Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Fuck-up.  

The tender age of bittersweet sixteen crept ever closer to Lainey and her classmates, and on its heels were promises of new life. New jobs to break school day routines, new responsibilities to make a game of. New relationships and new families, though the pickings were, admittedly, slim. 

What mattered the most to the lot of them, to hazard a guess, were the new privileges. Ration coupons that were truly your own to spend as you please, access to top shelf items in the commissary. Age restrictions and curfew would become a thing of the past. 

None of them would ever be able to fly too close to the sun in an underground cage, but they’d be able to stretch their wings and breathe. 

That was what mattered to Lainey. That tiny taste of freedom. Because maybe if she had just that little bit more, that space to breathe, she could figure out where, exactly, she belonged. 

What stood between her and that more, were final projects. Fear. The G.O.A.T. 

What stood between her and the G.O.A.T. were three men inside of an open classroom, all part of a parent-teacher conference that the Overseer himself had made a big deal of attending. Nobody else, nobody else, had to have one of these meetings. 

Nobody, that is, except for Butch DeLoria. 

She had well and truly fucked up if she was being lumped in with him – the boy voted most likely to end up becoming the vault garbage burner. 

Her stomach turned when she heard a tell-tale rhythm just down the hallway – a carefree whistle and the echo of heavy boots on concrete. The footsteps even sounded like they fell in a swagger. She didn’t have to look up to know it was that idiot DeLoria. 

Lainey looked up, anyway.  

Butch repaid her with a shit-eating grin. 

She let out an annoyed huff and shifted in her seat and waited. There were only two folding metal chairs set outside of Mr. Brotch’s classroom, positioned just to where the adults inside could keep an eye on whoever was in those chairs. The door itself was left yawning wide and open, not unlike a very large narc of a mouth.  

Anybody passing by could hear what was being said in that room, and the last person she wanted listening in as their judgement was laid bare was Butch. 

Butch, flying high and looking way too fucking smug when he plopped down in a chair that was pushed right up against her own, leaving her no room to breathe. Butch, who had a smirk like the sun – gleaming teeth housing venom that would bite just as stars burned. Butch, who made a little heh sound while words like “disorganized” and “distracted” eked out past the threshold, every one another clip in still-unstretched wings. 

He fired up a game of Zeta Invaders on his Pip-boy. She couldn’t help but to look at the glowing green screen and to be honest, it gave her no small amount of joy to find out that her high scores were better than his. Even so, it took him less than thirty seconds to lose his game, which she decided was on purpose.  

Butch’s high scores sucked, but they didn’t suck that much.  

Almost as if to prove her thoughts, he let his head loll to the side where she sat and he gave her that look he always gave her – grinning around the toothpick stuck between his lips, baby blues bright with a flicker of mischief. 

The look that practically begged her to start a fire. 

“So, what’re you in for?” 

“This isn’t jail, Butch.” She rolled her eyes and turned away from him. Well, as away as she could with nowhere else to go .  

“Might as well be,” he said, leaning over her shoulder just enough to lower his voice. “Y’know, with how you’re squirming so much.” 

If it were any other time, she would’ve taken the bait and started that fire he seemed to want so bad. This time, the Overseer was right there. So were Dad and Mr. Brotch. Butch had her cornered, and the worst thing about it was that by bringing her “squirming” into it, he’d actually managed to make her feel worse about being here. 

Did he know he was punching down? 

Fuck-up.  

Her gaze dropped to hands with a mind of their own, making tiny tears in the crumpled papers she held. Paper after paper that she should have remembered. Her stomach felt as though she’d actually been punched and for a moment she wondered – if this isn’t jail, why did it feel like she’d been put on trial?  

“Guess even daddy’s little princess flunks out sometimes, huh?” 

“At least I’m not flunking because I’m stupid,” she countered, clinging to what little fight she had in her, given the circumstances. 

“I dunno. I figure you’ve gotta be pretty stupid to forget about a final project.” 

“I’m not stupid...” she said, but her voice wavered. It barely registered as much more than her talking to herself. 

“You’re gonna have to do better than just ‘stupid’ if you want it to hurt, pipsqueak.” 

“I’m not...”  

Stupid.  

“C’mon, where’s your fire?” 

He had inched close to her again, for that last little blow to her ego. Close enough that on any other day, she would have felt the warm whisper of his breath in her ear. She would have picked up on the spicy-sweet scent of that stuff he put in his hair. Her skin might have even prickled with goosebumps – she would have ignored them – and then she might have elbowed him in the ribs. 

He would have laughed, the ring of it as obnoxious as lullabies. They would have thrown dazzling insults like daggers in delicate ballet. On any other day, the heat of blood in her mouth would have been a nectar that brought her to life. 

But she did not feel, or smell, or notice. 

Fuck-up.  

Instead, her body went numb as she waited for the sharpened scythe of rejection to sever her wings, leaving any hope she had of tiny freedoms to die. 

But... even if she didn’t notice any of that stuff, Butch must have. 

“Lainey?” he murmured. Just her name. Nothing mean. It was almost enough for her to notice again – the sigh that he gave and the way he shivered before straightening back up in his chair. “Hey,” he added, just a bit rougher. Just a bit louder. The elbow nudged into to her arm was definitely meant to be noticed – not enough that it was meant to hurt her.  

Just enough to get her attention. It was probably all he’d wanted in the first place. 

Slowly, she shifted in her chair, tilting her face up to meet his. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he looked almost relieved. 

“Look, princess,” he said. He almost seemed to savor the sarcasm he’d put in the nickname. “They’re not gonna like, lock you up or anything over a little bit of schoolwork. Your pop’s probably in there smoothing everything out right now.” 

Ha. She wished. 

“You don’t know my dad.” 

“I know he wouldn’t let ‘em turn you into a garbage burner.” 

“You really don’t know my dad.” 

“Bullshit,” he said. He took a second, stared at her like she was missing something. Then, he cracked a smile. “Look, take it from the resident miscreate...” 

A real smile. Small, at first - 

“Miscreant?” 

Then a little bit bigger. “Yeah, whatever -” 

“Delinquent?” 

“Fuck’s sake, use smaller words,” he said, a spark of mischief now in his eye to egg her on. “I’m supposed to be dumb, remember?” 

“Dick?” 

“Are you done?” he asked, pretending to be annoyed. A dimple in his left cheek betrayed him.  

She had to stifle a fit of giggles because for a minute there, she almost forgot that she was supposed to be quiet, and that she was supposed to be hanging her head in shame. She was supposed to be a fuck-up – lumped in with him. 

And she was also supposed to hate Butch DeLoria.  

“Why are you being nice to me?” she asked. Before he had a chance to say “I’m not,” she had one hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. It was just better that way. 

The pair of them remained close, eyes locked in stalemate. Neither of them moved an inch while they listened in on her fate. 

“If this vault is to succeed, everyone in it needs to pull their weight.”  

“Of course, Overseer. I can say with certainty that my daughter will work hard to catch up.”  

Butch rolled his eyes in an I-told-you-so way. Lainey fought the impulse to argue with him before they heard Mr. Brotch weigh in. 

“I have a suggestion, if we’re all on the same page. We have Lainey tutor Butch for the next few weeks after class. He’ll get some guidance where he’s struggling, and she’ll be in a place where she has to focus on her work.”  

Stupid.  

“Hm... so long as Butch doesn’t serve to be further distraction, I don’t see how it could hurt. But it’s the focus that’s rather the problem, isn’t it? I just don’t see how someone with such brilliant parents could be having these problems, James.”  

Distracted.  

“About that... James, have you considered putting her on medication?”  

“No...” she whispered, to nobody in particular. 

“I certainly hope that you don’t mean Mentats, Mr. Brotch,” the Overseer cut in. “Proper medication, of course, is invaluable. But those are amphetamines -”  

Fuck-up.  

“- A party drug -”  

Fuck-up.  

“- Addictive.”  

FUCK-UP. 

“And we wouldn’t want another Ellen DeLoria situation on our hands, would we, James? Think about it.”  

The derision dripped, oily and slick, from the Overseer’s maw and into the hall.  

Then, while Lainey’s ears rang and her head went static and she was left in freefall, Butch opened his big stupid mouth and licked her hand. Just like that, her soul came crashing back into her body, but at least he’d made her feel  something . 

“EW, BUTCH.” 

Namely, annoyance. Bordering on anger - 

“Get OFF ME, TWERP.” 

-though her anger had nothing on the venom of a Tunnel Snake. 

Whatever fragile truce they’d come to dissolved in a rush of acid rage. Before Lainey even had a chance to process anything beyond the shame that had been directed at her , Butch dumped her on the floor. Hard enough that her hip burned from the contact of bone colliding into concrete. Hard enough to make folding chairs screech for mercy from the force of Butch standing up. 

He was a miscreant. A delinquent. A fucking dick.  

But as she glared up at from where she was sprawled on the floor, she’d never seen him with a look like this – lips curled in a sneer around the toothpick still in his mouth, blues now dancing darkly with something much closer to hate. 

He looked exactly like a snake when he pulled back his fist. Tightly coiled. Poised to kill. She braced herself for impact, waited for him to punch down again. 

And she waited. 

And she waited. 

But Butch had never been looking at her. That hatred was reserved for someone else watching closely through a yawning open doorway, and he punched. Hard. If the force of his knuckles colliding with the door’s power access broke anything, or even hurt, he didn’t show it. 

Not to the Overseer.  

“Butch, so help me – “ 

“Yeah, whatever. I can find my own way to security, sir.” 

His eyes locked with hers one last time, all the fire in them burned to little more than ash. He shook his head, looked away, stepped over her while he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket.  

And as that boy DeLoria rounded the hallway corner and the sound of heavy, dragging steps got further away, she found herself wondering for the first time in a while where, exactly, he was supposed to belong. 

Chapter Text

“You’ll take care of my Butch, won’t you, sweetheart? ” 

 
Not long after Butch’s grand exit, Ellen DeLoria had arrived to the classroom carrying on as though nothing was wrong. Ellen had gone inside and spoken with the men, all velvet apologies and oozing smiles while red bruises bloomed purple over the stretch of Lainey’s hip. The air pealed with bells of laughter as the woman spoke briefly to Mr. Brotch, then to Dad. 

She’d been no different speaking to the Overseer. 

Ms. DeLoria had been sparkling champagne - did she know how he’d just poured oil over her name?  

Before Lainey’s dad had whisked her off and ushered her into his office in whispers, she’d been called into the classroom, too. Ellen had beamed at her. She’d cupped Lainey’s cheek in one hand, and with the warm smile of a mother keeping sins baptized in vodka, she had asked Lainey - 

“Take care of my Butch.”  

Mesmerized by a melancholy long buried in shining blue, Lainey had told her “I will.”  

Her mind was made up. There was no way that Ellen didn’t know. 

“Honey?” 

“Hmm?” Lainey blinked, taking herself away from the soothing scratch of graphite in notebook margins. While she sketched, her mind was lost somewhere between a youthful accusation of Ellen DeLoria “drinking up the ration coupons” and Butch’s bruised, bloodied knuckles. 

Dad had been hovering near his office window for several minutes now and he hadn’t moved much, other than to give her an ice pack. He also hadn’t mentioned a single word about the meeting, which was... something. 

It probably meant she was toast, but she still couldn’t get a real read on him. 

He reminded her of cathedral gargoyles, with pursed lips and a deeply furrowed brow set in stone as he peered through unstained glass and toward the clinic door. Maybe he was watching for signs of Ellen. Maybe Mr. Brotch. 

Most likely, he had been watching for Overseer Almodovar this whole time. 

He finally let out the deepest of sighs, relaxing enough that he almost looked human again. “Turn the desk lamp on for me.” 

When he heard the click of a switch that said she’d done as she was told, he flipped the main lights off. Nothing was left but a pale-yellow pool of light to spill across the gleaming surface of a well-kept desk, landing on a lone manila patient folder that laid open in the middle. 

Her patient folder. 

He shut the curtains and took the length of the room in a few short strides before settling across from her in his big, important Doctor chair. He rested his chin in folded hands in such a way that he almost looked as though he were praying - “Lord, grant me the strength”.  

His wrinkles looked a little deeper. His hair looked a little greyer. Lainey had no doubt in her mind that it was her fault, but he did not look like he was angry with her. 

Just tired. So, so tired. 

That might have been worse than her being toast. 

“What have you been working on?” he asked, gesturing toward her notebook with his chin. 

“Uh...” She stumbled. The notebook held new papers, instructions on what she was supposed to work on with Butch, and she hadn’t even glanced over them. Instead, her pencil had made its mark on the sidelines, filling the blank spaces that a too-quiet office and a restless mind left behind. “Birds...”  

They were supposed to be sparrows, maybe. Or bluebirds. Not that it mattered, because it wasn’t the right answer. 

“Ah, give me a moment,” Dad said, closing his eyes to think. “’The birds of the sky nest by the waters; they sing among the branches.’” 

Lainey blinked. She’d expected disappointment, not... this. “What’s that from?” she asked, though she could probably guess. 

“Another of your mothers’ favorite Bible verses, I’m afraid.” He took a moment to appraise what was on Lainey’s page before he gave an encouraging nod. “I think she would have liked them.” 

“Really?” 

“Really.” A long beat of silence passed while Dad seemed to study her, pained expression on his face. Lainey’s leg bounced, up and down, nerves electric from the scrutiny. The only thing to fill the quiet was the nervous hammer of Lainey’s heart against her ribcage. Finally, Dad broke the stillness that had settled over them. “You are so much like her.” 

It was a punch to the gut that she didn’t expect. 

Fuck-up.  

Lainey looked down at the birds on the page that her mother would have liked. Even now, a short few weeks from her coming-of-age, she knew precious little about Catherine Elaine Watson. She knew that she looked mostly like her mom. They both had these big brown eyes – filled with soul, Dad said. There were also the freckles, dusted across their cheekbones like tiny constellations.  

That was everything she had of her mom. Not Mom’s passion, not Mom’s brilliance. Not even a shared love of God, which made her feel the guilt of a sinner every time she went with Dad to light a memorial candle in the hallowed halls of the vault’s tiny chapel. 

Freckles.  

That was all. 

After another haze of discomfort had settled over them for far too long, Dad cleared his throat. 

“I think it’s long past time that we had a discussion about your condition.” 

Finally. At this point, Lainey was ready to rip the band-aid off. That didn’t stop her from shifting further back into her seat, or wincing at the ice pack that slid off from its place on her side. 

“Overseer Almodovar isn’t subtle, is he? Nor is he quiet,” he began, waiting patiently for her to adjust her pack. “But he isn’t wrong. Everyone must work together for the good of the vault.” 

“I know, Dad...” The shame she felt led her to glare down at the notes in her lap. Then, she studied the stray brown stitches on the arm of her leather chair. When loose, bedraggled strings lost their novelty, her gaze drifted to the alarmingly large syringe that the bobblehead on Dad’s desk held. 

Syringes. Medicine. Doctors. Brilliant parents. 

Fuck-up.  

She didn’t even notice how her glare had become coated in stinging, salted water until something wet dripped from her face and into her lap, smudging the tiny birds doodled in the margins of her page. By then, all hope was lost. Her scowl faltered. It had been the lone floodgate holding guilt and tears at bay. 

“I don’t know why I keep messing everything up.” 

“Oh, sweetheart. I’m afraid it isn’t you that has messed up, this time.” 

Dad reached across the desk, his palm facing up to take her hand. She reached back, and Dad gave her hand a squeeze. “I know that we don’t discuss your mother very much. The rare times that we do, the focus has always been on her good qualities. I fear that’s just what we do when we’re looking back on the memories of someone we love,” he said, wistful smile bringing a sad light to his eyes. “In that regard, I fear that I have failed you.” 

He withdrew then, to fiddle with the lock to the middle desk drawer. That was where he kept a few of his personal things. A pair of glasses designed to keep eye strain at bay. His first stethoscope. His stash of “good” pens that he didn’t want Lainey or Jonas to lose. 

And... a tin of breath mints? 

“What the Overseer said in that room... wasn’t entirely wrong. He certainly wasn’t wrong about your parents,” he said, running his thumb along the top of his tin, “but something that he doesn’t seem to realize is that your mother had help.” 

Dad popped open the tin he’d been holding, leaving the letters on display. Not “mints”. Mentats.  

He rose from his chair to take his place as the gargoyle by the window, a guard against the outside world. He left the open tin on the desk just in front of Lainey so that she could see. It was empty, save for a makeshift script in faded lettering taped inside - CATHERINE WATSON. TAKE ONE TABLET 2X DAILY AS NEEDED. 

“Mom had what I have?” She asked, in almost-disbelief. She ran her own fingers over the name on the script. A shiver ran down her spine. Amphetamines. Addictive. Party drugs – the Overseer’s words left ripples like stones in the water. 

“She did,” Dad said, matter-of-factly. “And she wasn’t any less of a person for it.” 

So, she shared brown eyes with her mother, filled with soul. Freckles like tiny constellations dusted across their cheekbones. And, now, Mentats. 

And they didn’t make Mom any less of a person. 

But there was one last jab that ate away at her conscience. Ellen DeLoria.  

Ellen, the drunk. Ellen, the pariah. Ellen, the fuck – no. 

Ellen DeLoria, the woman who knew. Ellen DeLoria, the woman who took time to be kind to Elena Watson, regardless. 

“The Overseer said I might become a ‘situation’ if you put me on these.” 

“Come again?” 

“He said... he said that...” it made her sick, even trying to remember what he’d said about Ellen. Sick because she didn’t want to end up like the woman? Sick because Ellen deserved to be treated with the same kindness she showed, rather than being no more than a cautionary tale? 

Maybe both. Maybe it was complicated.  

And honestly, a little because of her promise, too, and because of an anger long burning in fiery blue. 

“Never mind,” she said, deciding to carry on as if nothing was wrong. “Dad, do we have any extra stimpaks?” 

“For your hip?” 

“Sure,” she lied through her warmest smile. Dad knew, she decided. There was no way he didn’t know, and he let her champagne sin slide. 

After all, the greater sin was that there was a stubborn boy left with bloody knuckles out there, while all she had was a bruise. 

Chapter Text

“I was here first!”  

One time, when Lainey was still little and the kids were still sort-of-sweet, she had gotten lost somewhere deep and dark in the vault. Petty viper bites over hide-and-seek spaces in a storage closet had somehow, miraculously, managed to turn into a treasure hunt. There'd been a blocked-off door in the back of the closet that had given way to forsaken, frigid corridors and blacked-out apartments, all filled with the fragments of time long passed.  

There was too much to see down there to be scared of how dim the lights were, and there were too many boxes filled with silk-and-switchblade surprises to notice when she’d wandered too far.  

Plus, Butch was there hunting right along with her. Who else would have called her a baby and told her to get lost in the first place, and then panicked and begged her to stop crying when she did?  

He was the one that called her name in soothing, dulcet tones. He was the one that tried to soften his blows with the gift of a red silk neckerchief when she found her way to him. He was the one that had taken her hand and never looked back - fingers laced and locked to weave her back through labyrinthine hallways and past peeling posters of Vault-tec propaganda thick with dust. 

He also complained the whole way and called her an airhead, but he didn't let go until she was home. 

Sort-of sweet. But that was all back before he’d gone and turned into a complete jackass. 

Lainey sighed and reached to untie the wide red bow woven through her dark waves, and blew some stray hairs out of her way when they fell to her face. She shook the kerchief back into a wrinkled square and smoothed it across her dad’s desk before she picked up the bottle patiently waiting beside it. 

She ran her fingers over the label, linen white taped with love over that very particular shade of prescription orange. It wasn't the big, flashy tin with even bigger, flashier letters that would cry “Lainey’s on chems!” to the vault like an old-timey newsboy. That didn’t change how it still said “warning” in letters large enough to see, along with some other choice words like “amphetamine” and “blend”. 

And Dad had warned her, before he’d slipped out - 

“Take that straight to the apartment before you go anywhere else, honey.”  

“Please try not to wander.”  

“We’re both far better off if nobody else knows about this just yet.”  

Dad was probably right. She didn’t want to care what other people might think of her medicine, or what they’d think of her , but that was the thing about youth. You tend to care even when you think you’re too cool to show it, and Lainey? She cared. Fiercely. 

Lainey took her new meds and “her” stimpak, wrapping her secrets in soft, red silk. Then, she took her tiny contraband burial shroud and laid it to rest deep, deep within her book bag. It lay nestled under layers of notebooks and sketchbooks and myriad decay, basically in the foundations of the damned thing, in a place where homework and dreams went to die. 

Then, like flowers resting upon a freshly dug grave, she lay her newest assignment on the top of all that carefully-replaced junk. Sparrows in the margins and all. 

She slipped the bag over her shoulder and did her best to play it cool on her way out of Dad’s office. Stanley was in, grumbling very politely to Dad about back-breaking schedules and head-splitting headaches. Dad very politely advised him to rest, since aspirin kept failing to do the trick, and Lainey wondered to herself if maybe he needed more. 

Stanley declined with a good-natured grin, citing the Sisyphean effort to keep the vault running. 

“You’re taking the G.O.A.T. soon, aren’t you, kiddo?” he asked as Lainey skated past. “You know, we could always use a new maintenance technician. Maybe then I could take a break.” 

“Oh, I don’t know, sir. I have big plans to become the next garbage burner,” she quipped, feeling more at ease than she had all day. Stanley let out a hoot of appreciative laughter and Dad just shook his head in disapproval – the mild kind. The kind that meant Lainey, be serious, even though it hid a smile. 

Maybe it was just the micro-dose of medical rebellion calling to her, but she laughed. Just a little, gentle as the morning stars. It was definitely unlucky in the face of death, but all she had to do was make it home without wandering off course. 

The last thing she heard as she stepped through the door was a simple complaint - “Those Tunnel Snakes break everything they touch.” 

The innocent comment was an immediate distraction – it was about Butch, obviously, though he didn’t say names. For anyone else, it might have been easy to agree and move on and ignore it and take care of their own business first, but it wasn’t. Not for her.  

The words were a shock of venom, burning and impatient, that now coursed through her veins.  

About fifteen feet from the clinic door, she tripped over a second distraction on her way home – the toolbox that Stanley had waiting patiently for his return to the classroom. The second distraction was enough to lead her to a third, and her gaze landed on a dented access panel outside of a closed, quiet door. It was enough to make her wonder whether Butch had been set free.

That’s all it took. The toxin was in her brain. Lainey set out in the direction of the apartments with her focus tinted red. Red like fire, red like hate. Red like bruises and “sweethearts”, bloodied knuckles and softened blows. 

And then Lainey was lost. All over again. 

Chapter Text

"Loser.” “Fuck-up.” “Princess.” "Whore.”  

Have you ever felt a loneliness so cold that it sliced right through you, leaving a gasoline numb that sunk down to your bones? 

“That’s for babies.” “Are you crazy!?” “Stuck-up bitch.” “You lookin' to score?”  

Lainey had. Lainey did. It wasn’t a heartache that was constant, or relentless. It was a heartache that was stupid because she’d figured out how to manage it just after she turned thirteen. All she’d had to do was grow up a little. Make herself smaller. Package herself in a neat little box. 

Die a little inside, for the good of the vault. 

Thing was, every once in a while, something special would come along and shatter that box, and when that happened?  

Lainey would fucking break. 

Maybe it was that aching cold that called out in sweet, siren song when Ellen DeLoria opened the door to her heart and her home, dressed in little more than a baby-doll nightie and a long-feathered robe. 

“Um, hi.” Lainey said, blinking. A vague notion of you’re forgetting something clawed at her from somewhere deep in the pool of her memory, like a damned soul vying for her attention. She ignored it, because ignoring gut feelings is always wise. “Is Butch home?” 

“Oh, come in, sweetie! Come in!” Ellen beamed, waving her through the door with one free, manicured hand. The other held some sort of fruity-looking cocktail swirled in a milkshake glass. “He’s in his room.” 

Lainey had never been inside of the DeLoria apartment before – not that she’d ever had much reason to be – and it was crystal clear that Ellen lived in a whole different world. A world bright with color in an otherwise grayscale vault. 

Day-old daisies stretched for lamplight beside a radio in a tiny robins-egg kitchenette. Floral pillows and crocheted throws added life to mismatched armchairs in the sitting area. A small T.V. perched atop a stocked bar cart in front of them, playing romances in black and white over sparkling, unused stemware. 

It was small, and the décor was a little bit eclectic, but it was homey. Warm. An old Hollywood fever dream modeled to entertain guests that, as far as Lainey knew, Ellen DeLoria never had over. 

All that was missing was a cat named Cat. 

“Ohhhh, Butchie!” Ellen called, dazzling and delighted at the chance to fill the emptiness of her home with life. “One of your friends is looking for you!” 

Silence greeted them like an old friend. 

“I’m sure he’ll be out in just a minute,” she continued. “He was in such a mood when he came in, wouldn’t you know it? He didn’t even notice this fancy robe I found in one of the laundry rooms earlier! Oh, but he’s probably just feeling down because of school... come to think of it, how are you doing with that whole mess? Oh, sweetie, those men weren’t too awful to you, were they?” 

To say that Lainey was dazed would have been the understatement of the century. It was almost as if Ellen were trying to fit seventeen years of conversation into the span of twenty seconds. 

“No, no they weren’t that bad,” Lainey fibbed, although the woman had rescued a tissue from the coffee table just in case. “We just have to make up a little bit of reading, that’s all. It shouldn’t be too hard.” 

“Oh, good. That whole thing was such a bore,” the woman whined. “But I guess it’s a good thing you’re so good at reading. And I know you’re good at reading - my Butch used to come home so mad at you when he was little. He’d always yell, ‘Mom! Lainey’s showing off in class again!' Then he'd throw his books on the floor.” 

“Really?” 

It wasn’t too hard to imagine little Butch throwing any sort of tantrum. He’d always been really easy to rile up. Lainey was sort of surprised to hear that any tantrums had been thrown over her , aside from one over toys. And maybe one over sweetrolls. 

And one over her getting lost... 

“Mhm. You know, I think it was all just because he was a little upset that it took him a little bit longer.” 

“Oh...” 

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she drawled, “but he always gets a little crabby when he’s upset. Just like he was when he got home.” 

Then Ellen sniffed, still a bit miffed, and took a long draught from her fruity thing. 

“Oh, I’ve noticed. If he wasn’t such a hot-head, he wouldn’t have -”  

Somehow, Lainey managed to zip her lips before she could say anything else. It was obvious that Ellen still didn’t know anything about her son’s little show before she’d made it to the bore. It would have felt cruel to break the news that, yes , “that whole mess” had actually been sort of awful. 

“He wouldn’t have what, honey?” 

“Sorry, I lost it there for a second,” Lainey lied, a little harder this time. “If he weren’t so hot-headed, he wouldn’t have ignored your robe when he came in. I think you look just like one of those actresses.” 

Ellen bubbled with laughter and did a little twirl, steadying herself by gripping one of Lainey’s shoulders when she made herself dizzy and nearly tipped over. Before she knew it, Lainey had been drawn into a hug. 

The last part wasn’t a lie, Ellen was pretty. In a different life, where bombs had never dropped and she’d never been caged up, maybe Ellen’s living room would have been filled with people that gave a damn. Looks like hers might have earned her a ticket out of a small town and onto the silver screen. Maybe she’d have landed a job as a model in her youth. 

Even if it were something a little more scandalous, something in the vein of being a pin-up, she might have at least had friends. Instead, she’d spent who-knows-how-long branded the small-vault tramp. 

“Oh, thank you, sweetheart,” Ellen said, a little too tipsy and a little too moved by a compliment that was used mostly to cover Lainey’s ass. The woman held her at arm’s length again, one hand back where it’d been on her shoulder. "Every woman should have something in her closet that makes her feel beautiful, don’t you think? And men should have something that makes them feel pretty, too!” she added with a laugh. “Or, handsome, whichever word they prefer! You know, I’m convinced Butch even sleeps in that leather jacket of his. But if it makes him feel good about himself, what’s the harm? Do you have anything like that?” 

“A leather jacket?” she asked, feeling a little dumb. A little slow. A little unable to keep time in a hurricane. 

“No, no, something that makes you feel beautiful, honey, though I guess a leather jacket could do that. Especially if a boy gave it to you!” 

The truth was that she did have a memory she carried, sort of similar to that. Most days, it kept her hair back, taming dark waves away from her face. On the rare occasion she had any cause to wear something other than vault blue, it sometimes had a place tied with care around her neck. 

“You know what,” Ellen said, “I have just the thing. Come in here with me for a minute.” 

It was probably the fruity thing. It was definitely the fruity thing that made Ellen “too much”, but something beneath Ellen’s sparkle was so aching and real . Lainey couldn’t help but to get caught in the moment and follow along. 

And it made her feel alive. 

Ellen led the way through an open door, into a bedroom with a standing mirror. A makeup vanity. A mannequin, with some sort of prized sequined dress lovingly pinned upon it. While Ellen rummaged through a vanity drawer, Lainey remained caught in the spell. She didn’t notice the pneumatic hiss of another door opening back behind them. 

“Oh, here we go,” Ellen said, pulling a gold-leaf tube from the depths of the drawer. “Let’s try this on.” She scrunched her face in concentration and dabbed what turned out to be lipstick on Lainey. Even with unsteady hands, Ellen had the precision of an expert. “I knew it, this color is perfect for you. You look so pretty! Don’t you think so, Butchie?” 

If Ellen was a siren, then Lainey was a fool of a sailor. 

“Do I think what?” 

And ohhhh, the voice. That voice would have been the jagged rocks, there to tear her ship apart and drown her. 

Ellen had spun her around and gathered her hair back - all so the two could admire her handiwork in the mirror. Lainey looked, but she couldn’t tell you the color of the lipstick she was wearing, or whether locks of hair had fallen to her face. She was too busy staring at the reflection of the boy that had just stepped through the doorway. 

That boy stared back wide-eyed; jaw anchored to the floor. 

“Tell her she looks pretty!” Ellen insisted, all smiles as she took another drink. 

Butch closed his mouth. Then he opened it. Then, he closed it and started looking wildly between his mom, and the makeup, and anywhere else but the mirror.  

“Jesus, Ma.” he croaked. “There’s no way...” 

“Butch DeLoria, I did not raise you to be rude to guests.” 

Lainey was pretty sure she made a face at that, but she was still avoiding looking at herself in the mirror. Besides, at this point she was pretty sure she was wearing clown makeup. “It’s okay, he really, really doesn’t have to -” she started to say. 

“You look nice,” he mumbled at the same time, just loud enough to appease his mom. “I guess.” 

It was half-hearted at best, but Ellen was satisfied enough to smile at the both of them and clap her hands together. “You should keep it.” 

“Oh, I couldn’t…” 

Butch finally looked back at her reflection in the mirror, and judging by the scowl shot at her, she really couldn’t. 

“It doesn’t suit me, sweetie. I’m a summer, so you’d be doing me a favor! Besides, there’s something powerful about the right red lipstick.” 

“Thank you,” she said. She hoped she said. She let cold and silence roll over her like mist, broken only by the sounds drifting lazily from the television in the open room behind them. 

A typewriter clack and soft-strummed chords caught Butch’s attention. “Hey, Ma, your movie’s about to be at your favorite part! You don’t wanna miss your favorite part, right?” 

“Oh, I almost forgot! Thank you, Butchie.” Ellen reached up on tiptoes to plant a kiss on her only son’s cheek before she danced in a wobble out the doorway. “My sweet boy, you’re the best.”  

He wiped it off as soon as his mom’s back was turned, drawn like a moth to the lonesome full moon. She made her way back to the armchair she must’ve been in before Lainey interrupted. She pulled her knees to her chest and made herself smaller. Packaged herself back into her spot with a chenille throw. 

Before the woman could so much as look back over her shoulder and ask them if they'd like to watch with her, Butch grabbed Lainey’s wrist and dragged her through the apartment to the relative safety of his own bedroom. 

For the first time Lainey had noticed in years, Butch messed his own hair up. His fingers dragged through it while his heart rate settled and he fought to recover his tough-guy composure. He looked almost like that little boy again – hair mussed and cheeks painted rose, bubbling with laughter in a too-big leather jacket that dragged in clicks along a dusty linoleum floor. Her heart squeezed at the memory, for a second.  

Funny - she thought she’d iced that out a long time ago. 

“Fuck.” The boy was gone as soon as Butch mustered up a venomous glare – not too far off from the one earlier in the day. “You know you can tell her no, right? Why are you fucking with my mom?” 

“I wasn’t fucking with her,” she replied, a little incredulous because seriously ? Every bone in her body sang to her, ‘ run, Lainey, run’, before that boy bites. Run, Lainey, run, before the chill wears off. Run, Lainey, run, before your bones ignite. 

The stubborn bits of her body – so, pretty much everything that outnumbered the bones - told her to glare back. Guess which part won? “I was trying to be nice to her!” 

“Sure, pal. You and everybody else.” 

“It’s not my fault she was upset with you!” 

“What?” Whatever composure Butch had regained faltered with his voice and the boy was back, wide eyed and hurt, swallowed in his jacket again. “My mom’s upset?” 

“Well...” she stumbled. 

“Lainey what did you do?” 

“I didn’t tell her anything, I swear -” 

She wanted to touch him – why did she want to touch him?

“What did you do?"

“Nothing.” She still wanted to touch him, to chase the hurt away. One of her hands with a mind of its own reached out to his arm and she could swear she felt a tense muscle relax when she gave him a gentle squeeze. After a moment of silence her hand fell back to her side but her nerves still kept it busy. Fidgety. “She was just upset because you ignored her when you got home. You, um...” 

“What?” 

“You didn’t notice her fancy robe,” she said. “That’s all.” 

“That’s all she was upset about? You swear?”

There was a desperation there, wild and violent, that Lainey couldn't quite grasp. It stole the wind from her lungs. Her mouth fell open and she managed an unintelligible "Mhm," that Butch mulled over before he finally let it go.

“Figures you’d go off and start playing dress-up with my ma.” He muttered. He ran his good hand back over his face and gave the world-weary sigh of a wizened old man, years past the boy and the Butch he’d grown into. “Look, can you cut that out? I ain’t gonna jump you or anything.” 

“What?” There was an awful lot of ‘what?’ going around. Probably because everyone kept getting whiplash. 

“Squirmin’. You always squirm when you’ve got nerves. I guess other times, too, but...” Butch gave a small shake of his head and reached to take the lipstick she hadn’t had a chance to put away. She’d started fidgeting, twisting the tube in her hands since she had nowhere to go. “You’re gonna smush it.” 

“Well, if I smush it, you won’t have to hate me for having it.” 

“My ma has good taste,” he said, lips pursed while he studied her face. She could feel a heat creep up to her cheeks, and she was sure it got worse for the split-second his eyes flickered to her lips. “Don’t insult it.” 

He looked away and held it out for her to take back, another olive branch to add to her collection. So, she took it, and then she took a second to let everything sink in. She was in the DeLoria apartment, and it felt like life. She wore lipstick now, she guessed, a splash of color to combat the grey. 

And she was in Butch’s room. 

It wasn’t like the rest of the dorm, where Ellen’s wishes for more lived their lives on full display. It was neat – not the kind of neat that yearned for lost attention. It was the kind of neat that said ‘nobody comes here’.  

‘This is quiet.’  

‘This is mine.’ 

His bed was made – wrinkled a little, like maybe he’d flopped down on it. His pillow was gathered in a knocked-out heap, like it’d just finished going twelve rounds in a ring. A one-eyed, ragged teddy bear looked over the violence from a place of wisdom, stored high up and safe on a shelf.  

A spare pair of boots was lined up, toes against the wall. They waited for polish just underneath a small, hanging mirror. He had a desk; it had a desk lamp, magazines. Tiny screwdrivers set next to even tinier screws. His switchblade. Pomade.  

She spied a few vinyls book-ended by whiskey and aftershave – few enough to count on one hand, but more than plenty to rebel against the only other music that played over the vault PA. She imagined guitar-riff fuck yous to the Overseer’s smooth jazz. 

It was warm and it was home, just in a different way. 

Lainey wandered over to the bed and set her backpack atop the vault-blue duvet, fully intent on putting the lipstick somewhere it wouldn’t get smushed. Butch followed, close enough that she could feel him just behind her. “So, is there some reason you were askin’ after me?” 

“I wasn’t asking after you.” 

“Oh yeah? ‘Butchie, one of your friends is looking for you! ’?” 

“I, uh...” She remembered the words. She also remembered why she’d been on her way here in the first place, drawn in by fuck-ups and truces, blue eyes alight. And dimples... 

And crashes.

Oh no.  

“I know I look good, but maybe you should take a picture,” he teased, shit-eating grin taking up its usual residence plastered across his face. “It’ll last longer.” 

“Ugh .” She didn’t even realize she’d been staring, wondering at childhood freckles-turned-tan and weary creases shadowed under his eyes. She also didn’t realize she was smiling. “I didn’t come here for your face.” 

She unsnapped her bag and turned to rummage through it, in search of medicine for a badly-wrapped hand. 

“Well, why?” 

“It’s in here somewhere...” she mumbled, still digging through layers of sketchbooks, and notebooks, and long-dead dreams. 

“You get me a present or something?” Now Butch was close enough to lean over her shoulder. She felt her skin prickle when she noticed the spicy-sweetness of his pomade and the warmth his body gave off, even through layers of vault suit and leather. 

“Or something.” It was very hard to ignore the shiver that coursed down her spine when she turned her head a bit towards his. “Why do you think I’d get you a present?” 

“I dunno, but if it’s homework, I’m not interested. It’s bad enough you’re barging into my life, making yourself at home...” 

“Believe me, I am not barging into your life.” 

“Sure feels like it,” he murmured, the movement of his lips against her ear. 

“You hate me...”  

“And you hate me.” 

“So why would I...” her whispers came out in a half-hearted fight. The warmth of his sigh sunk in, dangerous and deep enough to chase away what was left of the chill. Run, Lainey, run – she ignored the way they sang. She nudged Butch in the ribs, gently. Just enough to get him to back off a bit. Then she turned her backpack upside down and shook everything out onto his bed. 

Run, Lainey, run.  

“Hey, what the hell?” Butch gave her a flat look. 

You’re forgetting something.  

“I’ll pick it all back up.” 

Stupid girl.  

Butch rolled his eyes – made a big show of it, though that same dimple gave him away. He dropped to one knee and started gathering some things that had fallen to the floor. A few loose papers, a couple of pencils that had rolled under his bed. “I’m swiping one of these,” he said, opening a plastic wrapper and popping a jawbreaker in his mouth. 

“Those are mine!” She laughed, and added “Twerp.” 

“For my trouble,” he insisted, gesturing to the mess before something like a flash of mischief chased its way across his face. “Besides, what’re you gonna do, lick it? It’s already in my mouth.” He stuck his tongue out for her to see, to show her the candy and how it had already painted him red. Red like cinnamon, because fireballs were her favorite. And red like bruises, red like “sweethearts”. Bloodied knuckles, softened blows. 

Run, Lainey, run.  

And red like screaming letters she’d forgotten, in weakened moments not-so-long ago. 

Before that boy can bite.  

Her gaze landed on a red scrap of fabric laid atop her pile of junk. Unraveled. Empty. Nononono. She gave her bag a couple last desperate shakes. A few pencil shavings fluttered to the ground, but there was nothing else left buried in the foundations. Her blood ran, not cold but with heat. 

She spotted the stimpak just as Butch rose to his feet, rolled almost to the edge of the bed where everything else had spilled over. The Mentats? Her heart skipped a beat just as Butch struck a match. He had a bottle, prescription orange taped with love.  

“Butch, give that back.” 

He ignored her, brow furrowed, working out a few choice words. “Dex...tro...” 

“Butch, please.” 

Run, Lainey, run. She took one weak, stumbling reach toward the bottle. All Butch had to do was dance a little out of the way. 

“Amp...amph. Woah.” Butch looked at her – he shouldn’t have looked at her – head cocked to one side. “Amphetamine?” 

He dropped a match he didn’t even know he’d struck, and it set gasoline bones alight. He looked at her, someone special, and Lainey? 

She fucking broke. 

Chapter Text

“Butch DeLoria brings out the worst in you.”  

That was the thing that Dad always said.  

It didn’t matter if tears had been streaming down Lainey’s cheeks after a shouting match over broken toys, or if Butch had dragged her kicking and screaming with him into elementary time-outs. Every time, without fail, Dad would furrow his brow, shake his head, and say that same thing.  

Sometimes he’d even add in a “why do you let that boy get to you? ” for extra flavor. 

When the ravenous shades of reality came, wolfish mouths bleeding and teeth bared to tear innocence apart at the grizzled age of eight, she’d just sort of accepted their bite. Friendships waned. Teeth dulled. Time passed, and friendships waxed again. It was the lunar cycle of life. 

But Butch’s mouth had never stopped bleeding. His teeth had never dulled. They still dragged along her skin and caught, and she’d never stopped to wonder why. 

She was always too busy biting back in their dance, loving the way her “worst” tasted and made her feel alive. 

“Congratulations!” Lainey snarled. There was a heat in her mouth – molten. Iron. Good. She relished the way it coated her tongue when words lashed out, thankful for anything that could cover the salt-flavored sting of tears. “You did such a good job sounding it out!” 

“Oh, fuck you,” Butch growled back. His dodges were rhythmic, keeping perfect time with her swipes. “What, you tryin’ to fight dirty now? Didn’t I tell you you’ve gotta do better than just calling me dumb?” 

“I just want it back! You’re being a dick!” 

“Oh, I’ll show you dick!” He danced around another desperate swipe, holding the bottle high over his head. 

“Give. It. Back!” 

“I will when you relax!” 

“Butch!” She climbed up on his bed to get some more height, not a thought in her pretty little head about how stupid it was to pick a fight while teetering on the edge of the mattress. With one last grab for her meds, her foot caught on the strap of her bag. The pair of them went crashing to the floor in a tangled mess while loose papers fluttered through the air around them. 

“OW!” 

He was definitely, actually pissed at her now. He had to be with a face as red as his was, and it did not help that she was the one that landed on top, arms splayed above his head. He shot her a look as dark as a new-moon night and grabbed at her hip to wrestle her off. 

She yelped like the wounded animal she was, and he immediately yanked his hand away from her like she had burned him with the fire she felt. 

“Woah, woah, shh...” He glanced over to his still-closed door, wary of any signs of life that might be outside. “Oh, come on,” he pleaded, looking back at her. Wild. “I didn’t even do anything to you...” 

“Didn’t do anything?” she asked. She sat back on her knees and yanked the zipper of her vault suit down, still feeling the heat and the blood and the impulse. “Didn’t do anything?” She pulled the suit to one side to show the screaming streak of red painted across the expanse of her hip. 

He swallowed hard – really hard. “I think I’d remember giving you that.” 

“Earlier, Butch,” she said, emotions starting to wane. His brows knit together and he tilted his head to the side, the way he always did when he was trying to understand. The way he was doing before she’d broken and bared her teeth. “In the hallway.” 

Maybe he wasn’t the only dick. 

“What are you talking about? We were just...” A light sparked in his eyes as he remembered the way his own hackles had raised. “Shit,” he hissed. He leaned up on one elbow and reached out in wonder, trailing a gentle finger over the mark he’d left. Licking wounds. “Y’know, earlier I didn’t mean to -” 

Her breath caught at the touch and she felt her cheeks flush, replacing all of the other violent things she had just felt. It was her turn to have to swallow hard. Really hard. 

That’s what Dad always meant about that “worst”. Around Butch, she was all fire. No thoughts. At least she always wore a top under the suit. 

“I know you didn’t.” 

“Is that why you’re here?” he asked, gaze flickering up to her face. “Payback?” 

“No.” She took a stray lock of untamed hair in hand, suddenly very interested in twirling and picking at a few split ends. “Believe it or not, I didn’t come here to make an ass of myself. That was all an accident.” 

“Then why, princess?” He reached up with the same hand that had been tracing idle circles over that small snatch of bare skin and tucked the lock away from her picking, safe behind her ear. 

“I need your hand,” she said, and then - “Why do you call me that?” 

“What? Princess?” He gave her his hand. The wrong one, because that’s just how he was. Not always a miscreant or a dick, but ornery. Prideful. “'Cuz you always get your way, and you’re perfect, and you’re too good for everybody else.” 

“I’m nowhere close to a princess. If I was, and I was perfect, I wouldn’t have to take... those.” 

“Amphetamines?” 

“That’s a fancy word, DeLoria.” 

“So why don’t you say it?” 

“Other hand,” she ordered, but it was gentle. Hushed. A lullaby request that asked him not to bite.  

“See what I mean?” Butch rolled his eyes at her. “Anyway, my hand’s fine.” 

“Quit being stubborn. I saw you bleeding before you stomped off.” 

“I said it’s fine, princess.” 

“Do you really want me to show you ‘princess’?” 

“Depends. What’s that s’posed to mean?” He asked, one smart-ass eyebrow cocked. He leaned back. She leaned forward with him. He grinned a bit more. All she had to do was put a little bit of weight on his shoulder, and - “OW !” 

“Your hand’s not fine, is it?” 

“Cut it out!” he whined. “Please?” 

“Let me see?” She took a page from his book and inched her way closer, so her whispered words would drag along his skin and catch. “Pleeease?” 

She could tell they had caught with a breath and a shiver. 

“Princess,” he muttered. She tried not to smile too big at the pitiful, puppy-eyed look he gave when he flopped back on the rug. Reluctantly, he held out the right hand for her to inspect. It was large, warm... it was also hastily patched and tied way too loose to actually do anything for him. He hissed around the candy almost melted in his mouth as she unwrapped it to reveal bruised knuckles. Dark, dried blood that peeled with the wrap. 

“Did you break it?” 

“Fuck if I know.” 

She squeezed. He winced. She ran her fingers along the bones, not sure if she felt any obvious breaks. Then again, who even knew if she was checking this right. 

“God,” she murmured, idly tracing over his knuckles, “why are you so...” 

“Handsome?” 

“I was going to go with reckless. Maybe dumb, but...” 

“But...?” 

“Maybe you weren’t dumb for getting mad,” she admitted. She reached back behind her, feeling blindly for the stim. She kept him pinned, though, and kept his hand. Just in case he changed his mind. “Why didn’t you go see my dad?” 

“You’re kidding, right?” A beat of silence passed while she laced the needle through the skin and he twitched at the cool of the flowing liquid. “It’s bad enough you’re here feeling sorry for me.” 

“Well, maybe if you bothered to take care of it yourself...” 

“You wouldn’t be here taking care of me?” 

“I’m not taking care of you.” 

“Uh-huh. Y’know, my mom did tell me a little bit about that whole meeting thing. Before I blew her off, I guess.” He flexed his hand a bit as the anesthetic started to work its magic. “’Lainey promised to take care of you! Isn’t that great?’ or something like that.” He sat back up the best he could, as close as he could get. “And you did come all the way here to play nurse...” 

“I’m not playing nurse.” 

“Sure.” 

“I’m not.” 

“Whatever. By the way, you can get off me anytime you want.” 

He looked smug – way too smug, asking for fire with gleaming eyes and wolfish grins. She let him up long enough to roll out his shoulders and stretch. As soon as he looked comfortable, resting up against the bed frame with his head thrown back, she gave him that fire and plopped back down in his lap. 

“Aw, what? What are you doing?” 

“I didn’t want you to win.” 

“You already won, didn’t you?” He sighed against her shoulder, pulled her closer, one arm snaked around her waist. “You barged in, trashed my room, tried to beat me to death. Don’t even get me started on that thing with my mom.” 

“Well, I’m not sorry,” she said to the drama king before she leaned a little further back into him. Her eyes slid shut - not at the scent of spice and leather, and not at the steady rise and fall of his chest behind her. The day was just catching up with her. That was all. “It doesn’t feel like I won.” 

“How do you figure?” 

“You still have my meds.” It was almost a whisper. Another lullaby. “Nobody’s supposed to know about those.” 

“Oh, c’mon.” He had to shift a bit to get to his pocket given the fact that he had a whole Lainey in his way, but he still held her close. Didn’t let her go. “I ain’t a snitch.” 

“Butch…” 

“Baby,” he lowered his voice, and oh, she liked that. The danger of the word dragged along her skin. “You got your way.” 

“You hate me." Her mind grew hazy. "You’ve hated me since we were kids.” 

It was easy enough to believe it, after years cornering each other in the same fight-or-flight dance. It was easy enough to believe that she hated him, too. That that was why he always got the best of her. 

But then she turned to take the bottle from him, prescription orange taped with love, and they were a little too close. Locked in stalemate for a moment before he tipped her chin up and his lips found their way to hers. 

She expected... mmmmm...

She expected gnashing teeth. Crashing hearts. A riot, and roughness, and “I hate you” told in the retaliation of a kiss. 

What she got was hesitant. Slow. Whiskey-warm drizzled into cinnamon-sweet. The whisper left behind after they pulled apart said anything but “I hate you.” They lingered for a few seconds after that first harmless brush, dizzy and on fire and breathing each other's air.  

Then she licked the corner of his mouth because she needed to taste the blood. He groaned and clawed her back down to the floor to bite. 

“So. You still hate me, too?” he asked, a few drawn-out kisses later.

“Mmm. Maybe.” She smiled at the tamed nips and gentle brushes along her throat, and the violent butterflies those things were giving her. He could have killed her with those sharp teeth if he’d wanted to. But he didn’t, which felt better. “I haven’t decided, yet.” 

“I can work with that.” She felt his grin against her skin before he even pulled away. He didn’t look smug, just lipstick-smeared and messy-haired and dimpled and dreamy. “You still think I’d rat you out?” 

“Would you?” 

“Why do you care so much?” He rolled over to lay down on his side next to her, one leather arm under his head. “Is it ‘cuz of that thing the Overseer said about party drugs? I figure you could stand to be more fun.” 

“They’re not supposed to make me fun, they’re supposed to help the vault fuck-up fuck up less, I guess.” She turned on her own side to face him. “Besides, I’m already fun.” 

“You’ve never done anything fun in your life, baby.” 

“If that’s how you feel, I could stop kissing you...” 

“Woah, hang on. Don’t do that.” He pulled her back against him and caught her by the mouth, desperate bites for attention that she parted her lips to let him have. Then gentle bites that she could sigh into and soothe. Once he decided she wasn’t going anywhere, he pressed another kiss to her forehead. “You’re not cool enough to be the vault fuck-up, if that makes you feel any better.” 

“Who’s supposed to be cool enough?” 

“Well, you’ve gotta keep in in the family, right?” He heaved a sigh, and started tracing lazy lines along the small of her back. In a quieter voice, one that was swallowed in that leather jacket, he added, “You’re not gonna end up like her, you know.” 

“That’s not what I meant at all. Your mom’s been really nice to me.” 

“Yeah, she’s like that. Tons of fun until she tries to quit. I’ve got this bottle of vodka I keep around for... for, uh.” He shook his head, as if to stop himself before he said too much. “I don’t know why I'm telling you any of this.” 

“You don’t have to.” 

“Well, maybe if you have a little dirt on me, you’ll relax about the chem thing.” 

“You don’t have to give me any dirt, Butch. I believe you. But if you wanted to talk...” 

“I thought we still hated each other.” 

She shook her head and studied his face, how that dreamy look had faded and how the weary shadows had dulled blue eyes to ash. It stung in a way that his bites never did. She reached up to touch him, brush him, soothe some of his stray messy hairs back into place. “She doesn’t hurt you, does she?” 

“What? No. No! My mom wouldn’t even hurt a fly. Never,” he protested, wild and hurt. “She just gets... sad.” 

“Baby...” she whispered. 

“You calling me ‘baby’ now, too?” He caught her hand on the way back down and let his lips linger over the pulse in her wrist. “That’s all you’re getting out of me today. You’re too good for the real dirt.” 

Before she had a chance to say anything else, a crash and a shatter beyond the bedroom door tore him away. 

Butch cursed under his breath and got to his feet. “Ma?” 

She didn’t answer. 

“I’ll be right back.” He threw her one last soft look over his shoulder before he opened the door and stepped out, boots dragging heavy across the floor. 

“Hey, ma?”   

“Butchie, I’m sorry.”  

Lainey could make out a few sniffles between words. 

“What? Hey, it’s okay.”  

“I - I broke the vase.”  

“Hey, hey. Shh. It’s just flowers. How ’bout I clean up this glass and then I’ll swipe you some new ones, alright? You want another movie on?”  

Lainey felt that cold, lonesome ache again, in a way not meant to be felt by someone from the greyscale outside. She sat up and got to work packing layers of notebooks and sketchbooks back into her backpack while the sounds of a broom scraping glass drifted lazily through the doorway. 

When she got to the fireballs, she left two on his desk as a thank you – one for trusting her, one for not being a snitch. She left a third beside them, wondering if the flavor would remind him of the rest. All that was left by the time the scraping stopped were her own secrets. The amphetamines – she could think it - that she zipped into the front pocket. After that, the kerchief. She let the soft red silk run over her hands like a stream of blood before she folded it back into its usual strip. 

“Is that the one I gave you?” Butch asked, leaning in the doorway. 

“Yeah.” 

“Huh. Here.” He crossed the room and took it from her, brows knit together and head tilted to the side. The way he always did when he was trying to understand. After a minute, he ran his fingers through her hair and gathered it back, gentle in a way that made her forget how to breathe. Then he wove their secrets back through her hair, and tied them in a bow. “This place is a fuckin’ minefield. C’mon,” he lowered his voice to soothing, dulcet tones, “I’ll take you home.” 

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.” 

“It ain’t like that. I just wouldn’t want you get lost 50 feet from your own place. You might trip and fall into somebody else’s lap for half an hour.” 

“I didn’t know you cared so much about where I sat.” 

“I don’t,” he said. But then he took her hand and never looked back - fingers laced and locked to lead her way back home. She wiped the lipstick smears from his face after one last sweet goodbye, but when that door closed and she walked away?

Butch's mouth still dripped, red and bleeding, and now Lainey knew why. 

Chapter Text

In all those girly movies that his Ma liked to watch—those ones that weren’t a complete waste of a perfectly good Friday night—the story pretty much always played out the same way. 

Guy meets a girl he’d give up everything for. Guy fucks around and finds some trouble, and most of the time he loses the girl for a while. But at the end of it all the girl always comes back—and the best girls come back burning everything down behind them.  

And after that they like… ride off into the sunset or whatever. 

Look, he didn’t watch all of them, but that’s how the movies were and his Ma liked the sap. He knew life wasn’t movies.

He knew that trouble just meant trouble—not that he was gonna tell his momma that. 

After a solid minute of grinning to himself outside of a shut front door, Butch headed away from Lainey’s with a drunken swagger in his step and a song stuck in his head that had a killer riff. 

He was strumming that riff on air guitar when he caught a shade of movement through a gap in see-through curtains, lining a window that had a prime view of the most boring, dead-end hallway. So, he was maybe a little curious, and he might have stopped his solo long enough to see what was up. 

What was up was her, but he figured it’d be her. Tossing that book bag onto some bouncy-lookin' bed and looking real pretty while she stretched and unzipped. His heart picked up on all that rhythm his hands had dropped, and for a second he forgot that he was supposed to be leaving. 

So, the room with the shitty view was Lainey's. He’d make sure to remember that and find his way back here to her again. 

He was about halfway into another lazy, doped-up smirk when she noticed his noticin’ and broke into a laugh. He was pretty sure she called him some fancy word for ‘perv’, which, y’know, was probably fair. 

“Can’t hear ya,” he said, playing as dumb as he was sure his face looked and pointing to his ear. 

Then Lainey threw him this look he didn’t have words for, but it made his knees weak all the same. He was already hooked on that before she ever pulled that suit off her shoulders, before she ever tied the arms around her waist. 

“I called you a miscreant,” she said—or probably had to yell—after waltzing her way over to him the window. 

“Smaller words,” he called back. She cracked the window open a little bit, just enough for more smooth talking. And yeah, maybe he was being a little bit of a 'miscreant’ or whatever and checking her out.  

“Delinquent?” 

Catching her changing was an accident, he swore.  

“C’mon, is that all you’ve got?” 

“I guess I’ll just settle for trouble, then.” 

“What, no ‘dick’ this time?” 

“You’re not being a dick,” she said. “Just up to no good.” 

“No good? Me? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Yes, you do.” Her laugh had him hooked, too. “You were standing there watching.” 

“I was gonna go!” he insisted. 

“Were you, though?” Then his girl— not your girl, man —the one that he’d said had never done anything fun in her life? She pulled that top of hers off and let it drop to the floor. “Were you really?” 

“Oh, come on. I’m innocent, I swear.” 

“Mhm.” 

“What, you don’t believe me? You’re the one that, uh-” 

She was the one getting him drunk off smiles like that – plus this real pretty blush that ran down from the freckles on her cheeks and past that dip in her collarbone, drawing his gaze to an eyeful of lace.  

He could feel that same liquor licking heat upward to leave his own skin patched in shades of drunken pink. 

“That started it,” he finished, remembering a little too slow that she had a face. “Besides, I still haven’t seen anything.” 

“I know. That’s kind of the point.” 

“And you’re in there calling me trouble?” 

“Well, my dad does say you bring out the worst in me...” 

“Oh, yeah? That’s what he says?” 

“He does, actually.” 

“Nah, there’s no way.” He leaned on the glass with one arm and gave her a lopsided grin. “How ‘bout you let me in, and I’ll bring out the best.” 

That blush of hers ran deeper and she looked away, caught up in some kinda thoughts. Twirling her hair from some kinda nerves he wasn’t in there to ease. 

“Hey,” he crooned. He needed his girl back. He traced a finger down the cool glass wishing it was her cheek. He wanted to catch her attention, to tell her I’ve got you, now. I’m here. “Baby, I was just-” 

“Fucking with me?” she asked, voice running low and smooth. A lick of Tennessee honey flickered deep in those brown eyes of hers when she looked up with her bottom lip pulled between her teeth and, oh, 

Baby.  

She reached back with one hand. 

I’ve got you. 

Messing with whatever clasps were back there holding that lacy thing in place. 

I swear it’s okay.  

“You really are looking for trouble, aren’t you?” she teased, all that fun and fire back. 

“No, I’m not looking for it.” She still had those nerves and now he did, too. He pressed his forehead to hers through the glass while he struggled not to drown in a sea of hormone-laced booze. “But I ain’t gonna run...” 

“You’re not?” she asked when the thing came undone. She was still holding it in place though, and holding him there, too. Then she smiled up, slow and sweet in a way he'd never known—in a way that drip, drip, dripped into his veins and lit him up far worse than any Tennessee whiskey ever had. 

“Baby…” he whined. Her eyes fluttered shut like she was still getting used to the taste and he couldn’t take it. How dizzy he was. “You win.” 

“Baby,” she whispered back. It gave him the shakes, how that sounded coming from lips that he was itching to catch and drink all the way down to the last drop again. 

“Lainey. Baby.” He was gone, throwing her his own soft looks and tracing the glass again. “Go put your stuff away before you forget.” 

“I’m not going to forget.” 

“I bet you already did.” 

Then she stretched up and arched her back fucking gorgeous for him, leaving a lipstick stain on her side of the window before she dropped the bra and the blinds, still holding that soft look like a smashed bottle to his throat. 

“Fuck!” He bonked his head back against the glass, grinning like a dope while she laughed at him from somewhere inside. He could hear her messing with her book bag, too, which meant he knew his girl. He was right. “I still didn’t see anything!” 

“I know you didn't! That's what you get!” 

He was pretty sure he was about to black out but fuck if the lack of air in his lungs didn’t burn Tennessee sweet. 

About the best thing a guy could do to keep from a full-on blackout was splash a little cold water on his face, so that’s what Butch did. He dragged his poor, recovering self over to the men’s room and leaned over one of the sinks, knuckles white while he gripped both sides of it. His head was still swimming. 

When he felt a little more steady, he glanced down at his right hand, all that hurt already gone from the stim. His bruises were fading over the bones, and if he had fucked up and broken something? Or fractured it, whatever. It’d be healed by the time morning rolled around. 

He took a long, hard look at the sucker in the mirror. His girl Lainey—she came back for him. 

He turned the faucet back on to wash those last stubborn flecks of dried-up blood off in those spots between knuckles, girl still on his mind and not fucking going anywhere. 

He couldn’t believe it. She still wore that same hair thing— neck thing ?—from the two of them playing house. She’d been wearing it this whole time, even after everything stupid he’d done. 

He tilted his chin up to look for anything that might be smeared along his jawline, or anything else Lainey maybe left on him. There was one spot left from pinning her down and stealing all those kisses—a sweet dab of red stained over the same old vault blue that was gonna line the inside of his collar for the rest of his life. 

Felt pretty good to have something else there for a change. He popped his collar and left that mark there to burn against his skin, keeping her with him until it washed out. 

His stomach growled loud and he splashed more of that cold water on his face. No matter how bad he wanted the flavor, cinnamon sugar and Tennessee whiskey just weren’t gonna cut it, tonight. 

He pulled the wallet out of his back pocket and did the math. One coupon, which shoulda meant zero since that one that was in there was supposed to be his spare just in case... uh.

Just in case Ma got sad.  

After mulling it over a little, he figured he could swing it. Ma got paid in two days, so that meant he could replace his backup. That meant the commissary, not the caf, to stretch that coupon out.  

Which also meant chasin’ trouble for real and swiping those flowers on his way back home—not that he was gonna tell his momma that. 

“Good evening, Jim.” 

Oh, great.  

Butch had been standing in an aisle in the commissary, minding his own damn business, by the way, when he felt a pair of eyes watching him. A pair of eyes that must’ve been feelin’ awful brave since her daddy was chatting it up with Jim Wilkins at the counter.  

“Do I look like I’m in the mood to chit-chat?” He fixed his best glare to his face and rolled his head to the side and sure enough, Amata was there looking more full of herself than usual. Hell, she was even staring him down. He might’ve gained a half an ounce of respect if he didn’t hate that whole ‘better than you’ thing she had going on with her face. “Or is there something you wanna say?” 

“I heard about the remedial lessons you’re taking,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. 

“And?” He gestured vaguely toward boxes of noodles and packets of Instamash that he’d been looking at on the shelf. 

“And...” The girl took a deep breath like she had to psyche herself up or something. “Lainey has to deal with you.” 

“And ?” he repeated. The lipstick lining his collar burned a little hotter against his skin, and all that heat went straight to his head. That look on Amata’s face was getting more stuck-up by the second. “What is this, you tryin’ to stick up for her or something?” 

“Yes, Butch, I am.” 

“Oh? Well do you stick up for her to him?” He jerked his head toward the end of the aisle, in the direction of the voices talking about fancy bottles of gin. She went real quiet with that, so he must’ve hit something . The Overseer ran his mouth loud enough when he was actually in front of people, figures he’d have something else to say to Amata about her friend behind her back, too. Now he kinda wondered what. “Figured.” 

“Look, just... just don’t cause any trouble for her, okay?” 

“Or else what?” He snorted, but the heat ran to his face for another reason besides just feeling cornered and ticked off. His girl “Lainey can find trouble just fine on her own.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“It means I was minding my own business, daddy’s girl. Figure out how to mind yours, too.” He settled on noodles because they were right there, and they were dirt cheap, and most of all he could grab ‘em and leave. He could leave before any of that liquor came back and licked the boozed-up looks back into his face. He could leave before he could think too hard about blushes running past collarbones, or bruises he couldn’t kiss better traced gently over hips. He couldn’t think about cinnamon. Or whiskey. Or how much she liked ‘baby’. “Besides, I ain’t gonna fuck with-” 

His girl. 

“Ah, Mr. DeLoria.” Butch damn near crashed into the old man. 

“Fuck! ” He probably shouldn’t’ve basically yelled ‘fuck’ right into the Overseer’s face. It sure as shit wasn’t gonna earn him any brownie points, and the look scribbled across Almodovar’s mug said pretty much that exact thing. 

“I need to speak with you. Step in here with me, for a moment.” 

Well, he couldn’t really say no. 

The Overseer led him down the aisle, past Jim’s counter, and then locked them in a dark back room. He pulled the string for the one pathetic lightbulb that lit the space up. 

"I have a business proposition. Unofficial, of course. But first, do I need to remind you about that little discussion we had about dogs, Butch?” 

“No, you don’t have to remind me-” 

“No sir,” he corrected. “So, I don’t need to remind you that if you so much as look in the direction of Amata-” 

“C’mon, man, I wasn’t even doing anything. I was trying to get away from her.” 

“If you can’t keep yourself in line,” he continued. “You’ll be treated like a feral dog. And what happens to feral dogs?” 

“Feral dogs get put down,” Butch muttered. Fuckin’ asshole. 

“So, you are capable of learning. Good.” 

Butch’s stomach rumbled again, just in time for the Overseer to give him this look. A 'feral dog’ look. A ‘better than you’ look. An ‘I might feel bad if I wasn’t a smug fucking asshole asking you to do my dirty work’ look. 

Fuck, did he ever want to hit something, again. 

The Overseer pulled his own wallet out and started going through it. “I’m going to need you to... ‘misplace’ something for me.” 

“Fine. What?” 

“Beatrice’s tarot cards,” the Overseer continued. “She’s always been a touch more... peculiar than her sisters. That means ‘strange’, by the way.” 

Pattern... patron... ize...? Ugh. Asshole. He knew what that meant. “Okay, why?” 

“Well, I’m starting to worry that her mind is growing feeble with age. She’s only in her mid-forties, for goodness’ sake, and she’s taken to claiming her grandmother was gifted with these abilities beyond our mortal comprehension, but I digress. The woman is losing it, DeLoria. Just get those cards of hers to my desk.” 

It was true Bea was a little weird, but Butch didn’t really get why any of this shit should matter if she wasn't hurting anybody. ‘Losing it’ seemed a hell of a lot harsher coming from The Man. Then again, he wasn't in any position to ask. “What am I supposed to do if everyone’s home?” 

“Get them out. Break something else to distract Stanley, if you must. You’ve proven to be quite resourceful when it comes to that. If you can’t manage something so simple, I happen to know that Stanley and Beatrice will both be attending a dinner party, oh, in a couple of weeks.” He held out a coupon in front of Butch’s face. “Half now, half when those cards are sitting on my desk.” 

“Fine,” Butch said, taking the coupon and pocketing it. “Take away Beatrice’s toys. Done.” 

The Overseer pushed past him and started to leave, even got so far as hovering over the button to the door before he stopped. “One more thing, Butch.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yes sir,” he corrected again. “You’ll be spending a fair amount of time with miss Watson for the next few weeks.” 

“So?” He didn’t like where this was going. That mark across his collar seared against his skin some more. So did ‘baby’. So did whiskey.  

So did all that trouble he hadn’t gone looking for. 

“I just want you to report to me if you notice anything... strange.” He pulled another coupon for Butch. “Keeping odd hours, drinking a lot of water, that sort of thing.” 

“How am I supposed to notice any of that stuff?” he bluffed. His heart picked up a riff to a song he didn’t like. He knew his girl. He’d notice. He’d known her his whole life. “What, uh... what’s with her, anyway?” 

“According to the good doctor, some condition that doesn’t exist. The last thing I need on my hands is more Beatrices. Or Ellens.” Then the Overseer gave him a look. A‘feral dog’ look. A look that said ‘or yous'. He took the coupon from him, though. What else was he supposed to do? “I’m aware the two of you aren’t close, so I’m not expecting much. But if you happened to notice anything at all... well. You know your way to my desk.” 

Butch went lookin’ for trouble with a swagger in his step on his way back home. He fucking hated gin but he swiped a bottle anyway, just because it was the last one. He made sure to stop by hydroponics and swipe the nicest flowers for his mom.

He knew how to fuck with the Overseer, just for fucking with him. 

When he went out later that night, he popped a fireball in his mouth and let that flavor burn sweet into a swig of whiskey from his flask. He took a long look at the glow of light coming from Lainey’s window in the dead of night. 

He knew trouble, and he knew how to lie. Most of all he knew his baby.  

Not that he could tell her that. 

Chapter Text

For one precious weekend, Lainey had felt the freedom of six again. Alive, again. Devil-may-care, again. Playing with that blue-eyed boy that lived just down the hallway, again. 

Down in the furthest corners of the vault, where the smallest families lived in the smallest apartments tucked away from all the rest, the grins grew from goofy and toothless to gleaming and rakish. God-awful knock-knock jokes turned into cheesy one-liners. Hallway stories told in picture books bled into lipstick stains picture-framed on window panes, all thanks to games of chicken. 

“Princess ” and “Nosebleed ” into “Baby ” and kisses, bites laced with the sweetest of venom. 

She didn’t know what to expect when Monday rolled around along with school, but whatever Butch was giving her wasn’t making very much sense. 

She’d catch him looking at her sometimes, zoned out in thought, leaning against the wall while he was smoking with his Snakes. If he caught her looking back, he’d scowl and flick his ashes into an empty Nuka Cola bottle before he looked away.  

He’d also started sitting behind her in class that day. Even if she was running so late that she was the last one to get there, he’d kick out a chair without a word while he slouched in his own seat, arms folded across his chest. Hackles stayed raised in that tough-guy façade until everyone else was dismissed.

When all that was left was the two of them alone he seemed... mm, she didn’t know. 

Tame? 

After lessons, he’d sling her bag over his shoulder and walk her back to those far-flung corners of the vault, where the smallest families lived in the smallest apartments. Always close enough that she could feel him even after he checked over his shoulder and left.  

She’d catch him staring at her lips while they talked about nothing, she’d glance at his while they talked about everything. 

But there was no “Baby”. They wouldn’t talk about the playing or the venom of the kiss. 

All of it over and over, over again. 

It stayed like that until the middle of that second week hit, while she was wandering alone on her way to class.

“The fuck are you looking at, feeb?” Wally Mack asked from one side of his mouth, lighting up one of the spare cigarettes he’d kept tucked behind his ear every day in the year it'd been since he’d turned sixteen. Seventeen, now. Nearly top of their class. He took one long drag and blew the smoke in her direction, challenging her to answer. 

She was way too tired for this. She’d barely started to figure out the right regimen for her meds with Dad. 

“Are you gonna answer me?” 

“I wasn’t looking at anything,” she said. She’d only paused at the bottom of a stairwell long enough to grimace at a sip of cold coffee she’d forgotten to drink. These past few days she’d found herself preoccupied applying lipstick in the mornings, probably for the same reason her heart skipped while she was counting leather jackets. “Where’s Butch?” 

Or maybe not. Really, who had time for that kind of self-awareness? 

“Oh, he’s not-” Paul started to say. 

“Who cares?” Wally cut in. 

“I guess that means you’ve finally decided you’re too good for him?” She figured her best bet was to play to Wally's ego so that she could get around them and leave. 

“’Too good for Butch’, huh? I won't lie, the sound of that's getting better every day.” Wally took another drag while he studied her, this time at least not blowing anything back in her face. “Why are you looking for him, anyway?” 

“I wasn’t looking for him, I just thought he’d be with you. I was wondering if he got any further reading the play, but I'll just ask him after class.” 

“Knowing him, he hasn’t even gotten five pages into the first scene.” Wally rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I guess it’s better that it’s you having to babysit him than me, though. Even if it is the blind leading the blind.” 

“If you say so, princess.” She went to walk past them, thoughts too mingled and mind too tired to filter through any of them and notice how they bled into the words that slipped between her teeth. 

“Did you just call me ‘princess’?” Wally asked, one eyebrow raised.

She could feel the mistakes in slow motion, even before the worst of them were made. 

“Well, you are too good for everybody else. And you are perfect. And your dad’s always schmoozing the Overseer, so you can get your way…” 

“Schmooze?” Wally demanded, mouth open and staring. Ashes from his cigarette dropped straight to the floor while Paul tried his best to choke back a snicker. 

Man, she wished she was usually this quick on her own without having to borrow the comeback. But borrow she had, skin flushed and very aware of who she’d gotten it from. 

“He does kind of talk the Overseer up a lot, Wally,” Paul chimed in, covering his traitorous smile with one hand. Paul had never been too bad, and he always seemed to find more of his voice when he was alone with only one other member of their pack. 

“Shut up, dumbass,” Wally shot back at the other boy. He sized her up one last time, cold and calculating before he scoffed to himself and shook his head again. “You know what, forget it. Come on, Paul. Lower-level trash isn’t even worth the waste of breath.” 

Lower-level trash? 

“Butch lives down here.”  

“I said what I said.” 

Sometimes, she wondered how Wally and Butch had managed to stay friends for so long, if you could even call them that. They’d gone to blows and showed up in Dad's clinic on more than one occasion. 

Paul gave her an awkward wave and Lainey watched the bargain-bin worms as they started to stomp their way up the stairs. Heavenward, apparently, since one of them was taking the term “social ladder” to heart. Paul lived at atrium level, practically next door to the Overseer’s palatial apartment because that’s where the security chief’s office was, just next door to security. 

The Macks? 

“Wally, you only live up by the Overseer because your family’s so big.” 

Immediately, her hand flew to her mouth. 

All Lainey had meant was that those were where the biggest apartments were, reserved for the biggest families to live closer to more of the vault's amenities. She hadn't said it as some sort of commentary on schmoozing or political favor, and it definitely wasn’t meant as any sort of commentary that had anything to do with anybody’s actually, really, really nice mom. That would have required some forethought.

That was also not how Wally Mack took what she said. 

“What did you just say?” He stopped dead in his tracks, fists clenched. Knuckles white. Lainey couldn’t see his face, but she could imagine the way the vein in his billboard of a forehead throbbed with fury. “You think you can mouth off to me, whore?” 

Oh, shit. 

Lainey dropped her cup of coffee in an elegant splash, thankful that she’d sacrificed the heat of her drink to the rituals of vanity. 

The cold sludge drenched her suit, oozing down through her camisole and sticking to her skin as she took off in the precisely calculated direction of oh god oh shit not here. She could hear a single pair of boots skipping stair steps back behind her, hunting lower-level trash in a fury fueled by uncontrollably laughing treason. 

Seriously. She’d be in way less trouble if Paul would just shut up and breathe. She’d maybe be able to backtrack and bat her lashes at the pair, smoothing everything over with a fake apology. 

She couldn’t care less about the insults racing after her or what Wally Mack thought. She just didn’t want to get her ass beaten and sent off to her dad for the crime of a crimson mouth moving faster than a sleepless brain and hard-learned social graces. 

She skidded around a corner, boots howling on the turn. Before she could throw a look over her shoulder, hoping beyond hope that she was in the clear, a pair of arms reached out from the shadows and snatched her through a doorway. She was trapped.

A warm hand smothered her yelp. 

“Gotcha!” someone laughed, pinning her against a closet wall and punching an access button just in time for doors to tuck them safe in the shadow, away from all the rest. Her someone’s eyes glistened like the flicker of a candle in the dark, practically dancing with mirth. “Well that was fuckin’ stupid.” 

“Butch?” she asked in a ragged, but really relieved, breath after he took his hand off her mouth.

“Shh.” He cocked his head toward the doorway to listen, body shaking with a quiet laughter he was fighting hard to contain. 

“Where did you-” 

“Shh. I’ve got you, now,” he whispered. Her heart skipped when he tipped her chin up with the hand he wasn’t leaning against to look at her, all that mirth mixed in with something... else. Something tame. “Since when do you stick up for me, huh?” 

“I wasn’t sticking up for you,” she lied. Her lips curved into ‘something else’ smiles right along with his while she caught her breath against him. This was the closest he’d been since then. “Maybe I just really wanted to pick a fight.” 

"Well, you're supposed to bring a blade with you to a rumble. Just in case shit goes sideways."

"Oh, yeah. I definitely knew that."

“Uh-huh. I'm sure you did." His gaze dipped steady down to her lips. Her breath snagged while he brushed his thumb just under them. “Y'know, if you're lookin' for a fight, you don’t have to go off and pick one with Princess Mack.” 

She grinned. “I didn’t know you were around to hear that.”

“Sure was. I ain’t about to let him live it down, either. And you.” He grinned back. “Were stickin’ up for me.” 

“Only a little bit.” 

“It still counts,” he assured. He was studying her now, tracing over the spots on her cheeks, brow furrowed while his gaze swept her face. She could feel the heat rushing to meet him, thinking maybe lipstick was worth the cold-coffee sludge until he added “You look like crap.” 

“Bite me,” she muttered, not thinking again. She still struggled to drop any of those fond feelings that had wormed their way in because when she looked back up to blue framed in ridiculously long lashes, Butch still looked kind of... dreamy. A defeated sigh escaped her. “Not like that.” 

“Not like what?” he teased. Only looking that dreamy by accident.

“You know what.” 

“Lainey, c’mon. I didn’t mean it like that.” He chuckled to himself a little and tucked her hair back behind her ear. Then he eased back away from her, heaving his own sighs. “You been sleeping okay?” 

"Oh." She didn't realize it was so noticeable. The flush on her cheeks wasn't going away. "I’ll be fine in a couple of days."

"You sure?"

"Mhm. It's just, uh-” she started. A board propped against a wall caught her attention and she took a few tentative steps toward it.  

The few minutes they’d been huddled together, whispering about everything and nothing, she hadn’t taken a good look at the closet they were in. Shadow curled around the corners of Vault-Tec crates where the dim ropes of emergency lighting didn’t reach. There were remnant scraps of furniture stacked, coat racks filled with barren hangers. 

“It’s just the Mentats,” Lainey finished. “Hey, is this the closet with the secret door?” 

Peeling posters of Vault-Tec propaganda lined the walls, reminding people to take their prescribed medication. 

“Yeah,” Butch said. 

Other banners advertised the importance of procreation. 

“You knew this was the closet with the secret door?” 

“Well, yeah. Had to go back for these jackets some time, didn’t I?” She heard the soft click of metal on metal from wherever he was behind her. “Hey, how ‘bout we skip class?” 

That click was followed closely by a zzzzzzzip.  

“You want to skip class with me?”  

“Why not?” His voice sounded muffled. “You stuck up for me.” 

“Only a little,” she murmured, smile teasing at her lips. She looked back over her shoulder to find Butch’s jacket on one of the hangers. Then Butch a few steps behind her, suit hanging loose and low around his waist, whole head hidden in t-shirt. “What are you doing?” 

She could feel her skin burning, trying not to notice birthmarks and waistbands snug around his hips. 

“Well, you’re soaked, so…” Butch got it pulled over his head where she could see his face, complete with flushed skin and wolfish grins. “What?” 

“I could always just go home and change.”  

“Yeah, but then you won’t cut class with me.” He made a point of looking her up and down, mostly at that elegant coffee stain that was setting into her suit. Mostly. It was hard not to let her teeth show and encourage him, even if he was blushing a little bit. “Have you ever even done it before?”

"Done what?" she asked, about as innocently as him.

He cocked a smart-ass eyebrow. "Cut class."

She shook her head no. He was starting to win. 

“C’mon. I dare ya.”  

“Oh, so now you’re daring me...”

“We can even do the homework, if you want. I could use the, uh.” He gave her that look, asking to dance when he closed the short distance between them and leaned down to lower his voice. “The one on one. Since I only read five pages of the book, and all.” 

“Whatever you say, Romeo." She sighed into the warmth he gave off and chose to take the freedom in the shirt he offered, deciding to play games with that blue-eyed boy. “I know you’re further than that.”

“That mean you're comin’ with me?” 

“Only because you asked for the extra help.” She caught herself staring at his lips before she reached up to trace under them, just the same as he’d done with her. “Tell me why you want to skip so bad.”  

A bloodthirsty thought chased its way across his features before he glanced down at hers again and sighed. Looked away. He still wouldn’t talk about that. “’Cuz I wanna break something.”  

He stepped away to zip the suit back over his shoulders, but she could still feel him like he'd never left.  

“Break something?” She watched while he pulled his jacket back on, kept watching while he pushed the board to the side.  

“Yeah.”   

“Why?”  

“’Cuz Brotch said the Overseer picked the play." His answer seemed like it was meant to be nothing. The look on his face told her it was everything, even if she didn't get it yet. 

His hackles were raised, again. The danger was there when he stepped through the door and held out his hand for her to take. 

She reached out for him, even with the danger. Lacing their fingers together, again, to take the edge down into tame. 

She let him pull her deeper with him, further than far flung corners tucked safe away from all the rest.  

All of it.

Over, and over again. 

Chapter Text

“The only thing worse than being outright stupid is being full of potential and letting it go to waste.” 

Lainey had been eleven when she’d heard the Overseer say that, and over burnt cookies, of all things. But being scolded over charcoal paperweights speckled with fire extinguishing foam wasn’t really the point, here. The point was that she’d barely had her Pip-boy and responsibilities for a year, only eleven, fucking up and making stupid mistakes and not really understanding why. 

She just couldn’t keep up the way that she used to, and she didn’t know how to fix anything or make it stop. 

When she couldn’t do either of those things, she started to let her mind run away. She started to wonder what it would be like to be somewhere, anywhere else. 

Most of the time, “anywhere else” just meant doodling to ease the buzz in her mind while she romanticized the wasted outside, wondering about all those things in the movies, and songs, and books. 

Petting dogs. Singing birds. What the breeze felt like blowing through your hair, running barefoot on a summer evening through the green blades of grass. What it felt like to collapse out of breath beneath the endless promise of an ink black sky, hand in hand gazing at the stars with a boy or girl you loved. 

This time, “running away” was closer to the real thing in the depths of the vault, wandering and romanticizing the underground. Leaning over an unpolished concourse banister and peering down into another three floors’ worth of open floors and infinite possibility, wondering if things like small pleasures and freedom always came laced with danger and wrapped in the dark comfort of black. 

“How far down do you think this place goes?” Lainey asked. Butch had turned around to let her change her shirt in peace after letting her go, neither of them feeling particularly brave now that there were no glass barriers between them. She peeled her sticky camisole off and draped it over the railing she’d been leaning on to dry. 

Maybe she wouldn’t make stupid mistakes and forget her shirt. They’d have to pass by it on their way back up to civilization. 

“No clue.” 

“’No clue?’ You’ve never stuck around long enough to explore?” 

“Nah,” he replied. “This place is kinda boring when you’re alone.” 

Alone? 

“I always thought you’d have brought your boys down here with you to find trouble, or...” 

“Or what, play house like you ? No way. Besides,” he snorted before she heard his boots wandering away somewhere, off into their mid-morning twilight. “I wasn’t about to share any of this with Wally fucking Mack.” 

Butch had always sucked royally at sharing, but then... well. She was down here with him. Alone. Together. Wrapped in dark comforts that bled into the past. 

Sharing freedom in a shirt he’d offered her to wear, and not “Wally fucking Mack.” 

“Mmm, it’s really because you think it’s creepy down here, isn’t it?” she teased, still easing into the nerves and that lick of danger she felt while Butch led her down here, fingers intertwined while they’d raced past the dust and cobwebs that even the spiders had long abandoned. 

The power in this part of the vault ran only at the bare minimum, diverting the energy to where it was needed upstairs. Down here? There was nobody around to need it. The dimly lit gaps left by people were filled with steady, heavy quiet and countless sheets that protected furniture from dust. All that was left to wander these halls besides the pair of them were ghosts. 

“Pfft. No.” Butch’s voice got further and further away, sounding like he’d had to call out. “Well, maybe. So what?” 

She stifled a laugh. There was the split-second heat of his gaze on her exposed back when she pulled his t-shirt over her head, and then nothing after she raised her arms over her head and stretched to settle into what he’d left behind. The warmth of cigarette smoke, layers of amber and spice. 

Pepper. Leather. 

Ghosts. 

“You’re telling me the big, bad Butch DeLoria is afraid of the...” 

Her voice trailed off and she let out a breath when she turned around and found herself alone. Still together. She would’ve felt so small staring back at endless empty rooms if she couldn’t feel Butch there with her, still wrapped in the scent of hair stuff and cologne while he carried on somewhere else in the comfort of black. 

“Dark?” 

She grinned to herself. There was still too much down here to see to be afraid. 

She didn’t find Butch hiding behind any of the metal crates she passed by. He also wasn’t crouched low behind any of the cracking planter walls built into the center of the wide walkway, waiting to jump out. Devil’s Ivy and Snake Plant still grew in them, a couple of decades untrimmed and defying the gods, gathered close to what little emergency light they could find. 

Everything she came across was built to hold centuries of life that just... wasn’t there. 

Even the chapel, or whatever a better word for it may be. 

Lainey stepped inside of it, far larger than the glorified broom closet she usually avoided upstairs. Vault-Tec had built it to be two stories high, exposed steel beams doing their worst to mimic the beauty of marble columns and swooping architecture. There were candelabras. Prayer mats. 

Intricate tilework lain but desecrated by vault yellows and blues, the visage of Vault-Tec seeping further beyond to taint blood-stained glass backlit by burnt out fluorescent light. 

She checked through step by step, bench by forsaken bench, kicking up unwanted demons with all of the dust. 

She could see little Lainey with her hair chopped short, begging the bleeding powers that be to make her good enough to stay Amata’s friend when Alphonse started holding her back. On her knees next to her dad, lighting memorial candles on every birthday that she had. 

Little Lainey enraged. Seeing red. Tears streaming down her cheeks behind the altar set upstairs after the fight that finally made her hate the very same boy that she was missing right now in the dark. 

“You can’t fix it!” 
“Fix what? You just looked sad, so-” 
“Yeah, well at least my mom’s not dead!” 

Launching herself at a tear-streaked tough-kid probably hadn’t been her finest moment, nor had biting first been his. Looking back, he probably hadn’t meant it, though. 

They’d both just been scared kids making stupid mistakes, not really understanding why. 

She shoved the unwanted thoughts away and shivered from a sudden chill. There was nothing else hiding for her in these pews, save for a discarded Jangles the Moon Monkey toy hiding in the back. The toy’s eyes lit up and she failed to smother a scream that echoed through the vaulted ceilings, followed by a bubble of hysterical laughter that reverberated through the ridiculousness of it all. 

“Lainey ...” 

Butch’s sing-song voice came from everywhere and nowhere all at once when she walked back out, leaving her skin prickled from the chills – nice ones, this time. She made it as far as poking her head into the door of a normal apartment when she felt the warmth of him standing behind her, leaning down into a low voice. “I ain’t afraid of the dark.” 

Her breath snagged and he caught her wrist, just to catch her attention and turn her around. “Then what?” 

“The Butch-man ain’t afraid of nothin’.” 

“Oh, I know.” She had a hand on her hip. Head to the side, all wry smiles while she rolled her eyes. “Because you’re so tough.” 

“You better believe it, baby,” he said with a grin. Baby... she ignored the shivers because he didn’t mean it like that. He gestured in a “ladies first” sort of way at a stairwell that would lead them somewhere further down. “What about you?” 

“Nothing,” she replied. For one, she wasn’t going to tell Butch anything if it wasn’t a fair trade. For two... she wasn’t sure how to explain how she was afraid. Of forever, she guessed. Of all the life she’d be stuck missing out on, forever. Of being branded wasted potential for the rest of her life, and never being good enough no matter what she did. “Duh.” 

Well, those things and her pal Jangles back there. 

“Yeah, right.” When they reached the checkered-tile bottom of infinity she’d been looking at from the top floor, he reached for a baseball bat he’d left waiting against the wall after he’d disappeared. It scraped the linoleum with a satisfying sssshhhhhhk before he held it out for her. “Everybody’s scared of somethin’ pipsqueak.” 

"Pipsqueak,” she muttered, not realizing she was whining out loud for Butch to hear. It was supposed to have stayed in her thoughts. “So, everyone’s scared except for you?” 

His eyes flickered with mischief when she took the bat. 

“Yeah, except for me.” He kept his hands shoved deep in his pockets while he walked backwards, eyes on her the whole way and looking suspiciously cocky. “You comin’?” 

“Cocky” until he nearly tripped over, probably over his own pride. Or it might’ve been his shoelaces, it was hard to say. It was just as hard not to sigh and crack a smile. 

“Mhm.” 

“Just making sure you weren’t gonna chicken out and leave me.” He turned to face forward after that, leading her toward a door just across the atrium. 

“I’m right here, aren’t I?” she asked just as she caught up. 

“Yeah, I guess you are. C’mon, I got something to show you.” His gleaming gaze slid sideways to her, just like his grin. “Pipsqueak.” 

She groaned. Out loud. On purpose, this time. 

He laughed. Out loud. Obnoxious as a lullaby. 

Butch messed with the door panel while she was busy dying inside, her soul aching to join the sweet smell of tobacco ghosts in the afterlife when the door hissed open to reveal a lounge. 

There were overstuffed chairs to collapse in after a long days’ work and smoke the San Francisco Sunlights stocked, all dried out in a powered-down humidifier. The jukebox inside somehow managed to look more pitiful and busted than the one in the upstairs diner that always needed repair. Fancy light fixtures hung above a pool table covered by sheets. 

All small pleasures that probably used to draw crowds of fun when these halls still sang with infinite possibility. 

There was a bar, too. A real one, with an assortment of dusty old glasses on top, already lined up for the bat. 

“We can still go back up, if you want,” Butch said, strolling through the lounge with his hands jammed deep, deep in his pockets. He took one out to rub over the back of his neck when he made it over to the counter. “Y’know, I can even walk you back, if, uh...” He shook his head to himself and took a martini glass from the lineup, placing it on a barstool. “Well, so you don’t get lost or something.” 

It was almost too dark to say, but she was pretty sure his cheeks were flushed, the same way they were on the day they didn’t talk about. 

She let out a starry-eyed sigh. 

“I didn’t come down here with you just to go right back up.” 

“No?” His lips curved back up as she fixed her stance to swing, hopefully well enough to appease the ghosts of little leagues past. 

“No,” she promised. She glanced up just to catch his gaze and he kept her there for a minute, accidental dimples and all. Little league spirits had to nag at her to focus on the glass but not before she told him, “I wanted to run.” 

Dink! 

It wasn’t a great swing, not really. She’d caught the glass on the stem and it’d been too delicate to withstand the bat, but they both still flinched at the impact. Then they let flinching fall into fits of infectious laughter at the mostly-intact glass that landed on the shag because holy shit, this was stupid and fun. 

Butch stopped laughing just a little before she did, barely long enough that she didn’t catch the soft way he watched her when she wasn’t looking. It was the same way he did between all of the scowls when he was leaning against walls smoking with his Snakes. The same way he sometimes did when she was zoned out, doodling in notebook margins while he caught up to her in class. 

It was the way he looked back over his shoulder at a closed front door after he’d walk her home, always to make sure that space cadet didn’t get lost and wander into the wrong kind of trouble on her way. 

“Can I do that again?” she asked, still breathless and beaming. “Just one more, I swear. I know you’re the one that wanted to break stuff, but-” 

“Sure.” Butch didn’t seem to think twice about sharing or putting up a fight, he just set another up for her. Not one with a stem, this time. “You need practice for that lousy swing, anyway.” 

“My swing isn’t that lousy, you gave me a bad glass!” 

“Whatever you’ve gotta tell yourself to sleep at night,” he said. That flicker was back to bite like the stars, the same way it was before they walked in. She waited for him because she knew, she just knew he had some wisecrack ready to get under her skin, but he held off long enough to lower her guard. Long enough for her to wind up the bat, just before the release. “Pipsqueak.” 

She missed so hard she spun, almost whacking him when he reached out to catch her and keep her steady and he would’ve deserved it, the twerp. The glare she leveled into his wolfish grin was probably about as fierce as a lamb, but she glared anyway. “Smartass.” 

Unlike her, he didn’t miss the swing. 

“What’re you pouting for?” 

“I’m not pouting,” she pouted, her own cheeks on fire. 

“You’re pouting.” 

“God, you look smug.” 

“That’s cuz I am,” he replied, preening and enjoying this way too much. “If you want a good swing, all you gotta do is think about something that makes you mad. I mean really gets you steamed.” 

“I guess that’s usually just your face,” she huffed. Or tried. It came out way too much like defeat in a sigh.

“Uh-huh. Must be why you’re pouting,” he teased, before his voice dropped into lower, warmer tones. “Or you could just try telling me why you wanted to run. I know it wasn’t ‘cuz of Wally fuckin’ Mack. I know you better than that.” 

"Hm,” she looked down at her boots, twirling her hair while she thought about it. “Not unless you tell me why you wanted to break stuff.” 

“I already told you, though.” 

“Yeah, but why do you care that it got changed?” She looked back up at him from under her lashes, almost sure she knew him better, too. “Are you really that upset that we’re missing out on Romeo and Juliet?” 

“Fuck no, I don’t care about that. I care ‘cuz he changed it the day after we...” His glare at his own thoughts looked like it held far more anger than her petty, pouty one ever could. At least until red patches stained their way across his cheeks, same way they did standing outside of her window. “After we, uh. The day after he was runnin’ his mouth in the classroom. About you...” His throat bobbed while he swallowed. “And my ma. Look, have you finished reading it yet?” 

“Not quite, but...” She’d made it far enough to know some things. About the drinking and the fighting. The secrets and fuck-ups that the protagonist was running from while she tried to make a life for herself somewhere, anywhere else. “Have you?” 

“Nah, I’ve only read those parts with you. After, uh. After class.” 

“So you’re not too far past the middle, then?” 

Even through the jacket, she could see the tension he held in his shoulders, how it went further down to his chest. He worked through some of it by moving, setting out another glass for himself and picking up the bat. 

“Still a lot further than five pages like that bastard said. I might be a little slower than everybody else, but I ain’t stupid. Plus, I saw the movie with my Ma one time, and...” He let out a frustrated sigh and wound up the bat, then released some more of that tension with a really good swing. “Never mind all that. I can read, and I’m far enough to know the Overseer butted in and picked it ‘cuz he’s got somethin’ to say about lower-level trash. Or stray dogs, or...” 

“’Something to say’ like what?” Between wasted potential, and secrets, and fuck-ups, the things she was afraid of started to creep up on her. “Butch,” she whispered. “Do you think he knows?” 

“Knows about wha-” His eyes went wide and he finally looked back at her. “Woah, hey, he doesn’t know. Trust me, if he knew, he’d’ve pulled you into his office for a nice little chat about stray dogs by now.” 

There was also the “outright stupidity” she’d spent years being pitted against, too. 

“Has he had a chat with you about stray dogs?” she asked him, voice running soft because that’s how she felt. 

“Don’t worry about it, Lainey.” 

“You can tell me. I meant it that day, when I said if you ever wanted to talk...” 

“Well, you can’t fix any of it, so you don’t have to worry abou-” 

“I don’t want to fix you,” she blurted, not too sure if she was defending the boy or the Butch he’d grown into. Either way, her mouth had always moved faster than her brain could catch. “I like you, I-” 

Her stomach collapsed and her breath went down with it. That was supposed to have stayed in her thoughts, just like petty whining outside of the door. 

She turned to bolt.

"Wait."

She had no problems being reckless and stupid and brave in the moment, playing games and taking off her shirt. This, though?

"Jesus, Lainey, wait-"

She didn't love giving him the chance to make it hurt, but he also didn't give her any hope of running. He caught her by the wrist before she could get anywhere, keeping her still and steady there with him.

“My turn," he said, still talking her down. "I answered yours." He let her go long enough to place one last glass on the bar stool and hand her the bat. After that he came up behind her, black leather arms wrapped around her, along with pepper and ghosts. She tried not to melt into it too obviously, still mad at herself even if the weight of endless promise felt comfortable pressed against her back. “What’s got my girl wanting to run?” 

“Forever,” she confessed, still too full of nerves to have caught on to everything he’d said. “I know that’s stupid and it probably doesn’t make sense, but-” 

“No, I get it. Forever down here sucks.” The heat of his breath in her ear gave her chills that ran all the way down her spine. “But what pisses you off?” 

She leaned her head back against his chest, eyes closed, brows furrowed in thought. 

The Overseer.

Outright stupidity, and strays, and

lower

level

trash...

Butch backed away long enough to let her glare at the stupid highball glass and swing. This time there was no stem to catch and the glass shards rained sharp to cut into vault-blue shag. 

“You’re not stupid,” she said. To herself, but more than anything else to him. There were way too many feelings to sort through, as usual. Embarrassment, regret, fear of rejection. Totally normal stuff, just a whole cocktail of it all at once. She tried to swallow it all past the heart that was lodged in her throat before she turned back around to face her fears.

“That so, pipsqueak?” 

“Well, maybe a little stupid.” She softened her mostly-unintentional glare when he tipped her chin up and tucked the waves she was twirling away.

“Yeah, and maybe I deserve that one.”

“Just... if you ever need to break some more stuff...” 

“I know where to find you.” The telltale dimples came out while he walked her back, eyes on her the whole way. “I still remember where your window is.” 

She laughed, more at ease thanks to wise-ass remarks, nerves finally fading into the dark.

“I bet you do.” She let him lift her up to the counter while he studied her, sweeter than the way she’d catch him sometimes before he’d scowl and look away. He dragged his thumb just under her lip, all the while chewing his own. “You keep teasing me,” she pouted, this time wanting him to hear. 

“I wasn’t trying to tease you, you know.” He rested his forehead against her own and she made space for him between her legs, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck. “It’s just been a crap couple weeks is all.” 

“Tell me,” she whispered, tracing idle lines down the nape of his neck. "Please?"

“What if I can't?"

“If you can't that's fine, but did he really call you a stray?”

“Fuck him. I ain’t a stray, and neither are you.” He pulled her hips back to the edge of the counter and laced his fingers through her hair. They were about as close as they could get—bodies pressed together, hearts racing through their suits. “You think you can wait for me? Just for a couple more weeks.” 

“I can wait, but-” 

“Fuck,” he hissed before she could finish her thought. He didn't end up waiting before he kissed her, really kissed her—biting and full of promise. Making up for lost time by immediately running his tongue with hers, not caring if they missed the mark a little or how messy and bruised their lips got. 

Clinging to each other and refusing to pull apart. 

“Just wait for me,” he breathed into what little space there was between them when they finally slowed down, eyes still closed and mouths still open, sharing breathless air like they’d just run miles and might collapse. “Please? I’ve just gotta catch up.” 

“Okay.” 

“You swear it?” 

“I swear it.”

Then she marked him with a promise in the sweet sting of a bruise, hidden safe beneath a vault-blue collar always wrapped in the dark comfort of black.

He tugged the collar of the shirt he’d shared with her aside, leaving danger-laced promises of his own to match.

Chapter Text

“How did you and Mom fall in love?” 

The question was innocent enough, asked on a rare morning that Dad was still home long enough to brew coffee for the both of them. He puzzled through a patient file while Lainey scrunched her face at a black invitation adorned with glitter-glue sparkle. 

"Math equations,” Dad answered, not looking up from his chart. 

“Math equations?” she asked again, more than a little skeptical. The idea of anybody ever falling in love over math didn’t really add up to her (ha!), but in the moment? Well... 

It was more believable than Susie and Amata’s prom theme being A Night Under the Stars.

She loved the stars. The idea of them, at least. 

She was also never going to see them, and neither was the prom committee. 

“Alligation,” Dad explained, or maybe corrected, but she didn’t bother asking him to give her anything else. Instead she watched him dream, watched the way his features eased while he checked off boxes and double checked a medication list. “We were trying to determine the ratio of water needed to-” 

He cut himself off, though a lazy, sideways grin found its way to his face before he looked back up at her over his clipboard. “Anyway, yes. It’s the little things, like math equations. Over time, they add up.”  

“Ha-ha.” She rolled her eyes over a smile, as though she hadn’t just been thinking a similar terrible joke. “Hilarious. You should’ve taken a career in stand-up.” 

“I’m afraid not, sweetheart. We can’t all be blessed with the work ethic to match this dazzling wit. Besides, the Overseer would never approve.” Dad nodded toward the invitation she still held in her hand. “Did you have anyone particular in mind?” 

Lainey nearly choked on a swig of coffee. “For love?”  

“For the dance,” Dad laughed, years of stress melting away with an almost-mischievous twinkle in his eye. It made her wonder what he’d been like when he was young. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the lipstick stains on all of my mugs.” 

“No,” she lied, though her cheeks were aflame. She'd been waiting for a definitely-mischievous Romeo to catch up.

She still didn't know why.

“Ah." He tutted as she placed her mug in the sink. "But you answered suspiciously fast.”

Chapter Text

Today was gonna be shit. 

Butch knew ‘cuz he fell asleep with his hair still wet and he couldn’t get it shaped the way he wanted it after spending forever in the bathroom with the pomade. There was this one stubborn-ass curl in the back that wouldn’t go away no matter what he did with it. Might’ve taken another shower just for his hair if it wasn’t for his Ma. 

Ugh. 

At that point it was just better to give up. 

See, thanks to all that “alone time” (no, seriously, that’s what Ma was blaming him for. Frickin’ A), he was running too late to even think about any actual, real food for breakfast. They were all out of Sugar Bombs at home and he could forget the caf - still not an option. Besides, even if he did have the time or the scratch, Mrs. Taylor was out sick and some clown had put Andy in charge of the joint.  

Nobody wanted that dumb robot’s cooking, so sink toast it was. 

Man, he hated the vault. 

He left the house, single piece of sink-toast in hand, not thinkin’ about the brown bag he left on the shelf in the icebox. Not thinkin’ about the red that still ran embarrassment across heated cheeks. 

Furrowed brows not thinkin’ about much. 

He’d overheard some of the girls around the corner powdering their noses, or whatever it was chicks did when they were hanging out at their lockers in packs. Talking about boys. Talking about prom. 

Hey, wasn’t his fault Susie and Chrissy were whispering so loud. 

Might’ve been an ego boost, too, if it didn’t go like – 

“So, who are you hoping will ask you? Freddie or Butch?”  

Well, it wasn’t gonna be the Butch-man, but his interest had been peeked. Peaked? P-I- eh, fuck it. Whatever. 

“I just don’t know! Butch is gorgeous- “  

Damn right, he was gorgeous. Couldn’t’ve put it better, himself. 

“-but so is Freddie and he’s so TALL now. Besides, Freddie’s the kind of guy you could actually take home to your parents, you know?”  

Take Freddie? Home to parents ? Like he gave a rat’s ass...  

Ugh, he really hated the vault. 

His locker slammed shut. His eyes rolled sky-high while shoving past a Wally Mack that was flipping him birds. 

Shoving past the notion of “not good enough.” 

He was headed to the stairwell to grab a smoke before class, maybe catch Freddie Gomez – good enough to take home to an actual dad – maybe offer him Wally’s newly-vacate...(vacationed?) spot in the gang. 

He’d been thinking about skipping out altogether, but that’s when he ran smack-dab into her. Not the “her” that he would have hoped for, if you were wondering. An annoying-as-shit “her.” 

“Ugh, Butch,” Amata said, making a face like she just smelled a fart.  

“Ugh, Amata,” he mocked, matching the tone of her voice. 

She narrowed her eyes as he dusted himself off. “Skipping class again?” 

“What’s it to you?” he asked, deciding to ignore her and make his way past. And he was gonna let her attitude slide, too. He didn’t have time, didn’t want to be within a mile of Daddy’s Perfect Little Prin- 

“What did you do to her this time?” 

Do to-  

He stopped dead in his tracks before he could make it more than two steps, ears burning red. “Do to who , dweeb?” 

“Lainey,” she replied while she steadied the shake in her voice. “Wally mentioned that she ran into a little bit of trouble on the way to class the other day, and you happen to be a lot of trouble, Butch.” 

Why the hell was everybody after him, today? Did he mention he hated the vault? 

“The hell is that even supposed to mean?” He turned back around to face her. He might not be in the mood to pick a fight, but he wasn’t gonna let a fight pick him, either. 

“What did you do to her?” Amata sniffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s what I mean.” 

“I didn’t do anything, so lay off.” 

“The only other times she’s ever missed class were because of you. ” So they were going the finger-pointing route, huh? “You gave her vault pox.” 

“Yeah, whatever.” He rolled his eyes. “Like a five-year-old could even go around making anybody sick on purpose.” 

Seriously? Was that all she had? The whole class caught it, fuck that, not his fault. 

“No, but you made fun of the spots on her face on purpose, even though you had them yourself. And that birthday she missed out on class-” 

“That was Susie, not me.” If he hadn’t been glaring before, he sure was now. If Amata wanted to start something, fine. He didn’t have a problem finishing it. “I wasn’t invited to that little get together,” he reminded, sucking on his teeth. “But, uh... pretty sure you were .”  

That shut her up, for maybe a whole five seconds. They’d been thirteen. Suze was mean, talking Lainey up about a party just to ditch her and guess what? Daddy dearest made sure that Amata ditched her, too.  

It wasn’t his fault. 

“Then there was the time she stayed with you to read that picture book when your Nona died, since you were too stupid to read it for yourself.” 

“Can it,” he hissed, because that one struck a nerve. Preschool. One of the worst days of his life, and his girl’d come looking for him. Spent it hiding under blankets with him. 

He still had that bear she gave him. 

It wasn’t his fault.  

“Oh, and when your mom got sick that Christmas-“ 

It wasn’t Christmas, but a couple days after. 

“I said can it, Daddy’s Girl.” Amata hit another nerve. He wound his fist tight, a snake about to strike, without much rattle left to warn her. “You know, maybe you oughta go shove a sandwich in that fat mouth of yours to shut you up.” 

December 27th. 

“’ At least my mom’s not dead ,’” Amata quoted – reigniting a venom that still lingered in his veins from the other worst day of his life. 

His fault. 

“You little bitch,” he spat. His brain screamed stop. “You don’t know anything- ” 

His fault. 

“But I guess maybe yours is better off ‘cuz she doesn’t have to deal with you.”  

His fault.  

He turned and slammed that arm against the wall, pinning Amata where he could tower over her. She just scoffed at him like it was nothing – he was nothing – and she still wasn’t fuckin’ backing off. “You really are a snake, aren’t you?” she asked. 

It took him a minute – nostrils flared, fangs bared- doing everything he could to reel it in before he really hit that wall and broke something, or worse.  

“Y’know, Amata, if you want,” he sneered, letting lips curl around his toothpick, “I could show you a real Tunnel Snake.” 

He hated it.  

Hated that “lower-level trash.”  

Hated that “could take him home to dad.” 

Hated that “Daddy’s Girl” look written all over Amata’s face. Couldn’t put a finger on it, but hated the messed-up way that staring this nosebleed down was almost like looking in a mirror if you squinted, some days. Hated the way that - 

“Hey!” 

Butch threw a look back over his shoulder. 

She was there, it was her. 

He hated 

Hated...  

.....  

.......  

... couldn’t hate his girl if he tried, but he damn sure hated the vault. 

Lainey was all of five foot away, confused. Hurt. And after those things, man did she look pissed off, too. Might’ve been proud if it wasn’t at him. “I swear to god, Butch, you’d better not.” 

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” He squeaked, and he hated that, too. How his voice cracked while he tried to reel all of the feeling in. “You’re taking her side?” 

“What side are you talking about?” Lainey looked between him and Amata, nose scrunched while she took it all in. “You’re the one that has her trapped.” 

“Yeah, well she-” he might not hate Lainey, but he did hate how she was always there when things were going wrong. 

“She what, Butch? Started it?” 

Like things were going now. 

“Whatever. Forget it.”  

Like when Nona died. 

“Amata started it?” 

Like when Ma almost did.  

Nobody answered her question. The hallway went cold. 

“Butch. Did she start it?” Lainey asked, a little softer. Asking him . She wedged her way between him and Amata, let her gaze find its way up to meet his own. 

“I was just-” Amata started. 

“It’s fine, just go,” Lainey said to her friend. “Whatever it was, he can take it out on me.” 

All he could do was blink at her. He let out a slow breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, all the tension in his shoulders draining with it. “Get lost, Daddy’s Girl,” he said to a still-shaking Amata. He never looked away from his girl, though. 

“But Lainey-“ Amata protested. 

“Go,” Lainey insisted, never looking away from him, either. “I’ll catch you in class.” 

She looked almost the same as she did the day he’d fucked everything up. Her hair was longer now than it was back then, but her arms were crossed over her chest the same. Her giant, too-good-for-the-Butch-man brown eyes were still burning, at least until Amata had wiggled her way out and he’d backed Lainey all the way up against the wall. 

It could’ve been a year he stood there looking dumb, mouth hanging open, distracted by the smell of cinnamon fire and the way Lainey’s heart was still racing through her suit. 

“Take. It out. On me ,” she said again, voice a little too dangerous and low.  

“You think I won’t give you hell just ‘cuz of the other day?” He reached up to trace her bottom lip – play it cool – before tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. 

She cracked a smile. “Do your worst, Romeo.” He scoffed as indignantly as he could manage before her smile faded. “What was all that about?” 

“It was nothing.” He checked over his shoulder to make sure the coast was clear before he dipped down to stop her questions before she asked them, stealing them from her lips with his own in a sigh. “Just a shit day, is all.” 

He was still half pissed off, other half starving after they’d gotten to class. And on top of all that, Brotch the Crotch had ‘em all writing an essay, today. 

Ugh. 

The day was still shit, just maybe a little less shit after he spied Lainey reaching for a piece of candy, or whatever she had stashed in her bookbag pocket. 

“Psst,” he whispered. 

Nothing. 

She either didn’t hear him or those mentats she was on were doing their job. 

“Hey,” he tried again, leaning forward to tap on her shoulder with his pencil. She ignored him. He poked her this time. Again. One more time in the ribs and... 

“Knock if off,” she hissed, turning around. She was biting her cheek like she always did when she was trying not to laugh, which meant he’d finally scored a win after a whole morning of, well.  

Mostly shit. 

He’d started to crack a grin so he could mouth something about the snacks that Lainey wasn’t going to finish, anyway. At least until Brotch came over to his desk, all just to slap a ruler down on it. 

UGH . 

“Well, Mr. DeLoria,” Mr. Brotch drawled. He put one hand on his hip, all the better to scold him the same he always did when Butch was acting up. “Since you seem so eager to open your mouth, why don’t you share what you wrote with the rest of the class?” 

That’s what it must have looked like to anybody else in the class. Like Butch was just giving Lainey hell. Living up to his reputation.  

He was kinda giving her hell, though.

“Aw, c’mon man,” he said while the rest of the class turned around to whisper. Butch rolled his eyes. “I’ll leave her alone.” 

Mr. Brotch shook his head and reached to pick up the piece of paper Butch had been trying to ignore for the better part of an hour. “This just says ‘this is bullshit’. Enlightening as always, Mr. DeLoria,” he said, heaving one of his signature “Why’d I get stuck with him?” sighs. “Does anyone else care to share their thoughts?” 

“I was surprised that we were allowed to read this. It’s sort of... it’s like, a lot,” Susie Mack chimed in, batting lashes and twirling strawberry ringlets around her pencil. “Did your dad really pick this, Amata?” 

Butch shot a glare toward the front of the classroom, right at the princess he was still pissed at. “My father thinks it sends a powerful message,” she said, looking down at the whole five million pages she wrote about the stupid play. 

Frickin’ goody-two-shoes. 

“And what sort of message is that?” Mr. Brotch asked. 

“Well...” Amata started. Butch snorted at how she seemed to shrink a bit in her seat. “I suppose... I suppose he thinks it shows a sort of... perspective. On how a person’s life can turn out if they, um... stray.” 

Stray. 

Just like that, he was back to -you guessed it- hating the vault. 

Wally Mack leaned back in his seat behind Amata, cool as a cucumber with his arms behind his head. “Well if you ask me, I think that Blanche lady was asking for it.” 

“That’s bullshit,” Butch muttered, maybe a little louder than he should’ve since he didn’t want any part of the class discussion, anyway. 

“Language, Mr. DeLoria,” Mr. Brotch said. 

“Did you even read it, Butch?” Amata asked, glaring daggers from whatever high horse she was still on from this morning. 

He didn’t open his mouth, roll his eyes, any of that stuff he wanted to do. Lainey didn’t give him the chance to. “He read it with me,” she said, cutting through the ice that was still there between him and Amata. Then Lainey turned around in her seat to look at him with those doe eyes, again. “You never told me why you think it’s bullshit, though.” 

His girl still didn’t even know what she was sticking up for. 

Crotch Brotch heaved another one of those heavy sighs, the kind he usually saved for Butch, or Paulie. Even Freddie, on some occasions. “Don’t tell me that Mr. DeLoria’s profanity is rubbing off on you, too, Miss Watson.” 

“I ain’t rubbing off on her, she knows plenty of curse words on her own. She’s just better at watching her mouth around you, teach.” 

“So you’ve got her swearing around you, do you, Butch?” Wally-fuckin'-Mack butted in, one eyebrow raised. 

“Go to hell, Mack,” Lainey said in uni...unis...? Oh, for crying out loud. She said it at the same time as him when they’d both turned around to shoot dirty looks at the now-former snake. 

“You do, don’t you?” 

“What’s that s’posed to mean?” 

“At least Shakespeare doesn’t devolve into this kind of chaos...” Mr. Brotch gave the whole class one of those sighs, pinching his brow between two fingers. “Let’s just get back to the topic at hand. Freddie, did you catch the symbolism with the light...” 

Butch tuned the rest of them out. Hard not to, now that Lainey was back to egging him on. 

Tell me she mouthed, poking him with her own pencil. 

Forget it he mouthed back. 

“I know you know this. Why else would you have been so pissed?” she whispered. She slid half a snack cake across his desk as some kind of a bribe, not that it was gonna work... 

His stomach growled.  

She looked at him. 

He shoved a bite of pastry in his mouth. 

“Fine.” He said, rolling his eyes as high as they would go. He wiped the crumbs off the corner of his mouth. 

“Miss Watson, do you-” Mr. Brotch started, looking for his next victim after putting Freddie through the wringer. “Butch, are you raising your hand?” 

“Yeah." He looked down, pretending to pick a stray crumb off his sleeve. "So?” 

“Well, do go on. This ought to be interesting.” 

This was stupid. “Look, old man. It’s just bullshit, okay? So, maybe that lady was kinda shitty-” 

“’That lady’ was deranged,” Wally Mack butted in. “But do you even know what that means?” 

“That’s enough. Let the man speak.” 

 Screw them, Lainey mouthed. Then she whispered, “Take it out on me.” 

So, he did. 

“This is your fault,” he muttered. “Look,” he continued, loud enough to get Brotch off his back. “Just because that lady fucked up a lot doesn’t mean she deserved... look, nobody deserves that , alright? There’s a difference between bad and evil, and even then...” His fists were clenched, nails almost digging into his palm even through the glove he wore.  

He remembered the time he watched the movie with his Ma, how he had to hold her for ages while the sobs made her whole body shake, at the end. How he tossed that film out in the trash, so she wouldn’t get drunk and accidentally watch it on a bad night alone. 

The whole thing hit almost too close to home and the Overseer knew it. 

And the Overseer picked it. 

And he fucking hated the vault. 

On top of all that, his face was bright as a cherry Corvega and the whole class was staring and he didn’t want his voice to do that cracking thing, again.  

“They carted that lady off like a dog at the end. Like a stray.” He swallowed hard before finishing his thought, looking Brotch dead in the eye. “And it wasn’t her fault.” 

“That,” Mr. Brotch said, rocking back over to Butch’s desk with his piece of paper in hand. “Write that down.” 

“What?”  

“You heard me, Mr. DeLoria. Write it all down. I might even give you a B if you can avoid using the word ‘bullshit’ for a whole paragraph.” Mr. Brotch threw a wink at Lainey (what?) before heading back up to his desk at the front of the classroom. He cleared his throat. “Well, people. Get back to it. You’ve only got twenty minutes left.” 

Butch wasted probably two of those minutes staring open mouthed while pencils went back to scratching on papers around them. The only other person who wasn’t writing was his girl. Looking at him, too-good-for-the-Butch-man eyes sparkling ‘cuz she was a little too pleased with herself. 

“What?” he asked. 

“It’s nothing,” she said, throwing him a lipstick grin that he couldn't chase.

Maybe he only sort of hated the vault. 

Chapter Text

The middle of the night was the best time to be awake in the vault. 

There had once been a time where the clock would strike midnight, and all that the tick of the clock would bring was racing thoughts and sleepless nights. It had meant nightmares about monsters, begging Dad to shine lights under the bed and chase away the shadows that an overactive imagination swore were lurking in her closet. 

When she got older and outgrew the fear, she still liked to stay up late into the night. Sometimes Dad would come home late and chuckle, then ask if she was still up to keep the monsters company. She would give him a good-natured eyeroll and tell him - 

“Yeah, Dad. I’m one of them, now.”  

But really, Lainey was just made for the peace of the night. 

The background buzz of busy days would fade away to silence in her head. Apartment locks would whisper shut, and when everyone else was tucked away into warm beds and gentle dreams, she’d revel in the small things while she was all alone. 

She could spend time with her sketchbook. Catch up on chores. Blast records until her ears bled, and when she got bored? 

She’d sneak out. 

She wasn’t some monster, some midnight criminal, and the night time guards had never treated her like one. Besides, the only officer that ever bothered to do lower-level rounds was Herman Gomez, who always tipped his hat in thanks for the fresh pot of boring black coffee she’d put on in the diner when he was stuck on third-shift rotation. 

The only real trouble she got up to on her own was being a little too curious and getting lost in her imagination. Raising her brows at the restricted section of the library and smuggling new romances out for Amata to tear through. After that, she’d wander over to page through the wealth of picture books in nonfiction. 

She’d trace a finger over the inked-paper wings of sparrows and falcons, marvel over maps of the moon and the stars. 

Run lines over silhouettes of the fast-racing cars. 

Those hustling days always drifted into sunsets and halcyon nights, until one night when the clock struck twelve and everything changed: 

The pipsqueak was basically an adult. 

Tick, tock. 

Lainey hadn’t even been doing anything with criminal intent when she picked up on a set of voices deep in discussion drifting out of the vault’s diner. She’d just been a little too lonely on the wrong night, wandering toward the clinic to keep Dad company. 

Doing her best to keep monsters at bay. 

Tick.

“Look, a Cherry Bomb’s cool and all, but zero to sixty in half a second’s still pretty fuckin’ fast,” a familiar voice debated. She let curiosity pull her toward it. “Nah. I’ll stick with the ‘62 ‘Vega Blacktip.” 

“You’re on, man! My car’d kick your car’s ass on the streets,” another voice she knew chimed in, just happy to be included, as well as she knew her best friend. 

“Oh come on, you think I’d be dumb enough to race a Cherry for pinks? No way, man. Plus, it’s not just about the speed, my fellow Tunnel Snake.” 

The corners of her mouth quirked up – perv . She could hear the devilish smirk in his voice, even without seeing his face. 

“Oh yeah?” a third voice asked. By then, she’d made it far enough to lean in the door frame with her arms crossed, where she could see that the last voice belonged to Paul. “What’s it about then, Butch?” 

“Cherry Bombs’re single rider,” Butch replied. “Those ones didn’t get made with a passenger seat.” 

Paul leaned one leather-clad, drink-heavy elbow atop the checkered diner table the boys were gathered at, confusion written in his brow. “What do you need a passenger seat for, anyway?” 

Lainey covered her mouth to keep a giggle down, pretty sure she knew exactly what Romeo over there was getting at. She’d snuck books with that exact plot out to Amata a dozen times, where some hopeful boy would sneak to his girl’s house in the middle of the night to sweep her off her feet. The young lovers would cruise around in his vintage Chryslus or Pegasus GT, laughing over blasted music until laughter turned to teasing. Teasing into feather-light touch. 

Innocent until the heroes would get a little too desperate for friction and found some place to “park.” 

Tick. 

“Well...” Butch started, sounding oh-so-smug. He was the picture of ease - sprawled out with one arm across the back of the booth, taking a long drag from the cigarette burning in his mouth. 

At the same time, Freddie Gomez, long-time loser friend and proud owner of the imaginary Cherry Bomb, spotted her. “Hey, Lainey!” he called with a wave, all smiles over the brand-new leather jacket he was sporting. 

Her Romeo lost his bravado and choked on the inhale, ashes dropping down the front of his suit. She let her laugh out of its cage while he recovered, brushing himself off and flashing a boozy grin over his shoulder that she could swear lit the dim room up. 

It might have even chased a few of her shadows away. 

“Hey, look. Another rebel.” Butch pulled himself to sit up a bit, nodding toward the space he made. “What, dreamin’ about me wasn’t good enough, so you decided to sneak out and find the real thing?” 

“Oh you wish,” she shot back. “The only dreams I have about you are nightmares.” 

“You mean the kinda nightmares where I’m calling you ‘pipsqueak’?” 

“No,” she said, teasing with a click of her tongue. “It actually turns out I’m afraid of clowns.” 

Paul dissolved into a fit of laughter, probably fueled by that same open bottle on the table that had Butch’s face flushed and looks bleeding soft when she slid in close beside him. Back at ease, made for the mischief of the night. 

Kind of like her, just a little more drunk. 

Tick. 

“Let’s get this lovely lady a drink, huh?” Butch said, still all teeth and boyish and looking at her in a way that brought red to her cheeks. 

“Lovely lady?” Freddie mumbled. He squinted at them over a skeptical swig of Nuka Cola chasing something warm-looking and brown and added, louder this time, “I thought she was nosebleed. Since when do you call her a ‘lovely lady?’” 

“Since the other day when she mouthed off to Wally,” Paul replied before either Butch or Lainey had a chance to say anything, shoulders still shaky as he wiped tears of laughter from under his eyes. “Man, that one was good.” 

“Wait, like, she was mouthing off on purpose?” 

“I think it was kinda an accident,” Paul explained. “She called him a princess.” 

“Hold up, why?” Freddie asked, brow quirked at Lainey for the answers, this time. 

Brow quirked at Lainey because he knew. 

Tick. 

Even Amata never knew. 

“’Cuz he is one,” Butch snorted, cutting into whatever weird, telepathic interrogation was about to happen between Lainey the Loser and Freddie the Freak. “Lately he’s been too busy hangin’ around upstairs with all the other princesses. His ma threw one of those fancy parties for the Overseer,” he drawled, the threat of a growl in his voice barely masking some hurt, but Lainey already knew. Amata was missing midnight rituals because she was at the fancy party, too. “You think they’re up there drinkin’ tea?”  

“And listening to Mozart?” Freddie added, attempting to ease nonchalantly back into his new role and shelving his cross examination.  

For now. 

“They’re probably schmoozing and drinking that gross gin the Overseer likes...” Lainey shook off a shudder. The one sort-of-criminal thing she’d ever gotten up to with Amata in the middle of the night might as well have been a marked-up bottle of rubbing alcohol. 

Seriously. It was terrible. She was pretty sure they almost died. 

“Not if I’ve got anything to say about it,” Butch said, looking excruciatingly self-satisfied. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked. 

“Nothin’,” he said, but that spark was still there. 

“There’s no way it’s ‘nothing.’” She lowered her voice. “Not when you look like that.”  

“Look like what?” He murmured back, all while he poked her in the ribs. 

She swatted his hand away, still a little too curious about that gleam in his eyes. “’I ain’t a snitch,’” she mouthed. 

“You really wanna know that bad?” 

Tick. 

“Not really,” she lied through the shrug she gave him. “Obviously it’s some top secret, Tunnel Snake business, so why should I care?” 

“You’re full of it.” He reached low to unsnap a bag laying underneath the table, opening it just far enough for her to see. She leaned just close enough to catch his low voice, and for her to catch a glimpse of a crystalline bottle stashed within. “If you go and rat me out to Amata...” 

“Let me guess, you’ll give me hell?” 

She rolled her eyes as she straightened back up, all the better to ignore the shiver that coursed down her spine. He grinned back like a wolf, all the better to play off the sparks shooting down his. 

“You’d better believe I’ll make your life hell.” 

And, all the better for ignoring the confused looks that Freddie was giving them both. 

“You think Wally’s schmoozin’ Amata?” Paul piped up, finally over the giggles and looking forlorn. Lainey and Freddie blinked at him, not sure what to do with his moment of liquor-laced honesty. 

Did he like their best friend? 

“Well if he is, she can have him,” Butch muttered to himself in an honest moment of his own. “Anyway, I owe you one,” he continued, kicking Lainey oh-so-gently under the table where the other two couldn’t see, waiting not-so-patiently to have her attention back on him. “Unless you think you’re too good to slum it with the Snakes.” 

“Well, I guess. Since I don’t have anyone cooler to hang out with.” 

“Cooler than us? Yeah, whatever princess.”  

His reflexes were faster than hers – grabbing her knee and flashing teasing grins when she tried to kick him sort-of-gently back. 

“I’m not a princess.” 

I know you ain’t. He didn’t have to say the words - she could feel them murmured against her jaw, cozied up on the hood of a ‘62 ‘Vega Blacktip. 

She could imagine things to whisper back with monstrous intent, things that left her warm when the two of them really weren’t even going together... 

… 

Right. Besides, they were still in the diner with the rest of his gang, so Romeo settled for calling her “Pipsqueak” and gave her knee a squeeze. 

She glared at him and he laughed. 

Tick. 

“Oh, shit.” A still-snickering Butch pulled a flask out from God-knows-where and passed it to her. “Here, try this.”  

“Do you need a Nuka Cola to chase it?” Freddie asked, sliding a lukewarm bottle across the table before giving her a chance to answer. 

“No,” she said. “Maybe...” she admitted. “It’s just whiskey or something, isn’t it?” 

“’Just whiskey,’” Freddie snorted, taking another long, indignant pull from his own soda pop. 

“Forget the lightweight,” Butch teased. “You trust me?” His fingertips brushed the inside of her leg for a split second in the seat. He started to take his hand back but she snatched it to hold tight while she threw her head back to take a swig. 

Which was maybe kind of dumb to do. She probably, definitely, took a bit too much at once and coughed and almost died, again. This time, with an audience, but it was worth it. 

The whole table erupted in cheers, and she almost felt like she was one of them. 

“Oh, come on.” Freddie laughed. “You don’t have to kill yourself being a show-off.” 

“Cinnamon?” she choked out with a grin, as soon as her lungs were back to basic functioning. 

“Yeah!” Paul said, back to his typical, fun-loving self after that brief brush of intoxicated melancholy. “Butch got some of those jawbreaker things and stuck ‘em in the bottle for tonight.” 

“Yeah, I figured out whiskey tastes pretty good with those fireballs you, uh-” Butch stopped himself, taking his own drink from the flask. His nose wrinkled and he shook his head, and Lainey couldn’t tell whether he was shaking off the whiskey burn, or if it was the rest of the words that should’ve belonged after that. “It just tastes better than whatever the hell those assholes’re drinkin’ upstairs.” 

“Way better,” Paul and Freddie both agreed, although Freddie looked like he was still on the fence. 

“It tastes like bad decisions,” she said, reaching for more, anyway. 

“Yeah.” Butch held it high above his head, just as an excuse to tease her, she guessed. Just as an excuse to draw her back in. “But I kinda think you like how bad decisions taste.” 

“You’re the worst.”  

“I told ya, baby, I bring out the best.” 

Tick. 

She’d nearly gotten that flask from him. Her fingertips had just brushed against the cool metal and she choked, almost falling out of the booth. 

“You know, if you like bad decisions, we’re supposed to get Freddie his patch tonight for the anniversary,” Paul chimed in. “Maybe she could come, Butch? Make her an honorary Tunnel Snake? She’s fun.” 

“I’m tons of fun.” She snatched the whiskey right out of Butch’s hand, trying to ignore... this. All of it. The tick of the clock, the race of her heart. All of the shadowy thoughts that an overactive imagination brought. 

The swig she took didn’t chase any of those things off. 

Butch studied her for a moment, in all her flustered glory. “I dunno if she could handle it.” 

“Handle what?” 

Butch had her and he knew. 

The boys ignored her— ignored her —just to get to her and it worked. Their grins at each other clawed under her skin, left her itching along with the whiskey burn. 

Handle what? 

“I mean, we need a replacement for Wally, anyway...” Paul said. 

Butch’s face fell flat. “A radroach could replace that backstabbing, ass-kissing...” 

“Pipsqueak’s here.” Freddie looked at her over his last sip of Nuka Cola, shelving his questions for good. “He’s not.”  

“I guess you are, aren’t you?” Butch murmured. He reached over to trace a finger along the inside of her thigh again, leaving venom in his wake. “You think you could handle a little dirt?” 

“What do you even have to do to get your patch?” she asked, if only to catch the flicker of shadow in his eye. “Start fires just to watch them burn?” 

“Ha! Who does that?” The danger in his laugh pulled her in. “Do you do that?” 

“She definitely starts fires,” Freddie assured, joining them in egging her on. “Remember that thing with the bake-off?” 

“I think she wants to start a fire, boys!” The darkness in his smirk had her just the same, but she’d always felt most at ease in the night. 

“Nobody’s about to start a fire on my watch.” 

Tick. 

The background buzz of laughter faded. 

Small revelries ground to a halt. 

“Ayyy, Officer Mack!” Paul said, still smiling easy into heavy bootsteps and jingling cuffs while the rest of them turned around to look. “Shouldn’t you be at a party?” 

“That fuckin’ rat,” Butch muttered under his breath. She could feel the tension in the leg still pressed against hers. Across the table, Freddie withered at the slightest hint of confrontation. 

“I volunteered for the extra hours. I’m going to be the next chief when your dad retires, Paul,” Stevie said, sounding oh-so-smug. Looking oh-so-sure of himself, even though the eager look on his face made Lainey’s stomach drop. “And what do we have here?” He tutted to himself once he got a good look at the girl that had gotten mixed in with the pack. “Curfew violation?” 

“Listen, Stevie, she... she probably just stopped in to brew some coffee for the night crew. Right?” Freddie looked at her, beaming telepathic pleas for her to play along because she knew. 

Freddie the Freak was on medicine, too. 

“It’s true,” she offered, and it was, it really was . She’d just gotten distracted along the way. 

“My dad says she does it all the time on her way to the clinic,” Freddie added, still sounding kind of small. 

“All of the time, does she?” Stevie took a good, long look at Lainey and it made her squirm, as if she wasn’t already fidgety enough. Eventually, he turned his piercing gaze back to Freddie. “And your dad just lets her?” 

“N-no, he...” 

“Officer Gomez usually makes sure I get to the clinic,” she interrupted, bringing the heat back to herself. “It’s just sometimes, if Dad’s working late, it gets...” 

Lonely, by herself at home. When the records stop and the pages get worn. 

And the monsters claw their way from the dark. 

“Quiet.” Lainey swallowed down the shallow breaths that had threatened to lodge in her throat. “Sometimes, it gets too quiet. I hate spending nights alone.” 

She didn’t like admitting that. She did not like the empty ache or the way that the night went still. All she really wanted was to be one of them but damn it. 

If she didn’t say something Freddie was going to pass out. 

“Ain’t the rules that she can be out past curfew as long as she’s with a responsible adult?” Butch’s voice held steady beside her—whiskey-warm even while he ran his mouth. He gestured across the table at the other two boys. “All three of us’re adults.” 

“Responsible? You? Don’t even get me started, kid.” Stevie leaned in to match Butch’s contempt with a hollow laugh. “Besides, DeLorias are why there’s a curfew in the first place. Isn’t that right?” 

Butch. Looked. Pissed. 

Venomous.  

Monstrous.

There were no better words for the sneer or the shadows that slithered their way into his glare. His gloved hand twitched over the leg pocket on his suit.  

The switchblade pocket.  

“Lainey hasn’t even done anything,” he spat. Asshole, he didn’t. But Butch didn’t have to say the word—Lainey could feel the way it burned low there at the end. 

Could feel the flame come licking out, the smoke burning under her skin. 

“I think you mean she hasn’t done anything, yet.” 

“No, I don’t mean ‘yet.’ She’s too good for...” Butch snapped shut his mouth and shook the words off, setting his glare across the table for backup. “Yo, Freddie. What time is it?” 

“U-uh...” Freddie floundered a bit, still grasping for better control of his own breath. “You have a Pip-boy. Why don’t you just-” 

“Tell me and you’re in the gang. You can call yourself a Snake for real.” 

“It’s, uh,” Freddie looked skeptically at Butch and swallowed, breathing finally evening back out. He glanced at the clunky rectangle frame on his wrist. “It’s 12:14, but why does-” 

The boy's eyes went wild and wide, looking from Butch to Lainey because he knew. 

Tick. 

Butch held her gaze because he knew, too. 

“Guess you’re one of us now, huh?” 

Those words he spoke should’ve been for Freddie, but they weren’t. Not really. Not while his hands went to work searching through his pocket—jacket pocket.  

The something else pocket.  

He pulled a pack of cigarettes from it and tapped one out. Then he took her hands, her restless, hair-twirling hands and tucked the cigarette he’d pulled and the lock she didn’t even know she’d been twisting back behind her ear.  

The bounce in her leg slowed. The background buzz in her head faded to whispers until it was just the two of them in that diner together. 

Skin burning and made for the night. 

“That’s distribution of contraband, DeLoria,” Stevie sneered. 

Butch ignored him, the look on his face still whiskey-flushed and soft. “Happy birthday, pipsqueak.” 

All of his hate came back just to glare blue flame back up at Stevie Mack and with that one look, the diner came back to life. Paul’s happy-go-lucky, boozy looks had vanished, replaced by something looking bitter and betrayed. Freddie’s hand was clamped tight around his empty Nuka Cola bottle, ready to smash it and somehow, somehow Freddie the Freak had gone still and become the very picture of cool. 

“I’m starting to think I need to tack on a couple of drunk and disorderlies.” The gleam in Stevie’s eyes was almost as cruel as his smile as he reached for his belt. “Like mother, like-” 

“No, ” Lainey blurted, cutting Stevie off the second she heard a click that made her blood run cold. “It’s my fault. I was going to help my dad close up the clinic, I swear . We share a pack of snack cakes around midnight every birthday. You can even ask Amata, she sleeps over.” 

She used to sleep over. 

Truth was, she hadn’t been allowed for three years. 

“Amata Almodovar is at my mother’s party,” the officer replied flatly. Frankly, she couldn’t even blame him for the doubt. 

“I know. That’s why I’m alone.” She fought past the ice in her chest and scooted slowly to the officer at the end of the booth, where Stevie now wielded an unsheathed baton. “You can take me to security. Please take me to security,” she almost begged. Funny, how her mouth felt coated in iron. “The boys didn’t do anything wrong.” 

“Jesus, Lainey,” Freddie muttered. She could see the way he pinched his brow between his fingers out of the corner of her eye. 

Lainey held her itching wrists out for Stevie to cuff, head turned to give a weak smile to Butch. “I’m too good for the dirt, right? That’s what you were gonna say?” 

“I’m not going to cuff someone that comes with me willingly,” Stevie said, but Butch was flat-out ignoring him. Instead, his mouth had dropped open in protest, and he hadn’t let Lainey’s gaze go.  

Her heart dropped, too. 

“You see how easy that was?” Stevie taunted. “Now, how about you boys clear out? If you’re still here when I get back, I might just have a reason to use these.” He jingled a pair of handcuffs for show before they clicked back into place on his belt. 

Maybe Butch was right. Maybe she couldn’t handle being a Tunnel Snake, even if it was just for one night. 

She could feel the heat of Butch staring as she walked away, burning in the wake of a car wreck. 

Tick. 

It only went cold when she was past the threshold, and she started to trudge for the stairs. 

“Where are you going, girlie?” 

Lainey stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh. I thought...” 

Stevie took a few slow, deliberate strides until he was by her side. “I passed your dear old dad on the way down here, so how about I just take you home? Wonder what he’ll say when he finds out you were with them .” He shook his head, look of disgust plain on his face.  

They walked side by side in silence for a moment, Stevie’s presence looming and hands still holding that baton tight behind his back. Once they reached the apartment block, he sighed and then he asked - “Just for the sake of curiosity, do you have any idea how old Ellen DeLoria is?” 

“No. I always thought it was supposed to be-” A perfect girl, a princess, would have been smart enough to slow down and take a deep breath. But Lainey was a fuck-up, like every other time before. “Rude.” She wet her lips, barely swallowing back any of the smoke in her lungs. “To ask a lady.” 

“Thirty-one,” Stevie drawled, either oblivious to her quivering, or relishing in it. She couldn’t bear to look up at him to see which it was. “You’ve always been a smart girl, I’ll let you do the math.” 

In her thirties? So what? Dad had only just passed forty, so... 

Lainey gasped, not on purpose. Her eyes went wide, not on purpose. 

The glare that followed at the floor wasn’t on purpose, either. “That’s why you said...” 

DeLorias are why there’s a curfew in the first place. Isn’t that right?  

“I knew you’d catch on quick.” She didn’t look at Stevie on purpose, either, and her stomach turned at the sidelong glance he gave when she did. “You weren’t drinking, were you?” 

“I was just lonely,” she added quietly, defiantly, though the words almost felt like an echo in an empty, cavernous hallway. 

He chuckled. “I’m not much older than you, I remember what it’s like. Maybe we can keep this between us - did they say you just turned sixteen?” 

“Sweet sixteen,” she said. Bittersweet, she thought, as they rounded the corner that led home. “For about twenty minutes, I guess.” 

“I guess I could let it slide. After all, I didn’t find you breaking any rules until they weren’t being broken anymore. Give it a year or so, you’ll grow out of that rebellious streak.” Something cold caressed her chin as they paused just outside her apartment. Stevie tilted her face up to meet his, using that baton he’d never put back. His hazel eyes darkened, bringing shadow with them to the Watson doorstep. “And then you’ll remember how I went easy on you, won’t you, doll?” 

Tick. 

Lainey masked herself in a sickly-sweet smile, batting fake lashes through sharpened teeth. “Yes, sir.” 

“’Sir.’” Stevie savored the title too much for her liking as he knocked on the door. “Hm.” 

“Ah, Officer Mack. Pleasure to see you again,” Dad greeted, smile on his face far warmer and more welcoming than the one Lainey had plastered to avoid throwing up. That is, until Dad saw her standing there in Stevie’s shadow. The corner of Dad’s mouth twitched. “Lainey?” 

“Good evening, Doc,” Stevie greeted back. His voice may as well have been slime incarnate. “Are you aware that your daughter was out past curfew?” 

“Oh, she was? I’m sure she was just out in the dining hall brewing some coffee, or perhaps she wandered off a bit on her way to see me. She occasionally comes to brighten my office while I stock bandages and file paperwork. These long nights do get rather lonely. I’m sure you understand, seeing as you’re working late yourself.” 

“Of course, Doc. One of the hazards of the job.” 

Lainey’s mouth might as well have dropped to the floor. She put her mask back on as quick as she could, trying to carefully shove... well, whatever she was feeling, somewhere deep and dark. 

“I suppose, if we’re being technical, it is her birthday...” Dad rubbed the back of his neck in thought. “That shopping bag you’d asked me about has pancake mix in it, you see. Birthday rituals, of a sort.” 

“I thought it was Fancy Lads?” 

“Ah, those I left back in my office for a rainy day. I thought perhaps Lainey had forgotten.” 

“Snack cakes and birthday pancakes, huh? You’re a lucky girl.” Stevie appraised her one last time in a way that made her want to peel the skin from her bones. “Don’t worry, Doc, I’m letting this one slide. I’d keep her away from those monsters, though.” 

Shadow claws dragged under her skin, sulfur coated her tongue. 

“Monsters?” Dad asked. 

Lainey brushed past him as she crossed the threshold, and whatever barrier had kept the smoke back. 

“I found her with the Tunnel Snakes, sir.” 

Tock.

“Stevie?” Lainey murmured white-knuckled, nails digging into her palm. She turned around to face him before the door could close. 

“Yeah, doll?”  

The slime coated her skin with his smirk. 

“With respect, those boys aren’t monsters. They’re just boys,” she spat, venom and all. She dropped the mask, the smile, and let it shatter as a tear rolled to the floor. “I killed the very first person I met.” 

“Elena!”

Monsters – she was one of them, now.  

She’d been one all along. 

Chapter Text

“Lord help me, Lainey, if those boys did anything-”  

The floor was good. 

“Like what?”  

The floor was grounding. 

“’Like what?’ How many times do I have to patch up whatever it is that they broke?”  

When the electric static wouldn’t leave her brain, Lainey would usually sit on the floor. Lay on the floor. Become one with the floor in the corner of her room, imagining the fibers of her green rug growing like grass, laying her body to rest beneath a starry canopy made of dark, gauzy netting and glittering fairy lights. 

“Butch was-” she had stopped long enough to unclench her fists and backtrack when she’d argued with Dad. “Those boys were sweet.”  

Thing was, laying in her corner on the floor wasn’t doing anything to tame her demons, even with the weight of every spare pillow in the house and the distraction of tiny spaceships blasting quietly from her Pip-boy. Every time she blinked, her eyes would get heavier and the Invaders would bleed together until her subconscious took the reins. 

“Teenage boys are seldom ‘sweet.’”  

Shake it off. 

“And police officers are?”  

Rinse and repeat.  

She’d shift to sit a little straighter and hug Telemachus a little closer to her chest, steady her breath and catch the lingering spice left behind on the t-shirt she’d kind-of-accidentally stolen from Butch. She’d switch from Zeta Invaders to the Smooth Jazz Snoozefest forever playing over the P.A.  

Then her eyes would close again. Longer, a little longer, 

Just…  

“Elena.”  

A bit….. 

“Sweetheart, wait.”  

Longer ……

Lucky girl.  

Lightning rolled over her skin and jolted her wide awake. She’d swear on the bear clutched over her racing heart that she heard the heavy hello of boots just outside the window. 

“Hey, you still up?” a muffled voice asked. 

Lainey quickly wiped a stubborn, startled tear that was trying to escape and sniffed. Tunnel Snakes, troublemaking, ornery ones, probably weren’t supposed to cry. 

She peeked out from her mosquito-net sanctuary and blinked up through the mist to find a boozy, lopsided grin and a lighter being shoddily taped to her window. 

Tunnel Snakes, hardly honorary ones, definitely weren’t supposed to cry in front of Butch. 

As soon as he got a good look at her he dropped his grin low into a venomous sneer, letting the lighter clatter to the ground. 

“What happened?” 

She didn’t answer. Her chest felt too tight for words. 

“Lainey.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Shit,” he hissed under his breath, shifting his focus to the window itself. He caught her gaze again when she started to stand, looking like he’d been punched. “No, don’t get up. Is this locked?” he asked. At some point he’d taken his switchblade from his pocket, flicking it open in one smooth click. 

“No, it’s…” she started, but Butch wasn’t waiting for her answer in the first place. He already had the blade slid under the rail to pry the stupid thing up. “Is it just you out there?” 

“Yeah, it’s just me.” He made delinquency look easy, sliding the window open. Dipping down to get everything he dropped. Slipping in. Locking up. “I, uh. I brought you something.” 

Drawing her curtains – nobody would know because the walls couldn’t talk. 

“Why?” 

Dropping to his knees in front of her. Taking her hands and stealing her heart. 

“Well, it’s still your birthday.” His face didn’t match the words – he held too much tension while he turned her wrists over, massaging them while he searched. “Somebody’s gotta be in charge of bringing you the fun stuff, right?” 

“I didn’t even think you knew my birthday…” 

“I mean I only know it ‘cuz it’s the same day we founded the gang, that’s all.” He gave her a half-hearted, half of a smirk, still examining every little bit of her exposed skin. “How ‘bout you tell me what happened.” She’d never been told that crime could be so gentle, trailing sparks through fingertips over bare legs, tilting her chin up to look at her throat. Sweeping troubled thumbs across her cheekbones, restless gazes dripping down to wobbly lips and slowly dripping feeling back into wobbly limbs.  

“What are you looking for?” she murmured when his touch grazed her bottom lip. 

“Nothin’.” There was a flicker of recognition and his jaw dropped a little when he sat back to take all of her in and it finally hit that she was wearing his t-shirt. Just his t-shirt. 

Well, that and underwear, obviously. The kind patterned with frilly blue lace. 

After a stunned few seconds he shook everything off but the red that stained his ears. He didn’t say anything about it, just got back up to snuff out everything but the fairy lights and glare through a small gap he made in the curtains. 

“I thought maybe you were off the hook since I didn’t see you in security,” he finally admitted. 

“Wait, he went back to the diner and got you, too?” 

“Nah, not this time, I just...” 

Her jaw dropped. “You went back to check on me.” 

“No.” 

“You did.” She followed that boy just to feel something – nerves? While pulling down at the edge of his shirt. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Stevie’s just a creep.” 

“I coulda told you that.” Without her underneath his fingertips, Butch resorted to movement. Fussing with the curtain some more, pacing until he decided to perch not-so-coolly against her desk. Fumbling with his pockets in search of a packet of cigarettes while he looked anywhere else but at her. He tapped one out to bring to his lips and tried to light it.  

Tried to light it.  

Tried to…  

He gave up and made some kind of pissed-off noise before he took it back out of his mouth, gesturing vaguely at the floor. “What’d he do.” 

“It’s nothing.” 

“Oh, yeah?” He finally looked at her. Glared at her, really, from under criminally dark eyelashes and even darker, murderous brows. “Then how come your hands are so cold?” 

“They’re not cold,” she insisted. She stopped pulling down hems to stare dumbly, numbly, at trembling hands before rubbing them up her arms. 

They were. 

“Stevie Mack’s a bastard, got it?” Poorly masked fury almost made his voice break. “Last time I got a write up from him, he…” Butch shook his head, as if he could dull the sudden fire by shaking away the thought. “Never mind all that. It ain’t ‘nothing’.” 

“What did he do to you?” It was her turn to glare feeling back into icy limbs, claws threatening at the edge of her fingertips. 

“Don’t worry about me, alright?” 

“’Don’t worry about me’,” she mocked with a shake of her head. If Butch could glower, she could too. “You’re supposed to tell me so I can hate him some more.” 

“Hate him?” He gave her the other half of that half-hearted, half of a smile – almost softened, almost dreamy in the dim glow of light. “You’re only supposed to hate me.” 

It got a smile out of her. At least, almost did. “He’s worse.” 

Butch blinked at her. “Here.” He slipped his cigarette back between his lips, this time lighting it with all the practiced ease of a teenage delinquent. “Wanna try this?” 

“My dad would kill me,” she said, not meaning for her lips to part. He took a long drag and she took a step toward him, a little too curious about the taste of the smoke that danced past his lips in the low light. 

“Well, you don’t have to, or anything.” He shrugged. “I just thought it might take the edge off.” 

“You’re not even going to give me shit for saying no?” 

“Nah, I can give you shit tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, since it’s your birthday and all. Speaking of which, here.” He leaned back a bit to dig through his pockets and she watched how the light shifted, carved out the hard angles of his face. Caught the buttons on his jacket, dragged down along long lean lines of his suit. The light caught the silver of the lighter he pulled from his pocket, too. “For that fire you wanted to start.” 

She took it from him and ran her thumb along the edges where things were etched into the silver case. A snake.  

BD. 

7-13-68.  

“You didn’t come here to give me a lighter, Butch.” 

She tried offering it back to him, but he shook his head. 

“Yeah, I did. Somebody’s got to be in charge of bringing you the fun stuff.” 

“You already said that.” 

“Yeah, and I still have a little of that whiskey, too.” 

Just the mention of the whiskey made her feel warmer, almost like she had cozied up next to him in the diner before everything went sideways. “The one that tastes like fireballs that I like?” 

“Yeah, the one that tastes like fireballs. Jesus, don’t think too much about it or anything.” Butch rolled his eyes, betrayed by a dimple while he fished for a flask in the inner lining of his jacket. “Here, it takes the edge off just as good as cigarettes.” 

She nodded and took a small swig. 

Were you drinking?  

Then her ears began to ring. 

I was that age, once. I know how it is.  

“Lainey?” He asked softly, bringing her back. She didn’t realize how she’d just been staring at the flask she’d held back out for him, too lost to feel the heat where their fingertips brushed. 

“He touched me.” She admitted in scarcely a whisper. She let go, pulling her arms around her chest while Butch took a swig of his own. 

Butch’s swig didn’t stay down. 

“He DID WHAT???” He spluttered and smacked his hand against his chest, fighting back the burn. 

“Shh!! Butch, my Dad…” 

“I don’t give a crap about that! Does your pop fuckin’ know ? Cuz if you were my kid, I’d…” There was a fiery look in his eyes. Violent. Untamed.  

Even while he still fought to breathe. 

“Not like that! He didn’t… Stevie didn’t do anything like… he just…” She couldn’t breathe right, herself. The air came so fast that the room began to spin. “He just, he did like this.” 

She grabbed Butch’s chin to force it up and the room stopped spinning, but only when he looked at her. 

“He touched your face?” It was okay. The eyes that met hers were fiery blue, framed in dark. “Hold on, I do that. Lainey… fuck.” 

“Not with a fucking baton.” She spat, throat raw and sulfur coated. “Even… even when you hated me, you never made me feel like… you never …” 

“I never what?” 

“It’s just different when it’s you.” She stepped closer, between his legs. Where she could reach out and smooth back a loose lick of his hair, no doubt misplaced by booze. “I like it when it’s you.” 

He swallowed hard, likely in an effort to reign his own monsters in. “He do anything else?” 

“It’s nothing, I swear.” 

“Quit sayin’ it’s nothing. It ain’t nothing.”  

“He just said I’d remember that he let it slide, and that I’d get over my rebellious streak by the time I was seventeen. And that your mom’s only thirty-one.” 

The stunned blink he gave her twisted into rage, like a match to gasoline. “He said that, did he? I’m gonna kill that bastard for fucking with my…”  

“Butch just leave it alone. I’m okay.” 

“Bullshit. I know what you look like when you're not.” 

“Yeah I am,” she argued, though her chest was tight. So tight. “I’m always fine.” 

He watched her through his own long exhale, taking another good look at the girl stood between his legs, making violence look easy until he reached to wipe a tear from her cheek. “What do you need?” 

“I just don’t want to be alone.” Exhaustion was beginning to win. Every time she blinked, it took longer. A little longer. Just a bit... “Stay with me?” 

“Stay with you?” 

“Just until I fall asleep?” Her heart was ready to give out. “I can’t…” 

“Hey. Hey, look at me.” He caught her face between both of his hands, running his thumbs along her cheeks. “You can have anything you want, alright? You want me to stay?” 

She nodded, and he reached to untie the bandana still in her hair. “Then I’m stayin’.” She sighed into the comfort of him running his fingers through long strands to shake them out. “There, it’s okay. I’ve got you, baby.” 

“Baby?” 

“Ain’t you? My-” 

Her lips parted and she leaned into what little distance was left between them, finally deciding to taste whatever warmth was left of the smoke.  

“Babe?” he whispered against her lips. 

“I thought I was just ‘pipsqueak’ for now?”  

“This is different. You’re mine right now, you got it?” He rested his forehead against hers, and all she could do was nod. “And if you want me tonight, I’m yours.” 

He shrugged out of his jacket, letting it fall on top of the desk behind him while she unzipped his suit. His Pip-boy came next, and the belt, all set down with his other stuff in a clunk . 

Then they were both down to t-shirts. Only t-shirts. 

Well, that and underwear. Duh. 

“Can I really have anything I want?” she whispered. He shuddered as she gave him a once-over of her own. Running her thumbs over knuckles that used to be bruised, tracing down along his forearm until she found a tell-tale scratch on his wrist, where cuffs must have once been too tight. 

“Anything, but only ‘cuz it’s your birthday.” He took her hand in his own to stop her, bringing her fingers to his lips. “Just don’t get too used to it.” 

“Trust me,” she said, tugging him toward the bed. It didn’t take him any convincing to follow when she pulled the blankets aside and climbed in. 

“What do you mean, trust you?” 

“I want the dirt, too.” 

“You mean about Stevie? I just got smacked around a little for running my mouth, that’s all.” He sighed, snuggling into the space she made. He kissed her jaw. “No big deal.” Then nose. 

“It’s a big deal to me.” 

“Yeah?” The look on his face wasn’t half-hearted at all. Definitely softened, definitely dreamy in the dim glow of light. 

“That scratch on your wrist - is that what you were checking me for earlier?” she whispered. “The only marks that I have are yours.” 

His answer came in his own way. He pulled the collar of her shirt to the side, leaving fading promises exposed to night air. Her breath hitched when he brushed his lips softly over the same spot he’d left above her collarbone the last time she wore this shirt. 

“You know I never meant any of it, right?” he murmured, brows creased with worry when his eyes met hers. “What if I bruise you some more?” 

“I can take it.”  

“Yeah?” His lips left hers to burn lower, a little lower- 

Just… 

A bit… 

Lower …. 

He’d dropped back on his knees, pried her stupid legs apart. Slid her shirt just far enough up so that he could dip down - leave sweet kisses to linger on hip bones, where other bruises used to be. 

Nerves sang to life when he rested his head against the inside of her knee - eyes closed, his warm breath leaving bare skin to prickle against chilled night air. 

“You’re shaking,” she whispered. Both of them were. 

“You trust me?” He swallowed poorly masked rage to steady himself. “Even if I go and leave marks?” 

She nodded. 

His eyes were still closed but he must have known because he shook his head and hissed, “You gotta say it.” 

“I trust you.” 

His gaze flickered back up in blue-eyed wonder that made her chest feel tight. He started with a slow kiss before he bit her, left his mark blistered sweet on the soft inside of her thigh.  

“Butch-“  

She threw her head back so hard she saw stars with the other mark he gave her. Tangled her hand through his hair when the heat of a criminal mouth ran smooth talk over vault-blue lace, leaving sixteen stained midnight in his wake. 

She forgot how to breathe. He did, too. 

Thank fuck the walls still couldn’t talk. 

“Baby. I’ve got you.” He was still fighting back venom when he dragged himself back up to settle beside her, and the weight of his body felt good. Grounding, when he pulled her in close and promised, “He ever fucks with you again, he’s dead.” 

Chapter Text

She stopped wishing when she turned 13.

Not on everything - lucky coins and clock times, lighting candles for the dead – those still counted. Breaking glasses, jumping brooms. A wish on an eyelash, and the first star to appear under the vast night sky?

If she had a sky, the stars would always count.

Just because Lainey had a complicated relationship with her birthday and the wishes that came alongside it didn’t mean she’d shut every other flicker of light out. But even though she didn’t do birthday wishes, she almost remembered a quiet part of her that had wished for something in the day’s earliest hours, still half asleep, when she felt the warmth leave her side.

She rolled over to the now-vacant space, body and brain still heavy and slow. Even with Butch gone, that side of her bed still smelled like boy - cologne spice and fresh smoke from that cigarette he’d offered her. She took another sleepy inhale - absolutely by accident - and the scent mixed with something buttery brown, then something else smoky.

A different kind of smoky.

Lainey slowly opened her eyes and yawned, blinking at the empty space on her desk. She remembered a leather jacket left there last night, among whatever watercolor sketchbooks and glitter-coated invitations had also been there. She almost wished for the clunk of a Pip-boy, a belt across the back of the desk chair.

Almost wished for the steady breath beside her that lulled her to sleep.

Then before she could wish too hard, her molasses brain started trying to piece together the sizzling sounds that came through the kitchen.

“Agh, damnit!” Dad swore, sizzling now drowned out by the clang of a pan. “Sweetheart, are you still asleep? Breakfast is almost ready.”

Right. Pancakes.

She sighed and let those almost-wishes go. Maybe Butch had left because of all the Dad sounds.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” she called back, almost didn’t want to call back. After all, her door was still locked from shutting it in her dad’s face.

Ugh. What a way to start adult life, locked in a cage that she couldn’t help but feel she was responsible for.

I killed the very first person I met.

She might have gotten dragged into that spiral, except her gaze landed on a small gunmetal case shining where that leather jacket had been, left behind for any fires she might want to start.

Did he tell her goodbye? She couldn‘t remember but she could still feel him, probably because she was still wrapped up in his shirt. Her shirt, now. What was he going to do, steal it back?

Lainey snorted to herself - not unless he took it right off of her back.

Her cheeks burned at the thought. That was not what she meant, but...

But...

But before she could let her mind wander too far back to venom-laced promises and shaky confessions of trust, that t-shirt was stripped off and shoved under a blanket and a pillow and a bear, and anywhere else besides on her. Then she plucked the lighter case from the desk and let a flame flicker for a second before she tucked it away somewhere safe, ditching all things Butch before Dad could see and assume the worst.

If those boys did anything-

“There’s some mail for you,” Dad nodded to a small stack when she made her way to the kitchen table. Fried Cram and Insta-Browns waited for them in the center of the table while Dad topped pancakes off with the traditional can o’ whip and sprinkles.

“Okay, thanks,” she said, pulling her chair out a little too stilted to look even remotely casual. God, could Dad tell that she was still having to remind herself to breathe? Why the hell did she feel so guilty? She shouldn’t feel guilty.

They hadn’t even done anything.

“So...” Dad ventured.

“Those boys were sweet.”

“So…?” Lainey held her breath.

Butch had been sweet.

“So… can we talk about last night?”

“Teenage boys are seldom ‘sweet.’”

“What part?” Lainey swallowed, not sure if the reflex came from some inner rage or a place of sheer terror. “Me getting caught out with the riff raff or me being escorted back by...”

And police officers are? - that was the last thing she'd said to Dad before slamming her door in his face.

Lainey shoved a bite of pancake in her mouth and let whatever other words were supposed to follow that die in her throat. To settle her nerves, she pretended to be entirely too interested in her first piece of mail - the annual poem from Beatrice.

This year's poem was about youth and spring and blossoming into a young woman or something, she was pretty sure. She was having a hard time actually reading it.

"By Stevie? But why..." Dad trailed off, which wasn't much like him at all. He moved the food around on his plate for a moment, stuck processing his own thoughts. "Sweetheart, why did you tell him that you killed your mother?"

The very first person she met.

"Because I did, didn't I?"

Lainey kept her hands and her mind busy reaching for another card. This time from Amata, promising gifts to go with a birthday lunch.

"Is that how you've felt? All this time?"

She finally looked at her Dad's face and almost wished she hadn't. She almost-wished that, because seeing him looking absolutely gutted - the deep well of sadness in his eyes that she'd never understand, the desperate worry that creased his brows - it made it hard to keep her own feelings boxed up.

She cracked. A tear dripped down to her chin. "Wouldn't you still have mom though, if it wasn't for me?"

"Sweetheart, I need you to understand. Life out there -" Dad had started to gesture somewhere beyond their tiny apartment walls but stopped, same way he always did when talking about life before Lainey. "Life can be incredibly cruel and the truth is..." He swallowed the lump building in his throat and after a moment, he was able to meet her gaze again. "The truth is, I could have lost your mother any number of ways, each one of them uglier and more horrible than the last. But for all of the ugly things we are made to suffer, there is always beauty to be found. You are the beauty that I found in all of it."

A beat of silence passed between them before Dad added the final blow.

"And I need you to know that your mother thought so, too. She loved you very, very much."

She let the tears fall, let herself feel a small part of it. Everything she'd been worried about fifteen minutes ago seemed smaller, for a moment. The t-shirt she'd buried, the lighter she'd tucked away. Whether or not those boys, or Butch, were sweet.

They had been.

“I heard the yelling.” Dad added quietly. “Do I need to make extra for whoever was in your room, or...?”

"No," she blurted. She quickly wiped the tears from her cheeks, those momentarily small worries suddenly very, very BIG. “Oh my God, Dad, no. There’s nobody-"

Lainey floundered again and settled for the last distraction she had left, taking a moment to grab and then look at a last invitation. Silver glitter on dark blue cardstock that shed bits of stardust wherever it went. Another prom invitation? Those had gone out weeks ago. But then she flipped it over.

"It was Butch DeLoria that I heard?” He asked, not told. It was his way of giving her an out, but also a way to bridge the uncomfortable gap.

"Yeah," she said, running her fingertips over messy words scrawled on the back. She met her dad's gaze even though her cheeks were on fire, and for the first time in a long time, she let herself wish. If not on her birthday then on stardust-coated fingertips, because almost-stars should count. "It was Butch."

Maybe after everything, we go to the dance?

Dad looked at her for a long while before he shook his head and Lainey could swear she saw the start of a wry grin. Very small, but very there. "You're more like your mother than you'll ever know."

Chapter Text

Next time, he was gonna stay.

That's what he said he was gonna do - and he did, for a little while. Up until something woke him up, at least. He wasn't sure what it was, but it felt off and he couldn't shake it. And he still stayed even a little after that 'cuz it was nice, wasn't it? Being curled up in some stupidly bouncy bed next to a pretty girl - his pretty girl - and just letting her sleep.

It felt almost normal.

He hung onto that as long as he could, holding her close 'til hallway lights outside the window started getting a little brighter and guard shift-switches would've already come and gone. 'Til he started wondering whether his ma had made it to bed or if she'd fallen asleep in front of a movie again.

Then those tarot cards he'd stolen with the boys started bugging him, too.

Butch dusted the glitter off his fingers from leaving that note and looked up at the door to the Overseer's office, Bea's cards feeling heavy as bricks in his pocket. Usually this kind of job didn't faze him, but something about this one felt different. He'd told Butch that Bea was losing it, which was only half true at best.

Whatever. Him and his boys had done the thing. It was fine. It meant money in his pocket, and soon enough he'd take the G.O.A.T. and get a job and have money of his own. No more scraps or sink toast. No more of the Overseer's dirty work.

He was almost out, almost free, and then when it was all over he could stay.

For a second he let himself think back to the matching shirts and sleepy kisses, and the steady warmth that was his. At least, had been his for a little while.

Yeah.

Next time, he’d stay.

It was probably reflex or something, but he rolled his eyes as soon as the Overseer's door hissed open and huffed to himself a little before he strolled in.

"Have something for me, Mr. DeLoria?" the Overseer asked. The old man stood behind his desk looking through several loose papers and manila folders spread out on top, some of 'em open. Not quite open enough for Butch to sneak a peak at, though.

"Yeah," he said, reaching for that brick in his pocket. "One pack of ta-rot cards, just like you asked. Here." Butch set the cards down right in the middle of all those papers and folders, some of which seemed to have classmate's names.

"And they are Beatrice's, yes? Were, I should say."

"Well, yeah. Who else even has any?"

"You never know," the Overseer said. With the likes of you, he didn't. Old Al finally looked up from all of his work, just to give Butch one of those icy looks like he always did. "It took you long enough, I was actually starting to wonder if you'd forgotten our arrangement. I thought breaking and entering was somewhat of a specialty of yours."

"No," he quietly protested, more to himself than anything. Thing was the Overseer wasn't wrong, but Butch wasn't going around breaking into people's apartments, either. Except maybe one. He fought back the heat that threatened to rise to his cheeks, opting for a solid glare instead. "Steve's been home sick a lot lately. I haven't exactly had the chance to swipe 'em."

"Ah, yes. Young Mr. Steve. What a waste," the Overseer muttered. He opened the top desk drawer to rummage through, all while scowling in the general direction of a folder labeled Steve Armstrong. He pulled two coupons out and held them out toward Butch. "As promised."

The door hissed open behind them and Butch turned to see Amata waltzing in as he tucked the coupons away in his wallet. They glared at each other as he passed her by, and he fought the urge to give a mock salute as he headed for the door.

“Oh. Butch,” the Overseer added before he made it to the door. Something about it made the hair on the back of his neck prickle. "Anything of Miss Watson?"

“Uh,” he said, and yeah, he sounded dumb. He dared a glance back over his shoulder at a busy overseer and his not-busy-enough daughter, only to find them both watching. "No."

He was almost out, almost free. This was the last damn job, he was done.

"Alright."

He heaved a sigh once he cleared the door and might have grinned to himself a little on the way down the stairs. It was over with. Now all he had to do was go home, maybe take a shower. Definitely brush the whiskey taste out of his mouth and get a fresh vault suit on before someone noticed that he smelled like coffee and cherry tobacco and girl - his girl.

Yeah it was dumb, but he was so close.

He only stopped long enough to grab some breakfast to take home, and from Andy. Dumb robot wouldn’t notice or care. He walked into his apartment quietly in case his ma was asleep on the couch, but it was quiet. No signs of her, save for an open bottle of vodka and orange-ade on the counter.

"Butchie, is that you?"

He didn't mean to, but he winced. He'd made it so close to his room.

"Oh sweetie there you are," his Ma said as she stepped out of her room, makeshift screwdriver already in hand. "I thought you'd already left without saying goodbye."

"To go where?"

"Well class, silly. You weren't there when I woke up."

"Nah," he said. So she must've fallen asleep late on the couch. "It's Saturday, ma."

"Oh, that's right!" She flashed him one of those dazzlng DeLoria smiles before she wrinkled her nose, confused. "Then how come you aren't sleeping in?"

"I was just out getting somethin' to eat," he lied. Well, half-lied. He held out a pecan thing to share with his mom. He was planning on sharing, anyway. "Here."

"My sweet boy, you really are the best," she sighed and took the roll-thing he offered, but Ma being Ma, she got a little close. Close enough to narrow her eyes and look him up and down. She took a bite, still eyeing him. "Your hair's not done."

"So what?” he countered, trying not to get too defensive about it. He took a small step back so she wouldn't catch the girl smells and added “You've got your readers on."

"That's because I'm working on something." She sniffed, which was a thing she did when she was pouting, but the heat started to creep up to his face, anyway. She crossed her arms and pouted some more. "You always do your hair..."

"Yeah, well I was planning on going back to bed," he said, which was maybe half-true, but sure as shit not before a shower now. To change the subject to anything else, he nodded toward her open bedroom door. That was where the mannequin and sewing machine and all the sparkly things belonged. "What're you, uh, workin on?"

"Prom dress alterations!" His ma lit up worse than a kid in a candy store. "Oh, I love seeing all of the dresses. Look!"

"Ugh, kill me now," he muttered to himself. He shouldn't've asked or followed her in, but there he was in his mother's room with all those sparkly things she loved so much. At least she wasn't looking at him. "Whose is that?" he asked, gesturing to some pink fluffy thing pinned up on the mannequin.

"Chrissy Kendall," she gushed, pointing at the different spots and going on about where she was doing stuff to the dress. Butch had no clue what any of it meant. "I guess she's going with Paul, but it didn't sound like they even like each other that way from how she talked about it. Oh! But could you give this to Paulie next time you see him, sweetie?"

“Ha!" Butch grinned and took the pink bit of fabric his mom held out for him. "So, Paulie’s stuck with a pink pocket square huh?”

“Well, sure! A nice boy would match her, at least.” His Ma took a swig of her drink and stuck a hand on her hip while she eyed him up and down. Again. "Why are you so interested, anyway? Is there someone you're trying to match?" She lit up again. Ugh. "Oh my God, Butchie, did you ask someone?"

"Seriously?" He huffed and puffed and crossed his arms over his chest. He did not want to go there. "Ma."

"Or is there maybe someone you want to ask?" That giant, way-too-bright smile on her face wasn't going anywhere. "No, wait. Don't tell me."

"Good, I won't."

"Good, so I can guess!"

"Ma!"

Fuck!

He felt all of last night rushing back all at once. Laughing in the diner, sharing drinks, breaking in. Ma, being Ma, could sense it or something.

"Did you ask Lainey?"

“Jesus, would you lay off?” At that point, he was probably glaring at his own mother, but she was asking for it. He could feel the red reach all the way up to his ears.

“You asked her!" His ma squealed and clapped her hands together. Man did she really live for all that girly stuff. "That’s why you look like you’re about to blow a gasket. Well? Did she say yes?”

“No!” He let out some breath he'd been holding. “Maybe?" He raked a hand through undone hair. Fuck, he just wanted to be done. "I don’t know, I left a note.”

“Butch DeLoria what do you mean you left that girl a note? You can’t just leave a note.”

It was like the flip of a switch, his Ma's mood sometimes. Something was off and for the life of him Butch couldn't tell what, but in that second she went from his momma to whoever his Ma had been before.

“Woah, hang on…”

“You’ve got to tell her to her face so she knows you mean it…” Her eyes were way-too-wide and too wet.

“Hey-" His stomach dropped to the ground.

“Boys that leave notes never mean it. They leave a note-”

This wasn't normal.

“I swear I meant it," he interrupted. His mind went back to the girl curled up in his arms, where he was wanted and warm and he swore he wanted to stay. Without realizing, he admitted "I just didn’t wanna wake her up.”

“-and they never come back,” she whispered. He blinked. His ma looked far away, probably about 17 years far away. This wasn't about him. It had never been about him, even the times when it was.

“Ma, hey.” He had his Ma by the shoulders. He couldn't lose her - he had to pull her out. “Listen, I’ll ask her okay?”

“You’ll ask her?” She murmured. Some of the color returned to her cheeks.

“Yeah, that’s what I said I was gonna do.” He gave a half-sick half of a smile. He didn’t know how. “Just give me a couple days to get it right.”

His hair stood on end when a trembling hand reached up to pat his shoulder. He had his mom back, everything was alright. It was done. When the G.O.A.T. came and went he'd be free.

Yeah.

He held on to that thought cuz it was nice, wasn’t it?

And then prom. Maybe prom, he could stay.