friday night fire fight - oneshots

s. bright (nsfw)

heatstrokes and other meet cutes
saul bright x reader
5.3k words

summary: after suffering a severe heatstroke and the beatdown of your life, you stumble across a nomad camp in the badlands. their leader is willing to offer a helping hand.

warnings/tags: heatstrokes, getting mugged, guns, blood, swearing, vomiting, mentions of rape/noncon, undressing in front of a stranger, strangers to lovers, thigh riding, smut, use of good girl, running away

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You had heard the same phrase over and over again.

You'd heard it at bars from truckers who had driven through the deserts all day and all night to avoid stopping out in the open. Their eyes were stamped with purple half-moons, expressions slack with exhaustion and fatigue they barely fought off. Their clothes were dusty despite never once stepping out of their cabs, and they spoke as if they'd seen the rapture itself out in those barren wastelands.

You'd heard it from ex-nomads who had sought to give up their lives in the deserts, too scarred from what they'd seen and endured to carry on out in the open. Their hands were calloused and their lips dry, always carrying around bits and traces of their old life, no matter how far they ran or how hard they tried to scrub all the dust off.

You'd heard it from mercenaries who'd had the misfortune of working jobs out there in the flat, dry banks and plains. They shook their heads when asked about it, said that some things just needed to lay down and fuckin' die. Their gazes danced with ravens and scavenger birds picking at something unseen in the brush, and their footsteps were a little lighter than they once had been, as if they were scared of leaving footprints in sand that wasn't even there.

You had heard the same phrase over and over again.

"If you think Night City is bad, wait until you get out to the Badlands."

You had always thought they were being dramatic. Silly. Ridiculous. It was all just a bunch of desert, nothing but rocky mountain ridges and a brutal, unforgiving sun that found a way through the clouds even if the heavens themselves refused to part.

You had been wrong. So very, horribly, awfully wrong.

Sand clinging to your trousers, your hair, your shoes - everything - weighed you down as you slowly trudged your way through the nothingness of the Badlands back toward the city. The tops of the skyscrapers and the holo-ads just barely prodded at the horizon, teasing you in a mirage of sorts. Miles. Miles upon miles left until you reached salvation, safety, relief.

You couldn't help but pant with parted lips as you feebly stepped up a ridge and forced your legs to move along - one after the other. That's all. That's all that it was. And yet, the simple act of walking felt as though it were the most impossible thing you'd ever done.

Nothing in your parched, sun-fried brain could tell you what the hell you had even been thinking coming all the way out here. You'd struck up a deal with a wastelander over the net abour buying a bike that looked preem enough to have come straight from the dealer's website. Now, you were sure that's where it had been from.

By the time you'd parked your car in the middle of the abandoned lot you and the seller had agreed to meet at, it had been too late. You'd been met with a tap on your window from the end of a pistol barrel, and on the other side had been a man wearing a mask over his face and goggles over his eyes to shield himself from the sand blowing in the breeze.

The was a blur in the forefront of your mind, too fast and miserable and beige-tinted to remember much.

The scavengers had pulled you from your car and stripped you of anything useful you had - your pieces, the tools from your trunk, hell - they'd even taken your belt buckle, thinking it to be worth anything more than a few dozen eddies. You had cried out, screamed for help as they backed you against your car and beat the living sense out of you, but of course no one had come. Your yells had been noting more than a few whispers on the wind, as far as anyone else was concerned. They had left you in that lot, staring up at the blinding sky, feeling blood slip from your mouth and trickle down the side of your face. Gasping for air in your bruised lungs.