No History of Being Rained On

They found the building they'd come for, which stood empty - stripped clean at some point in the past, the shelves bare, the fittings pulled from the walls, someone else's thoroughness leaving only the ghost of what had once been there. June stood in the middle of the room and looked at the bare walls, and then looked at him.

"It doesn't matter," she said.

He wasn't sure if she was telling him or herself. He didn't ask.

She'd had a reason to be here beyond the directive - something specific to this building, this address, that she hadn't named. He could see it in the way she stood in the empty room: not disappointed, exactly, more like someone who'd written a letter and arrived to find the address didn't exist anymore. She looked at the walls for another moment, and then she turned away, and that was that.

They made their way back through the building on her route and out to the skiff, the afternoon light coming in low off the water. They moved north without discussing it.

They tied up the boat at the flood margin and walked, and the walking brought them west along the old foreshore. He'd walked this way a hundred times alone. He didn't examine how it felt different this time.

She hadn't said much since the building. He watched her absorb the emptiness of it, not with disappointment, more with the expression of someone updating a document, making a correction in a margin. He found that he wanted to know what the document said.

They settled where a section of the old promenade wall was still intact, low enough to sit on, the water a metre below. The sun was setting. The bridge to the north was darkening against the sky, its few working lights coming on one by one in the dusk.

June had the notebook open on her knee, but she wasn't writing. She was looking at the bridge.

"You go up there every morning," she said, a statement, not a question.

"Most."

"Why?"

He looked at the bridge. The practical answer came up - sight lines, approaches, the value of elevation - and he let it go. "Habit," he said. "And it's… you can see everything from up there."

She waited. The room she left in conversations had a way of drawing out things he hadn't planned to say.

"I think it's the best place in the city," he said. "What's left of it."

She looked at him then. "You're not waiting for anything," she said. "Are you?"

It wasn't quite a question. He turned it over.

"No," he said.

"You've just… made a life here. In the best place you could find." She looked back at the water. "That's not nothing."

He didn't answer. What she'd said was true, something he’d never heard said, and he didn't know what to do with it, so he looked at the water as well. The harbour moved against the old seawall below them, a small, patient sound.

After a while she said, "There was a man in the vault. Cal." She said the name as if it were a weight she was setting down. "He was kind. He had a clear idea of what things should be, and I fit into it very neatly, and I thought for a long time that fitting neatly was the same as belonging." She paused. "It wasn't."

The water moved below.

"I would have left anyway," she said. "The directive was just… it was a door that opened at the right time." She closed the notebook. "I don't know if that's a good reason."

"For leaving?"

"For anything."

He thought about his old caravan crew. The adults who'd needed a kid for small spaces and hadn't been cruel to him, which had seemed like enough at the time, and which he understood now was not the same as kindness. "I think it might be the only kind of reason there is," he said. "A door that opens."

She looked at him for a moment. The last light was going off the water.

"What was her name?" June said. "The woman who went into the vault."

He went still. She held his gaze, not pressing, just present, that particular quality of her attention that took things seriously without making them heavier than they were.

"Sarah," he said.

June nodded. She looked back at the harbour.

They sat for a long time after that without speaking, and it was nothing like the silences of the first day. This was different. The bridge lights held against the dark. At some point her shoulder was against his and neither of them had moved to make it happen and neither of them moved away, and the city folded into night around them with the particular indifference of a place that had survived everything, and would survive this, too.

At some point, the sitting became something else - not decided, just arrived at, the way the shoulder contact had arrived. She turned toward him, he turned toward her, and the distance that had been maintained, carefully and then less carefully, over two days, closed.

The harbour air was cold, but the space between them was warm. The silence that had settled between them on the promenade wall was no longer empty; it was full of things unsaid. He turned toward her, a slow, deliberate movement, and she met him halfway. There was no fumbling, no awkwardness, only the quiet certainty of two people who had already measured each other and found the measure true.

His hand came up to her face, his thumb rough against her cheekbone, and she leaned into the touch. It wasn't a kiss of passion, not at first. It was a kiss of recognition, of landing. Her mouth was soft, and she tasted of the salt in the air and something else, something clean and vital that was just her. When his tongue touched hers, it was not an invasion but a question, and her answer was to deepen the kiss, her hand coming up to rest on the back of his neck, her fingers tangling in the short hair there.

The vault suit was a barrier, a symbol of the world she’d left behind. His fingers found the zipper at her throat, the metal cold against his skin. He paused, giving her the space to stop him, but she only tilted her head back, exposing the line of her throat in a gesture of trust. He dragged the zipper down slowly, the sound of the teeth parting loud in the quiet night. The blue and gold fabric separated, revealing the pale skin of her chest, the simple white tank top she wore beneath.

He slipped his hand inside, his palm flat against the warm skin of her stomach. She shivered, a full-body tremor that had nothing to do with the cold. Her own hands were busy, pushing his jacket from his shoulders, her fingers efficiently working the buttons of his shirt. She was not shy; she was direct. She was an archivist taking inventory, learning the geography of him with her hands - the hard plane of his chest, the smattering of scars, the rapid beat of his heart.

They shed their layers on the cold concrete of the promenade, until there was only skin and the faint glow of her Pip-Boy on the ground beside them. He laid her back on his jacket, a small act of care in a world that had so little of it. He looked at her then, really looked at her in the faint light. Her body was lean and strong, her breasts full and perfect, her nipples tight from the cold and from his gaze.

He lowered himself over her, bracing his weight on his elbows. The kiss this time was different; it was hungry. It was a need that had been building for two days, from the moment he'd seen her on the foreshore, a splash of impossible colour in a grey world. He kissed his way down her body, his mouth tracing the line of her collarbone, the swell of her breasts. He took her nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the peak, and she arched against him, a soft sigh escaping her lips. Her hands were in his hair, holding him to her, her body a language he was learning to read.

Ray moved lower, his mouth tracing the ridges of her ribs, the soft skin of her belly. He could feel the muscles tensing beneath his touch, the coiled strength of her. He settled between her thighs, his breath warm against her core. She was wet for him, already ready, and the scent of her was intoxicating, clean and sharp and utterly alive. He parted her with his thumbs and tasted her.

June cried out, a sharp, broken sound that was swallowed by the vast indifference of the harbour. He explored her with his tongue, learning her, finding the rhythm that made her hips buck, that made her fingers tighten in his hair until it was almost painful. He felt her build, felt the tension in her thighs, the frantic way her breathing hitched, and then she was coming, a silent, shuddering release that washed over her in waves. He held her through it, his mouth gentle now, his hands stroking her thighs until the tremors subsided.

He moved back up her body, his skin against hers, and kissed her again, letting her taste herself on his lips. Her eyes were dark, her face flushed. She reached between them, her hand closing around his cock, hard and heavy against her palm. She stroked him once, twice, her grip firm and sure, and then she was guiding him to her entrance.

He pushed into her slowly, giving her time to adjust to the size of him. It was a tight fit, a perfect, exquisite pressure. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, her heels digging into his lower back. He began to move, a slow, deep rhythm that was as much about connection as it was about pleasure. There was no rush. They had all the time in the world, all the time in the ruins of the old one.

He watched her face as he moved inside her, the way her eyes fluttered closed, the way her bottom lip was caught between her teeth. She was beautiful. Not in the way of the women in the pre-war magazines he sometimes found, but in the way of something that had survived, something that was strong and real and utterly present. He felt a surge of something fierce and protective, an emotion he hadn't allowed himself to feel in a very long time.

He increased his pace, his thrusts becoming harder, deeper. She met him stroke for stroke, her hips rising to meet his, her body a perfect, willing partner. The pleasure built, a tight coil in his groin, a fire in his blood. He could feel her building again, her inner muscles clenching around him, and he reached between them, his thumb finding her clit, rubbing in tight, hard circles.

That was all it took. She came again, this time with a cry that was his name, a raw, ragged sound that was torn from her throat. The feel of her coming around him was his undoing, and he followed her over the edge, his own release a shuddering, powerful thing that left him empty and spent.

He collapsed against her, his face buried in the crook of her neck, his body heavy on hers. For a long time, they didn't move, the only sounds were their ragged breathing and the gentle lapping of the water against the wall below. He was still inside her, and he didn't want to move.

After a while, he rolled off her, pulling her with him so she was tucked against his side. He pulled his jacket over them, a flimsy shield against the cold. Her head was on his chest, her arm draped over his waist. He could feel the steady beat of her heart against his ribs.

He thought about saying something. He didn't.

Neither did she, which was its own kind of answer.

The harbour moved. A generator kicked on somewhere and threw yellow light across the water, and she turned her face toward it. He watched her do it and did not look away.