Author's note: Little tiny slice of masturbatory lemon in this chapter too.

Stolen Glances

Trielle

Oh. My. God. Those were the only words running through my head after what had to be the most embarrassing, night of my life. And arousing, I admitted mentally, but still so embarrassing. I resolved then and there to never take a shower on the same night as Harkness, ever again, not even if I had to bathe with dirty bottled water from here on out.

The night had started off innocently enough, once Harkness had left me in peace to eat my dinner. I finished my steak and ate the punga fruit, which tasted a lot better than it looked. Mei came to collect me for bath night and we conversed as we walked back to the Weatherly to get my clothes and some chems to trade for water.

"So, girl, what's up with you and that Chief Harkness?" Mei questioned. "He's quite the looker and he seems to have a real thing for you."

"What makes you think he's interested in me?" I inquired, striving for an innocuous tone in my voice.

"Just something in the way he looks at you, and he is always staring at you."

"He's just keeping an eye on me, Mei. He thinks I'm a troublemaker and he's looking for an excuse to toss me off the observation deck."

Mei rolled her eyes. "He's looking for an excuse to do a lot of things to you, and throwing you off the top of the ship isn't one of them."

We had reached the Weatherly by then, and I ushered her into my room, giggling at her last comment. "You're crazy, Mei. I bet Harkness has tons of women throwing themselves at him. What would he want with me? I'm nineteen and still a virgin. I don't think I'm really his type."

"Still a virgin?" Mei goggled at me. "I lost my virginity at thirteen, though it was not at all a pleasant experience, getting gang raped by a dozen slavers." I opened my mouth to ask for clarification, but Mei held up a hand to stop me. "I don't like to talk about it, so let's focus on you. Don't you people know about sex in that vault of yours?"

"Sure, we all got sex ed when we were old enough, and it's not like I've never fooled around, but…it's complicated. The vault had been a closed system for almost the whole two hundred years since the Great War, and they were still operating under the morals that were prevalent when the bombs dropped. Casual sex was not encouraged, any sex outside of marriage was frowned upon, but it was more than that. The overseer meddled in everyone's love lives, much more than anyone realized, and he paired people up based on some twisted system he had. It was hard to get attached to someone, knowing you might not end up with them later if the overseer had his way."

"Wow, what a jerk," Mei said.

"Yeah, he was a real peach," I said. "Now, he did know that a bunch of horny teenagers couldn't possibly be expected to keep their hands off of each other indefinitely, so there was once a year when all the grownups looked the other way. On May 1st, every year, the vault threw a huge party for the younger set, and all of us were given extraordinary leeway with our sexual constraints, provided a period of penance was observed by pulling extra maintenance and doing other things for the community over the following month. It's quite complicated actually, but basically, we all followed a set of social conventions that allowed everyone to sort of hang loose for one night a year with no social consequences or attachments, or at least that's how it was supposed to work, but I guess you can't govern the workings of the human heart.

"Anyway, one night a year, the lights went out, figuratively and literally, and nature was allowed to take its course, until the next day, when all our carriages turned back into pumpkins, and we turned back into good little vault mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed on shit. Some people referred to it as a Beltane celebration or Cinderella's Ball. I just called it an exercise in frustration."

"Only once a year?"

"Well, we wouldn't want to go too crazy, now would we?" I said, sarcastically, hearing the overseer's voice in my head, speaking the words along with me. "But it was the same for me, year after year. The other kids would pair up and go off to some unused corner of the vault to fuck, and I was always left alone. Nobody wanted to be with that purple-headed girl from outside. Because I was, you know, from the outside, though I didn't know it at the time. I think that's part of the reason the overseer didn't like me: I didn't fit into his little personal breeding program. I was tainted, different. I didn't understand why none of the boys wanted to be with me. I saw the way they looked at me, the way everyone looks at me, but no one could seem to get past the damned purple hair and scars, or whatever was holding them back."

"Scars?" Mei asked.

I lifted my shirt to show her the network of lines and puckered stab wounds crisscrossing my torso and shoulders. "When I was twelve, one of the older guys in the vault developed a real problem with Psycho. Nobody knows where he was getting it, certainly not from Dad, but there were whole areas of the vault that hadn't been used in decades, so maybe he found a stash left over from before the war. Anyways, he went nuts one day; must have been a really bad batch, and he cornered a bunch of us kids in one of the tunnels. We'd been playing Hunt the Mutant in the unused tunnels, so we were too far away for the grownups to get there in time." I winced at the remembered pain. "He came out of nowhere, brandishing the biggest knife I've ever seen and screeching something about Commies. He was headed right for Amata and she froze, so I grabbed the nearest thing that looked like a weapon, which happened to be a length of pipe that had broken off the wall, and jumped in front of her. I hit him with it, but it was too heavy for me and he just shrugged off the blows and kept slicing me and trying to get to Amata." I shivered, remembering the terror.

"I don't know why he was so fixated on her, but she was my friend and I was too scared to run away. He stabbed me in the shoulder and my ears started buzzing; everything went black. Next thing I knew, Amata was shaking me and begging me to stop, and someone else was screaming for Dad. All the kids were gaping at me, and Paul Hannon was puking in the corner. I heard a squelching sound, and realized that I was still mechanically swinging the pipe. I'd turned the junkie's head into an unrecognizable pulp and was covered in blood, his and mine. Don't get me wrong, I don't want you thinking I was some kind of supernatural badass at twelve, or anything, it's just that there was so much blood." I shuddered. "As near as anyone could piece together after the fact, he must have slipped in my blood and fallen on the jagged end of the pipe. The other kids claim I jammed it into his neck, but I honestly don't remember that. All I can remember is him on top of me, and me fighting to get away. That's why I couldn't stop swinging the pipe; he had a death grip on my leg, literally. He wouldn't…let…go because he was already dead."

"Wow!" Mei breathed. "I guess in a truly horrible way you can identify with me, except that I was too scared to fight the slavers that raped me. What happened then?"

"As soon as I managed to put the pipe down, I collapsed and wound up in the infirmary for weeks from blood loss and infection. We had dermal regeneration technology, but the junkie had dipped his knife in some kind of industrial solvent, and the skin grafts to cover the scars wouldn't take. Most of the other kids couldn't even look at me for months, and when they did, they were so disgusted by my scars, and the fact that I'd beaten a guy to death with a pipe, that they didn't want anything to do with me. Nobody else in the vault had any scars, and they treated me like I might be contagious. Because I wasn't perfect anymore."

"Jerks," Mei muttered. "I've seen worse scars than those little things. So no one would touch you, not even on the night when everyone looked the other way? That must have been disappointing. Your one chance a year, and you couldn't get laid if you tried."

"And I did try everything to get rid of my virginity." I sighed. "When I was fifteen I managed to be alone in the supply closet with Freddy Gomez, one of the boys who didn't tease me much. I was on cloud nine; finally I was alone with a boy who was interested in doing something, anything with me that didn't include leering at my ass or calling me names, and who didn't seem to notice the scars."

"So…what happened?"

"We managed a few kisses and a little clumsy groping before the door opened and the overseer dragged us out by our ears. He took me to his office for a talking to, and he sat too close to me and kept patting me on the knee. He looked at me with that look that everyone gets, but on him it was really creepy…and he kept smiling, but it wasn't a nice smile, and it made me uncomfortable. It was like he wanted me for himself, even though he didn't like me and thought I was a bad influence on his daughter Amata, who was my best friend."

"Gross," Mei said.

"I wasn't turned off by the idea of someone older wanting me," I said. "Just him. By that point, I had developed quite a crush on my dad's friend and assistant, Jonas. I was convinced he was the perfect guy for me…smart, kind, and he really understood me. I don't think I was necessarily attracted to him physically, but we were kindred spirits, and I was too young to know the difference."

"I take it that didn't go well either?" Mei asked.

"You got that right. I cornered him in the reactor room one day, just sat down on his lap; pretended like it was all innocent at first, you understand, then I got to squirming around a bit, hoping to provoke a reaction. I poured out my feelings to him, and tried to kiss him. He was very polite about it, but he rejected me. He stammered something about how young I was and that Dad would kill him, and then ran off to a restricted part of the vault where I couldn't follow. He managed to avoid me long enough that I gave up, temporarily."

"Temporarily?"

"I had planned to try my luck with him again when I got a little older, but circumstances intervened." I swallowed hard. "He was killed trying to help Dad get out of the vault, yet another of the overseer's abuses of power. I still miss him, even though I think I wasn't really in love with him, just in love with the idea of being in love."

"That's rough." Mei said. "So an interrupted grope session with another kid, and a crush on an older friend, that's your sexual experience?"

"Not quite," I said. "The year I turned eighteen, I had been left alone at the annual party again and I was getting discouraged. Everyone else was doing the deed, getting some relief from their hormones, and I was reduced to sneaking around the vault trying to see someone in the act, so I could at least live vicariously off another's pleasure. So when Wally Mack came to me a few days later and asked if I wanted to 'do it' with him in one of the tunnels, I was thrilled. He told me to go get naked and he'd be with me in a minute, which should have been my first clue that something wasn't right, but I was so sexually frustrated by that point that I completely ignored the little voice in my head that said this was a bad idea."

"Let me guess…?" Mei said.

"Yep," I grimaced at the memory. "There I am in the tunnel, buck naked and waiting for Wally with bated breath, when the entire teenage population of Vault 101 bursts in on me with cameras, laughing and pointing. I tried to cover myself up, but Wally had snuck in and stolen my clothes. All of them. I ran further into the tunnels and didn't come out until I was sure the entire vault was asleep. Next day, he was playing tonsil hockey with Christine Kendall by the water fountain, so I pretended like nothing happened, but that didn't work. Those damned pictures kept showing up, sometimes in the worst imaginable condition, with you know, fluids, splattered on them, and the other kids teased me about it for months. I'd finally had enough and tracked down as many copies as I could. I did quite a bit of sabotage that summer, since that was my only revenge on my classmates. I got really good at being sneaky, picking locks and getting into databases people wanted to keep me out of. No one could prove it was me, but they never messed with me again. I never did have the courage to be alone with a boy again after that, just in case everyone forgot what happened to their rooms and possessions and tried to make me the butt of another joke.

"So that's why I'm still a virgin," I finished.

"Elle," Mei sighed. "My first time wasn't an experience anyone should ever have to go through, nor my second or third, but for the record, I did finally learn to enjoy sex; I just had to be with the right person under the right circumstances to appreciate it."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"Well, let's just say there's a big difference between what happened to my virginity and what can happen between two properly aroused people. I was fortunate enough to find someone who could do that for me, and well, it was quite a shock for me to realize I could enjoy myself with another human being." She sighed dreamily. "He wasn't a nice man, but he was nice to me, and I hope I can find another person like that someday. When Tenpenny ordered him killed for failing a job, that's when I knew I had to get away. So I ran, and ended up here, where I was hoping to start a new life, with maybe a new man eventually, someone who treats me like I'm worth more than just a quick fuck. Harkness is a prime specimen of that type of man, the type that can really make a girl change her perspective, and I have no doubt what's running through his mind when he looks at you. That said, girl you are in so much trouble if Harkness gets his hands on you," Mei laughed. "Now, let's go before all the hot water's gone."

We went down to the bath house and Mei introduced me to the matron, Olga, a pretty, older woman of Russian descent. Olga agreed to launder my clothing for a modest fee, and was more than willing to trade a bath ration for a generous supply of chems. I noticed Mei turn and giggle at something, but was too busy haggling for the fair price of a bath to see what she was laughing at. We went to a bank of lockers and stripped off our clothes, and in my case weapons and armor too, and wrapped ourselves in towels for the short walk back to the counter to hand over what we'd been wearing.

Mei directed me to a shower stall, which was actually quite roomy, and took one next to me. I could tell from the sounds of water in the stall on the other side of me that it was occupied, by whom I had no idea. I turned on the water and sighed with happiness at my first real shower since leaving the vault. It was so nice to be clean again, really clean, and I would have clean clothes to wear when I was done. I washed my hair and body quickly, not knowing how long I was allowed to shower for, and was just rinsing off when I heard noises from another part of the bath house.

It was Angela, who had clearly cornered Diego in the shower, armed with the 'ant pheromones' I had given her and ready to make her move. I leaned against the stall door to listen, and heard Diego all but melt for Angela's charms. All Angela had needed was confidence in herself, and I resolved to tell her tomorrow that Diego hadn't been under the influence of any chems when he responded to her. Various moans and sounds of slapping flesh drifted through the bath house, and I felt tingly all over just listening.

All of a sudden, the partition I was leaning on gave an alarming squeal of overstressed metal and came crashing down in an instant, taking the section between the stalls with it, and I was confronted with Harkness, in all his naked glory. I had seen pictures of naked men, and even a few in the flesh to be sure, but this was entirely something else, and I couldn't have looked away if someone had started the next Great War right behind me.

His piercing gray eyes swept over me, widening when they got to the juncture of my legs and turning to liquid silver when he realized that all my hair was the same color. He was magnificent, all hard muscle, dripping with water like some young sea god; chest lightly dusted with curling brown hair which arrowed down over his stomach to his groin, where it framed…oh, wow! I heard him catch his breath and his manhood swelled under my gaze. My eyes zoomed up to his face and I stared at him, wide eyed, while he stared at me with equal intensity. Oh my god, I thought, he's naked! You're naked! He's looking at you and he's not laughing or pointing. Well, one part of him is pointing at you. My glance shot back down to the part of him that was doing the pointing and it got even bigger. I swallowed hard and felt my nipples harden from the force of his regard.

"Oh," I breathed, meeting his eyes again. It's so big, did I do that? My god, it's still growing, and is it my imagination, or does that thing have a pulse? I ached to feel it against me so I could check for signs of life. My thoughts were rocketing around in my head like drunken bloatflies, and it was getting hard to concentrate. He looks like he'd be able to pick me up with one hand, or perhaps a certain other appendage. I couldn't help but look at it once more, and when it throbbed and swelled again, I inhaled sharply. I heard a sound like a smothered groan and my eyes met his for one last heated look that almost burned me to ashes right on the spot. We locked eyes for a long moment, then Harkness turned away, growling something that sounded like my name. He tried again, then swore, grabbed his towel, and headed toward his locker like the hounds of hell were on his ass. I snuck a peek at his retreating form, admiring the lines of his back and legs, to say nothing of his tight, muscled backside that made me yearn to test its elasticity and return the favor he had done me twice.

When he opened his locker and started rummaging in it for his armor, I ducked into an unused shower stall that was still intact, heart pounding in my chest. I put my hands over my mouth to stifle my erratic breathing and the sudden, hysterical laughter that bubbled out of me like water out of a fountain. I leaned against the wall and shook with repressed laughter until tears ran down my face. He saw you naked, the voice in my head screamed at the top of its imaginary lungs. He saw you naked and it turned him on! Finally, someone who can get past the hair color and the scars. And he has a few scars too, so he's not perfect either. Well, he is perfect, mental sigh, but maybe he gets what you went through. Then the rogue thought drifted into my head: I'd like to lick the water off of him, make him shiver, make him moan. I clapped my hands over my burning cheeks, embarrassed but aroused by my thoughts, and then I heard a knock at my stall door.

"Elle." It was Mei, and she was laughing. "He's gone. You can come out now. I brought your towel."

"Thank god," I muttered. I opened the door a crack and she handed my towel through, which I tied loosely around me.

"See what I mean?" Mei laughed. "Harkness couldn't take his eyes off you, and he looked like he wouldn't care if other people were watching when he slammed you against the wall and had his wicked way with you." She raised one eyebrow. "He certainly didn't seem turned off by your scars, and you liked what you saw, right? I mean, you could cut glass with your nipples right now, even through the towel."

"Yeah, yeah, he's freaking gorgeous," I said. "Now can we get out of here before I dissolve into a tiny, embarrassed puddle of goo on the floor?"

Mei steered me toward another door. "Olga says your clothes aren't ready yet, so just stay in here for a little while. I'll be back in half an hour." She opened the door to reveal steamy semi-darkness swirling around a blurry human figure against the far wall, shoved me in, and slammed the door. I heard her giggle from the other side of the door and felt my towel come undone and fall to the floor. Then I realized that the figure against the other wall was the man who not five minutes ago had seen me stark naked, and here I was, naked in front of him again, and we were alone. Having used up an entire year's worth of courage in our last staring contest, I made a squeaking noise and turned around to pick up my towel, forgetting that he was just as interested in seeing my backside naked as he was in seeing the front. I felt his eyes on my ass as I bent over, burning me, burning into me.

I quickly covered up and sat down along the opposite wall, careful not to expose anything or look in his direction as I stuffed myself into a corner of the room, keeping one eye on the door and the other on him. I glanced over, and seeing that his eyes were closed, felt free to look a little longer. Harkness sat with his back to the wall, facing the door, as I would expect any good soldier to do. He wore nothing but the towel around his waist, and I'll admit, I ogled his muscles shamelessly. He rested with his legs slightly spread, a slight grimace on his face as if he was in pain. I pulled my eyes away with some difficulty, and felt his scrutiny on me as soon as I turned away. We traded glances for a minute or two, our eyes never meeting, and then I looked over again and saw the tip of his manhood, poking out of an opening in the towel. I gasped and stared at it with eyes wide and mouth hanging open like an idiot. Damn, my mind babbled, that is one impressive piece of hardware. Is it bigger now? It is bigger. Oh…wow!

Harkness had opened his eyes at my gasp and looked down to find himself exposed. He actually looked embarrassed and tried to stammer an apology as he tucked it away, but was interrupted by the door to the sauna opening. It was the Young family, mother, father, and daughter, and Harkness took off like a shot as soon as they cleared the door, not even stopping to say hello to the new arrivals. I exchanged pleasantries with them, and then sat in an uncomfortable ball in the corner, feeling like an intruder on their family time. I wanted to leave, but Mei had said to wait for her.

When half an hour had come and gone, I figured she wasn't coming back and left the sauna to get my clothes. They were still damp, but I really didn't feel like hanging around the bath house any longer, so I put them on and headed back up to the hotel. I hadn't taken more than a few steps out the bath house door when Mei caught up to me, fully clothed with a smirk on her face and a bar of soap in her hand. She handed it to me, and I saw that it had my and Harkness' initials carved on it, surrounded by a heart.

"Here," she laughed. "For next time, since you obviously chickened out this time, judging by the way Harkness tore out of the bath house in soaking wet clothes about thirty minutes ago. Hey, next time you can offer to wash his back…and other things."

"Very funny, Mei," I growled. "You set me up. You knew he was in the sauna, didn't you?"

"Of course," Mei said. "I also knew no one else was in there, and I was hoping you two would benefit from a little…alone time after getting a good eyeful in the shower."

"Give it a rest," I sighed. "I'll see you tomorrow at breakfast."

We split off at the next juncture; she headed to her room and I headed to the hotel. When I got back to my room, a sound from the next room made me pause with my hand on the lock panel. Several masculine moans issued from the other room, interspersed with harsh breathing, followed by a sharp gasp and a long, drawn out groan of pleasure that sounded like my name, but was probably just my heated imagination.

Great, I thought, why should it be any different outside the vault? Everybody's still getting laid but me. I was tempted to slam my door shut in frustration, but didn't want whoever was in the next room to think I had been spying on them. I stripped off my armor and wet clothes and flopped down on the bed in my room, which was the most comfortable thing I had ever lain on, but the tension in my body wouldn't let me rest. Fuck! I got up and noticed the bottle of vodka on the nightstand, with two shot glasses set out right in front of it. Hell, why not? I poured a shot in each glass and downed both of them, one right after the other. The vodka burned down my throat and made me cough, but it still didn't help me feel any more relaxed. I could go take a dip in the Potomac River, which was sure to be icy this time of night, or I could take care of matters myself. I knew which I preferred to do; the dirty, irradiated river didn't seem at all attractive when I'd just gotten really clean for the first time in weeks.

I lay back down on the bed and tried to relax, but I kept picturing Harkness, in the shower, in the sauna…in my bed. My cheeks flushed as I recalled his fine male body, solid muscles and strong hands that I ached to have touching me. My hand stole between my legs to the little bud of sensation concealed there, and I circled it with my finger, whimpering at the delightful sensation and pretending it was his hands on me. Images of him flashed through my mind as I caressed my swollen flesh, fingers rubbing faster, free hand clinging to the bed cover as waves of pleasure built. Harkness was laughing as he teased me, smirking after slapping my ass, looking me up and down with heat in his eyes, and I was…drowning in a tidal wave of desire. I imagined that it was him I had heard in the room next door, groaning my name, and that made the flames burn even hotter. I squeezed my eyes shut in concentration, tighter with each imagined thrust, until I began to see stars. I had to remind myself not to hold my breath. I went over the edge moaning his name, hips jerking up off the bed in the strongest orgasm I had ever experienced in my life. My skin tingled all over and I could hear myself gasping for breath through the ringing in my ears. My last coherent thought was to turn off the bedside light before I fell asleep.