"Oh my God, I need a fucking shower like an addict needs a hit," Amelie says as she drops her pack and half of her clothes on the floor of our suite in one fell swoop. All that's left on her is her tank top and pants, and she's already unbuttoning those. I start to remove my armor piece by piece. As she drops her pants she pops her head into the bathroom. "Score! There's even soap in the shower. This day just gets better."

"A true triumph: soap."

She snickers, yanking off her tank top, only in her underpants. "Shush. Oh, Charon, I'm sorry, I shouldn't be so rude. Do you want the first shower?"

I let my eyes wander her body. "Why don't we shower together? That way, neither of us is first."

She winks at me. "Works for me."

It's not a sexy shower. Not at first. Not when we peel away our clothes and step under the hot water and realize just how caked in filth we both are. Even with bathing in cold water regularly, nothing beats soap and hot water. It turns out that Amelie's hair is actually quite soft and about an inch longer than I thought, once the knots and curls are washed away.

She rubs my cold hands warm again and I place one hand on her breast and one on her cheek. I flick her nipple with my thumb and she softly sighs, closing her eyes and leaning into me slightly. She stands on the balls of her feet to kiss me deeply, and her tongue finds its way to mine. It's strange how absolutely normal it feels to be with her this way; naked, wet, kissing and touching each other. Like we should have been doing it all along.

Amelie runs her hand down my chest, my stomach, my pelvis, until she reaches my - "Mmmmh, Amelie." She strokes a soapy hand up and down my shaft and in seconds I'm rock hard, my tip pressing into her stomach.

"You like that?"

"Yes, mistress." She lets the water run down my body and rinse the soap off, and she gets down on her knees. We lock eyes and she has both hands wrapped around my shaft. She's shaking ever so slightly. "Are you alright?"

"Never better. Just nervous. I've never done this before, this part."

"You don't have to -"

"I want to. Let me do this," she kisses the head of my dick, then starts to take the entire thing in her mouth. Oh my God, I love this woman.

I can only last a few minutes with her working on my cock like a professional, her nails digging into my leg and hot water running down my chest. I don't have time to warn her and I bust into her mouth.

"Amelie, my Amelie," I moan, as she takes it all. She pulls away and looks up at me, snickering.

"That was fun. I'd like to practice that some more. We both need to get a grip on the 'sex' thing, I think. We're both far too easy."

If I could, I would flush with embarrassment. "Well, over 200 years of inexperience will do that to a man. Especially with a woman as beautiful as you," I say as I take her into my arms. The hot water starts to run cold, but we're clean anyway, so we jump out. Someone has even left clean (well... as clean as anything ever is) towels in the bathroom.

"Give me your clothes, I'm going to go wash everything in the sink while I have the chance. I have some spare stuff with me for both of us. Although..." She stands on her tiptoes and kisses me hard, "I'm perfectly fine staying butt-ass naked for the day." She drops her towel and grabs our dirty clothes, stalking back into the bathroom. I watch her hips sway as she leaves me and resist the urge to grab those hips and take her from behind. I flop backwards onto our bed and bring my towel up to my face and groan into it, just loud enough for her to her my frustrations.

"You know, mistress, you absolutely are going to be the death of me!" My voice muffled by the towel. She chuckles from the other room. She knows. Oh, she knows.

She peeks her head out the door at me, my shirt in one hand and the bar of soap in the other, and says "I'm just trying to build you up for later, big boy." She winks and closes the door behind her. Where was this side of her hiding for the last nine months? She kept this behind a wall the entire time she's known me? She's stronger than I thought. I can hear her humming a tune I don't recognize as she scrubs the grime out of our clothes.

Later in the night, I wake up to a cold, empty bed and the muffled sound of a man's voice. At first I'm alarmed - who is in our room? Why is he here? Where is Amelie? I panic before I see the green hue of her Pip-Boy's light illuminating the bathroom through a crack in the door. I quietly slide out of bed and creep up to the bathroom door - not wanting to intrude, but, of course, curiosity killed the cat.

"'...Evergreen Mills, and it's well-hidden in some garage. But I'll find it, I have to. It's so close, but that's the story of Project Purity, isn't it? An eternity of 'almost there's'. Let's see if Braun has the missing puzzle piece.'"

It must be her father's holotapes. We found them in the Jefferson Memorial weeks ago, but she wasn't ready to listen to them. She started with the first holotape - one from before her birth, before her mother's passing. When she realized she couldn't handle it, she ejected the holotape and put them all in a small compartment of her pack, doomed to be forgotten for a while. I hear the click of the holotape ejecting, and the beep of a new one beginning. This one began with a woman's voice.

"...that batch of tests was inconclusive, but Madison and I are convinced it's a problem with the secondary filtration system. We're going to recalibrate the equipment and try again tomorrow, so that... James, please, I'm trying to work. Now's not the time..."

I heard Amelie sniffle and eject the holotape. It clatters to the floor and she quietly sobs, but it's muffled - she must have buried her face in her arms. I push the bathroom door open to find her in a ball on the floor, crying almost silently.

"Hey. Hey, now. It's okay. Come here, my love." I took her in my arms and pulled her close to my chest, squeezing her tight, squeezing the pain away.

"I thought," she says in between sobs, "I thought I could get some answers out of the holotapes. I th- thought l was ready. I," hiccup, "I didn't know my mom would be on the holotape. I nev- I never heard her voice before but somehow I knew it was her. It hurts so bad, Ch-ch-charon. It hurts."

I never knew what to do when people got overly emotional like this. Never in my 200-odd years did anyone ever tell me how to handle a crying, emotional teenage girl whose heart hurts more than any kid deserves to hurt. But I hold her, and I rock her slowly and kiss her head until the sobs slow, then stop.

"I'm sorry. I don't know why that affected me like it did. I just... there's a lot to deal with, you know? There's a lot of things that happen in my life that I don't actually deal with, I just file them away in my head for later... and I guess this was later." I release her from my iron grip and grab a small towel, dampening it to wash the tears from her face. "Thank you... for being here for me. I didn't mean to wake you."

"Technically, you did not wake me. Your father did. And... it is my job to keep you safe and happy, yes, but it is also something I want to do. I heard how upset you were and while I did not know how to fix it, I figured... if I held you tight enough, you might feel safe. Secure. And maybe you would feel better."

Her eyes well up with tears all over again. "Charon, you're too good for the likes of me." I put the damp towel over her eyes and cover her face with it, and she laughs. "Okay, maybe not. But... I love you anyway, you big lug. ... Well, I guess the bright side is I know where my dad went. Vault 112. Ever heard of it?"

I ponder for a moment. "No, I don't believe so. I'm not well-versed in the vaults, unfortunately. But I heard him describe a general location, if you're interested in leaving in the morning."

"I am. He said West of Evergreen Mills, and the coordinates on the holotape lead to... not that far from here. So I figured we can head there and figure out our next step as we go."

"Ah, flying by the seats of our pants, as always. I like it. But we should give a wide berth to Evergreen Mills. It's a raider camp, and not a small one."

She sighs, stretching as she gets off the bathroom floor. "Alright. Then we might as well go back to sleep. We might have a long day tomorrow. Who knows what will happen?"

(AN: I originally didn't want to ever do the "finding dad" stuff. I wanted this fic to be fun and smut and love and adventures. But I realized that I set myself up for disaster earlier in this fic by just mentioning that Amelie hadn't found her dad yet, so of course I have to do it now. I started playing the FO3 main quest again today and some ideas sparked... so I'm going to run with it. In the long, long break since I updated with chapter 19, I've thought long and hard and tried very hard to figure out what my goal with this was. I want to make this the best, and longest, and smuttiest fic on this damn website... So I hope I can accomplish that. Thank you, as always, for staying, and reading, and being there. I appreciate you all.)