Far Cry 5: In Hell I'll Be In Good Company [JessXfem!deputy]
The fern covered ground underneath the tall fir trees was usually a welcome sight to Jess Black. It was cooler in the damp forest. She hunted the prairie and dry valleys as well, but the sun would beat down mercilessly and the scrub was harder to move through than soft moss and ferns.
There was a quiet grunt from her side as her partner staggered and dropped to a knee.
Another major advantage to the soft ground was when the deputy, Sarah, still recovering from her recent imprisonment by Jacob Seed's thugs, staggered and fell. Moss and damp earth were a damned sight easier on her abused body than rocks and gravel.
Yep. The conifer forests were Jess's favorite place to be, even if you had to hike up a lot of steep grades. But they had one major drawback.
Rain came down steadily from low hanging grey clouds, making the forest come alive with the sounds of water hitting leaves. The rain wasn't hard, but was unrelenting, and now and then the wind would kick up just enough to whip it sideways beneath the hood that covered her head, shocking her anew with cold water in the face.
Even the normally irrepressible Boomer seemed downcast at the weather. His tail hung limp and he stuck close to the two women.
"Waterproof fabric my ass," Sarah muttered, doggedly putting one foot in front of the other as they climbed the hill.
"We've been wearing them for days, 'Rah," Jess replied, also feeling water soak through to her skin. "They've got mud and blood and sweat all in the threads. Water's gonna go right through."
Sarah grunted tiredly. "No wonder we ain't seen a deer in two days. They can probably smell us clear down in Fall's End."
"Probably."
"Yeah, I can see it now," Sarah mumbled, shivering. "Fucking Jacob sends his hunters after me. 'She's real easy to find. She ain't changed panties in a week, just follow the smell!'"
"Hey, we'll get to the cave in no time. We can wash up there. I got a can of Camp Dry in my bag, once everything dries off we can get it waterproof again," Jess consoled, referring to a can of spray silicone that would waterproof porous fabric.
"And eat. God I'm so hungry all the time now." She shifted her Barrett anti-material rifle to a more comfortable position and hefted her compound bow, scanning the trees for any sign of life. "I swear I've gone down a cup size."
There weren't any animals to be seen. Boomer might not be as good as he usually was in the rain, but he'd still point out any animals for them to hunt.
Jess winced. She was the better hunter of the pair, but she hadn't gotten anything since a duck the day before. Still, they had four large chinook split between the pair of them, hanging from their packs, all caught by the deputy. She was by far the better fisher, and always kept a three piece rod tied to her hiking pack.
By the time they reached the tiny natural cave Jess knew about from her frequent hunting trips in the region, they were both shivering with the cold, and Sarah looked like she was about to pass out. It had only been five days since she'd escaped Jacob's torture camp for the second time and she was still recovering.
The cave had seen campers before. It wasn't very big, being tall enough for a grown man to stand upright and wide enough he couldn't touch both sides with outstretched arms, but it only went back into the rock of the hillside about fifteen or sixteen feet. It was almost more of a deep overhang than a cave, really, with a jumble of large rocky boulders just down the slope from it. Previous visitors had brought in a short section of tree trunk and fixed it in place with some smaller rocks so it'd make a good bench to sit on. There was also the charred remains of a fire pit near the entrance, just far enough into the cave that rain shouldn't put the fire out. Unfortunately for the both of them, it had been raining for more than an hour and dry tinder was going to be hard to find.
Or not.
"Nice, the old log is still in here. We can make a fire with this," Jess said happily as they shucked their packs and put them in the back of the cave. "It's probably the only dry piece of wood in a mile all around.
"S-s-s-sounds great!" Sarah said, forcing cheer through her chattering teeth.
The two of them moved the log near to the fire pit, and then Sarah pulled an axe off her belt and set to the log with a will. The axe still had blood and hair stuck to it from where she'd buried it in a peggie skull, and the edge was getting a little dull from having to chop through the peggie's army surplus helmet in the process, but it took off chips and chunks with each swing.
Jess marveled once again at the deputy's seemingly limitless well of strength as the end of the log was reduced to splinters and piled up in the fire pit. Boomer was less enthusiastic about the flurry of movement and watched warily from the back of the cave.
Once a large pile of wood chips and chunks had been gathered, the now mangled end of the log was set on the edge of the fire pit. Jess pulled a can of sterno camp fuel out of her pack and nestled it under the chips, then reached for her lighter.
Patting herself all over, she gave Sarah a sheepish look.
Rolling her eyes good naturedly, the deputy pulled out a pretty zippo lighter and flicked it a few times. Despite the warm up she'd gotten from chopping at the wood, her hands were too cold and numb to light the lighter, so with her own look of exasperation she tossed it underhand at her partner.
Jess briefly admired the lighter and traced her finger over the engraved numbers on the back, but quickly resumed her task and had their fire lit. The sterno at the base of the fire made for a small, steady flame that quickly had the splinters and tinder over it burning, which spread to the rest of the chips. With the end of the rest of the log in the fire, a continuous source of fuel should keep the fire going for the rest of the day, perhaps even the night.
As the fire blazed up, Jess quickly took off her hoodie, then her shirt. She glanced up at Sarah.
"Hey, take your clothes off. There's a puddle just down slope, I'll give them a quick wash, and then we can hang them up here and get dry."
Nodding, the deputy stripped down to her underwear, shivering again as the cool air hit wet skin. She looked up and her jaw dropped, seeing Jess standing there in the altogether.
Jess was five and a half feet tall, dark hair, with a number of scars across her lithe body. The parallel scratches across her face were partially healed now, and she had any number of other small wounds, including a bandaged shoulder where a bullet grazed her, and some old but nasty looking bruises on her thighs, belly and sides where she'd been kicked during her imprisonment by the peggies. That being said, she was still a slender, shapely young woman with modest breasts and an untamed V of black pubic hair between her legs. Her nipples were small, brown, and hard in the cold. Who cared if it had been a while since she'd shaved anything, she was still as beautiful now as when she was putting an arrow through some asshole's heart.
She smirked knowingly at the deputy, cocking her hip to the side and presenting her breasts to best effect.
Suddenly finding the heat to blush, Sarah glanced away.
"Don't be like that, 'Rah," she chided. "You can look. You should take your underwear off, too. Didn't you just say you hadn't changed panties in a week?"
"Yeah, but… oh to hell with it." Sarah quickly took off her bra and panties, willing herself not to cringe or cover herself.
Sarah had mouse brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, and was a few inches shorter than Jess. Her body was taut with corded muscle, as even before the problems with Joseph's merry bunch of fanatics she'd maintained an enthusiastic work out program. Former army, recent deputy, her two main hobbies were fishing and rock climbing. She'd long accepted she was a smaller, physically weaker woman in a man's world, but with dogged determination and a rigorous schedule, she'd built some serious muscle for a woman. Unfortunately, her recent week and a half imprisonment by Jacob and his militants was long on pain and short on food. Numerous scrapes and cuts marred her skin, her ribs showing and her breasts drooping slightly from the lost weight. Bruises were everywhere, and she had several wrapped bandages around calf, thigh, and upper arm from bullet grazes and in one case an arrow that put her down. Her cheekbones were sharp and her muscles defined, but she'd lost muscle mass as well from the starvation.
Like Jess, she hadn't seen a razor in a while, but other than some scabs mostly hidden by her hair, her face was unmarred. Jess thought she was just about the prettiest thing she'd ever seen.
"I'll get us some water boiling," she announced, very deliberately turning away as she started rummaging in her pack.
Smiling slightly, Jess joined her, pulling a pair of bottles out of her pack, as well as a thermal sleeping bag, a wool blanket, and a tiny, folded mylar blanket. She left one of the squeeze bottles there, but took the other and their gathered clothes and braved the chill of the rain once more. Shallow pools had formed here and there in depressions in the rock, and she shivered a little as she crouched in the edge of one, spreading the clothes out in the water. A generous squeeze of the bottle of camp detergent turned the rock basin into a makeshift washer, and she swirled and squeezed and rubbed the clothes in the frothy water.
Jess had to work quickly. She had more meat left on her than the deputy but it was still cold, and she was getting a lot wetter. It wasn't the best job of clothes washing she had ever done but it at least got off most of the blood and mud. She rinsed each item in another puddle several times before gathering the lot up and hurrying back to the cave.
There, Sarah had set up several large rocks and a wire rack, which held a pot of water over the fire. On each side of the fire was a salmon half, scaled and filleted and laid across green sticks to cook. Another salmon, with the spine and bones removed, had been given to Boomer, who was happily tearing into it. Fish wasn't his favorite but he wasn't picky.
Working together, the little bit of naked awkwardness fading as they focused on the needs of their tasks, and with only a single trip outside for Jess to grab a few more sticks, they got their clothes mostly hung up or draped over rocks to warm and dry.
In the shelter of the cave, the air was warming steadily, though they were both chilled down to the bone neither was actively shivering. Outside, the rain clouds had drifted so low that it had shrouded the hillside in fog, limiting visibility to just a few dozen yards.
"Come on," Jess said, waggling the other bottle at Sarah suggestively. "It ain't a Hilton but the shower is bigger, you know?"
Sarah snorted and took the bottle to look over. "I thought you said you felt like you'd gone numb."
"I don't have to be clean to kill peggies, but I sure do enjoy it more," she replied, her accent thickening 'sure' into 'shore'. "I'll wash your back if you wash mine?" This time there was definitely a flirtatious lilt to her voice.
"I bet you say that to all the girls," Sarah countered.
Jess made a show of thinking hard about it. "Well, not all of 'em. Definitely a buncha cheerleaders when I was in high school. Some of the baseball girls, too."
They walked into the rain, slightly down slope to a flatter area with less risk of slipping.
"Got me into some fights, you know," Jess continued, her tone darker. "Had to move school a few times. You?"
Sarah passed the bottle of soap back to her partner, still lathering up her hair with her other. As the rain washed the suds down her body, she scrubbed at her skin with her hands. Several bandages got removed, a few with hisses of pain.
"Hah. Not me. I was way too scared to tell anyone. I didn't even hint about it. I mean, I realized I wasn't interested in boys pretty young, and I knew what that meant, but my family was religious, you know? Good girls didn't do those kinds of things." She paused, then smirked. "At least until I was in college."
"Yeah, I heard that. Not the college thing, I never went, but, you know… Of course, that's why I was a bad girl."
"Anyone ever take you up on it?" Sarah asked.
"More than you'd think. Girls like a bad girl almost as much as a bad boy, but it rarely went any farther than kissing. And almost every time after that, suddenly she'd get all guilty and then not want to talk to me or see me, or if she did it was just to cuss me and call me a dyke whore, you know?" Jess scrubbed hard at her skin, scraping it with her nails. While she definitely enjoyed a shower and running her hands down her body with another naked girl, it was just too damned cold to feel sexy.
"Yeah." Sarah's expression was hidden by soap and the rain, but she sounded sad. Sad and knowing.
"So fuck 'em. Most of them ended up trailer trash anyway. The few around here are probably either dead or singing hymns to that asshole, Joseph. I guess they've forgotten about me. I kept expecting to get called out and shot, or burned or something when I was in that cage at the lumber mill."
"Ugh. You done?" Sarah asked. "'Cause I'm freezing."
"Yeah, all clean," Jess replied. She followed Sarah up the slight slope back to the cave, both being careful not to slip and fall on the wet rocks. "Well, clean body," Jess admitted, following Sarah's lovely, muscular behind. "Dirty mind, I admit. You might have lost a little up top but you got nothing to complain about down low."
Sarah snorted. It wasn't the first time a pretty girl had flirted with her, not by a long shot. But… it had been a while. Since college, before the army. 'Don't ask don't tell' wasn't official policy anymore, but she still preferred most people 'didn't know'. And as a rookie deputy in a deeply conservative, deeply religious area, that was an even better idea than when in the army. And then the crazy christian cult went nuts. As far as Sarah knew, there had never been an insane fundamentalist christian cult that approved of gays.
Joseph already wanted to purge her of his twisted notion of sin and have her worship him. He didn't need more ammo. Especially not since, sadly, she still felt lingering christian guilt over being a lesbian. She'd never told her parents, though they were dead now. Never told anyone since college. In all of Hope County, only Jess knew.
And only because she'd caught Sarah checking her out when they were climbing hills. Sarah could have died from embarrassment, and stammered excuses, but Jess had just booped her nose, told her it was fine, and said she liked women, too.
It still took two days of awkward silences before she was willing to bring it up again, though. Jess was still hunting her family's murderer those first two days. And then Sarah was caught by a peggie group, as they fled a group of hunters. An arrow through her thigh dropped her screaming right before she could hit the river. Jess had already jumped in and was swimming the white water to safety. Jess had felt horribly guilty, but given what Sarah had been forced to do to some of her fellow captives, she was glad Jess had escaped.
She shivered, and not just from the cold.
"Come on, girl, let's get warmed up," Jess chided her. "The water's boiling. What do you want? We got apples and cinnamon oatmeal, blueberry oatmeal, and biscuits and gravy," she said, rooting through the packages of dried food in her pack.
"B-b-biscuits and g-gravy sounds good," she replied, glancing away. Jess was naked, and squatting, and Sarah was too cold for troublesome gay thoughts.
"Good call. I brought more of it anyway. This is the good stuff, lots of sausage bits and grease."
Boiling water was poured into foil lined pouches which were set to the side. Then the pot was set back into the rain to fill back up. Together they put Sarah's scavenged sleeping bag on the rocky cave floor, folded for extra cushioning. Then Jess's nicer, thermal bag was set up on top, giving them more seat padding, plus something to recline against. Then a wool blanket, a little damp from Sarah's backpack, and a flannel blanket from Jess. The foil lined plastic mylar blanket could be spread on top for even more warmth.
"Come on, don't be shy," Jess said, plopping down on the wool blanket and pulling the flannel over her, with space beside her for Sarah. "We'll be warmer together."
Sarah bit her lip but sat down beside her naked friend, pulling the flannel blanket over the both of them. With the small but cheery fire going in the entrance and the heavy fog smothering the land outside, the cave felt cut off from the world, almost unreal. Like they were the only people alive. Two girls, one dog, in a small room with a fire.
Jess passed food over, took a bite of her own, then sighed happily.
Sarah stirred hers with the camp spork and took a bite. Freeze dried food was never as good as the real thing, but it wasn't bad. Not bad at all. They ate in companionable silence for a while. The soft crackling of the fire and Boomer's contented snoring in the back of the cave the only sounds. Even the wind had stopped.
"This is what it's all about," Jess murmured. "Huntin, fishin, camping… Just being out here in nature. None of this shit with the peggies causing strife. Hell, they're just the latest in a long line of shit. Bills, jobs, banks, false friends, family… If it wasn't them I'd have another reason to be out here."
"It's nice," Sarah admitted. "I joined the police because I wanted to help the community. But it's nice to get away. I've never camped in these hills much, I admit. I usually stayed down by the lake, or one of the rivers. Back when I was a kid I used to camp out in our pasture, beside the cow pond. I must have caught every fish in that thing at least twice."
"Yeah, I fish sometimes. Usually for trout or salmon in the rivers 'round here. I just like huntin' more. Just something about being one with the bow, putting an arrow right into the sweet spot, and watching 'em drop. But you know, mainly, I think it was about getting away." She twirled her spoon around, scraping up the last of the gravy, then set the empty food pouch aside and took a drink of cold water from her canteen. "I tell you what, I think it's better with a pretty girl, though," she said, nudging Sarah.
Sarah blushed and hid it behind her food pouch, but she'd finished it as well. Her hunger had eased but was still present. "Yeah, I'm glad you're here, too." She paused.
Should she? Was she that daring?
She could be.
She should be.
Why not. Jess was already flirting with her.
"I'll check on the fish," she said, flipping the blanket away and then rising to creep on all fours to the fire.
Jess whistled at the sight.
Sarah paused, turned, and gave a little booty shake. The rock was cold but the air was warming and she'd stopped feeling the chill under the blankets, with the delicious warmth of biscuits and gravy sitting in her stomach. Clean and only the odd sore spot, it was really about as pleasant as it could be for her. The peggies were a problem for tomorrow.
Today was for her.
The salmon was cooked all the way through, even a little burnt in a few spots where it was too close to the fire, but it was good enough. Her own pack held a pair of stacked tin plates, though she paused and marveled at the bullet hole through them both.
Jess stared back as she looked at her through the hole in the plates. She hadn't even noticed a bullet come that close to ending her life.
Ignoring it for now, she slid the long fillets on a pair of tin plates and handed them back to Jess, then leaned out into the rain to grab the now full pot of water and put it back on the fire. They had some cider mix pouches that would go down nice after dinner.
Boomer was awake and watching her when she crept back under the covers, but his belly practically bulged with the big salmon he'd already eaten, so they ignored him.
Well, Sarah was going to. Jess tore off a crispy bit, nibbled at it, blew on it, then tossed it to the dog, missing by a few feet.
It was a testament to how full he already was that it took him two tries to roll over and stand up to get the treat.
"I think he's had enough, Jess," Sarah commented.
"He's a good boy. Good boys get treats," Jess explained.
"What about good girls?" Sarah asked, raising one eyebrow.
"Good girls get all the treats," Jess promised, waggling her eyebrows back.
She couldn't help it and snorted, getting comfortable beneath the blanket once more. The fish, even with only a salt rub for seasoning, was delicious, and it seemed like no time at all before she'd ate her entire fillet. Basically half a salmon, albeit a small one, by herself, and she was still hungry.
The deputy found her gaze turning to the side, where two more salmon lay, gutted but uncooked.
"Still hungry, huh?" Jess asked, eating the last of her own.
"Yeah," Sarah said darkly, remembering recent days of starvation.
"I still grab a much food as I can carry, whenever I see it," Jess agreed, subtly reminding her that she'd gone through the same thing. "You'll get used to it. You should have put another on the fire."
"Mmm, it'll take too long," she replied, grabbing the larger of the two fish and dragging it over. A little knife work and she had a fresh skinless fillet sitting on her plate. She quickly sliced it up into bite sized chunks, and also pulled a fistful of tiny soy sauce packets out of her backpack, looted from an abandoned home.
"Aww, you're gonna do sushi? I've eaten raw fish, but you ain't gotta get all fancy on me, 'Rah," Jess complained.
"It's not sushi, it's sashimi. Sushi has the rice, and isn't always raw fish," Sarah patiently explained. "You've never had it? It's good. I mean, we could use a little wasabi, but at least I have soy sauce."
"What's wasabi?" Jess asked.
"Green horseradish, basically."
"Shoot, I got a little horseradish in my pack. Hold on." She crawled out of the blankets and spent a moment going through her backpack.
"You know, as much as we're getting into those, maybe we should just drag them over," Sarah noted.
"Naw, where's the fun in that?" Jess replied, turning her head to look back at her. "This way, I get to shake my ass at you just like you did that cute patootie earlier." She paused, and Sarah could see that she was blushing, too. "Y'are lookin', right?"
"Uh huh."
Heat from the fire, heat from the blankets, heat from her burning cheeks. Jess had a lovely ass, heart shaped and rounded, far nicer than her own kind of lumpy butt was. Women are supposed to be soft and rounded, not rock hard glutes with no padding.
It was just as nice when Jess turned back around, her breasts, slightly larger than Sarah's, swinging freely and perkily. The cuts on her face did give her a slightly feral look but she made it work like a model. Better, even.
"Look see here," Jess said, offering a zip lock bag full of smaller plastic bags. "I got a bunch of seasonings and suchlike and took them out of their bottles. I got A1, I got ketchup, I got worchestershire," she said, mispronouncing it, "mustard, some pickles, I don't know what that one is, barbeque sauce, and horseradish." She paused, picking out a wadded up zip lock with some residue on the inside. "I ran out of relish." She seemed genuinely saddened by the thought. "I got some seasonings and stuff, too. I guess we could have used that on the fish."
Sarah accepted the zip lock with about an inch of horseradish in the bottom, rolled up with all the air sucked out of it to save space. "This will be fine. No, better than fine. Now crawl back in here with me and let me show you how to do field sashimi."
"Field sashimi, huh?" Jess asked with a crooked grin. "Well, it's classier than fish taco, I'll wager."
Sarah giggled a little, then snorted at herself. "You're so bad!"
Jess looked smugly pleased with herself. She brought the horseradish back and handed it over.
"See, we got a pile of fish that was swimming a couple of hours ago. We got some horseradish," she said, squeezing a glob from the plastic bag out onto the plate. "And we got soy sauce. I'd have dropped like, thirty bucks on this stuff back in college."
"Sounds like you enjoyed college," Jess noted.
"Oh yeah. Going from around here, which don't get me wrong, has its good points, but dating prospects certainly wasn't one of them, to a place where even the straight girls were experimenting? I went through three girlfriends and no one even asked me if I was gay. It was completely acceptable."
Jess laughed. "Three, huh?"
Sarah shrugged, taking a drink from her canteen before she started in on the sashimi. "That was just casual stuff. You know, trying it out. I mean, I was pretty sure I was gay, but what if I was wrong? And I'd never actually dated a girl, before. It's a bit different than guys, naturally. There's still the expectation of oral at the end of the date, but you don't mind as much." She winked.
Jess burst into startled laughter. "So why didn't you settle down with some nice girl?"
Sarah shrugged, taking a soy sauce packet and tearing the end. "Well, most of them turned out to not actually be gay, just playing around. Bi until graduation. And when I started actually running into other girls who wanted to do things long term, they tended to be… ennnnh, incompatible."
"Incompatible?"
"Hold on. Bite." She nibbled the end of a piece of salmon, found it good, then dribbled soy sauce on top, staining the pale pinkish flesh. A little dab of horseradish on the other end, and then she popped the whole thing in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. A smile crept onto her face. "'s good," she offered.
Giving her partner a dubious look, Jess repeated the preparations and ate her own piece. After a moment, she nodded. "Yeah, that's good. I've ate raw salmon before, I didn't know it was the same as sushi."
"Sashimi," Sarah corrected automatically. "Maybe one day I can carry you to an actual sushi place, let you see the difference."
"Got into it in college, huh?"
"Jess, I got into all kinds of things in college you don't run into around here," she said, eating another.
"So anyway, girlfriends?" Jess prompted.
"Oh, yeah. Well, you know the stereotype you hear from people? And on TV and the internet and stuff about how the gays and lesbians are all stupid liberals and stuff?"
"…yes…?" Jess hedged.
"And how liberals hate guns and huntin' and fishin' and stuff?"
"Oh no."
"Oh yeah. Now, there's some real cool people out there. But yeah, it was as hard finding a girl that'd even come camping or fishing with me. There was this one girl, real go getter type. She was always willing to argue her views, but she was also more understanding about the outdoors. She liked rock climbing, too, so we had that, and she'd camp with me. Didn't even mind me fishin'. Wouldn't go hunting with me but okay, fine."
Jess ate more salmon and nodded for her to go on.
"Dear Johnned me two weeks into basic. Said she just couldn't support the military industrial complex the way I did."
"That sounds like bullshit," Jess noted.
"I think it was. I think she found out we'd be apart for weeks or months at a time and found herself a Jodie. Or a Jodette. The whole military thing was just her making herself feel better."
"Sucks."
"It is what it is," Sarah admitted. "Happened to a lot of guys in basic, too. The rest of them married someone right after AIC so they could get out of the barracks. It honestly looked like that wasn't much better."
Jess nodded, not really understanding but not arguing.
Together, they finished off the plate of salmon, and, finally replete, both reclined comfortably and patted bulging bellies.
For a few minutes they just laid there, watching the fire burn lower and start to eat into the log.
"I'd always kinda wanted to go to college," Jess admitted finally. "I'd always heard college girls were easy. Sounds like I dodged a bullet, though."
Sarah shook her head. "Don't get me wrong. It was a lot of fun. You'd have liked it. I mean, there's classes and stuff, too, but studying wasn't that hard. I just met a lot of the wrong girls there." She paused. "Well, not wrong. Just wrong for me." She smirked suddenly. "And you? Miss big time hunter bad girl take no shit from anyone? You'd have had 'em worshipping at your feet. I snuck around the edges, not really putting myself out there. I bet there were other girls who would have liked the same things I did, who came from similar backgrounds and could understand my dreams." She chuckled. "God, if I saw some beautiful girl come in wearing realtree camo and smelling like Off bug spray, come in and climb up on a desk and be all, 'Hey, I'm a country girl! I hunt, I fish, and I'm here for your girlfriends! Who wants a piece ah me?' I'd have whooped the shit out of the dozen girls in line ahead of me to make it to the front."
"I take it back," the huntress said seriously. "Maybe I should have gone to college after all. What college did you say you went to…?"
"UMT," the deputy replied. "Feels like a lifetime ago now." She flipped the blankets off again. "Hold on, I'm going to see if the pot filled up."
The rain had slowly gotten harder, and the light was fading outside, turning the wall of fog into an almost uniform grey wall, lit only dimly by the flickering light of the fire. The log was moved further on top of it, blocking it from the outside of the cave and giving it more wood to burn. Sarah collected the pot of boiling water and also got out a pair of tin coffee mugs.
"Wait! Stop!" Jess suddenly said.
Sarah, backlit by the flickering fire, on hands and knees, naked as the day she was born, froze just like she would if she'd been given that order in battle or in the woods. Years of experience in dodging bullets and IEDs meant that if someone said 'stop', she froze.
And Jess just stared in admiration. The shadows cast by the fire obscured the little imperfections, scars and bruises and cuts, turning her from an amazing woman with feet of clay to an impossible, perfect goddess straight from many a hormone driven fantasy of Jess's.
After a moment of being frozen, Sarah allowed herself to turn and look at her partner, who was staring at her with a goofy grin.
"What?" she asked, going from serious to half laughing.
"You're beautiful by the fire," Jess admitted. "I've had dreams about this." She paused. "Well, fantasies."
Naughtily, Sarah stretched herself out, arranging herself in a model's seductive pose.
"Mmm," Jess said, either a moan or a comment.
"You're making me blush," Sarah mock complained, resuming her task of making hot cider mix.
"You made me realize just how lucky I am right now," Jess said seriously.
"Hmm?" she inquired, returning with the mugs of hot instant cider and climbed back into their cozy nest of blankets.
"Well, a lot of things are shit right now. Most of my family is dead, 'cept for uncle Dutch. Peggies running around killing people and worse. But you know, I just realized that this is as close to one of my teenage fantasies as I think it's possible to get. Can't hate that."
Sarah blew on her cider, and then took a cautious sip. Still too hot.
"So you had a lot of horny fantasies about camping with a pretty girl, huh?"
"With a beautiful girl," Jess corrected, just holding her cider and letting the heat seep into her hands. "But yeah. Had quite a few in this very cave, even. You ever tried to jill yourself off in a sleeping bag without letting anyone around you know?"
Sarah giggled. "As it happens, not exactly. But I know what you mean." She sighed. "For me it was fishing. Especially when I was old enough to go camp by the farm pond in the pasture by myself. Our house wasn't that big, and I was always scared of getting caught." She paused. "Of course, I was scared of getting caught out in the pasture, too. My dad had this habit of walking out there in the middle of the night to check on me. Got me paranoid. Couldn't do it."
"Now that's a shame," Jess admitted. "I bet you were cute."
Sarah snorted. "I was all arms and legs and pimples, you mean. Not all of us get blessed like you did, miss cover of Field and Stream."
"I wasn't on the… oh," Jess said, realizing that she wasn't being literal.
"I doubt I'd have done much anyway, even if I wasn't scared someone would walk up and see me or hear me. I didn't really know how two girls did it for a long time. I just imagined kissing and holding hands and stuff." She blushed at the memories. "Cuddling."
"Damn, 'Rah, you're gonna make me blush with all that kinky talk," Jess said deadpan.
"Quiet you. Some of us were good girls." Finding her cider cooled enough, she took a sip. It was delicious.
"Well, when we finish killing Jacob's evil ass up here, what do you say we head south? Maybe we can find that farm pond," Jess said, whispering cider scented seduction into her ear.
"That sounds wonderful," Sarah replied softly, and kissed her.
"I mean, since we're going to Hell anyway," Jess murmured, allowing the shorter, stronger woman to pull her into her lap, her calloused hands and whip corded muscles seeming stronger than any man as she encircled the huntress's waist.
"If this is wrong, I will flip off God and walk backwards into Hell," Hope county's most junior deputy said with the same conviction that let her clear an entire peggie outpost by herself. "Fuck Joseph, and fuck his kids." She kissed along Jess's neck, who arched her back and let her.
"At least in Hell we'll be in good company," Jess moaned in reply, burying her nose in her partner's hair.
"Amen."
AN: Far Cry 5 is great but fuck that ending. Also this is why there wasn't a new chapter of No Promises this week.