NSFW!
Boone refused to open his eyes in the cold and lonely dark where he shivered. He was alone in the dark, his figure hunched and curled up on the floor beside the bed.
A New Vegas winter was well on the way, and the cold bit at him. Even so, he didn't want the comfort - or warmth - that the bed offered. He needed to sit and shiver and think. Which, all in all, was who he was when he was at his best: a cold, pragmatic son of a bitch, a special forces nightmare with skills that helped him to overcome anything. He came back from Bitter Springs, from Carla, even from the no-man's-land he'd been hovering in after her death.
He would come back from this pubescent phase of lust and hormones that had plagued him since he had heard her voice over that radio in Sloan.
He would find reality again.
Eventually.
His mind wandered back to Juli, and the image of her limping and crying out as he grabbed at her in his mind's eye made his face twist up with anguish. He heard Carla in Juli's voice, the cry of something small and feminine, of something worthy of preservation, the cry of a woman.
Someone small.
He remembered he'd forgotten this by rationalizing her away. Juli was an unattainable thing outside of gender or biology. She was a force of nature that would wilt and die if it was ever touched. He would never touch her.
But he wanted to.
And Jesus Christ his dick was hard all the time since he'd brought her down from that tower.
Which was, all in all, pretty fucked up.
She'd died.
Boone's eyes clenched as the words formed again. He pressed his palms into his eyes to force the words away, but they remained.
She had died, and here he was lusting after her like a lost schoolboy.
It was all so fucking weird now.
When the doctor came out to report that she was being hauled into surgery, that she'd flatlined but they were working hard, he didn't even stop to glance at Veronica or that handsome stranger with the clean face whose name he pretended to forget.
There was something that just...came alive inside of him when he heard the news. Reminded him of Carla, Bitter Springs, of the monster that hadn't roared since she'd come into his life. It was the same, but different.
He had to get out of that building, that sterile clinic with lights that buzzed. He couldn't breathe, could barely see, barely remembered dragging himself into a bar. It felt like desperation.
He kept thinking that he'd been too slow and she'd been too weak, that if he hadn't been sulking away in some shithole she'd still be alive, that if his wounded pride hadn't been so important to him she would have made it. It hurt that he'd willfully avoided her, and she would still be breathing, hurt that if he hadn't stolen that fucked up kiss that didn't belong to either of them, his heart would be beating normally again, his chest would deflate, his stomach would settle.
He couldn't be anywhere near her or them or that. He had to make it go away.
Boone didn't mean to do anything that came next except to forget it all for a while, which was easy in Freeside with the NCR in town. With the cropped hair and the shadow around his eyes, the haunted, worried look that most of the young men wore, he fit right in.
He fucked the nearest woman he could find in the back of the building behind a dumpster against the brick wall, the act quick, raw, and angry. She seemed all too willing to oblige, and the clenching of her around him as they both climaxed made it all better for the briefest hint of a moment.
And then the aching intensified.
He parted with her without learning anything about her but her name, barely able to look her in the eyes as he fled to the nearest inn he could find. He thought of nothing but Juli's limp, lifeless corpse dangling between his arms between flashes of the meaningless, tawdry bedroom jaunt he'd had with that girl back with those settlers.
The disparity made him nauseous.
So he tried drinking.
That just made him feel dirty.
And sick.
He was so hungover it hurt, but he wouldn't stop because at least with the alcohol he couldn't even remember what was real and what wasn't. Veronica checked on him once, the bitch, and she rubbed his shoulders while he leaned over into the toilet, heaving that night's detox out of his system. He wasn't sure if he was crying, but when he woke up his eyes felt like he had been.
She said nothing but kind words, spoke to him gently of Juli, who was alive.
But the news brought him pain, so he shooed her away, threw a bottle after her as she fled the room.
She was kinder than he deserved because he was too slow and Juli had died and he'd let it happen.
He apologized to the empty room, tears in his eyes, and heard his father's voice in his own.
His father had always been a forceful man too, a rough man. He'd never hit Boone, not exactly, but he'd certainly heard stories about how his father, Boone's grandfather, had beaten the shit out of all of Boone's aunts and uncles. Boone had always feared he'd be as rough as his father was to his children, as coarse and as cold, or worse. He had always vowed to be gentler, softer, to be kinder and more submissive than his own father had been - if for no other reason than to spite his old man.
Boone remembered hating his father sometimes as a child. It never stuck, but there were days, sometimes weeks, in which Boone refused to see him, or speak to him, or talk to him, because of how he was treated or because of how his father treated his siblings.
He had two brothers, one older, one younger. Boone's older brother, Alex, was the star child - good at everything, handsome, good with his hands, good at making things, good with girls. He was revered by their father and doted on by their mother. His younger brother, Caleb, was doted on just as equally for being so cute, so sweet, so gentle, and the separation between Caleb and Boone was that of eight whole years.
It was like the cycle of child rearing was starting all over again for Boone's parents when Caleb was born. As a result, any attention that Boone might have gotten as "Eli" went by the wayside, and it had always made Boone feel so...in the way. He received neither the benefits of being the older brother nor the perks of being the youngest. And he was never treated quite as equally as either of his siblings. He didn't get as much attention, he was rarely asked what he thought or felt, and his word rarely contributed to a decision for the family.
The curse of the middle child.
But Boone's old man overlooked the curse when his temper reared, and he manhandled them all equally. It only got a bit out of hand once or twice in Boone's whole life, and the man, to his credit, consistently and conscientiously apologized. It was apparent, even if it didn't always matter to kid-Boone, to Eli, that his father never meant it. It made Boone respect his father for apologizing. It showed Boone that adults were flawed and deserving of understanding. It showed Boone that your heroes weren't always wonderful, but that didn't make them bad. And it showed Boone what he would have to do instead with his lovers and his children.
Gentleness. Softness. Kind words, careful prodding. He had to treat his family like a garden, cultivating it with patience and love and respect.
He wouldn't hurt his family, not the way his father had. He would never make them flinch...
...the way Juli flinched last night.
The thought caused Boone to suck in a breath as deep as he could in this twisted up position, his knees as close to his chest as was comfortable, his elbows wrapped around them as if he was protecting himself from his father's disapproving gaze.
Boone wanted to open his eyes, to forget the things she had said to him, but Juli's words rang so loudly in his ears it deafened him.
"I find you very handsome," she'd admitted so freely.
His abdomen clenched and he buried his head in his knees, feeling strangely guilty and almost...humiliated.
The Warden, the virgin, the innocent lamb, wasn't, in fact, the prey to his predator. She wasn't the usurper, the betrayer, the bitch whore that he'd cursed over the many sleepless nights they spent apart.
She looked on him and burned with wants and needs as a woman of flesh and blood.
But, worse, she hadn't forgotten about him. She'd worried.
She cared.
And he'd left her. Done the very thing he had been so mad at her about.
He'd allowed himself to believe that he meant nothing, that he was nothing, to her. It was an easy, poorly-healed wound that had never quite closed since childhood. Carla had reopened all of it, and with her absence, it had become a festering maw. When he first met Juli, Boone was broken seemingly beyond repair, incapable of feeling anything other than what biology forced him to feel.
Now, it hurt him deeply when he realized that she had done so much to heal that wound, and he'd failed her at the first test. He would do almost whatever she wanted to stick around now, to make up for gallivanting off somewhere else when he'd promised to come right back, to be available.
Which meant that, despite his best efforts, Boone also cared.
And then they'd shared that stupid fucking kiss and ruined all of it, and the feelings shattered everywhere out of their places, too much all at once. He couldn't care and kiss her. It was just simply not allowed. One or the other, but never both.
That wasn't Boone's lot in life anymore.
His abdomen tensed then loosened again as he thought of her ranting and raving, insisting that it wasn't what he'd twisted it around to be.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe Boone was just stupid. Or horny. Or a bastard. Or confused. Maybe Boone had more feelings than he realized and his body was ahead of his brain. Wouldn't be the first time.
He felt hurt inside of him, so much hurt at once.
Maybe she was just...there.
After all, the kiss wasn't romantic. Or sexy. It hadn't aroused him or triggered some immediate need for gratification.
It just...was. It was a release of tension, a sieve that had to let something out or one of them would die.
She offered comfort. He took it, desperately needing it, always taking from her when she needed him the most. He took and she gave.
When he remembered how she'd cried out when he'd yanked her around, how he'd treated her in spite of the fact that she was the one who'd died, she was the one who'd flatlined, he felt like his father.
He felt dirty the way his father used to say he felt dirty.
It was like this thing he couldn't stop, couldn't control, and it wasn't right.
None of this was right.
Especially not the dull bulging, the aching throbbing hunger, that emanated from between his legs at the thought of her that just wouldn't go away!
It was no longer a wonder why he'd spouted out all that crap about other women, why he felt the need to drunkenly admit to her the last thing he ever wanted her to know.
He wanted her.
Or rather, his dick wanted her, and that, without his consent, drove an insatiable possessiveness to have her.
His dick wanted her to be jealous, which made him cringe up and groan to himself, bury his face in his arms.
Why would she be?
Why had he said that stuff to her?
Fine.
He'd admit it.
He liked her!
There. It was out.
But it wasn't like he could ever let himself have her. In fact, it was because he liked her that he'd never have her, so the fact that he felt the need to ramble on about all the fucking he'd done in her absence to just get her out of his brain was mortifying.
They'd never have sex. She was off limits.
Even if her smile did things to him, not all erotic.
She made him feel like a friend.
The word made him bitter.
His body wanted something else, something he couldn't do with a friend, something that would expose a vulnerable side to him that would crush whatever was left of him if she saw it.
Because she would see it. That was her way. And Boone wouldn't be able to hide it. Not from her.
And she would see him and she would know him - even the dark, seedy parts of him that no one alive apart from Manny knew anymore, parts he'd rather die than have her realize.
What his body wanted was base and lustful and animalistic, passionate desperation mixing with longing to fill the hole.
Not worth losing his only friend over.
Boone moaned into his knees, wishing he could will her away.
But he couldn't. Like a fever, Boone knew he needed to get it out of him, to get it away from him. He needed to get her out of him, whatever that meant, so that he could honor her the way she deserved, the way a friend deserved.
He didn't deserve her. She deserved someone good, someone who would be around a long time, someone who was protective and gentle, someone who hadn't murdered their own infant child when hers had been taken from her.
The admission traipsed into his consciousness without invitation or warning, and his weak limbs began to tremble as it wreaked havoc inside of his brain. Long since dried tears welled up in his eyes from his throat, choking him.
What would she say to him if she knew?
Boone could just hear it.
"I hate you!" she'd shriek in his face, clawing just to get at him.
He wouldn't fight her.
What would she do?
Leave, and never come back.
It was a death sentence. He didn't want to die.
Not anymore, anyway.
Boone sobbed into his arms then because she'd ripped that from him, the numbness.
He'd done what the father of her child had done, and hearing her talk about it, cry about it - he was so sorry.
He was so, so sorry...
He had to make amends. He would make amends. Being with Juli was penance, even if she deserved better. This was his second chance. She was alive and he would do better. His redemption rested in her survival.
And they'd gotten the initial talk out of the way, and it would go back to the way it was.
It had to.
Because this was his second chance. His chance to be better and do this right, to fix it all.
His sobs faded again, waning as quickly as they'd come, and his dick ached all over again.
One night of fucking wasn't worth losing Juli, he told himself.
But that smile...
Boone throbbed and he groaned in his throat, clenching his eyes shut harder, as if that would help.
He shouldn't think about her.
It wasn't right.
Still...
Thinking of her took away his despair.
He wondered what it would feel like if he brought himself up against her. The erection in his jeans would begin to pulse as it made contact with the side of her leg through the denim. He would apologize, his breathing ragged, burying his face in her neck where he smelled her hair and those damn flowers she must have used to clean it. He'd bite his lip as he fought the intense, rabid, unbearable urge to rub himself up and down against her creamy thigh. Her thin, warm fingers like silk would lace into his almost as if they were making love, and she would guide his to settle over the mound of her nearly exposed breast just above her cleavage.
Boone groaned now, both in the dream and in real life, as he imagined the warm, fleshy nub of her nipple through the traitorous cloth in his mind's eye.
Boone let his knees fall down to the ground, his legs sprawling out before him. With his left hand, he anchored his fingers into a handful of blanket, a tether to reality, and he nearly gritted his teeth as his other hand, almost without his permission, almost of its own accord, slid languidly up from the floor to reach into his jeans, which were loose around his waist. His breathing began to hitch in earnest as he felt his hard-on grow in intensity at his own touch.
He pressed his fingers against his own length, his jaw clenching as he tugged.
Once. Just once.
A dangerous game.
This is wrong, one side of his brain chided.
This is sex, his other side argued. Sex is a need.
I shouldn't need this.
But you do. You're thinking with your dick. Sloppy.
His fingers jerked down again on his cock as if his body was slowly assuming control of all faculties. He thrust into his own hand a little, unable to hold it back.
She wouldn't want this.
She doesn't have to know.
It feels wrong.
She likes you.
She's lying.
How could she of all people possibly think he was good looking? She was pure and clean and straight lines and smooth skin. Boone was tarnished by long hours in the sun, rough, torn up hands, a shadow on his jaw that never seemed to go away anymore, a darkness under his eyes that made him look tired that had never been there before Carla - cold, mean eyes that were narrow and shrewd.
He was built, sure, but so were a lot of men.
This is just pretend.
A tug.
This is yours.
Another.
She doesn't need to know.
He liked her...hair. The way it smelled.
He liked her eyes too. The slanting of them was nice, and the color was clear. He liked the way she looked at him, the way her brow furrowed when she was frustrated. She was cute.
He also liked the way her body was shaped, a curvy shape, almost like a warrior, but miniaturized. She huffed around like a giant, even if she herself was small.
She had nice skin.
She was beautiful.
Boone grunted, resisted his own hand, slammed his head against the metal behind him now, which reverberated in the room so suddenly he made himself jump.
She didn't think she was beautiful.
She'd brought it up more than once. A pain, a hurt, underneath all the things he'd said, lingered inside of her. And he'd stirred it up deliberately to hurt that soft spot by mentioning other women. And he was sure she'd been wounded badly by this other man, this - this...father of her dead child, this scumbag fucker, this dick-licking cuntbag. Boone didn't even know the guy's name, but the stranger had found it in himself to betray Juli enough to have her howling at the skies like a savage animal keening over the corpse of its hunted cub.
It riled him up. His labored breathing heaved now, his aching so intense he felt nothing but his crotch, his fingers.
Juli was his friend. He didn't deserve to be doing this, shouldn't be doing this, but he just wanted so badly to just...to just...
He fought the words coming out, but he couldn't stop them.
...take it all away, just for a night.
The thought was dangerous, but once it was out it was all he could think about.
You could make her feel beautiful.
Yeah.
He could take it away for the other guy, make up for that piece-of-shit's mistakes.
And, in a way, make up for his own mistakes too.
That singular thought took any remaining self-control he had left and began to tug it away from his brain.
He thought of her center, of her clit, of her hips and thighs and what she'd look like naked. He thought of what it would be like to undress her, if she would be gentle and submissive or as demanding as she was when she spoke to him. He wondered if she'd be shy or assertive, if she'd be aggressive or if she'd avoid eye contact, if she'd use him and leave him behind because women did that sometimes too.
He didn't give a fuck.
The thought came out of nowhere, but he didn't give a fuck about how scary that was either because now his dick was so fucking hard.
His own need, the honesty in it, turned him on, the memory of her lips real and lusty and full.
His hands plastered against his shaft pulled up and down, up and down, with tortuously slow, hard movements that were so rough it almost hurt. He felt the budding precum welling around his tip. It was going to be a mess.
But he didn't fucking care. He couldn't care. Not anymore.
It was done. Whatever this was, it was going to happen. He couldn't stop it anymore.
For the first time, he was going to cum to her and he was going to fucking like it, he was going to fucking think about her and fucking breathe it in and shudder and thrust and want, he was going to fucking breathe her name out, get it out in the open, he was going to burst open for her and he wanted her to look him in the eyes when he did it, to watch with fascination, maybe take it up into her mouth as her tongue lit his shaft on fire around his seed.
He cried out with the vividness of the thought.
Fuck, he wanted everything.
He dreamt of fingering her, of the way she would squirm as he circled her opening with an index finger once, twice, three times, before she was clinging to him, pressing her bare breasts, those nipples, against his chest, begging for him to just fucking do it!
His two fingers would enter one at a time, her pussy warm and wonderful as it sheathed his fingers like well-oiled pistols sliding back into their holsters where they belonged. He moaned, gently at first, sounds that he hadn't heard out of his own mouth in years, sounds that casual dalliances couldn't possibly warrant, sounds that separated this fantasy from anything he had ever done or thought about since Carla died. He felt the pleasure of Juli's walls tightening around his fingers in his dream driving her to climax.
Climaxing.
His breath was loud now.
It was one thing to skirt around it, quite another to imagine him finger-fucking her right there on the hospital bed.
He never let himself have specific wants before. Maybe he'd thought about her naked before.
He'd just never thought about him naked with her.
Boone finally snapped.
He let himself think of forcing the gown up to her pelvis, let himself wonder what it would be like entering her, and the dream was as rough as his hands were, growing in intensity, in rhythm. He didn't hurt her, not like the last time he'd had this dream, but this time it was fun-rough, forceful and needy and passionate. She egged him on, bit her own lip, grabbed her own titties as he bobbed up and down on top of her, into her, as the nape of her neck grew sweaty, as her hips gyrated into him with increasingly forceful intervals. He almost felt the oneness of it, felt the wondrous comfort that came with her center, as she looked up at him, clutched his shoulders between her fingers, as she raked her hands over him to press him into her as close as he would come, as she just fucking looked into his eyes and fucking saw him.
God, she would fucking look up at him with those fucking eyes, those wonderful fucking eyes, and he felt the blinding white heat of it all building, mounting, rising up until-
Boone climaxed, eyes shut tightly, chills racing across his body as his throat tensed up from his heavy breathing. He let out small choppy puffs of air into the dark, solitary bedroom now, and he breathed out her name, somewhere between a croak and an outcry, a plea for her that took form in the shape of a prayer. He said it twice as he made a mess of himself, as his wilting energy waxed and then waned, as his eyelids grew heavy, his huddled body felt sleepy, his muscles relaxed.
And then reality came back.
It was dark.
He was cold.
And he was alone.
He couldn't, wouldn't, think of it now, even as regret waited at the edge of his mind, hands folded, patiently waiting to be seen, which it would be.
He disrobed, wiped himself off with the nearest towel from the bathroom that adjoined his room, crawled into bed, and fell asleep, dreamless for the first time in many long nights.
His stomach hurt.
Guilt sucked.
Boone wasn't even drunk, so he didn't know why he let himself do that. One moment it was moping and sulking and the next he was dreaming about being inside of her.
Quite the jump.
The fingers that roved an inch apart from her shape flinched. They tensed before balling into a fist as if to shake off the stress, as if when they grew too close she would somehow absorb his memory of what he'd allowed himself to do at her expense, wake up, and know.
The sensation moved from his fingers to his abdomen, and he felt disgusted, retracted his hand.
The hospital room was silent apart from general building noises that reverberated through the walls, so he nearly jumped out of his skin when she rolled back to him, eyes open and clear.
She cried out, making them both jump.
She put a hand to her chest.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I want to talk," was all he let himself say.
The guilt, the secret knowledge, of what he'd just done the night before coiled inside of him like a snake.
Worse, the guilt that he actually felt better now, more clear-minded, almost sober, held his tongue.
"Is talking the same thing as watching me sleep?" she snapped at him.
"I wasn't watching you," he averred quickly, his voice stoic and neutral. "I just arrived. I was trying to wake you up."
Half-true. He'd been there for a few minutes, tracing her lines around the air that she occupied without once touching.
"You scared me," she told him, her eyes stern, her voice cold.
"I didn't mean to," he said sincerely.
"That's what happens when you sneak up on somebody while they're sleeping in their room."
She looked past him, always looking around, as if on edge. He noticed a scalpel in her hand and alarm flitted through him.
"Expecting trouble?" he asked, nodding with his chin at her hand.
"No more than you would be," was her reply.
Her mask was on. He deserved it.
The information still gave him pause. He didn't ask for more, but she elaborated anyway.
She sounded tired.
"If the Legion comes, I'd rather go down fighting than crucified."
The image shot through Boone, and he thought of Carla.
She couldn't possibly know what it did to him, but it still made him shake.
"They won't do that," he assured her, his voice a heavy stone.
"How do you know?"
"I know," he told her.
He wouldn't let them, he thought, but he wouldn't say it.
It was already too strange between them now.
There was a silence. He watched her twitch and wince to herself as she attempted to shift in the bed.
"Would you like to stand up?" he asked as her eyes flitted around him but not into his eyes.
No, she avoided his eyes.
"I can do it," she snapped again, waving him away as he stepped out of the space around her bed to let her do it on her own.
He watched with excruciatingly exhausting patience as she swung her legs around to the edge of the bed but she didn't stand up. The way she flinched again made his abdomen clench, his fists ball up, but he hid all this from her.
"Does it still hurt?" he wondered.
"Not so bad now. It's just in a hard spot."
"Can I, uh...get you anything?"
She turned away, but not before he saw a sneer on her face.
"No," she dismissed.
"What can I do?"
"You've done enough."
He breathed in through his nose, pursed his lips.
"I haven't done anything."
"Don't worry, friend," she told him, shying away from his gaze.
He nearly snarled, his temper rising without his consent.
"And how am I supposed to accomplish that?"
"Your cup is already full, master," she quipped, her voice passive, "and I cannot fill it anymore."
"What's that mean?"
"You seem like you have figured out how not to worry about your friends in the hospital all by yourself."
It was his turn to flinch now.
"I was worried," he admitted.
"Worried enough to visit, huh?"
Ouch. He deserved that.
"I - I didn't forget, if that's what you're thinking," he stammered, feeling on edge now.
"So you chose not to come see me?" she asked, turning wide, hurt eyes up to peer at him.
His eyes widened too.
"What? No, that's not what I meant!"
"Then what did you mean?"
"I was just..."
How could he possibly admit all that?
"Having sex with hookers? Getting so drunk you embarrass me here in the hospital before the doctor who help me? The fun never stopped, did it?"
He felt himself close again, guarded his own facial expressions. He thanked God for his sunglasses and the fact that it had been a clear, sunny day today, which was cause enough for him to wear them.
"You think that's fun?" Boone probed, guarded.
She noticed, stiffened at his tone. Never missing a beat.
"I think you do," was her careful reply.
"I don't."
"Could have fooled me."
"Look..." he began, but he found he really didn't know what to say.
Idiot! Why didn't you prepare?
"Forget it, Boone," she interrupted, waving him off as she hoisted herself off the bed to limp across the room to the sink, where she drank with her hands. "You talk too much already. There's nothing else to say."
Boone paused, his heart racing as it sank. He needed to say this.
This was hard. Talking was so hard.
"If...you think so..." he managed.
He brought his hand up to the back of his neck, feeling a strange concoction of disappointment and grief well in his stomach.
How did he think this conversation was going to go?
"You disagree," she stated, a question.
"Yeah," Boone managed.
"Well, spit it out then," she told him.
"I'm sorry," he let his mouth say.
She whirled around to him.
"For what?" she asked, her tone caustic.
"I told you a bunch of messed up shit, and I crossed the line."
"Yes."
He was beginning to get irritated now.
He was here, wasn't he?
"Look, I was just mad because you left me behind and then I came back and you died, Ren! You know how fucked up that is?"
She hung her head now as she limped back to sit on the edge of the bed.
"Again, you get mad at me because I got so hurt. I can't help it if I died!"
"That's not the point - the point is you left me!"
"I didn't mean to!"
The familiar irritation welled up in him again.
"Well then, what did you mean to do? Because that's what you did and I just wanna know why."
"I just..."
She sighed, the defeat there alarming him. She sat across from him, hunched and huddled in a way he'd never seen her before.
"I need a friend," she told him.
His abdomen clenched so hard now it almost hurt, as if she had physically punched him in the kidneys.
"And what am I?"
"You're always mad at me," she mumbled, her fingers gnarling up together in her lap, her discomfort palpable. "Even yesterday, I made you mad. You're mad today."
"I'm not mad."
"You sound mad. And I haven't really seen you in a long time."
Boone exhaled. Took stock.
"I know," Boone finally acknowledged, hanging his head.
He sounded pissed, of course.
Per usual.
Boone gritted his teeth as she continued.
"I guess that made me sad," she admitted, hanging her head and avoiding his gaze before shifting at the edge of the bed.
He felt awkward standing and decided to sit across from her in the saggy armchair, which was good because his knees had started wobbling sometime in the last ten seconds.
Pussy, he thought to himself, and it hardened him.
"Why were you sad?" he growled, wincing at the sound of his own roughness.
She swallowed, didn't look up.
"So many things make me sad, Craig."
She wanted him to say something else.
"Like what?" he asked.
She crushed her chin into her chest like a child who knew it had done the wrong thing. Finally, she twisted her neck up high, forcing a loud clearing of her throat before declaring,
"It doesn't matter anymore."
"It does to me," was his reply nearly before she'd finished.
"I..."
She cleared her throat again, and he heard the tears behind her voice.
"I wanted..."
A pause. Composing herself.
"I wanted to make sure that you had a chance to be first, just like I needed a chance to be first."
"What do you mean?"
"You need a friend. But I also needed a friend. You couldn't be that friend."
This could not go unchallenged.
"Juli," he began, "I-"
"I wanted you to help me feel better, but you don't know how. I know that wasn't fair because I know when you're mad there's nothing but being mad."
He closed his open mouth, his next words dying in his mouth. A new feeling began to build as he narrowed his eyes at her.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, you've lost a child and the mother of your child and you seem..."
Finally, they met eyes and the helpless, almost envious glaze in her eyes chilled him down to his soul.
"...fine," she finally finished.
He scoffed incredulously.
"You think I'm fine?"
"I think you don't feel anything anymore," she admitted.
The feeling tossed everything around inside of him.
"Why would you think that?" he growled, almost angry at the accusation, at the lack of faith.
"Because...it's hard to lose family the way we've lost family."
He grunted, nodding.
"For me, there's too much, and I cry and yell. For you, there's nothing, and you get mad. Always mad at me."
The last part sounded like it slipped out, and Boone's mouth was dry.
"So I wanted to come back so I would be ready for you to be mad at me. I wasn't ready during that time when I left."
She smiled at him, a real one he wasn't prepared for, an ingratiating smile that poured cold water over the defensiveness, washing away the anger to reveal only aching sadness.
She thought he didn't feel anything at all.
She wasn't wrong.
Until that fucking radio tower...
But she also thought she was a problem, something to be dealt with, an obstacle, and she thought he hated her for it.
If only she knew...
"You are strong," she told him. "I want to be strong like you."
"No, you don't," he dismissed, hanging his head, staring at his hands, his voice bitter. "I am not strong if you felt like I had to..."
He glanced up at her - for help, he realized, and it struck him how right she was, how much he had relied on her, how much he had needed that reliable stare to reassure him that this was real, that life and all the hurting was real. He'd look to her to find out what to do.
She needed the same thing he took, and she had judged him.
And found him lacking.
It stung when she offered him a smile, when she tried to give him what his eyes asked for.
"Don't feel bad," she told him.
He scoffed.
"That's impossible, Juli, come on."
There was a long moment. She just blinked. It wasn't what she had expected.
"What do you mean?" she whispered.
"I'm sorry that I..."
But he didn't know what to say or how to say it. They'd never talked like this. It was completely new territory. It was completely honest. He almost looked to her again with that supplicating look, but he shot his eyes downward now, determined not to fall into the trap.
He was an adult man, he reminded himself.
"You said we were friends," Juli began finally, her voice wobbling.
"Yeah..."
"That surprised me."
He shook.
"Do you even like me?" she asked him, her voice high pitched.
"Yes," he told her, looking up at her eyes to try to emulate that look she'd given him.
It seemed to do something because she searched his face, stopped crying.
Suspicion dawned, and new, budding understanding of her began to take shape with him, like this was a vulnerable side to her that she'd never allowed him to see.
"Why?" she challenged.
He thought about it.
"You're..."
He sighed, his whole body tensing, like there was a giant fire inside of his skin that lit him on fire.
He was being tested.
"I don't know. You don't give up on me. You're...good. That's why I didn't really mind taking care of you."
She thought about this, and he watched her think, desperate for some reaction, which she wouldn't give him.
"I can take care of myself," she finally bristled, and he saw it.
The defiance. The wound brought on by his callousness.
"I've taken care of you a lot of times too," she informed him crisply.
"I know," he told her, nodding. "Kept me fed too. Missed your cooking."
He hadn't meant to admit that.
But it was the right thing to say for whatever reason because she seemed to perk up a little. When she met his gaze next, she looked almost shy and it made Boone smile, albeit reluctantly and only for a moment.
She returned it, but hers faded quicker than usual.
The hurt was plain now.
He swallowed. It didn't help.
"I should have come to visit," he told her.
Dammit, he didn't want to talk about this part.
It hurt a lot more.
"What were you doing?" she asked him, her voice high pitched.
He hesitated. She knew he didn't want to answer.
"Juli..." he began, but she shrugged, forced out some fake thing on her face to pretend at smiling, and it hurt his heart a little.
"Who were you doing?" she tried to joke, shrugging, half-turning away.
It wasn't funny.
"Juli," he supplicated, "I shouldn't have said any of that stuff. I was drunk. I was-"
"Which parts?" she prodded.
He winced. She wasn't going to let him off that easy.
"Most of it, but especially about the stuff with the...women and the...the, um..."
"The kiss," she helped him finish.
His eyes flitted into hers, her gaze so even and clear as it always was.
"I wasn't thinking straight," he rushed out, "and I was afraid you were going to die."
"So you needed comfort?"
The question was lacking judgment, but he felt judged anyway.
"Look, I don't expect you to understand. It was out of line. I shouldn't have kissed you like that. I just didn't expect...all this stuff just got a little mixed up, okay?"
"I know," she told him. "I'm sure that was hard."
"I just didn't..."
He trailed off, unsure of what to say, what he should say, without messing things up even more. Everything he'd thought about her, what she thought, what she felt, had been turned upside down. He didn't think less of her for it, but it all hurt a little.
He felt like maybe he didn't know her as well as he'd thought.
But he wanted to.
"I meant what I said, Craig," she told him, a gentle smile on her face. "I meant to comfort you. I didn't want to kiss you."
For some reason, that felt like a blow to his pride, right through to his core, and he had to fight not to grimace or even to react.
Which was stupid because that was what he wanted - right?
"I went a little crazy up there," he admitted, emitting a chuff of laughter that was completely fake.
She bought it, laughed once, which somehow released a lot of the tension in the room.
"We both did," was all she said.
"You should have slapped me."
"Oh, then who would scowl at me all the time?"
The playful barb stung a little now, but he deserved it.
All of it.
But he'd take it.
For her, he could take it.
He would prove her wrong.
Penance, he thought to himself.
"I'm sure there are other people who would wait in line to scowl at you," he remarked.
A joke.
She was surprised, but pleased, he thought, as she giggled lightly.
"No one does as good of a job as you."
I bet your blonde friend with glasses would try though, his brain simpered, but he didn't let the petulant words reach his mouth if it killed him.
A silence.
Then,
"I am your friend," he rushed out, his voice uncharacteristically wobbly.
They pondered that in silence.
"I haven't had a real friend in years," he felt his mouth say, feeling very out of place. "And...I know because of that I've...I've let you down."
She opened her mouth to joke, but this couldn't go on. He'd hurt both of them.
"No, I want to make something very clear," he interrupted, holding up his hand. "You are not my problem. You are my friend."
He let the words sink in, ignored the racing in his chest, turned away for the first time since Carla died from the alarm bells ringing in his ears. He reached forward, hesitated, but pushed onward to grab at her hand, a bold move. She turned up to look at him, tears welling in her eyes, doubt drowning the hope that hid behind.
"I am not here to make you sad or to take from you or to be a leach," he told her. "And if I am mad at you, I will tell you. I can promise you that."
The admission was hard, but it made his chest feel lighter.
"I know I'm not going to do a good job of being there for you," he admitted, releasing her fingers, "but I am going to try. I'm...I'm really sorry I wasn't there for you when you needed me to be."
Really? hers eyes asked now.
"I hurt you. And I want you to know that I don't ever try to do that on purpose. Ever."
She still didn't speak. His hands shook, so he placed them just above his knees.
"Do you understand?"
She nodded right away, as if she was hanging on his every word. He finally understood the power she had wielded over him as she took from him the comfort she'd always given, and he understood the toll it must have taken her to never be able to put the comfort stick down and just rest for a while.
Already he felt like he'd run a mile.
He felt a surge of affection for her that she had tried to do this for him for so long in the face of nearly constantly belittlement on his part.
"I won't act like that again," he vowed, knowing things were going to be different. "You can hold me to that."
The tears spilled over her eyelids and her lip wobbled, but she looked relieved. A bubble of laughter burst through and she wiped her nose on her arm, shaking her head.
"That was not what I was expecting you to say," she told him.
A silence. More comfortable, tension slipping out of the room with every passing breath.
"I haven't had a real friend in a long time," he felt his mouth admit, almost a warning to her, a plea not to hurt him.
Juli just smiled, returning the comfort.
"Me too," she admitted, nodding, her eyes far away.
Boone's back ticked upwards.
A chance.
A peek into the past.
But the moment passed, and she was trusting him again. He didn't want to ruin that over some lust for knowledge that didn't belong to him.
He would work so hard to earn that trust even if it took him the rest of his meager life.