A/N: I couldn't resist. *winks*.
The Alley Cat
By Kittenshift17
Chapter One
The lamps glowed when he got home, and smoke billowed from his chimney.
Sebastian Monroe sighed, stopping on the front path that led to the porch and looking up at the house before him. It wasn't much—a small cottage nestled and forgotten among other, more significant properties on the edge of an abandoned street. According to Gene, it had belonged to some little old biddy in her seventies before the blackout. He knew because it was one of the few houses on the block that didn't have a whole lot of electrical appliances, to begin with. It was one of the reasons he liked it. The washing machine in this place was an old dual tub, hand-wound spinner, and the basement was full of jams and preserves and jars of moonshine alongside an old gin mill.
But the lamps shouldn't be on. He was coming off a sixteen-day operation for Blanchard that had involved a ride out into the Plains Nation to recon on intel about a new patriot re-education camp they'd gotten wind of. He had trudged home from the office through the thin layer of snow on the ground, thinking he'd have been better trying to bunk in with Charlie or Gene or even Aaron if he could, but Miles was going to Gene's, and he and Miles hadn't done well on this mission together, just to two of them and no buffer.
His brother was mad at him again.
Bass hadn't wanted to impose on him any more than necessary, so he'd kept his mouth shut and planned to go home alone and curl up under a blanket, hoping he wouldn't die of hypothermia during the night.
And yet, smoke came from the chimney, and the lamps were lit. Some dumb fucker had moved into Bass's house while he'd been away. Of fucking course they had.
"If I didn't have bad luck," he muttered self-deprecatingly, glad he had a gun at least. Monroe twisted the rifle slung over his back around and propped the butt of it against his shoulder, prepared to kill whichever asshole thought they could move into his home just because he'd been gone for two weeks.
Striding impatiently up the path and across the porch, Bass flung open the front door; his gun loaded and ready to spray whoever was inside. He nearly swallowed his tongue when a knife sailed at him instantly, just barely side-stepping the trajectory and blinking when it whizzed by his ear close enough that one second slower and it'd be embedded in his eye.
The assailant stood in his kitchen in an oversized hoodie – one of his, he scowled – and no pants. She had thick socks on her feet, but otherwise, she was naked.
"Charlotte?" he demanded, lowering the gun and recognizing the tan skin, strong muscles, and wavy blonde hair of his best friend's niece.
"Jesus, Monroe," she breathed out, holding another knife ready to throw at him. She lowered it in relief.
"The fuck you doing in my house?" he wanted to know, kicking the door shut with his foot and pulling his gun strap up over his head, setting it down on the back of the couch, and dropping his bag by the door.
"I ran out of wood," she shrugged her shoulders like that was all the excuse she needed to help herself to his house and his wood and his food and… well, everything, by the looks of it.
"When?" he frowned, noting a collection of her gear scattered throughout.
Then again… some of this crap had been here before he'd gone on a mission. She tended to help herself to his house whenever she pleased.
"Couple of days ago," she said. "It's been snowing pretty hard. Figured I wouldn't get any dry wood until it lets up, so…."
She shrugged her shoulders again, not in the slightest concerned that she wasn't wearing any pants. After years on missions with her, years spent traveling day and night in her company; there wasn't an inch of the young woman he hadn't seen by now. Her modesty had taken a hike a long time ago where he was concerned. That was the nature of foxholes.
"You hungry?" she asked. "I made braised lamb earlier. I can heat some if you're hungry?"
Bass's mouth watered.
"Starving," he admitted. "Been on jerky and rations for weeks."
She nodded sympathetically.
"There's some water in that barrel there if you want to wash up from the road, too," she pointed. "Want me to get it warmed up while I'm at it?"
Bass wondered what the hell was going on that she was being so nice and what in the hell he'd done to deserve a break like this.
"I can do it," he said gruffly, though all he wanted to do was hunker down in front of the fire and try to warm up his toes before he lost any of them to frostbite.
She shook her head.
"Sit down," she invited. "I got it."
Bass wasn't sure he trusted a hope that she didn't have an agenda before realizing that she was being nice because the small cottage he'd made a home of only had one bed. And he'd bet Charlie had been sleeping in it while he'd been gone if she'd been staying here. So maybe she didn't want to be relegated to the couch just because he was home.
As if he'd bother trying anymore. He'd bunked down next to her in the woods and on dusty plains enough times in his life by now that neither of them was precious about sharing sleeping space.
"Glad to see you, Charlotte," he muttered when he did as he was told, dragging a chair closer to the fire and shrugging out of his jacket, the shoulders damp from the falling snow outside his cottage. He kicked his boots off his feet while Charlie put some braised lamb in a frypan to reheat, the scent quickly filling the tiny house. She made mashed potatoes too, and she heated those in another pan before scooping out a bucket of water from the barrel and heating it so that he might bathe the travel grime from his skin after his mission.
"How'd it go?" she asked as she moved around his house like she owned the place.
Hell, she'd been living there. Even when she had her own place a few blocks over and even when she had no excuses to be in his house, half the time she just wandered in and out whenever it suited her, catting about the place as she pleased. Bass didn't mind. It beat being alone.
"Found the camp," he said. "Took some prisoners. Tortured them for answers on where there might be more. The usual."
"Miles?" she asked.
"Pissed at me," he grumbled, unbuckling his belt and stretching his sore feet toward the fireplace.
"What for this time?" she laughed.
"He's getting moodier than an old woman," Bass shrugged. "I think he just can't stand the competing voices in his head when I'm around. Even when Rachel's not there with her holier than thou bullshit, I'm sure he hears her voice in his head making him doubt everything he knows."
"You two wreaked havoc, in other words," Charlie said. "And now he feels guilty and is blaming you for his actions like he's not his own man."
And that, right there, was why Bass kind of loved Charlie. She just fucking got him.
"Nailed it," he nodded. "Thanks."
He accepted the bottle of whiskey she passed him while she put his warmed-up food on a plate and offered it to him.
"I'll have it at the table," he said after knocking back half the whiskey left in the bottle.
She placed the plate there and went back to heating water.
"You want me to fill the tub, or you just want to wash in the basin?" she asked.
"Basin," he said. "Too damn cold for the tub."
She nodded, pouring the water in and fetching a sponge and a bar of soap, getting everything ready.
"Been much going on here?" he asked while he tucked into his food, pausing to groan at the taste because it was so damn good, especially after the shit he'd been living on. Meals were a lot crappier on missions without Charlie along. She wasn't a terribly good cook, but she was a brilliant hunter when they were on the road, and they often ate rabbit when she was with them, instead of just the jerky he and Miles had been choking down.
"Not a thing," Charlie sighed, sitting down next to him and stealing the whiskey bottle back, swigging liberally. "Grandpa keeps trying to get me to learn medicine from him, and I've been entertaining him a little bit to keep Mum from trying to bombard me with science and mechanical engineering. Next time there's a mission up for grabs, I'm going too. I don't care what Blanchard's orders are."
Bass's mouth twitched on a smile and he shook his head at her words. She was a funny thing, Charlotte. She was perfectly suited for a life on the road, and she was good in a fight, but she never seemed happy out there. At least, not when there was fighting and killing and struggles happening. When they'd traveled from New Vegas and back with Connor, and when they'd traveled alone, just the two of them, she always seemed most at home in the woods with her crossbow, away from other people.
"Small town life not for you then, Charlotte?" he asked mildly.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"It's dull here," she said. "And Mom's been driving me mental. She's convinced this has all been a Patriot conspiracy from the get-go. When she's not trying to teach me things about stuff that makes no sense, she and Aaron have had their heads together, trying to find a way to stop the nano once and for all. Trying to find a way to get the lights back on so we can beat these assholes."
Bass sighed.
"Getting the lights on is the last thing we need if we want to beat them," he said, shaking his head.
Charlie frowned, twisting to stare at him in shock.
"They've got a stockpile of military-grade weaponry that relies on machines to distribute, Charlie," he reminded her. "We don't. Philly is gone. All my planes and helicopters and guns and ammo and everything else. My army. It's all gone."
"Texas has those things," she pointed out.
"So do the Patriots, I expect," he said. "They're the remnants of the original government, no matter what they did and are still doing."
"But," she said, frowning.
"But they did horrible things?" he asked. "I wonder what that's like when you only have shitty choices to make to protect your people from other idiot people and from each other; from themselves."
Charlie stared at him.
"Was the sarcasm necessary?" she challenged.
Bass huffed a laugh and shrugged his shoulders. "Just sayin'."
"You had a bad trip, huh?" she guessed, her eyes appraising him.
"Cold, miserable and stuck with Miles while he's been bitching like a whining schoolgirl, walking hundred of miles in a pair of boots with a hole in the sole of one shoe," he said. "What do you think?"
Charlie winced sympathetically.
"Thought I'd be coming home to an empty, freezing house, though, so… thanks for this," he indicated to the meal he'd devoured.
Charlie smiled. "Figured it's the least I can do, right? Since I'm burning your firewood and I've been sleeping in your bed."
Bass shrugged, not saying anything though when she met his gaze, the ever-expanding ocean on all the things they left unsaid yawned widely. Shit. This frustrating, fiery, sexy, stubborn bitch of a woman was one of the only constants left in his life, and most times when he looked at her, he wondered what it'd feel like to bury his dick between her legs. But she was Miles's niece, and Rachel's daughter and his militia had killed her Dad and her brother, and she was damaged and fucked up and twisted and a little too much like him for anyone's comfort, especially Rachel's. So even when he wanted to say things like 'will you let me fuck you' and 'do you still want to blow my brains out' he usually just bit his tongue on all of them and had another pull on his whiskey instead.
"That water's going cold if you still want to wash," she said into the silence that grew between them.
They were long past awkward silence, him and Charlotte, so she didn't need to fill it with inane chatter, and he was grateful for that.
"Yeah, I will," he nodded, rising to his feet and sighing heavily before he picked up the heated tub of water and carried it down the hall to the bathtub where it wouldn't matter if he spilled a bit while he washed the old-fashioned way.
"I'll put some more on to heat so that you can rinse afterward," she told him.
Bass didn't reply before he started stripping out of his clothes, the room icy without the reach of the fireplace, but the relief of ditching the grimy, sweat-soaked, smelly garments palpable. It'd be a long trip, and it'd made him realize that he was getting old. Neither he nor Miles were as fast as they used to be, nor as spry as they used to be, or as alert as they used to be. One night when they were both still awake, not even splitting the watch yet, a group of ten Plains Nation war-clansmen had got the jump on them and only their decades of honing their instincts and training had saved them.
Bass hissed when he reached his undershirt, finding the wound he'd got in that fight had bled again, the fabric sticking to the blood of the crusted scab.
"What'd you do?" her voice was low and intimate, and he cursed, realizing she'd followed him and he hadn't noticed.
"Got cut," he answered gruffly, peeling the fabric away.
"Is it bad?" she asked, and he realized when she moved closer that she'd followed him to bring a lamp into the bathroom so he'd actually be able to see while he bathed.
"I'll be fine," he grunted, though he wasn't so sure he would be.
She didn't say anything as she set down the lamp next to the tub and moved over to him. Bass knew he should push her away. Knew he should tell her to get out of there, that he was fine, that everything would be fine in the morning. But he'd had the wound for more than a week now, sliced into the skin of his stomach and above his left hip. He and Miles had treated it as best they could on the road home, but it wasn't improving. It hadn't gotten infected yet – how could it when he poured moonshine into it every damn night? But it kept opening up again.
Charlie's hands found his hips without hesitation, turning him toward the lamp-light so she could see better before she bent to examine it.
"Sword?" she guessed.
"Yeah," he nodded.
"You've been keeping it clean?"
Bass sighed.
"Every night. Water and alcohol. Miles was grumbling about the waste of whiskey and moonshine."
"Is he injured too?" she wanted to know.
"Got a cut on his shoulder and we think a couple of broken ribs," he sighed, letting Charlie pull at the remnants of bandages and things he'd used to try and protect the wound.
"You're gonna have to cauterize it," she told him, seemingly unaffected by the news about Miles.
Miles was turning into a cranky shit and tended to fight with Rachel and to growl at Charlie the longer they stayed in Willoughby. She was probably pissed at him too.
"Yeah," Bass sighed. "I was afraid of that."
He tipped his head back, hating himself for the way the feel of Charlie's warm hands on his cool skin, even when she picked at his wound, felt so damn good. He told himself it was human nature to crave being touched – to need to feel someone else's hands running over you every now and then, but the longer he knew Charlotte, the more he'd begun to only crave her touch.
"Get clean," she told him quietly, squeezing his right hip just a bit as she straightened, standing impossibly close to him like they were lovers instead of prickly fighting partners and sometimes, deadly enemies. "I'll heat the blade. Are there any more?"
"Nothing that can get infected," he shook his head, resigned.
Charlie frowned at him.
"Broken ribs too?" she guessed.
Bass shook his head, knowing she'd see the marks even if he tried to hide them. Reaching for the buckle on his belt, he held her gaze as he opened it. It was hard to tell in the low light, but Bass would swear her pupils dilated as he unzipped his fly and started shucking off his jeans.
"You better not be commando again," she warned, not looking away.
She was all bravado, his Charlotte.
"Too fucking cold for that shit," he muttered, wobbling a little as he stepped out of his jeans, forcing the fabric from his body when it clung after two weeks of molding to his shape.
"Jesus, Monroe," Charlie swore softly when he revealed his legs below his boxers. "What the hell happened?"
Bass clenched his fists on the urge to do something he knew he couldn't when she crouched to inspect the enormous purple bruise on his left thigh and the swollen state of his right knee.
"Ten war-clan pricks jumped us at our fire one night on the way home," Bass said.
"They jumped you?" she frowned up at him, poking gently at the bruising. "Where was Miles?"
"Right next to me," he admitted. "We're… we must be getting old, Charlie."
It hurt to admit that. Hurt his pride. Hurt his ego. Hurt his sense of invincibility that had seen him through life this far, even when everything went to hell. It hurt to think that admitting such a weakness to the young, pretty, war-hardened woman crouching in front of him might just be one more reason why, no matter the tension that thickened and fizzed and frothed between them whenever they were together, he could never have her.
"You're not old," she rolled her eyes dismissively.
"Ten fuckers surrounded our camp and beat the fuck out of us, Charlie," he said. "We weren't even drunk. They got the drop on us and we nearly paid for it with our lives."
"How the hell did they get the drop on you?" she asked. "You and Miles and the ones who taught me to check the permitter. To listen to the night. To keep an ear out for breaking twigs and quieted animals and all those signs the world offers when someone is creeping about in the dark. How could anyone possibly have jumped you if you weren't drunk? What were you doing?"
Bass shook his head, looking away from her as she gently touched his swollen knee, carefully manipulating the cartilage to figure out if he'd torn something or just sprained it. He didn't want to answer her. Things between him and Miles were turning to shit again, and he didn't need to go spewing that onto Charlie too.
"You weren't fucking, right?" she challenged without looking at him.
Bass spluttered.
"The hell, Charlie?" he demanded. "I'm not… Miles is not…"
When she looked at him from under her eyelashes, her smirk was pure evil. Shit-stirring little bitch. She laughed softly when he glared at her, huffing in annoyance that he'd fallen for the bait. People had been saying for years that there must be something homo-erotic going on between him and Miles. A close friendship between any two people for long enough would inspire that much, he'd found. Even that asshole, Neville, had called him out on his 'borderline erotic fixation' on Miles. Some people just didn't get it, he'd learned. Sometimes, if you loved someone platonically, but passionately, people couldn't rationalize that love and sex didn't have to go hand in hand.
"Funny," he deadpanned at Charlie while she giggled.
"Something must've been distracting you two," she said leadingly, grinning. "If not hard-core hate-sex, then what?"
He narrowed her eyes as she rose back to her feet, standing so damn close to him that she was lucky she hadn't copped a slap to the face from his dick while she'd been so close to it.
"Hard-core hate-sex?" he challenged. "Really?"
"Don't try and tell me it's slow, sweet love-making between you two," Charlie teased. "You can barely be in the same room without bitching each other out anymore."
"What do you know about hard-core hate-sex, Charlotte?" he challenged, changing the subject, not about to admit that a bunch of bandits had got the drop on them because they had been bitching each other out like cranky children because whiskey was thin on the ground and they were both raging alcoholics.
He'd hoped to make her blush, to get her to back off, to earn one of those angry 'fuck you, Monroe' looks she so often threw his way. And when Charlotte looked him dead in the eyes, her expression blank, he realized he hoped in vain.
"It's the only kind of sex I have," she answered, dead serious.
"Jesus, Charlie," he muttered, frowning at her, really not wanting to think about her begin rough and angry and aggressive in the bedroom, because fuck, what wouldn't he give to be the one having sex like that with her?
The tension between them thickened, resembling the consistency of cold peanut butter and Bass thought he might actually choke on it, his hands twitching to reach for her and pull her into him so he might devour her lips and fuck her until he felt better.
Charlie stared him down, and damn her, she never backed off, this brilliant, brave, fierce, sexy woman. He had no right thinking about bending her over the edge of the bathtub and pounding into her ruthlessly, but it was all he wanted to do.
"Saying you don't?" she challenged softly, obviously not about to let the topic slip away into all their tension, even when it would be best for everyone if she did.
"Not always," he frowned at her.
She frowned back, looking curious and maybe a little jealous to think he might be giving it to some woman, somewhere, with tenderness and warmth instead of bile and hatred.
"You… should bathe," she muttered. "Your water will be getting cold."
With that said, she stepped around him, her shoulder brushing his as she went.
"You need me to teach you how to make it something else, Charlotte?" he said without thinking before she could leave the room.
He heard her footsteps stop. He heard her sharp intake of breath. Heard the rustle of her clothes as she looked back at him, but Bass didn't dare look over his shoulder and meet her eyes. He wouldn't be able to resist if she actually looked intrigued; if she looked like she wanted to find out how else any two people could fuck if it wasn't violent and hateful. Instead, he dropped his boxers, hearing her gasp at the sight of his naked ass. He stepped over into the tub and made an effort to begin washing, starting with his hair and working his way down.
When he dared look toward the door, it was pulled almost all the way shut and Charlie was gone.
Shit.
He'd probably scared her off again. He wasn't supposed to hit on her. There were things they weren't supposed to say to each other. She'd made that clear when he'd pointed out on the way back from New Vegas after she'd banged Connor that of all the guys she'd chosen to screw, she'd picked a Monroe.
At the time, he'd been jealous as hell and trying to come to terms with it. He wasn't supposed to want Charlotte the way he did. She was Miles's niece. Hell, she was probably Miles's daughter. Rachel was enough of a bitch to fuck him and get pregnant by him and then lie to everyone and call the baby Ben's. Charlotte had enough of Mile's habits and idiosyncrasies that she probably came by them honestly, rather than absorbing them just by watching the man.
And wasn't that just the tip of the iceberg on the big list of reasons why Sebastian Monroe and Charlotte Matheson weren't supposed to want each other?
Miles's kid, probably. Rachel's kid. Charlie had fucked Connor. Bass had fucked Rachel. She really was a lot like Miles, and he didn't want to add fuel to the fire about rumors of his supposed obsession with Miles. The age difference; twenty-five years was a big gap, bigger because of the blackout and all he'd grown up with and lived through before the blackout, all that she'd never experienced and didn't understand. Hell, he'd babysat the little brat with Miles a few times back when she'd been a toddler.
It was wrong.
The last thing he should ever think about when looking at that girl was wanting to yank those tight jeans she wore down to her ankles so he could bury his face between her legs. But shit, he wanted it. When he'd caught her with Connor that night, he'd been furious to think that she'd fucked his kid. She'd been as aware of the tension as him. Of course, she had. She'd been aware of it from the minute he'd introduced himself to her in a holding cell in Philly when she'd stared down the barrel of a gun and dared him to shoot her. Every encounter since then had only added fuel to the fire and now all Bass wanted was to drag her to his bed and fuck her blind until his heart gave out.
He could think of no better way to go.
But they weren't supposed to want that. They weren't allowed to act on that. And so they weren't supposed to talk about that. Which meant that by the time he got out of this tub, Charlie would be gone. Instead of him getting to burrow down next to her in his bed tonight and holding her for warmth and trying to convince himself it would be enough – that it had to be enough – Charlie would run. She would go to Gene's if her house really was cold and empty. She would go to the bar downtown and drink until she'd be warm enough to sleep anywhere and probably go home with some pussy-whipped Ranger prick and dive into another night of hard-core hate-sex with a man whose name she wouldn't even remember tomorrow.
He knew she wouldn't remember. She never remembered. He'd seen her go home with a few guys, and then call them by the wrong names when forced to interact with them on missions before. At first, he'd thought it was a ploy to keep them at arm-length when they all wanted to make her their girlfriend; their wife; the mother of children they didn't even know they wanted yet.
But he knew Charlotte. He could always tell when she was lying. He knew when she was genuinely confused, and when she looked at one burly wanker she'd bedded and called him Josh instead of Garrett, she'd genuinely had no idea the name wasn't correct. What was more, she hadn't cared. She'd made that clear when Garrett had corrected her slowly and taken pains to remind her that they'd fucked, and she'd blinked at him and asked him if he was sure because she didn't remember a thing.
All class, his Charlotte.
Bass sighed and got on with washing himself as quickly as he could so that he could get back into some warm clothes. He scrubbed thoroughly despite his speed. He hated going to bed feeling dirty if he didn't have to and the water was still warm compared to his skin, even if it had cooled while they'd been talking.
When he was done, he tipped the remainder of the soapy, dirty water down the drain and dried off quickly, wrapping himself in a towel by force of habit, thinking Charlie had probably left after his dumb comment. He was grateful he'd used the towel when he crossed to the bedroom and found her in the living room stoking the hearth up high, piling heavy logs into it to get it roaring and keep it burning all night long. In his room, he scrounged together the comfiest clothes he'd managed to get his hands on since settling in town when he wasn't on missions.
Of course, Charlie had already raided it and pinched the hoodie he liked to wear when it was cold and he wanted to be cozy, but he had a spare, even if it was a crummy Texas Stars jersey instead of the Philly Flyers.
"You ready?" Charlie asked quietly when he even had thick socks on his feet as he returned to the living room, knowing what needed to be done.
Bass sighed. She had the blade of her knife red-hot among the coals, an open jar of moonshine, and a small puddle proof that she'd sterilized it before putting it in the flames just to be doubly sure. He hated cauterizing wounds. It was like being hurt all over again, only twice as bad.
"You want me to do it for you?" she asked when he pulled his shirt and jumper back off over his head, baring his chest to make the cauterization easier.
"I'll do it," he grunted. "Last time someone cauterized one for me, I punched them."
"Miles?" she guessed.
"Jeremy," he shook his head.
She shot him a quizzical glance.
"Baker?" she asked.
"You knew him?"
"He's dead?"
Bass nodded, resigned, a jagged edge of his guilt cutting him anew at the memory of ordering the murder of his friend. He wondered if she could sense his involvement. So much of how they communicated relied on reading one another, rather than words, that he didn't doubt she could figure it out.
She didn't say anything, she just fished the knife out of the flames and handed it over to him, hilt-first. Bass blew out a hard breath, psyching himself up before he gritted his teeth and pressed the blade to the open wound on his hip. He nearly screamed, because fuck, it hurt, but he kept it in. Charlie offered no sympathy, just met his gaze stoically and produced a bandage from his medical kit. She raised her eyebrows, silently asking if she could bandage it and Bass nodded, the tension bleeding out of his as the stinging stopped and the ache set in.
She didn't talk while she got to work, putting a gauze pad over the wound, and then sticking it down with the last of the medical supplies he had on hand for stuff like this. He'd have to get some more from Gene if he was going to keep going on missions and getting himself into scrapes like this one.
"Sure there's no more open ones?" Charlie asked when she was done and Bass shook his head.
"Only bruises and cartilage damage."
"You didn't say what you and Miles were doing that ten Plains Nations guys got the drop on you," she observed, reminding of the topic he'd changed earlier.
"We were running low on whiskey," he offered, shrugging back into his shirt and jersey.
"So…. Bitching at each other," Charlie surmised, smirking.
Bass sighed, nodding before he retrieved the lamp from the bathroom and blew it out. Charlie got the rest of the candles, leaving only the roaring fireplace to light up the house well enough to see.
"Bed?" he offered quietly when she shuffled her feet awkwardly.
"I can sleep out here," she offered lamely.
Bass rolled his eyes and tugged on the front of her shirt before heading for the bedroom.
"Be warmer to drag the mattress out there," he grumbled at the changing temperature of the bedroom compared to the living room.
"Texas homes weren't built for blackouts and deep-snow winters," Charlie agreed, following him into the bedroom and crawling under the covers on the right-hand side of the bed.
Bass wondered what it said about the two of them as a unit that they didn't have to awkwardly dither over who would sleep on what side. He always slept on her right. After all this time, it'd just become a habit of theirs on the road that she slept on the left side of the fire and he slept on the right. When they fought side by side, he always went right, and she always went left. It was just their rhythm and sharing the bed would be no different.
Bass climbed in beside her and wrestled some of the covers out of her grip, yanking on them hard enough to haul her across the mattress in his direction. He thought about hauling her against him and holding her for the warmth and comfort of having a woman in his bed, but if he knew the vicious alley cat next to him, she'd streak out of the room if he tried it. She wasn't one for affection, his Charlotte.
"Aside from getting jumped by Plains Nation… how'd the mission go?" she asked quietly into the dark when they both stopped huffing and struggling over the covers and finally settled, beginning to warm up.
Bass shrugged his shoulders.
"Got it done," he replied grimly. "Patriots won't know what hit 'em."
"They're on board, then? The Plains Nation?"
"The strongest clans we wanted for it, yeah."
Silence stretched between them after that, and Bass wondered if she was tired. Reading her was a lot harder in the dark when he couldn't see her eyes and figure out what she was thinking.
"Had word from Texas the other day," she volunteered when Bass had closed his eyes and begun drifting off.
"What'd they want?" he rasped, thinking about rolling over and throwing an arm over her just to pull her closer, still cold despite his warm bath after so long trudging in the snow.
"Scouts are reporting a town lit up with electricity in Idaho."
"What?" Monroe sat up, reaching for her and turning her in his direction, looking for some semblance of her expression.
"Bradbury," Charlie nodded, letting him manipulate her closer without protest. "They say it randomly lit up and people have been flocking to it like zombies…. People who should actually be zombies."
"What do you mean?"
"There've been reports that people we know are dead – people we've killed – are there."
"The hell?" Bass frowned.
"Aaron thinks it's the Nano. Like what happened with Priscilla."
"Shit," Bass groaned.
"Reports say Neville's there, too," Charlie said quietly.
"Neville," Bass growled. "That means…"
"Probably Connor, too," Charlie nodded.
"Shit," he muttered. "The hell's he doing in a place like that?"
"Making the most of the power, I guess…" Charlie shrugged. "Monroe… Mom and Aaron said that Priscilla… when they fought her… the entire time, they were insistent that they – the Nano – be allowed to… take over them. Like, you surrender to the Nano and you're not really you anymore and they walk around in your body while you're trapped in your own head in a… Aaron said it was like a utopian world where there was no blackout and no death and everyone you love is there, and you're successful."
"Some kind of heavenly reality," Bass surmised.
"They said… Mom thinks that if Connor is still there and walking around on his own – not being held prisoner – that he might be… that he…"
"You think my kid surrendered to the robots," Bass finished heavily.
"Would he?" Charlie asked.
Bass sighed his mind racing, wondering if that could really have befallen his son.
"You probably know him better than I do, Charlie," he admitted quietly. "Every time I thought I knew the kid, he backflipped and did the opposite of what I predicted. You were banging him. Did he talk to you?"
Charlie pinched him under the covers for the casual way he said it.
"Pillow talk isn't my forte," she replied coldly.
"So I've heard," Bass muttered. "Doesn't mean he didn't initiate it and run his mouth."
Charlie pinched him a second time.
"Last we spoke like that… He was pretty mad. Betrayed. He's a lot like you, Monroe."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Bass narrowed his eyes on the blonde next to him.
She shrugged.
"Robbed of his family too young. Left with no one. Took a chance on someone who promised to be that family in their stead. And then betrayed by them."
"I never betrayed him," Bass growled.
Charlie snorted derisively.
"You turned on him and Neville the minute Tom pulled a gun on me and Miles," Charlie scoffed.
"He was supposed to flip sides, too."
"Didn't tell him that, though, did you?" she taunted. "You just flipped. For the family you'd made before you found out he even existed. For the man who hid him from you in the first place. Just like that."
She snapped her fingers under his nose.
"If he had any sense, he'd have turned on Neville too. The guy's a snake."
"Not the point, though, is it?"
"Then what is?"
She sighed.
"He'd do it," she said. "For the chance at being squared away in a reality where his Mom never died, and his Dad wasn't a war criminal and a dictator and never abandoned him. For a life where things come easy? Who wouldn't say yes to that, Monroe?"
"Your Mom didn't," he argued. "Aaron fought it off."
"Aaron fell for it first," Charlie said. "And I've listened to him moan about it when he's drunk. He'd have loved to stay in that world. Priscilla was alive and married to him and happy. His computer company was booming. His life was easy. All the wealth and food and liquor he could ever hope for. No more fear of being shot on a daily basis? He'd kill to go back to that if he wasn't too smart to see through the façade."
"And you think Connor's dumb enough to fall for it?"
"Yeah," Charlie shrugged.
Monroe sighed.
"You realize in that reality, he'd probably have been raised alongside you and Danny, and you'd probably be dating him, right?"
"Probably," Charlie shrugged. "In that reality, I'd be too dumb to see through his bravado and his bullshit."
"Fell for it more than once already, if I recall," Bass sneered.
"Pfft," she scoffed. "There's a difference between falling for someone's lines, and just being bored and looking to fill a few minutes."
"The fuck's that supposed to mean?" he frowned at her.
"Connor's used to girls who fall for his bullshit lines," Charlie said. "He tried them on me."
"And they worked. You fucked him."
"They didn't work," she rolled her eyes, turning to face away from him once more. "I was just bored. And no one else was that kind of easy pickings. It wasn't like I could've hung around in New Vegas for someone less easy to lure into bed. What? You never fucked someone just for something to do, Monroe?"
Bass raised his eyebrows, staring at the back of her head and scowling.
"Plenty of times," he admitted.
"You just don't like the idea of a woman doing it then?" she taunted.
"Not to my kid," he answered. "Not you."
"Too bad," she muttered.
"You think Connor's a Nano puppet, then?"
"Probably," Charlie nodded. "Not like he's got anything else to live for."
"Jesus, Charlie," he grumbled.
"Prove me wrong," she challenged. "His Mom's dead. His Dad flipped on him for the family who isn't blood, and he's alone. All he's got is a snake-like Neville, and from what Jason told me about the guy, he's no loving father-figure."
"My son's a nano-puppet," Bass sighed, giving in to the urge to loop his arm over Charlie and dragging her back towards himself until he was spooned around her.
She tensed briefly before sighing and relaxing, not bothering to protest or to fight him off.
"Probably imagining a life for himself where he's the man and his Dad's a cool guy and his Mom's alive," Charlie told him.
"Better reality than this one," Bass muttered.
"Right?" she replied.
Bass shook his head, burrowing his nose into her long blonde hair and breathing in the smell of her. She was warm against him, radiating heat like a tiny ball of sunshine, the warmth seeping into his cold bones.
"I've gotta get him back, Charlie," he murmured into the back of her neck.
She sighed.
"Yeah," she agreed. "I know. It's why I told you."
Bass nodded, wondering if she would help him. Suspecting that she would, if only for something to do that wasn't mooching around Willoughby and pretending at a regular life.
"You want to come with me?" he offered, closing his eyes as the warmth of her in his arm and the exhaustion of his mission finally caught up with him.
His mouth twitched into a half-smile when she whispered, "Don't I always?"