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Chapter Text

Butch walks out of Vault 101 and immediately sits down. He takes several steps, gets as far as the sign that reads “scenic overlook” and feels his knees get weak.

So he sits on one of the rocks there, and stares out over the whole expanse of the wasteland in front of him, tall buildings off in one direction, far in the distance but still imposing, and a walled town not too far in front.

Thankfully not too far because he's been stashing things for weeks now, things from apartments now abandoned—like James and Jonathon's—or things no one would miss. After all, he needs something to set himself up in this new world, and he can only hope some merchant would want some shiny knickknacks from the Vault.

After all, nothing out here is shiny.

Nothing on Jonathon had been shiny either, when he breezed back inside, all strong shoulders and pieced together armor and a fucking sword.

Butch had been thrown by the sword. The laser pistol on his other hip made more sense than Jonathon running around with a sword.

But now he's out of the Vault too, and all he has is his jacket, a switchblade, and a bag full of purloined Vault items. He's planned for this moment for so long, the enormity of it all almost sends him scurrying right back into the Vault—an option Jonathon had never had.

He tilts his head back, and wonders just what the sky had looked like, those months ago when another skinny kid from Vault 101 had been shoved out on this same rocky outcropping. But Jonathon had been kicked out—both times—and he does this by choice, even though none of the other so-called Rebels joined him in the end.

They were content with Amata opening the door, content with the idea that the Vault wasn't closed anymore.

As if that was enough.

As if maybe trading with some passing caravans, maybe meeting a few people, would ever be enough.

So here Butch sits alone, looking at a sky he'd never seen before, the ghost of another boy sitting here alone felt in the breeze as it blows and creaks by.

-0-

He reaches Megaton long before it got dark, his bag thrown over his back and hoping he would find a merchant willing to buy or trade some, if not all of it. He'll need the money to figure out where to go next.

But upon entering the town, he finds everyone giving him peculiar looks, something deeply distrustful in their gazes.

“Where did you get that jacket?” the women in the supply shop demands the instant he walks through the door, and he could swear her hand goes for a gun under her counter.

“What?” he asks, stupidly, but she's angry at him, tense and resentful and he hasn't even said anything yet.

“The jacket,” she repeats, hand still under the counter.

“I made it,” he says, pointing one thumb over his shoulder. “The Tunnel Snakes are my gang.”

That makes her stop, bringing her hand back up to the top of the counter. “Are they?” she asks, her voice changing immediately. “Interesting.”

“Why?” Butch finds himself asking.

“Oh, there's just only one other person I know with a jacket like that,” she says breezily, and Butch stares at her, something thudding painfully in his chest.

The only person to ever leave the Vault with a Tunnel Snake jacket was—

But it didn't mean anything. It probably never meant anything. Jonathon had been scared, following his dad, it wasn't like he'd had time to stop and change his jumpsuit, not for a while. He only wore the Tunnel Snake jacket out of the vault because Butch had insisted on not just giving it to him, but helped him put it on himself, before allowing him to leave.

He hadn't wanted him to leave, had wanted to wrap his hands in that stupid jacket and convince Jonathon to stay exactly where he was, but he hadn't. Instead, he'd watched him slip away into the darkness, watched the Tunnel Snake on the back of his jacket as long as he could, because it was easier than focusing on the back of his neck, the slip of skin between the bottom of his hair and the top of the collar.

Jonathon hadn't worn it back to the Vault, so it didn't mean anything now that this woman knew it as his. It had just been the first thing she saw him in, Butch felt sure. It didn't mean anything.

It couldn't mean anything, or else his lungs wouldn't fit in his chest anymore.

“What can I help you with?” she asks instead, and Butch swallows hard, dropping the bag on her counter.

“Anything you can give me for this?” he asks, hoping his smile is at least charming enough to get him something, anything.

After a moment she inclines her head and smiles right back at him and he lets out a breath, hopes it's quiet enough she doesn't hear.

-0-

He's pointed to Walter when he asks about earning some extra money. Walter agrees to give him a pad to sleep on, if he helps out with fixing the water purifier. He wants to protest, considering maintenance wasn't his job in the Vault, but things are different out here so he just nods his head.

“The other Vault boy was like you too,” Walter says, and despite how cranky he acts, he hands Butch more for dinner than he expected. “He helped repair the leaking pipes all around town,” and Butch has to choke the next bite down.

“Sounds like him,” he mutters, because Jonathon had been like that. The G.O.A.T gave Butch hairdresser, and Jonathon Pip-Boy programmer. After that, he'd been found with Stanley, working on just about any electrical or mechanical problem around the Vault, not just pip-boys. He tinkered with everything, always had. 

Walter just gives him another look and he ends up walking around Megaton because he can't sleep. He tries not to look up at the sky, sticking to the walkways until he finds the bar. Part of him wants to walk away just as fast as he walks in, but it's been an overwhelming day and one drink—or three—isn't going to turn him into his mom.

So he sits down, the ghoul at the bar greeting him with a friendly wariness, but he isn't sure how to respond.

“At least the radio works now,” the ghoul says, Butch trying not to stare.

“Sure,” he settles for, because the Vault Jukebox had barely worked on a good day. He doesn't recognize the song playing, but no one else is paying it any attention.

“It's too bad Three Dog only has the same dozen songs,” someone else at the bar says, and Butch busies himself drinking, trying not to show how new it all is to him. He also finds more and more people looking at his jacket with a strange consideration, and it makes his skin crawl.

Then the song ends, and a voice comes on over the ratio, loud and exuberant. “Grab your hankies, children, because I've got a heart-warming tale to tell. It's about a little boy's search for his daddy,” and Butch is listening just because he's never heard a voice over the radio before, trying to play it cool like everything isn't a shock to his system. “It's about love, abandonment, and now—this is the good part—reunion! You see, the kid from Vault 101 has been looking for his dad,” and Butch almost drops the glass. “A very nice man named James, who left his son behind in the Vault when he took off.”

Then the voice changes in tone. “What kind of dad leaves his kid in an underground bunker? Children, I just don't know. It ain't for Three Dog to judge, and you shouldn't either. But none of that matters now! Father and son were spotted walkin' and talkin' together out there in the wastes. Here's hoping they can hold onto each other this time around,” and Butch's whole chest is tight.

Tight because the radio is talking about Jonathon.

Tight because Jonathon had looked so defeated when Butch asked him about his dad, who he'd been following all around the Capitol Wasteland, unable to catch up with him. He wants to raise his glass, because in the time it took him to get himself out, it looked like Jonathon finally found his dad.

Butch refuses to feel jealous.

“Lordy!” the radio continued. “I just love that vault boy! Hole-dweller one day, Paragon of all that is good and right in the world the next. And, he's been busy...”

Then another song plays and Butch hides his face behind his hand, trying to get any equanimity back.

When he drops his hand, he finds the ghoul watching him again.

“Hey, you from the Vault too?” he asks.

“What gives me away?” Butch returns, with too much bluster.

The ghoul shrugs, cleaning a glass with a filthy rag, and Butch tries not to wince at that. Vault 101 had been repressive, dark, and unflinchingly depressing, but it was clean. Just another thing he'll have to adjust to out here. “Did you know him?” the ghoul asks.

“Who?” Butch plays dumb.

“Jonathon,” the ghoul says, and now half the bar is watching him, some with the same look the merchant had given him earlier, some just vaguely curious. Butch suddenly thinks to wonder just how much time Jonathon had spent in Megaton.

Butch shrugs, because he'd liked attention, in the past, but now he's realizing it's dangerous to have so many strangers watching you. “I knew him,” he says breezily.

But then he's on his feet, putting bottlecaps down on the bar and retreating as fast as he can. It's not dignified, but he doesn't care.

He sleeps on Walter's floor for two nights, helping him with his computer and welding some scrap metal up on the pipes. Some folks around town hear he used to be a hairdresser—a barber, he tells them when they come to him—and he makes a tidy profit off a couple of them.

Walter shows him his pip-boy can play the radio, and he turns it all the way down so he can sleep with his ear pressed against the speaker without annoying Walter. He can barely hear it over the rushing water, but it talks about Jonathon all the time.

He wants to not feel this tug in his heart, this ache in his hands, but the Wasteland is a big place.

This isn't the Vault anymore.

He's not going to run into Jonathon out here, and even if he does, it's not going to matter.

-0-

A few nights of that and he's off again, heading for Rivet City. It's bigger out there, and he suspects between knowing how to fix a computer and his barber skills he'll make it. Maybe he can even help out some caravans sometimes, or whatever.

In fact that's how he gets there, hitching himself to a group of traders. They've got guns and numbers, and they're all talking about a Project Purity.

“Who knows if it will work,” the bodyguard says.

“But can you imagine if it does?” the trader returns, and Butch doesn't say anything.

He took clean water for granted, like everything clean.

He figures out enough to know James is involved, that Jonathon is too, and then pretends not to learn anything else.

-0-

Rivet City creaks, and he's not sure he's ever going to get used to it.

It both feels smaller than the Vault and bigger, full of people coming and going and possibilities.

After all that effort to get out of the Vault he does find it amusing that he doesn't like going outside. Inside feels secure, like he's not about to fall off the face of the Earth and into that massive expanse overhead. Did he just trade one twisting corridor for another?

But Rivet City is different, and people don't know him. That alone feels like freedom.

He cuts people's hair, gets paid, helps the lady who runs the hotel with her unruly computer and her unruly customers and gets paid for that too. He annoys some folks immediately, but not everyone. He meets Tammy Hargrave one time and avoids her from then on.

He left his mother behind, he doesn't need to see her again in the eyes of another woman.

The first time he catches up to James Hargrave he almost hightails it away from him too, but instead teaches him tricks on his switchblade.

He doesn't sleep, thinks about going back to the Vault, and then one day he turns around while he's in the Muddy Rudder and finds Jonathon standing there, goggles pushed up into his hairline and giving Butch the most bemused look.

It's a punch to the heart.

“Well, if it isn't my hero,” he says, pretending to be unaffected. “The guy who sprang me from the Vault!”

“What?” Jonathon murmurs, head tilted to one side.

“I think I owe you a drink,” Butch says.

“I don't think you do,” Jonathon says, and he's got a ghoul standing behind him, giving Butch an unimpressed look. Butch ignores that. “What are you doing here?”

“Exactly what I told you I would do,” Butch says. “Get out of the Vault!”

Jonathon's eyes go up and down along all of Butch, and he's got different boots this time than when Butch say him last, and one of his jacket sleeves has a long gash down it, though any skin is covered by a long sleeved shirt underneath. Butch wants to know if there's stitches below, or a scar, or if he'd gotten out of that escapade unscathed.

“Oh, and I heard about your dad,” Butch continues. “You finally catch up with him?”

“I did,” Jonathon says and his voice drops, Butch getting an uneasy feeling. “But now he's dead.”

“Oh fuck,” Butch blurts out, but then Jonathon is folding down on himself, like he's going to collapse then and there in the middle of a dirty bar, on a creaking ship, where anyone could see him.

He always had been too open with his emotions, too easy to weasel inside, too glaring a target for Butch to resist. But now he catches him before he falls, the ghoul behind him starting forward and then falling back when Butch gets there first.

“Hey, hey,” he manages, and Jonathon's hair is longer now, pulled back at the back of his neck in a messy tail, and he's not crying, but he's shaking all over.

Butch didn't allow himself to envision meeting him again, out here in the Wasteland, but if he had, it wouldn't have gone like this. He would have bought him a drink, laughed a little, talked about the Vault for a minute, and then sent him back on his way.

Instead he staggers them both to the nearest table, dropping into a chair and trying to push Jonathon into his own chair, but instead he just seems to end up in Butch's lap, clinging to him like Butch is the only thing he can hold onto, and isn't that going right to Butch's head.

His hands feel too big, too useless, pressing desperately against Jonathon's back, and he can't remember if they were ever this close—except that one time, Butch delirious with relief, patting the lapels of his own jacket that he'd just pulled over the other boy's shoulders.

(There were other times too, of course, when they'd grappled with each other, over sweetrolls, over Amata, over anything and everything but those touches were different, quick and efficient and this isn't either of those things.

It still hurts though.)

“It's going to be okay,” he tries and Jonathon finally looks at him, his eyes fucking luminous in the dim lighting of Rivet City.

“Promise?” he asks weakly, the corner of his mouth curling, but he's not quite smiling.

Butch gets lost there a second. “Sure,” he says.

“You're a terrible liar, Butch,” Jonathon says and Butch wonders if he knows, if he could possibly know, just everything Butch isn't saying. He's lying by omission pretty much every single day.

“The fuck I am,” he scoffs instead, and that's a comfortable blanket over his shoulders, smells like home. He's not vulnerable, like Jonathon is. He's foolhardy and brash and it's better to slip into those clothes than change the script now.

That almost gets him an honest smile.

“I can't believe you left the Vault,” Jonathon says.

“I told you I was gonna,” Butch protests.

“Did anyone else come?” Jonathon asks.

Butch shakes his head. “Fucking cowards,” he says. “Big talk, no follow through.”

“But you,” Jonathon says, and he's looking at him again, the way he had when they ran into the hallway outside the classroom, when he'd come back from the Wasteland. “You follow through.”

“Hell yeah I do,” Butch says. “Haven't I always?”

Jonathon's smile grows wry. “Guess so,” he says, and Butch is aware, vaguely, of Jonathon's companion, sitting by the bar and watching them. It's almost ridiculous, Jonathon still mostly sitting on him instead of his own damn chair, and the well-armed ghoul who Butch doesn't know at all watching it all. “Even when it comes to trying to steal my sweetroll.”

“I have to be consistent,” Butch says. “If I say I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it, and yeah, that includes stealing your stupid roll.”

“Except you never got it,” Jonathon says.

“Not for lack of trying is my point,” Butch returns and finally, finally Jonathon is sliding off his lap and into his own chair, and Butch is relieved, and he's also bereft.

He wants the distance back between them as much as he wants the opposite.

What he wants, what he refuses to ever say, is he wants Jonathon against him, between him, making a home for himself in the soft corners of Butch's entire body.

But they're not just kids from Vault 101 anymore, trapped under the ground with each other forever. Now they're up above ground, in the Wastes, and Jonathon is some kind of fucking hero, who everyone is talking about, whose name is on everyone's lips.

If he ever belonged to Butch, he sure doesn't anymore.

And he never did anyway.

“So, Butch,” Jonathon says, and his face is still drawn. “You still wanna start that gang?”

He still hasn't introduced his companion to Butch.

And Butch just laughs in his face. “Are you kidding?” he asks, and Jonathon's eyes squint, not quite offended, but not happy either. “Me and you?”

“Why not?” Jonathon asks, and there's the hurt. “Tunnel Snakes rule, right?”

“I'm not starting a gang with a goody-two-shoes like you,” Butch says, leaning back just to put more empty space between them.

“Seriously?” Jonathon asks, bemused.

“Seriously,” Butch says with more punch than he thought he had in him. “Besides, don't you have enough to do?”

And Jonathon's smile turns strained, full of the grief of moment's ago again. “I guess I do.”

“Look,” Butch says, wanting to lean forward, wanting to tangle his fingers up in his hair, press against the strip of skin at the back of his neck. “If I can help out, or give you a haircut or something, you let me know. But we ain't in the Vault anymore, so I can go my way, and you can go yours.”

“We can,” Jonathon says, and there's something still inside him. “Or we can not.”

“What?” Butch asks, thrown.

“Vault kids gotta stick together out here, Butch,” Jonathon says, and then the asshole does the insane thing, the thing that makes Butch almost run. He reaches forward and takes one of Butch's hands in his, holds on tight and Butch openly stares at him, sure his mouth dropped down.

So much for not being vulnerable, he thinks, staring right into Jonathon's eyes.

“If you don't wanna start a gang with me, that's fine,” Jonathon says, but maybe like it's actually not fine. “But I'm not going my own way. I'm going to keep coming back here and bothering the fuck out of you.”

“I could move,” Butch says immediately.

“Are you going to?” Jonathon asks.

“Probably not,” Butch allows.

He hears the city creak around them, feels the shift of the boat as the water laps around it. It's settled hard against the bottom, but that doesn't change the push and pull of the water, the slow aching movements of the entire bolted together mess.

Maybe there's a reason he stayed here, instead of trying to go further North, or even farther away. Anywhere he would be guaranteed never to run into someone he knew.

“Then I'll see you next time I'm in town,” Jonathon says, his shoulders an exhausted slump.

“Yeah,” Butch allows finally. “Guess you might,” and he wants to punch Jonathon just to release all the things he's feeling. Instead he puts an elbow on the table and smirks. “Are you ever going to introduce me to your friend there?”

“Oh, shit,” Jonathon says.

“You forgot?” Butch teases.

“Charon, I'm so sorry,” Jonathon says, turning to him, and the ghoul just shrugs.

“Like I care,” he says.

“Right,” Jonathon says and Butch wants to bristle on his behalf, protest that Jonathon is just like that and this Charon should appreciate him for who he is, overly polite and emotional and all.

But that would reveal himself so he bites his tongue, and gives Charon a cheeky wave when Jonathon finally introduces them.

Charon doesn't look particularly excited by that, grunting in return, and then Jonathon is getting up, he's leaving, and Butch wants to stay sitting during that, but he doesn't, he's on his feet, saying goodbye again.

But not forever, because Jonathon is still promising to come back.

He's going to come back and Butch feels the bubbling feeling in his chest again. Jonathon wants to come back to him, and he's not sure what to make of that.

Except then Jonathon is gone, off to find something for Project Purity, and the next thing Butch hears on the radio is that he's been kidnapped.

And then the water all over the tidal basin changes, suddenly runs clear, and no one knows what happened to Jonathon.

Chapter Text

The thing Butch isn't ever going to say, not to anyone, is that he actually really likes cutting people's hair. He always has, no matter how he reacted when the fucking G.O.A.T reached into him and exposed something that felt dirty inside of him to everyone, no matter how he scoffs and insists he's a barber, not some hairdresser, fuck you.

It's not hard, it's not badass, it's not who he planned to be.

But even now that he's out of the Vault, away from everything he used to be, he still finds himself taking comfort in putting his hands on someone else and helping them instead of hurting them. And sure, nice hair maybe doesn't matter that much in the face of everything, but people seem so damned grateful for having something in their lives that doesn't just suck.

So he actually makes a pretty decent amount of caps.

In the Vault he used to wash everyone's hair too, pretty much no matter what service they came in for. It was a strange sort of intimacy, his hands in someone's hair, running the water and soap through their hair. Out here, it's harder, before the water suddenly runs clear to get enough water to make it worthwhile, so he mostly just skips that step, and misses it.

When he was seventeen and still mostly picking out hair styles from old photographs, he hadn't liked getting that close to people. It's not like there had ever been anyone lining up to touch him in any way that wasn't just violence or annoyance (Except, maybe, James, who had always been very kind with his hands when Butch needed to come in and get checked up, or the few times he got a cold. Of course, James also stole the spring from his switchblade when he was ten so after that Butch didn't like him much).

The first time his mom came in, his hands had shaken as he washed her hair, realizing it was probably the most intimate they had ever been in his entire life. She tipped her head back and hummed and he wondered what it would have been like if that had ever been part of his childhood.

Jonathon had cut his own hair most of the time. Butch tried not to read anything in to that because the one time Jonathon had shown up, hands shoved in his pockets and looking awkward, Butch had nearly dropped his scissors into his damned eye when he tipped his head back.

But he wasn't thinking about any of that during the three fucking weeks where no one hears anything about the Saint of the Wastes or whatever the fuck else Three Dog is coming up with.

He's just sitting on a whole basin of crystal clear water, trying to decide if he's going to start washing people's hair again, and if he can charge more for it, when he looks up and finds Jonathon leaning heavy on the door frame, peering at him with a faint smile.

Butch drops his scissors again.

“Hey,” Jonathon says, his voice creaky.

“What?” Butch manages.

“Everything alright there, Butch?” Jonathon asks.

“Are you fucking real?” Butch asks, starting to get annoyed. “Not some hallucination or shit?”

Something goes weird in Jonathon's expression but then he grins. “I'm pretty sure I'm real,” he says and Butch bends down, picking his scissors back up.

“Then where have you been?” he asks, and he can't look at Jonathon when he does, instead turning his back.

For a second Jonathon is silent behind him and Butch has to turn around just to make sure he's still there.

“Sorry,” Jonathon says softly. “I spent two weeks unconscious and then,” he shrugs vaguely. “It seems I always hit the ground running these days.”

“Please tell me you're joking,” Butch said and Jonathon tilts his head. “You look terrible, by the way.”

Jonathon's smile thins. “I imagine that's true.”

“For fuck's sake,” Butch mutters and gestures with his hand, still holding the scissors. “Sit down.”

Jonathon eyes the chair he dragged all the way down from the tower warily. It was worth it because at least it tipped back and spun a little, unlike most of the chairs around here. “For what?” he asks.

Butch points the scissors at him. “What the fuck do you think I do with these?”

And he figures he's running on—something—maybe adrenaline—because up until about five minutes ago he was starting to think Jonathon had died, had left him behind forever, irrefutably, and now he's convincing Jonathon to let him cut his hair of all things.

“Butch,” Jonathon says slowly.

“Come on,” Butch says, and kicks the chair, just enough to emphasize it. “You look like you need it anyway.”

“I was just,” Jonathon starts to say and then sighs, sitting down. “You're pushy.”

“I've always been pushy,” Butch scoffs, and then considers the water he has stacked up next to the cracked bowl, wheeling it over on a creaky cart he found somewhere else in the bowls of Rivet City. James Hargraves helped him find it, helped him set up the whole space.

“You don't,” Jonathon starts, swallows, and Butch reads nothing into it. “Have to.”

“If I don't wash your hair, I'm not going to be able to tell what's actually your hair. And then it will be all crazy and clumped up like that ghoul you had with you—”

“Charon,” Jonathon corrects him and then he seems to just sag against the back of the chair, letting Butch tip it backward.

“Whatever,” Butch says.

“Don't,” Jonathon says quietly.

“Don't what?” Butch asks, not looking at his face, focusing on pouring water into the bowl instead, it's edges cracked and chipped.

“You should use his name,” Jonathon said.

Butch scoffs, even though he knows he probably shouldn't. “It's not because of what he is,” he mutters when Jonathon just gives him a distressed look. “It's because he seems like a jerk.”

“He's not,” Jonathon says, quiet.

“Where is he anyway?”

“He doesn't like coming to Rivet City,” Jonathon says, and he's still looking up at Butch, which Butch wishes he wouldn't do, turning away to find the soap.

And then he's got Jonathon tipped backward, his hair in the water and Butch is running his fingers through it, softly, gently, and this is why he hates doing people's hair. This is why he stopped washing hair out here, where everything is harder, the edges sharp. In the Vault it was a desperate cry for people to notice him, to maybe like him, if only for fifteen minutes of their entire lives.

Because it means they have to feel him being gentle with them. They can feel the softness spilling from his fingers, the care he takes with them.

He feels the breath Jonathon takes as he very carefully massages a clump of dirt out of his hair, running his fingers through like a comb until they stop catching on detritus.

Even though the door is open, he can't hear anything except Jonathon taking deep, careful breaths, and the constant creaking of Rivet City, the ship still settling into the soft dirt beneath it.

Butch isn't reading anything into Jonathon's breathing, either.

“Okay,” he says, and ignores the way his voice comes out all rough, all compromised. “I'm,” and he stops because Jonathon has his eyes closed, and he looks outright pained for a second. “Wait, are—”

“I'm fine,” Jonathon says, harsh, and Butch can't stop his frown. “It's just,” and Jonathon deflates more against the chair. “I can't remember the last time someone touched me without meaning for it to hurt.”

Butch stills and then leans back over, squeezing the end of Jonathon's hair. He wants his hair damp but not soaking when he cuts it. “Come on,” he says.

“I'm serious,” Jonathon says, like he needs Butch to know this, to understand it.

“Charon not a fan of hugs?” Butch says, more snide than he means and Jonathon laughs weakly.

Butch wants to ask about his dad, because James had always hugged his son. Had lifted him up and carried him around his shoulders, had hugged him on his birthdays, had hugged him after the G.O.A.T and sometimes just when they were walking down the hall, Jonathon tucked under his father's shoulder.

It had been one of the reasons Butch spent so much time getting up under Jonathon's defenses, goading him to try and do anything.

One time Amata had cornered Butch with her fiery annoyance, demanded to know why he kept pushing Jonathon around. “After all,” she said. “He doesn't have a mom, you don't have a father. Shouldn't that make you, I don't know, even?”

And Butch hadn't said, how could it when he didn't even really have a mom either. He might as well have had no parents, while Jonathon's mom wasn't there, but at least his dad wanted him. His dad, so proud and warm all the time, practically glowing when he talked about his son.

But now James is dead, and Jonathon is sprawled out with Butch's hand in his hair, eyes wide and bright as he looks up at Butch, the corner of his mouth quirked, despite the devastation in the rest of his expression.

“Charon isn't a fan of hugs,” Jonathon confirms. “Neither is Fawkes for that matter.”

“Who the fuck is Fawkes?” Butch mutters, looking away so he can focus on picking up his scissors and not Jonathon's face.

Then he has the chair upright again, turning it away from him.

Which leaves him confronted with the back of Jonathon's neck, the pale strip of skin there, his damp hair straggling down and it's so vulnerable Butch wants to throw the scissors, the soap, the whole bowl at the wall.

“You'll have to meet him sometime,” Jonathon says and Butch just grunts, pushing down on the top of Jonathon's head.

“Hold still,” he says, because he's going to have enough trouble with this as it is without Jonathon talking.

So Jonathon does, he holds himself where Butch told him too. Butch doesn't think about it any more than he has to, sniping off the ends of his hair.

“Have you done anything for your hair since you left the fucking Vault?” Butch mutters and Jonathon shakes once in a chuckle before he catches himself moving.

“I don't think so,” he says, still looking down.

“Yeah, your split ends are fucking terrible,” Butch says and Jonathon shakes again.

“Of course that's offensive to you,” Jonathon says.

“Yeah, well, you used to cut your own hair all the time,” Butch says, like it never bothered him, like he hadn't sometimes gotten annoyed when he saw Jonathon with a new haircut in the hallways, knowing damned well he'd done it himself. That he'd taken away the chance of any intimacy between them, again, like he wanted to avoid Butch just that badly.

Like he couldn't stand to exist in a moment exactly like this one, Butch's hands on his head, Butch's breath warm on the back of his neck, Butch's fingers gentle.

“I haven't had time,” Jonathon says soft and Butch remembers him saying he hit the ground running after being unconscious for two weeks.

His fingers accidentally tighten on Jonathon's neck, and Jonathon sucks in a breath.

“Sorry,” Butch murmurs, refuses to think about it, and goes back to cutting off the ends of Jonathon's hair, the months and months of him running across the wastes with his sword and desperation.

Butch hates himself for wondering just how long Jonathon had been alone out there. It took him a long time to find his dad, sure, but what about Fawkes or Charon or whoever else Jonathon might know? Who else took a look at Jonathon's face and decided they'd follow him anywhere, while Butch sat here, in Rivet City, pushing him away for being, according to the radio, a fucking saint?

Butch sometimes feels like a fucking coward for not immediately agreeing to do the same, to follow him anywhere.

“Hey, Jonathon?” Butch asks.

“What?” Jonathon replies, so soft, so quiet, like he maybe almost fell asleep.

“How long did you wear my jacket anyway?” Butch asks and he feels the little gasp Jonathon makes.

“What?”

“It's just,” Butch says, trying to focus back on his hair, his neck, not the gasp he just made. “Half the people who meet me think I killed you for it.”

“They do not,” Jonathon says immediately.

“They absolutely do,” Butch snorts.

Jonathon goes silent and still under him, and actually Butch should have been done already, he just doesn't want to move.

“You know when I came back to the Vault?” Jonathon says finally.

“Yeah,” Butch says, sounding distracted even though he's entirely focused on the answer.

“About then,” Jonathon says and Butch freezes.

He'd looked at Jonathon, in the hallway outside the classroom, and felt a bit adrift over the fact Jonathon had come back without his jacket. He'd mourned it, mourned the moment that died when he had carefully put it on Jonathon's shoulders, the way he'd wanted to let his hands linger but forced himself not to be so transparent.

Jonathon had done that to him on purpose.

He has nothing he can say in that moment, so he just snips off some more hair and drops his hands.

“Butch,” Jonathon says, starting to turn around.

“Did I say I was done?” Butch asks, because he can't have Jonathon look at him yet, so he busies his hands again, even though it should be done.

Jonathon probably needs to go somewhere else, probably has something important to do. Maybe he could start by telling the radio disc jockey he's still alive so the asshole can stop sounding so sad about it every fifteen or twenty minutes.

Butch forgot he even had the radio playing quietly, so focused on Jonathon and Rivet City until Jonathon says quietly, “This is my favorite song.”

Butch looks over at the radio, set up so everyone can hear it when they come in, and not the one built into his pip-boy.

“It is?” he asks, wishes he could tease Jonathon about it, but Jonathon uses his distraction to lean his head back, pressing it into Butch's chest, below his heart and Butch freezes.

“Yeah,” he says. “Don't you like it?”

And Butch swallows, refuses to stare at Jonathon's head as he very carefully reaches down and lifts it back up, Jonathon moving with his hands easily. “I need to finish,” he says, and Jonathon nods a little before going still again.

But now all Butch can listen to is the soft strains of the song, to I don't want to set the world on fire. I just want to start a flame in your heart and Butch refuses, he refuses, to read anything into it.

I've lost all ambition, for worldly acclaim, I just want to be the one you love, the radio croons and Butch wonders if this really was all just a hallucination.

He's not sure he can survive a world where he knows this is Jonathon's favorite song.

“Alright, fine, I salvaged what I could,” he says, and pushes Jonathon gently in the back, to get him out of his chair.

Jonathon scrambles up, eyes going instantly to Butch's face, and he's had just enough time to school his features again, to look impassive.

He imagines the fact Jonathon's face falls a little.

“What do I owe you?” Jonathon asks.

“For you, never anything,” Butch says, turns away.

“Butch,” Jonathon starts.

“Come on, like everyone doesn't know this was your doing,” Butch says, waggling one of the bottles of clear water under his nose. “Payment enough, really.”

“Butch,” Jonathon says again.

“Of course,” Butch says. “You know what you really need to do now is take a fucking break.”

And if there had been a moment Jonathon was reaching for, waiting for, Butch has killed it preemptively.

Better to kill it than let Jonathon kill him.

“Yeah?” Jonathon asks, wiping his own expression clear.

“Yeah,” Butch says. “Don't you think you've done enough?”

“Maybe,” Jonathon allows, hovers. “I'll—I'm—”

Butch makes the mistake of looking at him. “Hey, I'm glad you're not dead though,” he says, brightly, and Jonathon's smile is strained but somehow still warm.

“Yeah,” he says, “Me too.”

And if that night Butch huddles down around his pip-boy, hoping Three Dog will play the fucking song again, well, no one else needs to know. Of course, it doesn't take long for it to come back on, since Three Dog only has about twenty songs in his entire library.

Butch lays in bed, ear pressed to the speaker, and lets himself remember all the things he couldn't focus on at the time, the warmth of Jonathon's skin, the tiny breaths he let out, the way he'd looked at Butch at the end.

Butch is used to this.

He's used to the wanting, to the longing, to not being able to look at Jonathon straight on.

And that one desire is you, the radio sings. And I know, nobody else ain't gonna do.

Butch almost laughs, instead buries his face in his hands, and doesn't turn off the radio every time it plays it over the next week. He leaves it on, just in case Three Dog hears any rumors of whatever Jonathon is up to, of where he's been.

And with your admission, that you feel the same, I've reached the goal I'm dreaming of, the radio whispers and Butch stands with a broom in his hands, trying not to laugh so hard he cries.

Chapter Text

Butch isn't so pathetic he counts the days until Jonathon comes back, but he honestly might as well be.

He's got a life of his own now. He's got shit to do.

That never stops him from looking at the door whenever it opens and half hoping. He hates himself just a little bit every time it happens.

Some Brotherhood of Steel paladins come around, sniffing after the rumors of a pure breed Vault dweller and Butch spends their visit avoiding them. They insist they're just there to speak to the leaders of Rivet City, make sure the water supplies are going where they're supposed to, but everyone seems to know they just want to talk to Butch too.

James Hargraves plays lookout for him and Butch tells the kid, sincerely, he's the best member the Tunnel Snakes have ever had.

The next time Jonathon shows up he's got a pinch between his brows.

“No one's been bothering you, have they?” he asks, after Butch orders a drink from the bar and doesn't think about his mom.

“Like who?” Butch asks, because so far Rivet City, more or less, likes him.

He's still getting used to that.

The corner of Jonathon's mouth twitches. “I just,” and he shrugs. “I know the Brotherhood was around.”

“What is their thing, anyway?” Butch asks, swirling his drink without taking a sip from it. “They were snooping.”

“They're interested in, well, blood purity I guess,” Jonathon says and Butch can't help the way his eyebrows go up as he looks at him. “It's not such a big deal with Elder Lyons, but just be careful, alright? Everyone knows by now I wasn't born in the Vault, but you're the only one who's left 101 who was.”

Butch twists his mouth. “Cowards,” he mutters, because he's not really forgiven all the other kids who had his back up until they had the choice to leave or stay. “But, what does that matter?”

“Because 101 was a closed Vault,” Jonathon says. “It means you're probably the purest human in the whole Capital Wasteland.”

Butch squints at him. “And that matters to people?”

Jonathon shrugs, not quite meeting his expression. “Maybe.” He pauses, as if something is occurring to him. He turns, squeezing Butch's arm suddenly, Butch almost jumping before he forces himself to stay still. “You should watch out for the Enclave,” he says, urgent.

“I thought you sorta blew them up,” Butch says, looking down at his hand, gripping the leather of his jacket hard enough to crease the fabric, bunched up underneath his fingers. He'd taken his gloves off before sitting down, and Butch almost wishes there isn't two layers of fabric between his skin and Jonathon's hand.

But there is, so wishing doesn't help anything.

“Like, multiple times,” he adds with a shaky laugh, because Jonathon's eyes are too intent on his face still.

“There's still remnants out there,” he said.

“Think any of them would be stupid enough to get all the way to Rivet City?” Butch asks, because Jonathon hasn't moved his damn hand yet. “Because they'd have to be pretty stupid, wouldn't they?”

“Just, be careful,” Jonathon says.

“Sure, whatever,” Butch tries to brush him off just to get this moment to end. “I'll run away like a good boy from any Enclave fuckers I see, alright?”

Jonathon gives him another long look before he slowly seems to force himself to open his hand up, letting go of Butch.

Butch refuses to miss his grip.

“Good,” is all Jonathon says, eyes darting away and down and Butch can't help it, he finds himself watching Jonathon try not to watch him back and feels something open up wide in his chest.

He wants Jonathon's hand back on him, and pretending otherwise isn't getting either of them anywhere.

Instead of doing anything, he just finally downs his entire drink in a few gulps, ignoring the look Jonathon gives him for that.

He'll deal with it all later.

-0-

Butch doesn't realize he's watching Flak and Shrapnel, until they notice he's watching them. “Do you want something?” Shrapnel asks hotly and Butch almost jumps out of his skin.

Flak just gives Shrapnel a look, before taking a long pull of his own drink. It's night time in the Muddy Rudder, a slow and quiet time and Butch is only here because he can't stand looking at the walls of his room.

That's usually what drives him down here, even on the nights he really doesn't want a drink.

“What?” he asks, a bit stupidly, because he used to know better than to stare at people, especially people who run a weapon's store.

“Do you want,” Shrapnel starts to say again, and Flak just puts a hand on his arm, shockingly close to where Jonathon had held Butch's arm just a week before.

“Sorry,” Butch mumbles, immediately turning his face away, because they're the last two people he should be watching. Rumors go around the city every once and a while, about Flak when he was still a slaver up in Paradise Falls, about what Shrapnel used to do to people he found in the Wastes, but the one that keeps catching in Butch's chest is the one about the fact they share a room with only one bed.

It's the fact that sometimes he catches them out of the corner of his eye, Flak leaning against Shrapnel's shoulder, and Shrapnel's eyes soft as he looks down at him. It's the fact sometimes they're holding hands as they walk and Butch tries not to get caught staring.

It's just.

He would never have been able to walk down the hallways of Vault 101 holding Jonathon's hand.

The Overseer would never have let them take an apartment with one bed, to live together, and that would have assumed Butch ever opened his mouth and was honest.

Which, that was never going to be the likely outcome.

So he tries not to watch them, not to wonder, not to get caught.

-0-

Charon finds him, and Butch drops his scissors again, because Charon is the last person he expects to walk inside the room he's got set up near the marketplace, to do his business in.

“I don't think I can do a lot for your hair,” he says, and Charon gives him a truly unimpressed look. “Sorry.”

“I'm not here for,” and Charon lets out an annoyed huff, Butch bending down to snatch his scissors up before he straightens, crossing his arms over his chest with the scissors dangling from his fingers.

“I'm here with a message from Jonathon,” Charon says.

“What?” Butch asks, suddenly feeling cold.

“He might not be back for a while,” and Charon seems pretty peeved about that himself.

“Why not?” Butch asks, because last time Jonathon had gone missing still featured in some of his nightmares.

“He took a boat,” Charon says dryly and Butch narrows his eyes at him.

“What the fuck does that mean?” he demands, hoping it doesn't mean what he thinks it means.

“I mean he took a boat,” Charon said. “Went off toward the coast somewhere.”

It meant exactly what Butch hoped it wouldn't.

“Why?” he asks, a bit forlorn.

Charon shrugs. “Why does he do anything?” he asks and Butch scowls because that wasn't meant to be a philosophical question. “Because someone asked him for help,” Charon adds, more quietly, almost careful. “So he goes.”

“You didn't go with him?” Butch demands.

“Didn't have the caps for two tickets,” Charon shrugs. “Fawkes will still be complaining about it by the time he gets back.”

“That's the second time I've heard Fawke's name,” Butch mutters. “Who the hell is Fawkes?”

Charon's face twists, almost into a smile. “Let's just say if it's hard for me to come into Rivet City, it's impossible for Fawkes.”

Butch feels his brows twitch up. “Another ghoul?” he asks.

Charon snorts. “No.”

“Okay, whatever,” Butch says when it doesn't seem like Charon is going to add anything else. “So Jonathon took off on a boat. Why'd you come tell me? Jonathon said you hate Rivet City.”

“I told you, it was a message from him,” Charon said in that gravely voice all ghouls seemed to have. Not that Butch had met many of them, but a few would slip through the city, with the force of Three Dog's insistence they were still just people and their caps they were willing to spend behind them.

They just often didn't have any reason to make use of Butch's services so he doesn't meet many of them.

“He specifically asked me to come tell that Vault boy in Rivet City he might not be around for a while,” Charon continues and Butch feels that in his chest. It's like a slow spreading heat in his chest, that goes down to his fingers, because Jonathon wanted him to know that he was okay, just gone for a while.

Jonathon's worried about Butch missing him.

Except, Butch realizes under Charon's gaze, that means Jonathon knows too much, knows that Butch relies in some way in knowing he's safe, that he's okay, that he's coming back.

And now Charon knows it too, knows Butch has to be told.

He clears his throat.

“When's he coming back?” he asks, because if everyone already knows, then he might as well ask.

Charon shrugs.

“A few weeks, at least,” he says. “Last time he was gone for quite a while, but hopefully this won't be anything like the Pitt.”

“The Pitt?” Butch repeats blankly. “The fuck is the Pitt?”

“Some place up North,” Charon says and waves a hand. “Same story: someone asked him for help and—”

“And he just fucking went,” Butch sighs.

Charon looks at him like he's amusing. “And he just fucking went,” he repeats and Butch sighs, looking away.

“Well,” he settles for. “You know. Thanks. For actually coming to tell me.”

“It's not really about you,” Charon says and Butch grits his teeth, realizes Charon is looking at his jacket too.

“What?” he asks.

“Just weird,” Charon shrugs and Butch feels that same way he had in Megaton, wanting to know why everyone kept looking at his jacket and seeing Jonathon. Even though he knows now, that Jonathon had worn it all across the Wasteland.

It makes Jonathon's “You still wanna start that gang?” hurt more when Butch remembers it, because Jonathon had been up here, a Tunnel Snake, wearing it on his back for achingly long months. But now he didn't wear it anymore and Butch showed up with his own instead.

It occurs to him, that maybe people are starting to think Jonathon gave it to him, instead of the other way around, now that they've accepted Butch didn't kill anyone to get it.

It makes him squirm a little, while Charon is still staring at him.

“It's my fucking jacket,” he mutters and Charon shrugs.

“Anyway,” he says. “Message delivered, I've got nothing else to do in Rivet City.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Butch says, looking away, because he doesn't want to watch Charon leave, even though it's not like he's got an attachment to the ghoul as an individual. He's just the only current connection Butch has to Jonathon, who's apparently off somewhere, saving someone.

Butch refuses to miss him.

Yeah, it's becoming a familiar refrain. 

-0-

Butch's head is still stuck on Jonathon weeks later, when there's not been a single fucking word from him, since Charon's message. Butch is trying not to think about the fact soon it's going to months instead of weeks.

His head is so full of that as he walks back to his room at night, idly taking his time, that he doesn't notice the scratching sound until he opens the door.

Two radroaches are in his room, rooting around, one halfway under the bed and Butch freezes.

If he hadn't been terrified of them before, what they did to the Vault would have been enough. His mother trapped in the room, saved by Jonathon who stopped escaping just to help Butch and his mom. But he hadn't saved everyone, and there had been too many funerals after that day, mostly for those killed by the runaway radroaches.

Now he stood there, unable to breathe as one of them ran its legs together, seeming to turn toward him.

Staggering backward, his back hit someone hard, their hands coming up to steady him.

“Something wrong there?” the form behind him asked and Butch tensed even more, realizing Sister was the broad form at his back.

Sister, the slaver, the one who everyone knew worked for Paradise Falls. Sure, he never gave Flak shit, but everyone avoided him for a reason and it wasn't just his stupid name.

Now Butch, the idiot, the kid from the Vault who came out here without any family, without anyone to miss him, had just walked himself right into his arms, because of a pair of fucking radroaches.

He can almost feel Sister look past him and realize what the problem is. “Want me to take of them for you, sweetheart?” Sister asks, and Butch has never even spoken to the man before, standing stiff and terrified.

Jonathon warned him about the Enclave, because apparently he thought Butch wouldn't be stupid enough to owe a slaver anything.

Jokes on both of them and Jonathon isn't here.

“No, I can,” Butch starts, because Sister's arms are still around him. “I can deal with it,” and his voice damningly shakes.

“You sure?” Sister asks, and usually he's not verbose, not talkative, so Butch is getting a bit worried about the fact they're still talking.

“Yeah,” he insists, starting to take a step forward, and Sister yanks him back against his chest.

Butch had almost convinced himself he was making too big of a deal about it all.

Apparently not.

“Let me go,” he hisses, because maybe freezing was the wrong response to this predator.

“I'm just trying to help,” Sister insists and the door is still open, the radroaches starting to come out and Butch leans forward, trying to break his hold on him.

“I'm fine,” he says, twitching his shoulders but not fully fighting yet. He doesn't think Sister will just drag him away down this hallway and straight to Paradise Falls, but he's starting to worry he might.

“You refusing my help?” Sister asks. “That's not very—”

“Sister,” and Jonathon's voice cuts down the hallway, absolutely cold and Butch freezes, shocked to hear it. He doesn't even have to turn his head to look down the hallway to know it's Jonathon. “What are you doing?”

“Just offering a helping hand,” Sister says, letting him go. Butch isn't expecting it, so he staggers a step forward, closer to the radroaches. He immediately backpedals several steps, angling himself away from both them and Sister.

“Is that the case?” Jonathon asks, and his hair grew out again, curling at the nape of his neck, and he's got a different pair of goggles up in his hair, a different coat wrapped around his shoulders, and dark circles under his eyes.

“Yeah,” Sister snaps, and Butch hasn't said anything, his eyes darting between the two of them and the radroach now in the hallway.

Jonathon sees it in the same second, like he now understands, and Butch wants to be embarrassed. Bad enough he wimped out in the Vault and begged Jonathon to save his mother when Jonathon was trying to save his own life. Now he's standing here showing Jonathon he's still as much of a coward as he was in the Vault.

But Jonathon's eyes just widen, running down the hallway and shoving Butch further back, putting himself between Butch and Sister, between him and the radroaches.

“They're just,” Sister starts.

“Just shut up and shoot one of them,” Jonathon snaps, and he made sure to shelter Butch before even pulling his own gun out.

Butch wants to throw up, from anxiety or fear or shame he's not sure.

“Does Rivet City have a radroach problem?” Jonathon asks, taking one out with a perfectly timed shot to its head. Sister's gun perhaps isn't as good as it takes him two shots.

“Not usually,” Sister grumbles, kicking one of the bodies with the side of his shoe.

“Come on then,” Jonathon says, grabbing Butch's hand and not giving him room to argue. “We should find Harkness, make sure he knows radroaches are getting into the city.”

“What?” Butch asks, head spinning.

“Come on,” Jonathon says, pulling him with him with only a look over his shoulder at where Sister is watching them leave, Butch stumbling after Jonathon.

“When did you even get back?” he asks.

“Tonight,” Jonathon says and Butch almost stops walking, almost trips.

“Tonight?” he asks.

“That boat docked just across the way from Rivet City,” Jonathon says, not looking back at him, and Butch is considering the back of his head, spotting what looks like a scar and almost trips again. “Thought I'd crash here for the night. Too late to try and get into the city or out to Megaton.”

“Why'd you go into the city?” Butch asks.

“Oh, sometimes I stay at Underworld,” Jonathon says, like that makes any sense at all.

“Isn't that like, a ghoul city?” Butch asks, and Jonathon is moving like he knows exactly where he's going. Maybe he does. Maybe he talks to the head of security regularly, or something. “In the middle of Super Mutant territory?”

Jonathon shrugs. “They're nice there,” he says, and Butch stares. “Beside, it's  where both Charon and Fawkes spend most of their time. It's where I always look for them first.”

“But you came here instead,” Butch says, and Jonathon hasn't dropped his hand. But that causes Jonathon to stop, look at him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Good timing, too. Don't you know to stay away from Sister?”

“Yeah,” Butch puffs up, even though he's exhausted. “I didn't fucking plan that—”

Jonathon looks away, down to their hands, and Butch stops breathing again like too many times that night already. He's getting dizzy.

“Glad I came here instead,” he says and finally drops Butch's hand. Butch tries not to feel cold, watching him silently. “Anyway,” Jonathon clears his throat. “Let's go find Harkness.”

“Yeah,” Butch says, like he's not aching at all.

-0-

That night Jonathon pays for them to both stay at the Weatherly Hotel that night, with Harkness and security trying to figure out how radroaches got into his room.

He hates the fact Sister is right across the hallway, in fact sees him as he enters the room after Jonathon watching them. He hopes nothing comes of it, as Jonathon closes the door behind them.

“You don't really,” Butch starts to say.

“It's fine,” Jonathon says, and he's dropping his coat off, letting out a breath like he's exhausted.

So Butch just nods, crawls into the bed after he drops his boots off to the side, doesn't take anything else off.

He thinks he isn't going to sleep, with Jonathon breathing on the bed beside him, but apparently he does, because when he wakes up in the morning, Jonathon isn't in the room anymore.

He lays there for a while, playing the night back in his mind, wishing he hadn't fallen asleep so fast. He would have liked listening to Jonathon sleep beside him for a while longer.

Chapter Text

Butch finds himself waiting for the sound of Jonathon's voice in the days that follow. Wherever he'd been, Jonathon doesn't seem ready to leave Rivet City again so quickly.

He just... is not spending that time with Butch, except when he is.

Butch now cannot remember what it was like, living in the Vault with Jonathon for such a long time. Perhaps it had been like a scarred over wound, something he just learned to live with. Now, every second Jonathon is in his city but somewhere else is an itch under his skin, an annoyance.

He wants him to be with him, and because he wants that he's never, ever, going to actually say it to Jonathon's face.

But it seems like whatever Jonathon does during the day, at night he finds Butch, and that might be the most aggravating thing of all.

“So when are you going to declare my room safe, anyway?” Butch asks, when they're sitting in Gary's Galley, waiting for whatever soup he's got that day. “It's been three nights, holed up in the same room at the inn.”

He has not been sleeping much, actually.

Jonathon just shrugs though, not quite looking at him. “When it's safe.”

“It was just a couple of radroaches,” Butch scoffs, as if that's something he can actually handle. Jonathon looks at him out of the corner of his eye, like he knows as well as Butch does that it's not.

“And the fact they got there is dangerous.”

“It could have just been a prank,” Butch says.

“You think so?” Jonathon asks, voice going deeper. “It's a deadly prank, if it is.”

Butch leans back, watching him and wishing he had a cigarette, just to have something to do with his hands. “I'm just saying, I don't think I've actually made any enemies.”

“If it was an accident, that's almost more worrying,” Jonathon points out. “Because then they can keep getting in.”

“If they found a hole, I think we'd have seen it by now,” Butch says, and he's watching where Sister is talking with Bannon down the way, all casual like, as if he's perfectly normal and only taciturn because it's a personality flaw.

Sister hasn't said a single word to him and he's not sure if it means he's biding his time to try something else, or if Butch is just being paranoid. The word on the street is Sister doesn't actually want to go back to Paradise Falls, and thus he should be safe enough. If he actually started kidnapping people, Rivet City probably wouldn't let him back in.

Yet, Butch also remembers the way the Brotherhood of Steel had been eyeing him up, like he was meat, just because of stupid genetics or some shit.

When he looks back, Jonathon is watching him intently. “What?” he scoffs.

“Just thinking,” Jonathon says, like there's something about Butch worth thinking about.

“Come on, Jonathon,” Butch says. “You're not always going to be here to protect me, anyway. I can take care of myself. That was just,” and he hesitates. “A slip.”

“A slip?” Jonathon asks and Butch grits his teeth, the anger surprising him a little.

“I know,” he says. “I know slips out here are dangerous, it's not like the Vault was ever as safe as they all liked to pretend. I can handle myself.”

“I just,” and Jonathon is looking away, Angela Staley watching them both with a look on her face that makes Butch want to snarl at her. “I don't know what I would have done if I got back, and you were just,” and he stops there, still looking away.

“Then don't fucking worry about me,” Butch says and Jonathon looks back at him, like he's an idiot, and Butch really is.

“Butch,” Jonathon sighs.

“I'm serious,” Butch says.

“I know you are,” Jonathon shakes his head. “But that doesn't mean it's going to work like that. I can't just turn a flip off, Butch, and stop caring about you at all.”

Butch feels that, right in his chest. “Jonathon—”

“If I could, I think I would have done it when we were sixteen and you were really pissing me off,” Jonathon just breezes right through and Butch is staring, openly.

You cared about me when we were sixteen? is almost on his lips, but then Jonathon doesn't stop, and he doesn't get it out.

“But then, when I was out there, at Point Lookout, I kept thinking,” and Jonathon shakes his head. “That I wished you were there, that you'd agreed to come with me. But then I was glad you weren't because of course it all went to shit in five minutes, and it was so stupid!” He hits the edge of the table, and it makes Butch and Angela both jump, even though he's not even talking to Angela and she probably should not be listening in at all. “Just two idiots, unable to let go of a grudge centuries later. What's the point of that? Especially when they drag half the fucking peninsula into it with them.”

“Hey,” Butch tries finally. “I mean, it's not like we hold grudges,” and Jonathon gives him a look Butch can't read at all.

“No,” he says. “No, instead I just had a vision of your body floating in water while nukes rained down from the sky.”

“I'm sorry, a what?” Butch manages, is proud of himself for that much.

He is going to focus on that part of the sentence, and not the rest of it.

“It was just a stupid tree,” Jonathon mutters, and that's when Gary finally shows up with dinner.

The last thing Butch actually wants to do is eat, but Jonathon is intently focused on doing nothing else, so he follows suit, instead of asking why the hell are you dreaming about me in your drugged tree trips?

-0-

The next day Harkness is the one to tell him his room is safe. There's something hiding in his expression when he says it, like he thinks either Butch or Jonathon is a fool, but Butch knows better these days than to antagonize the head of security, so he nods and thanks him and gets his stuff out of the hotel room immediately.

But that night, Jonathon shows up at his door anyway.

“Going to do an inspection?” Butch asks, means to be teasing.

Jonathon shrugs. “Do you want me too?”

“Something tells me you crawled over every single inch of this room already,” Butch says, like it doesn't bother him at all.

“I want you to come with me,” Jonathon says.

“Where?” Butch asks, because the city is quiet, just the creaks of the ship constantly trying to settle and never being able to truly rest. Butch knows how it feels. “It must be pitch black out there.”

“Not quite,” Jonathon says, with a tiny smile, and Butch narrows his eyes at him.

“Jonathon—”

“Come on,” Jonathon says, and holds his hand out. Butch considers it before he finally takes it, allowing Jonathon to pull him along.

He can't remember them ever holding hands before the last few days, even when they were kids, even before Jonathon's tenth birthday party when they got into that stupid fight over a sweet roll. Now Jonathon takes his hand like it's his right, like Butch's hand might as well belong to him, and Butch keeps giving it to him.

When they reach the top of the tower, where it opens up to the flight deck, Butch pauses, digs his heels in. “Jonathon—”

“Come on,” Jonathon says, waiting at the door, and behind him is just darkness, just the vastness of the open sky and Butch does not like the open sky, he doesn't like the feeling like he's going to fall off the face of the world and just keep going. “You told me you didn't like the sky, right?” Jonathon continues, like he's read Butch's hesitation for what it is.

“It's just,” and Butch squirms, thinks about running. “So much. Didn't it ever bother you?”

“Of course it did,” Jonathon says, like it's easy to admit to any weakness at all. “But I think you just haven't appreciated it right.”

“Is that fucking so?” Butch demands, puffing up. “I'm just not giving the sky a chance, is that what you're telling me?”

“Well,” Jonathon says, and tugs his hand, trying to get Butch to come forward. “Isn't that the truth?”

“Maybe,” Butch says, because the truth is sometimes he thinks he shouldn't have left the Vault, the truth is sometimes the world is so big and vast, even more than he could have imagined, and it makes him feel small and strange.

The truth is Jonathon's hand is warm in his, and Jonathon still has those circles under his eyes.

The truth is Jonathon is way too good for Butch, for anyone, and yet he keeps coming around and upending Butch's entire world and it's starting to fray his nerves.

So when he tugs again, Butch follows him into the night, out on the empty flight deck. There's still some people moving around Rivet City, even at this hour, and there's lights coming from the tower windows. But the further they walk, the more silent it gets, until it feel like it's just them and the husks of the fighter jets that never had a chance to take off in the middle of war.

So instead they sat on this boat, never settled into the riverbed, and slowly decayed until they were rusted down onto the flight deck, never able to fly away again.

“Okay,” Jonathon says, and Butch is squeezing his hand far too tightly. “Look up.”

“At what?” Butch asks.

“Just look up,” Jonathon says, his voice quiet in the wind and so Butch looks up.

He freezes, almost falls over, and grabs onto Jonathon to keep himself steady, keep himself grounded. Because the sky above him is glowing, a thousand pricks of light and big swooping layers of purple and blue, and he had never dared look at the night sky on the short trip from Megaton to Rivet City. He'd hunched down near the fire, pulled the blanket up over his head, because if the sky was terrifying during the day, then it must have been worse at night.

And it was, he felt like he was going to fall off the ground and go spinning away into all that darkness.

“There's no moon tonight,” Jonathon says, hushed, from where Butch is still clinging to him. “So you can see the Milky Way really clearly.”

“That's the Milky Way?” Butch asks, because he vaguely remembers that being mentioned in class, at some point, but he hadn't paid enough attention to actually realize what that meant.

“Yeah,” Jonathon says, warm, and his hands come up to cup the back of both of Butch's elbows, Butch's hands on his shoulders, and Butch's attention suddenly snaps from the sky back down to Jonathon.

He can barely make out his face, between the sky and the distant lights of Rivet City.

But he's watching Butch with a warm expression.

“I figured no one had shown you yet,” he continued. “That you don't have to scared of the sky.”

“I'm not,” Butch started to insist, automatic. “Scared. I'm—I'm unsettled.”

The corner of Jonathon's mouth quirks up, and he's still got his hands on Butch's elbows, is still letting Butch hold onto him. “And now?”

“Now I'm fucking overwhelmed,” Butch admits, and Jonathon seems to ease them closer together and Butch didn't exactly notice when that happened.

“It is a lot,” Jonathon murmurs, and Butch isn't just overwhelmed by the sky anymore. “I just—I just,” and they're standing there, out in the darkness, so close together. This time, Butch is the one who inches across the space between them.

He had paid attention to when their teacher started talking about satellites, about the moon and how it can never leave Earth, constantly trapped by gravity to circle it forever. He'd spent the class staring at the back of Jonathon's head, full of rage for something he already knew would be true.

Maybe, he realizes as Jonathon eats up the last space between them, he hadn't been the only one. After all, the instant they got out of the Vault, they were both free to go where ever the fuck they wanted.

Except, Jonathon keeps coming back, like maybe he's stuck in Butch's gravity too, while Butch knew he was going to be orbiting Jonathon ever since he was ten and couldn't admit he didn't want to punch Jonathon at all.

Jonathon kisses him first, because there is no version of the story where Butch is brave enough to do it himself. He has his hands on Jonathon's shoulders, has done his part to draw them closer together, but he won't be the one to jump them off the cliff, won't be able to bridge that last, impassible distance between where he is and what he really wants.

But Jonathon is, and Jonathon does, and they're standing there, under the entire galaxy, Jonathon's hands slipping from the back of Butch's elbows to grab his face, pulling him in even closer, as Jonathon kisses him like he's been drowning and Butch is the air his lungs need.

Butch can already barely keep his feet under him, swaying against Jonathon, whose mouth is burning hot in the night, his fingertips calloused as they catch on Butch's cheek, and Butch slides his hands from Jonathon's shoulders down before wrapping them around his back, fingers catching in the fabric of his jacket, the one that doesn't have a Tunnel Snake on it.

He opens his mouth, swallows down the sound Jonathon makes, feels one of Jonathon's hands go to his hair and doesn't even care if he messes it up. He just wants to feel it, feel the scrape of someone else's hands on his scalp.

He seriously can barely stand up, staggering both of them forwards. At first Jonathon protests, a deep sound in his throat, but then his back hits one of the grounded fighter jets and his moan goes high pitched, both his hands dropping down to Butch's arms, where Butch has pressed them into the cool metal of the plane, trying to ground himself and keep kissing Jonathon at the same time. The clang of them hitting the plane echoes over the water, and Butch barely even hears it.

“Butch,” Jonathon murmurs, and Butch freezes, fear stopping him, but Jonathon isn't saying anything else, he's just smearing his mouth along Butch's cheek, toward his jawbone. Opening his mouth, but not letting out any sound, Butch tilts his head back so Jonathon can reach his throat, if he wants.

Apparently he does because then he's dragging his mouth down Butch's entire neck, teeth catching on the skin, on his Adam's apple, and then he noses his way into the join of Butch's neck and shoulder, and Butch clings with one hand on the back of Jonathon's head, the other on his waist, and Jonathon is using the plane against his back to squish himself down, to give himself better access to Butch's throat.

Panting up at the night sky, Butch's head spins as he catches sight of the sky again, the stars and the Milky Way, and Jonathon warm and soft in his arms.

Then Jonathon reaches forward, both his hands around Butch as he spins him around, pinning him to the plane now with another clanging sound. Butch opens his mouth but doesn't have time to say anything before Jonathon is diving back in, his tongue swiping across Butch's opened lips, before going inside, and Butch can't help the way he nips at Jonathon's lower lip, does it again when it makes Jonathon smile against him.

Jonathon kisses him differently than Freddie Gomez did, but that was just because Freddie Gomez had kissed him on a dare, because they were both complaining about girls. Butch hadn't meant it, but Freddie had. And maybe Butch had goaded him into kissing him, just the once, because of how much he knew Herman Gomez would have hated knowing his son had ever kissed Butch DeLoria of all people.

Jonathon kisses him like he means it, like he wants Butch, like this isn't a mistake or stupid kids goofing off. He kisses him like he's trying to drown there, and when Butch gets his arms around his waist and hauls him against him, he's hard.

It knocks all the air out of Butch, makes him drop his head back against the plane with a groan, makes Jonathon's hands scramble on his back, around his neck again. They pant there for a second, Butch's hands still on his waist.

“Fuck,” Butch settles for and Jonathon's laugh is weak, maybe a bit nervous, his nose pressed against Butch's neck.

“I,” he murmurs, and somehow Butch realizes all at once, that yeah, he's gotten hard too. He'd been so focused on Jonathon he hadn't even noticed. “Wanted to do that since I was sixteen,” and Butch has to laugh at that, or he's going to cry.

“You really fucking should have,” he says, and Jonathon lifts his head, trying to look at him in the dark and Butch bites his bottom lip hard because otherwise he's going to whimper again, embarrassingly loud, because they're still pressed up against each other and he can still feel Jonathon.

“Could I have?” Jonathon asks, like he's unsure. “Because I was pretty sure I couldn't.”

“I might have punched you,” Butch allows and he can't read Jonathon's eyes in the darkness at all. “But I would have liked it.”

“How the fuck would I have known you liked it if you punched me for it?” Jonathon asks, almost pants it into his mouth.

“Because after I stopped freaking out I would have kissed you back,” Butch admits. They're staring at each other, still close enough he can feel Jonathon's breath on his mouth.

“Even at sixteen?” Jonathon asks.

Butch wants to laugh again, manages not to. “Yeah,” he pants. “Even at sixteen,” and then Jonathon is groaning, like three years is really so long, and he's kissing him again, both hands in Butch's hair this time and then he just, undulates against him, pressing their bodies together everywhere, and Butch slaps a hand out, banging it against the metal of the plane because otherwise he's going to fall apart. He gets his other hand around Jonathon's neck, fingers around the back and thumb pressed against his collarbone.

They stay there, kissing like that, rutting together, until it all becomes almost too much and Butch has to shove Jonathon back.

“Hold—hold on.”

“For what?” Jonathon demands and Butch laughs then, presses his forehead against his shoulder.

“Oh fuck,” he mumbles. “Because we're not fucking for the first time on the flight deck against a plane, Jonathon.”

Even in the darkness he can see Jonathon's eyes light up, the curve of his mouth. “No?”

“No!” Butch says, except he can't get his hands to stop touching Jonathon, and they're both going to be obvious to anyone who catches them. “Not when I have a perfectly serviceable room with a door we could use instead.”

“You know, I'd wondered,” Jonathon breathes into the side of his neck, and Butch jumps, tries not to moan again. “How'd you'd react, what you'd do, what'd you like.” Butch bites the inside of his cheek, tries to get his breathing under control enough they could maybe actually make it back to his room. “If you were an exhibitionist.”

“Jesus fuck,” Butch tells the stars and the Milky Way, his head banging on the plane again.

“You liked showing off so much,” Jonathon teases him, grins against his neck, and Butch has to shove him off or they will risk becoming exhibitionists.

Even if he hasn't heard anyone approach since they got out there, it doesn't mean anything. It's not like he was listening to anything beyond Jonathon's breath, his pants, his moans just from Butch kissing him.

So he straightens his clothes, tries to make the jumpsuit any less incriminating, and Jonathon does not help, still kissing the side of his neck. His pants aren't so bad off as Butch's Vault issued jumpsuit, baggier as they are.

“Room,” Butch growls, and he feels Jonathon go still beside him, the little hitch of his breath. “Now.”

“Oh,” Jonathon says. “Alright,” and they make a run for it.

Luckily they only pass Flak, who gives them an all too knowing look as they barrel by, stepping out of their way.

Then Butch is trying to remember how his door even opens, the Saint of the Wasteland pressing against his back, breath warm and hot on the side of his neck. And as he gets the door open, as Jonathon slams him against the backside of it, he thinks maybe every stupid fucking decision he'd ever made wasn't so stupid after all.

After all, it got him right where he always wanted to be.

Chapter Text

Butch lays with his head on Jonathon's chest, a hand pressing against his stomach as he listens to his heartbeat.

“You know, when I said I never meant anything I said?” he whispers and Jonathon hums, hair a bit wild against the pillow. Butch could offer to cut it again, but he likes the way the length of it looks after he's messed with it, had his fingers all up in it.

“I didn't actually mean that,” he confesses and feels Jonathon go tense beneath him.

“No?” he asks.

Butch thinks maybe he should have kept his stupid mouth shut, but he's already out in midair. “There were years where I really, really hated you,” he says, almost quiet enough Jonathon could pretend not to hear. “Because everyone seemed to love you.”

Jonathon shifts, starts to act like he's going to roll over and get a better look at Butch's face, but Butch doesn't let him, keeps himself exactly where he was. “I sorta hate to say it was about your dad,” he continues. “Now. But it was sorta about your dad.”

Jonathon stops, and then takes a slow breath. “Yeah,” he allows.

“I was jealous,” Butch says. “Because your dad loved you so much, and mine didn't even want me. I used to think about it a lot, that he was somewhere down there, that he must have known who I was, who he was to me, and in all the nineteen years I lived there, and he never fucking said anything. I still don't know who he was. If he was just dead, someone would have said, wouldn't they have?” and he stops talking, because otherwise his voice is going to crack.

This time when Jonathon shifts, he lets him, lets Jonathon turn them both so they're laying side by side, Jonathon's arm on his waist, and his own curled up against his chest, like he's holding something inside. “Fuck whoever he was,” Jonathon says and Butch can't help the almost hysteric edge his laugh has.

He's never talked about his dad, not even to Paul or Wally.

They knew, because everyone in the Vault knew, that Butch's father was somewhere in there with them, because when they were growing up no one entered the Vault, and no one left it.

Now sometimes he wonders if his father just sneaked out the door when they'd let James in, all those years ago, but even he knew that was just an idle fantasy. No, his father had looked at him, and decided year after year, that he wouldn't claim his son as his own, and everyone in the Vault knew it too.

It had burned inside Butch, knowing that.

“Your dad loved you,” Butch whispers, and Jonathon isn't quite looking at him anymore. “I hated that. I mean, I had mom, but,” and he just shrugs, a little, Jonathon's arm still warm and heavy on his bare waist. Jonathon knows what he means, without him having to spell it out. “James could be a real dick, sometimes, but he loved you.”

“A real dick?” Jonathon asks wryly.

“He broke my switchblade when we were ten,” Butch says and then winces, remembering too clearly the way Jonathon stared blankly at the distance after his death. “Sorry.”

“No,” Jonathon says, and he brings his other arm up, squished between them, to trace the edge of Butch's cheek and Butch keeps breathing through it, somehow. “He could be cruel, sometimes. I mean, he left me,” and Butch bites the inside of his cheek. “He was stupid or naive, thinking that he would just escape the Vault and they'd be happy keeping me after that.” Butch shifts forward, brings his hands up to rest on Jonathon's chest, just to feel him breathing. “And then,” and Jonathon stops. “Then he was surprised to see me. He was out there fucking around and risking his life and he thought I would have just been tucked away safe under the ground. It was like, suddenly, he'd never seen me before in my life.”

Butch pauses, frowns, hadn't thought about it. When Jonathon came back to the Vault, it'd felt like a punch, it'd felt electric. He held himself different, was finally as dangerous to everyone else as he'd always felt to Butch.

But sometimes Butch remembers the skinnier, younger version of him too, the one who fiddled with computers and pip boys and was a crack shot with a BB-gun, not a sword or laser pistol.

“You know,” and Jonathon's voice breaks a little now. “He even asked me, at one point, if I could go ahead and clear an area out, because I was a fighter, and they weren't.”

Butch stares at him, because he won't deny James' logic, but he can't imagine asking Jonathon to go up ahead, without him.

“He was my dad,” Jonathon whispers. “I love him, he loved me. But he still asked me, to take a risk he couldn't, or wouldn't, and I,” he breathes. “I think that's always going to hurt me, a little.”

“I would have gone with you,” Butch says immediately.

Jonathon stares at him, pulls him closer and Butch bites the inside of his cheek. He may have started this conversation, but he hadn't wanted it to go here. “Except you're the one refusing to start a new gang with me,” Jonathon teases.

“Your reputation sorta precludes starting a gang,” Butch says and Jonathon blinks at him. “What?”

“I don't,” Jonathon starts, uses the hand on Butch's waist to trail it up his back and Butch takes a shuddering breath. “Really care about my reputation.”

“What did Three Dog call you this week?” Butch asks. “The last, best hope of humanity?”

“Three Dog likes to exaggerate,” Jonathon says flatly.

“Why do you hate it so much?” Butch asks.

“Because no one is a fucking paragon,” Jonathon says. “You think I haven't done terrible things, out here? Sometimes there's just no good choice, and I'm,” he takes a shaky breath. “I'm not a saint. I'm not a savior. I just, I'm just me.”

Butch slides a hand back in his hair. “I know,” he says.

“Do you?” Jonathon asks.

“You're a bitch who wouldn't share your sweetroll,” and that finally makes Jonathon laugh, a little. “I don't know what you've done out here, not all of it, except every time I turn around there's someone else with a story about something you did. And it's,” he chews his lip, Jonathon watching the action with perhaps too much interest. “It's nice, to know there's someone out here who cares. Who isn't just in this for themselves. You never have been, you've always cared so much about people. It irritated the fuck out of me.”

“Irritated?” Jonathon asks, emphasizing the past tense.

“You know I'm gone on you,” Butch mutters. “It has to do something for me.”

“You know I'm gone on you too, right?” Jonathon asks. “You don't, have to be scared of being seen with me or whatever it is—”

“I'm not scared,” Butch insists, immediately. “It's not even that you're so good, and I disapprove or something. I don't. It's not even my reputation because I'm a fucking hair dresser.”

“Barber,” Jonathon corrects for him, and Butch reaches up to flick his nose.

“I'm whatever I say I am,” he says and Jonathon looks at him, in the dim light of his room in Rivet City with so much warmth Butch doesn't think he'll ever be cold in here again. “But it still—”

“Come with me, Butch,” Jonathon whispers and Butch can love him, tell him stuff about his father he never told anyone else, hold his naked body like it's just a normal thing he does, but he isn't sure he can do that.

“I'll think about it,” he settles for.

Jonathon doesn't say anything, doesn't act disappointed, just leans forward to kiss him again, as if they hadn't already worn out their bodies with touching. Butch lets him, because that's easier than talking anymore, wraps his arms around Jonathon's body and holds on.

-0-

“How good are you with a gun?” Shrapnel asks, and Butch freezes with whatever skewer of meat is on the menu at Gary's Gallery.

“Excuse me?” he manages.

Shrapnel narrows his eyes at him, obviously irked already, and Butch isn't going to point out he approached him. “Can you shoot straight?”

“I can shoot straight,” Butch says. “I'm not sure about much beyond that, though.”

Shrapnel grunts, considers him up and down, and Butch wants to edge out of his seat and maybe run for it. Shrapnel isn't like Sister, isn't a concern, except he doesn't actually like anyone, and Butch can't remember them ever just chatting before.

“Should get some training,” Shrapnel decides.

“Uh-huh?” Butch asks, wonders why this is happening to him, but then he catches sight of Flak, leaning against the flimsy pillar of their shop, watching them, and remembers all at once him watching him and Jonathon tumble down the stairs, remembers the fact Flak shares a room with Shrapnel with only one bed.

It makes his hands feel itchy, remembering that no one ever said it out loud, but there weren't any two men to share rooms in Vault 101. Not women, either. It had just been another reason things with Jonathon had felt so insurmountable, so impossible.

“I could use some more training,” he agrees, after a beat, because he has this sneaking suspicion Jonathon is going to ask him to leave with him again, and Butch isn't sure he'll actually be able to say no again, isn't sure why it's still so hard for him to say yes.

Shrapnel meets his eyes, nods, and that's how Butch finds himself taking marksmanship lessons, in the evening, off the top of Rivet City.

He doesn't look over at the place where they'd stumbled into a plane and kissed under the night sky, because he truly does want to focus on this. If he follows Jonathon anywhere, he's going to be able to stand up for himself.

-0-

“I want to show you trees,” Jonathon says, the next time he's in Butch's bed and Butch's head is still spinning a bit over the fact he's there, actually there, again.

“Trees?” he repeats, staring at the ceiling. “I've seen trees, haven't I?”

Jonathon laughs, slings himself Butch's body, settling down on his waist and Butch is tired, he's exhausted, but that doesn't matter, the way Jonathon is on top of him. “I mean, real, growing trees.”

“Is that one of those things Three Dog is going on about?” Butch asks and Jonathon raises a brow.

“Listen to a lot of Galaxy News Radio, do you?”

“I have to know what you're up to somehow,” Butch says and Jonathon looks down at him, his eyes almost luminous whatever emotion that raised in him. “And they keep playing that song you like, so much,” Butch says, and Jonathon tilts his head at him.

“I thought you didn't like it,” he says, bending down.

“I never fucking said that,” Butch says.

“Alright, you never said you liked it,” Jonathon says.

“Yeah, well,” Butch huffs, but he's still under Jonathon so it's not like he's got a lot of pretense left. “It's just a lot, sometimes, you're a lot.”

“I'm a lot?” Jonathon teases.

“You fucking know you are,” Butch grumbles. “Anyway. Whatever. Fucking trees?”

“Yeah,” Jonathon says, his hand at Butch's throat and Butch sorta always knew he was going to give up, he just thought maybe he'd have a bit more time.

“Yeah, fine,” he manages, and Jonathon's entire expression lights up and Butch was already in love with him, had been since they were kids, but something inside him still tightens at that, tenses up, like he needs to run away.

But he can't really run away, so instead he lays there, kisses Jonathon when he bends down, and thinks about the way the night sky looked. It had worked out for him, maybe seeing trees would too.

-0-

Jonathon has a dog, and Butch wants to be surprised, he really does.

“So you're finally leaving Rivet City?” Charon asks, amused, and Butch wants to flip him off. But he's pretty sure for whatever lessons he's gotten lately, the ghoul is a much better shot than him, so he just shrugs instead, spreading his hands out.

“What can I say, you can't keep a guy like me cooped up.”

Jonathon gives him a sideways look, because he damn well knows Butch is just posturing, but he doesn't say anything, just hands Butch a pair of sunglasses.

“It might help with the sky,” he says, and Butch had been trying to ignore that, the whole time they were talking about trees.

“I don't think anything is going to help with the sky,” he says, but takes them anyway, because the outside is always just too bright for him.

Charon, the asshole, looks amused.

He thinks he hears him say something to Dogmeat about underground kids, so this time he does flip him off, which only seems to make him more amused.

But then Jonathon takes his hand, and it's like a wild animal being gentled by kindness, because everything else flies right out of Butch's head and up into the big open sky above them.

-0-

At first, Butch doesn't think this is so bad. Charon is a shockingly good shot, and every once and a while Jonathon and him mention Fawkes, though he still hasn't appeared. When they sleep under the open sky, Jonathon keeps an arm around him, like that will keep him anchored down to the ground.

Of course then they get sprung by a band of Super Mutants, and Butch gets knocked hard to the ground, feels his leg bone snap when a mutant steps on it, and then he's not really sure what happens for a while.

He wakes up next to a whimpering form he's never seen before, leg still painfully broken, and his hands bound.

“Well, fuck,” he says, and that makes the wastelander beside him burst into hysteric tears. “Calm the fuck down,” he says through gritted teeth, trying to sit up.

“Don't you know wh—where we are?” the wastelander wails.

“Captured?” Butch asks, and looks up at the ceiling, sees the hanging bags of bloody limbs and almost throws up. “By Super Mutants,” and he hears something outside, grits his teeth again, tries to focus.

What would Jonathon do ? his traitorous brain asks, and he focuses on that. Jonathon has probably faced more super mutants than anyone Butch knows, and he hasn't gotten himself eaten—or whatever it is they do—yet.

“Just, calm down,” he says, because he's got to focus on this and not why he's here, not why Jonathon isn't, because Jonathon and Charon are good at this, they know what they're doing, so they've got to be fine—

And then he hears fighting, hears screaming, hears a roar of rage, and then silence.

He's trying to get the rope on his wrist to loosen when the door slams open, and a super mutant steps through. The fact he's wearing what looks like a honest torn up Vault Suit doesn't even register, Butch just starts screaming.

But then Jonathon pokes his head around him, and grins at him and all the air huffs out of Butch at once.

“Really?” the mutant asks, giving Butch a long look.

“Really,” Jonathon says, and Butch feels a bit woozy, actually. “Butch, I'd love for you to meet Fawkes.”

Butch just sits there, leg aching in a sharp and egregious way, and just stares at the mutant in front of him.

“No fucking wonder you never come to Rivet City,” he settles for, because, well, that explains a lot.

Apparently Charon is outside the door, because that makes him laugh, even as Jonathon bends down, untying him and handing him a stimpack for his leg. Butch hasn't had to use a stimpack for a broken limb before, and when he shudders and gasps at the abrupt pain of it knitting his bones back together, Jonathon gives him a comforting pat on the back.

“I had a lot of broken limbs, when I started out,” he says.

“Motherfucker,” Butch hisses. “That's because you run at fucking mutants with a sword.”

Jonathon grins at him, helping him stand, and Fawkes has already untied the other captive, who might just faint clean away from the way they're looking at him, all wide eyed and still terrified.

“I'm glad you got to you in time,” Jonathon says, and there is clear relief in his eyes, as he rests one bloody and dirt covered hand on the hollow of Butch's throat, his other one wrapped around his waist.

“Yeah,” Butch says, and has to laugh, because all that terror and assuagement in him is quickly turning to hysteric giddiness. He puts his hand over Jonathon's and holds on, in the middle of a ruined church, out in the wasteland. And they're covered in blood, in mud, surrounded by body parts and even more blood, but he kisses Jonathon there anyway, kisses him like he almost just died, kisses him for being the maniac who travels with a dog, a ghoul, and a fucking super mutant, because Butch is in love with the craziest idiot in the entire wasteland.

“Fuck,” he says when he pulls back. “You know I love you, don't you?”

Jonathon blinks at him, grins, still holding him. “I'd made an educated guess.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Butch says. “I almost died, don't get sarcastic with me right now.”

“You weren't going to die,” Jonathon says. “We were coming.”

“Yeah, still,” Butch says but then before he can worry, or fret, Jonathon is resting his forehead against his, huffing out a breath.

“This is hardly the place for this,” he murmurs. “But don't worry, I'm in love with you too.”

“Good,” Butch says, a bit tight in the throat.

“Just so we're all on the same page,” Jonathon teases.

He thinks Charon mutters something at that, but when they walk out of the church, Jonathon's got his hand in his, so Charon can stuff whatever it was. Butch is ready to take down whatever else the wasteland wants to throw at them, he's even starting to get used to the sky.

They keep heading North after that, Dogmeat bounding ahead, and Fawkes full of stories and history, Charon taciturn in comparison to the others, and Butch has never missed the Vault less as he does, holding Jonathon's hand through it all.

Chapter Text

The trees overwhelm in the way the night sky did, Butch standing at the bottom of one and looking all the way up its branches and up to the sky beyond.

“You know,” he says, when Jonathon comes over. “You don't have to like, spend all this time convincing me leaving the Vault was worth it. I like, already know.”

“That's not what this is about,” Jonathon says, wrapping an arm around his waist and hooking his chin over Butch's shoulder and actually, Butch isn't used to this at all yet. “I just. I've seen so many weird and wonderful things since I left, and I just,” he breathes out. “Want to share them with you.”

“You're such a fucking sap,” Butch mutters, but his cheeks are flushed as he keeps staring up at the tree branches, and he feels Jonathon hide a smile into the side of his neck, so actually it's all okay.

-0-

“You want to go back to Megaton?” Butch asks the next day, a bit warily as Fawkes cooks something on the fire, Charon sitting beside him and looking weirdly intent.

“Sure?” Jonathon says. “It's not really out of the way, or anything.”

“Do you have something against Megaton?” Charon asks, but he doesn't look away from the fire when he does.

“I just had a weird fucking time there,” Butch says, surly, as he rests his elbows on his crossed knees. “Everyone kept thinking I'd killed you for the clothes off your back,” and Jonathon sorta just smirks at him.

“Then showing up with me will disabuse everyone of that notion,” Jonathon says, and Butch can't really argue that one.

“Isn't it built around a still active bomb?” Butch tries, uncertain why he doesn't want to go so badly but Jonathon keeps grinning at him.

“Not anymore,” he says and Butch stares at him before he starts laughing.

“Guess messing around with all those pip-boys was good for something, huh?”

-0-

It takes a little while to walk all the way back to Megaton, because Jonathon has to stop at different towns and homesteads along the way, hands out water bottles to beggars lost out in the wastes, and Butch and Charon both stand with their arms crossed over their chests while this happens, but Fawkes is thrilled every time.

Except in that sort of aggressive way he has pretty much all the time.

Butch is still getting used to have a super mutant traveling with them, even when it was obvious Fawkes wasn't really the usual super mutant wandering around the place. At night, if the fire is bright enough, he pulls out an honest to God book and reads it by firelight.

Which is how Butch finally got introduced to the Wasteland Survival Guide .

“You did not fucking do all of this,” he says, shaking the book in front of Jonathon's face.

“You think not?” he laughs, batting Butch's hand away.

“Are you legitimately fucking insane?” Butch hisses, practically crawls into his lap just to confirm he's actually there and real and not fucking dead from going after mole rats with an experimental stick, or from sneaking into a RobCo factory.

“Moira needed the help!” Jonathon insists, holding his hands up in defense. “And I needed the caps.”

“It's not bad,” Charon says. “Pretty useful for wasteland newcomers,” and he gives Butch a look like he should have maybe read the book quite a while ago.

“You're a madman,” Butch decides and Jonathon doesn't look repentant about it at all. Butch decides when they do get back to Megaton, he's going to have some fucking words with Moira Brown.

Except he doesn't, actually, get the chance, too distracted from the time they step into town by the way everyone reacts to Jonathon. While he got wary looks and no small amount of doubt, Jonathon gets handed a water bottle and stimpack by someone the instant they enter town. He gets free drinks at the bar, and even Walter cracks a damned smile for him.

And it's not like Butch is jealous, because he's honestly not. It just makes him feel weird, like he's not supposed to be standing there, while Jonathon proves he's actually all the radio and everyone says he is, gracious and kind and a little bit sharp, but then again, they all have to be to survive in the wasteland.

Megaton doesn't even seem to mind Fawkes, several people chatting with him when they get there, Charon quieter beside him, and Butch just knows they wouldn't be getting that sort of welcome from anyone if Jonathon hadn't been the one to bring them inside the walls.

That's all fine, that's all something Butch can deal with, but then Jonathon shows him the house he owns. Jonathon's even aggressively chipper toward his neighbor, an old raider named Jericho who seems to be the only person in Megaton who wants to ignore him.

The house itself is also fine, even if it's larger than the room Butch's got in Rivet City. There's a kaleidoscope of different mementos, making it very different from Jonathon and Jame's old apartment in the Vault. James had only had some weird cross stitch of a Bible verse for decoration, but Jonathon's spread color out in every corner he can stuff it.

It's endearing in a way Butch doesn't want to think about.

But in the evening, when Jonathon is down the walkway getting dinner from the food stand across from the deactivated nuclear bomb, Butch snoops.

He can't help it, Jonathon just left him in there.

When Jonathon gets back, Butch is sitting on the edge of his bed, staring blankly at the Tunnel Snake jacket in his hands. He barely looks up enough to register Jonathon leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest before he goes back to looking at the torn leather in his hands.

“You really did a fucking number on this,” he says, uncertain how to really express the feeling in his chest.

“Yeah,” Jonathon says softly.

Butch rests it in his lap so he can trace a finger down the tear that goes right through the stitched on snake, hastily repaired with thread that didn't match. The cuffs in particular had been torn to shreds, part of the collar missing entirely, other hasty repairs obvious across the fabric.

“Why'd you wear it so long?” Butch asks, not yet looking up at him.

“Come on, Butch,” Jonathon whispers.

“You could have, I don't know, put it up, or something,” Butch says.

“I didn't want to,” Jonathon says, shifting forward until Butch can see his feet, from where he's still looking down. “I didn't think I was ever going to see you again. It was all I had of you. It was all I ever though I was gonna have of you again.”

“Didn't treat it very well,” Butch says. “You're not gonna do the same thing to me, are you?”

And Jonathon laughs, quietly, before he moves to sit down beside Butch, and Butch shifts on the bed to allow him beside him. It's a small bed, they'd had to squish together on it the night before, too exhausted after traveling to do anything else.

“I think you can take care of yourself,” Jonathon says, leaning their shoulders together.

“Yeah,” Butch agrees, because he can, more or less.

“And I don't have to hold onto a symbol anymore,” Jonathon continues. “I've got, you know, you now.”

“If you'd told me then,” Butch says, leaning harder onto him. “That you were gonna wear my jacket all around the wasteland like a love lorn idiot, I would have come with you then and there.”

Jonathon tilts his head, pressing his forehead against Butch's hair. “Romantic as that is,” he murmurs. “I'm sorta glad you didn't. But I'm just as glad you're here now.”

“Yeah,” Butch says, still holding onto the jacket before he turns his own head, just pressing their foreheads together.

“Now, come on,” Jonathon says, after a few long breathes. “The food's getting cold.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Butch laughs.

But he doesn't really want to let go of the jacket, laying it down carefully on the bed before walking out of the room after Jonathon, down the stairs to where his fucking robot butler is fussing over the misshapen food containers left on the table.

He doesn't sleep that night, and in the morning he wraps the handkerchief he spent all night stitching around Dogmeat's neck. It thrills the dog as far as he can tell, and Jonathon laughs so hard he almost cries when he sees the same snake Butch had put on the back of every Tunnel Snake jacket in miniature on his dog.

-0-

“Do you want to go back to the Vault?” Jonathon asks.

“Excuse you?” Butch asks, staring at him.

“I mean,” Jonathon shakes his head. “Just to visit. I mean, it's open now, right? You can say hi to your mom.”

The last thing Butch actually wants to do is say hi to his mom, or literally anyone else. But there's shadows in Jonathon's eyes, so he shrugs. “I mean, I guess,” he says, because it's not like Jonathon can just stop by the Vault again, or anything. Amata had made that fucking clear, and Butch still burns with it, that she'd banished the man who saved them, who was doing his best to save the whole fucking wasteland by sheer force of will.

Jonathon isn't allowed back, but for better or worse, Butch is.

He only goes because he figures Jonathon wants him to, and he regrets it the instant the heavy round door starts to hiss and shift, opening as aggravatingly slowly as ever.

On the other side if Officer Gomez, who looks as thrilled to see him as Butch is to be home.

“Oh, back are you?” he asks, hand resting on his security baton and Butch gives him a purposefully sloppy salute.

“Don't worry,” he says, “Just here to say hi to my mom.”

Gomez doesn't look like he believes him at all, but he lets him pass. Butch almost wants to stop, ask how Freddie's doing, but figures he'll find out himself if he can track Freddie down before he leaves.

So he walks back into Vault 101, sunglasses pushed up on top of his hair. He'd forgotten, for all the sky is always so present, and so terrifying in its vastness, that the Vault is comparatively dark, the ceilings claustrophobically low. The lights have an annoying hum that by the time he reaches the main hall have given him the familiar low level headache he'd used to wander around with all the time.

Somehow, he can't quite remember how he'd ever lived here.

“Butch!” and Wally Mack is the first one to see him, everyone else milling around awkwardly turning when he calls out.

Butch wants to be anywhere else, but he puts on a grin and finishes coming down the stairs even as Wally Mack is rushing at him, grabbing him in a hug.

“Hey there, Wally,” Butch says, because he's pretty sure the other boy hasn't hugged him in their entire lives. So he pats his back awkwardly, looks up and sees all the faces of his whole life looking back at him and weirdly, misses Charon.

He didn't even realize he liked Charon all that much, but he bets the ghoul would make this more bearable, somehow.

“How have you been?” Freddie Gomez asks, behind Wally's shoulder.

“Where have you been?” Wally asks.

“Around,” Butch says. “Settled down in a place called Rivet City.”

“Is it nice?” Freddie asks, eyes shining and Butch remembers when he thought these two and Paul were going to be his entire life.

He thinks about Rivet City, creaking away in the riverbed, surrounded by guards, full of jaded raiders and sweet kids and drunk ladies and determined chiefs of security. Not so unlike the Vault in some ways, and yet full of a spark of life he'd never seen here, under the ground.

“Yeah, it ain't bad,” he settles for.

“Are you here to see your mom?” Wally asks. “Or are you sticking around?”

“I'm just stopping by,” Butch says, immediately, not willing to risk anyone getting the wrong idea and trying to convince him to stay.

“Too bad,” Freddie says.

“Say, have you seen Susie out there?” Wally asks.

“Your sister Susie?” Butch asks in surprise.

“Yeah,” Wally nods. “She left a few months after you did. Just wondering where she ended up, is all.”

“No shit,” Butch says, because he remembered telling Jonathon they were all cowards, full of talk with no follow through. Somehow, he hadn't expected Susie Mack to be the one to head up the long walkway and into the sunlight.

“I though maybe she went to find you,” Wally teases, punching him in the arm and Butch laughs weakly, because Susie's crush had gotten worse, after Jonathon left, like she knew somehow her only possible rival in the Vault was gone.

They'd never actually talked about it though, thankfully, because then Butch would have had to tell her it still wasn't ever going to happen.

“I haven't seen her,” he says, instead. “But don't worry, I'll keep an eye out. How are things down here, anyway?”

“Oh, fine,” Wally says, and Butch keeps grinning, all indolent and not at all like the lights are setting his teeth on edge the longer he stands there. “It's weird, a little, now. We get traveling merchants and stuff, and they really like trading with us.”

“Yeah, I imagine they would,” Butch says dryly, because for all its flaws, the Vault just had more stuff than a lot of the rest of the wasteland.

“I heard there was a big fuss, a little bit ago,” Freddie says, his eyes wide. “Like, a battle over water or something.”

“Did you see any of it?” Wally asks and Butch shrugs.

“Not really,” he says, because he'd just seen the outskirts of it, had watched Liberty Prime with the rest of Rivet City, standing on the deck and staring. He'd seen the water change color almost overnight, had sat and waited for three weeks of news of Jonathon.

“Too bad,” Wally sighs.

“So things aren't really that different down here,” Butch says, looking around.

“I don't know,” Freddie says quietly. “It feels different, with the door open.”

Butch bites his tongue and nods, because he feels like he got transported into the past.

“You look different though,” Freddie says, looking at him and it makes Butch shift. “You wore your hair the same way for like, five years.”

And Butch laughs, a little weakly, because pomade is harder to find in the wasteland, and it's just not worth styling his hair as intensely as he did down in the Vault. He's been experimenting with some other styles, still combed back but looser, more into waves than the tight curl he used to wear.

It had thrown Jonathon a bit too, but it made it easier for him to run his fingers through it, and that certainly made it worth it.

“Whatever, dude,” Butch waves it off. “Anyway, I should go see my mom.”

“Are you really leaving so fast?” Wally asks.

“Yeah,” Butch says. “Gotta get home, been gone too long.”

And they both give him a decidedly weird look at that, and Butch feels it too. Because once this had been home, this is where he would have been coming back to if he'd ever been able to leave.

But he's slipping away, with a few more words and a wave, taking the same path he took every day for nineteen years, to the smallest family apartment in the Vault, where his mom almost always was.

And she is, sitting on a chair with a vodka bottle in hand. For a second she just squints at him and Butch wants to be anywhere else in the whole fucking world, maybe even back in that church occupied by super mutants and gore bags.

“Butch, that you?” she asks.

“Yeah, mom,” he says, leaning against the side of the door, watching her without entering the apartment.

“What you doing back here?” she asks, flicking her hand out, like he was some kind of bug she wanted to be gone.

“Just stopping by,” Butch says, looks around the apartment. It's even worse off than he remembers. He knew he'd been doing most of the cleaning, picking up her empty bottles and shoving them in the recycling chute so the Vault could reuse the glass. Mostly they were just sanitized and then filled with more homebrewed vodka, for her to drink herself into an earlier grave with.

“What for?” she asks.

Butch sighs, enters, starts picking up the bottles near the door. “Because you're my mom,” he says, thinks about James Hargrave, back in Rivet City. He's never leaving that kid alone with his mom, he decides. Not fucking ever.

“That didn't seem to matter when you got up and decided to leave,” she says, angry and bitter and Butch has to take a breath, and then another one.

“Okay, mom,” he settles for, takes the bottles down the hallway and shoves them into the same chute he always did. Then he goes back, sits in the chair across from her, and tries to bury the hurt deep enough it can't touch him anymore.

-0-

“Butch,” he hears, after he's left his mom, sleeping like she usually does in the mid afternoon, like life is just too exhausting.

He pauses, considers just walking on. But instead he forces himself to turn around and grin at Amata. “Sorry,” he says, more brazen than he actually feels. “I know you probably aren't thrilled to see me back.”

She doesn't look that different now that she's the Overseer, the same Vault Suit, the same hairstyle, the same look in her eyes. “No, it's fine,” she said. “Just going to sneak out again, without saying hello?”

And Butch can't help the little laugh he lets out at that, remembering all the years between them, the acrimony, the traded barbs, the years when she was cruel and the years where he was worse. Sometimes now, he thinks about how stupid it all was. “You wanted me too, babe?”

“Why not?” she asks. “We've known each other our whole lives.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sure. Well, hi, and bye.”

“Butch,” she calls as he turns, like he's really intending just to leave. “I know—I know it's been a while—”

“What?” Butch asks, looking back at her.

“It's just,” and she shifts. “I know it's a reach, okay, but,” and she bites her lip. “Have you seen Jonathon, at all, since you got out there?”

And for a second all Butch can do is stare at her.

All he can do is remember all the years he hated her, because she was Jonathon's best friend, the one he was sure Jonathon would grow up and marry. It'd seemed picture book perfect, nerdy Jonathon with his loving father and easy smile, and the serious but sharp daughter of the Overseer. They were a match made in Vault Heaven, destined to rule the rest of them when her father stepped down.

But then she did become Overseer, took over the Vault when her father had gotten too lost in his head, too paranoid and afraid, and she'd banished Jonathon a second time, asking him to never ever come back. And instead of their picture book ending, he is the one who crammed himself into Jonathon's tiny bed, the one who he took across the whole Capital Wasteland just to see a fucking tree, the one who kissed him under the Milky Way and held him.

He is the one who's going to walk out of here, in a few minutes, out under the endless sky, where he knows Jonathon waits for him. When he'd walked up to the door, he'd left Jonathon playing with Dogmeat, still wearing his new Tunnel Snake handkerchief. He figures they're still out there, in the sunlight, waiting for him to come back.

“Do I see Jonathon,” he repeats, blankly, still trying to process the fact the world seems to have moved under him, a little.

“Yeah,” she says. “I just. I want to know. If he's doing okay, now.”

“Yeah,” Butch says, because suddenly it feels easier. “Yeah, he's doing fine.”

Her eyes light up. “So you do see him?”

“Yeah,” Butch says, tries not to laugh now. “Yeah, I see him, you know, around. Wasteland's a big place, unless you don't want it to be.”

And she squints at him, a little then. “You'll tell him, you'll tell him hello from me, won't you?”

“Sure, if you want,” Butch says.

“I miss him,” she says quietly. “I just—I did—”

“You don't have to fucking explain yourself to me, Amata,” Butch says. “I'll tell him you said hi, next time I see him, alright? That you're doing fine as Overseer, that everything is just fine.”

She swallows, nods. “It's not bad to say hi to you either, Butch.”

And he thinks again, of all the stupid, shitty fights they had as kids. At some point, he'd started most of them, but well, he can admit now it was petty and stupid of him.

Because he turns, walks away from her and his mom with her bottles, and even Wally and Freddie, who seem frozen in a time he doesn't want to go back to. By the time he's through the Vault door he stops walking and starts running, out of the Vault, out of the ground, and into the vast sky.

He find Jonathon sitting with his head tipped back, eyes closed, on the same rock Butch had sat at, some time ago. Dogmeat lays on the ground beside him, head perking up when Butch comes out, tail wagging.

“Butch,” Jonathon says, face warming with a smile. “How'd it go?”

“Fine,” he dismisses. “Amata says hi.”

There's a shadow that passes across Jonathon's face, and he swallows. “Did you tell her—”

“I just say I see you sometimes,” Butch says. “Ain't her business.”

“Really?” Jonathon asks, amused, like he figured Butch would have bragged.

“Really,” he confirms. “Besides, that place is still a fucking tomb,” and he steps forward, a little out of breath from his run down the tunnel. Jonathon stands, the sun so bright behind him. “I don't give a shit about the past down there.”

“Is that so?” Jonathon asks, and its clear he sorta of still does, still cares a little about the people who cast him out for being too good or some shit.

“What I care about,” Butch says. “Is making a future, out here, with you,” and when Jonathon starts to smile again, Butch falls forward, into the circle of his arms, and holds on under the endless sky.

"I'm gonna make you a new Tunnel Snake jacket," Butch promises and Jonathon laughs into his mouth, hands warm on his neck.