A/N: Onto 10 chapters, woo~! Hope y'all been liking the story so far! Be sure to check out my profile if you like what you see for other works, several one-shots have recently been posted to my profile for your viewing pleasure! And don't forget to favorite, follow, and review Winona's story if you enjoyed so I can get some feedback, a new chapter's updated every single Friday!

Happy reading, happy writing!

~Konfessionist, signing out

October 19th, 2275

Butch and Dolly walked the halls of Vault 101, with his arm slung around her shoulders, pulling her in against his side, as was their usual position together. His mouth dipped toward her ear to whisper a dirty promise that made her blush, and caused her hand to catch the spill of nasally giggles in her palm as it met to her mouth, her other hand thumbing the ashes off her cigarette. When they turned the corner of the hall he pressed her body to the nearby wall with his hand dropping down from her shoulders to her waist, keeping her body firmly against his as he attacked her neck with quick nips of teeth and suckling lips. She let out a gasp, followed by another snort of a giggle into his ear, and nearly dropped her cigarette.

"Butchie, we shouldn't be doing this out in the open!" She cried with a smile as he grabbed at the zipper tab of her vault jumpsuit and pulled it down enough to expose her collar bones, taking care to attack at the newly revealed skin.

"The Tunnel Snakes can do whatever they want, babe. We rule this vault." He reminded her between bites and kisses against the flesh of her chest.

"So the Overseer—" A snort of surprise and then a laugh escaped her as his knee pressed between her thighs. "Really talked t'ya?"

"Yeah, he did." Butch answered after some time of kissing her neck and pulled back to look down at her with a mischievous smirk, his eyes pointed and hungry upon her. "Don't worry 'bout it, Dolly. It's big boy business."

"Whatever 'ya say, Butchie." She wailed absentmindedly, and pressed the last drag of her cigarette to his mouth. He inhaled greedily, flushing it back out through his nose before flinging the butt to the floor to grind under his boot toes, and his mouth was latched onto her neck again to ravage the skin with lips and teeth.

A handful of days ago, the Tunnel Snakes were called into the office of the almighty Overseer, where they thought they were busted for some upcoming Halloween prank they pulled; it was on the maintenance guy, Floyd, that involved a cherry bomb and a canister of chocolate pudding that exploded a little too close to the reactors, or whatever... Butch wasn't really paying attention when he was getting another reading of the Vault Safety and Other Regulations handbook from Officer Park and old-timer Officer Taylor. He only began paying some attention when the officers were dismissed from the office by the Overseer, which was a very unusual thing for him to do. He then called for a truce, and said that instead of being punished, the gang was being offered a pretty juicy deal; if a resident was acting out of line, or proving themselves to be disloyal to the Overseer and Vault 101, he wanted the Tunnel Snakes to severely annoy that person until they would rethink their loyalties, just to get rid of the gang members.

With the Vault Loyalty Inspector job phased out years back, it was less likely that someone would question a delinquent being a delinquent than an officer harassing a resident. In return for playing bad cops with problematic vault residents, the Overseer could ignore the majority of Tunnel Snake activity—under the strict order that it was physically harmless, and they left him and his daughter alone completely.

So if Butch wanted to have a bit of fun with Dolly in the middle of the hallway at 2:37 in the morning, than he would have a bit of fun with her—and the Overseer would continue sitting up in his office, playing a paranoid God with his thumb up his ass as usual. The weird bastard was probably watching on one of his cameras, anyways. It's not like he was getting any from anyone but himself.

Butch continued working away at Dolly's neck until there were dark hickies forming. Her body went slack against his, permitting him to continue with soft moans, which stopped suddenly as her body tightened against his. When he pulled back to look at her, her eyes were trained over his shoulder at something and she was tightly gripping the sleeves of his leather jacket at the biceps.

"What's wrong?" He grinned smugly. "The Butch-Man too much for 'ya?"

"There's someone in the diner," She said in a low voice, nodding over at the big front window of the cafeteria, which gaped at them like an open mouth from the opposite wall. It was dark, which was expected at now 2:40 AM, but what had piqued his interest was a figure of someone hunched over the table at the front booth, illuminated by the eerie green glow of a Pip-Boy screen's flashlight.

"Are they watchin' us, Butchie?" She asked. "I don't wanna do nothin' if someone's around. It's creepy."

"Nah, they ain't watching." He replied in a distracted tone. Upon seeing the person tilt their head up, tucking long hair of tight curls behind an ear, the ominous green glow of the figure's Pip-Boy cast over trademark white hair and illuminated it in a green wash. He grinned upon realizing that it was Winona, alone, in the diner, at 2:40 AM, after the Overseer told him only a few days ago that he'd look the other way if the Tunnel Snakes caused trouble outside of their deal.

The tiny Poindexter was now fair game and no one was going to protect her, or get in his way.

"I'm gunna go check it out, Dolly." Butch spoke as he looked back to her. "Go home."

"But—! Butchie!" Dolly complained, surprised, in an annoying gasp of a whine. Her arms clung tightly around his neck in a desperate attempt to keep him from going when he was already gone.

"I said go home." He replied strictly with a half-lidded gaze of disinterest in her.

She scoffed in disbelief and finally released him, her hands on her hips. "You're ditchin' me?"

"I got Tunnel Snake business t'take care of for the Overseer," He said as he fixed his jacket, popping the collar and lapels and then smoothed a practiced hand back over his gelled hair.

"Seriously? You can be such a bastard, sometimes!" Dolly huffed sourly and shook her head. Fixing her vault suit and tugging her Tunnel Snake's jacket tighter around her waist, she tied the arms in a knot on her hips before storming off down the hall with what dignity she had left in being rejected; her hips moved in an irate back and forth sway like a pendulum about to break from rocking so fast as she strode away. Butch snorted obnoxiously after her before walking to the diner door.

He didn't know why he tried starting all that intimate shit with her half of the time, seeing as how she was annoying as hell and made weird-ass noises when they were doing the nasty (her moans literally sounded like death)—but he was a guy who still needed to get his rocks off somewhere. Sometimes when he banged her from behind, her face buried in the bed, it made the sounds more tolerable. She was an okay lay, aside from sounding like some of the weird noises the vault burped up in the stillness of the night.

He slapped his hand to the door's console button, a smirk playing his lips like an instrument as it slid open, and the darkness of the diner framed a box of light at his feet where it slunk in from the vault hallways. He thanked God for whoever invented blinds because he had a lot of damn trouble falling asleep at all in the first place, and the vault lights were only shut off in common places that were closed for the night—like the cafeteria was supposed to be.

Winona's face whipped back over her shoulder when the door had opened. Unable to scramble away to hide, she relaxed slightly when she saw him and not a night guard coming to harass her. Though the guard would have been better with what he had in mind to do to her. The cafeteria table she sat at was buried under scrap parts, tools, a notebook and pencil with a broken eraser, grid paper, scrap paper, pictures, drawings, diagrams... where the fuck did all of this shit come from? Did she draw it all?

The Serpent King never saw Winona "in action" concerning her inventing hobby, and of course he never thought about the process she went through to build her things, but damn did it look like a headache.

"Hey, Whammy." He taunted snidely with the use of a nickname she hadn't heard in years. He went towards her booth with his hands buried deep into jacket pockets. "Now what's a Goody-Two-Shoes like you doin' up and outside past her curfew, huh?"

Her eyes stayed on him suspiciously as he walked over with a bored kink in his lean-back gait.

"Nothin' to say, huh, Whammy? 'Ya know, I don't think you're supposed to be in here!"

Winona remained quiet, and that empowered him despite the unwavering look in her face; like she wasn't going to fight but she wasn't going to retreat, either. She'd only stand on the battlefield despite knowing his guns were on her and wouldn't budge an inch. She was taking her ground in that weird non-threatening way of hers and Butch didn't know how she managed to pull off such a delicate balance of 'fuck you' but also 'not fuck you'.

"I see how it is... maybe someone'd like to hear 'bout the vault's resident mad scientist hiding in the diner at 3 in the morning? Looks kinda suspicious... don't it?"

Winona finally sighed and gave him a cynical look. "I think 'mad scientist' is a little generous of you. Long time no see, DeLoria."

"Not long enough, you ask me." Butch responded in a low whistle as he leaned a hip against her table and placed a splayed palm a top her work, pinning under his weight one of her many notebooks. Her cynical stare turned more agitated and that caused a generously troublesome grin to come to his face. "What, you hidin' out 'cause 'ya can't face that you and golden boy Freddie Gomez split like a banana sundae?"

"You heard about that, hmn? Thought you'd be too busy with being a troublemaker, or sticking your tongue down Dolly's throat to have time for much else." The inventor replied plainly as she ripped her notebook out from under his leaning hand, causing his arm to buckle at the elbow from the shift of weight. He would have banged the table if he didn't see it coming, and was able to recover flawlessly.

"It's not my tongue that usually ends up down her throat," He replied with a goofy snigger. With her hands occupied by her reclaimed notebook, he readily swiped a massive blueprint that was rolled out across the entirety of the table. It looked rather important—of course it'd need further inspection!

Winona practically lunged over the booth at him to retrieve it, but fell back into her seat when her hip dinged the edge of the table painfully loud. Butch was already up and on his feet despite her fumble, pedaling around the diner while examining the blueprint in a way that he looked like he was professionally observing the designs for critique; the blueprint itself was half finished and filled with many details and notes, and from what he could make out from it, it was an outline of a dog of some sort... though the ears stood taller and the muzzle was narrower and more pointed. Idly scribbled calculations littered around the edges amongst more professional notes that pointed to various parts of the drawn animal, saying things like flashlight near the eyes, wheels? at the feet, and... flamethrower with several arrows pointing fervently at the mouth.

The hell? She makin' a fire-spittin' dog or something?

"DeLoria, give it back." Winona demanded tersely as she slid out from the seat and came after him in a quick stride, trying to snatch the blueprints back when he wouldn't listen. He ducked away and shoved his back towards her to ward her off, where she bounced off of him.

"Ah, ah~! This is official Overseer business, Professor Pipsqueak. Gotta make sure you ain't doin' something dangerous 'ya know."

"And since when were you on good terms with him? You couldn't be on good terms with a nun if she even gave you the chance!" She snapped rudely with her hand snaking around his side, grabbing at the edge of the blueprint but he was already walking away from her to circle back around the diner. "God dammit, Butch—" She huffed.

"Didn't know you could swear, twerp!" He laughed as he continued reading over the blueprints even though he found nothing more of interest in them, and only wanted to harass her further. "Sounds hilarious comin' outta you, though. Say "fuck" for me, would 'ya? Bet you can't say it without stuttering."

"Oh, can I use it in a sentence?" She asked with mock enthusiasm before adding on tartly; "Fuck off, Butch."

"Winona Old Lady Parker!" He cackled with mocking glee. "I'm impressed!"

"Give that back to me. You wouldn't understand half of what's written on that page, anyway—consider it me trying to do you a favor by keeping your brain from shorting out." She responded with a small frown that creased the space between her brows.

"I know what flamethrower meansdon't I, Itty-Bitty-Titty-Committee? Maybe I should hand these over to the Overseer... tell him you're plannin' on making a weapon. Weapons are contraband, don't 'ya know, Snowflake? I'm sure he'd have lotsa fun dealing with you." He spoke indignantly as he rolled the paper up into a bundle.

Winona was grimacing now, her mouth pulling so tightly that he could see the crevices of her dimples but what caught his attention was the way her back tensed; how a fleeting glimmer of panic captured her eyes when he mentioned telling the Overseer.

This was exactly what Butch wanted when he walked in.

"I- It's not a weapon!" She exclaimed as she ran for him, gripping the sleeve of his leather jacket to use as leverage by pulling his arm toward her, her opposite hand reaching for the designs he kept prisoner. The skinny inventor was on the tips of her toes now, struggling to reach, and nearly resorting to jumping to get some extra inches of height—but he easily held it up another taunting foot over her head. She was leaning into him slightly to try and brace herself.

"No? Well I don't think a flamethrower shoots rainbows! And which one of us d'you think he'd believe? I'mma let you in on a little secret, freak—he and I are best pals, now. I go runnin' to him with this?" He nodded his head toward the blueprint that was still held high above her. "How do 'ya say 'bye bye cool toys' in Nerdlish, huh?"

"Like I believe that you and him are even remotely on good terms after all the crap you've pulled over the years!" Winona hit a closed fist against his chest in a flash of anger before withdrawing, arms tightly folding over her midsection.

That surprised him. She never laid a hand on him no matter how angry he made her—he knew she was freaked.

"Even if 'ya don't believe it, believe that this'll see the incinerator." Butch smirked at her victoriously when he saw that her shoulders tensed more upon his threat.

Winona looked away to the door with a fixed stare that displayed her tormented thoughts, and he knew that she knew she didn't have many options. Regardless of who told the Overseer about her work, and with or without evidence, he'd use anything he could get his grubby hands on against her. Everyone in 101 knew how much the Overseer disliked Winona, what with her haywire inventions or other trouble she caused with her hobbies, but the guy hated her father even more; he would use just about anything to humiliate them both.

With an aggravated groan and a frustrated curl of her brow, she turned back to him.

"What about a trade?"

Butch's interest was piqued by this... a trade... Winona was a pain in the ass over the years, but if those 8 years of pranks, insults, bullying, and overall warring taught him anything, the practiced tinkerer was a force to be reckoned with. The only things that seemed to limit her were her imagination and the few supplies the vault could offer her for her building. If he wanted something made—to style his hair for him, maybe even tweak old faithful Toothpick, perhaps some of those homemade smoke bombs of hers?—he could get whatever he wanted.

The thought of it was tempting, but Butch DeLoria didn't want a cool new toy... he wanted something else of her.

"You know, I've always wanted a little pet—and it looks like there's an openin' just the right size for 'ya!"

Winona's face flushed with embarrassment as her foot rapidly began tapping against the floor. "You can't be serious—"

"I ain't laughin', am I? You do whatever I say, when I say it, and without bitchin' about it. If I call, you come runnin', and you're my pet until I'm done with you."

"Are you kidding me? For however long you say—? No way!"

"Alright, off t'he Overseer I go!" He sang as he tucked the blueprint into his jacket and stepped around her.

"Wait, wait!" She had her fingers in his arm to keep him from leaving before he could take another step. "Fine, you have a deal! But I swear to God, Butch—if you make me do something really messed up—"

"I'm a bastard, but I ain't an outright sicko, grandma Parker." Butch rolled his eyes as he took the blueprint out from his jacket and waved it around a little to keep her attention. "You're not allowed t'back out when I give it back. Deal?"

"Deal." The inventor hissed as she snatched the rolled up paper back from him and went back to her table to gather up the rest of her things quickly. Lord knows what would happen if he saw anything else she was working on... "You can be a real bastard sometimes. I hope it's worth it to you."

"It's about t'beeee," He sang again as he came up behind her and when she turned around, the petite dweller jumped backward in surprise. His body was nearly pinning her against the side of the diner seat backing with the way he leaned over her, a hand bracing himself on the edge of the table and she leaned as far back as she could—which wasn't very far. He felt her knee brush between his and could smell a faint, sweetly floral scent coming from her.

It was definitely her shampoo. Ever since he entered his apprenticeship in the vault's only salon, he could recognize that white lily scent anywhere. It was a favorite with the customers he practiced on, and the smell lingered in his clothes after most of his apprenticeship shifts.

"Didn't say this Tunnel Snake was done playin' with his food yet, pet." He spoke in a low, husky tone that sounded almost suggestively threatening.

"Do you have to call me that?" Winona glared weakly.

Butch firmly cleared his throat at this. "What'd I say about the rules, pet?"

"Fine. Do you want me to call you Master, too?" She snapped dryly.

"Don't gimme ideas, fun-size. Now say that I'm better than you."

The inventor shot him a questionable look with a straight face. "...I never thought I was bet—"

"I'm sure," He snorted. "Sure 'ya didn't think it when you switched out my hair gel with one of your smoke bombs last year, or when you put yogurt in my baseball cleats when we were 15. Or when 'ya screwed with my alarm clock when we were kids—and don't you deny it, I know that was you. I know when something's your handiwork."

"I never attacked you first. Anything I ever did to you was in retaliation, I never started something first." She replied quickly and squared out her shoulders to make herself seem bigger. It caused more contact to be made between them with her forearm pressed into his stomach to put some distance between their bodies, but he didn't budge an inch, and only pressed slightly closer.

The inventor's words brought forward a conversation he overheard that wasn't particularly meant for his ears… it was a year ago, at the Year End Formal, that he found his partially drunken self skulking around a corner and listening to Winona and Freddie talk about him outside the atrium. He left them without an insulting word when he came out of the bathroom (despite knowing that he interrupted something intimate) but that was only because his inebriated brain had the great idea of just hiding and watching. He didn't particularly know why he thought it was such a fantastic idea; maybe he was hoping to catch something good that he could use against her later, like if Freddie the Freak slobbered on her or Winona unexpectedly burped in his mouth.

He couldn't help but wonder if it was going to be her first kiss, and maybe that was the real reason he wanted to watch—to see if it was.

"So for today I want to keep it that way for as long as we can have it. In case it doesn't happen again. Butch and I can fight tomorrow."

Despite all that he drank, he also remembered her turning to leave—coming towards him and the drunk snake almost pulled away then—but then she was being whirled around by a burning red Freddie holding onto her elbow and the guy's mouth was suddenly planted on hers. Butch remembered how her hands rested flat against his chest to grip the front of his jacket, how she looked so trusting of him when she pulled Freddie in closer... how her eyes drew blissfully shut, and she smiled through the kiss so wide that Butch could see her dimples.

He wanted to punch Freddie Gomez so hard in the face he'd be shitting out his teeth for days.

It still made him sick to think about how happy Freddie made her... and Butch didn't know if it was because it was his mission to make her miserable, or if it was some residual feelings of his crush from long ago. Her dimples killed him from the moment he saw them and he hated Freddie—almost genuinely hated him—in that moment.

Fuck those dimples.

They played tricks on him.

He knew that the flutters of emotion he had weren't real, because last week it spread quickly through the vault that Winona the Weirdo and Candy-Pants Freddie broke up... and he didn't care at all. He didn't feel anything about it, one way or the other.

"Say it, Parker." Butch warned. "Say I'm better than 'ya."

"...You're better than me..." Winona spoke quietly with the embarrassment pinkening the apples of her cheeks.

"What's that? I don't think I heard you too good," He smirked as he leaned an ear towards her and cupped his hand to it. "Say it again. Who's better than you?"

"You're better than me, Butch!" She said louder with her face pinkening even darker.

"Good girl," He taunted as he pat the top of her head as she twisted herself away, thoroughly embarrassed. Now satisfied with how their encounter turned out, he stepped around her to leave the cafeteria. "See 'ya around, pet. Don't get too busy now, you hear me? I might need your services, soon."

"God dammit, aren't you tired of this?"

Butch glanced back at her when the door opened and saw that emotionless, big-eyed stare of hers as she tried to hide her embarrassment, but the pinkness in her cheeks gave her away—and the King Snake didn't feel creeped out by it.

"We don't have to be like this... we're not children anymore." The white-haired girl reasoned with a gentle frown turning her mouth. "Aren't you tired of what we're doing here? Don't you have better things to do than be an ass all the time?"

"Tired?" Butch pondered this with a cocked head and his eyes flitting away from hers, hands finding home in his leather jacket pockets. "...Ain't nothin' better around here to do."

The Tunnel Snake leader then peacefully left without another word, not even addressing her calling him an ass, and he didn't really know why. As the diner door shut behind him, his heart was pounding in his head louder than the electric hum of fluorescent lights above as he made his trek back to the living quarters. He entered the front room of his apartment to see his mother sprawled over the couch in an unconscious heap with a vodka bottle loosely hanging from her fingers, and he threw a blanket over her before retiring to his bedroom. Meticulously, he yanked off his boots and left them on the floor before stripping off his jumpsuit and laid on his bed, over his sheets, to stare at the ceiling.

This was his nightly ritual until Butch felt tired enough to finally drift off to sleep; care for his mom, strip down, lay in bed and count the age spots on the ceiling.

"We don't have to be like this… we're not children anymore."

Maybe I don't want it to be like that. Butch thought without any malice as he turned over onto his side to stare at the closest wall instead.

"Aren't you tired of what we're doing here?"

I can't quit it... I got nothin' left—got nothing else. He mused solemnly and his eyes traced the seams where the metal plates of wall met and he counted the bolts that held them together; thought about every door he ever opened, every inch of floor he walked since he first learned how to, every hiding spot for skittering radroaches this place could hold. There was a ritual to this place he would never escape... and she was apart of it. Winona was apart of the dull comfort and routine of daily vault life, where nothing unexpected ever happened, and he felt unsettled if the part of his ritual that included her was incomplete.

From a long time ago, he knew she was a bigger part of him than he cared to admit to even himself.

"Don't you have better things to do than be an ass all the time?"

Butch wished since he had enough conscious thought for himself that he could just be somebody else—somebody that didn't naturally cause trouble, or was angry all the time without knowing why, or was hated by most of the few other people he knew, or could actually fucking think rationally for once and not let his first response be to act like a bastard. He wished he could be the type of man that could have agreed with her words and just ignored her for the rest of their lives, and not continue to be enemies but not begin to be friends, either; only neutral parties with the simple awareness of the other person's existence. He wished that he had more friends that didn't stick around because they thought it was fun to get into trouble. He wished he was like the idea that he had of himself in his head—where everyone respected him, let him do what he want, and all the pretty girls were lining up for him to get up their skirts.

He'd be the king of everything and radroaches and Winona Parker wouldn't scare him as much as they actually did.

But the Butch DeLoria that he loathed so much was who he actually was—the one that made her vulnerable in one of the most degrading ways possible, tormented her constantly because it made him feel better, and made her feel as low as he always felt—and it only made him angrier knowing that this was all he could, and would, ever be. He'd be the Butch DeLoria that flipped off security guards in the hall, played dumb pranks on unsuspecting maintenance workers, and would have an obnoxious fight with a girl, who only wanted to make peace, for the rest of his miserable, simple, unexpecting life.

He'd never be able to be somebody that was a better man than himself.