MISS ATOMIC BOMB - cooper howard x barb howard - 2.9k - request for @tearueful trigger warning for; sub!cooper, dom!barb, femdom, subspace, edging, dream sex, denial, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, lap sex, cowgirl style, high sex, character study, canon typical body horror & ghoulification, dubious consent, self hatred, collars, choking, tit worship, biting, roughness, minor vaultghoul one-sided crush references note: this is an inbox request, prompt: ❛ god, shut up and fuck me already! ❜
Even his slow-as-shit circulatory system eventually has to process the metric fuckton of cocaine.
And yes, he took it directly to the face. But he did it to feel alive, there’s a kick inside his chest he’s long forgotten. Hope now feels like debt. He owes a MacClean, and that don’t sit right.
Lucy looked fucked up by this place. The Ghoul supposes he does too, though in a different way. He’s slumped on a broken couch with two dead men entwined next to him. A feral with a bullet in his brain and a raider with an open throat. Kind of a grim locale.
But temporarily safe enough to celebrate living to shoot another day. His trigger finger isn’t up to shape right now, but there’ll be time for that. Can’t botch the job while he’s fucked up on rubbing alcohol and jet.
Moving is hard, speaking is harder. The Ghoul is lethargic, holotape of his last movie playing on a loop. If he knew then what he knows now, he would’ve gone easier on the man in the mirror.
Cooper looks soft by comparison, pasty in black and white. Weaker, for certain. He thought he knew pain. And fear. He thought Anchorage was the most hellish thing that could haunt him but he was wrong. War never changes but there are worse things. The aftermath, for one. The loneliness, the confusion, the oh-god-what-are-you.
Time has made him a predator and flayed him to the bone. Cooper was chipped away, piece by piece, until only muscle and cunning remained.
What would Barb think of that?
There was a time he thought that about her. That the bits of the woman he loved fell away with time and pressure. Maybe part of that is true but the hardest truth is that sleek, stunning woman is who he married. Always there, as the muscles beneath the skin. The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
He doesn’t like thinking about what Barb would think of him, because the answer always ends in screaming. Or silence. If she’s alive to see him, he would rather she didn’t. It isn’t right, she shouldn’t have to.
But he could protect her. Now, he could. Her and Janey. He could kill the whole damn world for them.
Every part of his face is leaking, tears down his cheeks and the skeletal hole remaining of his nose. The Ghoul’s face burns hot and uncomfortable. Cheek to the asphalt, expecting to die he thought only of them. And of never knowing if they’re anywhere. Or even how they died.
Movement down the hall, behind the magazine racks makes him sit suddenly upright. His head spins, struggling to catch up with the rest of him. The jolt of hope in his gut is a little closer to home. He wants, for a second, for it to be Lucy. Even just to shoot him dead, he wants her to come back.
The television at some point slipped to static, projecting the Vault-Tec PLEASE STAND BY screen. He doesn’t like Vault Boy’s smile, and avoids looking at it.
And it isn’t Lucy’s boots on the floor, certainly. The approaching sound is too delicate. Almost like high heels.
He isn’t immediately aware it’s a hallucination. Dreams about Barb usually involve her rose-coloured lingerie before the bombs. Now she casually drifts out from behind the magazine racks, like she could be shopping for something.
Doesn’t seem particularly surprised by his appearance, she even smiles. Crosses the room in her coral pumps and silk dress, until she stands between his knees.
He can’t speak, only flounders on a dry throat. Even if he could talk he has no idea what to say. Cooper was her husband. Emphasis on was. He doesn’t know this woman, or how this woman knows him.
“Those eyes,” she smiles wider, all the love and affection of a reunion under better circumstances. “I’d know them anywhere.”
She should be terrified. This is wrong. She should be screaming.
“Hi, handsome,” Barb talks like they’re still married. But they didn’t talk once they weren’t. He has nothing to compare it to. “Got room for me?”
Always, but he doesn’t say it. There is nothing left of his heart but she can have the gap where it was. He doesn’t trust himself to say anything, and she doesn’t seem bothered. Just sits her perfect self down beside him.
Bombshell can mean a woman. It means her. She looks like sex on legs, but that could be the cocaine talking. He looks like he should be reburied.
“You remember the New Year’s Eve party we had two years before Janey?” She’s still beaming, angling herself towards him. Crossing one leg over the other, heedless of the dead people inches away. “And you had four whisky sours? Yeah, that’s what you look like.”
It was five, actually. He doesn’t correct her, and wonders if she’ll get the hint. Cooper is still mad at her. The Ghoul is stoned and indifferent. Maybe getting a little hard. She is goddamn beautiful.
They don’t make beautiful like this anymore, even as he was hoping for a different woman. Lucy has the sweet-faced dishonesty of a girl who’s never known suffering. Smooth and lovely as a new, copper penny.
But he doesn’t have a picture of Barb. When he closes his eyes and tries to remember his ex-wife he realizes how long two hundred years is. He simply can’t fathom her vivacity after so long without it, and now she’s sitting next to him. Bumping her knee against his.
“Sorry for crashing your party, but I was never one to let you languish in self pity.” “Come on, cowboy. Buck up.”
She can’t make him happy any more. He won’t let her. All the Ghoul can do is turn his scarred face from her, flinching when her rose-coloured nails reach for him anyway.
“I missed you,” she says. “You look different, I’d hardly know you.” Some part of his inebriated brain knows what he wants to hear. Barb doesn’t say she was wrong. Even maimed, he knows she had reason to be afraid.
“But how can I fault you for living?” She asks. Isn’t waiting for him to reply any more. This isn’t a dialogue, this is a fever dream. “You did what you had to.”
He tried. He failed and he bled and he tried. The Ghoul knows he’s ruined.
“What happened to your collar?” It’s not a question he needs to answer. The yellow bandana she knotted snug at his throat is long gone. He isn’t hers. “You always looked so handsome in it.”
Her hand closes around his throat, a firm and temporary replacement. The Ghoul lets her guide him by the neck to lie against her, helplessly lethargic.
“But I could do whatever I want with you,” she enjoys every word of that sentence. And the way his pupils are blown nearly to the edges. “Collar or no collar.”
He isn’t hers. He’s not. He wants Lucy but she’s not coming back. The Ghoul hurt her, and Cooper is dead. But the fight to pull away simply isn’t there. The character he insists upon is a rough, lone wolf. On the couch with his wife he’s a lost dog. He just wants to come home.
Cooper nuzzles his ruined cheek into her collarbone, sharp edges catching on Barb’s softness. She smells like perfume that hasn’t been manufactured in two centuries. She smiles against his scarred exterior as she kisses him.
It’s too good, where it isn’t numb, it's warm and aching. She isn’t here, she can’t be, but otherwise he’s alone. He doesn’t want to be.
Touch is overwhelming, his whole body is on edge. If this is what he wants his nerves haven’t gotten the message, the Ghoul keeps waiting for the knife in his back. Barb gathers him close, hooking her knee over his leg and settling her weight across his lap.
Her dry-cleaned dress rides up her knees. Barb’s gorgeous legs frame his hips, heat like fire building between them. Manicured nails brush his face, under his sunken eyes. He can’t open them, can’t look at her.
“Isn’t this cozy?” She wiggles in her seat, rubbing herself against the prominent ache in the front of his pants. “Missed me?”
God, yes. Missed her smell and her touch and her soft everything. Missed her breath on his cheek, dark curls in his fingers when he sinks them in her hair. She feels real. Barb is all his immediate senses can process, it pushes Cooper’s mind somewhere hazy. Somewhere forgotten.
A man has to be sharp to stay alive. Grow spikes through his weak parts and get used to the bleeding. He has to unlearn any urge to lose control, to feel alive chasing the pleasure of another. He has to hate the parts of him that want to be good.
“I missed you,” she says again. It doesn’t sting any less this time.
He squints through his lashes and wishes he didn’t look. She’s unbuttoning her dress, revealing smooth skin and a lacy bra. All of her, just like new. Barb has to pry his hands up by the wrists and place them at the swell of her chest. She doesn’t have to say she knows exactly what he missed about her, but grinds her core against him as a reminder.
The Ghoul paws at her flesh more greedily on purpose, her husband was gentle. Was. That’s dead in him. He squeezes her tight when he’s given permission, lurching face first into the line of her cleavage. Gasping and biting the tops of her breasts.
She pinches behind his ear, where the nerves are alive. Their first sensation in decades is pain, white-sharp making Cooper whine. Fine, no biting.
He kisses the teeth marks, licks his apology over each one. Her nails fan across the back of his skull, ready to grip hard and draw blood should he test her again. Some part of him still likes the discipline.
Barb never asks if he wants this. Cooper privately mourns his ability to make it stop. He could, he doesn’t want to. He’s lost her twice already, and in this way he’s still weak.
“Look at you,” she sighs. The Ghoul wishes she wouldn’t. It’s not her place to judge what the world’s done to him. But her lips tease the shell of his ear. “Do you think I can still give you goosebumps, darling?”
She can’t, he won’t break and say so. He wants her to try, opening his mouth guarantees he’ll beg. Like her dog and he’s not her’s. He’s nobody’s darling.
But he’s sinking, growing hazy between the ears. And not just ‘cause of the chems. Barb always knew what to say to put him under, take the pain and make it all feel so good. He’s pulling down her bra without permission but his focus is on seeing her tits again.
Her skin flushes and prickles with goose flesh, Cooper wants to coax each physical sensation he’s been stripped of. He kisses his lips around her nipples, tugging their little peaks with his teeth.
Barb is working a rhythm in his lap that he has to bite down about. Good things are not to be trusted, the Ghoul sinks his teeth into his woman.
“Do not bite me or I’ll make you regret it,” she warns, but it's already too late. Her frustration melts to mock-sympathy, pricking at his nerves. “Little ghoul, why do you want trouble? I could be so nice to you if you’d be good.”
“God, just shut up and fuck me already!” He growls, it all comes out in a rush. Can't sink into subspace if you're mad as a dog at your dom.
“Beg,” she snaps.
“No,” he grunts.
“Beg me unzip your fly, cowboy.” She teases. “Beg me to take your cock out.”
He thinks about her forcing his legs open, ripping his belt buckle to undo it. Taking what’s hers the way the wasteland took everything else. She’ll be nice if he’s good but he’s not, he can’t be trusted. He’s bad, he’s bad. He’s shaking when Barb’s thumbs rub circles into his hips.
“Shy?” She asks.
“Ugly,” he replies.
“You’re not,” his wife sighs.
“And you turned out to be a good, lil liar,” he grumbles. “I can only take so much.”
“I mean it, I like this skin,” she insists, “It’s good skin, it’s all you have left. Shall I touch it?”
“Motherfucker’s’ve tried to rip most of it off—“ he starts, his wife cuts him off.
“Drop the accent and beg for me to be gentle,” she says. So easy to order, so hard to obey. But he starts.
“Please—“ The Ghoul stops himself.
His prick is starting to hurt, all this resisting isn’t helping the mindless ache. He wants to buck into her soft heat, Cooper is painfully aware of her plush ass snug against his thighs.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it? I know you so well, even still.” She sounds proud of it, makes Cooper’s heart ache because she’s right. “You don’t want to scare me.”
“You ain’t scared?” He pants through the question. Cooper’s drawl is softer than the Ghoul’s. Natural. “Really?”
“No, darling,” she kisses his brow bone. He can’t resist leaning into it any more.
“I missed you so bad,” he doesn’t sound like himself when he whimpers. He was the tough guy for too long, anything else is bad. Ain’t right.
“I know, I missed you too,” her perfect smile is inches from his ruined face, fingers caging around his throat and squeezing. “But I gave you orders, didn’t I? Don’t make me wait.”
The fog around him thickens, pain and pleasure become mostly the same. Barb knows how his body works, even as she acts like it’s a discovery. The parts that felt good still feel heavenly, she knows where to push.
“Please,” nothing stops him this time. “Undo my belt’n just please be gentle. I can’t— It hurts, baby.”
“Good boy,” she whispers. “I know that wasn’t easy, I’m proud of you.”
The torturous wait doesn’t end with her fist around him, Barb keeps one hand at his neck. Substitute for a collar, something in him says. Makes his cock ache like hell.
“I think I wanna ride the cowboy,” Barb has a laugh in her throat, a giddiness he hasn’t heard since they were married.
All the memories of her are running together, he’s struggled for two hundred years to fall out of love. And if she’ll be on top of him again, he’ll beg for it. Least he can give is honesty, even if she broke the trust. Broke his heart in two right in front of him, no one else can mend it.
“There we go,” she keeps a running monologue as she eases the zipper down over his bulge.
His pinstripe pants feel uncomfortably tight in the crotch, the Ghoul groans with the full content of his lungs when she wraps her hand around him. Grip isn’t too tight, but skin contact feels like fire, she has to be disappointed. She has to be disgusted.
“You’re so sexy,” Barb says instead. A jab pointed directly at his heart. “Just look at you, still sensitive.”
“Not as,” he croaks. Words don’t come easy, his throat feels dry and raw from the rubbing alcohol and chem cocktail.
He wants to say forget his rotting body, let him overwhelm hers. His jaw may crack when he flexes but he can still eat her pussy. He can make her scream for it. There’s a surge of unchecked dominance, a carnal survival instinct. Cooper never wanted control, Barb has yet to really meet the Ghoul.
She rolls her hips when he bucks, grabbing tight at his collar to steady herself. He wants her to look mad, to break that promise of gentle touch that she forced him to make. Who he is now likes it rough and quick and mean.
Barb throws her whole weight against him. She’s a small woman but there’s a force at her back that knocks the wind from his lungs. One of her hands takes both his wrists, loose enough to break if he was desperate for freedom.
Cooper sits under her, breathless and unwilling to fight any more for what he’s always willingly given. This is as it was, as he still wants it. His wife rises on her knees and lines up his cock with her other hand, brown eyes swallowing him whole as she lowers herself in his lap.
The real woman would’ve teased the shit out of him for bucking like a horse. But she did make a promise, and this is his dream.
Her tight heat pushes him right back under, his shoulders go slack. He thinks of nothing, he thinks of her. Barb pins his wrists, he doesn’t make her use much force. Cooper’s not going anywhere. His eyes glaze over, the only part of him he recognizes. Two green eyes in an old man’s face.
“I think you can feel this,” Barb grins like a cat, setting her pace like this is still their game. He tries to speak but only manages a weak groan. She’s not wrong. “That’s it, I love your noises.”
She used to make him cry talking like this, praising every insecurity. Loving every sign of weakness with sincerity he’d grown not to expect. He melts against her, forgetting briefly at their joining that she isn’t here. And that he doesn’t forgive her.
