Work Text:
For the young Butch DeLoria, some days in Vault 101 were easier than others. On weekdays, the early mornings were frequently the most peaceful; before the artificial sunlight spread sickly fluorescence in the cold metal halls, before the corridors flooded with vault residents rushing to fit to their assigned schedules like worker bees in an uncaring hive, before his mother could be roused from her drunken stupor
Other days were not quite so peaceful. The weekends were often spent with a menagerie of friends and acquaintances as he whittled away the hours he could to get away from what he always knew would be greeting him upon his return; a blacked-out caricature of his parent, surrounded by the empty bottles of the afternoon’s misadventures, unable to acknowledge him or show him any affection the way a parent should.
It was upon his return to his sleeping quarters on one of these days when he ran into the vault doctor’s kid and the Overseer’s daughter in the corridors deep in conversation; over what topic he didn’t know, nor did he care.
What was far more important was the fact that they were standing in his way.
“Move,” he boomed, pushing past them. With his shoulder, he struck the taller one, shoving her into a metal wall.
“Watch it,” the doctor’s daughter growled, fists clenched at her side.
From behind her came the smaller voice of the other girl as she placed her hands on her friend’s shoulder. “Come on, Angel, it isn’t worth it.”
“Come on, Amata,” Angel echoed, “It will be if I have anything to say about it.”
Butch scoffed; a fleeting sound in the smothering din of the whirring cogs and grinding gears in the vault walls that echoed like a rebellious sibilant. “Whatever.”
Oh, how he hated those two. Amata and Angel. The two most irritating classmates this side of the vault doors. The two half-orphans raised in the walls like bugs in a flytrap. How little respect they gave him and his gang.
Sure, the Tunnel Snakes might not be much yet, but they would be in time.
He pushed past them once again as Angel muttered an obscenity.
The confrontation still buzzed in the back of his mind and bubbled in his chest as he made his way to his and his mothers’ quarters. There was so little in his control - really, what could he control in his life as a fourteen year old in a vault like this one? - but he should have been able to intimidate them enough into silence.
He had always managed it in the past. Vaguely, he recalled an instant in the vault’s classroom where, upon the discovery that Amata was in his seat and Angel had taken the spot of Wally’s, the two took turns throwing their stationery across the room until Amata burst into tears and the pair moved out of their way.
Sure, there weren’t actually any ‘assigned seats’, but everyone knew those seats belonged to the Tunnel Snakes.
Still grumbling, he slammed his fist against the button to open the door to his living quarters with far greater force than necessary, and the mechanism groaned angrily in reply.
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered under his breath, “save your complaints for the precious Overseer.”
Like a nighthawk stalking its prey, he moved silently through the apartment, making his way through the quiet and the dark, gingerly stepping over strewn pieces of trash and the occasional pile of laundry.
At last, he reached his mothers’ room, and he hoped against hope that this evening would not echo the ones before it. In his mind’s eye, he envisioned his mother curled up in bed, reading a preserved pre-war book by soft lamplight.
He knew that was not what was waiting for him on the other side of the door.
With a grunt, he pushed it open, releasing a wisp of stale air and the stench of something akin to ethanol that burned in his nostrils.
“Ma?” he whispered into the dark.
He waited a moment before venturing in any further, stepping over a precariously-placed bottle on the carpet.
He found her still and silent, lying in her bed. The pillows were askew at the head and she blinked wearily at him, blankets twisted around her like an insect caught in a spider's webbing.
“I'm gonna go to bed,” he whispered. “It’s been a long day.”
“I can’t think,” she mumbled, feebly, eyes unfocused. “I can’t—I can’t think. Come here, boy.”
With a sigh, he sat down on the end of the bed, eyes drifting back to the door. His mother’s hand moved restlessly around the material of her comforter before resting on his knee.
“You okay, ma?”
In response, her eyes slammed shut and she groaned low.
“I wish y’ didn’t see me like this, Butch. Y’ a good boy. Y’ don’t deserve this,” she slurred against the mattress, her chest heaving erratically with each shallow breath she struggled to take in. The pungent, stale smell of vodka seemed to permeate her skin and saturate the sheets, enveloping the room in its aroma.
“I- I love you, Butch,” she mumbled, turning away from him. “Y- you know that?”
Tears pricked his eyes and he fought himself to keep them down, down, draining them back to the depths of his tumultuous mind. His chest burned with the unshed sobs he swallowed as he bade his mother farewell, closing the door behind him.
It wasn’t fair. Amata and Angel’s parents were so unlike his own. He deserved that kind of kinship, longed for it in the night’s lonely stretches where the vault’s quiet murmuring was his only companion.
At least, in the dark, he could pretend it wasn’t like this.
“I love you too, ma,” he replied, closing the door behind him.