Author's Notes: HEY! Yeah, hey you! This chapter features smut from the get-go, coarse language, and the shoving of combat shotguns into Butch's face, THUS being Rated M! So if you prefer your fanfics to be smut free, please, save yourself and leave now. (Mind you, I've mentioned somewhere before that I suck at writing love scenes such as this, along with battle scenes... But whatever! It's your call!)
So enjoy what I've written, and if you have a moment, please take the time to drop a lovely review for yours truly~ (Flamers are NOT welcome here!)
Moaning and heavy pants echoed through the small room, and if anyone had been watching and had known the awkward couple, they would have believed that they had somehow entered into a twisted realm of contradictions.
"B-Butch!" Aimee cried between gasps, her head thrown back in ecstasy as she rode the writhing, slightly muscle-built body below her.
He clutched her hips firmly with bruising strength, like he was trying to find something steady to hold onto as she sent him farther and farther away from here, farther away than he had ever gone before. Was he still in the Capital Wasteland?
His hips rocked and bucked underneath her like the rough waves of an oncoming tide. He hadn't done this before but his animalistic instincts had taken over like he had done this a million times. Moments ago he was too tired, and quite frankly too horny, to argue with the stubborn brunette over who was on top.
It was apparent to both sides that she had much more experience in the bedroom than he had anyways.
Besides, he liked the view he had as her body moved in rhythm to his thrusting, the way her curves seemed to fit into his like a glove.
Butch pressed Aimee's body closer as he sat up underneath her and wrapped her strong legs around his waist. She snaked her arms around his neck and ensnared him in a deep kiss that created one of the final shoves over his edge as she continued pumping her body up and down on his manhood.
No words were exchanged between the partners. All they needed was Butch's throaty groans and Aimee's quick whimpers and quiet moans as they kept pace with one another, and as drunk as he was, he could feel her heart racing in sync with his.
He could feel her lady folds tighten and clench around him, she was just about there, and saw her mouth open and close as if she were trying to scream something. But this is where the dream would end.
Butch jolted awake on his mattress in another sweaty heap and bundle of tangled blankets. The dream always ended like that, right before she would moan his name and ride out the rising waves of her orgasm. How had he known what happened after that, when all he knew was what happened in the dreams?
He quietly groaned in frustration at the tent-shape that formed in his blankets and he flopped back onto the mattress to stare up at the ceiling. After coming in, making sure he hadn't woken up Fawkes or Charon (he made that mistake once after coming back in a ruckus at three in the morning and became acquainted with Charon's combat shotgun pressed against his junk) he pulled out his mattress and stripped down to nothing but his boxers and fell asleep. The house was too hot to sleep in a jumpsuit and leather jacket.
We gotta get a bigger place soon… This fuckin' house smells like rotting flesh and mutt ass.
He was too use to the non-irradiated food, the conditioned air, and the safe steel walls of the Vault he escaped from. He'd come back once in a while to visit, and make trouble for Amata as the new Overseer, but he soon noticed that his plans had to change. If Aimee couldn't go back, and all though she never said he couldn't go back, he wasn't going back either.
It would be unfair to her… He thought before his eyelids snapped open. Wait, what the fuck do I care about what's fair for her?
Butch cradled his head in his arms as he closed his eyes to fall back asleep. But he couldn't, and he didn't know why.
She's pissed at me. It's obvious I said somethin' wrong. But… The key…
Butch fingered the key on the long piece of twine around his neck. He got it from Gob up at Moriarty's Saloon, mostly because he knew he lost things pretty damn easily, and this way he'd always have it on him.
He cursed himself at whatever he said to her, which seemed like one giant ass blur in his mind right now. Just like whatever fragments his dream hadn't shown him; like how the two had ended up in that damned bed in the first place.
The only thing he knew was that he was drunk off his ass, they both were, and when they woke up that morning with splitting headaches they were cuddled up close to each other. Naked. The way she looked at him sent his heart into little spasms of flutters. Of course, it was ruined the moment she realized it was Butch and not Freddie Gomez or whatever, and she beat what little sense he had with her pillow.
For a pillow, it still hurt like a bitch... He let out a throaty chuckle and a little smirk at the memory.
Where had they been anyways when it happened? When they happened if that was even a rational question? He couldn't remember. There were so many places they traveled to, he lost track. Maybe it was Paradise Falls in Eulogy Jones' love nest after she decapitated him, maybe it was Underworld in Carol's Place, or maybe it was here in Megaton, in Aimee's bed...
Butch shuddered in a strange manner at the thought of his last bit of innocence being taken in the room just a few feet from his mattress. He needed a manlier word for virginity; after all, the Tunnel Snake's didn't use sissy words like that. He needed something a little more masculine for the term.
He looked up at the closed door to the room he might have lost the last bit of his child-like side; or the door that he thought was closed...
The entrance to Aimee's room was open just a crack with Dogmeat laying in front of it, belly to the sky, tongue hanging out between his lips and a sleepy twitch in his paws. A small source of light creeped through the little gap of the open door, and he was curious as to why she was up so late, if it was late at all. He crawled over on his hands and knees to look through the opening, and he couldn't exactly put an emotion or a feeling as to what he came across.
Aimee was sitting at her desk in nothing but a long shirt and boxers for pajamas. The clothes hung loose around her thin frame, hugging the curves of her breasts and sides just perfectly and her hair was a disheveled mess of curls as she ran her short fingers through it. In her other hand a lit cigarette was held between two trembling fingers, and many more butts were scattered inside an ash tray close by. Her body shook as she knocked back a vodka shot and pressed a button on her Pip-Boy with an unwilling finger, the sound of a Holodisk shattering the silence in the tense room.
"Well, here we are again. Project Purity and me." A deep, kind voice emerged from the Holodisk.
Butch's eyes widened upon hearing the familiar voice. That sounds like her old man! What the fuck's a Project Purity?...
"It's been close to twenty years since my last entry. Since I left all of this behind to make a life for my daughter... We spent all that time in Vault 101, tucked away from the rest of the world. It wasn't perfect, but it was safe, and that's all I could have hoped for. Now, my daughter is a grown woman,"
Butch watched with an anxious feeling knotting in his midsection as Aimee took more heaping chugs of vodka, inhaling smoke from her cigarette like she could have replaced it with the air she needed for the rest of her life. He could see her begin to sever herself from the reality she wanted to have absolutely nothing to do with anymore. The reality he needed her to stay in for him... But how could he ever blame her for wanting to leave?
"Beautiful, intelligent, confident..." James' voice continued to sing sadly.
"N-No...Don't say it... Just- don't..." Aimee mumbled to herself in a voice that wasn't at all hers.
Somewhere down the line, she was hiding the fact that she wasn't strong anymore; she was fractured, completely broken if Butch dared go into that far of a description. The way she spoke made it sound like she listened to her father's empty voice a hundred times in that recording, and every time she wished he had said something different, something that could have kept her going on as the stubborn broad that she is.
"Just like her mother." His voice finished sadly.
The stubborn broad that she was...
Her shoulders arched and bobbed as her flood gates broke and she sobbed to the last words of her late father's recorded voice. "And as hard as it was to admit it, she doesn't need her daddy anymore..."
"Wh-Who said I didn't f-fucking need you? Who s-said you could le-leave me all alone?" Aimee whispered menacingly between sobs and another swig of vodka. She was trying to choke back her frustration and her anger in the world, but the vodka certainly wasn't helping.
"All I wanted was to have my father back!" She screeched and shoved her chair away into a tense topple, flinging the bottle against the wall.
The glass exploded into sharp pieces and rained onto the floor, the alcohol seeping out from under the door and the cool sensation awoke Dogmeat if the sound of shattering didn't. He jumped up and shook the liquor off from his fur, pressing his muzzle into her room to see what was happening.
The lights turned on downstairs and Charon was already running up them two by two, combat shotgun in hand, his eyes turned ominous upon seeing Butch on the floor in nothing but boxers and a horrified look on his pallid face. Charon grabbed a fistful of his black hair and shoved the shotgun into his face.
"What did you do to her?" He yelled at the cringing Serpent King.
"I-I didn't do nothin'! Honest to God!" He tried to remove Charon's hand, but that only made him tighten his grasp.
Aimee's door slowly swung opened and Dogmeat backed away from her with his head hung low. Even Charon stepped back from her as he finally let go of Butch's hair with an expression none of them had ever seen in his lucid eyes before; he was panicking.
She stared at the floor with the neck of the vodka bottle in her hand like a weapon, the jagged angles dripping wasted alcohol and crimson blood. She had cut her hands from picking up the glass, and when she walked past them, she left tiny bloody footprints on the cold metal of the floor. She cut her feet on the glass as well but none of her wounds seemed to faze her.
"Aimee?" Fawkes looked down at her as she slowly drifted down the stairs in an unconscious trance.
"Need more booze... Helps me sleep..." She mumbled to him as she entered the small kitchen.
"Damnit..." Charon murmured and lowered his shotgun away from Butch's face.
"Is she commencing self-harm Charon?" Fawkes asked with a deep concern in his voice as he walked towards them, helping Butch up from the floor.
"S-She was listening to Holotapes... From her old man." Butch replied quietly, earning a wrathful glare from Charon.
"What were you doing listening to something private like that?" He snapped.
"Hey man, I woke up and saw her door was open! I looked in and she was cryin' and shit listening to some recording with her old man's voice on it. He said somethin' 'bout a Project Purity. What the fuck is that?"
Charon and Fawkes looked to each other with a certain look in their eyes, as if they had known something he didn't... They did know something he didn't!
"What's goin' on?" Butch demanded with his hands balled up on his sides. "Tell me God damnit!"
"Ever wonder why James left in the first place?" Charon asked calmly.
Butch twitched a little at the question. He never thought about it, actually... All he knew was that a lot of shit went down the night the door of Vault 101 was opened. It was like everything bad the Overseer had tried to repress into the thick walls were exposed and unleashed. Fires broke out everywhere, the Radroach infestation seemed to boom before everyone's eyes as they bit and jumped on people, so many people died...
Paulie...
He also knew that everyone was mad. Amata wasn't though, she knew she couldn't blame Aimee's father, but at the time Butch could. And he certainly did. He was mad too, but then again, it was because it was Aimee's father. If it was anyone else's dad he wouldn't have given a flying rat's ass about the door being opened. In fact, he would have bought the man an entire fucking liquor cabinet with all the expensive booze in it.
Maybe it was because, growing up, I never had a father... He just died one day. Butch thought solemnly.
He wasn't old or nothin', just real sick, and when he was gone ma just started drinkin' her troubles away... Yeah, sure, got hurt from time to time as she went on her whiskey rampages, but I let her because she needed a way to let go of all the anger and pain that she felt...
Somewhere along his childhood, he accepted that it was life to be hurt by another person. He became a bully to Aimee to release his anger on to somebody. Aimee didn't deserve it, but at the time he was a kid, and all his jealous thoughts seemed to circle around everything she had that he didn't, but desperately wanted.
It took him so long to comprehend something. All though he had a mother, and his father died when he was five, Aimee never even met her mother. Maybe it wouldn't hurt as much, never knowing someone and they died, but the connection between a mother and her little girl was sacred; there was pain somewhere in her.
Charon sighed, breaking Butch's train of thought. "From that stupid look on your face I'm guessing you don't know the real reason why?"
Butch glared at the ghoul sharply.
"I thought so, it-" The echo of a door slamming shut escaped into the tiny house, cutting Charon off mid-sentence and Fawkes looked over the banister with drained eyes.
"Aimee just left." He clarified for the two and went to the Nuka-Cola machine, which was completely filled with his favorite soft drink before the evening had gotten too dark and quiet. He sat and drank quietly, with Dogmeat by his feet in a daze of drowsy whimpers.
"Probably went to get more booze..." Charon responded with a shake of his head, and he looked up to Butch. "I don't know much from before I met Aimee, so I can really only tell you what I experienced after she bought my contract."
"Your contract?" Butch sniggered. "What are you? Some body guard for hire?"
He could see the ghoul's finger twitch on the trigger of his combat shotgun, and immediately stifled himself. What he had said wouldn't have been an insult, to anybody but Charon.
"I was at first. I am loyal to whoever holds my contract. But, after..." Charon looked away from Butch, staring at the cracks in the walls, maybe counting the bolts that held the flooring together, or reminiscing through moments as the seconds passed.
"After, what?" Butch raised an eyebrow at him. "She dump you or somethin'?"
His head turned right round and he glowered down at the young adult before him.
"If she dumped me I wouldn't be here, now would I? Besides, that's a term that you would use for lovers, correct? We were never lovers..." He growled before mumbling; "Idiot..."
"After Aimee's father died she ripped up Charon's contract and let it float to the wind. Forgotten, forever." Fawkes finished for the ghoul who had lost his tongue for a moment.
"What for?" Butch asked, now interested in it. "You coulda left since she tore it up. You were free! I woulda booked my ass outta there!"
"A smoothskin like you would have done that," He grimaced at Charon in irritation. "But what she did was different."
Butch could see something change in the ghoul's face. It was difficult to pick up any emotion, mostly because any distinguishable features he should have had were eaten away by radiation long ago, he could only pick up little hints of feelings in his usually hardened eyes. But with how long he had been traveling with the small group, he was getting better at reading Charon. Mostly because of Aimee...
"What she do?" He asked, settling back onto his mattress after what felt like forever and a day.
"She gave me a choice. She pulled out my contract, looked me in the eyes, and while tearing it up she said; "Charon, you're a free man now. You can choose to stay, or you can choose to go. But whatever you may choose I want you to know that you are more than a scrap of paper. You are my closest friend, and no matter what path you take, I give you all the happiness I could have."
As Charon spoke, recounting every word Aimee said, Butch heard truth in the words. It was Aimee all right... From what he heard about this Ahzrukhal guy he wasn't exactly the bee's knees, and Aimee buying his contract was a freaking God given miracle. Charon didn't see it that way until later down the road. At the beginning it was just another business contract and nothing more.
"She said I was a free man." He looked down on Butch, his arms folding over his chest again. "Not a free ghoul. No one else would have said that. No one but her."
Butch saw Charon in a completely different view now. He was cold when he first met, and as far as he knew Charon never liked him from the day then on, mostly because he gave the Tunnel Snake a swift kick to the gut and cracked three of his ribs... Which reminded the him that he still had to get back at the ghoul, but that could wait till later. Charon wasn't so...Detached, anymore. Had he slowly showed himself with comfort over time? Or did Aimee find a way to create that side in the emotionless creature?
"Back to what I was saying earlier," Charon interrupted his train of thoughts again. "Project Purity."
"Yeah!" Butch exclaimed. "What is it?"
"It may be best if you start, from the very beginning, Charon." Fawkes suggested sleepily from where he sat, petting Dogmeat's head with a lackluster hand.
He nodded and looked back to Butch. "Back from when I met Aimee. It was a little over a year ago, the ghouls of the Underworld were in a frenzy over a newcomer amongst them. Everyone in the Ninth Circle talked about it. Ahzrukhal took no interest in her until he discovered she was a little smoothskin with a bundle of caps in a lunchbox..."
