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Lucy realizes she’s angry somewhere in the middle of beating Gary unconscious with a lead pipe. Well, she assumes their name is Gary, which may be unjust of her. It was the only word the clones uttered the entire time they chased Lucy through the vault, chanting “Gary! Gary! Gary!” as they slashed with knives and swung lead pipes.
She’d attempted to defuse the situation—remembering all too clearly the scream of the man she maimed with acid.
“Help me understand where you’re coming from,” Lucy had pleaded, breathless, leaping over the collapsed sections of the main living quarters as the clones scrambled after her.
Her Vault-Tech pants were torn, fraying at the seams, and blood was running down her knee from where she’d scraped it on a rusted ladder. The lights overhead flickered ominously. But still, she had to try. Learning how to navigate conflict leads to a peaceful work life and the ability to deflect the effects of stress—at least, that’s what her father always said.
Her father… The muscles in her shoulders lock.
A clone shrieks, “Gary!” in triumph and shoves her through a window.
When Lucy emerges from the vault, she’s shaking with adrenaline, clutching a bloody pipe and panting, harsh, quick gulps through her mouth. The sun is too bright overhead and the heat of the desert pounds at her skull. The ghoul, tattered hem of his leather duster flapping in the acidic breeze, trails a knowing eye over her sweaty, bloody form.
He’d refused to enter the vault—“Sweetie, I’d rather roll around in two-headed cow shit that set a single toe in one of those vaults of yours”—despite her well-constructed elevator pitch that there could be useful supplies (weapons, food, water) inside.
“So,” the ghoul drawls, brow raised, “was it everything you hoped for?”
Glaring at him, Lucy retreats to the shade beside the vault’s entrance where Dogmeat pants happily next to a small bowl of water. She plops down on the sand and pulls out the bottle of Nuka-Cola she’d found underneath one of the desks. There’d also been a cloning log, detailing the planned power failure, hostile cloning experiment, and the excess stockpile of weapons. Everything had been choreographed. Everything. From the death of their overseer to the power struggle to the brutal infighting that left nearly everyone dead. And then the Garys had gotten loose.
(Detailed out for the sake of what exactly? What was the gosh darn point of it all? Lucy still didn’t understand.)
Dogmeat growls quietly as Lucy shifts closer, following the shade. Lucy wonders if the dog can sense what she did to her owner. Or maybe Dogmeat (what a horrible name) just doesn’t like her. Maybe she can smell the vaultie rot underneath Lucy’s skin.
Bitterly, Lucy twists open the Nuka-Cola, pockets the bottle cap, raises it to her lips, and takes three deep swallows. She doesn’t offer to share even though a part of her wails at the deliberate social gaffe; Lucy hears her father’s voice talking about how sharing teaches compromise and fairness—about how, if we give a little to others, we can get some of what we want too. Now, come on Luce, split that slice of pie with Chet like a good girl.
The angry tightness in her chest, the one Lucy felt as she slammed the metal pipe through Gary’s head over and over and over, swirls. The syrupy-sweet flavor of the drink clogs her throat.
There’s a swish of leather, a muffled clang of spurs on sand, and the hair on the back of Lucy’s neck stands at attention as the ghoul strolls over to lean his elbow carelessly against the side of the vault. “You gonna need another few minutes to pout or can we be on our way?” he asks. “Daylight’s wasting.”
Lucy bites down so hard on the inside of her cheek she tastes blood.
Now Luce, she hears her father say, when we're upset, we're less able to think strategically. Give yourself time to calm down before you make any major moves.
Lucy breaths in, holds it, and exhales deeply. She tilts her head up and meets the ghoul’s gaze. He’s staring down at her with those jarringly human eyes of his, all arrogance and annoyance framed by long, thick lashes. She runs her eyes over his jaw line, his cheek bones, and the lanky line of his body.
“You’re Cooper Howard, aren’t you?”
The ghoul doesn’t move. Doesn’t shift an inch or twitch a finger, but Lucy’s watching his eyes, sees them go cold, and she knows she’s right.
“My dad showed me your movies,” Lucy continues. She doesn’t break eye contact as she takes another long sip of her Nuka-Cola. “He loved The Man from Deadhorse. Could quote every line.”
Slowly, the ghoul—Cooper, she supposes she should call him now, even though “ghoul” certainly suits him better—kneels down into crouch in front of her, hazel eyes burning into hers.
She figured it out a few days back. He’d known her dad; he’d said the lines “feo, fuerte y formal.” Her dad had excitedly translated that line to her and Norm over and over again: he was ugly, he was strong, and he had dignity. He’d explained how a person can do ugly, hard, acts without being cruel—how one could be strong and fair and created to endure suffering while making the world a better place. He’d quoted that line so much she’d had it engraved onto a spare bit of steel for her father’s fiftieth birthday. It hung in a place of pride next to her father’s bed. Right next to the framed Cooper Howard autograph that had been in his family for generations.
Purportedly.
Because the ghoul was old. Over two hundred years old. Over two hundred years, and he called her dad by his name. Asked him if he wanted “another” autograph. Lucy had watched enough Cooper Howard films to recognize the swagger in the ghoul’s stride now that she was looking for it. Clock the distinctive method of cocking his gun, and the patented Cooper Howard head tit. It seemed impossible that the man on her small television screen, the one she’d watched as she went for vault-incentivized walks with her father, whose handsome face had winked and grinned in black and white, was the twisted, calloused thing before her.
“You’ve still got the hat,” Lucy realizes suddenly.
Cooper regards her thoughtfully. For a long moment, he does nothing. Then, calmly, causually, he reaches out and backhands the Nuka-Cola with one quick swipe. The bottle flies out of her hand, smacks against the vault, and shatters, dark liquid dripping down the weathered steel.
Dogmeat leaps up, barking. Cooper whistles out of the side of his mouth, never taking his eyes off Lucy’s, and Dogmeat quiets. Lucy doesn’t react, doesn’t jump or yell or sock him in the jaw. Just folds her empty hands in her lap and sits patiently.
Finally, he says, low and serious, “Say that name again, and it will be the last word out of your mouth.”
“But then what leverage would you have to find your family?” Lucy asks, sweet as apple pie. Cooper grinds his teeth—a reaction that lights Lucy up like a cornfield under an artificial sky. “That’s why you need me, isn’t it? That’s why you brought me along? You need my dad to tell you where your family is.”
“You can still be leverage without a tongue,” Cooper threatens, eyes narrowing. He favors hard positional bargaining, Lucy sees. That’s fine. She wrote her final Speech and Debate paper on the positional bargaining approach, proposing that it was the best negotiating tactic against a side that only seeks to get what they came for.
Lucy nods amicably. “That’s true. But then I’d stop being an active participant in this initiative. You’d lose my buy-in and have to drag me the whole trip. That’d really slow you down, wouldn’t it? Doesn’t seem like a viable solution that benefits either one of us.”
Cooper throws a punch. His fist hits the side of the vault next to Lucy’s head with a clang. That sets Dogmeat off again, her barks loud and agitated in the still, windless wasteland. Lucy’s breath catches. He upsets her, no two ways about it, but she’s not afraid of him. Not anymore. She’s got leverage, and besides, she’s learned what real monsters look like.
“That name’s not for you. Understand, Vaultie? I don’t want to hear it out of your mouth again.” Cooper’s voice has gone strange. His consonants are less slippery, more rounded. The pupils in his eyes are massive, swallowing every last bit of iris, the whites of his eyes almost glowing against the burnt tinge of his skin. Dogmeat barks and barks and barks.
Lucy looks away, suddenly ashamed of herself. Who has she become? Less than a month in the wasteland, and she’s throwing acid, picking fights, jabbing at people’s weaknesses. Beating Garys into paste. She’s better than that. She promised she would be—not to her father, but to herself. That still matters. It has to.
“Call me Lucy, then,” she says softly, willing to split the difference. “You don’t like Cooper. I don’t like ‘Vaultie’ or ‘Sweetie’ or ‘Princess’ or any of the other things you spit at me instead of my actual name.”
Cooper doesn’t say a word, but Lucy can feel his eyes boring into her skull, can sense the fury radiating off of him, stronger than the burning sand against her bare skin. Dogmeat’s barks turn plaintive, whining. She arches her back, pawing at the sand. Cooper lurches away from her, the ghoul again, torn leather coat flapping loudly as he storms off into the vast nothing of the wasteland. Lucy takes a moment to collect herself before heaving her body upright and following in his wake.
They walk. They walk over windswept sand dunes and through decimated forests, skeletal tree trucks jutting out of calcified earth like rotten teeth. They walk over crumbling highways, the ghoul’s spurs clinking as loose concrete crunches beneath their feet. They walk past collapsed billboards and twisted signposts and around the smoking ruins of cities that smell like putrid meat. They walk and walk and walk, and Lucy admires the horrible, festering beauty of each landscape. She can’t help tilt her face up toward the scorching sunshine, breathe in the fresh, corroding air, and trail her fingers over rutted walls, fossilated ground, and the gritted rut of the world above.
Everything in the wasteland scrapes or burns or hurts, but Lucy wouldn’t trade it for all the smooth surfaces, all the filtered air, all the climate controlled rooms in all of Vault 33.
Cooper ignores her, hasn’t said a word to her of his own volition since their exchange outside the vault. Lucy’s attempts at conversation were quickly shut down.
“Where are we going?” was met with a curt, “North.”
His reply to “How did you know my father?” was a rude snort.
Cooper’s nasty smile after “Why’d you name her Dogmeat?” finally made Lucy mentally throw up her arms in defeat.
It’s not that Lucy feels much like talking, which, she admits, is an odd sensation—she got several commendations for her communication skills back in school—but there’s a delicate balance between an uncomfortable silence and a productive conversation. Small talk has a way of creating common ground and forming bonds, and Lucy’s used to excelling at it.
A natural leader, her father had called her, beaming with pride. Born to do great things and mentor the next generation.
Lucy doesn’t feel much like a leader now, trailing Cooper as he tracks her injured father’s path. She feels toxic, high-risk, detrimental. Her father called people like that hurricanes: a person with the ability to destroy the social fabric of the vault by creating friction and hostility. People like that were always relegated to less meaningful work, roles where they couldn’t cause stress or conflict. Once, her dad confessed his fear that Norm was developing that way. Asked her to help coach Norm out of those traits, lead by example. It was an opportunity for growth, he said.
Staring at Cooper’s back, she considers all the damage she’s planning to whip up. She imagines gripping her father by the shoulders and shaking him until he tells her everything. In her head, she returns to Vault 33 and tells them everything they’ve dedicated their existence to is a lie. She takes Norm’s arm, leads him out to the crater that is the New Republic of California, tells him about their mother and the people who lived there and what became of them. (Norm would probably process it better than she could. He’s always had a gift for accepting unpleasant news and getting on with it.)
Logically, Lucy knows it would be cruel. That all she’d be doing was hurting her friends and neighbors the way she’d been hurt. But wasn’t transparency essential for social citizenship? How could you build a thriving culture without accountability? It was the core value of her father’s overseer philosophy.
The contradiction sets the anger off again. It’s starting to give her a headache, but Lucy can’t stop worrying it like a loose tooth, twisting it over until her head aches and her eyes burn. By the time the sun sets and Cooper’s spurs chime to a standstill, she’s furious and exhausted. Torn up by the savage cruelty of her father’s crimes and what they mean for the world—and her place in it.
What does she even have to gain by meeting her makers? What is she doing, following this man through dust and dunes and the decimated bones of the world?
There’s no strategic plan for this, Lucy realizes. It’s her thought, the act of thinking it rather than the realization itself, that infuriates her.
“We’ll stop here for the night,” the ghoul says, his accent thick and smooth and oh so obvious in retrospect. “No fires.” He drops his satchel carefully on the ground. Lucy suddenly recognizes it as the one from the Cooper Howard films, the one always thrown over the back of his horse. She wonders, briefly, what happened to that horse, and then shoves the thought away.
Same thing that happened to everything else.
Lucy swings her own bag off her shoulders and folds to the ground with a sigh. Her legs hurt, and the heels of her feet pound painfully. She had always considered herself strong and physically fit, but she’s learning there’s a huge difference between vault-fit and wasteland-fit. She’d asked Cooper to slow his pace after their first day on the trail, and he gave her a look so condescending that Lucy spent the next ten miles fantasizing about smashing every one of his yellow vials and leaving him to slowly turn feral.
Honestly, that should have been Lucy’s first clue that she wasn’t processing this experience productively.
They eat silently, Dogmeat curled up at Cooper’s side, eyes half-open and watching Lucy warily. Cooper consumes his special supply of dried meat with more relish than necessary, meaning he’s deliberately trying to disgust her. It works. Lucy can barely choke down a handful of InstaMash—With real dig-in flavor—before shoving the package back into her bag.
“You can have the first watch,” Lucy says magnanimously, settling down on her bedroll with her back to Cooper. She inwardly recoils at the act, even though she knows he needs her. Alive and (mostly) in one piece. Theoretically, Lucy’s more safe with Cooper than any other grounder in a hundred mile radius, but that thought mainly just depresses her.
Cooper doesn’t respond beyond a wet smacking sound as he licks his fingers clean.
Closing her eyes, Lucy tries to push away thoughts of ghouls and ass-jerky and flesh sizzling in a burst of atomic light. She must have been successful because the next thing she knows Cooper is nudging her with his foot.
Startled awake in an adrenaline-fueled burst, Lucy springs to her feet, knife in her hand—disoriented in the darkness.
She’d been dreaming of the Garys, except they’d had her father’s voice. They’d chased her through the ruins of Vault 33. Lucy was in the middle of jumping over the broken corpses of Steph, Chet, and Norm as they bounded after her, chanting, “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy!”
Cooper slides out of range, eyes glinting in the moonlight. His jacket and hat are off, set next to his satchel along with his lasso and shotgun.
“Easy, killer,” he says with a smirk. There’s nothing malicious in it. Coming from him it’s magnanimous, but Lucy’s heart is pounding and her throat’s tight, and blood is zip, zip, zipping through her veins like a buzzsaw, and she has no more grace to give.
“My name’s Lucy,” she snaps. “Got it? Coop.”
Before Lucy can blink, Cooper’s on her. It’s only the years of mandated combat and self-defense training that saves her—her arm moving instinctively to block the butt of the handgun aimed at her temple. She seizes Cooper’s wrist, twisting it until the handgun slips from his grasp, hitting the sand with a muffled thud.
Cooper grunts in irritation and punches her in the jaw. Lucy’s head snaps back, teeth clicking painfully. She recovers in time to see the unsportsmanlike kick aimed at her knee, an attempt to knock her off her feet, but Lucy dodges the blow and slams her elbow into Cooper’s gut. He doubles over, more out of reflex than pain, but it’s the opening Lucy needed. In a perfect one-two-three execution, Lucy grabs Cooper’s right shoulder, jumps, and swings her legs up and around his neck.
She throws her weight sidewise, fully expecting Cooper’s body to fold underneath hers. Cooper, though, fights dirty.
He grips her knee with both hands and twists the joint in a direction it definitely is not supposed to twist. Pain explodes like stars, and Lucy yelps in pain. As her grip on him loosens, Cooper shoves her up like one of those barroom brawlers in his films, breaking her lock on his head and shoulders. He throws her off him, and Lucy’s shoulder collides painfully with the hard ground, the sand having surprisingly little give.
She staggers to her feet, but Cooper’s already after her, aiming blow after blow that Lucy barely has any time to block.
Before leaving the vault, Lucy never fought like this. All training sessions were informative, with teachers patiently coaching her through the perfect form. Practices had rules and structure. Her opponent wasn’t allowed to snatch her wrist and bend it backward until the bones in her joint ground together, forcing her to drop her knife. And they certainly weren’t allowed to slam a fist directly into her wounded side—the one Monty had stabbed.
Cooper, on the other hand, has no qualms about doing so, one right after the other.
Gasping in pain, Lucy tries to scramble after her knife, but Cooper wraps his hands around her waist with bruising force and shoves her face-first into the ground. Sand gets in her mouth and in her eyes as he yanks her backward, pulling her bodily underneath him. Spitting grit out from between her teeth, Lucy rears back, slamming the back of her head into Cooper’s skull. The impact is lessened by Cooper’s lack of nose, but it’s enough to throw him off balance.
Lucy rolls away, vaguely aware of Dogmeat’s frantic barking. She sees Cooper reach for his hip. Moving fast, Lucy distributes her weight along her body, slides forward, and strikes. Her foot connects with Cooper’s hand, knocking his weapon (another gun—how many guns does he have?) away.
Jumping to her feet, Lucy becomes aware of three things at once. The first is that she’s grinning. She can feel her lips stretched across her face. The second is that, underneath the pain, her body feels more alive than it’s felt since the night her world shattered in a flash of light and a pull of the trigger. The third thing, the third essential thing, is that her father would be very, very disappointed in her behavior.
Good, she thinks, even as the guilt comes, sudden and sharp.
An angry growl cuts through the darkness. From the corner of her eye, Lucy glimpses fur and fang lunging toward her throat.
She shouts in surprise and folds into herself, covering her neck and head, but she’s seen what Dogmeat can do, seen her rip open the stomach of a radroach with her teeth. Lucy knows this won’t end well for her. She closes her eyes, bracing herself. Can she kill a dog? She doesn’t know. When she was little, she had an imaginary dog named Moose that she slipped her vegetables to. Lucy’s mother had just died (purportedly), which is the only reason her father let her get away with such an unforgivable waste of food.
“Heel!” Cooper commands sharply, and Dogmeat rears back with a whine. “Down.”
Glancing up, Lucy sees Cooper standing between her and Dogmeat. He points towards his satchel, posture firm. Dogmeat looks at Lucy and back at Cooper fretfully, but finally slinks off to lay down next to Cooper’s things. With a loud grumble, Dogmeat curls into herself and buries her head underneath her tail.
Watchfully, Lucy finds her own knife in the sand and stands. Cooper turns to face her, steel flashing as he pulls a massive bowie knife from his hip. Cooper tosses his weapon from hand to hand, smiling with too many teeth. A few feet away, Dogmeat huffs in disgust.
“Mark my words, Lucy MacLean,” Cooper says, sliding a finger down the edge of his blade, “you and I are going to reach an understanding before the night is through.”
It’s that grin, that cocky, arrogant, I-know-something-you-don’t-vaultie grin, that makes whatever traces of guilt she has slide away, makes her forget every single lesson on de-escalation and upward management she’d ever learned.
“Damn right we are,” Lucy says and charges.
Their bodies collide, fast and brutal. By now, Lucy doesn’t expect Cooper to fight fair, but still every knee to the gut and fist to the ribs catches her off guard. She manages to land a blow that sends Cooper sprawling. Enough time for her to catch her breath and regain her footing.
Cooper spits blood from his mouth and takes in her stance, her arms in perfect defensive posture. He laughs. “You learn that from a book, Little Luce?”
With a wild cry, Lucy kicks sand in his face and launches herself at him, slashing with her knife. Cooper blocks her arm and grabs her hair. She hisses as he pulls her head back and stomps her foot against his ankle. He releases her, cursing loudly.
This is pointless, Lucy knows that. There’s nothing productive or mutually beneficial that can come from their fight. If Lucy wins, Cooper will be wounded at best, incapacitated at worst. Cooper winning probably means Lucy will start the next morning another few fingers short. Either outcome won’t exactly endear them to each other—not that they’re running the risk of becoming too friendly.
It’s what Steph would call a dumpster fire for sure.
It’s also the most fun Lucy’s had since her wedding night—the sex, not the betrayal, bloodshed, and murder, obviously.
Lucy sprints forward and throws herself at Cooper. She knocks them both to the sand, but he catches her waist and holds tight as he twists their bodies, trying to immobilize hers with his own. Lucy uses their momentum to spin them again, and she lands on top. In one quick movement, she pins Cooper’s body to the ground with her thighs and presses her knife against his throat.
Cooper stills, tense and tight and breathing hard underneath her.
“Ha!” Lucy crows, but her celebration is short-lived. Sharp steel pricks her side, right between her ribs. Cooper grins devilishly, his knife aimed up toward Lucy’s heart.
For a long moment, there’s nothing but their heaving breaths. Lucy can feel Cooper’s hips shift between her legs, testing her perch. Her left hand is braced against his chest, and she can feel the warm muscle and thud of his heart underneath her palm. His hand is on her hip, gloved fingers tight against the vulnerable strip of skin between her vault-blue pants and white tank top.
“Well,” Cooper drawls. “This is what we in the business call a stalemate. What do—”
Lucy kisses him.
She doesn’t know who’s more surprised, her or Cooper.
The touch of his lips, the bone hard press of them, and the taste of blood and chemicals on his breath barely has time to register before he’s shoving her off him with sudden, explosive force. Lucy lands on her back, air knocked from her lungs. She blinks up at the stars and considers her life choices.
“What.” Cooper demands, accent slipping again. “The fuck.”
“I’m pretty angry,” Lucy says because it’s important to be transparent in these situations. She doesn’t look over at Cooper; she keeps her gaze on the cold, twinkling of the stars, beautiful, distant, and removed.
A long pause, then a disbelieving and drawn out, “Okay.”
Lucy turns her head. Cooper is propped up on his elbows, staring at her in blank disbelief, but still somehow managing to project exasperation with the slight tilt of his chin.
“Would you like to have sex?” Lucy asks. Cooper barks out a single, sharp laugh. Lucy nods in response, completely understanding where he’s coming from. “It’s okay if you don’t,” she tells him because Maximus had seemed startled by her offer, and she’s starting to realize not everyone shares the same opinion about sexual activity—it being a healthy, normal way to improve your cardiovascular system. “Sorry for kissing you by the way. I should have asked.”
Steph hadn’t wanted to kiss either. Said it was just for Bert. Lucy thinks about the family Cooper’s looking for and feels a pang of remorse. Cooper probably has someone he’s saving his kisses for too. She should have respected that.
Cooper stares at her, saying nothing. His eyes narrow and his lips part, and suddenly there’s a different kind of tension in the air, swirling between them and sinking into the pores of Lucy’s skin. Her pulse increases, and she feels it beating, hot and slick, between her legs. Cooper works his jaw back and forth, gaze flickering over her body.
“Sex reduces stress, regulates cortisol, and improves cognitive function,” Lucy explains, staring at the cavity where Cooper’s nose should be.
Exhaling loudly, Cooper shuts his eyes and shakes his head, incredulous.
“It would tick off my dad,” Lucy adds.
Cooper’s eyes snap open. “Take off your pants.”
Lucy sighs in relief, reaching for the clasp on her vault uniform. (She’s going to have to get new pants in the next town. She wonders if slipping on grounder clothes will feel like shedding her skin, like releasing a part of herself and sliding off a foundation.) Hands join hers as Cooper yanks the fabric off her legs. It tangles with her boots, but Cooper has those off her feet right quick and pulls her onto his lap with one fast tug.
Their faces are inches from each other. Cooper’s stare is a challenge, as if daring her to call it off. Lucy smiles, distributing her weight across his hips and feeling his erection against her thigh.
“Would you like to kiss me?” Lucy asks, remembering her manners this time.
Cooper snarls at her and tangles a hand in her ponytail. He yanks her head back, exposing her throat, and Lucy gasps, pleasuring curving down her spine.
“Girl, the things I would like to do to you,” Cooper mutters, low and gravel-thick, and runs his mouth along her throat. Lucy shivers, breath catching as his teeth scrape over her flesh. Her hands find Cooper’s shoulder and latch on. She grinds her hips down, feeling Cooper exhale against her skin. He leans back, yanking his gloves off, and slips a scarred hand under her tank top and the elastic of her bra.
Cooper’s skin is rough and calloused. His fingers chafe against her nipple, but Lucy closes her eyes at the sensation, biting back a groan. You had to be quiet in the vault. In such close quarters, it was only polite. But then Cooper’s releasing her hair to slide his hand between her legs, and Lucy forgets herself.
Gasping, Lucy arches her back, chest pushing up and out, hand scrabbling the back of Cooper’s skull. The skin there is just as withered and coarse as his hands. His fingers press against her, unrentling and merciless, and Lucy feels the rush of wetness between her legs, feels herself start to drip. She knows Cooper feels it too by the strangled sound in the back of his throat and the twitch of his cock underneath her.
Cooper pushes two fingers inside her without warning, and Lucy feels herself throb around him. He watches her, eyes full of something unidentifiable as she bucks her hips and swallows back her moans, panting as she moves to meet the thrust of his fingers.
“That’s right,” Cooper mutters, hand twisting, slipping a third finger inside her. Lucy bites her lip, riding out the burn. Cooper pumps his fingers in deeper, harder, faster. “You want something, you take it. That’s how it is out here. None of this please and thank you bullshit. Just take it.”
Lucy’s shaking, all her muscles pulled taut as the tension in her builds higher and higher. His fingers fuck her steadily, thumb pushing in circles against her clit. Her skin breaks out in goosebumps, clenching up as her body stiffens. She forgets to cover her mouth, and her shout still seems to echo around them as she comes.
“Atta girl,” Cooper grunts, fingers choaxing her through it. “If only your daddy could see you now. Moaning like a whore and pussy milking my hand.”
Lucy’s body is being pulled in so many directions she doesn’t know how to react to that, doesn’t know whether to scream with pleasure at the shudders still coursing through her or slap Cooper across the face. She tries to breathe in, to compose herself, but Cooper curls his fingers, his thumb moving against her in an unrelenting rhythm. It’s enough to make her wail. When she comes again, Lucy turns her head and sinks her teeth into the base of Cooper’s neck, shaking all over and tasting blood between her teeth. Her nails claw at his back hard enough to rip the leather.
“That’s it,” Cooper hisses. “There you are.”
Sweat crawls along Lucy’s hairline, her whole body one big flush of heat, tight and sore, the inside of her thighs soaked. Her scalp burns when Cooper hauls her back in by her hair, and she gasps into the kiss, melts into it, even as Cooper’s teeth dig into her lip.
She didn’t know sex could be like this, that it could anchor the desire for violence in pleasure, didn’t know how much better that could make it. Sure, Steph could pin her down and make her beg and Chet could rock into her slow and teasing and it was lovely, wonderful even. But this. This is Cooper’s tongue in her mouth and fingers scratching her thighs, and this is Lucy dragging air into lungs that already ache and this is drowning on dry land. It’s being crushed into nothing and embraced at the same time.
She pulls away, panting. Cooper grins up at her like a predator.
“Ain’t that a picture. You look good with my blood in your mouth.”
Lucy bears her teeth and shoves Cooper down onto the sand. He goes easily, laughing, eyes bright and sharp. Lucy’s done with him, tired of his teasing. She moves fluidly, shifting down his body as her fingers pull open his belt and pop open pants, and sinks down, mouth closing around his cock.
That shuts him up.
Cooper's breath goes ragged, and Lucy hums, considering. The texture is different and the taste is slightly off, but over the years, Lucy has come to the conclusion that a penis in the mouth is a penis in the mouth. Granted, Cooper’s penis is larger and hotter than others she’s sucked—although, to be fair, she hadn’t had a chance to do this with Monty before he stabbed her—and his precome has a strange, sour taste, but he responds predictably to the brush of her tongue and drag of her lips. She takes more of him in, letting the head of his dick brush the back of her throat.
Lucy likes sucking cock. Her pussy throbs, growing wet all over again the weight of Cooper’s dick rests on her tongue. Cooper makes a choking sound as she begins to suck in earnest, bobbing her head up and down. Lucy hollows her cheeks and swallows. Cooper bucks his hips in response, and there are hands pushing at the back of Lucy’s head.
Lucy pushes them off her and sits up. Cooper’s cock slips out of her lips with a wet plop, spit shiny and so hard it must hurt. Cooper opens his mouth like he’s about to scream at her, but he seems to get distracted, just looking at Lucy, staring at her, eyes raking over Lucy’s face and swollen lips.
“If you want to fuck my mouth, you have to ask nicely,” Lucy tells him with the meanest smile she’s ever given.
Cooper’s eyes widen briefly before his face darkens, a nasty tilt to his brow. His hands curl into fists at his side. When he speaks, his voice is shaking. “Sweetie, I ain’t asking you for shit.”
Lucy feels her grin widen. She runs her fingers lightly up Cooper’s thigh, feeling the muscles twitch under her hands. His cock, which has the same irradiated look as the rest of him, bobs up almost hopefully.
“Guess I’ll just follow your advice and take what I want then,” she says and gets back to doing just that.
She uses every trick she knows to take Cooper deeper, make it dirtier. Cupping his balls, Lucy lightly drags her teeth along his shaft. Cooper’s cock twitches in her mouth as she tightens her lips over him, as she rolls her tongue over the head of his dick. Spit dribbles out of her mouth, coating his cock and covering her fingers.
Through it all, Cooper doesn’t touch her. Doesn’t so much as thrust his hips. Lucy knows it must be driving him nuts to have her mouth on him and not be able to use it in the way he wants. She can tell by the hitching in his breath, the spasms of his thighs, and the thick coating of precome on her tongue. Oh well. She’s having a great time.
Wrapping her fingers tight around the base, Lucy makes it as sloppy and slow as she likes, getting Cooper’s cock wet with her drool, sucking hard on every other upstroke. Cooper’s grunting quietly, trying to hold back noise, but Lucy twists her hand the next time her lips brush her fingers and he shouts, fist pounding the ground.
Lucy pulls off completely, and Cooper lets out a growl that makes that place between her thighs pulse.
“Do you want to come in me or in my mouth?” Lucy asks, watching as Cooper grinds the heels of his hands against his eyes, teeth gritted in frustration. She admires his dick, red and throbbing in her hand. “You can. All you have to do is ask for it. It’s not really that hard to be considerate, you know.”
The look Cooper shoots her is half outrage and pure irritation. Lucy somewhat expects him to throw her face-first into the sand and fuck into her from behind. The thought has a certain appeal, which is troublesome.
Instead, Cooper surprises her. He sits up, pupil-blown eyes looking directly into her own. “Lucy,” he says, sarcastically genteel, which is minimized by the undercurrent of desperate hunger, “I would very much appreciate it if you would go fuck yourself. On my dick, if you would be so kind.”
Lucy feels her lips twitch. Not exactly polite, but he did ask. You have to be happy for the small victories. She manages to keep a straight face as she tells him, “I’d enjoy that very much. Thank you.”
She does it slowly, teasing his cock with her entrance before taking him inside of her in small degrees. Lucy wants more, wants to be filled and stretched, split open and fucked out, but it’s worth the restraint to watch Cooper’s lashes flutter, the tendon in his neck popping out. She’s sweating again, arching her back and letting out a soft, broken noise as she takes him to the hilt.
Rolling her hips, Lucy feels electricity spark inside her. Cooper’s holding himself still, body taut as Lucy buries him inside her as deep as he’ll go. She takes a great shuddering breath, head tipping back and eyes sliding closed. Experimentally, she tightens around him, and her pussy quivers happily as she shivers all over.
In the next moment, Cooper’s fingers are tight and bruising on her hip. “Gonna—” Not quite a warning, but almost a question.
“Yup,” Lucy chokes out, and then Cooper is drawing out and slamming back in. Again, and twice more and Lucy sees starbursts behind her eyelids. The rhythm Cooper sets is fast and demanding, and Lucy’s thighs are cording with tension. Her whole body feels like a wire, stretching out and ready to break.
“Harder,” Lucy demands, angling her hips and choking on moans as he surges up into her. It nearly hurts like this. A bit too deep. She pushes down into it anyway. Puts her fingers on herself and finds her clit slippery and hot. “Don’t stop.”
“Fucking… let me—” Cooper grounds out and rolls them.
He’s on top of Lucy, fucking her so hard he’s folding her in half, pumping his cock in and out of her in deep thrusts that leave Lucy shaking and chanting, “yes, yes, just like that, yes.” Her hands grip Cooper’s ass, legs spread as wide as she can get them, grinding against him like her life depends on it. Cooper moves his hand between her legs, stroking her with cruel, firm precision, and Lucy is coming for a third time, white hot, tears streaming from her eyes, head swimming with sensation.
When she drifts back to herself, limp and loose, she realizes Cooper has slowed his thrusts, a steady, almost considerate, rocking of his hips. Lucy blinks up at him in surprise. He’s watching her, lip raised in a sneer, but there’s a wariness in his gaze, something guarded and strangely careful. Lucy takes in his mutated skin. This man refused to give her water. He tried to sell her for drugs. Once upon a time, his handsome face and cocky grin had flashed over the screen in Lucy’s living room, her father laughing next to her.
For a moment, she’s tempted to throw him off of her. Leave him in the dirt as she cleans every trace of that life off her.
Her thoughts must flash across her face because Cooper's expression disappears behind a mask of mockery and condescension.
“Now you’re getting it,” he says and starts to shift off of her. “Take what you want and get out.”
It’s that kind of negative behavior, Lucy decides, that she needs to redirect. Wrapping her legs around his waist, she clenches around him and smiles with all her teeth. “I’m just fine where I am, thank you for asking.”
The reaction is instantaneous. Cooper takes both of her wrists in one hand and pins them into the ground. His other hand wraps around her throat, grip loose but firm, as though making sure she doesn’t turn her head, doesn’t take her eyes off the thing fucking into her hot and greedy, barely pulling out before he plunges back in with a shove.
His cock is at an unusual angle inside her, thudding fast and firm in a way that feels borderline dangerous. Lucy doesn’t look away. She keeps her eyes firmly on Cooper’s, meeting him thrust for thrust. The sliver of space between them is sizzling and charged. Lucy wonders if she’s going to have bruises on her wrists tomorrow, where Cooper is holding her down. The thought thrills her; she always likes having something to show for her work.
“I’m going to,” Cooper snarls, yellowed teeth clenched, almost like he’s giving her one last warning.
Lucy tips her head back, limp, unresisting, content to enjoy the telltale hitch in his breathing, the minute thickening inside her. She arches her spine, hooking her ankles together behind his back.
“Okey dokey.”
Almost immediately afterward, Cooper pulls out and stalks away, barely pausing long enough to tuck himself back into his pants. Dogmeat barks and chases after him. Lucy can see their figures moving in the darkness—her eyes adjusted to it now. It doesn’t worry her; she knows Cooper won’t go far.
She takes advantage of the unexpected privacy to clean herself off, scooping what she can out of her. Curious, she examines the semen on her fingers, but she can’t tell where his slick ends and hers begins. He’s just a man after all.
(Or maybe, she considers idly, she’s becoming something else. Something like him.)
Lucy dresses and sits for a while, watching the stars and enjoying the cool air against her flesh. She feels better, having given her feelings somewhere to go, and she finds she can examine things objectively.
Fact: her father isn’t who he said he was and had something to do with the destruction of the planet. Fact: Knowing the exact whats and whys won’t change anything, but she needs what he knows to help the others in Vault 33. They need to be shown what they’re really a part of so they can choose, for the first time in their lives, what they want to do next. Fact: she has to do it carefully. Learning your entire life is a lie has consequences, Lucy thinks, scratching at the dried semen on her fingers.
Fact: for that, she needs her father. So does Cooper. Therefore, Lucy’s exactly where she needs to be. She’s setting herself up for success by setting clear goals, developing new skills, and gathering the resources she needs to meet her objectives. At the realization, the last of the helpless anger in her chest—the one that blazed at the thought of being a pawn in a game she doesn’t know how to play—sputters out. She exhales deeply, exhaustion creeping into her bones.
After a while, it becomes apparent Cooper’s going to stay out for the rest of the night, prowling the perimeter with Dogmeat, so Lucy lays down on her pack and closes her eyes. He can take her watch; she’s going to grab sleep where she can take it.
It’s to that thought that Lucy drifts off.
“Get up,” Cooper says. Lucy’s eyes snap open.
A scrap of metal holding roasted meat lands in front of her face. The sun hasn’t tipped over the horizon yet, and the sky is a bright pink and burnt orange. Some stars still twinkle above, clinging on in the dark blue swatch higher in the atmosphere. No clouds. It’s going to be another brutally hot day.
Cooper’s sitting cross legged next to a small fire, Dogmeat resting her head on his thigh, eyes closed in contentment. Slowly, Lucy sits up. Between the impromptu knife fight and the satisfyingly athletic sex, her entire body is stiff and sore, like one massive ache. As she reaches out for the plate, Lucy sees blue smudges on her wrist where she’s bruised. She glances at Cooper, but he’s ignoring her, chewing pointedly on his own breakfast.
“Is this…” Lucy starts, examining the meat suspiciously.
Cooper scuffs. “Radroach. You wouldn’t appreciate the good stuff.”
Lucy rolls her eyes at his posturing.
They eat together in companionable silence. In the vault, a pause in chatter meant there was nothing to cover the hum of the air filters or the murmur of electricity or the vibrations of the pipes—the endless rhythmic thrum of machinery keeping them alive. Out here, there’s none of that. Just the quiet sound of wind and the shifting of sand and the occasional sigh from Dogmeat.
Cooper finishes his food and starts kicking sand over the sputtering embers of their fire. Dogmeat jumps up, tail wagging. Lucy takes that as her cue, finishing her meal in three quick bits and starts packing her bag.
“There’s a settlement about half a day’s walk from here,” Cooper tells her, and Lucy manages to keep from stiffening in surprise. “We’ll resupply there before we hit the Mojave Wasteland. I think I’ve got an idea where your daddy’s headed.”
Lucy nods tentatively, not daring to look up at him. “Sounds good.”
There’s a hiss of a RadAway puffer and a ripple of leather. Cooper’s spurs clang weakly against the hard sand as he approaches and stops in front of her. Lucy finally lifts her face to his, settling her pack on her shoulders and adjusting the straps
For a long moment they regard one other, each of them sizing the other up. Lucy takes in his tattered jacket, stained leather, and expressionless face and knows that he’s following the even stitching in her vault uniform, the dirt crusted into her skin, and the calculations in her eyes. Then, slowly, Cooper extends a hand. Just as slowly, Lucy claspes it and lets him haul her to her feet.
They set off without any fanfare or further exchanges.
Walking at a comfortable pace, Lucy matches Cooper’s strides. Dogmeat circles them, yapping in excitement. Lucy takes a swig of water from her flask and wordlessly offers it to Cooper. Syncing his steps to hers, Cooper takes the proffered container, drinks quickly, and hands it back, and they walk north together, disappearing deeper into the wasteland.