Heart and Claw Update

2k words.

***

Cooper didn’t have to see the sky to tell it was getting late, but his limited progress on repairing the power armour was making him too frustrated to consider going to sleep. He’d managed to secure the chest piece onto the frame, literally taping it back on using spare adhesives Pearl had in her piles of spare parts. The legs and arm pieces were another story. Cooper was resourceful, but he’d only had limited experience with power armour, and repairing the damage Pearl had done wasn’t as easy as reassembling a gun or welding parts together.

He must have spent hours trying to connect the left arm sockets to the wireframe, cursing under his breath at the little progress he made. Each limb had dozens of little connectors that fed into the wireframe by microscopic wires, where power could be distributed from the exosuit to make the plating feel lighter than it really was. Just how did they mass produce these things before the Bombs? Why hadn’t they deisnged them to be repaired in the field?

He was momentarily distracted as Pearl walked into the bathing chamber, meting her eyes for a second before returning his attention to the frame. “Cooper…” she sighed. “you said you were coming to bed.”

“In a minute,” he growled, twisting his arm at an awkward angle as he delved into the wireframe, catching his finger on a sharp bit of metal and drawing blood. His curse echoed off the stone walls.

“You said that ten minutes ago,” Pearl complained, tapping her foot on the ground. “Just leave it, you’ve done all you can.”

“Which isn’t enough,” he replied, sounding more defensive than he wanted. “We need every advantage we can get when we attack the lodge, and I need this suit intact.”

“No you don’t,” she said, making her way over. “You’ve gone years without an exosuit, and you survived this long, didn’t you?”

“I suppose…” he said. Her hand came down on his shoulder, and he touched it with his own, looking up at her with a worried expression.

“You’re a capable man, crafty, and you don’t stop for anything,” she said. “I’ve seen you fight, you don’t need a tin suit to be a force to be reckoned with. You’ll be fine without it.”

“I don’t know how you can be so calm, Pearl,” he sighed. “I’ve been in a lot of tight scrapes, but attacking a fort is something I’ve never done before.”

“Wanna know my secret?” she asked, bringing her voice down to a whisper. “I get this little thing called rest, it helps me out a lot.”

Cooper had always been a light sleeper, but something about this whole situation made him feel he wouldn’t get much sleep over these next few days. He was worried, not over his own life, but Pearl’s. It was a ridiculous notion, she was covered in a natural coat of scaley armour, but the thought of her coming to harm again created a pit in his stomach.

“I can see that might be a problem for you,” Pearl said, reading him like one of her books. “What if I rode you until the sun rose above the mountains? How’s that sound?”

“It’s an idea,” he said, his mood lightening a little.

“Don’t be coy, Coops, it doesn’t suit you. My pack was worried too when I told them we were going back, how do you think they feel? They have to close in to melee range under hails of bullets, that’s fucking terrifying, but they’re content to make do with what time they have now, even if there’s a risk some of us might not come back.”

“How?” he asked. He knew these creatures were more than just dumb animals, and he was curious as to what sort of mentality they had when it came to dealing with stress.

“I’ll show you,” she said, her lips spreading in a grin. “Follow me.”

They left the bathing chamber, heading into the deeper reaches of the mine, one of the lightbulbs flickering as they passed by it. Cooper rubbed his hands together as he stepped between the twin railway tracks, the temperature dipping with every pace. Just how did these reptiles stay warm in such frigid temperatures?

The mineshaft opened up after a while, Cooper recognizing it as the chamber with all the excavation equipment, easily the largest space in the entire den. The only source of illumination was the light spilling in from the two passageways leading into the area, leaving the rest of the room in near-darkness.

As Cooper’s eyes adjusted, he noticed something was moving near the center of the chamber. To one side of the giant excavators was a bundle of fabrics, a nest not all that different from Pearl’s bedding, and there was something on top of it. Multiple somethings. He couldn’t pick out much in the gloom, a questing hand, a pair of coiling tails, interlocking horns.

“I don’t need to tell you it gets cold out in the Wastes after dark,” Pearl said. “but for reptiles it’s worse, ‘specially in winter. We have to share what little body heat we make, but we have ways of… amping that up. And it helps relieve the tension, so that’s a bonus.”

It didn’t take a genius to know what she was talking about. A soft grunt filled the room, along with an especially powerful movement from the pile. Two white eyes blinked open from the writhing masses, Cooper’s muscles tensing as the hungry gaze lingered on him. He was pretty sure it was Matriarch, but the shadows were making it hard to tell.

Cooper inched closer, the way his shoes clocked against the stone disturbing the shifting pack, and one by one they looked up at him, halting their proclivities to watch him approach. Had he walked in on something like this before, when he’d come through here with his syringer? Just how often did these things go at it?

“They wondered about how compatible we were,” Pearl said, waving her hand between her chest and his. “I just had to spill the beans, and they were pretty excited once I gave them all the raunchy details.”

“W-What?” Cooper asked. “You told them? Pearl that’s… private.”

“That’s the cost of living in a pack, privacy goes out the window. Besides, they begged me!” Her tail flicked, indicating she wasn’t being whole with the truth. “Still, I mayhave embellished it a bit too much. They’ve been itching to get their claws on you ever since. Jump on in if you want, you’re bound to surprise most if not all of them.”

“Pearl!” he exclaimed. “I-I can’t do… that with them. They’re-”

“Intelligent, eager and willing creatures?” Pearl suggested. “You’ve done the dirty with me, how’s this any different?”

“Everything’s different!” he said. “First of all, you and I’ve got a connection, but I’ve only had a handful of interactions with these things… girls, whatever.”

“That’s more than could be said for those prostitutes you frequent so much,” Pearl countered, Cooper dragging his hands down his blushing face. “But it’s pretty sweet hearing you say that you like me. Aren’t you even the least bit curious as to what a bunch of deathclaws could make you feel? Trust me when I say they can make all your worries disappear…” she cooed, snapping her fingers for emphasis.

Cooper wanted to deny it, but a little voice in the back of his head was asking him similar questions. His encounters with Pearl were so passionate, so much more intimate, and especially novel, compared to what bedding a woman was like. What sort of proclivities would the pack subject him too? All he had to do was walk a few more steps, and he’d find out…

“E-Even if I wanted to,” he began, Pearl watching him stutter with a big smile on her face. “You and I, we’re… humans don’t usually share partners with other people…”

“Ah yes, humans have monogamous relationships, read about that somewhere,” Pearl said. “Well, we deathclaws are a lot more frivolous when it comes to that, and I don’t mind a bit of sharing if it means getting you to relax, Cooper. Besides,” she added, leaning a hand on a wide hip. “something about watching you wriggle around, it just... just gets me going, is that weird? It sounds weird when I say it.”

Cooper felt tiny under the gaze of the collective pack, scratching his head as his thoughts reeled. He wasn’t really considering this, was he? Despite Pearl’s words, he still felt like he would be betraying her if he decided to indulge himself, as strange as that sounded. He hesitated for too long, two of the deathclaws turning their attention back to each other, a handful of scales being grabbed by a clawed hand, a sultry hiss emanating from one of the females. He felt blood rush to his groin as he watched them gyrate, taking each other right then and there, Copper unable to tear his eyes away.

He didn’t want to reduce himself to such deviancy, but he found it increasingly harder to refuse his body the more the pack turned their attention back to themselves, soft moans and heaving bodies shifting in the dark, Cooper catching a sliver of pink as someone’s womanhood was exposed for a split second, a meaty thigh sealing it away right after.

“What’ll it be, Coops?” Pearl asked, holding out one of her hands. He wasn’t thinking straight, watching in stunned silence as one of the deathclaws brought their hips to another’s, the recipient purring in delight. Cooper made to turn hisemlf around, put his back to such thoughts in the most literal of ways, but when he willed himself to do it… there was nothing. His deviancy won over, and he met Pearl’s eyes with a neutral expression. She didn’t need to ask him what his answer was, it was written all over his face.

Her lips pulled back in a smirk, and she growled something in her animal speech. Before he could ask what she’d said, he noticed a scaly arm reaching out of the pile of bodies, a pair of creamy eyes peeking out at him. Before he could react, the giant arm seized him by the ankle, Cooper falling on his ass as it pulled his leg out from beneath him. Pearl stopped him before he could fall too hard, but she backed off after giving him an apologetic look.

Cooper eyes widened as he was dragged