If there was one thing Butch prided himself on, it was that he never tried to bullshit himself. Sure, he'd bullshit everyone else, strutting around the vault like he was such a hotshot, makin' it with all the girls and keepin' all the boys in line. But never to himself. All anyone else gave him was shit anyway, he didn't need it from himself too.
No one knew better than Butch that he was a coward and an asshole. And how he was too much of a coward and an asshole to stop being one.
He'd been too much of a coward to stop being a dick and bullying the girls. He'd been asshole enough to keep doing it to the girl he'd been in love with since she broke his nose on her tenth birthday.
Ah, Cat. Doctor's brat, love of his life, bane of his existence. He'd watched as she waltzed the metal hallways, somehow managing through sheer force of personality to make the cold grey seem warm. People called him the poster boy for teenage rebellion; they were wrong. Little Cat was the true rebel, the true queen of these tunnels. She moved to her own beat, bent to no one's will. She was judge, jury, and executioner of her own moral code, as stubborn as the vault itself. She took all that the Tunnel Snakes dished out and more because it suited her, and Butch knew she'd been the one in control of every single altercation. She was glorious and he was hopelessly infatuated.
She'd broken his nose, and it was like an epiphany. This girl, this little nobody whom he hadn't even looked at twice the day before, suddenly became somebody to him. Every cell in his body had seemed to come alive, every atom rising to her unspoken challenge. He'd wanted her as much as a ten-year-old could want anything, and had offered to let her join the Tunnel Snakes.
She'd looked him in the eye and said no thanks.
He'd always known he was an angry child. That was usually the best thing anyone, including ma, had to say about him. At the moment of her rejection though, a fury he'd never felt before had swept through him, so strong that he'd been stunned into silence. When he didn't say anything, she'd turned and left. He'd never know what happened in the next few minutes, but when he'd calmed down enough to be cognizant he found himself standing in a toilet stall, knuckles split and wall bloodied, trembling with the last vestiges of rage and hurt.
He spent the next few years in a whirlwind of hate and adoration. He'd go out of his way to pick on her or, in her absence, Little Miss Perfect Amara. Sometimes she'd fight back. Other times she'd stand there and take his shit with that knowing glint in her eye. Sometimes, for reasons he couldn't fathom, she'd take his side, and for a few glorious seconds they'd function like some well-oiled butt-kicking machine.
He loved her. He hated her. He respected the hell out of her, not that he'd ever admit that. He feared her because no one else, not even ma, could make him hurt.
Sometimes, he'd swear she knew.
In the depths of those dark eyes he'd see a spark of challenge, a hidden I-dare-you. But Butch was a coward and an asshole and Cat would never be his, so he'd kept on picking on her and beating up the other boys for harassing her and in the dark privacy of his bedroom thinking of her.
And when she'd left, Tunnel Snakes jacket wrapped around her thin frame, he'd been too much of a coward to go with her, and too much of an asshole to say goodbye.
