This is Nick’s favorite part of the day. It’s quiet when they come to Sanctuary, and he watches Nate, awaiting for it.
Nate drops the heavy sack of scraps and scavs, raises long, languid arms above his head and groans. Long and drawn out. “’m getting water, want some?”
Nick rubs the raw skin of his good hand, the stiff steel knuckles of the bad. “If you’re carrying it.”
“I’m offering.” The heavy, tattered coat falls from his shoulders. Without the bulk of it, or the clasps and hefts of his armor, his shirt falls straight from the juts of his shoulderblades, to the tight cinch of his belt.
Maybe it’s optimism, but Nick digs out two mutifruit from his bag and sets them on the bed. He sits down beside them, and starts on a quick inventory of what they’ve got. Beside the ton and a half of scrap metal Nate insists on picking up from everywhere they go, they are getting low on ammunition. the scrap goes into making amazing weapons, but very hungry ones.
Nate walks in slowly, the two buckets wallowing at the end of their ropes. He sets one down in front of Nick with a grunt. “Anything you want in there?”
“If you find a way of making ammunition anytime soon, give me the heads up.” Nick glances through his own stash, fifty or so rounds. “We’re gonna need to go shopping.”
“Yep,” Nate sits beside him, lifts his arms, stretches. Yawns. “Tomorrow. Maybe Cricket’ll be in.” He scratches the ragged cut at the back of his head, and bends over the bucket.
And that. That right there. That’s Nick’s favorite moment of all.
Nate has a rag for the purpose, he soaks it, squeezes it. The water’s still warm from the generator, steaming gently. Nate stretches his arm down and starts on it, the rag cutting long, deep swathes into the uniform grey-brown of dirt and radiation, leaving skin the colour of bright, burnished copper trailing behind.
Nate hums something soft and vocaless deep in his throat, rich with pleasure. The rag runs over the thin bones of his wrists,, the long, lanky fingers, the overlarge knots of knuckle and finger joints. In the lamplight of the old shack, his hands are heavy, sweet red-brown, the color of earth from an Earth no longer there. Nate glances at him, eyes glinting in amusement. “It’s getting cold. You want cold water, you can wash in the river.”
Nick grins. His coat comes off with a little reluctance still, but Nate isn’t looking, slapping the soaked rag over his neck now, running over the stiff, salt and dirt spikes of his hair. Nick does what he can with his own hands, but the skin of his right is so stained that it’s hard to tell what is dirt and what’s just long standing discoloration. The water’s uncomfortably hot on the bones of his right, he lets the wet cloth hangs to cool it before running it over the struts and joints. The heat of it shoots right up the conductive metal and makes his elbow ache.
“Are those for me?” Nate is pulling his boots off, he’s spotted the fruit.
“They sure ain’t for me.” Nick rolls up his sleeves, carefully wipes down the joints of his bad arm, the sensation is raw on exposed bones and wiring, he winces. “Thought you might want them for your project.”
Nate pulls a face. He rubs wet fingers over the brand on his cheek. The symbol of Atom is scorched black, and for all Nate insists it didn’t hurt, it makes something twist inside Nick’s circuits anyway.
“The bounty of Atom.” His lips lift with the irony. His teeth are neat and white as they sink into the fruit, juice welling up and staining his mouth purple and pink and reminding Nick, bizarrely, of Deathclaw he had once seen, feasting on the body of a mirelurk. The blood had been that same purple, and there’s something of the Deathclaw in Nate’s bright amber eyes.
He finishes the fruit, and munches his way half heartedly through the second. “I don’t suppose it counts if I just chew and spit it out?” He looks at the half finished fruit.
“I wouldn’t let any of the faithful hear you say that.” Nick smiles and for all his own doubts over Nate’s conversion, he’s glad of this particular stricture in Atom’s faith. Eat of the bounty of Atom. That is, fruit that was irradiated to the point of growing legs and running away.
But they could cope with radiation. That was what radaway was for. What Nick will be endlessly thankful for the faithful of Atom for, is that they actually made Nate eat something. Apparently a human really could survive on nothing but purified water and stimpacks, if they didn’t mind looking like the human version of Gen 1 synth, at least.
There’s a bit more strength to Nate’s shoulders now, since Far Harbor, a bit more solidity to his legs as he pulls his pants up and puts his feet into the bucket with a sigh. The husk of the fruit is tossed out of the window towards the compost heap. The rag comes out again, soaps up Nate’s legs, the staring jut of his shinbone and the muscles strapped taut under his skin.
Doubled over, the shirt pulls tight over Nate’s back, shoulders, the knuckles of his spine. Nick runs a finger down the knobbles. “Get anymore obvious, and I could get a tune out of them.”
“Fuck you.” Nate twists his head up to grin at him and yes. Yes. This is why Nick is here. This is why he is grateful to the Children of Atom, to the Minutemen, to this whole ruined, broken world as he is to to anyone or anything that can make Nate look like that. Who make him just so. Damn. Happy.
And he wears happiness so well. Like the sun, behind those dancing, bird of prey eyes. Sunlight on water, on broken metal, on smashed glass. Bright and brilliant and sharp and glorious and Nick cannot help but smile back, cannot help but reach out his hand and Nate sits up, catches Nick’s hand and his whole body is open to him. Liquid and easy with the sheer joy.
Nate shifts over, knocks the bucket away with a quick cast of his foot and brings his feet up on the bed. Just this close and Nick can feel him, the pulseline at his wrist, Under Nick’s thumb, the slight uptick in breaths per minute, the warm flush creeping up Nate’s chest and turning the skin there russet red, burnt umber.
If there ever needed a justification for what old, human Nick would have called ‘mixing the races’ and others back then had rather worse terms for, that justification is Nathaniel Brooks.
His fingers touch Nick just above where his collarbone would have been if he had one. Just below the crest of his shoulder where a Gunner once took offense at his existence and left him with a three inch long line of raw metal where the skin was scoured off. Nate’s fingers land soft as moth wings, the heat of them sharp, sweet.
Nate wavers, one hand still caught in the trap of Nick’s steel ones. His fingers trace around the gash in Nick’s shoulder, trace around to the base of his throat. His shoulders are drawn up in a hawk’s hunch, eyes bright with a same intent and focus as before a shot.
The kiss, when it comes, is sweet. Nick can only half taste it, the sensors in his mouth are mostly burnt out or were never fixed in properly in the first place, but the sweetness is in the contact, the hungry push of Nate’s teeth, the press of his thumb against the complex knot of wires at Nick’s throat that burst with a wave of warm, delicious sensation. Nick closes his eyes, smiles against Nate’s mouth.
There is still a part of him that wonders what the hell Nate is getting out of this. Nick’s mouth dry and slick plastic inside, no doubt tasting mostly of coolant and cigarettes, but when Nate breaks the kiss to steady himself, pull his hand from Nick’s and starts pulling off the last few layers between them, he’s smiling. That brilliant, starburst smile, blooming like the false sun he worships for a god.
And, by God or Atom or anyone out there- if Nick can make someone that happy just by kissing them, then there has to be a point to him after all.
Nate shucks off his shirt and pants, kicks them into the nest of blankets and curls up against Nick. For such a tall man, he can pack himself away to quite a small space, small enough for Nick to put his arms around easily, fit against him, mold his more yielding body against Nick’s less forgiving one until Nick can feel Nate’s heart beating through every inch of his own body and Nate can feel the clicks and whirs of Nick’s systems through every nerve and Nick tightens his grip by increments, tiny degrees and he can believe this is his. This is something he can have. Whole, holy and entire.
Nate is very still, limp and quiet and eyes closed as though trying to memorise every fragment of this. Register every fragment in his still uncertain mind and never let anyone take it away. Nick breathes in the hot rad small of Nate’s hair, does the same. This is something they can understand, the two of them. Maybe no one else, certainly no one who isn’t a synth, but there are no questions, no need for answers.
Sometimes, things can be so bad that you need these moments, these memories.
Then Nate looks up, a brief darting motion, he smiles like quicksilver and snatches another kiss, fast as breathing. “I got something for you.”
And just like that, Nick is sitting there with empty arms and Nate is across the room to his pack. “Saw it as we were coming in.” He continues, digging in, “But wanted to wait under we had some light. Here-” he pulls something free, dances back to the bed and dives back in, snuggling under Nicks arm as though he had never left. “For you.”
It’s a mutifruit flower, pale purple, the petals a little crushed from it’s bumpy journey in Nate’s pack. Nick curls his metal fingers around it, feels every vein on the little thing, the fine fur on the stem. It has no scent, but the crushed petals are damp, smell of falling rain. “Nate-” Nate has his eyes closed, face turned into Nick’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
“You’ll put it with the others?”
“Sure.” He’s getting quite the botanical collection, what with this whim of Nate’s to give him every flower they pass on their travels. Hubflowers, mutifruits, wild carrots, even a few pickings from the vast, nodding blooms of mutated lilac they had once found. Nick would like to say he isn’t sentimental, but-
“You’re going to wreck my reputation.” He kisses the top of Nate’s head.
“Nah,” Nate yawns. “All the best detectives get flowers, s‘like a way of saying thank you.”
Jenny had never given flowers. Or been given flowers. She wore her hair buzzed short, laughed like machinegun fire, she’d been more likely to give Nick- old, human Nick- a shotgun blast to the face than a dozen red roses. Who’d have given him a shot or three, if he’d tried to give her any.
He turns the flower in his hands, over and over. Nate’s hair is too long again, they spend too much time away from Diamond City for him to keep it in any style at all, and he has two laughs, the soft, deep one Nate can hear now, echoing from deep inside his chest, and the other one. The one that belongs to another Nate entirely. The one that cuts through the air like an early warning siren, as the first bombs fall.
But that Nate isn’t here, this one is. Nick loves them both.
“Wanna have sex?” Nate yawns. He throws his legs over Nick’s, drags up the edge of his shirt with one hand and spreads a hand over where the false skin is fraying against his metal ribs. The heat of him has sunk so far into Nick that the touch only makes him shiver as Nate finds another cluster of wires, and Nick’s eyes slide half closed with the sheer warm contented pleasure of it.
“That’s up to you, sweetheart.” Another kiss. “Whatever you want.”
Nate hums and presses his crotch against Nate’s thigh and, well, that’s a pretty clear answer. The hand on his back splays flat, rubs little circles around that sensitive spots where lose wires and sensors are clustered and soldered together and god, oh god that feels good. There is no human equivalent Nick can reach for, nothing like orgasm or the sexual build up he’s happy to reach down and give Nate a hand with. It’s like- sinking under a deep sea of warm, sweet comfort, surrounded and safe and it would feel wonderful whoever was doing, like the most absurd trust exercise in vulnerability except, it’s Nate, and Nick would hold himself open to the waist and let Nate root around in him for spare parts if he wanted.
Nate’s cock is hard against his thigh, Nate shudders when Nick wraps his good hand around it, tuns his face up hungrily for a panting kiss.
And they stay, like that. Just like that. And it must look utterly absurd to anyone- the very idea is absurd, a half wrecked synth and a human with half his marbles gone on a filthy bed in a nuclear wasteland. But then, what isn’t strange and bizarre here? Nate rolls his head back and groans happily into Nick’s side, sliding back down until the two of them are curled up on the bed, Nate shivering and breathing deep and heavy, both hands on Nick’s back, roaming hungrily and mapping out new pathways of wires and sensors and bleeding out warm pleasure.
Nate comes with a low, languid shudder, over Nick’s leg and hand and his own stomach. His hands still for a moment, and Nick moves them away carefully. It’s enough, it’s more than enough, he can close his eyes and drift for most of the evening, like flying, or being deep underwater.
“Love you,” Nate mumbles, slurred.
“Yeah.” It doesn’t feel quite right, to say it back so much. Nate hands out declarations like he does flowers, like kisses, and it works for him. Nick- Nick doesn’t quite work like that, maybe if he says the words too much, they’ll wear out and break like everything else has around them.
But Nate just nods, like he knows what Nick is thinking. He reaches down and grabs the rag from Nick’s bucket and cleans the both off, mumbling what might be an apology and might be something more intimate, but it’s doesn’t matter. It’s good. One thing in this broken, impossible world, is good.
Re: Valentine/M!Any
This is Nick’s favorite part of the day. It’s quiet when they come to Sanctuary, and he watches Nate, awaiting for it.
Nate drops the heavy sack of scraps and scavs, raises long, languid arms above his head and groans. Long and drawn out. “’m getting water, want some?”
Nick rubs the raw skin of his good hand, the stiff steel knuckles of the bad. “If you’re carrying it.”
“I’m offering.” The heavy, tattered coat falls from his shoulders. Without the bulk of it, or the clasps and hefts of his armor, his shirt falls straight from the juts of his shoulderblades, to the tight cinch of his belt.
Maybe it’s optimism, but Nick digs out two mutifruit from his bag and sets them on the bed. He sits down beside them, and starts on a quick inventory of what they’ve got. Beside the ton and a half of scrap metal Nate insists on picking up from everywhere they go, they are getting low on ammunition. the scrap goes into making amazing weapons, but very hungry ones.
Nate walks in slowly, the two buckets wallowing at the end of their ropes. He sets one down in front of Nick with a grunt. “Anything you want in there?”
“If you find a way of making ammunition anytime soon, give me the heads up.” Nick glances through his own stash, fifty or so rounds. “We’re gonna need to go shopping.”
“Yep,” Nate sits beside him, lifts his arms, stretches. Yawns. “Tomorrow. Maybe Cricket’ll be in.” He scratches the ragged cut at the back of his head, and bends over the bucket.
And that. That right there. That’s Nick’s favorite moment of all.
Nate has a rag for the purpose, he soaks it, squeezes it. The water’s still warm from the generator, steaming gently. Nate stretches his arm down and starts on it, the rag cutting long, deep swathes into the uniform grey-brown of dirt and radiation, leaving skin the colour of bright, burnished copper trailing behind.
Nate hums something soft and vocaless deep in his throat, rich with pleasure. The rag runs over the thin bones of his wrists,, the long, lanky fingers, the overlarge knots of knuckle and finger joints. In the lamplight of the old shack, his hands are heavy, sweet red-brown, the color of earth from an Earth no longer there. Nate glances at him, eyes glinting in amusement. “It’s getting cold. You want cold water, you can wash in the river.”
Nick grins. His coat comes off with a little reluctance still, but Nate isn’t looking, slapping the soaked rag over his neck now, running over the stiff, salt and dirt spikes of his hair. Nick does what he can with his own hands, but the skin of his right is so stained that it’s hard to tell what is dirt and what’s just long standing discoloration. The water’s uncomfortably hot on the bones of his right, he lets the wet cloth hangs to cool it before running it over the struts and joints. The heat of it shoots right up the conductive metal and makes his elbow ache.
“Are those for me?” Nate is pulling his boots off, he’s spotted the fruit.
“They sure ain’t for me.” Nick rolls up his sleeves, carefully wipes down the joints of his bad arm, the sensation is raw on exposed bones and wiring, he winces. “Thought you might want them for your project.”
Nate pulls a face. He rubs wet fingers over the brand on his cheek. The symbol of Atom is scorched black, and for all Nate insists it didn’t hurt, it makes something twist inside Nick’s circuits anyway.
“The bounty of Atom.” His lips lift with the irony. His teeth are neat and white as they sink into the fruit, juice welling up and staining his mouth purple and pink and reminding Nick, bizarrely, of Deathclaw he had once seen, feasting on the body of a mirelurk. The blood had been that same purple, and there’s something of the Deathclaw in Nate’s bright amber eyes.
He finishes the fruit, and munches his way half heartedly through the second. “I don’t suppose it counts if I just chew and spit it out?” He looks at the half finished fruit.
“I wouldn’t let any of the faithful hear you say that.” Nick smiles and for all his own doubts over Nate’s conversion, he’s glad of this particular stricture in Atom’s faith. Eat of the bounty of Atom. That is, fruit that was irradiated to the point of growing legs and running away.
But they could cope with radiation. That was what radaway was for. What Nick will be endlessly thankful for the faithful of Atom for, is that they actually made Nate eat something. Apparently a human really could survive on nothing but purified water and stimpacks, if they didn’t mind looking like the human version of Gen 1 synth, at least.
There’s a bit more strength to Nate’s shoulders now, since Far Harbor, a bit more solidity to his legs as he pulls his pants up and puts his feet into the bucket with a sigh. The husk of the fruit is tossed out of the window towards the compost heap. The rag comes out again, soaps up Nate’s legs, the staring jut of his shinbone and the muscles strapped taut under his skin.
Doubled over, the shirt pulls tight over Nate’s back, shoulders, the knuckles of his spine. Nick runs a finger down the knobbles. “Get anymore obvious, and I could get a tune out of them.”
“Fuck you.” Nate twists his head up to grin at him and yes. Yes. This is why Nick is here. This is why he is grateful to the Children of Atom, to the Minutemen, to this whole ruined, broken world as he is to to anyone or anything that can make Nate look like that. Who make him just so. Damn. Happy.
And he wears happiness so well. Like the sun, behind those dancing, bird of prey eyes. Sunlight on water, on broken metal, on smashed glass. Bright and brilliant and sharp and glorious and Nick cannot help but smile back, cannot help but reach out his hand and Nate sits up, catches Nick’s hand and his whole body is open to him. Liquid and easy with the sheer joy.
Nate shifts over, knocks the bucket away with a quick cast of his foot and brings his feet up on the bed. Just this close and Nick can feel him, the pulseline at his wrist, Under Nick’s thumb, the slight uptick in breaths per minute, the warm flush creeping up Nate’s chest and turning the skin there russet red, burnt umber.
If there ever needed a justification for what old, human Nick would have called ‘mixing the races’ and others back then had rather worse terms for, that justification is Nathaniel Brooks.
His fingers touch Nick just above where his collarbone would have been if he had one. Just below the crest of his shoulder where a Gunner once took offense at his existence and left him with a three inch long line of raw metal where the skin was scoured off. Nate’s fingers land soft as moth wings, the heat of them sharp, sweet.
Nate wavers, one hand still caught in the trap of Nick’s steel ones. His fingers trace around the gash in Nick’s shoulder, trace around to the base of his throat. His shoulders are drawn up in a hawk’s hunch, eyes bright with a same intent and focus as before a shot.
The kiss, when it comes, is sweet. Nick can only half taste it, the sensors in his mouth are mostly burnt out or were never fixed in properly in the first place, but the sweetness is in the contact, the hungry push of Nate’s teeth, the press of his thumb against the complex knot of wires at Nick’s throat that burst with a wave of warm, delicious sensation. Nick closes his eyes, smiles against Nate’s mouth.
There is still a part of him that wonders what the hell Nate is getting out of this. Nick’s mouth dry and slick plastic inside, no doubt tasting mostly of coolant and cigarettes, but when Nate breaks the kiss to steady himself, pull his hand from Nick’s and starts pulling off the last few layers between them, he’s smiling. That brilliant, starburst smile, blooming like the false sun he worships for a god.
And, by God or Atom or anyone out there- if Nick can make someone that happy just by kissing them, then there has to be a point to him after all.
Nate shucks off his shirt and pants, kicks them into the nest of blankets and curls up against Nick. For such a tall man, he can pack himself away to quite a small space, small enough for Nick to put his arms around easily, fit against him, mold his more yielding body against Nick’s less forgiving one until Nick can feel Nate’s heart beating through every inch of his own body and Nate can feel the clicks and whirs of Nick’s systems through every nerve and Nick tightens his grip by increments, tiny degrees and he can believe this is his. This is something he can have. Whole, holy and entire.
Nate is very still, limp and quiet and eyes closed as though trying to memorise every fragment of this. Register every fragment in his still uncertain mind and never let anyone take it away. Nick breathes in the hot rad small of Nate’s hair, does the same. This is something they can understand, the two of them. Maybe no one else, certainly no one who isn’t a synth, but there are no questions, no need for answers.
Sometimes, things can be so bad that you need these moments, these memories.
Then Nate looks up, a brief darting motion, he smiles like quicksilver and snatches another kiss, fast as breathing. “I got something for you.”
And just like that, Nick is sitting there with empty arms and Nate is across the room to his pack. “Saw it as we were coming in.” He continues, digging in, “But wanted to wait under we had some light. Here-” he pulls something free, dances back to the bed and dives back in, snuggling under Nicks arm as though he had never left. “For you.”
It’s a mutifruit flower, pale purple, the petals a little crushed from it’s bumpy journey in Nate’s pack. Nick curls his metal fingers around it, feels every vein on the little thing, the fine fur on the stem. It has no scent, but the crushed petals are damp, smell of falling rain. “Nate-” Nate has his eyes closed, face turned into Nick’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
“You’ll put it with the others?”
“Sure.” He’s getting quite the botanical collection, what with this whim of Nate’s to give him every flower they pass on their travels. Hubflowers, mutifruits, wild carrots, even a few pickings from the vast, nodding blooms of mutated lilac they had once found. Nick would like to say he isn’t sentimental, but-
“You’re going to wreck my reputation.” He kisses the top of Nate’s head.
“Nah,” Nate yawns. “All the best detectives get flowers, s‘like a way of saying thank you.”
Jenny had never given flowers. Or been given flowers. She wore her hair buzzed short, laughed like machinegun fire, she’d been more likely to give Nick- old, human Nick- a shotgun blast to the face than a dozen red roses. Who’d have given him a shot or three, if he’d tried to give her any.
He turns the flower in his hands, over and over. Nate’s hair is too long again, they spend too much time away from Diamond City for him to keep it in any style at all, and he has two laughs, the soft, deep one Nate can hear now, echoing from deep inside his chest, and the other one. The one that belongs to another Nate entirely. The one that cuts through the air like an early warning siren, as the first bombs fall.
But that Nate isn’t here, this one is. Nick loves them both.
“Wanna have sex?” Nate yawns. He throws his legs over Nick’s, drags up the edge of his shirt with one hand and spreads a hand over where the false skin is fraying against his metal ribs. The heat of him has sunk so far into Nick that the touch only makes him shiver as Nate finds another cluster of wires, and Nick’s eyes slide half closed with the sheer warm contented pleasure of it.
“That’s up to you, sweetheart.” Another kiss. “Whatever you want.”
Nate hums and presses his crotch against Nate’s thigh and, well, that’s a pretty clear answer. The hand on his back splays flat, rubs little circles around that sensitive spots where lose wires and sensors are clustered and soldered together and god, oh god that feels good. There is no human equivalent Nick can reach for, nothing like orgasm or the sexual build up he’s happy to reach down and give Nate a hand with. It’s like- sinking under a deep sea of warm, sweet comfort, surrounded and safe and it would feel wonderful whoever was doing, like the most absurd trust exercise in vulnerability except, it’s Nate, and Nick would hold himself open to the waist and let Nate root around in him for spare parts if he wanted.
Nate’s cock is hard against his thigh, Nate shudders when Nick wraps his good hand around it, tuns his face up hungrily for a panting kiss.
And they stay, like that. Just like that. And it must look utterly absurd to anyone- the very idea is absurd, a half wrecked synth and a human with half his marbles gone on a filthy bed in a nuclear wasteland. But then, what isn’t strange and bizarre here? Nate rolls his head back and groans happily into Nick’s side, sliding back down until the two of them are curled up on the bed, Nate shivering and breathing deep and heavy, both hands on Nick’s back, roaming hungrily and mapping out new pathways of wires and sensors and bleeding out warm pleasure.
Nate comes with a low, languid shudder, over Nick’s leg and hand and his own stomach. His hands still for a moment, and Nick moves them away carefully. It’s enough, it’s more than enough, he can close his eyes and drift for most of the evening, like flying, or being deep underwater.
“Love you,” Nate mumbles, slurred.
“Yeah.” It doesn’t feel quite right, to say it back so much. Nate hands out declarations like he does flowers, like kisses, and it works for him. Nick- Nick doesn’t quite work like that, maybe if he says the words too much, they’ll wear out and break like everything else has around them.
But Nate just nods, like he knows what Nick is thinking. He reaches down and grabs the rag from Nick’s bucket and cleans the both off, mumbling what might be an apology and might be something more intimate, but it’s doesn’t matter. It’s good. One thing in this broken, impossible world, is good.