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"How the fork do you scamper so fast in those heels?"
"Practice, practice, practice, and just a smidge of inexplicable talent. It's a very useful skill! No one ever expects a sweet lady to be so spry, which works wonders for the element of surprise! You are trying to grab a helpless victim wobbling around on inconvenient heels, and whoosh — she's already on the other side of the city..."
"You're a crafty biscuit, Brughel Poisson."
"Thank you for the compliment, darling."
Sampo Koski was breathing heavily after their speedy little jog, but it was probably just for show. Boothill had seen this scoundrel pull off near-marathon sprints, shaking off an overly persistent "tail" for hours. This time, it had taken them a mere five system minutes to fully disappear from the sight of the sore losers they’d just conned out of their cash. Or rather, mostly cash — and something else, something Boothill didn’t quite grasp and had unceremoniously shoved onto his companion, who had far more experience in the field of financial scheming.
Or maybe it was more correct to say "companionette." The only thing distinguishing this "companionette" from Sampo Koski was that Boothill had known him before this whole mess started and was already aware of what kind of character he was. Other than that — even if you sent this particular character to compete in the "Miss Universe" pageant, no one would ever suspect such a knockout beauty to be a somewhat awkward, middle-aged man.
The beauty was knockout in every conceivable sense of the word. First, if Boothill hadn't known the whole truth, he'd have probably, shamefully, fallen for her languid gaze, enticing movements, and the seductively broad sweep of her shoulders (omitting the fact that, even with that sacred knowledge, he still fell for it; only, to his credit, there was no particular shame in that). And second, despite his general distaste for direct confrontation, Sampo Koski possessed quite decent hand-to-hand combat skills and had successfully knocked out a couple of aggressive thugs, clearing a path for their retreat. Boothill, of course, would have preferred to let his gun do the talking, but the aforementioned knockout lady talked him out of it, citing some vague arguments — mercy, high morals, reputation, shmeputation. But he agreed anyway. Sometimes Boothill allowed himself to make concessions. Rarely. With varying degrees of success. And only for certain specific individuals.
Sampo Koski, performing this evening under the name Madame Brughel Poisson, belonged to an extremely narrow list of trusted people, which consisted of two people or something like that.
"And still," Boothill said, leaning casually against the wall and watching Sampo inhumanly quickly steady his breathing and slip back into his standard cocky demeanor. "You really go all out every time, huh?"
"What do you mean?" Sampo was already adjusting the chestnut curls of his wig and retouching his plump lips. The strap of the garishly pink dress had slipped off his shoulder during all the running, and as Boothill mentally drooled over the exposed collarbone, he began to doubt whether the slip had truly been an accident.
"Your getup. The posh wig, the bling worth a zillion credits, that beauty mark under your eye, practically a match for my tattoo. And I dunno how you do it, but you're genuinely indistinguishable from a sweet lady. One thing is just throwing on a dress... but that figure!" He raised his hands to the heavens... or rather, to the ceiling. The gesture didn't quite work out because of the stupid formal jacket Boothill had been dying to get out of from the very moment he got into it. "The tits, the hips, you've got it all. Where'd you dig up such high-quality falsies?"
His answer was a trademark Sampo sly squint, the kind that could be described by a sequence of symbols: colon-three. This put Boothill on guard, but not to the point of immediately abandoning his original intentions. He was used to backing up his words with actions — so, mostly for demonstrative purposes, he reached out with his greedy mitts and wholeheartedly groped those voluminous feminine assets.
A sound came out of Sampo's mouth. An extremely indecent sound, he had to say. Boothill blinked in confusion, because along with that sound, an unexpected revelation dawned on him: the falsies felt suspiciously unlike silicone. Granted, he rarely had occasion to grope real female breasts — he'd had more important things in life, like shoving his gun barrel in the faces of various IPC motherlovers — but based on those few occasions, he could arrive at quite definite and utterly baffling conclusions. After a moment's thought, he put on what he considered an intelligent face and, for the purity of the experiment, squeezed his fingers again.
The sound repeated. And, Boothill realized, about twice as indecent as the previous one, if such ephemeral matters could even be measured in numbers. Sampo looked at him intently, and apparently assessing the shape of his eyes, which were rapidly approaching perfect circles, sighed and shook his head:
"Well, my friend, if even the second time didn't get through to you, I honestly don't know how to drop a more elegant hint..."
"Elegant, my ass!" Boothill tried to shake off his bewilderment with a dog-like shake of his head, but achieved no tangible success on that front. "Hold on. You mean... they're seriously..."
"Yep. As serious as can be."
"Like, the realest of real? Flesh, blood, all that crepe?"
"What, wanna check again?"
"Of course I do, what kind of stupid question is that?!"
"...That answer doesn't fit the usual script at all," Sampo chuckled and, grabbing Boothill's wrist, planted his palm back onto his décolletage area. "That's what I like about you, handsome."
"Wait a sec. You got some kind of usual scripts with all sorts of random dipsticks — and I'm not in 'em?" Boothill squeezed his palm a little tighter than necessary and smirked vengefully when Sampo let out an exaggerated, theatrical squeal. "Thanks for the 'handsome,' but I don't intend to share my lovely lady."
"Ow! Gentler! I am a delicate lady, after all!" Judging by the utterly smug, cat-that-got-the-cream expression on his face, his words were to be interpreted in the exact opposite way. "Heh-heh, it's nice to know you can recover from shock so quickly."
"With you, a fella's gotta expect just about anything, you delicate lady..." Boothill sighed fatalistically.
"Ah yes, Sampo Koski is a man of many talents."
"'A man'?"
"Next question..."
"Next one it is," Boothill's eyes flashed greedily. "Did the additions only happen up top?"
"Well, how should I put it... if something had been added down below too, it would've come out a bit creepy..."
It didn't kill Boothill's drool-worthy mood, of course, but he visualized the statement in fairly vivid detail and roared with laughter.
"So, it subtracted," he summarized, once he'd stopped laughing.
"Subtracted!" Sampo confirmed cheerfully.
Several lewd scenarios immediately sprang to Boothill's mind, which he wanted to put into action right away. He looked around. A door was temptingly looming nearby, most likely leading to a storage room — one of those that usually appear out of nowhere right at the moment when the plot desperately needs one. Boothill looked at the door. Then at Sampo. Then back at the door... back at Sampo... and broke into a satisfied, toothy grin:
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"I don't know. I, personally, am thinking about the Quida Nebula's Criminal-Administrative Code. And you?"
"...Pfft," Boothill rolled his eyes theatrically and shoved the cheekily giggling Sampo into the storage room. "Why the wubbaboo would you think about that? You're probably guilty of violating half its articles anyway."
"You wound me! All of them at once, actually."
"What about your sweet little story about being the most law-abiding citizen in the world?" Boothill asked, methodically arranging his partner on the edge of some dusty chest.
"Am I supposed to spin that yarn for the main character of wanted posters right now?" Sampo reasonably clarified, readily allowing Boothill to arrange him in any accessible or inaccessible position. Of course, in such cramped conditions, the assortment of inaccessible positions was significantly larger, but the space cowboy wasn't one to complain about such minor inconveniences. The great intergalactic speculator, on the other hand, was perfectly capable of whining right now about a sore back, the uncomfortably hard surface, the shoes chafing...
"That's still a trick question, which one of us has more of those fudging posters."
"Wanna bet?" Sampo asked immediately. "A wish."
"And are you gonna haul your ass around the cosmos counting them?"
"Of course not! I have my own methods!"
"Ugh, whatever. Stop loving with my head and let's get to the wubbabing already," Boothill declared peremptorily and latched onto Sampo in a predatory kiss. The most terrible thing was that even during the kiss, Sampo managed to giggle, smack his lips, and happily kick his feet. Sometimes Boothill wondered what he even saw in this clown, and then he'd peacefully lay his head on the clown's lap, and the question would vanish on its own. This was clearly not one of those times, so, snorting vexedly, the cowboy bit him on the lip and pulled back, peering into the cheeky green eyes.
There wasn't the faintest glimmer of conscience in them as Sampo replied:
"Now, how could I not love your head? I absolutely adore it. Especially when it is overheating so charmingly."
"I'm gonna bite something off of you right now."
"Just do it sensually!"
"With feeling, sense, and precision, I'll bite off your crafty ass — that work for you?"
"Buddy, I think you're paying attention to entirely the wrong parts of my body, the ones you were asking so many questions about not more than a couple of minutes ago."
He had no comeback. Boothill scratched the back of his head, sighed heavily, accepted his fate, gathered his thoughts and grew himself a steel pair, and then sharply tugged the bodice of the dress, pulling it down and revealing... well, these were definitely not falsies.
"Whaddya think?" Sampo inquired, squirming in anticipation. "Spent all night growing them, put in the effort."
"I'm not even gonna think about how you forking did that," Boothill informed him, feeling a strong urge to squirm impatiently himself at the sight of this magnificence. Despite the full mechanization of his body, he could still experience lust, fortunately, a fact Sampo regularly exploited. Actually, for situations of varying indecency, Boothill had one specific detachable part stashed away, but as it happened, this time he hadn't counted on the party continuing... well, screw it. He still had his hands. And a long tongue — which, unlike Sampo, he used correctly. Meaning, for its indirect purpose.
He leaned in and pressed his lips to the lush breast, lightly nibbling the nipple, while gently settling his palms on his partner's unusually slender waist. Sampo, seemingly long ready to surrender himself unconditionally into the cowboy's hands, trembled sweetly, and for a second Boothill thought that if they fooled around in their usual style, he might accidentally snap that waist in half. However, there was no time to ponder this; with trembling hands, Sampo pressed down on the back of his head, forcing him to continue — and, preferably, on the double. Boothill wasn't stupid; he usually got the hint by no later than the second try (sometimes the third), so he eagerly took up the surprisingly silent request.
With chains of kisses, he traced around both areolas, brushed his nose in the hollow between the collarbones, left a few careful bites — no, he still couldn't bring himself to bite as he normally did, but there was a certain charm in that too. In all fairness, his caution wasn't unfounded: in his memory, Koski had never melted so much from light, fluttering touches before.
Boothill looked up. Sampo, biting his lip, was concentratedly trying to catch his breath, but he didn't seem to be having much success.
"And we haven't even started yet," Boothill teased him, feeling a strange pleasure from their sudden role reversal. Seeing Sampo close to transitioning into an aggregate state of a puddle was always pleasant, but what a rare phenomenon it was! And here, it had taken barely anything at all, and Boothill's brakes were starting to gradually fail because of it.
"Then start already," Sampo snorted impatiently, squeezing his thighs together unambiguously. "While you're taking your sweet time, I'm dangerously close to flooding the downstairs neighbors."
"We're on the ground floor."
"Then the basement mice! Come on, knight in shining armor, prevent the flood, chop-chop!"
He didn't have shining armor, but obeyed anyway. Somehow, it was all starting to look as if Sampo had deliberately pulled some strings and led the narrative precisely into this dusty storage room, but first, Boothill wouldn't be the least bit surprised by such a turn of events, and second, he had absolutely no desire to complain about it.
Besides the very conveniently slipped strap, the pink dress also had an equally convenient slit up to mid-thigh. Boothill took full advantage of this and shifted the weightless fabric aside. And, perhaps he would have been glad to get straight down to business, but suddenly under the dress, he discovered Sampo's favorite curved blade, secured in a sheath on the thigh, in a comically contrasting juxtaposition with the lace underwear.
"What exactly were you counting on in this whole situation, I can't figure it out?" asked Boothill, carefully extracting the blade. Sampo deftly intercepted his hand, took the weapon back, and answered simply:
"I wasn't counting. I was just doing."
"Oh."
The sturdy blade pressed against the back of his neck. A large reserve of patience had never been on the list of Sampo Koski's many virtues, but now, it seemed, his poor reservoir had sprung a leak entirely. Can't say Boothill was against this kind of unique spice in their horizontal relationship, but for propriety's sake, he still muttered:
"Alright, I get it, I get it..."
"Good boy," Sampo didn't remove the blade. Boothill dropped to his knees, threw the graceful ladies' legs over his shoulders, and just in case, pondered how funny it would be to read a line in his obituary: "decapitated for refusing to have sex." He didn't fancy becoming a headless horseman, however, so he didn't dawdle any longer: with just his fingertips, he pulled the underwear down, giving himself no more than a second to fight cognitive dissonance, and hastily slid his tongue into the already not just wet, but positively gushing depths. It seemed the flood joke hadn't been a joke.
The partner's legs instantly shuddered on his shoulders, and the blade dangerously scraped against a metal plate on his neck. Taking this as a sign he was doing everything right, Boothill grinned smugly and went all out, selflessly lapping up Sampo in every direction. Well, there's a thing: the cowboy had never suspected Koski was even capable of making the kinds of sounds that nearly deafened one's ears — and it was strange the whole building hadn't come running, a building Boothill had, honestly, completely forgotten about. At some point, he had to grab Sampo under the knees and hold him in place: he was bending, twisting, and shaking from every careless touch. Boothill was genuinely curious: was it all thanks to his skills with women — or was everything just heightened for Sampo from unfamiliarity?
It didn't take him long. In the end, Koski arched his back, nearly choking Boothill to death with his thighs. Wheezing strangledly, Boothill forced Sampo's legs apart, took a life-giving gulp of air, and wiped his face on the sleeve of the fancy jacket. Perhaps that was the only sensible use for this stupid rag.
"One more time?" Boothill suggested with an innocent smile.
"H-have a heart," Sampo gasped convulsively. The blade clattered from his weakened fingers. "Give me at least a couple... of minutes... to catch my breath... you fiend! I'm not a cyborg... unlike some!"
"Well, you aren’t. Just some unknowable, chthonic forking thing, which is only about one percent studied and pulls new tricks every day."
"I love you too," Sampo mumbled, haphazardly trying to uncross his eyes. "So, in which role do you fancy me more?"
Boothill bared his teeth in a joyful grin and stated confidently:
"Yes."
***
A few days later, Boothill received a private message.
Sampo:
Handsome! Good news!
Sampo:
I sneaked into the IPC archives the other day and look what I found
Boothill:
[voice message transcribed]
You sneaked WHERE, say that again?! Are you fudging kidding me???
Sampo:
Don't interrupt, or I'll get offended and won't tell you anything 💔
Sampo:
So
Sampo:
[attached file: "Statistics_on_Strategic_Wanted_Poster_Placement"]
Sampo:
You have two and a half times more posters
Boothill:
………
Sampo:
Which means I'm ready to fulfill any wish of yours~~~
Sampo:
I can dust off Brughel again. Or I can come up with something more interesting. Maybe a double set this time? Or something completely inhuman? Just no tentacles, that's, unfortunately, not to my taste
Boothill:
[voice message transcribed]
Holy crepe…