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It's still a novelty, waking up next to someone. Still feels strange and inexplicable, to have a warm, breathing body pressed up close – to find, come morning, your arms and legs tangled with the limbs of another.
Micro-movements and half-sounds, an antidote to the stillness.
You slept alone for so long; lying out in the wilderness, staring numbly up at the inky sky and knowing that if you closed your eyes, you might not open them again. Or worse, in the ruins of your old home – wind rattling through the holes in the walls and you, crouched beneath the skeleton of your marital bed, wondering whether the radroaches or the chill or the grief would kill you first.
Even before the bombs, you tended to sleep alone. Nora – God, you can picture her now, curled into a delicate ball, her fine-boned chest rising and falling. You were big and dumb and unwieldy by comparison; it was too damn easy to roll over and throw an elbow at that beautiful face. Far too often you would creep out to the sofa, fall asleep to the sounds of Codsworth clanking around, the television humming happily through the night.
After the war, of course, when you'd wake howling and fighting the air – shit, it was too dangerous to lie with her, then.
Grabbed her throat, once. Never slept next to her again.
How she still loved you, you will never know. How she managed to look on you with those gentle, trusting eyes, or ever once allowed you to hold the son she spent twenty hours giving birth to, you cannot say. There was a kindness in her that you aren't sure the world will ever replicate.
She should have lived. But it doesn't matter now.
Even if it happens more often than not these days, it's still a novelty, a God damn gift, to wake up next to someone. It had been so very long – Christ, you didn't even know how fucking lonely you were until you woke up that first morning with a fistful of red fabric clutched tightly to your chest.
“You're starin'.” Hancock grumbles, without opening his eyes – but you know he hasn't been sleeping. He never does, when he's with you. “S'creepy.”
You chuckle, caught-red handed; roll off of the arm you had been propped on to splay out on your back. There's no need now to be afraid of your big, clumsy body : of your too-broad shoulders and errant elbows.
Hancock won't mind. He can take it.
You wriggle into the cracked earth until your sore back acquiesces, press a hand up against his thigh just to feel him there. Rough sinew-skin and a too-hot heat under the pad of your thumb, the tingle of a rad-burn trying to seep right through his clothes.
It doesn't make sense, how perfect this is. You could never put words to how much you need it, or why.
Hancock hums, rolls to face you; his dark eyes regard you as they always do, with a mixture of disbelief and fond tenderness. His hand slides over to carefully map your body – firm and sure and always alien, every semblance of velvet flesh long since peeled away. You let him do it, smiling softly as he strokes your belly, inching up the path between your ribs to settle on your chest, heart beat drumming underneath his palm.
“Somehow,” He murmurs, “Somehow I'm always fuckin' surprised to find you here.”
I understand, you think.
Your throat aches, eyes prickling and all you can do is beam at him, grinning like an idiot. Articulation has never been your strong point. He laughs in return, joy and awe and something you can't put your finger on, something you certainly can't deserve.
“Here,” He says, nudging at you. “Roll over.”
You comply readily, pillowing your head on your arm until he grumbles no, c'mon, like this; you are too drowsy to argue, instead let him man-handle you, let him slip his arm underneath you and wrap it across your abdomen, let him curve himself around your spine.
This – this is new. Being held. The feeling of his forehead pressed into your hair-line, hot breath tickling across the tops of your ears. This is safe and vulnerable all at once, makes you feel small.
You've never in your life felt small.
A wobble settles in your lungs. You cling to his arm for dear life.
“Hancock.” You whisper, without knowing what you mean to say after. He squeezes you around the middle, swallowing thickly – the air between you feels still and static, lightning-bright. Your heart is beating so loudly you can't hear much of anything but the blood rushing through your ears. Too restless to stay still, you shift, rubbing against him, trying to somehow shuffle back far enough to simply crawl into his skin.
He huffs and mock-growls, tilts and presses on top of you to pin you into the ground. In all the ways that matter, he has you snared.
A few moments of silence, strung together by your heavy breaths and his searching hands, seeking out the landmarks of your body; belly-button, mole-cluster, the nub of a nipple -
And then -
“You sleep okay, baby?” As if he thinks he can change the damn subject just like that – circumvent the fact that he's fucking spooning you – yet you kiss at his arm despite yourself, warm and cosy, too fucking comfortable to call him on being a jack-ass.
“Woke better.” You say. It's corny and it's stupid and you sound mortifyingly choked; to your surprise, however, he does not scoff but makes a wounded sound, free hand grabbing at your hip, his fingers pressing into the flesh with enough force to bruise. Sharp teeth nip fervently at your jaw, your throat, the soft meat where neck meets shoulder.
You whimper, though it doesn't hurt, was never designed to hurt.
He swings his head round, butting at your chin – declares abruptly,
“Liar. You don't gotta wake up and fuckin' stare me out every day, you know? I ain't – I ain't goin' anywhere, man. Okay?” It sounds too much like I love you, makes your breath hitch in your chest.
It's a promise. No one makes promises, not any more.
But.
Somehow, here like this, with a solid ache in your bones that will never quite ease, with blistered fingers that smell like gunpowder and death, you could believe it. Mud and blood caked into your clothes, radiation turning your lungs inside out and God, you don't feel – you don't feel - hulking and ungainly and useless, you feel like you fit.
You feel like you belong.
He thumps his fist against your chest.
“Okay?”
You nod, and remember how to breathe. He kisses behind your ear, makes you feel small all over again.
“Good.” His voice is a whisper, a shiver, small and so fragile. “Go back to sleep.”
You know that when you wake, he will be a novelty all over again.