◈ @aquicksojourn // cont.
Physical uniformity did not exist in Junkertown. A history of hardship, horror, hunger was written into the hides of those who called the Wasteland home. Amputations, tumours, toothless mouths, a thousand ailments for which they had no name – and no treatment. Odessa herself glittered with piercings, was striped with scars, her growth excessive, inexplicable except perhaps for the radiation that leaked out of the ground and rained down from the sky.
Whatever pride she felt for being intact – the marks of past skirmishes did not count, in her mind, nor did the fragments of shrapnel that burrowed deep and made their home in her body – it did not translate into disgust for cybernetics. Such prosthetics were a symbol of pain and strength both, a necessary melding of flesh and machine.
“I ain’t worried.”
For a brief instant, Odessa imagined her head imploding violently between Vivian’s squeezing thighs and quickly decided there were far worse fates. Yet she detected the reluctance in her lover, the embarrassment, the uncharacteristic stumble over her words. For once, instilling uncertainty in another did not taste like triumph.
Although she did not entirely trust her ability to be gentle, the Junker Queen lay at her lover’s side and skimmed a broad, callused hand along the central line of her body. It was impossible to say whether an organic sternum or a steel rod passed beneath her palm, but there was no denying the artificiality of Vivian’s heart. It whirred mechanically between each beat, thrumming in its cage.
Blunt, black-polished fingers climbed higher still, gliding featherlight along the column of her throat, over her jaw, to trace the raised ridges at the peaks of her cheekbones, framing eyes of an impossible shade of blue.
“Sure, we can do that.”
Even as she conceded, Odessa didn’t rush to take her seat. Instead, she melted deeper into the bed, their combined weight forming a hollow in the mattress that pushed them together. Tempering any trace of impatience, she kissed the plush fullness of Vivian’s lips, and dipped the barbell of her pierced tongue into her mouth. Here, the veteran was all flesh and blood.
While one hand remained cupping an umber cheek, the other snaked down, following the seam in her mechanical forearm. It came to rest on the barricade Vivian had built around the very crux of her. Odessa made no move to pry those articulated fingers away, instead interlocking them with her own, threading their hands together.
