Diversion

"Care to tell me your side of the story?" We were sitting propped against the waist-high cupola wall, basking in the afternoon sunbeams, our feet dangling off the narrow observation platform. We had made our way to the top of the steeple in silence, gathering our packs and enough supplies for an overnight stay. Setting up a hasty camp at the enclosed and protected base of the stairs helped restore a sense of companionable normalcy to our strained relationship. The steeple was a perfect spot to have a private talk with my partner, but I had been in no hurry to rush things. It was enough to just be near him, enjoying the sense of partnership, the balance of shared tasks to secure our privacy and comfort. I focused on memorizing every detail of my companion, shoving my own conflicted despair to the back of my mind. Time enough to worry about my situation later. I really don't want to think about it right now.

Once freed from the presence of the Railroad's members, MacCready was more willing to open up to me. "When you disappeared, I- I lost it, I guess. All that was going through my mind was how I let you down, again. I wasn't fast enough, wasn't strong enough to stop that Courser from grabbing you. My ears started ringing and the world went fuzzy." We leaned against each other, drawing comfort from physical contact, something we both craved. "I... don't remember much after that."

"Deacon said you went on a shooting spree."

"I may have," he mumbled. "By the time I came to my senses, my magazine was empty and Danse had me cornered against the wall." He shook his head, brushing at his cheek with one hand. "Muttering the same kind of nonsense we all do when trying to calm someone down."

"And then?"

"And then he made things worse by telling me that was basically the last I'd ever see of you. That the Institute would have you replaced with a Synth and I couldn't trust anyone who looked like you." He broke off the last word and took a shuddering breath. "It felt like he punched me in the gut, but he was only telling me what I already knew. When Deacon finally showed up and didn't contradict the story...? Everyone knows the Institute kidnaps and replaces people." He reached out and absently traced the lines of scarring across my forearm, a habit he had picked up in the last month. "I held on to the hope that you could escape. Hope that was strengthened when Deacon told me about the extra programming Tinker Tom put in your Pip-Boy to help you if you ever got into the Institute. I knew then that I had to wait for you, that when you did get free you'd come straight back, and I just had to be there when you did."

"Oh, RJ..." I pressed against his warm side, his arm coming up to pull me in closer.

"Without you there to keep me thinking rationally, I was completely lost. Lost enough to have listened to that two-faced bastard of a Railroad agent when he gave me the signal that you were a Synth." His arm tightened around me and I snaked my own hand around to give him an answering hug. "I wasn't completely sure, which is why I said something first. I almost killed you, angel!" His voice was a mix of anger and terror, the twisted knot of emotions bursting out in a healing rush, like lancing a boil. "I never would've forgiven myself if I had pressed that blade home."

"But you didn't." I pointed out, resting my head against his shoulder. "It was a tense situation. Deacon made a mistake, RJ. He even apologized for it." Inwardly, my stomach flip-flopped. I didn't realize it was that close, though. Thank the powers that be for his hesitation.

"And I didn't murder him for it. But I won't ever trust him again." MacCready sighed heavily, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Make me civilized?" He shifted a bit on the narrow planks to rearrange our embrace into a slightly more comfortable position. "Or at least more tempered. I wouldn't have hesitated to shoot Deacon before."

"That's your definition of 'civilized'?" I looked up into his crystal blue eyes, darkening as clouds moved in to block the sun. "Please tell me you're kidding right now. Besides, you're the one who said you wanted to be a better person. Not killing Deacon for making a mistake is a good step along that path."

"Well," he squirmed, "mostly kidding." A slight shrug accompanied the somewhat apologetic quirk of his mouth. "Anyway, that's what happened. You disappeared, and I went crazy."

"I was miserable without you." I admitted. "Scared, and wanting more than anything for you to be there. Your fighting tenacity was the incentive I needed to push back against them. If I supposedly keep you tempered and rational, you buoy my spirit and courage." I moved to rest my head on his chest, listening for a moment to the steady beat of his heart and the quiet rush of his breathing.

"You may be on to something there, angel," he murmured affectionately, stroking my hair. "I think... maybe together we make one competent, balanced Wasteland survivor."

His words soothed my ego, but I was still a bit skeptical. "I don't know. You seemed to be doing just fine before I came along."

"I don't think drinking myself blind in Goodneighbor, smoking endless cigarettes, dodging the Gunners, and waiting for work to find me counts as 'doing fine.'" He looked up suddenly when a fat raindrop spattered down, followed by several more. "Let's take this downstairs. I hate getting wet, and there's a storm coming."

"Radstorm?" I asked nervously, sitting up a bit too quickly and almost falling off the edge of the narrow platform to the landing below.

"Whoop!" MacCready caught my arm, steadying me. "No, just the regular type. Though," he leered with a cheeky grin, "we could pretend it's a radstorm if you need me to 'comfort' you." There it is, his incredible ability to bounce back. He truly has an unbreakable spirit, and I love him for it.

I smiled wistfully at him, dodging the increasing number of raindrops towards our protected "camp" below. "Oh, would you?" I teased, fluttering my eyelashes.

-0-

I woke up to the quiet sounds of falling rain, and the shuff of turning pages beside my curled-up form. We had been comfortably lounging in the pile of our purloined blankets, listening to the soothing sound of the rain. It wasn't quite dark yet. Hm, must've dozed off for a few minutes. I wiggled around to face my companion, who was propped up next to me, heedless of his muddy boots on the bedding, contentedly leafing through...

"A comic book?" The colorful panels and speech bubbles were unmistakable.

MacCready started guiltily, closing the pages with a slight flush creeping across his cheeks. "Uhhh..." he temporized.

Sitting up a little to cuddle against his side, I angled the cover in order to read the title. "Grognak the Barbarian? Huh, never heard of that one. Any good?" The title character was unmistakable, a blonde muscular fighter wearing little more than a long green loincloth and boots, wielding a bloodstained axe.

MacCready's mouth worked silently for a few moments before he managed to stammer out in surprise. "You... like comics too?" He dropped his hands to his lap, nearly creasing the tattered pages.

"Sure, why not?" I was faintly amused as his astonishment. He knows I'm into the arts. Why is liking comics a surprise? "Comics are a perfectly legitimate art form."

"It's kid stuff!" he protested weakly, adding quietly, "I used to read them to Duncan as a bedtime treat, with voices and everything."

I snorted. "Some of them, sure. You like what you like! I thought you didn't really care what other people thought."

"Lucy never cared for them." A light flush bloomed across his cheeks.

Ah, that's the explanation. "But yeah, I read comics and graphic novels. Some of my friends back home have even published-" a wave of homesickness and despair crashed over me and I choked off my words with a broken sob, curling into MacCready's side for comfort. Friends back home... Family... A world that's just as far away as the day I arrived...

"It snuck up on you, didn't it?" A warm hand patted my back and I nodded my head, unable to speak. I clung tightly to him, closing my eyes and just letting the tears flow, soaking the leather of his duster. "I know what that feels like. Hold on a sec..." The comic was placed carefully on one of the storage boxes scattered about the alcove and, reaching out with one hand to root through his pack, MacCready pulled out a bottle.

"Oh, noo..." I protested weakly, but took a mouthful of the fiery liquid when he held it to my lips, following with his own generous swig. "I'm just so tired, RJ," I hiccuped, causing him to stifle a smile. "And scared. And frustrated! Every time I think I'm getting close, they move the goalposts."

He held up the bottle in a faux toast. "Welcome to the world, angel. Nothing is fair." When I declined a second swig, he shrugged and took another draught. "As your bodyguard, I'm ordering you to take tonight to relax and think of something else. Tomorrow is soon enough to worry."

"But what am I going to do-?" The bottle was pressed to my lips again in admonition, and I took the implied penalty drink. "Fine." But I'm going to worry anyway, drunk or not. What's the point of pestering everyone in the Commonwealth if there isn't even enough juice to power the transfer? Maybe I should just stay. I muttered rebelliously into his lapel, the alcohol starting to affect me, shutting down my natural brain-mouth filter.

The bottle fell and rolled across the floor, the remaining unnamed alcohol spilling in an splashing stream. MacCready exclaimed wordlessly, writhing free to rescue the escaped container before the blankets got soaked. He looked mournfully at the small amount remaining before tipping his head back to consume the dregs. The empty bottle sailed away to land in front of the barricaded door to the church with a distracting clatter. "Don't," he sighed pensively, giving me a heated look from lowered eyelids, "tease me like that."

"Huh? Did I say something?" I couldn't remember. I was just thinking, or so I thought. My inner conflict had resurfaced with a vengeance at the sight of my partner scrambling to rescue a wayward bottle, giving me a very good demonstration of his lithe, athletic movements. It's a good thing we're already lovers, or this would have pushed me over the edge. Oh dear, I think I'm tipsy.

"Nevermind, angel. It's just the booze talking." He kneeled at the entrance of our blanket nest, feeling around to test the limits of the alcohol christening. "Hm, guess there wasn't much left. Mostly spilled on the floor and missed the blankets. Waste of good liquor, though." In a lightning change of mood, he sighed overly dramatically, eliciting a slightly tipsy giggle from me. "Ha, you laughed. I win."

"Were we competing? What was the game?"

"The game of 'distract-the-boss'," he smirked triumphantly. "I just made it up."

"And won, all in record time." I grinned at him, the strong spirits loosening my reserve. "Kinda cheating to get me tipsy first, don't you think?"

"Welcome to the world, angel," he repeated, snorting when I stuck my tongue out at him.

"Hmph. If you really want to distract me..." I teased, walking my fingers across the piled fabric in a random path.

"Oh? Just say the word, and I'm all over it." Flirtatiously, he crept towards me on hands and knees, an amorous grin lighting his features.

"Read to me?" I pointed to the comic he had abandoned, and almost giggled aloud as he froze stock-still halfway up the blankets, a completely stunned expression on his face. "Please? You said you do voices and everything..." my words trailed off when he didn't move. Uh-oh, maybe I'm asking too much if he used to read to Duncan, but I love listening to his voice. It's wonderful.

With a sudden shake of his head as if to reorient himself, MacCready sat back on his knees. "Not... quite what I was thinking, angel," he smiled winningly, reaching down to pat my leg, "but I'd be happy to read to you if you'd like." He looked around the mostly enclosed alcove in the lowering dusk. "We'll need to get some more light, though. Lemme grab the lanterns from up top." He stood and ascended the narrow stairs to the open belfry where the two historical lanterns were placed.

I had my own suspicious about the lanterns on the open railing, and decided to poke around the storage crates to see if there might be backups. Just as I pried open the second crate to discover a number of carefully packaged replacements, MacCready stomped back down the stairs with an annoyed frown. "Who the hell fastens lanterns to a railing? They were nailed down tight, too. I couldn't get them free without breaking them."

"Well, it might have something to do with the history of this place, which I'm going to guess is the same as in my world." I went on, a little hesitantly in my slightly inebriated state, to tell my partner about the importance of the lantern signals during the Revolutionary War, and how the British were thwarted in the attempt to raid colonial stockpiles, which was about the limit of my knowledge. During my recitation, I handed several of the undamaged replacement lanterns to my partner to set about our "camp", filling them from a scavenged oil can.

MacCready commented sardonically. "Those were their only choices? Land or sea? Pretty dumb if you ask me."

I nodded. "Yeah, well, back then there wasn't exactly a large range of options, you know?" Digging though my pack, I pulled out a flip lighter. "All right, let's light it up!"

MacCready lit the first lantern with his own lighter, intoning in a slightly fruity "announcer" voice, "One if by land..."

Following his lead, I lit the second, stating dramatically, "Two if by sea."

"Hmm," he mused, taking in the dim illumination. "Not enough light. Guess we'll have to keep going." With a grin at me, he lit another lantern. "Three if by air..."

I laughed. "Air travel for troops wasn't around back then, silly!" When he mock-pouted at me, I giggled again and lit the fourth lantern, taking up the game. "Four if by, uhhh, subway tunnel!"

"Five if by brahmin caravan."

"Six if by saddled deathclaw..." We kept up the game until we had lit every lantern in the crate, coming up with increasingly ridiculous methods of travel. It wasn't until I looked around at the now brightly lit alcove, commenting "Good thing they only had two choices. That railing upstairs couldn't possibly hold all of these lanterns!" that we laughingly started snuffing them out one by one.

"Yeah, and we don't exactly want to announce our location with too much light, either," MacCready remarked. Once the light was just bright enough to read by without being overkill, we settled back into our blanket nest, curling up to ward off the rainy chill.

Duncan is the luckiest kid in the world if he got bedtime stories like this, I reflected contentedly, enraptured by my partner's dramatic flair and talent for voice acting as we paged through the old, battered Grognak comic together. MacCready dove into the role of storyteller with increasing enthusiasm, adding sound effects and battle cries as the action moved towards the climax of the tale. When we reached the final page, he wound down with a satisfied grin and I wanted to applaud. I decided to thank him with a passionate kiss instead, which reminded him of his previous idea to distract me. He responded to my unspoken invitation with a very gratifying eagerness.

As we reconfirmed the depth of our relationship, the thought percolated quietly in the back of my mind: I could get used to nights like this...