America, Redefined

👗 - Clothes off or on during sex?

Either, although clothes on or partly on is more common. Taking all the clothes off is extra effort, and he doesn’t think the rest of his body is interesting enough to make the effort worth it. Like, why do his knees have to be exposed, they’ve got nothing to do with this? There are exceptions sometimes, but most of the time if his clothes are totally off for sex it’s because they were already off anyway, like getting out of the bath.

🍸 - Do they have any methods of courtship for getting people into bed?

Nathan finds lots of sexual things upsetting. On some level, he finds sex itself in any capacity slightly upsetting. The fact that bodies do things and need things and want things and there’s really no way to totally control it is a source of low-key constant frustration for him. He does enjoy pleasurable physical sensations, but he wishes that his body had switches to let him control it, rather than being subject to the whims of an autonomic nervous system.

Aside from that general subliminal angst about how dare his body just do stuff sometimes without his permission, he’s got a whole host of hang-ups. Also usually involving control and feeling like his partner is trying to take his control away. Pinning him unexpectedly is a big no-no. Grabbing his hair while he’s giving a blow job is also bad. Things along those lines.

Hate sex, no. Angry sex, maybe.

The distinction is that if he hates someone then he doesn’t trust them. Plus, he only hates people he feels are a potential threat. (He might disdain someone he dislikes but doesn’t feel is any threat, but not hate them. Hate is for people he feels fighty towards and the fightiness is tied up with his threat response.) Sex feels a bit vulnerable to him because he feels like there’s always a little bit of loss of control even if it’s just loss of control over his own body and reactions, so he won’t ever have sex with someone he truly hates. 

meadowlarksingingoverhead  answered:

Random sentence starters. (Open)

Gabban clasped his hands together and smiled. “Thank you, sir!”  How delightfully easy. The frumentarius had never expected to meet a soldier so eager to please. Was ‘Birdie’ that much of an asset for them?

“I promise this won’t get you into any trouble.” No more than the usual scuffle between factions. “Those men at Freeside don’t want me performing at the Wrangler ever since they’ve seen us together. They’re not very keen on the NCR right now. But if you tell your people to hold back for a second, I’ll put a good word in...I’m very persuasive.”

He linked arms with Nathan. “I’ll say the NCR’ll help them gun up or something. Then your people can swoop in and lay on the charm. How’s that?” It was better this way. The legionnaires weren’t capable of earning ‘The King’s’ trust no matter what the offers. Instead, let the bear have them and make Nathan more of a source of information than he already was.

When Birdie slipped his arm around Nathan’s, Nathan’s heart beat a little faster and he glanced around to see if anyone was noticing. But on the Strip, people were far too busy watching the barely-dressed women writhing outside Gomorrah and trio of drunk soldiers attempting to do a human pyramid and brahmin baron hollering obscenities at his valet. They didn’t care at all about two people quietly walking arm-in-arm. In New Vegas, no one would care even if they started groping each other in the street.

“I don’t think Colonel Moore will like it, but I might be able to pull some strings, call in a few favors. Ambassador Crocker would be thrilled to open diplomatic talks with the Kings, so the right word in his ear can make it happen without Moore ever knowing about my involvement.”

@america-redefined

In his dreams, there are legs, arms, glasses, and a face that feels comfortingly familiar against his quaking fingertips, but no voice. Never a voice. Words fail him in conversations with colleagues, at press conferences, and at board meetings, instilling in him an embarrassment so great it tears the veil of sleep from what remains of his withering visual cortex.

He doesn’t forget them any more, those dreams. Not like he used to, not since the friend-lobotomite made him remember, made him yearn for a time he only ever gets to experience in flashes during restless nights, such as tonight, when the Dome is too silent and his thoughts too loud. He can’t even focus on the jukebox in front of him, its lights flickering on and off in tune with Ella Fitzgerald’s Manhattan—one of many records given to him by the selfless Courier.

“8?” Uncharacteristically apologetic, 0 peeks into his room, thrusting his eye monitors forward in a faceless expression of franticness. “I, uh… I need you to come take a look at something. The security systems are… well…” The other Tank turns, glancing nervously behind him before returning his attention to his colleague.

“Just help me out here, okay? I need to know if what I’m seeing is real, or if my ocu-vis-receptors are on the fritz again.”

Alarmed, 8 abandons his nostalgic daydreams and follows 0 out into the Dome’s main chamber, unsure of what, if anything, he is about to witness.

Nathan had learned the names of the major pre-War research facilities when the Enclave was still strong. Livermore, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, Big Mountain, and others. They were the proverbial lost cities of gold to the scientists in Research and Development, all assumed destroyed by the bombs. So, years later, with the Enclave gone and the Institute his new home, when Nathan found out that Big Mountain was intact and its data and experimental prototypes ripe for the picking (if one can survive the crater) and its head scientists still alive (after a fashion), he knew he had to make the attempt to reclaim that old world knowledge.

It wasn’t an easy mission. He still had old government codes and was able to program an access badge that should trick any automated security that he was a high ranking military officer with the appropriate security clearance to be in the facility and access all the buildings. It wouldn’t help against what other threats might be there, but it was a start. For the rest, he had his Enclave scout armor, a few stealth boys, and an experimental high energy rifle.

Six pursed her lips for a moment, her brows knitting together as she pondered something. It took her a few more moments before she felt confident enough to ask at all.

“Were they the good guys, or the bad ones?” The answer wasn’t that simple, but still she wanted to know.

“The bad ones.” They were fighting against America, QED. 

@america-redefined​ / sc.

“Caution is advised in these parts.”

THE SMOKE from the edge of his GUN leaves a trail that seems to flitter off into the air for a moment, A FEW select super mutants dead at his feet as he SIGHS quietly. Usually he’s not the type to DIRECTLY go hunting for these creatures, THOUGH hate them as much as he does, IT’S not a morally applaudable act, and he’s doing his best to DEFY expectation of such things.

“We established supply lines for this PRECISE reason. You don’t have to JOIN our cause, but USING the trade routes would be advised…ESPECIALLY if you’d like to remain PHYSICALLY intact rather than GUTTED by these…monstrosities.”

He’s almost cavalier on the subject of what he’d just done, but LIFE in the Commonwealth called for a CERTAIN level of desensitization in order to PROMOTE success & survival.

“Yes, well the trade routes don’t necessarily go where I’m going. Do I look like a caravaner to you?”

He should perhaps be more polite to someone who probably just saved his life, but needing to be saved in the first place has him feeling prickly and uneasy, like the balance of power isn’t in his favor and he needs to modify his position to fix that.

priority alpha | nathan & wesley

[ cont from here ]

Wesley doesn’t think very much of the Enclave. It’s disappointing more than anything. Out in Springvale armed with a baseball bat and BB Gun, he’d see Eye-Bots and apart from attempting to make friends with a few, felt rather glad to have them around. Floating around, old tapes of the America Dream and ancient band music that actually gave Wesley hope that there was a better future out here.

He really like Eden, growing up with his dog Honey in Kentucky just like Abe Lincoln had. Wesley should’ve known. It didn’t occur to him that the recording on a loop were anything strange. It didn’t occur to him that Eden’s “secret bunker” was anything to scratch his head about. Wes had grown up in a Vault. But you couldn’t govern a damn country hidden away, could you? He should have known better.

He had already made one enormous mistake he would never be able to make up for. He couldn’t condemn thousands of people to die again. Once Wes realized that by “mutants” Eden meant anyone born in the Wasteland since the bombs fell… his mind was made up. The FEV and Eden’s plan would have killed all of them. Eden had to go.

He didn’t expect the Enclave to still be after him after killing his father, after the Purity Project had been complete, even if not to the “presidential” expectations. But here they were. And Wesley was making small talk with an Enclave solider, or whatever he was, teasing him even. And he was still breathing. That was a bit of a shocker.

“Same. Actually. Hey, look what we have in common. Okay, what’s the better comic: Grognak the Barbarian or Captain Cosmos?”

@america-redefined​

“Captain Cosmos, obviously. Astronaut beats caveman every time,” he answered promptly. This was a topic he’d thought about before.

“And don’t argue about it; you’re my prisoner.” He raised his plasma pistol slightly to emphasize the point, even though the success of this capture was still hypothetical. Maybe if he knocked the Lone Wanderer unconscious? No, he’d still need to carry him out through an upward scramble of rubble and crevices so small he was barely able to squeeze through them by himself. There was no way to do it. They were going to be stuck here a while at this rate.

“Don’t we all,” Joshua said dryly, taking a sip. Once sated, he reached onto his rifle bipod from his rucksack, idly deploying them. “At least two Decani, three o’clock. Means there’s at least two contubernia in the area. They don’t stray far from their Decanus, but I’m only seeing ten mulling about.”

“Didn’t catch your name, son,” he said, slotting the bipod onto his sniper rifle.

“Nathan Lone, stationed out of Hoover Dam. I was sent across the river with a team of 5 scouts. The rest of them didn’t make it.”

He hadn’t know them well, didn’t grieve for them, but it felt like failure that he couldn’t keep them alive and that bothered him. Evening the score with Legion blood would go a long way towards attenuating the shame.

He didn’t like being here on the Hoover Dam. Any fleeting comfort being surrounded by NCR troops brought him was swept away by the long fall into the Colorado not far enough away, and the smoke from the Fort definitely not either. 

But he was still here, ashing his cigarette off the edge of the dam. Waiting for orders. Waiting for shipments. He wasn’t even with the NCR anymore, but loyalty was a bitch.

Boone wasn’t upset about being high up back when he was safely in the jaws of a rickety old dinosaur, or… anywhere else really. But this still bothered him.

He went rigid as footsteps came a little too close behind him, and gave a little cough when he turned to face the newcomer.

“Christ. You’re quiet.”

.

“All part of the job.”

“You’re 1st Recon, right? Retired?” The beret, but no uniform, was a dead giveaway. Nathan suspected he knew which one, too. Boone, Craig: 26, retired to Novac, widower. He’d read the reports and this man fit the description. If Nathan was right, he might have a job that this man would be perfect for--NCR trained sniper, NCR loyalty, but no longer officially on the payroll.