They'd met that day courtesy of the Medic's absentmindedness, one of the many things they had in common. The Demo had agreed to pick up a shipment from a local butcher when he drove into town to check on a shipment of custom glassware for his still. She had, via a hastily scrawled note the Medic had tucked into her typewriter, been sent to do the same. The recognized each other from one of the few times the Medic had bothered to be social, at a dinner thrown by the more social Engineer as a part of his abortive attempt to make them all a team, rather than a group of individuals who rarely saw each other off the field.
They'd known immediately what had happened. She sighed heavily when she saw him, then apologized for her absent-minded husband, hand rising to push a thick strand of hair behind her ear, drawing the Demo's eye to her chewed nails and the raised callous on her right forefinger from writing, still decorated with a faint ink blotch that had sunk into its whorls.
The Demo eyed the shorter woman, frazzled ends of brunette hair escaping what had likely started the day as a neatly combed and sprayed bob. Self-conscious, she pushed the small discs of her glasses further up on her long, thin nose, one of her kitten heels clacking against the floor as her foot shifted inside it.
"Doesn't surprise meh," he said. "Tha Doc never seems ta quite remember anything but his projects."
She flushed, immediately thinking something she wished she hadn't. The Demo cocked his head, watching the embarrassed flush rise high on her cheeks, her eyelashes lowering thickly over her downcast eyes.
That's no surprise either, he thought as she stammered an offer to pick up the shipment without him, freeing him to go on with his day. Tha Doc can barely be arsed ta pay attention ta healing us on tha field, let alone to a wife. The Demo realized he pitied her, obscurely—the slight slump to her shoulders, the fact that she still couldn't look at him, how very quiet her voice had been. Tha pouir thing is probably dreadful lonely.
"Least I could do," he said, "is help yeh wrestle tha shipment to yer car. The Doc says it's a bit of a heavy load."
The Medic's wife looked up at that and the Demo watched the muscles in her cheek jump.
"Perfect," she said bitterly, and added in a barely audible hiss, "he took the truck and he didn't tell me it was large. Fantastic."
The Demo reached out, gesturing in the air between them. "Lass, how 'bout I help yeh? I have meh truck and I'd have had ta do it anyway."
With a grunt and a nod, she agreed. Following her into the butcher, the Demo found himself watching the whisk and sway of her skirt, tiny blue forget-me-nots twining in the print with daisies. A touch ironic, he thought, watching the cotton ruche and fall about her hips as they swayed, tha forget-me-nots on the pouir woman. Wonder if she picked them a'purpose.
It had been fortunate for her, as it turned out, that he had come. The shipment the Medic had said was large turned out to be the entire carcasses of three adult pigs, nearly 500 pounds of bristly fat and pork. The Demo backed the truck around to the butcher's loading dock and unlatched the truck bed. When he bent with a sigh to hug a pig to his chest, she ran around him and grabbed its legs.
"What're yeh doing," he barked, breath short from the weight.
She stared at him challengingly and staggered forward, forcing them both to cross the few feet to the truck bed and drop the carcass in with a protesting squeal from the truck's suspension.
"It's my problem, too," she huffed, crossing the short space to wrap her hands around the back legs of the next pig.
He grunted irritably as he picked the next pig up. Tha damn Doc, he thought. There's no way tha lass could've carried these home by herself. She's probably already hurt her damn back out of pride and tha man probably won't even notice. "I can get it," he barked. "Go on yeh wee thing."
Her head came back as if slapped, a single drop of sweat trailing down her reddened cheeks. "I'm just fine," she said. "He's my husband and I can take care of myself. And I'm not 'wee,' either."
They dropped the last carcass in the truck bed silently, straightening with a pained wince from her and a muffled groan from the Demo as he knuckled his lower back. He eyed her, watching her straighten carefully and take the first limping step forward, then make herself walk toward the edge of the building, stiffly taking broad strides.
The Demo swore and took off after her, quickly crossing the space between them with the muffled crunch of gravel. "Oh fer tha love of—lass, come back. Least I can do is drive yeh home."
She turned slowly as he got to her. "I have a bicycle. I'll be fine."
The bicycle, a faded yellow frame leaning against the butcher's store just ahead of them, looked just as beaten as she likely felt. The Demo stared down at her for a moment, then reached around her to grab the thing and deposited it in the back of the truck, atop the pigs. After a moment, she followed him, her limp making the gravel rasp.
She wouldn't let him open the truck's door for her, but while she stood, trying to figure out how to climb into the truck bed, he simply picked her up, fingers digging into the soft skin of her waist, and deposited her on the seat. She stiffened, breath huffing out of her lungs, but before she had time to say something, the door was shut and he was crossing the truck to open the driver's door with a click and squeal.
She didn't say anything to him until the truck had turned out onto the small country road that led back to the city.
"Thanks," she said, the sound barely audible over the chugging truck engine.
"Don't bother yer head with it," the Demo said shortly, his skin prickling with irritation. After a moment, she reached out and patted his hand, and he realized he was genuinely angry—angry at her for being proud, angry at the Medic for being neglectful or absentminded, angry at himself for watching the sway of her hips in that skirt and for the small shock that went through him when he'd grabbed her waist to lift her, for the urge to linger there. She's another man's wife, he thought. And yeh aren't a sneak.
Her hand was warm, almost too warm, on his, and she pulled it away after a moment with a sigh and a faint, obscure sense of sadness that stung them both. The Demo pulled his eyes back to the road with a jolt, fingers tightening on the steering wheel.
She said nothing through the ride, merely pointing to give direction to the Medic's house, a dilapidated one bedroom at the end of a winding, dusty road. The Demo let her get out of the truck by herself, wary of touching her at all, and wheeled her bicycle into the garage. After a moment, she joined him, her eyes sliding over to him from her bicycle and sticking to his face with something that was almost weight. The Demo watched her lips part, a thin scar over them bending as her lips opened, then closed. He realized she was struggling for words, that time was passing with the two of them looking at one another in the dimly lit, dusty garage.
He turned away before she did, breaking the moment. Over his shoulder, he heard her thank him, her voice huskier. The Demo jumped into the truck with a protesting groan from the suspension, and slammed the door, driving away in a plume of dust and gravel. In the mirror, she stood just on the edge of the shadow cast by the garage, her figure growing smaller as the truck hurtled away.
The second time they met was at the Engineer's barbeque, an attempt to get rid of the bits of pig carcass the Medic hadn't needed for his experiment. The Engineer's house, a sprawling place surrounded by neatly tended gardens, included what had to be the single largest grill the Demo had ever seen. She was standing by it, a small figure in a shockingly red dress, her unruly hair scraped into a ponytail that looked painful.
The Demo stood just outside the gate, watching her start and look up hopefully as people walked into the backyard, turning back quickly to smile at the Engineer and hand him things, her husband talking away animatedly with the Engineer beside her. When he finally walked in, she looked up at him and smiled, a faint flush rising in her cheeks. Neither the Engineer nor the Medic stopped their conversation as she excused herself to grab more beer from the kitchen, her eyes straying back to the Demo as she walked.
After a moment, he followed her. I'm just settlin' meh beer, he thought, the bottles clinking in the cardboard of their holder as he walked. I'm just going ta put tha beer in tha fridge before I go out, so it'll be cold. She turned immediately when he walked into the room, the hem of the dress swirling around her thighs, her back to the refrigerator. She stayed there as he crossed the room, watching him, and moved just enough for him to reach the refrigerator door and pull it past her, silently pulling two beers from the six pack in his hand and presenting one to him.
He took it from her, his fingers lingering on hers for a moment before they both sprang backward, the Demo bruising his lower back on the counter island behind him and she bruising hers on the refrigerator door.
"What are yeh after," he whispered.
For a moment, confusion—he watched her blink, then look away uneasily. "I don't know," she replied, her voice low. "I don't…. I'm not that kind of…."
"Me either," he said, voice rasping into the tense silence between them. She'd worn makeup, he thought, following the thin line of black just above her eyelashes. She looked down, at the creased leather of his boots, and he followed the red line of her upper lip down to its mate, parting as she took a breath in. She looked up to see the expression on his face and shuddered, taking a stuttering breath.
The Demo's grip on the counter behind him tightened. The air between them crawled with heat and a prickling awareness of each other. When the Scout walked in to grab a beer, the Demo turned and left the room with something just short of a jog, beer foaming in his bottle. The Medic's wife followed a moment later, juggling three beers, and went back to standing between her husband and the Engineer, who accepted the bottles she handed them without breaking their conversation. The Demo sat with his back to them all, skin burning with the weight of her eyes, and tried to have a conversation with someone, anyone else. He could feel her behind him, something like a current between them making him ache with the need to cross the distance between them and touch her.
He left the barbeque early, realizing after his first beer that letting himself get drunk would result in him waiting for her next trip to the kitchen before bundling her into the nearest closet and doing something he was unfortunately sure he could forgive himself for, eventually.
The third time they met was at the bookstore. The Demo had been fairly careful to hide it, a love for poetry that would, he knew, have made him the subject of a million jokes. He needed something to fill his time, something that was less demanding than chemistry and more distracting than a million laps of the base and not-infrequent cold showers.
Every time he looked at the Medic, he felt ashamed of himself, an emotion quickly washed away under sullen anger. If tha man paid any attention ta the damn woman, he thought, she wouldnae be so…. He couldn't finish the thought without getting angry again.
She found him curled up in a chair, a reading area in the back of the bookstore filled with comfortable and mismatched furniture. She knew him immediately, the frayed elastic of his eye patch nearly swallowed in his hair, the broad hills of his back shifting where they peeked out of the white cotton of his shirt, shocking against the warm brown of his skin. She watched the small hairs on the back of his neck raise as she stood behind him. The Demo shifted in the chair with a rustle, the open book in front of him lifted for a moment so that she could see the words.
"I always liked Neruda," the Demo said quietly.
The Medic's wife walked around him, sitting in the closest chair. "How did you know it was me?"
The Demo bit his tongue to prevent himself from answering, from telling her that even a sliver of her reflection as she walked up behind him had lit his entire body like a candle, that he'd been reading the same line for the last few minutes, unable to concentrate enough to progress past it: Come with me, I said, and no one knew.
After a moment, she cleared her throat. "Which poem?"
"Come With Me," the Demo read, his mouth dry.
She took a deep breath. "Ah. That's… that's a good one." Another deep breath. "Read it to me. Please, I mean. Please read it to me."
Her lower lip was caught between her teeth. The Demo realized his own breath was shallow, fast. With a nearly painful wrench, he looked back down at the page, at that same first line.
It took him three times to read it aloud, his voice failing at the words 'wound' and 'love.' When he finally finished the poem, he closed the book with a thump and lowered it to his lap.
"What're yeh doin, tha Medic' wife?" His voice was angry, he realized, even a little harsh. She flinched, then reached out for him, unable to look at her own hand as it settled over his.
"Please," she said, voice barely audible. "I'm sorry, I just… I'm just…." Her fingers tightened as her eyes closed, wrinkling with pressure. When she opened them, she glared at him, hand still clutching his, on his lap. "It's just a poem," she said, voice hard. "There's no need to be so angry."
The Demo couldn't stop himself from pulling a hand from under hers and wrapping it around her wrist. Her breath left her in a rush, a dizzied look emptying her face, when he squeezed it. "Don't," he ground out. "Don't pretend this is just a poem."
She stared at him over the crooked edge of her glasses, lips open and slick, pupils blown wide. She took a breath in, her breasts rising against the open edge of her shirt, the flush on her cheeks disappearing between them. Her other hand crept over, pushing them together and mounding them against the thin cotton of her shirt. Without conscious thought, he captured her other wrist and squeezed again to watch the drugged expression on her face.
They froze like that for a moment.
"Please," she finally whispered. "Please, it's been so long."
The Demo shuddered, his fingers tightening again. She shifted, the thin fabric of her skirt riding up to expose a thin line of pale lace, a slip that dipped gently between her knees. He let go suddenly and she fell forward, to her knees, and looked up at him, eyes unfocused. He realized he was sweating, panting as if he had run miles.
"If we don't…" The Demo trailed off, his fists clenching. "Lass," he said, finally. "If we don't get out of here, one of us is likely ta do something we'll regret."
She looked up the line of his body, still on the floor, on her knees. When her eyes finally met his, she spoke, voice low and firm. "What makes you think I'll regret it? Give me a ride home."
With that, she picked herself up and turned, looking once back over her shoulder, and walked out of the bookstore. He followed, trying as hard as he could to walk slowly, to move slowly as he opened the truck door for her, as he wrapped his hands around her waist again and boosted her into the cab, as he walked around the truck and sat down in it.
She let him get out of town before unbuckling the seat belt and laying on her stomach on the bench seat, fingers nimbly seeking the row of buttons that closed his pants. The Demo made an inarticulate noise in the back of his throat and came up off the seat, letting her free him from his pants, foot momentarily flooring the gas pedal as she wrapped her lips around him, and with a single, hard suck, buried his cock in her mouth all the way to the back of her throat.
She stayed like that, small movements of her tongue and throat spasming around him while her head stayed still, until he pulled into her driveway and killed the engine, shaking with the desire for release. He had to pull her off him with a cringe at the sudden cold, hand white-knuckled in her hair. She grinned when she looked up at him, lips fat and swollen, mouth wet. He froze and she flowed forward, fitting as much of herself as she could between him and the steering wheel, mouth seeking and finding his.
The kiss was heat incarnate, a kind of infectious madness that hit him like a drug, sweeping away any and every resolution he'd tried to make to ignore this, to tell her this was a terrible idea, that they could both walk away and pretend it hadn't happened. When she fumbled the door open and pushed him out of the truck, he nearly fell. She followed, catching herself on the truck door, and pulled him, still exposed, into the house.
The Demo blindly kicked the truck door closed, and then the house door, watching her shed the shirt and throw it across the living room, then step out of the skirt and run, heels clacking against the floor, looking over her shoulder, toward the back of the house. He followed her, clothes dropping as he went, kicking his pants off just in front of the messily unmade bed she laid on, her thighs spreading the edge of her slip to expose the dark thatch of her pubic hair. The Demo stood for a moment, taking in the Medic's discarded vests piled in the corner, a picture of the couple on the nightstand by the bed, spare glasses on the Medic's side of the bed, a neat line of men's shoes along the wall.
"We shouldnae," he said, the protest weakened by the way his skin yearned toward hers. "I should go."
The Medic's wife merely looked at him for a moment, then crooked her finger, the other hand drifting over to the peaks of her nipples, making high points in the thin silk of her slip. The Demo stood, watching, while she squeezed, the pressure pulling from her a small moan.
She laughed, huskily, and parted herself with her fingers as he crawled onto the bed. Her lips were a dusky pink, a color that was something not quite pink and not quite brown, and slick. The Demo watched her fingers disappear with a wet noise, sliding easily into her.
"Help me," she growled. "Help me."
The Demo grabbed her wrist, pulling her fingers out and fitting them into his mouth, bearing the salt of her body. She made an eager noise, hips lifting off the bed, fingers wriggling in his mouth. He groaned as he sank into her and her legs tightened around him, letting her fingers fall from his mouth.
"God, yes," she hissed, and undulated. His eyes closed, the Demo thrust forward into the clutching heat.
He swore, taking a shaking breath, and grabbed the mattress on either side of her head. She turned and nipped his wrists with a nasty grin, spurring him to move again.
With a low chuckle, he complied. She reached down between them, and he could feel her fingers moving rhythmically, knuckle tapping the muscle as he surged forward. She fluttered and her head tilted back, throat making a long line in the pool of her hair.
Guilt and that wet heat—the Demo could feel the tension rising in them both like a cord that connected them, winding around and around them both until it was nearly pain. She came before him with a scream that rapidly became hoarse and then soundless. He followed seconds later and pulled himself out of her with a sucking sound, collapsing on the bed. She pushed his shoulder until he rolled over and sat up, still breathing hard.
"You're not done," she said. "Trust me."
He watched her come up on her knees and lean over, digging in the nightstand on her side of the bed and emerging with a small vial of lubricant. On all fours, she peeled the wet slip up on her hips, exposing the pale curves of her ass. He watched her open the vial and slick up her fingers, then tease the tight pucker of her ass.
The Demo watched, raptly, as she worked herself open, fingers disappearing slowly, slickly, and the choked noises she made as the muscle started to bloom open. He was painfully hard long before she had opened herself up enough to let him see into her, to see the reddened, throbbing walls of her ass appear and disappear beneath her fingers.
"Please," she said, looking at him over her shoulder. "Please."
She writhed as he pressed himself into her, biting the mattress beneath them and howling, sound muffled. Her ass was fever-hot around him, clutching, pushing, pulling him in deeper as her back arched. He choked and froze, bent over the curve of her back, fighting down the urge to come right there.
"Lass," he panted, "if yeh want ta get tha bed dirty, I believe I can help yeh."
She stopped and grinned at him over her shoulder. "That's the idea." She squeezed him on purpose, watching his face darken. "Now fuck me until you can't stand up."
He did.