused by your struggling as he defied any fearful expectations by pulling your pants back up over your hips. He maneuvered you onto your back before standing, looming tall and imposing over your rapidly slackening form.
He gripped your arms, cinching the rope before dragging you across the floor and tying you to the couch’s leg. Retrieving his hat and saddlebag, he slumped onto the ruined upholstery with a sigh befitting a hard day’s work. You glared, pulling at your bonds; he ignored you, producing a jet inhaler and a metal tin. After a long drag, he threaded a fresh needle, then rummaged for the bag of caps you’d tried to shove into your other bag after he’d shot it.
“Put it down!” The demand was a weak attempt from your voice; the words were slurred and wobbly. Even if you could roar like a bear, you were sure he would’ve kept ignoring you. He examined the bag, some of your caps falling out of the hole onto the floor before he found it. He tsked, examining the seared hole marring the burlap.
Mustering all the strength that was left in your body, you pulled your knees to your chest and kicked out. Your aim was weak, but not quite imprecise; your feet drove into the bag, sending it and its contents all over the floor. He watched the caps scatter, and then used his boot to kick your body further away from him. He growled, looking at the clutter, but decided he’d wait until you were out to pick up the mess, just in case you found a way to make a new one.
Your last waking moments were a futile struggle against the rope, each tug growing weaker and weaker until you couldn’t keep your eyes open any longer.
You woke up to the sun’s unrelenting orange glare pouring through the windows. Your arms were no longer bound, and your head ached as you sat up. Nothing debilitating, but enough to be a reminder of what had caused it. And that’s exactly when you remember. You looked around; the intruder was gone, and with him every last one of the thousands of caps you’d run off with.
“Fuck!” You cursed, shrill and loud enough to wake the dead in their cars outside. You got up, moving the cushions on the sofa, then pushing it across the floor to better see under it, hoping his cruelty was limited to just hiding your fortune. But as you tore the room apart, it was nowhere to be found.
You grabbed your other bag, dumping its contents on the floor, hoping that you had shoved some caps in there or some had just managed to land. No luck. But within its contents was a leather pouch you didn’t recognize. You smiled as you felt its contents through the aged hide. You pushed everything else out of the way, loosening the draw string and letting the caps fall onto the floor. You counted each piece of aluminum eagerly, two hundred. It wasn’t a lot, but it was better than the zilch you thought you were stuck with.
You grabbed the leather pouch to start putting the currency back in when you noticed something that hadn’t come out with the caps. You pulled out a folded postcard. Noticing a handwritten note on the back first as you unfurled it. “Only place acting like that will get you somewhere.” As you turned it around, your lip raised as you let out an offended scoff.
okay so I'm rewriting all of what I have of chapter 7 for those of you waiting; I don't know just didn't like it. Also redoing that one shot. I just wasn't getting where I needed to fast enough so might revisit it for a longer form. But! This new one shot I'm liking a lot better
Snippet from what I've got so far as proof of life.
-
The heat of the fire, combined with the dry desert air, only made the ropes feel more abrasive against your skin. You twisted your wrists under its hold in search of relief, but only found more irritation.
With a huff, you dropped your hands back onto your lap, looking up to see the last of the setting sun behind the silhouette of your captor. So much for a new start.
“Where are you taking me?” You asked, your voice petulant as you broke your days-long silence. The man’s scarred face moved — maybe raising a brow if there had still been hair there — but didn’t look at you.
“Wherever you scurried away from.” He said, twisting the cap off his canteen. “Or would that be a who?”
You didn’t answer, and he must not have expected one, only raising his head to drink the water. You watched as a droplet fell down the side of his chin, suddenly reminded of how long it’s been since you had a drink of anything other than swallowing your own spit.
As if he sensed you staring, his eyes moved to you. He seldom spared you a glance. Why would a herder need to meet his cattle's eyes? But when he did, you always squirmed. If his physicality didn’t tell you he’d been in the Wastes longer than anything should, his eyes forced the idea upon you.
“So what? Vegas then?” You asked again, forcing yourself to look away from the water before your thirst became too much to ignore. He just looked at you, a silent scoff for asking stupid questions, and you looked back down to your bound wrists.
The last night had been a silent standoff until you stood down into a fruitless slumber on the sandy ground. Tonight would be the same, and even though you resented the situation, you didn’t blame him. Your mind was constantly running with ideas of escape, although every scheme would leave you with little payout; bound wrists and a body fatigued from hunger and dehydration would only get you so far.
Still, when you blinked awake with a stiff back and cramped leg, you looked over to your captor. The fire was long gone, leaving you both in the dark and only further shadowing his lounging figure. He was leaning against a piece of ruin, legs crossed at the ankles and hands folded over his torso, but never far from a weapon. With his hat pulled over his face, he looked every bit the cowboy, reminding you of the old movies you’d seen so long ago.
With a testing weight, you moved your foot, stirring the sand and rocks underneath it. Your eyes darted up to him. Not a movement, not even a hitch, in that shallow breathing, nearly invisible to the untrained eye. You repeated the motion with your other foot, then, with the practiced strength and grace of a dancer, lifted yourself from the ground.
One
Two
Three
Still. Nothing. You couldn’t see his sunken eyes underneath the tilt of his hat, but your confidence let you think they were closed.
You started with a few cautious backward steps. Then, when you were granted no reaction, you turned and started running as fast as you could, your wrists bouncing awkwardly in front of you as you ran with no direction or goal in mind except for “away”.
You looked back over your shoulder and could see his figurestill lying there. Maybe his head had moved, but there was too much distance and not enough moonlight to be sure. You didn’t care. He was down, and you were up, and you were going to get away from all this. Leave and start over, just like you had planned to in the first place.
You ran until your legs felt like jelly beneath you and each breath burned your lungs, then you ran some more. When you had put maybe a mile and some change between you and your captor, you let your pace fall to a tired but hasty walk. After about an hour more of walking, you saw the ruins of some building nestled in the hills, and decided that would be a good enough place to give yourself the rest you’d sold for escape.
You leaned against the remaining few feet of wall and fell to the ground with a heaving breath. You used the sharpest edge of a rock you could find to saw through the ropes, then, with a final glance around you, you closed your eyes.
Maybe it was the relief of your assumed escape, or maybe your body was choosing exhaustion to win over the alertness needed to be alone in the Wasteland, but those few hours of sleep were the best you had gotten since leaving Vegas. That was until you were woken up with a mouthful of sand.
You coughed, spitting out the sediment that coated your tongue and lips. You tried to push off the ground, but whatever hand pushed you grabbed you by the back of your jacket, scruffing you like a cat. You flailed your arms and screamed, reaching back and clawing at the arm, only to be met with layers of fabric stopping your attempt at an attack.
You managed to get a foot under you and pushed off the ground. Again, you found yourself running, only this time with unmeasurably more desperation in each step. You yelped as a gunshot echoed through the air and a bullet whizzed past your head. You didn’t let it stop you; if he was going to shoot to kill, he wouldn’t miss. He just wanted you down.
You kept going, too much of a coward to look over your shoulder, until you got to a mountainous hill you couldn’t breeze over. After a quick, calculating gaze, you found a large rock you figured you could use to get you up a little further. But as you leaped onto the rock, your foot sank through the thin, cardboard-like material.
Okay I’m on vacation so chapters are going to be a little wonky but I’m going to try to get something out in the next few days but! Some options: either a Ghoul one shot or new chapter
Okay I’m on vacation so chapters are going to be a little wonky but I’m going to try to get something out in the next few days but! Some options: either a Ghoul one shot or new chapter
Summary: Right when he can't afford any more trouble, Cooper Howard dives into it headfirst.
Series Masterlist
Introduction | Previous Chapter
Word Count: 10,663
Notes: Long chapter my bad but I like this one best so far.
Chapter Tags: Lots of sex, we've got: oral (f!receiving), face sitting, penetrative sex, riding/reverse cowgirl, shower sex, pulling out and creampies, shower sex, hair pulling, fingering(f!receiving again but Cooper Howard is a giver), kind of tipsy but not drunk sex. Then we have some drinking, smoking, swearing, prescription drug use, shitty family dynamics, canon-typical discussion about war/war anxieties, older man/younger woman. I think that's it, it's a big one I may have missed a few.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
You’d arrived in Boston a day before Cooper. Nuka had paid for your airfare, you assumed Cooper had shelled out for his own. You weren’t sure how he excused that, but you tried not to spend too much time thinking about the backstage of the affair.
You figured he’d been joking. It didn’t help the way he’d suggested it. Then the two of you kept fleshing out the idea, but it was just that — an idea. “It would be nice to get out of here, just for a little while,” he said the next day, and you didn’t argue.
The work had been fine; some promo shoots at Nuka-World. Business has been dwindling with the constant news of injuries and even the odd death coming from the park. You even noticed the rides in some of the older areas were in bad shape, and you figured that’s why they tried to keep the shoot near Galactic Zone.
You stood next to your father, shaking his hand and giving the camera a perfected smile. The two of you must have looked more like business partners than family. You supposed you were.
Your father— surprisingly—had been in a lot of the photos. Normally, he would be scurrying around for Bradberton, making sure he looked ever-so camera-ready. But the man was noticeably absent. You hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him all day. As he blinked away the flash from the bulb, you asked your father.
“Sorry, jellybean, you’ll have to repeat that.” He said, pushing his glasses out of his face to rub his eyes.
“Bradberton. He’s usually here for this kind of stuff,” you rephrased, taking the helmet off your head. “Where is he?”
“Off-site.” He said. “Don’t worry, he wishes he could be here.” He answered, then waved over an assistant. Funny, he was always the one being waved around before.
“Daddy?” You called, trying to get his attention again. He held up a hand behind his back, and you rolled your eyes. You put one hand on your hip and the other around the helmet, securing it to your side. You let out an impatient huff as he turned back to you. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Sorry, what were you saying?” He finally asked. You closed your eyes for a moment before you could roll them and smiled softly.
“I’m going down to the beach this weekend. Can I borrow the V-8?”
“Have a car drop you off.”
“No, I need to drive.”
You huffed, working your jaw. You hated talking to him. The only time he doesn’t talk to you like you’re still a kid is when there’s a contract between you. Before you could say anything, another employee approached him with a question, and this time, you let your annoyance show.
“Please, Daddy. I told my friend I’d pick them up from the airport.”
“Your friend can’t take a cab?” He asked, not sparing you the attention.
“Not when you’ve got two perfectly good cars.”
He took a moment, surveying around the park with an analytical eye before looking back to you.
“Car’s yours for the weekend if you give me another day here.” He said, his tone going slightly more professional.
“I’ll take the Buick instead, but I’m only here the rest of the day.” You shot back. He gave it a moment of consideration, then nodded.
You didn’t see much of him the rest of the day. Your time was instead spent posing next to snot-nosed kids while their parents encouraged them behind Codacs. By the time you peeled that horrible suit off and got back to your father’s house, it was well past five. You didn’t see his Corvega in the driveway. Though in all honesty, it would’ve surprised you more if he had been home.
You hadn’t been in the house much since moving to New York, even less since the move to California. Habitually, you still called it home, though looking around now, it felt very little like it. Growing up there had always been a sterile feel to the house, but in the years since you’ve left, your father has turned it into a three-story office. File boxes were piled in dining room chairs as if they were sitting down to eat plates full of manila folders. The living room wasn’t much different, and you figured it was from disuse rather than from work to keep it clean.
The only difference between growing up in the house and visiting now was that your father wasn’t having to pretend to be anything other than a man in love with his work. The littered papers, the dusty end tables, and the empty shelves only served to manifest that.
You poked around the kitchen. The fridge was bare; a few bottles of soda — shocker — and some produce that looked like it had gone bad before you had even bought your plane ticket. The cupboards weren’t any more promising, but eventually you scrounged together a thing of Cram and some crackers.
You walked around with the plate, stopping by the dining room. You popped a bite into your mouth, cringing at the dull and salty feel of the food. Maybe you’ll just have a big breakfast tomorrow instead. As you rolled the mush around in your mouth, you curiously looked over some of the folders. Most of them were acquisitions and patents. You figured he must have been sorting through papers. Eventually, you got to the other side of the table, the contents of the folder labeled confidential. You shrugged off the warning with another bite of bad food and opened it. Narrowing your eyes as you read through the contents.
Life Extension and Prolongation Program
You almost laughed. Every time you came home, you realized more and more just how little your father worked for a soda company.
You grabbed the contents but left the folder, setting the papers under your plate. You opened the dining room window as wide as it could, then scattered the other remaining contents on the table and onto the floor as if they’d been strewn by the breeze. You dumped the remaining food into the bin, left the plate in the sink, and took the papers upstairs, stashing them in your luggage between stacks of clothes.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
“Jesus, Mansfield.” Cooper braced himself on the side of the door as you took a particularly hard turn.
“Sorry,” you offered. “I’m not good with the gears.”
He looked down at the wheel, then back up at you with an incredulous look. “This is an automatic.” He said, unamused and almost worried.
“I know.” You smiled and winked through the tint of your sunglasses. He let out a humored scoff and shook his head.
“Doesn’t make you any better of a driver.” He said, turning his gaze back in front of him, a smile making itself known on his own face.
You eventually pulled into a coolant station, where you agreed to let Cooper finish the trip for his sake more than yours. You leaned against the side of the car, taking the opportunity to stretch your legs and have a smoke. You had pushed your glasses up on top of your head, seeking the shade of the canopy instead.
You watched Cooper as he docked the nozzle into the neck. Your eyes trailed up languidly from where he held the pump at his hips up to meet his eyes, where he met your gaze. Your eyes bounced down for a moment before meeting his again with a raised brow and a look that could’ve meant nothing good.
“Enough.” Cooper scolded, but there was nothing in his tone to tell you he meant it.
You smiled before wrapping your lips around the cigarette and taking a drag. Cooper watched, his eyes never leaving yours.
“Enough what?” You asked, exhaling smoke. He shook his head with a faint smile, finally breaking eye contact to look at the numbers on the pump. He pulled the nozzle out, a heavy drop of coolant splashing onto the ground as he returned the pump to its spot.
“Just get in the car.” He said, motioning his head toward the passenger seat. You again held his gaze for a moment before pushing off the side and walking around, settling into the seat. Cooper went inside the station, emerging a few minutes later with his own pack of cigarettes as he put his wallet back into his pocket.
Driving admittedly went a lot smoother with Cooper behind the wheel, albeit slower. Not long after leaving the station, your hand found Cooper’s leg. He didn’t say anything, keeping his eyes on the road ahead of him. Soon, you moved in your seat, your other hand meeting its mate on his leg. Now, he turned to look at you for a brief moment, and you could see the curious look in his eyes through his sunglasses.
“You got those shorts on too tight?” He asked casually, his eyes back on the road. You shrugged, your hands still moving curiously over his slacks, still not having heard a no.
“I think they fit perfect.” You hummed, playing with his belt buckle.
“Didn’t say they didn’t.” He said, casting another glance your way but keeping his head straight. You didn’t reply, leaning further across the bench and kissing his shoulder while you untucked his shirt. Cooper shuddered at the contact, relishing it for a moment before he shook his head.
“Sweetheart, I’m driving.” He said with a sigh, placing a hand on your side to stop you. You settled back into your seat.
“You’re no fun.” You said lightly, looking out the window again.
“You’re plenty of fun for the both of us.”
“Here, that one there.” You told him, pointing out the address. Cooper raised a brow at the house. The further down the road, the more the houses announced themselves. He’d almost expected you to tell him to keep driving until the tires or the car met water.
It wasn’t as ostentatious as some of the others around it, but it certainly wasn’t being dwarfed. Soft yellow siding was accented by blue shutters. The gambrel roof and matching dormer sat high on the second floor, and an octagonal deck was nestled on the side of the house.
“Nuka cola must love its assistants,” Cooper remarked, turning into the driveway.
“Executive assistant.” You corrected with a roll of your eye.
“Executive assistant.” He repeated, pulling the key out of the ignition, his mind falling somewhere he’d been trying not to let it.
“I don’t know,” you shrugged. “I think there’s something else going on.” You said, not giving him the chance to open your door. Cooper turned to look at you as you stood, taking a moment to stretch before reaching into the back bench to pull out a paper bag of groceries. He thought back to that bag of papers he’d found in your apartment.
“Yeah?” He closed the door behind him, grabbing another bag, this one full of rattling bottles he’d gotten while you’d gotten food.
“Yeah,” you echoed, using your free hand to fiddle with a key ring. “It’s just weird. I didn’t see Bradberton at all yesterday. I asked around, and apparently, no one’s seen him since last month.”
Cooper hummed. “So he’s just gone?” He asked, standing behind you at the door.
“No. I mean, I heard a while back that he’d be ‘indisposed’ for any public appearances. But company-wise, no one’s even seen his shadow. They’re still hearing from him, but it’s just all memos passed through my father.” You twisted the key in the door, then moved up to undo the other lock. “Doesn’t matter, though.” You added, pushing the door open. “This was my mother’s.”
Cooper let out a low whistle as he stepped through the threshold. You stopped in the foyer, setting the bag on an entryway bench as you undid the scarf around your hair and draped it over a coat hook.
“Thought you said they separated?”He asked, putting his own hat on a hook.
“They did. My grandparents wanted my father to get the Cape house since he was getting custody of me. I guess she didn’t put up a fight about that either.” You said, your disdain evident in your voice. You picked up the bag and pushed further into the house, your heels echoing in the sprawling space.
Cooper didn’t rush behind you; the bottles clinked as he adjusted the bag in his grip and walked slowly through the house, admiring the light but vibrant colors and polished woods.
“They had pretty good taste then,” he noted when he finally met you in the kitchen. “Your grandparents.” You smiled and shook your head, pulling a bottle of juice from the bag.
“No, they didn’t. I’ve redone most of it.” You beamed. He laughed softly as you grabbed more to bring to the fridge, watching your hips flick back and forth as you moved across the kitchen. “There are some guest bedrooms that need to be exorcised of floral wallpapers, but I just haven’t had as much time recently.” You sighed, and Cooper moved around the island to open the fridge for you.
“Well, I think it looks just about perfect. Very you.” He said, his hand falling from the fridge door and ghosting over the small of your back. He lingered behind you, letting you finish what you were doing before he guided you against a counter.
“There’s a lot more than just the kitchen.” You teased with a scrunched nose. He hummed, lifting you up onto the countertop in an easy motion.
“I’m just familiarizing myself here, first.” He said, standing between your knees as your hands found his shoulders.
“I think you’ve got it.” You replied as his hands found your waist, running over the soft knit of your top before moving underneath the fabric, snaking up underneath your bra. He moved up, kissing the side of your neck, the smell of your perfume hitting him like the first sip of a heavy drink. While one hand ran over the lace of your bra, the other made its way out from under your shirt to cradle the side of your face. He lifted his head to kiss you, but was stopped by your gaze. You held it for a moment, then glanced past him to the rest of the house.
“I should go check on the rest of the place first.” You said. Cooper hummed, his hands not moving.
“Is this your idea of payback?” He asked with a slight smile.
“No, the Mr. Handy was acting up last time I was here. I want to make sure it didn’t go rogue and destroy the upstairs.” You said, removing your arms from his shoulders and putting a hand on his chest.
“It’ll be fine.”
“So will you.”
He held the look for another beat, then stepped back, letting you hop down. After you left him in the kitchen, Cooper put away the rest of the bags the best he could, guessing as to where things could go. He left the bottles of liquor on the counter and checked his watch; it was only just past noon. Even on a vacation, he supposed that was too early for a drink.
He went back out to the car to get his bag and your suitcase, scoffing at the weight of the latter, but he wasn’t surprised. He made his way upstairs, finding the lights on in what he assumed was the master bedroom. Setting the luggage out on the plush carpet, he took in the room. It was spacious, with a small balcony overlooking the beach. He figured you must have annexed the room into your own during your redecorating. It was blue more than anything, varying shades from near pastels to fuller turquoises and aquas that didn’t overtake the room.
He noticed a pile of framed posters leaning against a wall. He sauntered over, flipping through them. He recognized them quickly as some of your other films. They seemed to be mostly those cheesy monster flicks. ‘He’s programmed to conquer….INVASION OF THE ROBOTIC MAN’ read the one on top. You were unconscious, being carried away by a man in a metal suit. The ones behind held the same cadence. ‘Return of the Bug’, ‘Prohibited Planet’, ‘CENTIPEDE!’. He smiled as he looked through the posters. Maybe he could convince you to spend a night watching them all.
“May I help you with your luggage, sir?”
Cooper nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the voice. He let out a deep breath, turning around to face the robot.
“No, I’m all set.” He said unenthused.
“No problem at all!” It said, one of its eyes contracting and dilating on Cooper while another scanned the room. “Could I interest you in a drink, then?”
Cooper sighed, an awkward feeling settling at the sound of his friend’s voice in the machine.
“No.” He repeated, turning away from it and picking up his own bag and setting it on the foot of the bed.
“Of course. I am at your service whenever you need, sir.”
Cooper ignored it, focused instead on unpacking his clothes. Only looking up when he heard your footfall coming down the hall. He watched skeptically as you asked the robot to clean the dock. It floated off, thanking you for the chore.
“Is that thing going to be on the whole time?” Cooper asked. You must have noticed the distaste on his features as your own expression shifted.
“You don’t like it?”
“You don’t need it.” He countered, setting his clothes down on the bed.
“What, you think I’m going to clean a dock?” You asked with a smile that Cooper didn’t quite reciprocate.
“It’s a dock, Mansfield. Things get dirty outdoors.”
“What is your issue with him?” You asked, adjusting your weight on your hips. He sighed at the defensiveness in your tone and realized this wasn’t worth getting you in a fuss about.
“Nothing.” He said, shaking his head as he took the toiletry bag into the ensuite.
“Then what’s this?” You asked, following behind him.
“What’s what?” He asked, meeting your gaze in the mirror as he set the items on the counter.
“The huffing and the attitude?”
“Attitude?” He repeated, laughing sardonically. “Sweetheart, you really can’t be yelling at people for having an attitude.”
He saw your jaw work in the mirror, as if you were stepping back from coming back at him with another sharp-tongued remark. You turned and walked back into the bedroom. Cooper followed a few minutes later, and you were perched on the foot of the bed next to his belongings, watching him with an almost pouting but not petulant expression. His own face softened, and he stopped in front of the bed. He didn’t say anything, looking down at you with a patient but expectant gaze.
“I…” You trailed off, taking a breath as you tried to push the words out from the back of your head. “I’m happy you’re here. I’m…I just-I don’t…maybe I’m just nervous. And I think that obviously you’ve got something on your mind, too.” You shrugged, trying to make the comment seem light. Cooper sighed, studying your face, the lack of ease in your words replaying in his head. He reached out, picking up the hand that was on your lap and holding it in his own.
Your vulnerability was still rare. It was obvious that you were learning to navigate just as much as Cooper was. He raised your hand slightly, moving his thumb over the lines of your knuckles.
“I’m not supposed to be here, sweetheart.” He said in earnest. “We both know that.” Your eyes darted away from his for a moment, acknowledging his words but not wanting to face them. “But I want to be here. You know that, too.” He said, bringing your hand up to his lips, giving the soft skin a quick kiss.
You nodded, giving him a small smile. Your silence told him that you were done with the exposure.
“Now, you gonna unpack?” He asked, nodding towards your suitcase. “Or do you need to wait for the robot to do it for you?”
You rolled your eyes, your smile shifting to your usual playful grin.
“He’d be happy to do it.” You said, standing up from the bed, your hand lingering in his for a moment before you moved the suitcase onto its side. He watched as you bent over to rifle through it, tossing pieces of a bathing suit behind you onto the bed. Cooper picked up a piece as you stood back up, examining the fabric with a raised brow.
“This is a bathing suit?” He asked as you pulled the material from his fingers.
“You’re suddenly a prude?” You shot back, kicking the heels of your feet. He watched as you held the top up over your shirt. “See?”
He hummed, sitting on the bed. “I’m not seeing anything over that sweater.”
You sneered at him playfully, taking a step forward when he nodded for you to do so. You stood between your legs, and his hands found your waist again, slipping under the knit of your top and pushing it up. Once the shirt was gone, he turned you around, hands moving up your back and undoing the clasps on your bra. You let the undergarment and your sweater fall to the floor, and Cooper took the bikini top from you. His knuckles brushed against your spine as he fastened the top around your back, then he knotted the strings behind your neck.
You turned around, and Cooper’s hand trailed from the bowknot resting on the nape of your neck down to your chest, ghosting over your breasts as he smoothed the fabric over your skin. His eyes traced the lines of the fabric, the red and white stripes popping against your skin.
“What’s the verdict?” You asked as he cupped your breasts, his thumb running over where your nipples pebbled against the fabric.
“I think,” Cooper started with a low hum, taking another moment to admire the curves of your cleavage before looking up at you. “You knew exactly what you were doing when you packed this.” He said, pressing a kiss against your sternum as he moved his hands to your waist.
“Then I’ll just stay cooped up all weekend, not to be seen by the sun.” You sighed melodramatically. You felt Cooper smile against your skin, and with a nip on the side of your breast, he looked up.
“Not a terrible idea.” He said, grabbing you by the belt loops of your shorts and pulling you down onto his lap. He felt your hands against his shoulders, and he let one finger trail down your arm, painting an invisible line against the dips and contours down to the delicate bones in your wrist. You adjusted your hand, cradling the side of his face and guiding his gaze back to you.
“I think that would end badly for both of us.” You said, running your thumb over his cheek. “I’d go stir crazy, probably take you with me.”
He laughed softly, kissing the palm of your hand. “Not far from it right now, sweetheart.”
Your eyes met the ceiling again with a tsk. “Then go get a hotel.”
“Was I complaining?” He pulled you forward on his lap until your chests were inches apart.
“Doesn’t feel like it.” You answered him with a smile. Cooper shared the expression, his eyes falling to your lips before meeting them with his own. He didn’t waste too much time before pushing your lips open with his tongue. You matched her fervor, your hand moving to the back of his neck and running through the hair on the nape of his neck.
It didn’t take long for him to move your bodies on the bed. His head on a pillow, and your body on top of his. You had worked his shirt away from his pants and unbuttoned it eagerly. He shuddered as you ran your fingers over the muscles of his abdomen and chest, your nail scraping over his nipple. He let your hands admire him as he undid your shorts, and you kicked them off once they were out of his reach. Cooper groaned, seeing that you were bare underneath, but he was grateful nonetheless. He pulled you forward until you were hovering directly above him, his warm breath fanning over you.
You placed your hands on the headboard in front of you, and his lips met your sex, his tongue pressing against your opening with a testing weight. The muscle teased against your entrance, but never made its way in. He hummed in satisfaction, moving his attention to your folds, his tongue darting careful circles around your clit but never giving it the attention you needed.
His hands moved from your thighs to your ass, spreading you and pulling you harder against him. His teeth grazed against your clit, pinching the bud lightly before soothing it over with his tongue. You let out a full sigh, your head falling back, and you rolled your hips against his face. You squeaked out an apology for the moment, but you just felt him shake his head beneath you.
He increased the pressure, his tongue sweeping across you in heavy, wet strokes that made your body buzz, but never delving deeper. With the continued teasing, your body pushed itself further against him. You opened your eyes and tried to lift yourself higher with your thighs, but Cooper held his grip on your hips, keeping you pressed firmly against his face. You were about to move a hand to swat at him in lieu of some smart remark, but he finally gave your clit the attention you needed; his tongue meeting the swollen bud with a rhythmic pressure. You cursed, tightening your grip on the headboard and letting yourself rock against his face without grace. He groaned against your wet skin approvingly, one hand moving to smack your ass. You gasped. What little force there was to the slap reverberated to your core as he worked you up to your climax.
Cooper could feel your swollen pussy throbbing and clenching impatiently against him, and the furrow of your face and desperate whines told him you were close. He pressed his tongue flat against your clit one last time before moving you off him. Your eyes were heavy and hooded as you looked down, his face wet with your arousal and glistening in the sunlight trickling through the windows.
“Go and take what you want, sweetheart.” Cooper said, his voice low. You huffed, glaring down at him. He smiled, watching as the gears moved slowly in your lust-addled mind. You wanted to tease him back, bring him to the edge for no reward, just like he had done to you. But you were far too impatient, especially now as your arousal coated his chest.
You huffed, moving so that you were facing the foot of the bed. You rushed to strip him of his pants, your hands frantic as you pushed his slacks down with his briefs just enough to let his cock stand free. You forward, bracing yourself on his thighs as your entrance greedily kissed the swollen head of his dick.
Cooper groaned as you lowered yourself down on him, his hands moving to grip your ass. He watched with hungry eyes as you swelled every inch of him. There wasn’t a minute of sex with you he didn’t love, but watching him stretch and fill you out, how eager you were for it every time, was one of the best ones.
“That’s it,” he cooed, massaging the globes of your ass. “Take it all.” He let his head fall back as you started to bounce up and down on his cock, his own hips snapping up to meet every descent. Your hands dug into his thighs, your nails leaving small crescents against the muscles as your panting turned to moans. It didn’t take long for that knot to tighten again, and your movements became loose and uncoordinated, allowing Cooper to take over and fuck into you, chasing his own orgasm.
Your thighs trembled on either side of him, and he could feel you pulsing around him tighter with each movement. He pulled you flush against him, rolling his hips up into you, kissing that sweet spot inside you relentlessly.
Your head fell forward, and you chanted his name like a prayer. Then any semblance of words turned into a cry as you came around him. Cooper’s movements went back to sloppy thrusts that only lasted a few moments longer before he pulled out, painting your ass and lower back with his release.
He gave you a moment to catch your breath and encouraged you to turn back to him, draping you over his chest. There was a peaceful quiet, the sounds of each of your breathing evening out. Cooper’s thumb moved to the curve of your ass, swiping up a stream of his release and bringing it against your lips, which your parted to clean the digit without even thinking about it. He hummed, leaning forward to kiss the top of your head, then used the corner of the duvet to clean the rest of his cum off your skin. You tsked, smacking his arm.
“Have the robot change the sheets.” He smiled, setting the fabric down and resting his hand on the small of your back. You rolled your eyes, lying your cheek against his sweat-damp chest and looking out the window.
“I’m going to try to catch some sun.” You said, but you made no effort to get up.
“I’ll catch up with you.” He said, his thumb tracing small patterns against your skin. “I’m going to take advantage of being in bed and get some shut-eye.” You moved your head to look at him with a small pout.
“Nap outside,” you suggested, your hand running over his chest, toying with the hem of his unbuttoned shirt. “There’s these deck chairs we can move out to the beach.”
“I’ll make sure to grab one when I wake up.” He said, giving your forehead another placating kiss.
You lingered in the bed for a few more minutes before getting up with a stretch. You gave yourself a bird bath in the ensuite sink, figuring you would need to wash the sand off you later. Cooper was out of bed when you got out, getting out of his slacks completely, but readjusting his briefs. He watched as you put on the rest of your bathing suit. You fished a bottle of sunscreen out of your suitcase and handed it to him.
You shivered as the cool lotion met your still-hot skin, but Cooper’s hands soothed the sensation as he massaged the product onto your back. You went to take the bottle back from him to do the rest of your body, but he pulled it away.
“C’mon, need to get the front.” He said with a playful smile. You snatched the bottle back and rolled your eyes.
“I think I’ve got that, you dirty old man.” You jibed.
“Dirty old man?” He repeated, his brows raising. “Sweetheart, you just rode my face like a bucking bronco.”
“Are you complaining?” You shot back, smiling, as you finished applying sunblock to your legs.
“Not while I’m still alive and breathing.” He said, pinching your side as he moved back to the bed.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
You’d dragged out one of the beach chairs and stuck an umbrella in the sand next to it. It was far enough into the afternoon that the sun wasn’t at its worst, but you didn’t want to take risks. You settled into the lounger, tipping the sun hat over your face, and you were asleep within twenty minutes. The magazine you had brought to read was untouched on the foot of the chair.
You couldn’t tell how much time had passed when you felt Cooper’s lips on the side of your neck, followed by a low coo urging you to get up. You groaned, lolling your head to the other side and stretching your arms above your head, almost batting his face as he bent over to wake you.
“Dinner’s almost ready, c’mon.” He said, straightening up and collapsing your umbrella, revealing a sun that sat far lower in the sky than you remembered.
“I thought we were going out?” You asked groggily, closing your eyes again.
“Switched things around.” He answered. “But I’ll eat your plate if you want to keep sleeping outside like a stray cat.”You opened your eyes and looked up at him through your brows, seeing a teasing smile on his face.
Cooper carried the chair and the umbrella back to the deck, unfolding neither as you trudged behind him, the smell of food already wafting out of the house. You looked behind you, noticing your chair had been the only one on the sand.
“You didn’t come out.” You noted, pulling the glass door open.
“Can’t sunbathe and make you dinner at the same time, sweetheart.” He said, taking the door from you, letting you step in before him. You shrugged, stepping into the large living room.
“I’ll be right down,” you said, heading for the stairs. “Just gonna grab a cover-up.” If Cooper said anything, you didn’t catch it, having started up the stairs before you finished speaking.
You padded down the hall, letting out a yawn and stretching your arms again as you entered the bedroom. You heard the telltale whooshing and mechanical hum of the robotic butler and moved your head to look at the machine as it made the bed.
“Hi,” you gave it a small wave as it reared an eye to look at you. You went to pick through your luggage, only to find the suitcase empty and standing up. You glanced at the closet, seeing some of your garments hanging. “Thank you.” You said, moving over and pulling the sheer half robe off the hanger.
“My pleasure, Miss Huxley.” It replied. You pulled the material over your body, watching as its arms moved to tuck the sheet into place.
“Mr. Handy?” You asked, tying the sash. Another eye moved to face you, its hands fluffing the pillow.
“How can I be of service?” It chirped.
“Did someone ask you to change the bed?”
“Your guest requested such. Though I do believe he wanted me out of the kitchen more than he wanted clean linens.”
You let out a humored breath, a smile pulling at your lips. “Thank you, Mr. Handy.”
You went downstairs with a little more energy, finding Cooper standing over the stove. On the counter next to him were two steak medallions with grill marks hatching the tops. You raised a brow, looking out the window as the grill cooled. You hummed at the observation, leaning against the island.
“Making yourself right at home.” You noted with a playful smile. He looked over his shoulder at you, his gaze lingering on you for a moment before turning back to whatever he was making.
“Forgive me, Mansfield, was just trying to make you dinner.”
“You’re not out of my good graces yet,” you replied. “Just means you need to be all the more careful about how that steak is cooked.” You pushed off the counter and walked over to investigate the stovetop. Peering around his back, you saw him pushing brussel sprouts and onions around in the pan.
“We didn’t get bacon.” He said as your head ducked away, choosing instead to examine the martini he’d been sipping while he cooked.
“You’ll be okay, Cowboy. Better for your heart.” You said, taking a sip from his drink and cringing. “Jesus, Coop. Is this just gin?”
He smiled as you set the glass down and leaned back against the counter. “No, it’s not.” He said, turning the burner off and moving the pan away from it. He took the glass from you and set it down. He lifted you onto the counter, stepping between your legs. He grabbed the drink, took his own sip, then pressed the rim of the glass against your lips. You pinched your face, shaking your head.
“C’mon,” he purred, moving his other hand to your face and leaning your head back. You parted your lips, letting him tip the drink into your mouth. You winced as you swallowed the liquid, involuntarily shaking your head. He laughed softly as he set the empty glass down on the counter, using his thumb to swipe away a dribble of cocktail from underneath your lip. He ran the digit over your lips, watching the movement with a heavy gaze.
“You need to start drinking like you mean it.” He teased, leaning down to kiss underneath your ear. You gigged warmly, nudging his hip with the inside of your thigh. He didn’t budge, instead burying his face in the crook of your neck. He hummed appreciatively; your earlier perfume was covered by the smell of sand, saltwater, and sex.
He nipped at the skin, one hand slipping between the opening of your robe to feel the skin of your side, the other toying with the sash.
“You’re a highly irresponsible chef.” You said, your fingers running lazy circles on his arm.
“Potatoes are on a timer,” he spoke against your skin. “I’m multitasking. That makes me an incredible chef.”
“Don’t act humble on my behalf.” You said, moving your hand to snake your nails through his hair, scratching the nape of his neck. He only hummed in response, adjusting his lips to suck a dark spot on your neck. You hooked one leg around his hips, urging him closer.
“How long until those potatoes are done?” You asked, tugging his hair to raise his head.
“Not long enough,” he answered, his mouth meeting yours. “There’s no timer on—“
“Ready to be of service, Miss.”
You yelped, nearly jumping off the counter. You whipped your head around to see the Mr. Handy hovering on the opposite side of the island. You laughed, facing Cooper again, who groaned and dropped his forehead against yours.
“Fuckin’ thing.” He cursed.
You giggled, shaking your head. “Maybe he just wants to watch.” You said, letting your hand fall around his neck.
“I don’t want it to.” Cooper said.
“Stage fright?” You teased, scrunching your nose. You hopped off the counter and went over to ask the robot to clean the deck. It didn’t move, one of its eyes scanning over to Cooper — who was pulling the rest of dinner out of the oven — and the other dilating and contracting on you. You furrowed your brow, looking up at it curiously.
“Mr. Handy…?” After a moment, the eye on Cooper moved to you.
“Happy to be of service, Miss Huxley.”
“Go clean the deck.” You repeated exasperatedly. It thanked you and buzzed away. You sighed, fixing your robe. “Was he like that when you asked him to change the bed?” You asked as Cooper fixed plates for the two of you. You took it upon yourself to fix drinks for dinner.
“I didn’t ask it to change the bed.” Cooper answered. You stopped, setting the bottle of vodka down on the island and turning to face him.
“You didn’t?”
“No, sweetheart.” He carried the two plates to the dining room. “I know how to change a bed.”
You were about to protest for your own ability to do the chore, but stopped on the words for a moment. Cooper met you back on the island, pulling the vodka away from you and twisting the cap back on.
“Did you tell it anything, then? While I was outside?” You asked, turning to face him fully.
“I told it to fuck off.” He said, grabbing a bottle of merlot instead. You chewed your cheek, but you told yourself you were likely overthinking it. Robots fuck up all the time. Yours wasn’t any better than anyone else’s.
“Probably just on the fritz.” You shrugged. “I’ll ask it to run diagnostics after dinner.”
“Or maybe it’ll just roll over and die like a bug.” Cooper said, carrying the wine glasses to the other room. You followed him with the bottle.
The two of you sat adjacent to one another in the dining room; the dining m table was too large to enjoy company sitting on either side. Your leg brushed against his, then eventually you used his lap for an ottoman, draping one leg over his thighs while the two of you ate and conversed.
“Have you sailed before?” You asked, stabbing more food onto your fork.
“When I was younger.” He answered. “That’s what you got?”
“Mhm, that and a Capri.” You said once you were done chewing. “Sailboat’s roomier.” You added.
“You take classes?”
You nodded. “During the summers when I was younger. Sailing, tennis, horseback riding…I can’t even remember everything.” It was Cooper’s turn to nod, grabbing the napkin from his lap to wipe the corners of his mouth and taking a sip from his refilled wine glass.
“Janey’s friend took did sailing last summer. She pestered us about it every day for a month afterward.” Cooper spoke casually, but you were caught off guard, almost tensing. Since things had evolved—for lack of a better term—he had barely talked about Janey to you, if at all. Maybe her name was woven in when he would lament the husk his marriage had become, but you figured his daughter was this invisible line he had drawn.
You resumed chewing after a moment's pause, adjusting your face and hoping your surprise wasn’t too evident on it.
“I loved it, good skill to have.” You said. “But, I was a little closer to the beach than we are back in L.A. I’m sure there’s a camp or something she could go to.” You watched his face for any reaction, when none came, you felt a little more stable on the new waters.
“She does scouts.” He said, and you nodded. “Maybe her troop leader would be interested in having them do something like that.”
You gave a reassuring shrug. “My friend Marcie did scouts.” You said. “Though she was way more outdoorsy than I was.” You laughed softly. “She taught me the difference between currants and nightshade, and I taught her how to do her brows.”
“Both very useful things, of course.” Cooper said. You accepted the teasing with a smile.
“That’s why she got sent to finishing school. Always rolling around outside, with bandaged knees and dirt under her nails. Her parents were in the same circles as my grandparents — all those old money assholes — and they thought she ‘made them look bad’.”
“What about you?”
“Old money assholes.” You repeated, taking a bite of your steak. “It was just my grandmother by then, she wanted to make sure I ‘learned to be a lady’.” You shrugged. “They thought they’d fucked up with my mom. The way she ran off and all. I mean, I was a good kid, but I guess they didn’t want to take risks. That old witch is probably rolling in her grave seeing me doing billboards in skin-tight leather.” You finished with a chuckle.
“Well, I think the rest of the world is pretty happy seeing you up there.” He winked. “It’s nice with Janey. She’s always been a good kid, but she’s not growing up into a brat, either. Barb and I always wanted to make sure of that.
“Maybe she’s just humoring me, but she still likes all the same stuff, too. The horses, the cowboys, and all that.” He added fondly. “Maybe she’ll grow out of it and into a pair of heels, but I just hope to whatever fucking God there is she won’t wind up like her mother.” He finished, his tone changing as he took another sip of wine. You did the same, unsure how to follow up on that one.
“I think as long as she knows you’re there, you don’t need to worry.” You said finally. “People tend to do more straying when they feel alone.”
“I know,” he nodded, grabbing the bottle to refill the wineglass. “And it’s not that Barb’s a bad mother. She just thinks that this work — her work — is safe. It's right. Said something about getting Janey on payroll when she’s old enough.” He shook his head, his lip rising in distaste. “She only half meant it, but if my daughter ends up working with those bloodsuckers, I’ll know I fucked up.”
“You think she’s even interested in that?” You asked, placing your fork and knife on the empty plate next to each other.
“No. I don’t know. Like I said, she’s more into the idea of cowboys and westerns than management and corner offices.”
“Would be a weird kid if she were dreaming of all that.” You said with a soft smile.
“What about you?” He asked, leaning back in the chair, resting one hand on your leg over his lap.
“What about me?”
“What did you dream of doing?”
You shrugged, refilling your own glass with what was left in the bottle. “This, I guess. Always liked movies.”
Cooper gave you a skeptical look, and you shrugged with a smile.
“What?”
“C’mon, you never wanted anything else? Astronaut, cowboy, space cowboy? With those glasses you had, you could’ve been the world’s sexiest nuclear engineer.”
You kicked his calf with your other foot, and he laughed.
“Yes,” you confirmed. “I wanted to be an actress, so I started acting.” You said. “Didn’t really land on that until a little later, though. Can’t say I had anything in mind before then. Just wanted to be good enough for more than a passing second of my father’s attention. I even got accepted to CIT. He acted like I told him the weather, and my heart wasn’t really in it, anyway. So, I let my grandmother ship me off to charm school.”
“Really?” Cooper asked with a raised brow.
You nodded, taking a sip of the wine. “Molecular biology.” He scoffed, shaking his head with a chuckle. “No, I’m serious!” You said, pushing his arm.
“Well then, you’re a lot dumber than I thought you were.”
“I just told you I got accepted into CIT.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly why.” He said, looking to you with a smile but a half-serious look in his eyes. “I mean, what the fuck are you doing running around half naked for Centipede when you could be doing something like that?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to stroll into Hollywood and get to be in the next Gone with the Wind. Everyone needs to start somewhere.” You defended. “Besides, last time I checked, you were acting, too.”
“That’s different. I was a ranch hand and then a Marine. I didn’t leave behind the most prestigious university in the country to run around La La Land.”
“I wouldn’t have been happy.” You said with a small frown, finishing your glass of wine. “Even if I was wildly passionate about molecular biology, my father wasn’t going to pay for it unless I signed on to work for Nuka. Hell, I’m still not sure what they need a molecular biologist for. But Coop, you just said; corporate drag and dreck; that’s…” You shook your head. “Well, it’s a living, but not a life.”
“Yeah, but sweetheart, you’re still on your daddy’s payroll.”
“An advertisement every now and then isn’t the same as what…a beverageer? Hunched over a desk, wearing a lab coat with a patch, and seeing what that much sugar does to the human body? Honestly, does that seem like me?”
“No,” he agreed with a shrug, putting his own wine glass down on the table. “But is this?” You made a face.
“What do you mean?”
He took a breath, shifting his head as if weighing out the right way to verbalize his thoughts. “The billboards, the cheesy movies, the whole sex symbol thing. You’re good at pretending it’s you, but it’s not.”
“They’re just stepping stones.” You said after sitting on his words for a moment. “In an industry like this — like ours — you don’t get anywhere if you don’t cause a wake.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just going to wash off. You’re too smart not to know that.” He said. “And I know you know you’re too far into all this; the acting, the PR, the studio to change your image. Hell, the studio loves what you are. Nothing wrong with what it is, sweetheart, but don’t go acting like it’s something different.” His words were honest, in that special-to-him way he had of delivering things that made them feel almost harsh in their practicality. But his hand ran a soothing pattern over your leg as he spoke.
“I’ll evolve, though.” You said, your words spoken to convince him and yourself. “Stepping stones.”
“Maybe you will, but maybe the world won’t. Hell, it might not have time to.” He said.
“Not more of this.” You groaned, leaning your head back.
“Have you thought at all about it?” He asked seriously despite your theatrics. “There’s nothing wrong with being prepared, sweetheart.”
You sighed through your nose, meeting his gaze. “No, Coop. I haven’t given any more thought to renting a spot in some lead shoebox.”
“Mansfield, just think about it.” He urged, giving your leg an encouraging squeeze. “If something happens, I’m gonna want to know you’re safe.”
You looked down, playing with the skin of your nail beds, but careful not to tear it. He was probably all taken care of. His wife probably got them half of a vault to themselves. You could get a spot, afford a good spot, too. But it’d just be you. Yeah, there are other people, but spending years underground with a bunch of strangers? You’d rather just take the bomb.
“Yeah, I’ll think about it.” You said, putting your leg back on the floor and standing up to clear the table. Cooper caught you with a hand on the small of your back before you could go to the kitchen, and you looked over to him. His face was conflicted, and his mouth was parted slightly as if he was trying to speak, but something was stopping him.
“What?” You asked softly.
His jaw worked, then he swallowed, shaking his head. “I’ll help.” He said, standing and gathering the wine glasses and the empty bottle.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
“C’mon,” you urged with a giggle, shrugging off your cover-up that had already come untied and slipped off your shoulder. “It’s warm!”
The energy had lightened while the two of you cleaned the kitchen in tandem, then you settled on the deck to drink and watch the sun go down, which put you in a much better mood. Once you had finished your last cocktail, you wanted to go for a walk on the beach. Now, you were pulling on Cooper’s arm to try to get him into the water.
“Sweetheart, it’s barely May,” he said with an amused smile. “That water is not going to be warm.”
“You don’t know that.” You said, letting go of his arm and wandering off closer to the shoreline. Cooper picked up the sheer robe from the sand, putting it in the same hand that held your sandals. He followed you from a few paces behind, taking a sip from the bottle he’d brought with him on the walk; it would take a little more than some wine and a few cocktails for him to get where you were. He watched as you confidently strolled into the water and immediately tensed up, jumping back like a cat with an accompanying curse.
“Well?” He asked with a raised brow and ribbing smile as he came up behind you.
“It is warm. I just don’t want to swim right now.” You said, turning your nose up slightly. He shook his head at your defiance. “Try it then.” You challenged, doubling down.
“I don’t think I wanna swim right now either.” He replied. You responded with a melodramatic sigh and held out a hand to get your things back from him. Cooper shook his head. Despite your stuck-out lip, you didn’t bother hiding that scheming look in your eyes.
“You can come here if you want them.”
‘It’s my shit, just give it to me.”
“You’re going to try to pull me in that water.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Give me my stuff.” You said, reaching forward for his arm. He moves out of the way, and you stumble forward with a laugh.
Cooper nestled the bottle in the sand and set your belongings down next to it, and by the time you came back towards him, he intercepted you; grabbing you by the waist and hoisting you up. You shrieked in playful protest, squirming in his grasp as he carried you back to the shoreline.
“Water’s warm, right?” He asked, loosening his grip as if he was going to drop you. You squealed a surrender, your feet kicking at his thighs. He didn’t listen, instead dipping you down until your shoulders and hair crested the water.
“Cooper!” You cried, trying to arch out of the baptism. He finally relented, pulling you up and away from the water, setting your feet down on the sand.
“That wasn’t funny.” You said with a moue.
“I’m sure you would’ve thought it was funny if you had managed to tip me over.” He smiled, unbuttoning his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders, and using it to dry you off. You didn’t respond, just looking up at him through an angry brow. He tsked, shrugging the damp shirt back on and picking up your robe, draping it over you once he was sure you were dry enough that sand wouldn’t stick to your skin.
“Don’t give me that.” He said, lifting your chin. “You’re gonna act mad at me?”
“I should,” you said. “I’m cold.”
“Well,” He started, picking up your sandals and the bottle, handing them to you before lifting you again; one hand on the small of your back and the other under your legs. “Let’s get you back and in some hot water then.”
“I’m still gonna be mad at you.” You declared, leaning your head against his chest and putting one arm around his shoulders.
Your act was forgotten quickly as he carried you back to the house, stopping occasionally to point out different stars and the constellations trailing around them. You’d squint up to try and see, already at a disadvantage furthered by inebriation.
He’d only put you down when the two of you got to the ensuite, setting you on the counter while he got the shower ready. The sound of water hitting the tile filled the space, and he walked back over to you, his hands on either side of your hips.
“It’s a miracle this thing stays on.” He mused as he undid the knots on either side, his thumbs gently running over the now bare skin before moving to your back and undoing the clasps and knot around your neck. He pulled the material away, caressing a breast in his hand; his eyes dark and hooded as he watched the flesh knead between his fingers.
He leaned down, taking the peak into his mouth, his lips latching around your nipple. He sucked and nipped for a moment, his tongue pressing against the bud. He raised his head and pulled you off the counter, your feet landing on the plush bath mat in front of the sink.
“I’m going to clean up downstairs and make a call, alright?” He said, kissing your temple. You reached out and grabbed his wrist, and he turned back to meet your pleading gaze.
“What?” He asked fondly.
“We can save water…” You suggested, moving your hand down to play with his fingers.
“That’s cute, Mansfield, but I don’t think you’re too worried about the environment right now.” He said, but didn’t pull away.
“Then it’s saving time.” You offered instead. Cooper looked at the watch on his other hand and let out a contemplative breath, working out the time difference in his head.
“Are you gonna be quick?” He asked.
“That’s entirely on you.” You said as you walked your fingers up his arm.
You let out an overdramatic breath of relief when the warm water hit you and started rinsing off the day that had collected on your skin. You ran your hands over your shoulders and dipped your head further under the stream of the shower head, soaking the rest of your hair that hadn’t gotten wet earlier.
Cooper stepped in a moment after you, and you looked over your shoulder with a smile. With a hand on your waist, he moved you so that he could stand under the stream. You budged, stepping to grab the loofa and bar of soap. You bent over, starting to scrub at your legs; the movement caught Cooper’s attention. You stood up, glancing behind you with a playful gleam in your eyes.
Cooper smiled back softly, reaching out to take the loofa from you. He lathered your shoulders, the nylon pouf gliding across your skin. He reached around to your front to access your chest and stomach, then back to the small of your back. His other hand followed the soapy trail, tracing down the line of your spine. He reached behind him to hook the loofah over the temperature knob. His hands returned to your body, massaging the muscles of your shoulders. You sighed, closing your eyes and lolling your head back.
You let your eyes open after a lingering second, meeting his gaze. He leaned down to kiss you, pulling your back flush against his front, and you could feel him poking against your backside. You smiled against his lips and tried to turn around in his hold to face him, but he held you still with his hands on your hips. You stayed for another moment and then pulled away, the muscles in your neck protesting the angle.
He used one foot to spread your legs, and one hand to your back, leaning you forward. You propped your arms against the tiled wall, watching as a trickle of water made its way down to the lip of the tub. Cooper didn’t waste time pushing two fingers into you. You moaned as the digits curled inside of you, taking the time to work you up and open. You pushed your hips against his hand in an adagio, your head falling forward as the steam in the shower worked with the need and alcohol in your head to blur the lines of the tiles into a soft fog.
Cooper watched your body writhe and wiggle in front of him, the water sluicing off you and making your skin slick. He pulled his fingers out slowly, and your hips followed the action as if pulled by an invisible leash. He pushed the digits back in, his thumb hooked over your ass while the hand in front of your body began to toy with your clit. Your hands tried to curl against the tile but to no avail, and you opted instead to push your body back and as close to Cooper’s as it could go.
His hand pulled out of you one last time and wrapped around the base of his cock, now fully hard and standing at attention. He pumped himself only a few times before pushing into you in one slow, heavy movement. You moaned out his name, using the wall to push back against him and meeting his hips as he began to fuck you. His hand found your hair, grabbing a fistful of the wet strands and pulling, arching your back further.
Steam clung to your skin and hung heavy in the air around you, making every motion feel all the more hot and deliberate. He resumed the small circles over your clit, though you had been too busy reveling in the feeling of him inside you again to even realize he had stopped. You began to tighten around him as you neared your orgasm. You pulled against his grip on your hair, and he loosened his hold on the tendrils, allowing you to look over your shoulder at him, looking up to him with glossy, lust-blown eyes. His own gaze moved up from where it had been watching where your bodies connected. His hair was dark and wet from the water, some strands falling forward, clinging to his temple and forehead.
Cooper’s breath hitched, and his eyes stayed locked on yours as he pressed harder against your clit. As your orgasm pushed through your body, your head fell forward again, and his name fell from your lips. His hand fell from between your legs, but his pace didn’t falter as he chased his orgasm inside you. He used the now free hand to grab your thigh and raise your leg enough to allow him to fuck into you deeper, his balls slapping against your swollen clit as his tip kissed your cervix. You fussed from the overstimulation beneath him, but made no move to get away, your cunt drawing him in with each pulse like a siren’s song. With a few more purposeful but uncoordinated thrusts, he came, flooding your pussy with rope after rope of his release.
For a few minutes, the sounds of panting and slowly steadying breathing drowned out the water's sound. Cooper set your leg down and pulled out of you slowly, watching with a hooded gaze as his cum leaked out of your fucked out pussy. He cursed, hoping that it could be the last thing he saw before he died.
He finished in the shower before you, stepping out with a kiss to your soapy hair. You weren’t too far behind him, but you lingered in the bathroom while he did what he needed to. You took your time moisturizing and perfuming your body and setting your hair. The latter takes a little extra focus than normal as the last of the night's alcohol was still lingering in your system. You eventually left the bathroom, an invisible cloud of steam trailing behind you into the bedroom.
Cooper was already in bed when you came out, the day's newspaper folded across his chest. You pulled a blue negligee from the closet and stepped into it, then crossed to the vanity. You shook a Nembutal from the orange bottle into your palm and swallowed them dry, setting the bottle back next to your birth control.
You reached for the light switch, glancing over at him. "You need this on?"
He shook his head, setting the paper on the nightstand.
You flicked it off and made your way to your side of the bed. You pulled the blanket back and stopped before lying down. Cooper's breathing had already started to even out, one arm folded behind his head, the other resting at his side. There was space between you — a reasonable amount of space — and you found yourself suddenly aware of it.
You couldn't remember the last time you had shared a bed with someone, at least not like this. Not just slept in one, but meant it. You tried chalking the distinction up to whatever alcohol was left in your system so you could reasonably not think about it.
You lay down facing away from him, but his warmth reaches you anyway. You closed your eyes and waited for the pills to do what you needed them to do.
Summary: Right when he can't afford any more trouble, Cooper Howard dives into it headfirst.
Series Masterlist
Introduction | Previous Chapter
Word Count: 10,663
Notes: Long chapter my bad but I like this one best so far.
Chapter Tags: Lots of sex, we've got: oral (f!receiving), face sitting, penetrative sex, riding/reverse cowgirl, shower sex, pulling out and creampies, shower sex, hair pulling, fingering(f!receiving again but Cooper Howard is a giver), kind of tipsy but not drunk sex. Then we have some drinking, smoking, swearing, prescription drug use, shitty family dynamics, canon-typical discussion about war/war anxieties, older man/younger woman. I think that's it, it's a big one I may have missed a few.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
You’d arrived in Boston a day before Cooper. Nuka had paid for your airfare, you assumed Cooper had shelled out for his own. You weren’t sure how he excused that, but you tried not to spend too much time thinking about the backstage of the affair.
You figured he’d been joking. It didn’t help the way he’d suggested it. Then the two of you kept fleshing out the idea, but it was just that — an idea. “It would be nice to get out of here, just for a little while,” he said the next day, and you didn’t argue.
The work had been fine; some promo shoots at Nuka-World. Business has been dwindling with the constant news of injuries and even the odd death coming from the park. You even noticed the rides in some of the older areas were in bad shape, and you figured that’s why they tried to keep the shoot near Galactic Zone.
You stood next to your father, shaking his hand and giving the camera a perfected smile. The two of you must have looked more like business partners than family. You supposed you were.
Your father— surprisingly—had been in a lot of the photos. Normally, he would be scurrying around for Bradberton, making sure he looked ever-so camera-ready. But the man was noticeably absent. You hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him all day. As he blinked away the flash from the bulb, you asked your father.
“Sorry, jellybean, you’ll have to repeat that.” He said, pushing his glasses out of his face to rub his eyes.
“Bradberton. He’s usually here for this kind of stuff,” you rephrased, taking the helmet off your head. “Where is he?”
“Off-site.” He said. “Don’t worry, he wishes he could be here.” He answered, then waved over an assistant. Funny, he was always the one being waved around before.
“Daddy?” You called, trying to get his attention again. He held up a hand behind his back, and you rolled your eyes. You put one hand on your hip and the other around the helmet, securing it to your side. You let out an impatient huff as he turned back to you. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Sorry, what were you saying?” He finally asked. You closed your eyes for a moment before you could roll them and smiled softly.
“I’m going down to the beach this weekend. Can I borrow the V-8?”
“Have a car drop you off.”
“No, I need to drive.”
You huffed, working your jaw. You hated talking to him. The only time he doesn’t talk to you like you’re still a kid is when there’s a contract between you. Before you could say anything, another employee approached him with a question, and this time, you let your annoyance show.
“Please, Daddy. I told my friend I’d pick them up from the airport.”
“Your friend can’t take a cab?” He asked, not sparing you the attention.
“Not when you’ve got two perfectly good cars.”
He took a moment, surveying around the park with an analytical eye before looking back to you.
“Car’s yours for the weekend if you give me another day here.” He said, his tone going slightly more professional.
“I’ll take the Buick instead, but I’m only here the rest of the day.” You shot back. He gave it a moment of consideration, then nodded.
You didn’t see much of him the rest of the day. Your time was instead spent posing next to snot-nosed kids while their parents encouraged them behind Codacs. By the time you peeled that horrible suit off and got back to your father’s house, it was well past five. You didn’t see his Corvega in the driveway. Though in all honesty, it would’ve surprised you more if he had been home.
You hadn’t been in the house much since moving to New York, even less since the move to California. Habitually, you still called it home, though looking around now, it felt very little like it. Growing up there had always been a sterile feel to the house, but in the years since you’ve left, your father has turned it into a three-story office. File boxes were piled in dining room chairs as if they were sitting down to eat plates full of manila folders. The living room wasn’t much different, and you figured it was from disuse rather than from work to keep it clean.
The only difference between growing up in the house and visiting now was that your father wasn’t having to pretend to be anything other than a man in love with his work. The littered papers, the dusty end tables, and the empty shelves only served to manifest that.
You poked around the kitchen. The fridge was bare; a few bottles of soda — shocker — and some produce that looked like it had gone bad before you had even bought your plane ticket. The cupboards weren’t any more promising, but eventually you scrounged together a thing of Cram and some crackers.
You walked around with the plate, stopping by the dining room. You popped a bite into your mouth, cringing at the dull and salty feel of the food. Maybe you’ll just have a big breakfast tomorrow instead. As you rolled the mush around in your mouth, you curiously looked over some of the folders. Most of them were acquisitions and patents. You figured he must have been sorting through papers. Eventually, you got to the other side of the table, the contents of the folder labeled confidential. You shrugged off the warning with another bite of bad food and opened it. Narrowing your eyes as you read through the contents.
Life Extension and Prolongation Program
You almost laughed. Every time you came home, you realized more and more just how little your father worked for a soda company.
You grabbed the contents but left the folder, setting the papers under your plate. You opened the dining room window as wide as it could, then scattered the other remaining contents on the table and onto the floor as if they’d been strewn by the breeze. You dumped the remaining food into the bin, left the plate in the sink, and took the papers upstairs, stashing them in your luggage between stacks of clothes.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
“Jesus, Mansfield.” Cooper braced himself on the side of the door as you took a particularly hard turn.
“Sorry,” you offered. “I’m not good with the gears.”
He looked down at the wheel, then back up at you with an incredulous look. “This is an automatic.” He said, unamused and almost worried.
“I know.” You smiled and winked through the tint of your sunglasses. He let out a humored scoff and shook his head.
“Doesn’t make you any better of a driver.” He said, turning his gaze back in front of him, a smile making itself known on his own face.
You eventually pulled into a coolant station, where you agreed to let Cooper finish the trip for his sake more than yours. You leaned against the side of the car, taking the opportunity to stretch your legs and have a smoke. You had pushed your glasses up on top of your head, seeking the shade of the canopy instead.
You watched Cooper as he docked the nozzle into the neck. Your eyes trailed up languidly from where he held the pump at his hips up to meet his eyes, where he met your gaze. Your eyes bounced down for a moment before meeting his again with a raised brow and a look that could’ve meant nothing good.
“Enough.” Cooper scolded, but there was nothing in his tone to tell you he meant it.
You smiled before wrapping your lips around the cigarette and taking a drag. Cooper watched, his eyes never leaving yours.
“Enough what?” You asked, exhaling smoke. He shook his head with a faint smile, finally breaking eye contact to look at the numbers on the pump. He pulled the nozzle out, a heavy drop of coolant splashing onto the ground as he returned the pump to its spot.
“Just get in the car.” He said, motioning his head toward the passenger seat. You again held his gaze for a moment before pushing off the side and walking around, settling into the seat. Cooper went inside the station, emerging a few minutes later with his own pack of cigarettes as he put his wallet back into his pocket.
Driving admittedly went a lot smoother with Cooper behind the wheel, albeit slower. Not long after leaving the station, your hand found Cooper’s leg. He didn’t say anything, keeping his eyes on the road ahead of him. Soon, you moved in your seat, your other hand meeting its mate on his leg. Now, he turned to look at you for a brief moment, and you could see the curious look in his eyes through his sunglasses.
“You got those shorts on too tight?” He asked casually, his eyes back on the road. You shrugged, your hands still moving curiously over his slacks, still not having heard a no.
“I think they fit perfect.” You hummed, playing with his belt buckle.
“Didn’t say they didn’t.” He said, casting another glance your way but keeping his head straight. You didn’t reply, leaning further across the bench and kissing his shoulder while you untucked his shirt. Cooper shuddered at the contact, relishing it for a moment before he shook his head.
“Sweetheart, I’m driving.” He said with a sigh, placing a hand on your side to stop you. You settled back into your seat.
“You’re no fun.” You said lightly, looking out the window again.
“You’re plenty of fun for the both of us.”
“Here, that one there.” You told him, pointing out the address. Cooper raised a brow at the house. The further down the road, the more the houses announced themselves. He’d almost expected you to tell him to keep driving until the tires or the car met water.
It wasn’t as ostentatious as some of the others around it, but it certainly wasn’t being dwarfed. Soft yellow siding was accented by blue shutters. The gambrel roof and matching dormer sat high on the second floor, and an octagonal deck was nestled on the side of the house.
“Nuka cola must love its assistants,” Cooper remarked, turning into the driveway.
“Executive assistant.” You corrected with a roll of your eye.
“Executive assistant.” He repeated, pulling the key out of the ignition, his mind falling somewhere he’d been trying not to let it.
“I don’t know,” you shrugged. “I think there’s something else going on.” You said, not giving him the chance to open your door. Cooper turned to look at you as you stood, taking a moment to stretch before reaching into the back bench to pull out a paper bag of groceries. He thought back to that bag of papers he’d found in your apartment.
“Yeah?” He closed the door behind him, grabbing another bag, this one full of rattling bottles he’d gotten while you’d gotten food.
“Yeah,” you echoed, using your free hand to fiddle with a key ring. “It’s just weird. I didn’t see Bradberton at all yesterday. I asked around, and apparently, no one’s seen him since last month.”
Cooper hummed. “So he’s just gone?” He asked, standing behind you at the door.
“No. I mean, I heard a while back that he’d be ‘indisposed’ for any public appearances. But company-wise, no one’s even seen his shadow. They’re still hearing from him, but it’s just all memos passed through my father.” You twisted the key in the door, then moved up to undo the other lock. “Doesn’t matter, though.” You added, pushing the door open. “This was my mother’s.”
Cooper let out a low whistle as he stepped through the threshold. You stopped in the foyer, setting the bag on an entryway bench as you undid the scarf around your hair and draped it over a coat hook.
“Thought you said they separated?”He asked, putting his own hat on a hook.
“They did. My grandparents wanted my father to get the Cape house since he was getting custody of me. I guess she didn’t put up a fight about that either.” You said, your disdain evident in your voice. You picked up the bag and pushed further into the house, your heels echoing in the sprawling space.
Cooper didn’t rush behind you; the bottles clinked as he adjusted the bag in his grip and walked slowly through the house, admiring the light but vibrant colors and polished woods.
“They had pretty good taste then,” he noted when he finally met you in the kitchen. “Your grandparents.” You smiled and shook your head, pulling a bottle of juice from the bag.
“No, they didn’t. I’ve redone most of it.” You beamed. He laughed softly as you grabbed more to bring to the fridge, watching your hips flick back and forth as you moved across the kitchen. “There are some guest bedrooms that need to be exorcised of floral wallpapers, but I just haven’t had as much time recently.” You sighed, and Cooper moved around the island to open the fridge for you.
“Well, I think it looks just about perfect. Very you.” He said, his hand falling from the fridge door and ghosting over the small of your back. He lingered behind you, letting you finish what you were doing before he guided you against a counter.
“There’s a lot more than just the kitchen.” You teased with a scrunched nose. He hummed, lifting you up onto the countertop in an easy motion.
“I’m just familiarizing myself here, first.” He said, standing between your knees as your hands found his shoulders.
“I think you’ve got it.” You replied as his hands found your waist, running over the soft knit of your top before moving underneath the fabric, snaking up underneath your bra. He moved up, kissing the side of your neck, the smell of your perfume hitting him like the first sip of a heavy drink. While one hand ran over the lace of your bra, the other made its way out from under your shirt to cradle the side of your face. He lifted his head to kiss you, but was stopped by your gaze. You held it for a moment, then glanced past him to the rest of the house.
“I should go check on the rest of the place first.” You said. Cooper hummed, his hands not moving.
“Is this your idea of payback?” He asked with a slight smile.
“No, the Mr. Handy was acting up last time I was here. I want to make sure it didn’t go rogue and destroy the upstairs.” You said, removing your arms from his shoulders and putting a hand on his chest.
“It’ll be fine.”
“So will you.”
He held the look for another beat, then stepped back, letting you hop down. After you left him in the kitchen, Cooper put away the rest of the bags the best he could, guessing as to where things could go. He left the bottles of liquor on the counter and checked his watch; it was only just past noon. Even on a vacation, he supposed that was too early for a drink.
He went back out to the car to get his bag and your suitcase, scoffing at the weight of the latter, but he wasn’t surprised. He made his way upstairs, finding the lights on in what he assumed was the master bedroom. Setting the luggage out on the plush carpet, he took in the room. It was spacious, with a small balcony overlooking the beach. He figured you must have annexed the room into your own during your redecorating. It was blue more than anything, varying shades from near pastels to fuller turquoises and aquas that didn’t overtake the room.
He noticed a pile of framed posters leaning against a wall. He sauntered over, flipping through them. He recognized them quickly as some of your other films. They seemed to be mostly those cheesy monster flicks. ‘He’s programmed to conquer….INVASION OF THE ROBOTIC MAN’ read the one on top. You were unconscious, being carried away by a man in a metal suit. The ones behind held the same cadence. ‘Return of the Bug’, ‘Prohibited Planet’, ‘CENTIPEDE!’. He smiled as he looked through the posters. Maybe he could convince you to spend a night watching them all.
“May I help you with your luggage, sir?”
Cooper nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the voice. He let out a deep breath, turning around to face the robot.
“No, I’m all set.” He said unenthused.
“No problem at all!” It said, one of its eyes contracting and dilating on Cooper while another scanned the room. “Could I interest you in a drink, then?”
Cooper sighed, an awkward feeling settling at the sound of his friend’s voice in the machine.
“No.” He repeated, turning away from it and picking up his own bag and setting it on the foot of the bed.
“Of course. I am at your service whenever you need, sir.”
Cooper ignored it, focused instead on unpacking his clothes. Only looking up when he heard your footfall coming down the hall. He watched skeptically as you asked the robot to clean the dock. It floated off, thanking you for the chore.
“Is that thing going to be on the whole time?” Cooper asked. You must have noticed the distaste on his features as your own expression shifted.
“You don’t like it?”
“You don’t need it.” He countered, setting his clothes down on the bed.
“What, you think I’m going to clean a dock?” You asked with a smile that Cooper didn’t quite reciprocate.
“It’s a dock, Mansfield. Things get dirty outdoors.”
“What is your issue with him?” You asked, adjusting your weight on your hips. He sighed at the defensiveness in your tone and realized this wasn’t worth getting you in a fuss about.
“Nothing.” He said, shaking his head as he took the toiletry bag into the ensuite.
“Then what’s this?” You asked, following behind him.
“What’s what?” He asked, meeting your gaze in the mirror as he set the items on the counter.
“The huffing and the attitude?”
“Attitude?” He repeated, laughing sardonically. “Sweetheart, you really can’t be yelling at people for having an attitude.”
He saw your jaw work in the mirror, as if you were stepping back from coming back at him with another sharp-tongued remark. You turned and walked back into the bedroom. Cooper followed a few minutes later, and you were perched on the foot of the bed next to his belongings, watching him with an almost pouting but not petulant expression. His own face softened, and he stopped in front of the bed. He didn’t say anything, looking down at you with a patient but expectant gaze.
“I…” You trailed off, taking a breath as you tried to push the words out from the back of your head. “I’m happy you’re here. I’m…I just-I don’t…maybe I’m just nervous. And I think that obviously you’ve got something on your mind, too.” You shrugged, trying to make the comment seem light. Cooper sighed, studying your face, the lack of ease in your words replaying in his head. He reached out, picking up the hand that was on your lap and holding it in his own.
Your vulnerability was still rare. It was obvious that you were learning to navigate just as much as Cooper was. He raised your hand slightly, moving his thumb over the lines of your knuckles.
“I’m not supposed to be here, sweetheart.” He said in earnest. “We both know that.” Your eyes darted away from his for a moment, acknowledging his words but not wanting to face them. “But I want to be here. You know that, too.” He said, bringing your hand up to his lips, giving the soft skin a quick kiss.
You nodded, giving him a small smile. Your silence told him that you were done with the exposure.
“Now, you gonna unpack?” He asked, nodding towards your suitcase. “Or do you need to wait for the robot to do it for you?”
You rolled your eyes, your smile shifting to your usual playful grin.
“He’d be happy to do it.” You said, standing up from the bed, your hand lingering in his for a moment before you moved the suitcase onto its side. He watched as you bent over to rifle through it, tossing pieces of a bathing suit behind you onto the bed. Cooper picked up a piece as you stood back up, examining the fabric with a raised brow.
“This is a bathing suit?” He asked as you pulled the material from his fingers.
“You’re suddenly a prude?” You shot back, kicking the heels of your feet. He watched as you held the top up over your shirt. “See?”
He hummed, sitting on the bed. “I’m not seeing anything over that sweater.”
You sneered at him playfully, taking a step forward when he nodded for you to do so. You stood between your legs, and his hands found your waist again, slipping under the knit of your top and pushing it up. Once the shirt was gone, he turned you around, hands moving up your back and undoing the clasps on your bra. You let the undergarment and your sweater fall to the floor, and Cooper took the bikini top from you. His knuckles brushed against your spine as he fastened the top around your back, then he knotted the strings behind your neck.
You turned around, and Cooper’s hand trailed from the bowknot resting on the nape of your neck down to your chest, ghosting over your breasts as he smoothed the fabric over your skin. His eyes traced the lines of the fabric, the red and white stripes popping against your skin.
“What’s the verdict?” You asked as he cupped your breasts, his thumb running over where your nipples pebbled against the fabric.
“I think,” Cooper started with a low hum, taking another moment to admire the curves of your cleavage before looking up at you. “You knew exactly what you were doing when you packed this.” He said, pressing a kiss against your sternum as he moved his hands to your waist.
“Then I’ll just stay cooped up all weekend, not to be seen by the sun.” You sighed melodramatically. You felt Cooper smile against your skin, and with a nip on the side of your breast, he looked up.
“Not a terrible idea.” He said, grabbing you by the belt loops of your shorts and pulling you down onto his lap. He felt your hands against his shoulders, and he let one finger trail down your arm, painting an invisible line against the dips and contours down to the delicate bones in your wrist. You adjusted your hand, cradling the side of his face and guiding his gaze back to you.
“I think that would end badly for both of us.” You said, running your thumb over his cheek. “I’d go stir crazy, probably take you with me.”
He laughed softly, kissing the palm of your hand. “Not far from it right now, sweetheart.”
Your eyes met the ceiling again with a tsk. “Then go get a hotel.”
“Was I complaining?” He pulled you forward on his lap until your chests were inches apart.
“Doesn’t feel like it.” You answered him with a smile. Cooper shared the expression, his eyes falling to your lips before meeting them with his own. He didn’t waste too much time before pushing your lips open with his tongue. You matched her fervor, your hand moving to the back of his neck and running through the hair on the nape of his neck.
It didn’t take long for him to move your bodies on the bed. His head on a pillow, and your body on top of his. You had worked his shirt away from his pants and unbuttoned it eagerly. He shuddered as you ran your fingers over the muscles of his abdomen and chest, your nail scraping over his nipple. He let your hands admire him as he undid your shorts, and you kicked them off once they were out of his reach. Cooper groaned, seeing that you were bare underneath, but he was grateful nonetheless. He pulled you forward until you were hovering directly above him, his warm breath fanning over you.
You placed your hands on the headboard in front of you, and his lips met your sex, his tongue pressing against your opening with a testing weight. The muscle teased against your entrance, but never made its way in. He hummed in satisfaction, moving his attention to your folds, his tongue darting careful circles around your clit but never giving it the attention you needed.
His hands moved from your thighs to your ass, spreading you and pulling you harder against him. His teeth grazed against your clit, pinching the bud lightly before soothing it over with his tongue. You let out a full sigh, your head falling back, and you rolled your hips against his face. You squeaked out an apology for the moment, but you just felt him shake his head beneath you.
He increased the pressure, his tongue sweeping across you in heavy, wet strokes that made your body buzz, but never delving deeper. With the continued teasing, your body pushed itself further against him. You opened your eyes and tried to lift yourself higher with your thighs, but Cooper held his grip on your hips, keeping you pressed firmly against his face. You were about to move a hand to swat at him in lieu of some smart remark, but he finally gave your clit the attention you needed; his tongue meeting the swollen bud with a rhythmic pressure. You cursed, tightening your grip on the headboard and letting yourself rock against his face without grace. He groaned against your wet skin approvingly, one hand moving to smack your ass. You gasped. What little force there was to the slap reverberated to your core as he worked you up to your climax.
Cooper could feel your swollen pussy throbbing and clenching impatiently against him, and the furrow of your face and desperate whines told him you were close. He pressed his tongue flat against your clit one last time before moving you off him. Your eyes were heavy and hooded as you looked down, his face wet with your arousal and glistening in the sunlight trickling through the windows.
“Go and take what you want, sweetheart.” Cooper said, his voice low. You huffed, glaring down at him. He smiled, watching as the gears moved slowly in your lust-addled mind. You wanted to tease him back, bring him to the edge for no reward, just like he had done to you. But you were far too impatient, especially now as your arousal coated his chest.
You huffed, moving so that you were facing the foot of the bed. You rushed to strip him of his pants, your hands frantic as you pushed his slacks down with his briefs just enough to let his cock stand free. You forward, bracing yourself on his thighs as your entrance greedily kissed the swollen head of his dick.
Cooper groaned as you lowered yourself down on him, his hands moving to grip your ass. He watched with hungry eyes as you swelled every inch of him. There wasn’t a minute of sex with you he didn’t love, but watching him stretch and fill you out, how eager you were for it every time, was one of the best ones.
“That’s it,” he cooed, massaging the globes of your ass. “Take it all.” He let his head fall back as you started to bounce up and down on his cock, his own hips snapping up to meet every descent. Your hands dug into his thighs, your nails leaving small crescents against the muscles as your panting turned to moans. It didn’t take long for that knot to tighten again, and your movements became loose and uncoordinated, allowing Cooper to take over and fuck into you, chasing his own orgasm.
Your thighs trembled on either side of him, and he could feel you pulsing around him tighter with each movement. He pulled you flush against him, rolling his hips up into you, kissing that sweet spot inside you relentlessly.
Your head fell forward, and you chanted his name like a prayer. Then any semblance of words turned into a cry as you came around him. Cooper’s movements went back to sloppy thrusts that only lasted a few moments longer before he pulled out, painting your ass and lower back with his release.
He gave you a moment to catch your breath and encouraged you to turn back to him, draping you over his chest. There was a peaceful quiet, the sounds of each of your breathing evening out. Cooper’s thumb moved to the curve of your ass, swiping up a stream of his release and bringing it against your lips, which your parted to clean the digit without even thinking about it. He hummed, leaning forward to kiss the top of your head, then used the corner of the duvet to clean the rest of his cum off your skin. You tsked, smacking his arm.
“Have the robot change the sheets.” He smiled, setting the fabric down and resting his hand on the small of your back. You rolled your eyes, lying your cheek against his sweat-damp chest and looking out the window.
“I’m going to try to catch some sun.” You said, but you made no effort to get up.
“I’ll catch up with you.” He said, his thumb tracing small patterns against your skin. “I’m going to take advantage of being in bed and get some shut-eye.” You moved your head to look at him with a small pout.
“Nap outside,” you suggested, your hand running over his chest, toying with the hem of his unbuttoned shirt. “There’s these deck chairs we can move out to the beach.”
“I’ll make sure to grab one when I wake up.” He said, giving your forehead another placating kiss.
You lingered in the bed for a few more minutes before getting up with a stretch. You gave yourself a bird bath in the ensuite sink, figuring you would need to wash the sand off you later. Cooper was out of bed when you got out, getting out of his slacks completely, but readjusting his briefs. He watched as you put on the rest of your bathing suit. You fished a bottle of sunscreen out of your suitcase and handed it to him.
You shivered as the cool lotion met your still-hot skin, but Cooper’s hands soothed the sensation as he massaged the product onto your back. You went to take the bottle back from him to do the rest of your body, but he pulled it away.
“C’mon, need to get the front.” He said with a playful smile. You snatched the bottle back and rolled your eyes.
“I think I’ve got that, you dirty old man.” You jibed.
“Dirty old man?” He repeated, his brows raising. “Sweetheart, you just rode my face like a bucking bronco.”
“Are you complaining?” You shot back, smiling, as you finished applying sunblock to your legs.
“Not while I’m still alive and breathing.” He said, pinching your side as he moved back to the bed.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
You’d dragged out one of the beach chairs and stuck an umbrella in the sand next to it. It was far enough into the afternoon that the sun wasn’t at its worst, but you didn’t want to take risks. You settled into the lounger, tipping the sun hat over your face, and you were asleep within twenty minutes. The magazine you had brought to read was untouched on the foot of the chair.
You couldn’t tell how much time had passed when you felt Cooper’s lips on the side of your neck, followed by a low coo urging you to get up. You groaned, lolling your head to the other side and stretching your arms above your head, almost batting his face as he bent over to wake you.
“Dinner’s almost ready, c’mon.” He said, straightening up and collapsing your umbrella, revealing a sun that sat far lower in the sky than you remembered.
“I thought we were going out?” You asked groggily, closing your eyes again.
“Switched things around.” He answered. “But I’ll eat your plate if you want to keep sleeping outside like a stray cat.”You opened your eyes and looked up at him through your brows, seeing a teasing smile on his face.
Cooper carried the chair and the umbrella back to the deck, unfolding neither as you trudged behind him, the smell of food already wafting out of the house. You looked behind you, noticing your chair had been the only one on the sand.
“You didn’t come out.” You noted, pulling the glass door open.
“Can’t sunbathe and make you dinner at the same time, sweetheart.” He said, taking the door from you, letting you step in before him. You shrugged, stepping into the large living room.
“I’ll be right down,” you said, heading for the stairs. “Just gonna grab a cover-up.” If Cooper said anything, you didn’t catch it, having started up the stairs before you finished speaking.
You padded down the hall, letting out a yawn and stretching your arms again as you entered the bedroom. You heard the telltale whooshing and mechanical hum of the robotic butler and moved your head to look at the machine as it made the bed.
“Hi,” you gave it a small wave as it reared an eye to look at you. You went to pick through your luggage, only to find the suitcase empty and standing up. You glanced at the closet, seeing some of your garments hanging. “Thank you.” You said, moving over and pulling the sheer half robe off the hanger.
“My pleasure, Miss Huxley.” It replied. You pulled the material over your body, watching as its arms moved to tuck the sheet into place.
“Mr. Handy?” You asked, tying the sash. Another eye moved to face you, its hands fluffing the pillow.
“How can I be of service?” It chirped.
“Did someone ask you to change the bed?”
“Your guest requested such. Though I do believe he wanted me out of the kitchen more than he wanted clean linens.”
You let out a humored breath, a smile pulling at your lips. “Thank you, Mr. Handy.”
You went downstairs with a little more energy, finding Cooper standing over the stove. On the counter next to him were two steak medallions with grill marks hatching the tops. You raised a brow, looking out the window as the grill cooled. You hummed at the observation, leaning against the island.
“Making yourself right at home.” You noted with a playful smile. He looked over his shoulder at you, his gaze lingering on you for a moment before turning back to whatever he was making.
“Forgive me, Mansfield, was just trying to make you dinner.”
“You’re not out of my good graces yet,” you replied. “Just means you need to be all the more careful about how that steak is cooked.” You pushed off the counter and walked over to investigate the stovetop. Peering around his back, you saw him pushing brussel sprouts and onions around in the pan.
“We didn’t get bacon.” He said as your head ducked away, choosing instead to examine the martini he’d been sipping while he cooked.
“You’ll be okay, Cowboy. Better for your heart.” You said, taking a sip from his drink and cringing. “Jesus, Coop. Is this just gin?”
He smiled as you set the glass down and leaned back against the counter. “No, it’s not.” He said, turning the burner off and moving the pan away from it. He took the glass from you and set it down. He lifted you onto the counter, stepping between your legs. He grabbed the drink, took his own sip, then pressed the rim of the glass against your lips. You pinched your face, shaking your head.
“C’mon,” he purred, moving his other hand to your face and leaning your head back. You parted your lips, letting him tip the drink into your mouth. You winced as you swallowed the liquid, involuntarily shaking your head. He laughed softly as he set the empty glass down on the counter, using his thumb to swipe away a dribble of cocktail from underneath your lip. He ran the digit over your lips, watching the movement with a heavy gaze.
“You need to start drinking like you mean it.” He teased, leaning down to kiss underneath your ear. You gigged warmly, nudging his hip with the inside of your thigh. He didn’t budge, instead burying his face in the crook of your neck. He hummed appreciatively; your earlier perfume was covered by the smell of sand, saltwater, and sex.
He nipped at the skin, one hand slipping between the opening of your robe to feel the skin of your side, the other toying with the sash.
“You’re a highly irresponsible chef.” You said, your fingers running lazy circles on his arm.
“Potatoes are on a timer,” he spoke against your skin. “I’m multitasking. That makes me an incredible chef.”
“Don’t act humble on my behalf.” You said, moving your hand to snake your nails through his hair, scratching the nape of his neck. He only hummed in response, adjusting his lips to suck a dark spot on your neck. You hooked one leg around his hips, urging him closer.
“How long until those potatoes are done?” You asked, tugging his hair to raise his head.
“Not long enough,” he answered, his mouth meeting yours. “There’s no timer on—“
“Ready to be of service, Miss.”
You yelped, nearly jumping off the counter. You whipped your head around to see the Mr. Handy hovering on the opposite side of the island. You laughed, facing Cooper again, who groaned and dropped his forehead against yours.
“Fuckin’ thing.” He cursed.
You giggled, shaking your head. “Maybe he just wants to watch.” You said, letting your hand fall around his neck.
“I don’t want it to.” Cooper said.
“Stage fright?” You teased, scrunching your nose. You hopped off the counter and went over to ask the robot to clean the deck. It didn’t move, one of its eyes scanning over to Cooper — who was pulling the rest of dinner out of the oven — and the other dilating and contracting on you. You furrowed your brow, looking up at it curiously.
“Mr. Handy…?” After a moment, the eye on Cooper moved to you.
“Happy to be of service, Miss Huxley.”
“Go clean the deck.” You repeated exasperatedly. It thanked you and buzzed away. You sighed, fixing your robe. “Was he like that when you asked him to change the bed?” You asked as Cooper fixed plates for the two of you. You took it upon yourself to fix drinks for dinner.
“I didn’t ask it to change the bed.” Cooper answered. You stopped, setting the bottle of vodka down on the island and turning to face him.
“You didn’t?”
“No, sweetheart.” He carried the two plates to the dining room. “I know how to change a bed.”
You were about to protest for your own ability to do the chore, but stopped on the words for a moment. Cooper met you back on the island, pulling the vodka away from you and twisting the cap back on.
“Did you tell it anything, then? While I was outside?” You asked, turning to face him fully.
“I told it to fuck off.” He said, grabbing a bottle of merlot instead. You chewed your cheek, but you told yourself you were likely overthinking it. Robots fuck up all the time. Yours wasn’t any better than anyone else’s.
“Probably just on the fritz.” You shrugged. “I’ll ask it to run diagnostics after dinner.”
“Or maybe it’ll just roll over and die like a bug.” Cooper said, carrying the wine glasses to the other room. You followed him with the bottle.
The two of you sat adjacent to one another in the dining room; the dining m table was too large to enjoy company sitting on either side. Your leg brushed against his, then eventually you used his lap for an ottoman, draping one leg over his thighs while the two of you ate and conversed.
“Have you sailed before?” You asked, stabbing more food onto your fork.
“When I was younger.” He answered. “That’s what you got?”
“Mhm, that and a Capri.” You said once you were done chewing. “Sailboat’s roomier.” You added.
“You take classes?”
You nodded. “During the summers when I was younger. Sailing, tennis, horseback riding…I can’t even remember everything.” It was Cooper’s turn to nod, grabbing the napkin from his lap to wipe the corners of his mouth and taking a sip from his refilled wine glass.
“Janey’s friend took did sailing last summer. She pestered us about it every day for a month afterward.” Cooper spoke casually, but you were caught off guard, almost tensing. Since things had evolved—for lack of a better term—he had barely talked about Janey to you, if at all. Maybe her name was woven in when he would lament the husk his marriage had become, but you figured his daughter was this invisible line he had drawn.
You resumed chewing after a moment's pause, adjusting your face and hoping your surprise wasn’t too evident on it.
“I loved it, good skill to have.” You said. “But, I was a little closer to the beach than we are back in L.A. I’m sure there’s a camp or something she could go to.” You watched his face for any reaction, when none came, you felt a little more stable on the new waters.
“She does scouts.” He said, and you nodded. “Maybe her troop leader would be interested in having them do something like that.”
You gave a reassuring shrug. “My friend Marcie did scouts.” You said. “Though she was way more outdoorsy than I was.” You laughed softly. “She taught me the difference between currants and nightshade, and I taught her how to do her brows.”
“Both very useful things, of course.” Cooper said. You accepted the teasing with a smile.
“That’s why she got sent to finishing school. Always rolling around outside, with bandaged knees and dirt under her nails. Her parents were in the same circles as my grandparents — all those old money assholes — and they thought she ‘made them look bad’.”
“What about you?”
“Old money assholes.” You repeated, taking a bite of your steak. “It was just my grandmother by then, she wanted to make sure I ‘learned to be a lady’.” You shrugged. “They thought they’d fucked up with my mom. The way she ran off and all. I mean, I was a good kid, but I guess they didn’t want to take risks. That old witch is probably rolling in her grave seeing me doing billboards in skin-tight leather.” You finished with a chuckle.
“Well, I think the rest of the world is pretty happy seeing you up there.” He winked. “It’s nice with Janey. She’s always been a good kid, but she’s not growing up into a brat, either. Barb and I always wanted to make sure of that.
“Maybe she’s just humoring me, but she still likes all the same stuff, too. The horses, the cowboys, and all that.” He added fondly. “Maybe she’ll grow out of it and into a pair of heels, but I just hope to whatever fucking God there is she won’t wind up like her mother.” He finished, his tone changing as he took another sip of wine. You did the same, unsure how to follow up on that one.
“I think as long as she knows you’re there, you don’t need to worry.” You said finally. “People tend to do more straying when they feel alone.”
“I know,” he nodded, grabbing the bottle to refill the wineglass. “And it’s not that Barb’s a bad mother. She just thinks that this work — her work — is safe. It's right. Said something about getting Janey on payroll when she’s old enough.” He shook his head, his lip rising in distaste. “She only half meant it, but if my daughter ends up working with those bloodsuckers, I’ll know I fucked up.”
“You think she’s even interested in that?” You asked, placing your fork and knife on the empty plate next to each other.
“No. I don’t know. Like I said, she’s more into the idea of cowboys and westerns than management and corner offices.”
“Would be a weird kid if she were dreaming of all that.” You said with a soft smile.
“What about you?” He asked, leaning back in the chair, resting one hand on your leg over his lap.
“What about me?”
“What did you dream of doing?”
You shrugged, refilling your own glass with what was left in the bottle. “This, I guess. Always liked movies.”
Cooper gave you a skeptical look, and you shrugged with a smile.
“What?”
“C’mon, you never wanted anything else? Astronaut, cowboy, space cowboy? With those glasses you had, you could’ve been the world’s sexiest nuclear engineer.”
You kicked his calf with your other foot, and he laughed.
“Yes,” you confirmed. “I wanted to be an actress, so I started acting.” You said. “Didn’t really land on that until a little later, though. Can’t say I had anything in mind before then. Just wanted to be good enough for more than a passing second of my father’s attention. I even got accepted to CIT. He acted like I told him the weather, and my heart wasn’t really in it, anyway. So, I let my grandmother ship me off to charm school.”
“Really?” Cooper asked with a raised brow.
You nodded, taking a sip of the wine. “Molecular biology.” He scoffed, shaking his head with a chuckle. “No, I’m serious!” You said, pushing his arm.
“Well then, you’re a lot dumber than I thought you were.”
“I just told you I got accepted into CIT.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly why.” He said, looking to you with a smile but a half-serious look in his eyes. “I mean, what the fuck are you doing running around half naked for Centipede when you could be doing something like that?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to stroll into Hollywood and get to be in the next Gone with the Wind. Everyone needs to start somewhere.” You defended. “Besides, last time I checked, you were acting, too.”
“That’s different. I was a ranch hand and then a Marine. I didn’t leave behind the most prestigious university in the country to run around La La Land.”
“I wouldn’t have been happy.” You said with a small frown, finishing your glass of wine. “Even if I was wildly passionate about molecular biology, my father wasn’t going to pay for it unless I signed on to work for Nuka. Hell, I’m still not sure what they need a molecular biologist for. But Coop, you just said; corporate drag and dreck; that’s…” You shook your head. “Well, it’s a living, but not a life.”
“Yeah, but sweetheart, you’re still on your daddy’s payroll.”
“An advertisement every now and then isn’t the same as what…a beverageer? Hunched over a desk, wearing a lab coat with a patch, and seeing what that much sugar does to the human body? Honestly, does that seem like me?”
“No,” he agreed with a shrug, putting his own wine glass down on the table. “But is this?” You made a face.
“What do you mean?”
He took a breath, shifting his head as if weighing out the right way to verbalize his thoughts. “The billboards, the cheesy movies, the whole sex symbol thing. You’re good at pretending it’s you, but it’s not.”
“They’re just stepping stones.” You said after sitting on his words for a moment. “In an industry like this — like ours — you don’t get anywhere if you don’t cause a wake.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just going to wash off. You’re too smart not to know that.” He said. “And I know you know you’re too far into all this; the acting, the PR, the studio to change your image. Hell, the studio loves what you are. Nothing wrong with what it is, sweetheart, but don’t go acting like it’s something different.” His words were honest, in that special-to-him way he had of delivering things that made them feel almost harsh in their practicality. But his hand ran a soothing pattern over your leg as he spoke.
“I’ll evolve, though.” You said, your words spoken to convince him and yourself. “Stepping stones.”
“Maybe you will, but maybe the world won’t. Hell, it might not have time to.” He said.
“Not more of this.” You groaned, leaning your head back.
“Have you thought at all about it?” He asked seriously despite your theatrics. “There’s nothing wrong with being prepared, sweetheart.”
You sighed through your nose, meeting his gaze. “No, Coop. I haven’t given any more thought to renting a spot in some lead shoebox.”
“Mansfield, just think about it.” He urged, giving your leg an encouraging squeeze. “If something happens, I’m gonna want to know you’re safe.”
You looked down, playing with the skin of your nail beds, but careful not to tear it. He was probably all taken care of. His wife probably got them half of a vault to themselves. You could get a spot, afford a good spot, too. But it’d just be you. Yeah, there are other people, but spending years underground with a bunch of strangers? You’d rather just take the bomb.
“Yeah, I’ll think about it.” You said, putting your leg back on the floor and standing up to clear the table. Cooper caught you with a hand on the small of your back before you could go to the kitchen, and you looked over to him. His face was conflicted, and his mouth was parted slightly as if he was trying to speak, but something was stopping him.
“What?” You asked softly.
His jaw worked, then he swallowed, shaking his head. “I’ll help.” He said, standing and gathering the wine glasses and the empty bottle.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
“C’mon,” you urged with a giggle, shrugging off your cover-up that had already come untied and slipped off your shoulder. “It’s warm!”
The energy had lightened while the two of you cleaned the kitchen in tandem, then you settled on the deck to drink and watch the sun go down, which put you in a much better mood. Once you had finished your last cocktail, you wanted to go for a walk on the beach. Now, you were pulling on Cooper’s arm to try to get him into the water.
“Sweetheart, it’s barely May,” he said with an amused smile. “That water is not going to be warm.”
“You don’t know that.” You said, letting go of his arm and wandering off closer to the shoreline. Cooper picked up the sheer robe from the sand, putting it in the same hand that held your sandals. He followed you from a few paces behind, taking a sip from the bottle he’d brought with him on the walk; it would take a little more than some wine and a few cocktails for him to get where you were. He watched as you confidently strolled into the water and immediately tensed up, jumping back like a cat with an accompanying curse.
“Well?” He asked with a raised brow and ribbing smile as he came up behind you.
“It is warm. I just don’t want to swim right now.” You said, turning your nose up slightly. He shook his head at your defiance. “Try it then.” You challenged, doubling down.
“I don’t think I wanna swim right now either.” He replied. You responded with a melodramatic sigh and held out a hand to get your things back from him. Cooper shook his head. Despite your stuck-out lip, you didn’t bother hiding that scheming look in your eyes.
“You can come here if you want them.”
‘It’s my shit, just give it to me.”
“You’re going to try to pull me in that water.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Give me my stuff.” You said, reaching forward for his arm. He moves out of the way, and you stumble forward with a laugh.
Cooper nestled the bottle in the sand and set your belongings down next to it, and by the time you came back towards him, he intercepted you; grabbing you by the waist and hoisting you up. You shrieked in playful protest, squirming in his grasp as he carried you back to the shoreline.
“Water’s warm, right?” He asked, loosening his grip as if he was going to drop you. You squealed a surrender, your feet kicking at his thighs. He didn’t listen, instead dipping you down until your shoulders and hair crested the water.
“Cooper!” You cried, trying to arch out of the baptism. He finally relented, pulling you up and away from the water, setting your feet down on the sand.
“That wasn’t funny.” You said with a moue.
“I’m sure you would’ve thought it was funny if you had managed to tip me over.” He smiled, unbuttoning his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders, and using it to dry you off. You didn’t respond, just looking up at him through an angry brow. He tsked, shrugging the damp shirt back on and picking up your robe, draping it over you once he was sure you were dry enough that sand wouldn’t stick to your skin.
“Don’t give me that.” He said, lifting your chin. “You’re gonna act mad at me?”
“I should,” you said. “I’m cold.”
“Well,” He started, picking up your sandals and the bottle, handing them to you before lifting you again; one hand on the small of your back and the other under your legs. “Let’s get you back and in some hot water then.”
“I’m still gonna be mad at you.” You declared, leaning your head against his chest and putting one arm around his shoulders.
Your act was forgotten quickly as he carried you back to the house, stopping occasionally to point out different stars and the constellations trailing around them. You’d squint up to try and see, already at a disadvantage furthered by inebriation.
He’d only put you down when the two of you got to the ensuite, setting you on the counter while he got the shower ready. The sound of water hitting the tile filled the space, and he walked back over to you, his hands on either side of your hips.
“It’s a miracle this thing stays on.” He mused as he undid the knots on either side, his thumbs gently running over the now bare skin before moving to your back and undoing the clasps and knot around your neck. He pulled the material away, caressing a breast in his hand; his eyes dark and hooded as he watched the flesh knead between his fingers.
He leaned down, taking the peak into his mouth, his lips latching around your nipple. He sucked and nipped for a moment, his tongue pressing against the bud. He raised his head and pulled you off the counter, your feet landing on the plush bath mat in front of the sink.
“I’m going to clean up downstairs and make a call, alright?” He said, kissing your temple. You reached out and grabbed his wrist, and he turned back to meet your pleading gaze.
“What?” He asked fondly.
“We can save water…” You suggested, moving your hand down to play with his fingers.
“That’s cute, Mansfield, but I don’t think you’re too worried about the environment right now.” He said, but didn’t pull away.
“Then it’s saving time.” You offered instead. Cooper looked at the watch on his other hand and let out a contemplative breath, working out the time difference in his head.
“Are you gonna be quick?” He asked.
“That’s entirely on you.” You said as you walked your fingers up his arm.
You let out an overdramatic breath of relief when the warm water hit you and started rinsing off the day that had collected on your skin. You ran your hands over your shoulders and dipped your head further under the stream of the shower head, soaking the rest of your hair that hadn’t gotten wet earlier.
Cooper stepped in a moment after you, and you looked over your shoulder with a smile. With a hand on your waist, he moved you so that he could stand under the stream. You budged, stepping to grab the loofa and bar of soap. You bent over, starting to scrub at your legs; the movement caught Cooper’s attention. You stood up, glancing behind you with a playful gleam in your eyes.
Cooper smiled back softly, reaching out to take the loofa from you. He lathered your shoulders, the nylon pouf gliding across your skin. He reached around to your front to access your chest and stomach, then back to the small of your back. His other hand followed the soapy trail, tracing down the line of your spine. He reached behind him to hook the loofah over the temperature knob. His hands returned to your body, massaging the muscles of your shoulders. You sighed, closing your eyes and lolling your head back.
You let your eyes open after a lingering second, meeting his gaze. He leaned down to kiss you, pulling your back flush against his front, and you could feel him poking against your backside. You smiled against his lips and tried to turn around in his hold to face him, but he held you still with his hands on your hips. You stayed for another moment and then pulled away, the muscles in your neck protesting the angle.
He used one foot to spread your legs, and one hand to your back, leaning you forward. You propped your arms against the tiled wall, watching as a trickle of water made its way down to the lip of the tub. Cooper didn’t waste time pushing two fingers into you. You moaned as the digits curled inside of you, taking the time to work you up and open. You pushed your hips against his hand in an adagio, your head falling forward as the steam in the shower worked with the need and alcohol in your head to blur the lines of the tiles into a soft fog.
Cooper watched your body writhe and wiggle in front of him, the water sluicing off you and making your skin slick. He pulled his fingers out slowly, and your hips followed the action as if pulled by an invisible leash. He pushed the digits back in, his thumb hooked over your ass while the hand in front of your body began to toy with your clit. Your hands tried to curl against the tile but to no avail, and you opted instead to push your body back and as close to Cooper’s as it could go.
His hand pulled out of you one last time and wrapped around the base of his cock, now fully hard and standing at attention. He pumped himself only a few times before pushing into you in one slow, heavy movement. You moaned out his name, using the wall to push back against him and meeting his hips as he began to fuck you. His hand found your hair, grabbing a fistful of the wet strands and pulling, arching your back further.
Steam clung to your skin and hung heavy in the air around you, making every motion feel all the more hot and deliberate. He resumed the small circles over your clit, though you had been too busy reveling in the feeling of him inside you again to even realize he had stopped. You began to tighten around him as you neared your orgasm. You pulled against his grip on your hair, and he loosened his hold on the tendrils, allowing you to look over your shoulder at him, looking up to him with glossy, lust-blown eyes. His own gaze moved up from where it had been watching where your bodies connected. His hair was dark and wet from the water, some strands falling forward, clinging to his temple and forehead.
Cooper’s breath hitched, and his eyes stayed locked on yours as he pressed harder against your clit. As your orgasm pushed through your body, your head fell forward again, and his name fell from your lips. His hand fell from between your legs, but his pace didn’t falter as he chased his orgasm inside you. He used the now free hand to grab your thigh and raise your leg enough to allow him to fuck into you deeper, his balls slapping against your swollen clit as his tip kissed your cervix. You fussed from the overstimulation beneath him, but made no move to get away, your cunt drawing him in with each pulse like a siren’s song. With a few more purposeful but uncoordinated thrusts, he came, flooding your pussy with rope after rope of his release.
For a few minutes, the sounds of panting and slowly steadying breathing drowned out the water's sound. Cooper set your leg down and pulled out of you slowly, watching with a hooded gaze as his cum leaked out of your fucked out pussy. He cursed, hoping that it could be the last thing he saw before he died.
He finished in the shower before you, stepping out with a kiss to your soapy hair. You weren’t too far behind him, but you lingered in the bathroom while he did what he needed to. You took your time moisturizing and perfuming your body and setting your hair. The latter takes a little extra focus than normal as the last of the night's alcohol was still lingering in your system. You eventually left the bathroom, an invisible cloud of steam trailing behind you into the bedroom.
Cooper was already in bed when you came out, the day's newspaper folded across his chest. You pulled a blue negligee from the closet and stepped into it, then crossed to the vanity. You shook a Nembutal from the orange bottle into your palm and swallowed them dry, setting the bottle back next to your birth control.
You reached for the light switch, glancing over at him. "You need this on?"
He shook his head, setting the paper on the nightstand.
You flicked it off and made your way to your side of the bed. You pulled the blanket back and stopped before lying down. Cooper's breathing had already started to even out, one arm folded behind his head, the other resting at his side. There was space between you — a reasonable amount of space — and you found yourself suddenly aware of it.
You couldn't remember the last time you had shared a bed with someone, at least not like this. Not just slept in one, but meant it. You tried chalking the distinction up to whatever alcohol was left in your system so you could reasonably not think about it.
You lay down facing away from him, but his warmth reaches you anyway. You closed your eyes and waited for the pills to do what you needed them to do.
