the story in which Alex Seattle Geer is right for hating enclosed spaces,

[doubletap]

and Neil Park is blamed for his knowledge of vaults.

---

Terminal Entries:

1st Floor, Vault Entry-Room Computer:
- Data Entry 1: Year 20XX, Month XX; There's no escape.
- Holotape Entry 1: Y#4@ SDhig^8705 H98 [data corrupted]; This is hell and I want out of it.

1st Floor, Cafeteria Luncheon:
- Holotape Entry 2: Private Recording; I've had better?

1st Floor, Cafeteria Supply Room:
- Inventory List: Inventory List; A list of food....
- Data Entry 2: Shift Notes; Maybe I should tear the walls down.

1st Floor, Broken Cave:
- Data Entry 3: Preparations; Everything's fine.
- Data Entry 4: Near the End; I'll tell you the truth, but I won't give up my soul.
- Data Entry 5: Finally, the End is at Hand.; This is far enough.

1st Floor, Office:
- Data Entry 6: Vault-Wide Public Service Announcement; Get back to work everyone.
- Data Entry 7: Locked Administrative Reply; You're reaching for straws.

1st Floor, Administrative Secretary's Office:
- Data Entry 8: Drama Hoes; It is sort of funny that people aren't able to lie, though.
- Holotape Entry 3: Bill Self-Log; Byron's access still works everywhere.

Comments

[goodfight]

[It strikes him, then. And although it may ruin the proximity between them, Neil releases and not withholds.

Even when he would rather keep the potential hurt from Alex.]

Courier Six.

[The name people call him--that white-haired man with his Securitron army. It's the first time Neil has uttered the title in full to the rightly identified man.]

Hero of the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. White hair, dark hair. Friend, foe, traitor, or messiah. They don't define you either.

[doubletap]

[ Neil speaks and Alex jolts to hear the title from his lips. The simple first is somehow worse than the rest, even with everything. Courier Six. The only thing Ulysses would call him. The label Benny referenced and House called to. What started all of this.

Neil thinks the words would ruin the proximity between them and he's almost right. Alex has to fight the urge to back, to move away, and it probably shows in the tension in his shoulders and arms, the stillness of his form. He takes in what Neil says and differentiates between an attack and the person he loves trying to help him.

Because that's what this is. Neil reaching out.

He shifts his weight to his left, so he can reach up with his right hand and press it against Neil's chest. ]

...What was it....

[ And he's trying, even if his voice is strained. ]

..."You love me too much"?

[goodfight]

[Expectation crumbles away. It is only Alex and Neil in this broken down projection room.

Neil closes his eyes, absorbing the touch, the echo, and the weight of another's hand pressing down.]

Don't think it will ever be enough. Loving you.

[Wanting you more than he can rightfully bear.]

[doubletap]

[ He gives a sad smile to that, even as Neil closes his eyes. ]

Am I not enough for you, then?

[goodfight]

That's not it.

[There is nothing about sufficiency here. Nothing about a lack. Neil opens his eyes to a sad, smiling Alex.]

Just saying there isn't such a thing as loving you 'too much,' Alex. You deserve all of my love.

[A pause as he wrinkles his nose.]

That is as cornball as it gets, wow.

[doubletap]

[ There's a beat in which what he's never said peaks and crests... And then is buried under a more important truth to him. Because Neil will always be more important than himself.

He curls his fingers against Neil's chest, rubbing his knuckles against him lightly. ]

You know... You're much better at accepting your own emotions when it's a precursor to sex.

[goodfight]

[Of course, he's more open to-- Wait, what?

Neil blinks, making sense and no sense of what is being referenced. Finally, he just gives up.]

That's 'cause tricky old Mr. Pituitary Gland is releasing endorphins straight into the normally calm and collected Mr. Brain, making me oh so happy to accept all the things.

[He says, deadpan.]

[doubletap]

Yeah, that's what my brain said, too.

[ He smiles self-deprecatingly and continues. ]

You need to just allow yourself what you feel.

[ Says the hypocrite. ]

[goodfight]

...Right.

[That story again--something about his brain being scooped out and Alex having a conversation with it. Neil was hard-pressed to believe it then, and he's hard-pressed to believe it now.

He rolls his eyes at both declarations.]

Speak for yourself.

[doubletap]

Hey, I've come to terms.

[ He smiles again, means to go on-- Instead, he cuts himself off. ]

With my own feelings, that is. Yours is a whole 'nother thing. Saying there's no loving me too much? Fuck if that isn't hard to take in.

[goodfight]

[He stills. He doesn't smile back.]

It is hard to accept.

[Hard to swallow down, what with Neil's general aversion to connections.]

Even knowing I can't lie. I've always been two minded about things, and maybe I got used to that. Still.

[And yet.]

Maybe it's the vault. Maybe it's actually me, but I'm pretty solid on how I feel about you.

[Not so much on the outcome of that love.]

[doubletap]

Tell me.

[ He says in the way of a request, and can't remember if they've touched on this before. ]

When did it change? When did it get to the point that you love me that much?

[goodfight]

[Once upon a time, Neil would have answered with Novac. In that rundown motel, he confessed he loved someone, and from that moment, he became a changed man. He thinks to repeat that sentiment, that time.

But the truth isn't so simple as that.

His heart stutters. The weight on his chest suddenly feels like it could crush him.]

When I finally realized the past is dead.

[doubletap]

[ Under his knuckles, Neil's heart shifts in its beats. And in the jumble of mussed chairs, Alex shifts to lay to the side, curling around Neil like he had in a downtrodden house on the border of Illinois. He holds him.

Wonders where to go. Right here. ]

For me, it was when I realized I was scared to death of you dying. More than anything I could remember.

[goodfight]

[Alex lays beside him, arms and legs adjusting to hold him, and Neil shivers as if cold.]

It doesn't seem right.

[He cannot help murmuring.]

Supposed to fall in love over happy things. Not death.

[Not complete and utter loss, real or a possibility.]

[doubletap]

I don't think it'd be real if it were like that.

[ He muses. Wonders at himself speaking of love. He would never have thought it. ]

How can you know how deeply someone is part of you if life is just joy?

[goodfight]

How can you know of hope if life is just death?

[Neil swallows, his throat thick with something he can't name.]

We've got some good things, don't we? It can't be all bad.

[doubletap]

[ Neil is upset over something Alex might not be able to understand, but he--

He reaches. Touches Neil's face. ]

I want to understand why you're upset. Tell me?

[goodfight]

[The hand at his face burns. Neil wants to tell Alex to forget it, dismiss everything as the ramblings of a mind off its rocker, but he can't.

He can only answer.]

Things fall apart in the new world.

[New. Old. Terms common in the West, defining past and present. Possibly shaping the future.]

People love and people leave. I shouldn't feel for you this much when that's the way things are. That's asking for trouble. Begging for it.

[doubletap]

Except you're you.

[ He says, and he finds himself not speaking in the way of convincing, but just of telling the goddamn truth. ]

And I'm me. We're two people far too different from the norm. Too strong, too fast, too clever, too smart. Too goddamn successful, and too many fucking failures. Before you, there was no one I could really speak to. Really communicate with. No one to understand my point of view. I'm not going to let go of that. And hell if I'm going to let any wasteland take that from me. Or take me from you.

[goodfight]

[Except Neil Park is a lonely little boy. Except Alex Seattle Geer has something broken inside him. Except they're going 'round and 'round, and it hurts to hear how different they are from other people. Even as it sings sweet nothings in his head.

Alex will not let him go, and Neil--]

You think I'd want to let you go? I said before--

[After he smashed his fist into the wall.]

--you're going to make me never want to leave you. But I don't know... I don't know where we're going anymore. I don't know anything. Feel like I'm walking blind right now. In circles, maybe.

[doubletap]

[ God, it's so fucking simple. So simple that it hurts and he loves the shit out of it. Out of Neil. He hefts himself up, props himself on an elbow--the hand touching Neil moving to grab his shoulder.

His eyes are bright, seemingly more blue than pale. ]

West. We are always going fucking west. We chase the damn sun as it goes down and we find out everything it left behind. We are seeing your fucking ocean and we are going to Frisco and when I show you everything you had better damn well hold to never leaving me, because there is a shit ton of great stuff out there, and I want you to see what I love.

[ ...Remember? ]

I want you to see what else there is to see. It's not a fucking circle. It's a path to a destination. The only thing that matters. The experience. The finding and the knowing. The person right next to you as you walk.

[ It's a lot, not the most he's said, but possibly one of the most revealing. His cheeks start to flare, slightly embarrassed, but he refuses to look away, to try to take back his words. It may not be the most... realistic thoughts, given the way things are, but they are his, and Alex-- ]

...I'm who I am, all right? Truth or not, bullet to the head or no. I'm myself, and the person who I am loves this damn crazy kid from Vault 101 in the east, and I ain't never going to let go. You either. We're walking. We're following the sun to the sea.

[goodfight]

[Alex grabs his shoulder and looks him in the eye, and Neil can only see the color, the blue overtaking all else.]

"By the time we get there, this will just be a memory."

[It's a repeat. An echo. It was spoken in the basement of the Jefferson Memorial as ED-E filed the jagged edges of the hole in his skull with a fine laser.]

Isn't that what you told me? "This is nothing but a moment." And I--

[Another echo screaming inside his skull.]

--want to see the sun set on those shores. With you. But you have to show me where to go.

[Before Neil loses himself along the way.]

[doubletap]

[ Neil speaks of that time, that place, and what happened, and he calls to the things that Alex said-- The first things he said, utterly his and only for Neil. Alex's eyes soften, his grip holding instead of grasping, and instead of smiling, he nods once. ]

I don't mind being your navigator, kid. You're my sun and air, after all.

[ But still. Still. It pushes. Reaches for him, those words. ]

...Is it now?

Nothing but a memory?

[ A moment. A singular bad step in time. ]

[goodfight]

And now yours. Entirely.

[Given in bittersweet tones. Neil blinks away the damn tears, wishing he himself was an adequate offering. But Alex raises a question. The part of Neil's skull that's a fraction softer than the rest aches in its utterance.

But still. Still.]

A no good, fucked up, nightmare-inducing memory. But a memory.

[More ghost than flesh.]