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shorelineshelter · 7 years

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King of This Hologram: Fallout 3

(Warning: Graphic description of past torture, sexual slavery, and other various nasty things.)

They’d been traveling together for two years. Charon had started to shake the years of experience telling him to just stay silent. To just be there to look mean. He found himself more than a little interested in his boss’s past. He’s all too aware that every scar has a story. Especially for folks with histories like they both did.

Rivet City wasn’t one of their standard stopping points, but it was the closest (and softest) bed KG had access to. Said human was gradually winning over the town. At first they wrote him off like everyone else in his life had done before. KG was intent on changing their minds.

In all honesty, KG could charm the mutated birds out of the trees if the put his mind to it. Even Charon himself was captivated (not that he would admit it.) with him. He perked up when he heard some half-hearted shouting, relaxing when he caught sight of KG trotting over to where he was waiting. The smoothskin waved, just being sure to catch his attention.

Charon stands, nodding to the man. Together they made their way back to the hotel. KG was already unfastening the gun holster Charon had insisted he buy. Just because he was a poor shot didn’t mean KG could do without any firearm. It falls onto the covers with a muffled thump.

Charon finishes securing the door, then turns to see KG undoing the buttons on his sweat soaked shirt, shrugging out of it. The ghoul bites his tongue, ignoring the warmth setting under his tough hide. KG was just comfortable with him and not to mention, it was totally against his few remaining morals to get into anything less than a professional relationship. So what if they shared a bed sometimes (most of the time), and a bath once (or twice)? There were still those last few lines he hadn’t, that he wouldn’t cross.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t allowed to ask him things. He wanted to know about this and it provided a solid distraction from the dangerously romantic thoughts that had been plaguing him recently.

“Tell me about the scars, boss.” Nailed it. Perfect boner killing material.

“Which one?” the man replied as he flopped onto the bed.

“All of them?”

“Pick a place to start then.” his voice is masked by the bedclothes, but he’s watching Charon for his reaction out of the corner of his eye. There’s an unsaid, ‘finish what you started.’ in that gaze.

Instead of trusting his steadiness of his voice, Charon steps over and hesitates for a moment before brushing his knuckles over the largest of the scars on KG’s back. It arches over his left shoulder blade, wider than his admittedly massive palm.

KG turns his face so he’s not speaking through a mouthful of sheets. “That one was probably the last major one from my first trainer. He was showing me off to Starr, publicly mind you, so I decided to...embarrass him a little. Well…” he scratches at his arm, “A lot. I bucked him off and threw him onto his back, then walked off whistling some jingle I used to hear all the time out west.”

Charon blinks for a moment, “You’re not from the Capital?”

“Naw.” he hums, fiddling with a loose thread on the covers. “I was from a vault out in the NCR. Was only here for two weeks when I got snatched. Said I looked exotic.” he flourishes a little, voice tinging bitterly. “It’s why you couldn’t figure out how I’d never dealt with mirelurks before. Kinda like how I’m sure you’ve never had to tangle with geckos.”

“I’ve been to the NCR before. Shot plenty of them.”

“Oh shit, really?” KG perks up, excited for a moment before realizing something, sobering. “I guess the contract can travel easily, huh…”

Charon nods, shrugging a little. “But we’re getting off track.”

The man looks sheepish, and chuckles. “Sorry. Anyway, dude was out of his mind pissed. He’d always had a gift for knives, so he took this wicked looking one and skinned me like I was a damn molerat or something. They kept it clean, thank fuck, but Starr was livid that he’d done so much damage to me. I’d only been there for two months so it was like he was still trying to keep me nice. After that, he stopped caring about them leaving marks on me.”

Charon’s hands clenched, but curiosity compelled him to delve deeper. Thick fingers tapped another scar above it. It was only a fourth of the size, but looked much deeper. The center was puckered in, as if it hadn’t healed as smoothly as the larger one. Small round blemishes were peppered around this, and many of the others. Cigarettes, maybe heated rebar? Call it an educated guess on his part.

“Third trainer.” the detached manner in which he spoke made it clear Charon wasn’t the first to wonder. Why had people asked about it? Were they actually concerned, or just bored clients between rounds?

“She’s who gave me most of them. Mean old dame liked leaving marks, and Starr was happy to let her at this point. I was starting to piss him off, but it made him want to break me all the more.” KG rolled onto his side, back still to Charon. From this angle, he could better make out the curving scar on his hip, but they’d get to that one later. “I...heh, I sucker punched her.”

“You hit your trainer?”

“Fuck yeah I did! Gotta make it clear I’m not some mutt to be tamed.The center, where it’s deepest was a filleting knife. She drove it in about half way and it snapped off. She used what was left of it to strip the skin around it. It took weeks for me to recover the use of that arm.” KG drawled, his western territory accent creeping in at the edges of his voice.

Charon knew this wouldn’t be pleasant, but he pushed down the wave of nausea and said, “The little one, other shoulder?” Fuck, his voice was uneven with that restrained disgust. Not at KG. Never at KG. At all the trainers that flayed him open like he was a hunk of meat. That had burned him, probably for nothing. That had forced him to his knees, giving him a crash course on servicing clients. At those clients, bending him over filthy tables, chairs, beds, anything in reach and fucking him until he bled.

And if he was being honest, at himself for those late nights where he found himself in the same bed, struggling to control his urges to loom over the man who’d found the humanity he’d thought he lost and brought it out from wherever he’d locked it away. To not give in to the traitorous voice demanding he capture KG’s mouth, licking his way into it. To pull the human into his arms before- oh. KG had been talking, hadn’t he? Charon chided himself for getting lost in his own head, again.

“I, uh...didn’t catch that.” he admits.

The man gives him an all too knowing smile, “I figured as much. It’s just from a bad gecko bite when I was little.”

It was such an innocent explanation. Much more run of the mill than he’d been anticipating. Charon can’t contain a small snort from how out of place it seemed.

He can hear the grin in KG’s voice, “Yeah, they can’t all be horror stories from the sex trade.”

“Just most of them.”

“Pretty much, Char’. Where to next?”

They continued like this for some time. KG hadn’t exaggerated when he’d haid the third trainer was the worst. Only a small knot of scars under the gecko bite wasn’t credited to her, so far. (‘First trainer, thought it was easy to hide it there.’) All of the burns were her doing. The long, neatly placed slashes to his lower back. Dozens of thin marks, almost like tallies that he hadn’t seen until he’d looked closer.

“So, what about your second trainer?” Charon asked at some point.

“Oh, yeah. He was the first ghoul I met. He didn’t leave a mark on me...not one that lasted anyway. He didn’t believe in scarring his ‘projects’. He carried his tools with him at all times. A crop and a club.”

Charon’s blood ran cold. “Ivan Popov.”

KG suddenly looked over his shoulder at Charon. “Yeah, how-” the words die in his throat as he sees the tension in his companion’s shoulders.

There had always been a gap keeping their histories, their experiences with training apart. Charon was trained for war, KG was trained for sex. With one name, now there was a bridge linking them together, and it was terrifying to realize a man like Popov had also survived the bombs. Had carried on offering his skill set to slavers instead of generals. Had kept using his favored tools.

“He...designed the training protocol for my unit. Gave me my designation.” was all the ghoul could admit.

KG was watching him carefully for any tiny scrap of expression to give him a hint of how to approach this. Then he offered, “I know it’s not going to make the hurt magically go away but…” a momentary hesitation, “He’s dead now. I laced his canteen with poison.”

The breath he’d held rushed out of his lungs so quickly it hurt.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to remind you of h-”

“You had no way of knowing.” there was a sharp edge of pain he couldn’t mask in his voice. “You still have more scars to tell me about.” he settles his warm hand over the scar curving over KG’s hip. “This one seems the most recent.”

KG shifts underneath his palm, stumbling for his words. “O-Oh, yeah. You’re right, it’s the last one I got in the trade. A month and a half before I met you.”

Charon boldly (foolishly?) decided to leave his hand where it was, giving in to his need for contact slightly. He’d never admit how touch-starved he really was.

“I made a break for it when we were going through an overgrown farm plot, looking for any food that hadn’t been taken before we got there. Starr saw me and caught me as I shot by him...with a sickle.”

Charon flinched hard. “You’re lucky you can still tell that story.”

“That’s not the closest call I’ve had.” KG says, quiet enough that Charon almost thinks he imagined it. Then the man rolled onto his back, displaying those three long, ragged slices that tore from his left armpit to his right hip. They looked old, but Charon had a good idea what caused them.

“Deathclaw.”

“Mhmm.” KG nods. “I was 14 when what was left of my vault decided to leave home, looking for more sustainable food sources. I got spooked by a herd of bighorner, and wasn’t paying attention. I got separated from the group and the ‘claw found me first.”

Charon waits, hands still resting near his hip, displaced from the man turning over.

“I killed it. There was a ruined old fence, the kind with metal poles and they were all jagged on the ends so I made a trap, sorta. I lured it into a corner and when it lunged it used it’s weight to drive the pole into it’s brain. The group heard me screaming bloody murder and found me before I could bleed out. The doc’ said I was an inch away from being disemboweled.”

Charon’s voice was surprisingly emotional when he spoke, “You’re not even 24 yet.”

KG must’ve been startled by his display, watching him warily. “Yeah? What about it?”

“You shouldn’t have this many stories to tell. This many scars. You should be with your family.”

“My family is dead.” the man states, dryly.

“Exactly. You shouldn’t have lost them so early. You should be somewhere safe. How many times have you been on death’s door?” the ghoul’s hands are restless, plucking at the blankets. “More than me, when I was your age.”

“The world wasn’t on fire when you were my age.”

“But it was at war. I was being conditioned by Popov, and I still didn’t have the pain you have to carry.”

The human sat up, expression full of shifting emotion, unable to pin down. “We’re both fucked up, Char’. Just in different ways.”

That struck Charon deeply. That was the truth, plain and simple. He couldn’t argue it if he tried. He found himself longing to hold KG again. To pull him tightly against his chest, and never let him go. It made him feel weak.

“Char’...can I ask you something personal?”

A nod is all he can manage.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while...do you think there’s a way for me to ask that we be more than companions...more than friends, without you being honor bound to say yes?”

Oh. Well damn.

He must’ve been hallucinating. Things like this didn’t happen to people like Charon. Shockingly pretty smoothskins like KG didn’t want nasty old ghouls like him. Good things didn’t happen to people like him. As he struggled for an answer, Charon could see his boss grow nervous, thumbs beginning to twiddle. Impulsively, he takes one of those tiny gloved hands. He stares at how KG’s fingers curl over his own, heart stuttering at the sight.

He didn’t so much step over that line, so much as leap.

“If...if you’d permit me, I’d like to answer that with my own question.”

KG gives one of those odd lopsided grins Charon has grown to like. “You can always ask me questions.”

“I am-” the ghoul’s voice cracks, causing him to clear his throat. “-not the type to have flings. If I say yes, I need to know you’re in it for me, and not just some experiment on what it’s like to be with a ghoul.” he drags a thumb over the back of KG’s glove. “Tell me, will you change your mind when you’re bored of waking up next to me?”

KG looked like he’d been slapped. “I don’t do flings Char’. It’s against my character.” he threads his fingers through Charon’s. “It’s been two years. Hell, I’m pretty damn sure I’m in love with you at this point. I’ve just been afraid that you would be forced to go along with it because of that piece of paper.”

“...you could have anyone you wanted.” Charon is careful not to sound too bitter about that.

“Yeah, and anyone includes you.” the look in KG’s eyes makes Charon feel like he’s going to melt or something sappy like that. “You actually listen to me. You didn’t check out the second you saw the collar.” he holds up a hand to stop Charon from butting in. “You’ve been through many similar things to me. I mean, we shared a trainer! You’re different from when we first met. You’re becoming whoever you were before you were Charon.”

“Not really. I was a hooligan.”

That earns him a poorly contained giggle. “Let me rephrase. You’re becoming you, Char’. And I’m in really deep for you.”

There was a beat of quiet where Charon considered verbally replying, but he went against that in favor of leaning in to press his lips to KG’s. His training was faintly rebelling over the fact that he didn’t ask for permission, but when an arm looped around the back of his neck, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

Charon broke the kiss, and KG was grinning brightly at him.

“You kiss like a fucking prince in those old picture books.” There’s warm laughter in his words.

“What would that make you?” Charon huffs, glad it was hard for smoothies to tell when ghouls were blushing because he could feel it creeping up to his ears practically.

“Probably a dragon. I gobble up cute princes like you for breakfast. I’ve been told I kiss well enough to make folks reevaluate their lives.”

“Bullshit.”

KG just looks at him. “You just want me to prove it, I know that for a fact.”

“So?”

It was KG’s turn to blush, before he set himself to the task of proving to his partner just how true the claim actually was. Charon swore he could get addicted to this man.

#fallout 3 #fallout #kg #charon

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