I own nothing but my own idea of how this scene went and all of that, so don't sue me, please?

I don't really ship Deacon and Cassie together but I friend-ship them so much, I thought this scene needed to be given some space... especially since it decided to play in my head on a loop yesterday evening. That said, there is sex in here, and I'm not talking about the hearts and rainbows kind.

One more thing, English isn't my first language and this was written at my phone all in one go, so if you find typos or mistakes, do tell me and I'll correct them!

Kisses all around

I clenched my fists, trying to stave off the panic.

My heart was beating like a drum, so loud I could barely hear Deacon breathing right next to me.

Somehow, he had ended up becoming my friend, my… protector, even. He respected me, and had decided that I needed to be trained to defend myself, so he had put a knife in my hand and proceeded to assault me until we were both bleeding and bruised. After a couple of months, he had declared I was good enough not to be dead weight on a hunt for supplies. The knife turned into a gun, and a list of chemicals and medical supplies was stuffed into my pant's back pocket.

Catarina had remarked often that I was a positive influence on him, but I thought it was less about my influence and more that Deacon liked me, respected me, and enjoyed my company enough that he was unwilling to alienate me with his more extreme behaviors.

This was my fifth run with him.

Whitley and his men had turned left a while back, trying to find some piece of machinery, but I had insisted on going deeper into the abandoned mall. I needed some, any chemicals. I knew some had to have been left behind and I needed them. The facility had no painkillers left, nothing to clean wounds but the alcohol Deacon and his men made to drink… and I wasn't so sure that wasn't poisonous. I had argued with Whitley: "We need those things. I can synthesize disinfectant and even some anesthetic with this stuff. I refuse to dig another bullet out of someone who's awake to feel it."

Deacon had sighed. Whatever his reasons, he took my side more often than not. "I'll accompany her. You go find whatever for Jones, I don't care. We'll meet outside in an hour."

It was long past that mark, now. A group of scavengers had attacked us. They had set up camp in the main part of the mall, and they hadn't appreciated our company.

We were trapped. We had hidden in the broken elevator in the basement. The space wasn't tiny, the elevator had been used for transporting goods, probably, given it's size, and the forklift blocking most of the entrance to it, but it also wasn't as big as I would have liked.

"You alright? Cassie?"

Deacon's voice snapped me out of it. I pulled off my respirator.

"What are you doing!?" he flared up like a match. If I was less scared I might have smiled.

"It has a hole. It broke when I hit the door." I head him curse under his breath, his voice worried. "It's fine. You're immune so I can't catch it from you. And if they find us, it won't matter." We both knew what would probably happen to me if they found us.

A quick death was the best case scenario.

"Cassie…"

"I said it's fine, Deacon."

"Fine! Goddamn it…"

"Now, let me see that." I had seen one of the scavs get him with a trowing knife.

"It's fine" he was mocking me, so I punched him. He had taught me well. "When did you get so bossy, bright-eyes?" he drawled.

"I'm a doctor. We are all bossy. It comes with the degree. Now shut up and let me see."

He shrugged off his jacket and the shirt he had under it, grunting in pain all the while. When he was naked from the waist up, I pointed the flashlight to his shoulder. "It missed anything major. You'll have another scar for the collection, but it just needs a few stitches… and fucking disinfectant."

Wordlessly he held up a flask. I groaned. That stuff was disgusting at best and toxic at worst, but beggars can't be choosers. I washed out the wound Compared to some of the scars on his back, it was positively tiny. Then the needle. I had a couple of those treaded into the lining of my parka, hidden and ready.

He grunted a couple of times while I stitched him up, but I was quick and I had had practice in the last few months. He muttered some thanks while he shrugged his shirt back on, but left it open and the jacket on the floor. It was warm in here, even thought it was winter outside, and the effort of holding still while someone poked you with a needle had put a sheen of sweat on his chest.

I took off my own jacket, then sat next to him. "Pass me that flask?"

He straightened immediately. "You hurt, Cassie? Let me see." That was the thing about Deacon. He was a borderline sociopath and a dick 24/7, but if he cared about someone he'd do almost anything for them.

"I'm not hurt, I want a drink. I might be hurt later, when that shit scorches a hole in my stomach. But at least I'll be drunk." He grinned, all white teeth and flashing eyes like a tiger, and passed me the flask. There wasn't a lot left but we shared a few swallows.

By the time he tossed the flask in a corner, empty, i was drunk enough to ask: "What happened to you? So many scars…" James didn't have as many, but I didn't say it.

He was silent for long enough, frowning deep enough, that I thought he would not answer at all. Then he took my hand, showing me the new, small callouses on them. "I was thirteen when the world went to shit. I was small, thin. My father was in prison" he hesitated, then went on. "Someone called the cops on him one night while he was beating my mom… he was probably dead already, the bastard, mom was sick and no hospitals would take any more sick people, just the immune… and you don't want to know the stories about what they did to immune kids in there. So it was just me and my brother. No money, no food and two stomaches that growled all the damn time. The world was never real good to hungry kids, but those days… I was already a little bastard, took from dad, I suppose, no problem knifing someone for their supplies, but by the time we walked into the West VII Quarantine Zone, I was fifteen and my brother was scared of me. Fast forward a few years during which everything went… well, good is a big word, but decent. I was twenty-two when they made me chief of security. Again, for a few years things were good, then my brother got hurt during a raid… when he got a fever and the doctors stopped treating him for fear of a new virus… I went nuclear. He died, and I turned into a scavenger, one of the bad ones. The scars are just a consequence."

"I'm sorry about your brother."

"Me too." He cleared his throat. we were silent for a few minutes, then he said: "You know, if Whitley and the others found what they were looking for, you'll go back to 2016 in a few days."
I hesitated. It was a subject I didn't like to dwell on for a few reasons. "Yeah."

"You say that like you aren't too happy about it."

I frowned. Thought about what I wanted to say. My life was in 2016. My time. My job. Hot water. James Cole. A broken heart. Anger I knew was misguided. Hose Ramse. Venegance. Justice… Jealousy. James (I had taken to calling him that in my head before Chechnya and had never stopped) had stuffed me into a machine, sent me trough time to a place I didn't know how to navigate… and he sent me there alone. He chose Ramse, the guy who put a knife into him in '87 and tried his best to murder the whole world, over me. I hadn't expected that. I thought I was dying, and he left me alone on that metal table. It felt like the worst betrayal… and I didn't know why. I could reason my way to the conclusion that I was being stupid about the whole thing, but I couldn't feel my way past it. I loved him, and I thought James loved me, even if we had never said the words, never made any promises… hell, we had never even held hands…

That was when I realized I was still holding Deacon's giant paw of an hand. And I didn't let go while I answered his implied question. Why wasn't I happier to go home? "There is still a lot to do here… I'm not sure what I should or would do there. And I would feel like I was leaving all of you behind." It wasn't a lie, any of it, but it was so much less than the full truth to feel like it.

"Someone has to find Cole and send him back, and they sure as hell won't trust me to do it." He joked.

"They wouldn't trust you to the bathroom alone."

He shrugged. He really didn't care. "But you will be back. Jones said this isn't a one way trip. She…"

We both tensed when we heard a creak, my heart jackhammering again and my hand flying to my gun. He stopped me, holding the gun low, next to my tight, then when everything stayed quiet, let me go. "Just an animal."

I took a long, deep breath.

Another.

Another.

My heartbeat slowed down.

Seventy beats per minute.

Sixtyfive.

Everything stayed quiet. Deacon was still, listening… until I spoke. "Distract me."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Distract me, Deacon."

He looked at me with narrowed eyes. Contrary to popular opinion at the facility, he wasn't stupid at all. If he had been born a couple of decades earlier I had no trouble picturing him in a business suit, a ruthless financial shark… or, for all I knew, he would have become a teacher, with his love for books. But he had been born to a dying world, and that had honed other aspects over his natural intelligence. He understood my meaning. But he wanted me to say it, apparently. "You are going to have to be more specific than that, Doctor Railly."

Fine, if he wanted to hear it, I wasn't about to shy from saying it. "I want to be fucked until I can't remember I'm scared, Deacon"

He grinned. A happy little sociopath.

I took off my shirt, then pushed off his while I straddled him. He was big under me, with me sitting on his tights, our eyes were level, green to ice blue, and he felt like a wall of muscle. Hard, big and strong.

I didn't kiss him, burying my face under his stubbled jaw, biting his throat.

I felt his hands on my waist, gripping me hungrily, caressing my back with a heavy hand, unhooking my bra, sliding under my hair to grip the nape of my neck. I slid my arms from the straps of the bra, letting it fall to the floor. The hand on my nape fisted in my hair, bringing my face up to his for a kiss that felt more like we were trying to eat each other.

It took a few seconds to get out of our booths and jeans. He was commando, I wasn't.

During one of our earlier supply runs I had found a few pairs of new panties abandoned in a box in the back of a shop and I had hidden them away. I had spent my first few months in this time washing my single pair of cotton panties every night and let me tell you, that got old fast. He traced the lace, shaking his head, grinning a little. "What?"

"Lace underwear." He said, like that was supposed to explain everything. "I feel like I'm about to fuck a woman from an old magazine." His grin widened. "I like."

I chased away the memory of another man saying something like that, kneading his muscles, raising my mouth to his. "Shut up and fuck me, Deacon."

I had thought it would be quick and hard. Maybe even a little painful.

Meaningless like sex between strangers.

I had been wrong. Once he had me naked he took his time. It wasn't lovemaking, I don't think that is possible with a man like Deacon, but he wasn't about to be hurried. He treated my body the way some children deal with a favorite sweet. Avidly savoring every morsel, every small taste.

And I returned the favor. The last man I had had sex with had been Aaron, a couple of years ago, and he was as different from Deacon as a man could be. It was a treat for me, too.

We had no condom, but I had analyzed his blood and knew he was clean, and I had started taking shots to avoid a pregnancy when I was in college and never stopped.

He was big enough that it was uncomfortable at first, but I didn't stop him. I didn't mind the small pain and he seemed to enjoy my nails digging into his back, my teeth in his trapezius muscle.

We moved together, gripping at each other, finding a quick pace that suited us. One of his hands still fisted in my hair, the other gripping the cheek of my butt. I would have marks there tomorrow. My hands were frantically trying to pull him closer, faster, harder, scratching his back, digging into a muscled bicep or shoulder.

Deacon slipped a hand between our bodies and rubbed my clitoris... And I exploded, unexpectedly, all of a sudden, clenching wetly around him, wanting to scream from the pleasure and glad for the hard hand that immediately went to my mouth, shutting me up.

He buried his face in my neck, suffocating his own groans in my skin, roughly toying with my breasts, prolonging my orgasm... And judging from his moans, his, too, until he collapsed on top of me.

I reveled in being squished for a couple of minutes, while our breathing returned to normal and sweat cooled on our skin, until the endorphins started to fade. I always liked those few minutes of being pressed into whatever surface by the body of my partner after sex, glued together by sweat and other fluids, maybe a very primitively feminine enjoyment of being caught, held prisoner, maybe a simpler need to be as close as possible. But after those first few minutes he was just heavy and the floor uncomfortable.

I didn't have time to figure out how to tell him to move, however, because our radio crackled. Whitley was coming.

We dressed quickly, a bit awkwardly, and by the time we were done Marcus and the others were coming down the stairs to the basement.

We snuck out of the mall without another encounter with the scavengers. I was even lucky enough that one of the soldiers had a spare respirator to replace my broken one.

It was a couple of hours later, as we were nearing the facility that Deacon asked, softly, so as not to be overheard: "Regrets?"

I looked him in the eyes when I answered: "None."

He searched my eyes for a second, then "Good." he said, and kept on walking.

I hope you enjoyed this little fic... and if you did R&R, will you? There might be a companion chapter in Deacon's POV in it for you! Plus, it makes me very happy when you do!