Alternative Methods.

[doubletap]

Has sex become repetitious? Feeling sore in certain areas? Well, good news! Your boyfriend has sent you on a quest to find different ways of having fun gay sex. Yay!

Find the following people and seek out their knowledge:

• Arcade Israel Gannon (=D)
  
• Jimmy (Westside)
  
• Old Ben (Freeside)
  
• Doctor Alex Richards (Novac)
  
• Ignacio Rivas (Helios One)

Good luck, Wanderer!

Comments

[goodfight]

So in that week Neil ran around with Arcade, Alex had gone to Hidden Valley. Neil wonders why he couldn't think to stand by. Why he didn't follow his person to that place, even as the answer's staring at him in the face.

Alex would not have went if Neil had been around.

"...Wouldn't call you irresponsible. That takes time to finish." To face adequately.

[doubletap]

He looks over Neil's face, to watch the pock marked ceiling instead. "It's heavy," he murmurs.

The weight of it.

"...Think I thought it'd lessen when I was done. It didn't. Not at all."

[goodfight]

Neil watches. Only ever watches.

"...It's heavy," he quietly agrees.

[doubletap]

He glances back to Neil and attempts a smile. Reaches an arm out to point at a medium sized cloth bag. "Each and every one accounted for."

Neil probably remembers. Alex's almost neurotic task at finding all of the holotags. The reference now only reminds him of that time. And that time in the Capital as well.

"...I had wanted to... give them to Veronica, I think. But I don't know if I could ever tell her what I did. So I killed your family, but brought you their jewelry?"

He swallows, once. "...I really don't know if I can tell her."

[goodfight]

His eyes grudgingly leave the sight of Alex to look over at the aforementioned bag. It is likely filled to the brim with holotags, each listing the names of those dead and gone. Neil, too, doesn't know how you would tell someone that kind of news.

However. "Eventually, she'll know." No matter the circumstances, no matter the reasoning, no matter who or what was or wasn't watching, it tends to come back. Tends to creep up at the most unexpected time. "I guess it's a matter of if you want her to find out from you."

[doubletap]

It's an obvious truth. Nothing is ever truly hidden, and yet--

Again, he swallows, looks to the ceiling then brings his gaze back down to Neil. "I keep collecting those holotags," he says, trying for humor and falling entirely short. "Here, in the east. I keep trying to keep the people that I destroy. How stupid is that."

[goodfight]

"Not stupid."

For the same reason Alex finds the task to be heavy. "You know the weight. You keep them to remember," Neil explains, eyes still fixed on the bag. "It's stupid to forget. To willingly push away what you caused."

[doubletap]

Alex winces at the last. Closes his eyes entirely, body stiff. "I've caused a lot of ruin. Lot of destruction. Starting to think..."

That he's done nothing good at all.

He thinks to say something, to lessen it or joke, but he just leaves it there, hanging, his eyes still closed.

[goodfight]

Neil falls to silence. He does not give simplistic retorts nor does he offer consolation. There is no point in denial or comfort; one cannot get by on such things, not in the wasteland.

But there is the truth. The simple fact of things. Neil looks over at Alex, expression unfathomable. The words rolling around in his mind are not easy to say.

"You saved me." A pause. "Three others have said the same. Ruin comes with the territory--" With the wastes. "--but that isn't everything about you.""

[doubletap]

Alex blinks open his eyes. "Did I though? Really?"

Save you.

[goodfight]

Neil does not smile. He does not shift. He stays only perfectly still.

"Without you," he gives, "I would have gone to the Pacific and drowned."

[doubletap]

He freezes.

Alex knew this. It's not something new. It was obvious, at the time and after, obvious that Neil's intention was to walk into the sea. So he knew this. Of course he did. But he has never heard Neil voice it.

It's pure reaction, and where another would reach in anger, would force his fear and rage onto the other in a passionate kiss-- When Alex reaches, it is soft. It doesn't lack strength or assurity, but it is soft, caring, and epitomizes care. Alex reaches, pulls Neil to kiss him, and doesn't make it anything more than it is.

I love you.
I'm sorry.
I'm so glad that you're here.

[goodfight]

It isn't a truth he meant to give away. Not in this life, at least. The sea to the West existed as an end goal; it was his River Ouse, his ticket out, and even as he despises the easy path, he couldn't stop. He couldn't cease those steps toward the edge of the known world.

Until the desert. Until Alex.

It is kindness, what Alex offers. Love. Compassion. All the pieces Neil has lacked in all twenty-five years of his life. He stays against the other man, eyes closing, drinking everything in.

[doubletap]

When Alex moves it to progress, it isn't as it was headed before. It wasn't sex of passion, of intensity. Neither was it for love's own sake.

It's something more intent, something closer to the times they had in Vault 7: Something aching and slow, love-making more than anything else.

Something to reach into their broken pieces and pull them together, into each other. To make an attempt to heal.