[This originated as the final part of another work, but it ended up being too long, so I made it it's own thing. Hope you like!]
ooooo
Cait's vengeance is needle-sharp and burns like paint thinner, eats through collars and chains and brands her pain with scars. She's confessed to entire days spent finding places stripped of innocence and pinning faces to her damaged flesh like bounties to a corkboard, twisting veins into nooses, etching names behind her eyelids: Tower Tom, Zeller, and all the other bastards who contributed to the crooked rubric scabbed into her body.
She carries a list of dead men. Browned and stiff with curdled bloodstains and hidden away like a cache of chems in a pocket sewn into the left breast of her rags-and-stitches corset, pupils dilate and heart kicks at her chest when it's consumed. Honestly, the list is redundant, Cait says. Has been rehearsed more than putting one foot in front of the other, but Deedee still checks both directions before crossing intersections; as hard to quit as breathing, clinging to things they don't need anymore.
There are worse addictions.
Diamond City reeks of noodles and stale mud, but summer evenings are kind, sometimes. They'd climbed the steel rungs to the roof of Deedee's city-centered apartment with intent to lounge in one of the hollowed RVs spat like bullet casings across the DC skyline, if only to say they'd escaped the musk of the house that day. Didn't go as planned- does anything ever?- but Deedee doesn't mind where they've wound up.
It's Cait's fault, really. Wiggling her ass up the ladder, sitting in Deedee's lap and not the chair next to her, flirting over her shoulder like she doesn't know Deedee gets hard when girls with ruby red smiles talk her up.
Back and forth motion of the hips, swirling like chardonnay in a wine glass, rough-cut prickle of Cait's nails digging into Deedee's knees. Little moans trickling into the drying puddle of people far below, stiff thighs rubbing and rubbing, ass thumping abs. Pulsing and fever-hot, pulling and squeezing and pulling along Deedee's length, a liquid mess pumping between her legs.
Deedee reaches up and takes a fist of tender flames, smooth and lapping at her fingers, tugs gently and Cait coos a sweet, wordless rhythm like tinkling chimes. Sun bubbling down to nothing along the black griddle of the horizon in the distant background.
Comes in her lap again, tense and quivering like a plucked bowstring, draws and snaps and Deedee comes, too, filling her up, up, up. Leans forward and holds her around the waist, just holds her, can't think of anything but holding Cait's warmth to herself until they're gooey and melty and completely together like crayons on a hot day.
Wind blusters by and the RV grumbles, motes of rust milling to the floor. Hope this thing doesn't roll off.
Cait straightens and reaches high for the RV's ceiling, purrs in tabby-cat while she stretches in the rays salaciously caressing her silhouette. She's still wearing her cotton tank top that sunlight blazes right through and her pants are God-knows-where.
"Goes without sayin', but that was fuckin' top notch," Cait says over her shoulder. "Think anyone heard us?"
"Hope so," Deedee mumbles. It's that mumbling time of day where the air is orange and translucent, sunshine waning but not so that shadows are too dark to see into. Feels sacred, no one wants to break the quiet. Even Cait lowers her voice.
"Probably gave the Guard a stiffie or two."
Deedee grins through Cait's shirt. "Made a housewife or two jealous."
"I wasn't that loud."
"You get pretty wild when I rub your clit."
"Oh, fuck you." Cait flicks Deedee's knuckle.
She falls into a silence so quiet that Deedee can hear the thoughts jingle-jangle in her head, bobby pins tinkering with the tumblers of some troublesome lock guarding... something. Something she cares about, obviously, would simply out and say it, otherwise. She squirms until Deedee's arms fall limp, and then she kneels high and just moves, hips swinging a half-crescent of pale grace that never grazes the floor and finishes by straddling Deedee's lap, now face-to-face. Could've been a dancer.
Cait visibly refrains from touching her. Hands are loosely balled on her own thighs, but her body is so close that the wet heat of her groin tickles Deedee's, as if she's resisting the urge to be intimate. Her eyes carry the weight of difficult questions, hair tangling with ambling particles as it curtains the stern borders of her face canted downward.
"Why're you keepin' me around?" Cait asks. As cool and tempered as white paint, but Deedee sees the fat brushstrokes hidden beneath, where all the crazy colors are hustling and worrying and drawing the horrible, awful pictures of what could be.
"I don't understand," Deedee says, thumb dribbling up Cait's ribs to her breast, soothes little circles.
"I mean," Cait's spine slumps and she looks to the invisible lettering etched into the RV's roof, chews her bottom lip while she reads it. "I mean… I mean you're my best. Pretty certain that's not a secret, the shite I've been through."
Deedee smiles, slick and easy. "Right back at you, doll. Can't think of anyone I'd-"
Cait's already shaking her head.
"- rather, uh, anyone I'd rather..." Deedee's slim, black brows furrow.
"There's better than me, out there. Better for you."
Deedee measures her words like grains of powder in reloaded brass. "Ain't no one out there that loves me like you, Cait."
The corner of Cait's lip pulls: no, you're wrong and that's the sad truth of the world, can't you see that, Deedee?
Deedee hates it. "Okay then, who?"
Her face flusters, her spines bristle, gotta actually come up with names, now? Scowls, "I've seen how Mags looks at you, but-"
"Mags is a-," Deedee purses her mouth. Grunts. "Mags was a fling, nothing more. She had too many secrets and I couldn't make my life revolve around Goodneighbor. I've got flighty feet, you know that. Who else?"
"Doesn't matter who else-,"
"Piper?"
Eyes flicker like a switchblade, poised to slice, "I said it doesn't matter who else."
Damn. Only thing stronger than her mind made up is her right hook. Deedee exhales with her mouth closed, traces the drowsy edges of Cait's bicep from elbow to shoulder and back. Brawn and no brains, this woman.
"Point is: I need you, and you don't need me. So, why've you stuck around? What's your angle?"
Deedee reclines further in the chair, groan of straining metal rumbling through the RV like thunder. Third time this month, this flavor of conversation. And she'll see it through to the end, Cait deserves that much. "My 'angle', huh?"
"Yeah, everyone's got one."
She ponders in the green pools of Cait's eyes. "Even you?"
"I said everyone, didn't I?"
Had to guess hers? Well. When Deedee first swooped into that shithole freezer of a theater, there was one line through one name on that browning promise she keeps tucked away in her corset. Three months pass with Deedee's straight shooting, and four more lines appeared. More angry scratches there than there weren't. Suppose revenge is as good a reason as any, but Deedee prefers to believe that Cait first fell for the shimmer of her eyes instead of the flex of her trigger finger.
"My angle…" filthy smirk, can't resist, "S'probably that one where I jut my hips out like this and you rock into me like that- ."
"Goddamnit."
"Sorry."
Cait sighs, stares at her lap. Sunlight makes a shadowy cutout of her, burning fringes fluttering in the breeze, threads of bright auburn yarn swishing across her unchanging paper face, an arts and craft project a mother would magnet to the fridge, show her off to others, isn't it just the most beautiful thing you've ever seen? Deedee takes a chance and crawls her fingertips up Cait's stomach- no objections raise, not a peep- cradles her breasts in the curved L's of her index and thumb, hikes her tank top to her clavicle. Takes her supple breasts in her hands and smothers her skin with her lips.
"I love you," Cait whispers.
Deedee peers up, mouth to her sternum, breathing her like oiled gloves and salty peanuts and cheap beer, the air of her favorite ballgame that doesn't play anymore. "Love you, Cait." Ridges of nipples cut against the side of her tongue, flesh beneath as delicate and pale as bath foam.
Hips buck, hands flit up Deedee's body, butterfly wings through her shirt.
"I don't have an angle on you, doll." Hot air on wet nipples, deep breath above. Fingers rowing through Deedee's pitchy sea of hair, fingers stroking her cock down low, oh that's nice. "I just wanna be with you. Let me have that, please?" I don't know what I'll do without you, nothing left for me on this earth but you.
Deedee's hard as a nail. Hips lift, fingers line them up, Cait sinks so deep, cups Deedee's face like clear spring water and drinks, kisses, all lips and tongue and teeth and little, darling moans, "Okay, okay. Okay. Oh…"
Nothing, just the evening twitter of insects and the billow of steam from flues and quiet, passionate fucking. Half-clothed bodies sliding together like fault lines, up and down, little tremors, little groans. Pressed so close, Cait rutting her clit through Deedee's pubic curls, lips mashed, fingers bruising, breath fucking gone. Burning up in the sunlight, sweat and shirt and nothing else between them, not even air, Cait clenches and shudders, coming, Deedee cries out and follows her. Messy afterglow, long, soulful kisses, simmering to comfortably warm like the summer sky fading to mild, glittery night.
Daylight has one leg in the grave and the other in a scrap-metal splint, around the time the big, bad watch comes out to harass doped-up stoners and keep the streets clean of would-be synths. Ruins everyone's fun. Meanwhile, Deedee hugs her lover and watches a hundred colorless squiggles flee to the corners of her vision.
"You ever miss normal things?" Cait asks Deedee's neck.
She reflects upon the memories put inside her Courser brain of the Pre-War world, of the air stifled by smog and nuclear fears, the spiking rate of inflation, the bills piled high as spy satellites. She doesn't regret missing it.
"Can my normal compare to your normal?"
"Thought you weren't actually Pre-War?"
"I ain't, but I've still got the memories. Only normal I know."
"Hmm," Cait says, sounds like empty space where words want to be. Minutes ooze by, full of loud nothing and unuttered questions.
"Cait, doll?" Splayed hand coaxes up her back, lips haunting her ear, "You can talk to me, babe."
"… Did you ever go on dates?"
Deedee laughs out loud, Cait scurries into her shell, Deedee quits laughing. Clears her throat. "Sorry, that was… Didn't expect that, was all."
Cait's quiet as a mouse, clinging to her front.
"You wanna go on a date with me, baby doll? Is that it?"
"Not what I said," Cait grumbles.
"S'what I heard." She supplicates in the shrine between Cait's shoulder blades, fingers toiling and bowing. Kisses the cords of her neck until they slacken. "It's alright, baby. Do you really wanna go on a date with me?"
Cait shuffles in her lap, spells her languid thoughts in Morse code down where Deedee's ribcage disappears into her waist. Same spot she'd scratched bloody two nights ago, tickles in lingering pinpricks. "Wouldn't mind it. I guess."
Deedee kisses her cheek until she lifts her head. Tousled sex hair and fathomless, green eyes, oh she's engrossing like this, when the shadows mend her old wounds. Almost domestic, like Deedee could catch her on the sofa reading novella by the gentle glow of lamplight.
"Tonight, the Colonial Taphouse. Wear something nice that's easy for me to take off." Deedee pecks her on the lips. "Alright?"
Takes a moment to settle in, hunting for a lie in Deedee's features, green eyes so goddamn green and sober. She idles against Deedee's forehead, alright, alright, fine. Eyes narrow. "You just wanna piss off the tin can that griped at you, last time."
"I wanna fill that prissy cocksucker with-," RV thuds as Deedee rapidly taps her foot, outbursts are nothing but trouble, nothing but indiscriminant hatred, she's become better at snuffing out the fuse but it still scorches her fingers, "He called you a whore, d'you know that?" Cait chuckles, cheeks dimpled. "He said, 'Oh, ma'am, I absolutely loathe to inform you of this, but 'her kind' are not permitted to work the Stands after the hours of 11:30 P.M. Dreadfully sorry.' Fucking cunt."
"Love, your British is fuckin' awful."
"Yeah? Well, your Irish sounds Scottish, so."
The Taphouse tries to be everyone's favorite dive bar, stylish but unoppressive choice of music, a bartender as fluent in booze as he is in shutting the hell up, and a serviceable repertoire of shit that'll get her hammered in thirty minutes flat, but it only lets in the type of people that don't traditionally go to dive bars. The rich brand, like Abraxo, lot of big talk, lot of colorful comments, but all it does better is drain the wallet and leaves a foul residue Deedee can't shake for the rest of the night. Third Rail's still number one, might always be, even if the swill tastes like water from the subway tracks.
Taphouse's wine is decent, at least. All they have is a bitter, bold-as-gunfire red, but it complements Deedee's steak and tatoes and weeps enticingly from the corner of Cait's mouth. Also complements burger grease and skin when she leans over and laps it up. Wellingham pretends he isn't dismayed that he must serve his patrons' wishes and fetches them another bottle at their leisure.
They fuck in the bathroom, quick thrusts and greedy mouthfuls of air. Pants to knees, Cait bent over, head lolling between outstretched arms, scrabbling like a blind woman for the swaying brick wall. Slap of flesh, moans spattering onto concrete like vomit, fuck, had too much to drink, Deedee's face is on fire. And Cait is hot and slippery and deep, flesh of her waist singeing Deedee's fingers, flesh of her cunt so conforming and perfect. Reaches around and fumbles her clit and Cait's thighs squeeze, cunt squeezes, orgasm squeezes Cait empty like the last dredges of a toothpaste tube, frothing moans. Someone knocks, they ignore them, door's locked anyways.
Cait's balance teeters and she lurches forward off of Deedee, rips her away from the edge, she whimpers like she didn't know she could.
"Fuck… sorry," Cait mumbles. She swivels with bodily finesse she shouldn't possess anymore and kneels, Deedee understands and steps closer, finding chalky holds in the crevices of brick, gonna need them.
Cloudy, green fractals, like broken kaleidoscopes that only swirl emeralds. Throat dries as Cait looks up, kissing her slick tip, lips slipping down her cock and taking her into her mouth. Mmmm, wants her cunt but this will do, this wet warmth and this tongue rasping down her length, this suction that pops. Head bobs, hungry gaze, Cait sucking her off until, "Christ," teeth grit, "Christ," comes in her mouth, Cait gulps her like a shot, some spills.
When she's on her feet, Cait kisses her with everything, tastes like wine and cock and like they need to be home, right now. They wipe off hastily with toilet paper and redress, and, sticky fingers interlocked, they embrace the world.
Wellingham's optics appall, the other patrons wince, the bartender is nowhere to be seen- they encounter him outside, flanked by two of DC's best and bravest.
Toothy grin, thick laughter in her throat, "Bathroom's nice."
Cait cackles.
They saunter away untouched by authority, into the night like giggling bandits.
Stadium lights have Diamond City roleplaying an internment camp, helicopter beams pouring over helter-skelter shanties and regular patrols enforcing curfew. They stagger down the back alleys where harsh white doesn't slice up the canopy of stars, each the other's crutch down rotting wooden walkways that slither through mud and muck. Corrugated walls on one side, sweet-smelling mutfruit fields on the other.
"Fun date?" Deedee asks, cowering in her jacket from a cold wind.
"Mm hm," Cait hums through Deedee and disperses in the ground like lightning, heart skips when Cait lays her head on her shoulder. "Lotsa fun."
"I loved it. We should do it more often."
Cait smiles into the leather of Deedee's jacket. "Goin' on dates or fuckin' in bathrooms?"
Deedee squeezes Cait's hand. "Both."
A red assortment of bullet-shaped dents prohibits further progress, and Deedee frowns when her jacket pocket doesn't cough up the key. "Aw fuck, I think I lost- ," she shuffles around in the other, "Yup, definitely lost it."
Cait raises a rusty bobby pin. "Always got one on me."
She hugs the door, fiddling with and cursing the stubborn pins that won't align while Deedee shamelessly sidles up behind her. Nudging her nose through her cool threads, nursing her erection with the warmth of her thigh.
"Love, you're making it kinda hard to get this done," Cait grunts.
Deedee wraps around her like a woolen blanket. "You make me kinda hard."
"Only kinda?" The knob clunks and the door reveals it's secrets: sparse furnishings and a heater in the corner that's been chugging since the door last closed. Cait twists and kisses like an atomic bomb is in the sky, they're going to perish, surely, and won't you be the last thing I remember? your lips and your heat and your arms around me, just stay with me as we turn to ash? They amble inside to wait for the explosion that never comes, and Cait says, "You make me fuckin' wet."
They shed clothing like past lives, years tossed to dark corners to be forgotten, to mold and crumble and be stumbled upon at night, tossed with the trash for good. If only it were so easy, but Cait is naked and beautiful and kissing her and Deedee is hard; it's that simple, with Cait. Throw everything to the curb, if only for a moment, because that shit doesn't matter. What matters is the coppery tinge of cracked lips, not the aging mistakes skewed like tally marks across their backs.
"Eat me out," Cait breathes.
"God, yes."
"God's got nothin' to do with it," almost angry, "I want your pretty face between my thighs."
Kisses down the whole of her, the soft and the unyielding, the smooth and the not-so. Lifts a leg and rests it over one shoulder, kisses down that same thigh to the dripping core of her, drinks her slick liquor like swirling gunsmoke- Cait's got that same tang to her, chirps metallic on the sides of her tongue.
Sin grumbles from Cait's lips, kneading two handfuls of Deedee's hair. "You do so much for me, darlin'," she croons like rolling sax, "don't ask for nothin', an' you, you-,"
Folds melting like waves of chocolate on Deedee's tongue, sifts through, dives, twists. Bucks into her face, Deedee smiles and glances up: Cait ogling her through wispy lashes, tongue pinched between teeth. Two in her pussy, curling and pulling, and one wriggling up her ass and, mmm, dirty girl knows what I like, oh fuck, swaddles her clit with tongue and lips, trigger-fine ginger buzzing like Quantum in her nostrils, nose-deep in downy.
"My pretty, little treasure," words wobble, legs imitate, "my love-," moans her climax and rides it like Deedee's mouth, yanking at the roots of her hair, "- need you-," pulse of wetness down her forearm, working Cait until she combs apologies into Deedee's scalp, finished.
Deedee's knees are accustomed to bingeing hard surfaces, many an hour atop rocky outcrops and cement rooves studying how the crisp intersection of follicles frames a man's face; there's something like irony in how she prefers her prey at sniper's range and her lovers as close as can be. Cait hauls her from her reveries and stands her up, hoards Deedee's lips like spent shotgun shells.
"Stop thinkin'," she groans.
So she stops. So easy to.
And looking into her eyes when she's inside her on the mattress- fucking her slow and quiet and firm, she's slippery inside, and tight, and molten, and Deedee is fuckin' perfect, don't stop, kisses like Lucifer's touch, fiery and damning- and looking into her eyes as clear and wet as rainwater, listening to her confess, "I love you," clutches her like so many precious caps, like Deedee is something she shouldn't have, "I'm shite at showin' it, but I really love you,"
Has Deedee thinking, maybe she's got it wrong. Maybe it's not about scratching lines through names, or tying nooses, or whittling tombstones. Maybe that's been left to rot with her corset in the corner; Deedee hasn't so much as glimpsed the paper in months, after all. Maybe it's about loving Deedee, and kissing her, and fucking her, maybe it's about living, not simply subsisting. Maybe it's about spiting names, proving she's more than they ever could be, she's more than a dog to starve into obedience, into allegiance, she's above that and above them, she can love and be loved, they'll see. Maybe Deedee is her vengeance.
Lot of maybes, more than Deedee typically tolerates, but, hell- fucking Institute- maybe Cait is Deedee's, too. Couldn't find her own, so maybe she'll be another's.
Walls are thin, but not their problem. Cait is softer than she'll ever admit to being and inside her is a holy place where Deedee prays for God, bathes in the sweating passion of her spirit and chants her name to the choir. Flow sweeps them away, Cait is suddenly above and glorious, groins grinding like ocean against sky. Rage carving white and fast from belly to heart, Cait throws her head back and-
ooooo
[Thank you for reading! It's kind of hard for me to post, nowadays. Got too much going on in my head, usually wind up deleting more than I write. Have a good rest of your week!]