the pier.

[doubletap]

Let him just say it now--the kid had a lot of problems.

I mean, not really a surprise or anything--Alex had found him dried out in a desert, for crying out loud--but god damn.

Let’s recap.

Alex Seattle Geer found himself in love with a Vault brat from the Capital Wasteland with a daddy complex the size of Hoover Dam. Said kid loves him back--sometimes. Said kid would probably rather put another bullet between Alex’s eyes rather than spend time with him, and didn’t this just go to show it. Neil leaves to check up a rumor, said he’d be back shortly--shortly became two days and by then Dogmeat was back, meaning Neil took off somewhere he was worried the dog would get hurt at. Two days turn into two weeks and counting, and by then, Alex has tracked Neil’s steps, found the fucking pier, the fucking tool of a woman looking for her child, and all of the pieces are too easily placed.

Neil left for Point Lookout. And Alex, ED-E, and Dogmeat are left hanging in the wind.

Alex has been fucking camping on the dirty sand and shit next to that pier, waiting for that stupid kid to come back on that stupid ferry the woman told him about. Tobar the fucking Ferryman, and Alex feels like shooting the asshole just for submitting to Neil’s request. Probably not the guy’s fault, but-- Hell. Yeah. He didn’t traipse all over the goddamn country just to be left in the dust. Is the kid even coming back? Who fucking knows.

Alex will just.

Wait here.

Until Neil comes back.

Yeah, that’s not pathetic at all.

Comments

[goodfight]

A voice cuts through his sleep like a knife. A padded surface sits beneath him. Both are familiar but not. Familiar but--

Neil inhales sharply. His dark eyes snap open to bright, stinging lights, and he exhales on a cry. Shuts his eye tight to keep out the glare, pulling the skin on his forehead and subsequently his poorly stitched and made incision.

It is a poor decision.

"Shit! Ow, fuck!"

[doubletap]

Alex's hand tightens on Neil's shoulder, powerlessness touching him and moving away. "Sorry, kid, but I gotta ask you some questions. Not that much really. You just need to be awake right now."

He reaches with his other hand--his fingertips barely touch Neil's jaw. "Think you can try to focus on me for a sec?"

[goodfight]

"Al...ex?" Neil loosens his face muscles somewhat at the recognition and contact, tension slowly dissipating as the explanation progressed. The fog of sleep still lurks behind his eyes, behind that god awful pain. It threatens to pull him under, but somehow, he manages to stay above it all.

The young man slowly opens his eyes to look at Alex.

[doubletap]

Neil opens his eyes, focuses on him, and Alex smiles--tired, old. "What, you don't sleep for two weeks, now you won't wake up? We gotta have a talk, babe."

The poor kid. Alex is fucking glad Neil killed the fucker, because otherwise Alex would find it hard to focus right now. "I want you to stay where you are, but we got a couple of options at the moment."

[goodfight]

It's difficult to exercise comprehension through that fog, with that tired face staring back at him. Neil blinks, going through the words a second time. Alex is wanting to present choices, and choices for people like them are chems to an addict.

"What...options?" he croaks out.

[doubletap]

Alex gives in and runs his thumb over Neil's cheek, then withdraws his hand, leaving the other firmly on Neil's shoulder. "It's simple, kid. You have to stay still.

"I can either try my hardest to drug you into oblivion so you don't move, and maybe you don't wake up after." Neil's choice, Alex reminds himself. The kid chooses. "Or you stay awake through all of it, only on Med-X. You keep yourself still and you stay awake and talking to me. That way I know you're still kicking through it."

[goodfight]

Affection proves doubly effective here as Neil shivers at the gesture, his nerves humming at one pleasant aspect in a sea of misery. It moves through him before eventually passing, leaving behind a lack and the recent memory of dreams. Of punga-ridden hallucinations. Alex asks if Neil would like to be put under or stay awake, and Neil thinks that if the other man just knew about the nature of his sleep as of late that he wouldn't ask such an obvious question.

Only, there is something missing. "Kicking through what?" questions Neil.

[doubletap]

Neil shivers, and as much as Alex would like to attribute it to himself, the reaction is to the infection--the pain--the fever that's likely going to start building. Worry crosses over his eyes, and Alex reaches--touches the air above Neil's forehead. "I have to redo this," he says without prelude.

"It's not going to be fun."

[goodfight]

The stitches and likely the destruction held within. Alex would redo what that ferryman did, and Neil--

He trembles as his countenance practically radiates the very opposite of want. "Don't put me under," is the answer, rushed and edging toward panic. "I'll stay awake." Stay put and follow instructions, even if it would require the entirety of his efforts. It's better than another fucked up dream, dictating things that are better left behind in the murky swamp.

[doubletap]

Sound, sight, the air around Neil's body--everything gives off the essence of fear. Panic. A pure reaction, nothing more, and Alex has never seen the like from Neil Park. Alex's entire body shifts from tension to something looser. He touches the side of Neil's face opposite from his wound, touches the kid's cheek, and leans to kiss him extraordinarily gently. "Hey," he says. "It's okay. I won't let anything happen you don't want."

Alex will keep him awake himself, if Neil is so adverse to the idea. "I got you. I'll fix this. Trust me."

[goodfight]

Contact, pain, a soft kiss-- They do not matter so much as that promise, that protection from that which lurks behind the dredges of sleep. Neil calms, in spite of his wide and bloodshot eyes.

"What you do need from me?" he questions, voice subdued.

[doubletap]

Neil quiets, and for that, Alex is grateful. He straightens, pulling his hand away. "Right now, you need to stay awake on your own for a little bit. I need to make this place a bit more secure before we start. You also need to get a little bit of food in you--and water, to wash out some of the alcohol, or your blood's going to be too thin for me to work with."

He moves as he talks, crossing to his own pack and coming up with an MRE. On the way back, he snags two of the water bottles he filled. "I know it's not shit you like, but we're just going for nutrition here, okay?"

[goodfight]

Food and water, right. His stomach threatens to rebel at mention of both, but it is as Alex says. His blood's too thin; it will flow out faster than is healthy.

Without wanting, out of both frustration and exhaustion, Neil bursts into tears. Nothing else about him changes. "Yeah," he says evenly. "Okay."

[doubletap]

Alex finishes walking over, then puts the bottles and packet on the gurney next to Neil, before crouching down. Head height with the table he watches Neil without judgment.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

[goodfight]

The essentials to this upcoming operation are within reach, but it is Alex that begs for his attention. Neil watches the older man for a long minute, the tears obscuring the details on Alex's face, eyelids fluttering in an attempt for clarity.

Finally, he exhales in a sigh. "It's fine." No, it's not. "I mean, I'll be fine. Eventually."

[doubletap]

Alex, despite everything, offers Neil a grin. He stands, hands on his thighs to push up. "Kid, that was never in question. You pull through anything. Don't you remember passing out in the desert? When those raiders in Kansas got that lucky shot in your gut? There's not a doubt you'll be fine."

But you're not now.

Nothing of Alex shows that--he only expands a casual confidence in the simplicity of the statements made. They're true, of course. But this is something different. It's not just Neil's body in question.

[goodfight]

He blinks, his mind mulling over the painted past. Without the feeling behind the motion, Neil returns Alex's expression with a small smile of his own. "That bullet barely missed my liver," is the response. "Still don't know how I survived that."

Still don't know why he had to continue. Why he had to get on that damn ferry. He grimaces, pain pressing into his skull like needles.

[doubletap]

Alex drops the smile, keeps the quiet presence. "Because you survive," he says. "You always do. You'll survive this, too," he says, meaning more than the head injury.

He turns to head to the door. "Just focus on keeping some food down for now. Drink all the water."

[goodfight]

Survive. "I do, don't I?" Live through to another day, to start another day, to go through another cycle. He's been at this for less than five years, acclimated to the lifestyle by the way of sheer willpower, and Neil--

(Why do we do anything?)

His head screams like someone ripped it open with a Ripper, and Alex is telling him to focus. Quietly, his expression still contorted, he reaches for a bottle.

[doubletap]

He leaves him to it. Walks out the door like it's nothing, like it's just another day, and around the corner and down the hall, Alex gasps, hand to his chest, and leans hard against the wall. His head tilts back to press against the wall, and he squeezes his eyes shut, keeps any tears that were threatening deep inside. "Goddamnit," he whispers. Just. Goddamnit.

ED-E is watching over Neil, and Dogmeat has been staring at Neil since he started talking, and Alex is breathing in an abandoned hallway and remembering what it means to be calm.

[goodfight]

It's hell opening that bottle, but he manages. Takes the water in slow, agonizing swallows as his eyes attempt to focus on the scenery and the remaining occupants. ED-E is closest with Dogmeat toward a corner. Neil recognizes medical equipment as well as an odd familiarity that he just cannot shake.

When he tips the bottle back one more time, recognition strikes and strikes hard, and Neil almost chokes on his water. He coughs instead, grimacing again at the resulting pain in his head. At the conclusion he makes.

This is the place he was born in. The same room his mother died in.

(Skeleton. Birthday hat. "If my kid looked like that, I'd abandon it, too.")

Quietly, with Alex out of the room, Neil starts sobbing.

[doubletap]

He takes a moment. Hopes the kid is eating. Then pushes off the wall and heads to do what he planned to do from the start. Hopefully the assholes upstairs won't come down at all of the noise.

The white couch is pushed up the stairs, angled across the door. The filing drawers that were next to it are shoved to the foot of the stairs, letting people see over it, but blocking the pathway. Alex doesn't really believe it will stop anyone who wants to come down here, especially if they have power armor and are lacking dicks, but it's not for the blocking that he does it. It's for the sound. He doesn't want to be interrupted, and the sound of the couch falling down the stairs or the cabinet slamming against the floor will give Alex enough time to finish whatever step he is doing and pick up his gun.

As a last thought, he pulls the desk and the smaller cabinet into the start of the hall, angling them against each other that it wouldn't be easy to climb over them. Alex looks over his work, mouth a thin, displeased line, but eventually he nods.

In the room Neil is in, the kids have shifted. Dogmeat has moved to sit next to the gurney, looking up at Neil with old eyes, and ED-E has moved even closer as well, beeping quietly in concern. He is not going to call for Alex, but he doesn't know what Alex's friend needs.

Alex comes back in a singular motion, swinging the door around behind him, leaving it open enough to hear anything that happens out there--

But what he hears instead is the sound of quiet sobbing. Alex rotates on his heels back to look at Neil, face a wary mask. The kids are hovering, and Neil hasn't even opened the MRE packet. He makes a motion with his hand to ED-E, and hesitantly, the eyebot backs off a bit. "Neil."

[goodfight]

God, how long has it been since he last cried? Years? Was that when Christine Kendall kicked him in the balls with such force that Dad had to treat him on the classroom floor? What a ridiculous memory, a stark contrast to the here and now.

Neil Park sobs into his water bottle, causing eyebot and dog to hover near in concern. There are noises outside, something that might cause one to wonder, but Neil only wipes his eyes with the back of a hand.

It is his name, however, that forces a hard stop. Noticing the man at the door, Neil swallows the noise and coughs harshly. Closes his eyes at his skull threatening to burst.

"Sorry," he manages between breaths. "I'm trying." To eat, to drink. To fucking survive.

[doubletap]

At that moment, in this solitary second, Alex doesn't know what to do for Neil. Alex is woefully unprepared for this--what do you say to your young lover when his head has been ripped apart by a sociopath?-- No, honestly. Alex has never been close enough to a person to watch them cry and want to comfort them. He doesn't know how. And he doesn't even know if comfort is something Neil would want--or accept.

But he is here. And that is all Alex can offer.

He crosses the room, boots heavy against the floor, and he reaches--touches Neil's arm and keeps his hand there. "Take all the time you need. A few more minutes won't make a difference."

The impatience he had been holding has vanished. The anxiety that causes him to need to move shifting to something thicker, heavier--a steady fear instead, tempered only by the lack of distance between them.

[goodfight]

He inhales sharply at the proximity, the pressure on his arm. Alex exercises patience, and Neil wishes not to test it. Not to mess things up more somehow. Opening his eyes, he reaches for the MRE packet. His fingers slip multiple times trying to fiddle with the opening, and Alex takes the packaging from him, eventually handing back an opened MRE.

Neil manages to start eating, taking pains not to look at Alex directly. Each morsel of food proves blander than their irradiated, pre-packaged brethren, but it is the blandness that stops Neil from throwing it all back up. While chewing, he glances down at Dogmeat and offers a weak smile, attempting to reassure the mutt.