Aniya

I can fix that. A genius with a particular interest in electronics. Fallout 4 OC. Mod is 21+, some content may be NSFW icon by memaidraws

[nonukesthanks]

deadeyedrifter​:

He met her kiss readily, and brought a hand to support her head. Slowly, and without breaking the kiss, he lowered her to the pillow. He settled on an elbow himself, his legs entangled with hers: partly on top of her, partly next to her, so as not to smother her with too much of his weight. To leave her wiggle room, a way out, despite an undeniable want to wrap himself around her.

Only after minutes, did he break away. 

“I don’t wanna be dramatic–” He spoke softly, almost whispered. A grin crinkled skin around his eyes and down his cheeks, “But if another bomb were to drop on Boston to freeze this moment in time, it’d be fine with me.”

He’d be exactly where he’d want to be. 

But he left that part implied, unspoken. And he certainly wouldn’t admit it’d be everything he’d want out of what was left of this stupid life. That no other ambitions of his came remotely close enough to top it. 

No, he wouldn’t add any of that. That kind of inane shit from the mind of an infatuated, lovestruck jackass, wouldn’t do either of them any favors. Not now.

“Couldn’t even be bothered.”

Aniya laughed. It was soft, also, matching his tone, indulgent in the quiet. Her eyes wandered over his face, the deep lines made by his smile. She knew a lot of his smiles well, she was sure of it. This was her favorite. The pad of her thumb traced them, palm cupping his cheek.

“I like when you’re dramatic,” she answered him, secure with the weight of him on her, wrapped in his shirt, head on his pillow. It made her a little bolder, even with every cautious thought in her head trying to talk her out of it. Every little warning that reminded her of every mistake and misstep she’d made that day to ruin things was snuffed under the warmth of his words. 

Her grin matched his. “But--but that bomb can fuck off. I want to be with you, again and again. Not just now.”

It was a lot to get out, and she barely managed to avoid flinching into waffling about it. But she’d said it. Later she might not manage it, but she’d said it.

[sketchesofchaos]

Commission for deadeyedrifter!

[deadeyedrifter]

Thank you so much @sketchesofchaos !!! <3 I commissioned her to draw ma boi and @nonukesthanks​ Aniya for us and oh my god look at our babies. 

[nonukesthanks]

Absolutely floored LOOK AT THEM they’re so in love. Let them have every happiness once they’ve worked for it for another five years

[nonukesthanks]

deadeyedrifter​:

He half-expects her to argue that if he can bring her gifts, then he should be more forthcoming when she wants to do things for him, as well. Though never adverse to a hearty, heated argument to get the blood pumping, this is nice too.

It’s automatic, really, how as soon as she gets on her toes, he brings an arm around her back to alleviate some of the strain, and leans in to meet her.

That argument is coming, though not necessarily today. It’ll likely be on the anniversary of their meeting, if it comes to it. That date is rapidly approaching; no need to rush into an argument right now, even if she could try to win just on the merits of it being her birthday alone.

For now it’s wonderful to start a kiss and have it be reciprocated, to know that the worry of his reaction to her boldness is silly and unnecessary. She can pull him in and he even helps her, letting her press her lips to his and drink him in with gratefulness and affection.

[nonukesthanks]

deadeyedrifter​:

He laughs, just happy to see her happy. What a change from the last time he witnessed one of her protocolled, robot-enabled, not-really-much-of-a-surprise parties. She barely dared to look him in the eye, then.

Granted, he hadn’t been much of a proper guest, either. Didn’t exactly bring any enthusiasm or cheer to the table that day. Just booze, and that was mostly for his own peace of mind.   

“I don’t hate getting them for other people.” He draws back a bit to look at her, resting his arms on her shoulders. “Least of all for you.”

What a change, she realizes, when she doesn’t flinch as he mentions other people. She can hear the warmth in his voice as he singles her out, feel the weight of his arms, and trust that this is real. And not just because of the book, but because he’s still here.

She smooths the back of his shirt and trails her hands to his chest, gaze soft. One slides up to his cheek, thumb rubbing across the high bone there. She’s up on her toes, then, a familiar signal (how nice, to have familiar signs) that he needs to bend down to her level.

[nonukesthanks]

Once the robots completed their yearly ‘surprise’ routine for Aniya’s birthday, Rick steps up and hands over a bag of groceries. “Figured we’d cook something nice tonight. Can’t live off cake alone.” The bag is suspiciously heavy. Underneath the vegetables, herbs and a separately wrapped cut of meat from Choice Chops, sits a thick, old but well-kept reference book, ‘21st Century Advances in Computer Engineering.’

“I wouldn’t dream of trying with you around–” Aniya replies, taking the bag and, not quite ready for the weight, almost dropping it with a little “oof!” Once the confused look is offered to him and quick separation of goods is complete, she marvels at the book, fingers spreading over the cover, flipping it back and forward.“Wh…where? Did you find this?” Wide blue eyes look back up at Rick, a goofy grin sliding onto her face.

[deadeyedrifter]

He barely contains his stupid grin when she misjudges the weight of the bag. To maintain at least a semblance of ignorance, he commits to putting the groceries away in the fridge as she unpacks them. He doesn’t have to keep up the pretense long, fortunately. 

“Ha! Well, you’ll be pleased to know I didn’t risk my life breaking into a government facility, this time.” 

Not that traveling some seventy miles inland is at all without danger, but then again, neither is walking three feet outside of Diamond City. That’s just the way the world is. But, the point is that he didn’t purposely go and tamper with poorly aged military security systems. 

“You’d think CIT would be the place to look, but the place is stripped of anything related to this subject. So, I found out about another college town a few days’ west of here, and as luck would have it, they had an engineering department. Not much left there, either, but at least it wasn’t like the whole faculty just decided to pack up and move.”

[nonukesthanks]

Aniya flips open the cover, though she doesn’t take in much about it as she’s oscillating fast between looking at Rick in all his handsome, giddy-smiling glory and the centuries-old papers bound in her hands. What he’d found for her is precious, and will do wonders to help with her own efforts--recreating the magic of the pipboy, improving lives in the Commonwealth, maybe finally fixing her goddamn air conditioner so it doesn’t break in a heatwave. But it’s that he found it for her, that he went through all that trouble!

She shuts the cover carefully and squeezes it to her chest a moment, then (checking to make sure there’s no flour or other robot-baking-debris first) sets it aside so she can wrap her arms around his waist and press her cheek to his chest. “For someone who hates getting presents, you’re too good at them.”

[nonukesthanks]

Once the robots completed their yearly ‘surprise’ routine for Aniya’s birthday, Rick steps up and hands over a bag of groceries. “Figured we’d cook something nice tonight. Can’t live off cake alone.” The bag is suspiciously heavy. Underneath the vegetables, herbs and a separately wrapped cut of meat from Choice Chops, sits a thick, old but well-kept reference book, ‘21st Century Advances in Computer Engineering.’

“I wouldn’t dream of trying with you around--” Aniya replies, taking the bag and, not quite ready for the weight, almost dropping it with a little “oof!” Once the confused look is offered to him and quick separation of goods is complete, she marvels at the book, fingers spreading over the cover, flipping it back and forward. “Wh...where? Did you find this?” Wide blue eyes look back up at Rick, a goofy grin sliding onto her face.

[deadeyedrifter]

Very rough sketch, but since I never know I’ll actually manage to keep being happy with anything I try to work more on, I wanted to post it like this.

Rick and @nonukesthanks‘s Aniya FIXING THEIR SHIT

[nonukesthanks]

deadeyedrifter​:

He took her face between both hands, and brushed his thumb along her cheek, smiling faintly.

“… Ah. Well, these things happen. It’s a high-risk, high-reward sort of business, baking.” He lowered his hands to her waist and turned her around, making her face the damning evidence that sat on the counter– but doing it together(!), looking over her shoulder. “So what can we salvage from the wreckage?”

Aniya gave a sort of token resistance, pushing her face into his neck to try and avoid the sight. Better view than the charcoal-dusted monstrosity on the counter gave.

“Maybe the middle. It’s just hot sugary fruit, now, though. There’s  no top.” It probably tasted burnt, too. That flavor had a way of lingering on anything it touched.

[nonukesthanks]

deadeyedrifter​:

“Adventurous.” He smiled at her, and it wasn’t even mocking or teasing. He walked on over and bent down to greet her with a kiss.

“So how’d it go?”

As if he couldn’t smell, or spy over her head, the answer to that very question.

The kiss lightened her heart up considerably, considering how down it had become over this failed ‘adventure.’

“Well...” She knew very well he could tell what’s wrong. “I burned it. Right after I forgot to turn on the oven. Two points of failure.”

[nonukesthanks]

deadeyedrifter​:

It was Hamlet who’d awaited Rick beyond the old barricades to escort him past the defense system and let him into the bunker. Almost like a real butler, preceding a distinguished guest to be presented to the lady of the manor. Rick snorted to himself at the thought, though the image was soon forgotten.

The moment the reinforced door slid open, a waft of disaster came up to greet him. Something smelled… burnt. And it wasn’t the usual smell of recently soldered alloys or overheating hardware, either. No, this was distinctly culinary.

How puzzling.

“Hey, ‘Niya.” Rick trailed to a halt at the foot of the steps. “What did I miss?”

“Um.” Was Aniya’s eloquent response. There was an old aluminum tin full of burnt oats and questionably decent hot fruit on the counter behind her. Curls were a wonderful thing when you needed to block sight of your mistakes.

“Nothing important.” Was the bashful reply, embarrassed and giving away the game easy. “Just...trying something new...”

[nonukesthanks]

@deadeyedrifter

It hadn’t gone quite to plan. Aniya had been very careful, amazingly attentive, even! She’d gotten the blackberry crumble done completely to the instructions on the scrap of paper she’d bartered off a lady at the last settlement. It was just some fruit and flour and oats and sugar, basically. Easy!

But, of course, something had to go wrong. She forgot to turn the oven on and, when she realized it’d been sitting there just...waiting, she cranked the heat up so it was preheating far too hot. Before long, the top was burning.

All that kerfuffle meant that instead of having it ready before Rick arrived, she was waiting dejectedly for it to cool down to check for any salvage at about the time he was due.

[nonukesthanks]

deadeyedrifter​:

He tilted his head, pressed the side of his face against her palm. God. This was something else. Her hushed tone, the way she looked at him in the low, pulsing light. No noise of fifty other people getting drunk in the next room over. 

Quiet, intimate. Veritably fucking romantic.

How long had it been since it’d felt like this? Barring two nights ago, how long since he’d been touched by someone who halfway gave a shit? Years. Ten? Fifteen? More than he could stand to quantify. Tenderness was never a priority, all those years of hooking up at the first coy glance from across the bar. Maybe afterwards, but even then they were just empty gestures, theater. This felt different. It felt different from their first night, even. Less pressure, less of a desperate hurry.

He turned his head to brush his lips along her fingers, before he took both her hands, put them on his shoulder, and lifted her up.

“Nice, isn’t it?” he said, softly, echoing his own words from two nights prior. He lowered them both to the bed. “To agree on something for once?”

Aniya loved how effortlessly he picked her up and brought her back down. She sank into the softness of his bed and drank in the quiet tenderness in his voice, committing them to as careful a memory as she could. Her palms trailed along his shoulders, fingers tracing muscle, one up the back of his neck to bury in his hair, the other down his arm.

“Yeah,” she confirmed after a beat too long, not from hesitance or fear this time but because there were so many more things to drink in. Not even residual fears and anxieties of the day, of moments prior, could take away from this warm moment.

Her hand slipped from his arm and she propped herself up to meet him as he came down and kissed him for once without asking.

[nonukesthanks]

deadeyedrifter​:

Goddamn. Her laugh really could make or break him. He hadn’t realized how much was riding on it, until the sound of it came with a wave of relief. He let out a breath, a quiet chuckle, and drew her tighter against him.

“Well…” He mumbled, reaching with his unoccupied hand to take the curtain off a hook beside the window and let it fall shut in front of it. “Nowhere’s perfect.”

He stepped back and took her hand, drawing her with him to the bed. “But I think I can forgive the lack of a mountainscape outside my window if it means I got you within walking distance.”

Aniya melted inside, knowing pretty words were easy to say for most everyone but refusing to believe in the moment they weren’t heartfelt. She followed along with him easily, somehow without tripping over her own feet.

She was really going to spend the night in his house, his bed. This was actually happening.

“We’ll just have to make sure we take a trip out to them sometime,” she murmured, giving his hand a little squeeze while searching his gaze. The lantern light changed a lot of things about how he looked, highlighting some angles and softening others. Almost reflexively she reached up to cup his cheek. “I like you being nearby, too.”

[nonukesthanks]

deadeyedrifter​:

Rick squinted at the distant zeppelin. The bulk of it was just a slightly lighter shade of dark against that of the night sky, but the well-lit gondola underneath was hard to miss. So, what the fuck did she mean, ‘is that the Prydwen’? How many other airships did she know?

“It is.”

He turned to her. His arm slipped out of her grasp, and moved around her back. He grinned, though it was only half there, tentative, unsure whether he ought to try and pretend to be funny at all, considering how poorly his last attempt went down.

“Convenient, too.” He kept his voice low, as if this was him surreptitiously flirting rather than cracking a joke, “This way I can keep an eye on all those vertibirds you don’t want me to hijack.”

Aniya did laugh, allowing her misgivings about the Brotherhood to lie unspoken on the floor. Much better to relax into Rick’s hold and enjoy the joke delivered so smoothly in his rough voice.

“Your home’s perfectly situated for all your favorite things, then, right? The ocean and vertibirds.” She considered her own words, sleepy and warm, using his arm as a guide to lean against his bare chest. It didn’t help her think further, really. “Just need a mountain vista, I guess.”

[nonukesthanks]

deadeyedrifter​:

It took Rick no time at all to figure out that the only way to prevent this from getting even more awkward, was to keep a reassuring smile on his face and go ahead as planned. He stomped down the urge to deflect. As alluring as it was to about-face right into tidying his kitchen, allowing a moment to build himself up again, it would only make her feel unwanted. And she’d blame herself for it while she was at it.

Christ, no. If he had to stop to lament every moment he ruined, he’d never get anywhere. Suck it up and smile.

He picked up the oil lamp. “This way,” he said, and preceded her out of the kitchen, up the last flight of steps into the attic. It didn’t use to have a landing, but he’d built a wall out of planks in the rafters, and fitted a door. Just something about an open stairwell right next to where he slept didn’t play well with his survival instinct, so he’d fixed it.

He went in ahead of her and put the lamp down on a nightstand – a touched-up crate on its side with a shelf fitted inside. The bed was similarly make-shift; two layers of old pallets tied together, a salvaged and restored mattress, and a bunch of blankets and pillows piled on. The big, fabled window with its promises of a spectacular view on the sunrise, was black now. Rick walked over to it.

“Not the best view this time of night, but look,” In the far distance, behind the ruins of East Boston, the old jetport and the Brotherhood’s big fuck-off blimp were a beacon of light in the dark, “I got those show-offs for a night light.”

Aniya followed curiously, wanting just as bad to shed the awkwardness of the moment prior. Plus, it could be exciting, was exciting, to see his bedroom. To be invited up to stay. Maybe there were other reasons behind it she couldn’t divine just yet, but for the moment, even through all the mishaps and misunderstandings of the evening, Rick still wanted her here.

The furnishings were a little out of the bounds of her expectations. For some reason, she expected Rick--perpetually willing to sleep on a couch or in a ditch or god knows where else--to have a more spartan bed. It reminded her of her own and she had to wonder if she’d misjudged him again or if he’d been inspired by her. Or done this for her.

Better to not get ahead of herself. Rick could just like comfort! It wasn’t about her at all.

She joined him at the window and, after a moment’s hesitation, gave in and wrapped an arm with his, leaning into him. Surely, it was fine. He’d brought her up here because they were going to share this room and that bed.

The blurry lights in the distance were pretty, but she couldn’t make it out. She squinted. “Who’s over there?” With the height and the distance... “Is that the Prydwen?”

[nonukesthanks]

deadeyedrifter​:

If that face she’d pulled just moments ago was her ‘trying to joke about it’, then he was in for a confusing time. As problematic as that would be in the foreseeable future, that wasn’t even his biggest problem right now. A much more immediate problem was how the hell he’d move them on from this.  

“Well…” He spread his hands and dropped them again with a chuckle. “I can’t reverse time, so it might be too late to not apologize.”

“Right, I just mean...” Aniya got to her feet, coming away from her place at the table so she could be at his side. She did want this, she wanted him, and this night to go well again.

“I really do want to see your bedroom.”

[nonukesthanks]

deadeyedrifter​:

Christ, would you look at that face?  

“He was gonna be down past Florida in the Caribbean, so I asked him for coffee this time.” He reached up to brush some of those curls aside, only for them to fall right back in place. “I stopped by Tidings the other day, to see this scavver I asked for those jukebox parts. She offered me a cup of coffee, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I remembered–”

Probably because Holly’s cabin wasn’t fraught with bad memories in the making, the way that canteen in Rivet City was.

“– so I figured I’d give it another chance.”

Aniya helped, tucking some curls behind her ear. There was little else she could do, but she did stretch out onto her side so she wasn’t leaning so far above him, her arm pressing into the rough ground so her hand could support her cheek. Bravely, her other hand rested lightly on his chest.

It was still a marvel she was allowed that simple intimacy.

“There’s a lot of fruit and things down there that don’t grow here, right? I think?” Aniya didn’t know what fruits, exactly, but there had to be some. “Maybe something like that?”