Vital Information (For Your Everyday Life)

Norm wasn't sure he'd ever truly get used to being outside the Vault, physically or mentally.

After weeks of adjusting to the presence of the sun, something he'd only seen with his own eyes for the first time when Lucy had first run off, he'd finally reached a point where his exposed skin tanned a bit instead of instantly burning, leaving him pinkened, sore, and dehydrated. Still, he wrapped most of himself up in the lightest layers he could find, trying to slow the process of becoming a sun-dried raisin as much as he could, his eyes on the ground. The rocky terrain had long ago started to all blend together.

When the wind kicked up, throwing stinging sand into his face and leaving his eyes and teeth full of grit, he wrapped a torn length of fabric fashioned into a makeshift scarf around his mouth and nose to make it easier to breathe. After a while, the sand storm became severe enough to blot out the horizon, leaving him squinting into his Pip-Boy screen to ensure they were moving in the right direction, all his faith placed in the proper function of his compass. At one point, his traveling companion reached out and grabbed his hand, ensuring they wouldn't lose one another in the haze.

"Let's stop," he could barely hear her yelling over the roar of the wind. "There's no way to guarantee we're not being watched or followed. We could be wandering blind into a trap."

His throat dry and raw, Norm gave her hand a squeeze of agreement, and followed along as she hunkered down alongside one of the larger rock clusters that dotted the desert floor. They had to lie down to even be mostly blocked from the wind, which still howled too fiercely for them to hear one another. But huddling side to side, each of them watching the torrent of sand for any potential threats, was much less exhausting than walking directly into the hot, dry gusts. Norm kept his head down and tried his best to not complain, even to himself.

He doubted Lucy had whined when she'd faced the same challenges.

At the time—only a couple months ago, though it seemed a lifetime—he'd thought the trek back home from what remained of downtown Los Angeles, half-dead and spiraling existentially, was the hardest thing he'd ever faced and ever would, even though he hadn't done it alone. It hadn't taken him long after leaving home again to learn that that wasn't the case.

His return to the trio of sister Vaults hadn't lasted long after his initial adventure had begun. He'd been there to see the water chip in 33 fixed, but in the celebration afterwards, he'd felt hollow. His sister was still out there, after all, and he had reason to believe she was not only alive, but actively pursuing their missing father, as well. What sort of man would he be if he did nothing but crawl back into his hole in the ground and wait?

And so, not long after, he'd struck back out into the sandy, sun-bleached wasteland in search of his sister...and more answers. Despite knowing he'd never manage to find Lucy alone, though, the presence of his chosen companion had proven a bit of a double-sided blade.

He'd never in a million years have made it even this far without Thea. That was easy enough to acknowledge. Sure, he'd managed to lead the denizens of Vault 31 a handful of miles from the Vaults to what remained of Vault-Tec headquarters, but it had been by the skin of his teeth, and things had still managed to get incredibly ugly. The scars around his throat were still sensitive to the touch, delicate and a shiny pink hue. The brush with death had left him even jumpier than before, even more aware of just how fragile his life was and how unprepared he was to face the world.

Thea, on the other hand, knew far more about the Wasteland that stretched out before them, and she was gentle and patient enough to share her knowledge without becoming frustrated with how frightened and craven he could be. He'd already lost count of the number of times she'd directly or indirectly saved his life, and they'd only been on the road a few weeks. Not only was she aware of all the various kinds of danger they could (and often did) run into, she knew how to forage for food and medicinal plants, how to ration out water most reasonably when it ran low. It was one thing to read these things in a book, but another entirely to reliably put them into practice when you actually needed them.

There was one thing the two of them shared in common, though: while tactical, neither of them was especially strong. Norm, though growing a more fortified spine by the day, had long ago proven that his greatest skill in combat was hiding, followed by fleeing. That fact hadn't changed, since those were often the most pragmatic options, but he had become at least somewhat more comfortable with the idea of physical conflict. While Thea was incredibly charismatic and often used that skill to charm or bargain their way out of trouble, she had seemingly accepted that, unfortunately, not everything could be resolved by talking.

When it came to fighting, she had proven to be more of a "lie low, wait, and watch for an opportunity to snipe from a distance" person, and Norm could certainly see the advantage. He'd be more apt to adopt the technique himself if his marksmanship weren't so embarrassingly inadequate. Until Thea had gifted him a small caliber pistol to keep at his hip for emergencies, he'd never even held a gun. Even now, every time he so much as touched the thing, he thought about the way she'd hovered close to show him how to shoot it. The memory gave him goosebumps and made his gut ache in that humiliatingly familiar way.

Norm respected the hell out of the older woman, cherished her warmth and knowledge...and he was also fairly certain he was in love with her. These feelings, he'd found, were a little less easy to acknowledge. The fact that he'd harbored the same massive crush on her since puberty, since long before they'd even met each other in person and he'd realized she was still alive, only added fuel to that particular fire.

Thea was, technically, impossibly old. Physically, she easily had a decade on Norm, maybe more, but she had also been there the day the world had ended. Like his dad. In that sense, though, he knew far more about Thea's origin than he knew about his father's.

Originally from London, she'd been an actress for years (one whose body of work he was quite familiar with) before being cryogenically frozen in a Vault all the way on the other side of the country in Boston, after which she'd managed to escape alive and continue on. In the aftermath of that, she'd joined up with the Brotherhood of Steel and spent time working with them before coming west on assignment earlier in the year. It wasn't hard to see the way that her ordeal had impacted her, turning her into the tough survivor he'd become acquainted with.

The version of her that he'd become so enamored with as a young man definitely still existed, though. He saw it sometimes.

Granted, she looked a little different now than she always had in his mind, in the old movies and zines; her jet black hair was streaked with silver strands, her elegant cheekbones a bit more gaunt than he remembered. Her mismatched eyes—one blue, the other more of a moss green—still held the same mischievous, knowing twinkle they'd always seemed to when he'd studied images of her face, but there were dark, deep bags beneath them that hadn't been there before. Time and age had changed her, true, but he found her no less breathtaking than he had the first time his father had allowed him to watch "Under The Covers".

She was just as playful, just as wry and teasing as he'd always imagined she'd be, but in a softer, more tangible way. As much as he cherished every moment he was able to spend with her, he similarly found himself rather tortured.

No matter how guilty he felt about it, he fantasized about her endlessly.

After the sand storm finally died down, they extracted their stiff bodies from the rocky patch, both groaning and shaking their clothes out as best as they could. They realized they'd gone a bit off-course before they stopped once they gained their bearings, but Thea didn't seem pressed as she scanned the surroundings.

"You know, I think we're just over the hill from one of the smaller bends in the Colorado." she noted, squinting into the distance.

"That right?" he huffed, fanning himself. The sun was already kissing the horizon, ready to dip down behind it within the hour, but it was still plenty hot.

"That is right," she replied. "What would you think about settling in early once we get there? I am just unbearably grimy."

Norm pursed his lips in mock consideration. He was already tapped out after swallowing what felt like a pound of sand.

"I'm not opposed to the idea," he said.

He pulled his baseball cap off when he finally sat down an hour or so later and ran his fingers through his sweaty hair. It was getting long. Uncomfortably warm, he reached for his zipper and yet again had to correct when he remembered the average jacket didn't zip to nearly the chin. Thea had managed to convince him to ditch the Vault suit early on into their travels.

"Might as well paint a massive 'kick me' sign on your back." she'd explained. "Or, better yet, a 'rob me, stab me, and leave me in a ditch' sign."

"That's a really long sign." he'd quipped back, joking to hide the genuine discomfort the idea gave him. Despite knowing, logically, that it was only a piece of clothing and that his companion was correct in her advice, it still felt strange to wear anything else. He'd worn a Vault suit every day for his whole life. Still, she was undeniably correct in her assertion.

The deep red robe and tunic Thea had originally given him had seemed to him to be just as eye-catching as his Vault suit had been, but the results spoke for themselves. When they entered trading outposts and scant little villages, no one had batted an eye at him (though a few did glare). When he'd worn his suit, it had felt as if every predatory eye in the world was drawn to him. Still, the heavy robes proved to be too much for him to handle with all the walking they did, and he soon he'd taken to wearing a faded zip-up and pair of cargo pants he'd found when they'd gone poking through an abandoned house in search of supplies. Though rather filthy, the outfit was lighter and made him feel less conspicuous.

"I think I'll sneak down to the water and have a bath. Keep an eye out, will you, love?" she asked after they'd settled in, sweeping her silver-streaked hair up into a messy knot on the top of her head that bounced and wiggled as she walked by.

"You're gonna take a bath in there?" he asked, his brows knitting together as he stared at the slow, light brown churn.

She giggled.

"It's not that bad. Low radiation, that's the big thing, yes?" she said, her seemingly stiff fingers already working her zipper down a bit. "Trust me, your idea of what constitutes cleanliness out here is more warped than you might believe, even now."

Norm wasn't thinking about cleanliness, at least not primarily. No, he was watching Thea splash around in the water (for protective reasons, he told himself). Down near the stream, she was distorted by the lingering heat of the early evening, her shape shifting and waving when she stood. For a silent beat, he tried to focus his eyes as best as he could, but guilt stopped him from staring too long. He went back to poking at the fire and trying to not stare at her bare back through the flames.

When she finished up, he went in himself, slowly becoming more and more aware of just how dirty he felt the longer he sat and stewed in his own stench. Still, he was very preoccupied.

It felt more than a little juvenile to think back to the first time he'd ever seen her on screen, years and years ago, but he could never stop himself. After all, it had been a life-shifting moment for the young Norm. Thea's breathtaking beauty, all raven hair and ample curves and sharp gazes, wasn't the only thing that held so much appeal to him. Her character, the illustrious femme fatale Scarlett Alexander, had been thrilling to watch and seeming devious to fall into the path of...until it was revealed that she was innocent. Beneath all the thrill had been a heart of gold, which only made it easier for a pubescent Norm to fixate on the role, as well as the actress herself.

When she'd first appeared on screen, he'd felt frozen in time. In that moment, he'd felt like he understood love.

That first viewing, sat close on the couch with Lucy and his father, had been the only time he'd watched the film with company. Every time after that, he was watching alone in the dark, engaging in the recently-discovered pastime of abusing himself until he was raw and exhausted. The scene where she confessed her feelings for her plot-doomed love interest and fell passionately into bed with him as the camera faded to black never ceased to bring things to a sudden and messy end. Things had only improved marginally, thanks to whatever witchy hold it was she had over him.

"Ugh." he grunted, pulling his thin lower lip between his teeth to try and keep himself quiet as he gripped his already-throbbing erection. Their travels made it difficult to have any real privacy, and he had lacked the usual access to his preferred method of stress relief for weeks as a result. Spending every single day looking at her and growing close with her only made the problem grow tenfold.

He thought about how she looked from behind as she led him through the Wasteland, her wide hips swinging back and forth as she walked protectively ahead of him. Norm had always considered himself more of a breast man, but there was something about Thea's ass that he fixated on. He thought about covering her in oil and grinding his naked body against hers, and his cock throbbed at the image.

"Fuck," he whispered, his hand beginning to work his hard length beneath the water. What sort of sounds would she make, he wondered? He knew he could make her feel good if he just had the chance to prove himself...

"Norm!"

It felt as if he nearly flung himself a mile high with how hard he jumped at his name being called.

"Yeah?" he called back, hands moving behind him to support his weight in an attempt to look innocently placed.

"Do you want me to warm you up something to eat?" Thea called, waving a can of beans over her head. He closed his eyes and huffed. His stomach growled.

"Yes, please." he shouted as he resumed throwing the lightly smelly water into his face. It wasn't nearly cold enough for his tastes.

Moments like this always proved to be particularly bittersweet for him, the euphoria of so vividly imagining himself intimately close with her twinged with the knowledge that it could never truly be. She was married. Hell, she was so married she had multiple husbands waiting for her back in Boston (something that made sense to him, if he were truly honest; he'd sign up to be a third husband on the right day, he often thought...). She even had a son.

Well, she had had a son. The day the bombs had fallen, the pair took refuge in a Vault near their home, only to discover that the Vault was a cover for a cryogenics experiment. For nearly two centuries, they had been frozen in the Vault, until her son was kidnapped and Thea re-frozen, left to search for him as the sole survivor of the whole nightmare.

The saddest part was that it all truly seemed to be for nothing. Based on what she'd read on the terminals, the whole experiment had been abandoned shortly after the bombs fell. The whole thing made him nauseous with anxiety any time he thought too long about it, still unsure what the plan for his own home Vault was supposed to be.

He dunked his head under the surface and yelled just to have some kind of release.

-

"Come on, it'll help us both greatly if we just improve your accuracy a bit."

Thea's voice carried easily through the tiny ghost town they'd spent the night on the outskirts of several days later. While they'd done a long, thorough sweep of the place to ensure it didn't seem like anyone had been through recently, it had only done so much to settle the younger man's nerves. Though his countenance felt stronger than before, he still felt like a prey animal every day.

"I find it shocking you even trust me with a firearm, honestly." he joked in reply as he descended the small hill behind what seemed to be an old, half-collapsed house. There was a rickety fence that looped around most of the property, though only about one in every three panels still stood intact. Thea stood lining up a few empty beer and Nuka-Cola bottles she'd scrounged up from the piles of debris that littered the place, a foot or two between each.

"Just like the first time. You can do it." she promised, and the way she said it made him believe her enough to pull the small revolver from its holster. At least his hand no longer shook every single time he handled the thing.

"Perfect. Try and hit one. Whichever one you like."

Raising his arm, he closed one eye and tried his best to line the tiny notch at the end of the barrel up with the middle of the five bottles. He squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He'd missed.

"Wow, I'm shocked." he said sarcastically, though it came out more bitter than joking.

"Don't beat yourself up." his instructor encouraged, moving in close to analyze him from behind. It made the tips of his ears hot.

"You just need to make some tweaks to your stance." she advised, her arms suddenly wrapping around him to straighten his back, tugs his arms here and there until she was satisfied with what she saw. Norm tried his best to not squirm at the direct contact; the first time she'd taught him to shoot, she'd only lifted his elbow, turned his head a bit. Now, she held him close and didn't let go for a solid minute or two. He found himself glad she was standing behind him instead of in front of him.

"Alright." Thea went on. "Take a deep breath. Let yourself relax as fully as you can."

Drawing the hot, dry air in through his nose, he let it out in a huff through his mouth, feeling a small amount of the tension leave his spine. Just as before, he closed one eye and cocked his head.

"Try opening your other eye, dear. You'll see twice as well with both of them." she teased, beaming when he did as she'd said.

"Now, when you pull the trigger, try to squeeze it a bit firmer instead of tugging it. Go ahead."

He nodded, his brain overwhelmed between all the new information and the feeling of her so close to him.

The center bottle exploded into a plume of brown glass shards, only the bottom-most stump left behind. His whole body tingled with excitement.

"Simple as." she said, all smiles. "Try another."

He fired again. A miss. Drawing in another deep, stabilizing breath, he tried to ground himself as best as he could, feeling the warmth of her body seeping into his from behind.

He pulled the trigger, and the next bottle in line disappeared. She cheered, giving him a playful jiggle that was half-hug, half-roughhousing. Her joy could often turn very physical depending on her mood.

"Excellent! Wonderful." she praised, her strong hands gripping at his narrow shoulders. Her big grin was contagious, and he felt like his gut was full of eager, slithering snakes working themselves all into a big knot. When she hugged him, he tried his best to angle his hips away from hers.

When they made camp again that evening, tucked up against a rocky cliff side to protect them from the breeze that kicked up, Norm was itching to be alone. Throughout the handful of miles they'd managed to cover with their late start, he'd been quieter than usual, still able to feel Thea wrapped around him, holding him. He fixated on replaying the moment she'd put her arms around him over and over again until he was sick with want.

"You're not hungry?" she asked as he set up the little pup tent he'd scrounged up. With some patching, it had proven to be quite serviceable, enough to keep him from waking up with a mouth full of sand every single morning.

"Nah. Tired today." he explained simply, watching her scrape something out of a can she'd heated over the tiny fire they'd made. His eyes lingered on the way her lips wrapped around the end of the spoon she held.

"Oh, I see." she said, her still-chewing mouth covered by the back of her hand. "I hope you feel better in the morning, sweetheart."

"Yeah, me too." he replied, throwing in a half-assed smile for good measure. She'd know something was off, but she'd been good thus far about respecting any time he needed space, and he zipped himself away feeling confident that he'd be alone for the rest of the night. Too close in proximity to her to do anything about the desire that threatened to burn a hole in his core without feeling like an absolute creep, he curled up on his side and closed his eyes. Things were silent for a while, but eventually he heard her humming a tune he didn't recognize to herself as she moved from one spot to another, doing whatever she was doing. Her voice echoed in his head as he drifted off.

In his dream, she was with him, her body pressed up close behind as they both huddled together inside the tiny tent. The warmth of her arms wrapped around him from behind, as well as the feeling of her lips against the back of his neck, was vivid. Goosebumps raised themselves up all across his skin at the brushing kisses she placed against the skin she could reach.

"Sweetheart." she said, just like she'd said it a hundred times before. She pulled herself up onto her knees, planting more pecks along the side of his face and the top of his head. He could feel her bare breasts sweeping against the back of his neck as she moved over him. That heat in his gut was back, building up into a pleasant boil.

"Thea." he could hear himself plead, though his lips never moved.

Suddenly, he was on his back, his eyes on the silvery patch in the roof as the naked woman before him crawled up his legs, her body swaying to and fro as she closed in on him. He groaned at just how soft every inch of her bare skin felt against him, a sound that turned to a pitiful whine as she let her hand pass boldly over his jutting erection.

"Fuck." he cursed, arching his hips into her touch, only to find it already gone.

"Yeah?" she asked, grinning again. Her smile was almost unsettling, though, a bit too big for her face as she reared up over him, planting her hips over his aching cock. He scanned her up and down, drinking in her curves and the thin, sunken-in lines that stretched across her flanks and stomach, decorated the sides of her full breasts.

"Thea." he whimpered again as she began to slide her glorious curves back and forth across his straining erection. She chuckled seductively, hands cupping his jaw as she looked down at him. The last thing he saw before he was ripped into consciousness was her wild, grey-streaked hair framing her beautiful face.

Norm groaned into his arm as he roused, his groin aching worse than his back after a twenty-mile day with a heavy pack. Thea was singing softly to herself again, packing up her things based on the sounds he could hear. She'd want to hit the road soon, meaning he'd have to pull himself out of the fog and put on his best face.

He rolled over onto his back and huffed again.

Three more filthy, danger-ridden pit stops later, there was no sign of Lucy or his father, and Norm was starting to lose hope. The wilderness was full of things trying to tear them limb from limb, while nearly every person they met seemed to be trying to scam or harm them. More than once, they'd run into literal cannibals.

Each and every day was an exhausting fight, and still he felt no closer to any sort of answers or satisfaction. Probably it would never come and he'd die in this horrible desert, his pathetic, scrawny corpse feasted upon by the car-sized scorpions they seemed to constantly encounter.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked as they descended yet another sloping dune, adjusting his hat to shield his face from the glaring sun as best as he could.

"Of course you can, dear." Thea replied, warm as ever while she watched her steps closely.

He very nearly chickened out, the question weighty enough on his tongue to tie it into a clumsy knot. But he'd grown at least a little, and he managed to force it out.

"Why join up with the Brotherhood?" he asked finally, studying the footpath ahead of them instead of looking at her. "They seem like...assholes. I mean, obviously I don't know every single one of them, but..."

Though he'd been worried his inquiry would upset her somehow, she seemed no more angry than she did any other time, a thoughtful look on her face as she paused to lean against an old abandoned shed.

"They seemed like my best chance at finding my son when I first left the Vault." she explained, a wistful smile tugging at her full lips. "And no, they're not perfect. Far from. But that's fairly par for the course in this world, I've found."

Norm found himself thinking back on some of the people they'd met, he'd met, and he nodded in tepid agreement.

"I guess so." he said, sitting down on a rock.

"You can't let perfect be the enemy of good. Not out here, and not if you don't want your heart shattered over and over again." she insisted. He could feel her staring at him. "Besides, you start to get close to people and you want the best for them, want to see them improve. Sometimes I think it's best to use what power you have where you have it, yeah?"

"Yeah." he said, though his tone conveyed how unconvinced he was.

There was a quiet moment between them, Thea's knowing gaze sweeping over him again and again. He squirmed, as always, upon realizing he was being watched closely.

"Nobody's perfect, Norm." she said, moving to lean beside him. "Sure, sometimes you can write people off whole cloth based on their actions, but nothing in this world is black and white, my love. When you care about someone, you can see the potential they have, what they could be at their peak. I see that potential in the Brotherhood, just like I see it in you. They disappoint me at times, yes. But I always want the best for them."

Her hand patted at his shoulder affectionately as she spoke, not a single hint in her face to suggest that she was joking or mocking him with her words. His throat stung when he swallowed, and he had to look away from her for a moment.

"I get it." he said eventually, once they'd started back down the road.

She patted him on the back in a warm, motherly display of affection.

"I knew you would." she said. "Being from the Vault puts you at a disadvantage out here, but you're smart. You're resilient, too, even if you doubt that about yourself. Lucy's just the same, by the way, if what all the people back in your Vault said about her is true. That's why I know we're going to find her."

He caught her gaze at that, his eyes embarrassingly misty as he blinked rapidly.

It was tepid after sunset. Thea, maybe emotionally spent from the day, had retired early, the sound of her steady, heavy breathing that occasionally broke into light snoring coming from Norm's tent. He had offered it to her when he'd volunteered to take the first watch. sat leaned against his pack as he stared at their small fire, his legs spread out before him.

After killing some time messing with his Pip-Boy, he eventually let out a deep sigh. The ache in his gut that had been nagging at him for days on end was growing to a point where he could no longer ignore it. After taking another long pause to ensure his friend was still sleeping, he double checked to make sure there were no raiders running up to see him pulling his dick out. Satisfied by what he'd seen, he pulled his outer button-up over his lap and tried to relax.

He tried to think about anything, anyone else, but it proved to be a fruitless exercise. The person in his mind morphed into Thea, as always, and suddenly he was giving up his resistance and indulging himself in his favorite fantasy. There was a familiar sting of guilt in his gut as it tightened with arousal.

"Oh." he sighed as he pictured latching himself onto her breast, lapping at the warm taupe of her nipple (he knew the exact shade; he'd seen it more than once when she'd bathed and changed through stolen glances, blurry peeks from a distance) with the tip of his tongue as he ground his hips against the bed beneath them. She always seemed to love how he touched her in his mind, but teasing her like this always drove her especially wild, and she pushed at the waistband of his underwear with her feet urgently until they were pooled around his knees.

Norm tried to keep one foot in reality, as impossible as it seemed, his ears tuned to the world around him. He could still hear Thea snoring lightly. Her fantasy counterpart groaned approvingly when he sunk his hand between their bodies and let his fingers explore her hot, swollen folds. The grip on his cock tightened, and his hips bucked hard.

Her hair was wild on the bed around her, a halo of dark and silver strands. Some of them clung to her sweaty, reddened face, hot to the touch when he swept his fingers across it. He was aching, leaking, nestled right up against her waiting entrance.

"Come on." she encouraged, wrapping one long leg around his narrow hip and easing him forward with excitement in her eyes.

He tried to tease her again, rub himself along where she wanted him most without giving in, but she was too wet and he was too eager and soon he was burying himself deep. He fucked his hand hard, imagining the way Thea would claw at his back at her body jolted beneath him, how she would beg to cum as he rolled her stiff clit between his fingers. Unconsciously, he pressed his back hard into the old log he leaned against, letting the knobby surface bite into his skin as he pumped himself faster.

"You're so good," he could hear her say, feel her breathe into the sensitive crook of his neck. "You're so good."

Something about that phrasing proved to be too much, and suddenly he could feel the thick, warm slickness of his release spurting against the exposed sliver of his stomach and coating his fingers.

"God." he gasped, blinking hard as his eyes adjusted to the dim of the evening around him. Panting, he let his head fall back for a moment before he cleaned himself up.

When his body had stopped trembling and his heart rate had returned to normal, Norm listened in again. Thea seemed to still be resting comfortably, though her breathing was quieter than it had been before. The guilt he would typically feel after going places he hadn't given himself permission to go was present, a sour tang at the back of his throat, but it was less potent than usual.

New Vegas was impossible to miss on the horizon, all lit up with electric lights and a dozen different colors of neon in the rapidly growing darkness. New Vegas where Lucy probably was. It sat like a glowing beacon in the center of his field of vision, calling to him, promising him the revelation of everything he wanted to know. That promise could be a lie, he'd accepted, but the idea that he was doing something, doing what he could, gave him peace as he settled in.