The next little while was unremarkable although I mist admit, having someone accompanying me made life on the Wastes much easier to bear.

We wandered the Wastes, doing this and that, hurting some and helping others.
I often made him wait outside a place if I knew I was going to go on a killing/stealing from innocents orgy because I feared him and what he thought. I was fuzzy on the whole contract thing and just tried to keep my...tendencies as hidden as I could to stay on the safe side for as long as I could.

When I went to Rivet city to run an "errand" for Mr. Crowley, I left Charon at the Muddy Rudder.

I washed the blood off myself and my silenced 10mm moments before returning to Charon and feeling a sense of guilt I hadn't had before. I snuffed out the guilt with a massive hit of psycho and then felt guilty about doing the psycho, and then felt guilty on top of it for not enjoying the psycho that I spent 30 caps on. I suddenly had a new found respect for raiders.

On the subject of guilt, as I left Rivet City I felt a pang of guilt knowing that I'd told my Dad I'd meet him in the science lab over a week ago. I would've turned back, but the thought of going made me feel physically ill and I couldn't bring myself to turn around and do what I was supposed to to expected to do. I reasoned that it was for a more mature reason than wanting to make my Dad know how it felt to be abandoned, but in all reality, it was probably just that. I reasoned that I would go when I was good and ready and only when I was good and ready. It'd give the fucker more time to think about his mistakes and give me more time to make some more mistakes to blame on the mistakes he made.
Like my tendency to take any drug put in front of me.
Totally his fault.

Out on the Wastes I watched Charon kill a pack of regulators while I cooled my heels.

He was fast becoming the only person I didn't think of as pitiful and all other men were beginning to look like feckless little sissies compared to him. All bark and no bite.
I found watching Charon deal with hostiles to be...titillating in lack of a better word because not only did he seem to relish the kill, he was a killing machine. When we encountered hostiles, he didn't merely kill them, he ground them into a fine, red paste, spewing insults as if his life depended on it.

"Yeah! You like that? You dead fuck!"

When he was done, he'd rest his shotgun over one shoulder or squat on his haunches and just wait,

for if he wasn't killing he was waiting to kill. It appeared to be the only thing he enjoyed.
I became as obsessed with watching him kill as I did about trying to pretend I dope-happy thief with a tendency to off people for no apparent reason aside from entertainment.

My life had become little more than watching him and trying to keep him from seeing me.
I became compulsive about covering up my tracks and making him wait outside when I felt that nip in my brain that told me I was going to do things I didn't want him to see.
I'm not sure how convincing it was, but it became second nature over time and I'm fairly certain that he didn't know the full extent of my delinquency beyond petty theft and mischief.

One morning I was watching him plow down a dozen raiders as they scrambled like radroaches, unable to escape the barrage of vulgarities and shells that Charon unloaded on them. It was only when he looked at me in passing, absent absentmindedly wiping some blood off his cheek with the back of his hand, that all of my emotions clicked into place like a landslide and I realized what the problem was.
I'd had it bad for the bastard since day one and I guess I was just as much of a closeted ghoul-o-phobe as anyone because it took me that long for it to dawn on me.
He was squatted on his haunches resting when he looked up and caught me looking at him in astonishment as I tried it on for size and saw that it indeed did fit like a glove.

"Cut down on the drugs, kid." He growled at me.

In a moment of drug-fueled paranoia I questioned whether he could hear my thoughts and
I resolved to finish off what I had and then follow his advice. Not that I haven't said I was going to quit dope before mind you.