Many nights had passed, weeks in fact, since Juli had been really sick with her infection, but Boone's thoughts often went back to that long night with mixed feelings of both longing and indigestion.

All that night, and in all the nights since then, Boone couldn't help but to feel with his hands just how small she really was. A fragile person, a small, petite thing incapable of protecting itself, like a little cocoon. In short, he finally noticed for the first time something that should have been a glaringly obvious, self-evident truth: Ren was a woman. A woman with breasts and hips, smooth skin and smooth hair. A woman with cheeks that were shapely in all the right places, a woman with a neck that was perfect and looked perfect to taste. Boone remembered his words.

Don't make it weird.

She hadn't. Not once. Didn't say a word, just shivered there against him as sleep savagely stole her away from him throughout that night, for the duration of which he maintained a silent vigil, unable to tear his eyes from her. For the first hour or two, Boone shivered too - his, out of anxiety and rage. He felt helpless and he was mad at her for that. He'd have to yell at her after...

...she woke up? he'd argued with himself. After she was better? What if she didn't get better?

That was when something close to panic set in.

If she died in her sleep, he'd never forgive himself. How could he? He'd lost his strength and thrown her to the ground like she was an animal, like he was. He'd sworn he'd never do that again when Carla died. That he'd be in control. But he'd been as far from in control as he'd ever been now. No, now she was in control. Of his life, of his feelings, of his temper. Somehow, it all came back to her.

And if he'd murdered her...

He could end it right there next to her. Make little graves for them and just off himself right beside her. He had a gun. He knew how to make it quick, how to keep it from hurting too bad. A fate he'd deserve. One she'd never condone.

For the first time ever, her wants and desires came into play, and Boone knew he could never do that. If he hadn't done it after Carla, he most certainly wouldn't do it after Juli. That just didn't seem just or fair somehow.

Even though, Juli's potential death did terrify him, and he was so horrified at the mere thought, in fact, that he couldn't sleep all that night, even as the edges of his sanity begged him to tuck in for the night, begged him to accept that he could do nothing more. But he couldn't accept it, just couldn't sit back here and be helpless like he always was. In his distress, Boone nearly cried thinking of how helpless he was and how painful it was remembering what this felt like. She hadn't moved in some time, had stopped shivering, her back to him, and he wasn't about to jostle her corpse.

He didn't dare touch her.

Boone's hands made their way through his hair, which was getting longer now. He brought them forward and back, forward and back. His abdomen clenched and he tried hard to steady his breathing.

She was dead. So dead. Completely dead.

He'd killed her. He had to die.

Right as he was about to give in to something irrational, he heard a whimpering to his right.

His heart soared, and he felt so high suddenly that his breath left him completely.

She wasn't dead.

No, she was...crying. Relieved at the sounds of her being alive at all, he whispered,

"Ren..."

She continued to whimper. Didn't respond.

Hesitating behind her back, Boone reached forward several times, losing his nerve each time, until he finally couldn't take it anymore. Finally, his palm met her left shoulder.

"Ren..." he repeated.

She mumbled something. In her language.

"Wo de shubao..." she whispered.

Boone's hand tightened on her shoulder in frustration. He tried to understand the statement for a long, intent moment before giving up.

"I don't know what you're saying."

"Jiu ming," she whimpered, tears beginning to fall.

Under his hand, he felt her shivering and somehow urgency came between them.

He leaned forward so that his face was just above hers and strained to hear her.

"I don't understand, Warden. Help me understand."

Ren nodded.

"Help...me..."

It was clear that the effort exhausted her, but he wanted to help her right then. With all his heart.

"Okay...okay, Warden, I'm here. What do you need?"

"My bag..." she mumbled seemingly incoherently.

"What?" he replied.

"In my bag...wood..."

Off-put by this demand, Boone stood, hesitating awkwardly until she feverishly repeated the demand, more of a request this time.

It was the first time she'd given him leave of all of her things, and a monster inside of him ached to take advantage of the opportunity to snoop on her when she was powerless to do anything about it. He could find her secrets, uncover her lies hidden under her eyes, shrouded by pain masked as normalcy. But he didn't end up doing that. He just reached into the front pocket of her fat brown pack, where he'd seen her meticulously, almost religiously, place small wooden figurines as if putting them to bed. He refastened the clasp, and then he crossed the small threshold of the fire to place them firmly into her hand.

Juli seemed to visibly relax as the satchel of these figures sank into her hand, and she tugged them close to her chest, hugging them tightly.

Boone wanted to ask.

He ached to ask.

Boone was almost afraid to ask.

But he had to.

"Warden?" he whispered, as if to a child, kneeling down to crouch on his ankles beside her.

The nickname began to feel a little cruel, and Boone was taken with the sensation that she really didn't know what the word meant. He'd have to remember to stop calling her that, but it would be hard now. It was practically her name.

"Mhmm?" she answered anyway, clearly exhausted.

"What are those?" he whispered to her reverently.

Dull laughter rumbled in her throat as she clung to the little satchel.

"Jia," she whispered groggily.

She cleared it tiredly.

"...means 'home.'"

There was a pause and Boone watched her with closed eyes moving her lips in silent exchange.

"What are you doing?" he asked her bemusedly.

He'd seen her do this many times, though only when there was one figure, and she always whispered to it, as if it could hear her only if she spoke quietly right by its head. This was such an open affair, and the action was clearly so reverent for her that he was almost ashamed to see her doing...whatever it was she was doing.

She didn't answer. Seemed too involved in her whispering.

"Hey..." he coaxed. "What does 'home' mean this time?"

Dammit, if that wasn't the most personal question he could have asked. In pain, she stiffened, and Boone cursed himself. What a dumb question. Clearly this was painful, clearly she was upset, clearly she was unwell...

"Angels," the Warden explained softly, in a tone he'd scarcely heard her use. "They protect me."

Juli shivered more violently than before, Boone was realizing now. He squeezed his fists and then relaxed them again absently, wishing there was something more he could do for her. Hell, he was about to overpower her, which he could easily do when she was full strength, and get a stimpak on her, but her insistence, sheepish and sincere as it had been, stayed these impulses, even as they came in increasingly urgent waves.

"Do you need protection?" Boone whispered to her, feeling vulnerable.

Juli just laughed in her throat.

Boone just narrowed his eyes down at her.

"What are their names?" he finally asked her.

"Shh..." she whispered, not unkindly, before resuming her mouth movements.

"What are you doing?" Boone asked, more on edge now.

"Praying," was her response.

She didn't elaborate.

"To which angel?" Boone finally asked, feeling annoyed, though he wasn't quite sure why.

"My mama..." she whispered, her lip quivering now.

Boone stiffened, realization forming slowly in his heightened stressed state.

"She in there? In that bag?"

Juli didn't need to answer this time, her thick black hair spilling over her shoulders haphazardly in her shivery fever. Her lip began to quiver in earnest, and it tugged on Boone's heartstrings. Her whole body moved, and her normally tanned skin looked pale.

"Cold?" Boone mumbled.

She nodded, turning her head into the mat below her to hide her face. Still, she clung that bag to her, and Boone heard and saw her whisper incoherently into the mat's lining, desperate for some relief.

He knew that look.

Carefully, gingerly, he made his way back to her to lay down, picked up the blanket he'd placed on her, and crept under it. She stiffened at once at his renewed presence, and Boone wasn't sure if this was a violation. After all, this was undoubtedly a boundary he'd kept and he didn't want to break their bond over her wrong perception that he'd gotten a little pervy when she was down and out. Still, her shivering made him ache for her, and he knew he wanted to help her temperature normalize.

"This okay?" he asked her back, a consistent inch or two between every part of him and every part of her.

She didn't answer for a long time. So long, in fact, that Boone thought she'd fallen back to sleep. But she hadn't. She whispered,

"It's okay," and it was.

Over the rest of that night, Juli, against her best instincts, Boone knew, didn't make anything weird. Juli was impressively composed, despite how skittish he knew her to be, and he was moved when she huddled closer against him, finally eliminating the gap. At this point, groggily, clearly in sleep, Juli twisted around to face him and whispered, almost intimately,

"Don't leave me."

Things moved inside of him that hadn't moved in a long time. He felt a tugging, a shifting, and then a giant rock fell away. The ensuing avalanche took his breath away, and Boone wasn't ashamed to feel tears at the loss of these sensations, and a feeling of being overwhelmed at their return. Immediately, he was angry with her.

He didn't owe her anything. Not even his loyalty. He didn't really need her to ask him that. Besides, wasn't that a given? She shouldn't have even needed to ask. They were...almost friends, maybe. No, not friends. He didn't have friends. But she and him were better than he was with anybody else living. That meant something.

Then, he was sad for her.

A small, broken whisper, tired and weathered, experienced and beaten. Juli knew pain, now it was certain. As young as she was, as small as she was, she had experience - with death, with life. Hell if he knew.

But she'd been abandoned.

Badly.

Indignation on her behalf was next, and, pointedly, with masculine possessiveness, he tugged her into his crooked figure until the two of them were practically cuddling, for God's sake, and it was then and only then that he began to feel something else, another side effect of this emotional avalanche.

It had been mounting for hours, and only after he'd exhausted himself not thinking about did he have to address it.

Goddammit, Boone was horny.

Juli was a woman.

He hadn't been next to a woman in this position since he'd been with his wife, which had been a long enough time for him to have forgotten what it felt like. Given his emotional state, he hadn't really felt the urge to address his physical needs. If they ever cropped up since, he'd either fix them with thoughts of her in the past when the two were happy or he'd just drown in the thought that she was gone and she was never coming back. That killed a hard-on pretty quick, usually, and it was his preferred method of doing away with sexual gratification. On those rare occasions that he did allow himself the mercy of a climax, it was always accompanied with intense feelings of despondency and guilt right after, so he opted for the first option.

Now, though...now was different. It felt different.

Because now he wasn't thinking about Carla.

Now he was thinking about women. All women, any woman, the female species. He was thinking about sex.

And bodies.

And Juli.

He hadn't felt urges for another woman since Carla had died.

For any woman.

But Juli had breasts. He hadn't noticed that before. They were growing larger, he thought. And the thought made him realize that on some subconscious level Boone must have looked at her breasts before because he noticed that change now. They looked pleasantly plump now, perfect hand sized to squeeze at his leisure. He found it odd that they'd increased in size. Almost like she'd been malnourished when they'd first met and she was finally aging, despite her age. That must have meant she was abused or in some sort of trouble to cause her body to fluctuate like that, but that information came to him from a dim place.

Because, god, he was as hard as a deathclaw hide.

He closed his eyes hard, but it didn't help the fever that had started in his head and migrated south to his groin. He smelled her hair, a flowery smell - he'd been right that first time - a womanly smell. His eyes, when he allowed them to see her, lingered longingly on her breasts when they shifted around and this had become possible, on the curve of her shoulder blades, on the grooves in her neck. Her jawline drew his eyes somehow in a way that it never had before. Had she always looked like that? Smelled liked that?

He surveyed her face, for the first time not critically, as he normally did. No, now it would have been more accurate to say that Boone was marvelling at her womanliness.

As this reached a peak, she sleepily brought herself closer against him, and her right foot slid between his two feet, causing her knee to come into contact with his thigh.

And finally - finally, oh God, he'd been aching for this moment - she was flush against him. No space between them.

Boone groaned, afraid to move, unable to budge.

The shift did break that intense spell though, and some sense trickled back.

Frustration. That was this feeling.

Why did he feel this way?

He registered on some distinct, very honest place that it actually had nothing to do with Juli. In fact, it was probably because of his respect for her as a person, not as a woman, that he even felt this way now. She was a woman as she slept, a womanly body that didn't move like the girl he travelled with, didn't talk like her, spit out witticisms like she did, didn't lead him, didn't command his attention. As a sleeping figure, she was a beautiful goddess that all women represented. Tantalizingly close, closer than he'd allowed anybody to be, probably closer to a man than she'd ever been, Boone guessed.

Next, Boone realized what an honor it was to be this way, how much she must have trusted him to jump at everyone else but to snuggle into him unconsciously. That, too, aroused him, and he found himself, in his exhausted stupor, feeling a warmth he hadn't in years begin to melt away the bitterness at his center, even if it was just for a little while.

God, Juli's body woke something up in him that he couldn't control. His hands itched for her, so they made themselves busy tucking her in, making sure that his fingers grazed against all the best parts of her but being careful not to fondle. The contact burned, and Boone crunched his eyes closed again, unsure of what he ought to do.

Pointedly, he made himself face the disappearing stars, and he breathed, just breathed.

He thought of all the women he could have now, all the women in the world that were possibilities for him to please and satisfy. Like a muscle memory he'd forgotten, that night had woken him up to sensations he'd forgotten, like a breakthrough he hadn't known he needed, and the rest of that feverish time was spent with him fantasizing over women who were like Juli but who were not Juli, who could never, would never, be Juli.

As the sun rose, Boone cursed himself.

He'd made it weird.

Without Carla, it had become weird.

The fact that such a thing was even possible was a multifaceted monster to Boone. On one hand, Boone was relieved, hopeful, maybe even a little excited. He could feel. He wasn't broken. On another, he was angry. He'd made himself not to feel these things on purpose, and the fact that she was waking him up to caring about things again, even himself, however briefly and however meagerly, was none of her business.

Next, he was terrified.

About what all these feelings could mean for the future.

It had been years since he'd thought about another woman, really, and the last emotion he felt was some semblance of guilt for his urges. Carla'd be disgusted with him. He was. Carla wouldn't have liked Juli. Carla would have scorned her as an outsider for being Chinese and turned her nose up at her. Most likely Carla would have belittled Juli, bullied her, hated her for no reason.

For the first time, Boone didn't like that thought.

Fuck that, he thought to Carla in the waking hours of the last dredges of his energy. The Warden's okay.

Still, Boone could just see her crossing her arms, lips pursed in disgust and cruel amusement as she gave Juli a vicious once-over.

Nothing special, was imaginary-Carla's conclusion.

Well, then fuck you, Boone found himself thinking as sleep finally leaned in to take him.

This caused Boone's eyes to shoot open.

Did he really just think that? To Carla, of all people? Could he really be so callous?

But at the same time, with the ambivalence of a damned man, Boone also was tempted to stand by his evaluation. He wanted to give in to those urges he felt, to encourage that want to help him scoop the pain out of his tar-like core, but he also wanted to stick by Juli. Honestly, she was nicer than Carla, and sweeter.

Still, though, with or without Carla, weird was weird, and he'd definitely accomplished that. It had actually been weird for him since that night and that was awful. He wanted it to go back to the way it was before when they were just two people, two human persons, who could coexist without the tension of noticing a potential sexual partner.

But it couldn't go back. Despite his best efforts, she was real now. Realer than she'd ever been. Flesh and blood.

And, for the first time in almost a year, Boone was too.

In the nights that had passed, much to his own chagrin, he felt flush knowing that a woman was beside him. Again and again, he reminded himself that it was Juli, not one to be trifled with, that she was off limits, that it would ruin her, that he was the worst thing that had ever happened to her and that he couldn't push the nail into her coffin any more.

He thought of things every man did on lonely nights, though, because to his thinking thoughts were free: breasts, thrusting, moaning, grunting, gasping. He never dared allow her into that picture, refused pointedly. Juli was better than that, she was off limits, and she wasn't his type. But the consequence of feeling a woman again flush against him had woken up something inside of him that was ravenous and horny and exhausted.

And that beast had not gone away in the weeks since her recovery.

Some nights, when it got really bad, he really did want her. A last resort, a final admission to himself in a rare moment of self-honesty.

He'd run then. Go for runs around the perimeter of their camp just to get her out of his head, out of his system. Boone knew he'd rather die than let one of those fantasies come to pass because Juli was real and worthy of preservation and he wasn't about to soil that with emotional investment. He couldn't. Couldn't allow it.

But that didn't mean that sometimes he was tempted into tricking himself that those short hours of pleasure would be worth it.