moving in, moving on

[sideways]

Title: Moving In, Moving On

Rating: PG

Series: Fallout: New Vegas (original characters)

Wordcount: 1,814

Summary: Only a few weeks after Avery has left the army to return to the Mojave - return to Wyn - things are still hesitantly settling into a new normal.

Remarks: Wyn belongs to weirderwest!

“So,” Wyn said one morning, eight days into the experience of home ownership, “did you really wear that all the way back from California?”

That was apparently his coat, which he only discovered when he shuffled up on his elbows to peer down the length of his bed. It was folded neatly on top of the crate he’d shoved up here for what would probably be a good reason if he could remember it, and didn’t seem deserving of the sceptical side-long look it was receiving. Avery felt a little offended on its behalf.

“As that happens to be its entire purpose…”

“Down, boy, I was just trying to picture it. You with your bag over your shoulder, hitching rides with the caravans, snuggling up at night to the friendliest brahmin – it’s very rustic.” She turned her head to share her smile with him then, deep dimples suggesting his offense wasn’t completely unwarranted.

She was sat on the bed as well, there not really being anywhere else to sit, but at a cross angle facing the railing, her knees bent over his own and her hair loose across her bare shoulders. The loft wasn’t much bigger than the mattress laid flat on its timber flooring, and he suspected the builder’s intention had simply been to add more storage space; but it lifted him above the windows and so above the light pollution that flooded unceasingly over the wall from the Strip, and that had endeared him to the idea of a perched nest. It was a quicker solution than seeking out enough whole cloth to hang curtains, and left him light during the day when nailing over the windows would not.

“I don’t have any other coats,” he said at last; and then, off her raised eyebrows, added, “Eight years has a way of thinning out the alternatives, Wyn.”

She wrinkled her nose. “That’s…well, honestly, that’s plain sad. Are you sure you’re going to be alright with this new world of having to dress yourself?”

“I’ll manage,” he growled, and in flopping back against his pillow did not make an effort to avoid jolting her. It was too early for a ‘debate’ (read: self-righteous lecture from Wyn) on the evils of army life; even more so in this particularly earliness, when the peace between them was still fragile in ways they hadn’t quite mapped out the edges of. It had been a nice night. Surely a nice morning wasn’t too much to ask for on top of that.

Maybe Wyn felt the same, or maybe that was as far as she’d intended to take the jab anyway, because she didn’t press the point. The silence stretched on – not entirely comfortable, if at least not tense – and Avery had just let his eyes slide shut again for a moment when abruptly she patted his leg as one would a dozing hound.

“I need coffee.”

He had no fridge, no table, no bed-frame – but he had a coffee pot. A house-warming gift, Wyn had called it, and neither of them had bothered to point out this particular gift warmed it in her favour.

He made a wordless grumble of protest in the back of his throat as the patting turned to a much less comfortable pressure, his body reduced to a bracing point as she pushed herself to her feet. His mind skipped ahead slightly, trying to remember where her clothing had gotten to and whether he’d have to move for her to retrieve it; a musing that was rendered completely moot, as it turned out, as the next thing he heard was a creak of wood by the edge followed by footsteps descending down the ladder.

“Oh god,” he said to the ceiling, and flung himself into a seated position in order to lean towards the gap in the bannister and glare down after her. “Wyn, for the love of common fucking sense-”

Green eyes swung up towards him from the ground floor, entirely too knowing; she’d found time to grab her glasses, naturally, and she’d slipped her panties on shortly after waking, but the rest of her was exactly as naked as feared, pale skin glowing in the morning light. It was a fear that wasn’t doing a thing to prevent over-willing arousal from starting its slow burn low in his stomach, but he was too accustomed to his traitor body’s reactions to pay it much mind.

“Problem, Avery?” she called up to him.

“Aren’t you supposed to be part of the world that dresses itself?” he demanded.

“Exceptions can be made to any rule.” She propped her hands on her hips in a way that accentuated the taut muscles of her sides, the curve of her chest, the cussed smugness on her face. "Particularly in exceptional circumstances."

Avery kicked the last tangle of sheet off his legs, shoving himself away from the railing in order to half-crawl to the end of his bed with a lack of elegance he was not going to dwell on; the coat found itself unceremoniously ripped from its resting place, and then even less ceremoniously thrown down on top of toothy grin with perhaps a little more force than was called for.

She half-caught it as it fell anyway, letting it sling over one shoulder, and pulled another dramatic face at whatever it was about the coat that affronted her so. “Really?” Wyn said, and tacked a sigh onto the end. “And here I was thinking being on private property would get you to loosen up a little.”

“Private property with open windows, Wyn,” he said despairingly. “Can I at least get to know the goddamn neighbours’ names before offering them a peep show?”

“Worse ways to encourage business in a new town, stretch.”

“Wyn!”

She laughed, swinging the coat around her shoulders to slide her arms into the sleeves. It hung a little loose on his frame, so of course it was a tent on hers, draping well below her buttocks and prompting her to start folding the sleeves back so she could find her fingers again.

Satisfied for the moment that she wasn’t about to recommence streaking around his house, he turned to start digging up his own modest coverings; they wouldn’t be the cleanest ones, but that was one of a few things he planned to worry about later today. He’d spent his fair share of time on laundry duty; at least now he’d only have to be elbow-deep in his own smelly garments.

Come to think of it, that might explain Wyn’s disdain for his clothes.

He glanced over the railing as he pulled a shirt over his head – after that little debate there was no chance of going down bare-chested and not getting called out on why it was that he could get away with semi-nudity – and paused to see Wyn, having wrestled the coat into acceptable submission, fiddling with the coffee machine at his bench. At his bench. In his coat.

A week and a half in Novac, two weeks in Freeside, and still these moments struck at some hollow inside of him like a drop of water falling down a well; so small as to be swallowed unnoticed, surely, but for the ripples and echoes that made it so much larger than that. The space inside him couldn’t be filled by the events of a few mad weeks or even a full mad year – perhaps wouldn’t ever be truly closed over – but these things, these moments…

When he’d left California, there had been no guarantee that they had been possible. Sometimes it still felt like they weren’t. Each was as whole-heartedly received as if they had truly been offerings of water to a parched land.

Avery knew he’d lingered too long when she turned towards him and whatever amusing remark she’d readied on her lips faded at the sight of him standing up there. One of the sleeves was determinedly fighting loose of its folds, giving her a slightly lop-sided look that was more commonly associated with him, and her hair had been flicked free from under the collar but not yet bound up in its bun.

“Everything alright?” There was a slight hesitance to her words; one he’d gotten all too used to this last while.

He ducked his head, muttering something that hopefully sounded assenting as he swung around to make his way down the ladder and hoped the blush would vanish by the time he set foot on the ground. It didn’t seem likely, but her gaze had drifted off by then anyway, focused on some distant or internal point as she sipped from a steaming mug.

Stupid to still feel as though he’d been caught doing something wrong when this happened. They’d already talked about it, had more or less admitted to wanting the same things from each other – to wanting each other in full – so there was no need for flutters of guilty panic at feeling a bit of damned affection for the woman he loved.

Can you communicate with me? she’d asked, and it hadn’t seemed much to promise at the time.

He cleared his throat, drawing Wyn’s attention, and tried to find a reasonable position for his hands that wasn’t a defensive folding of the arms or an awkward jamming of his hands into threadbare pockets. They helpfully proceeded to hover somewhere around waist-level.

“It’s just-” He floundered for a word under her gaze and settled somewhat uninspiringly on, “Nice. Having you here, I mean.” He paused a moment, then admitted, “Also it occurred to me I haven't washed that coat since all the brahmin-snuggling.”

A grin spread across her face at that last bit, but its usual sharpness was softened by the look in her eyes; all the fragility and hesitance and guilty panic suddenly didn’t seem such an issue when words so simple could earn a look like that. She stepped close, still with a strip of bare flesh down her centre where the coat hung open, and pushed up onto her toes for a soft kiss he had to lean down to meet, the heat from her mug curling up beneath their chins and the taste of fresh coffee on her breath. His hands found far more willing purchase on her hips, muffled as they were beneath the fabric.

“It’s nice having you here as well,” she said, and then patted his chest with one hand. “And don’t worry, you have a very manly musk. Besides, you’ve never been stuck bunking with a bunch of very unfresh, sweaty couriers. It has a way of lowering your standards.”

Avery pondered this point for a few seconds. “One canvas tent, four troopers, and a three-day long sandstorm.”

She gave him an exaggerated wince, mouth rounding in a soundless ooh, and he bent his head again to kiss the amused sympathy off her lips.