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Mr Brotch was giving his usual speech about the history of the holiday, about the meaning and symbolism behind it… much to the boredom of the class full of teenagers, most whom were only anticipating the annual sweets from the Vault’s carefully rationed sugar allowance.
“Now, St Valentine was martyred for marrying couples…” he droned on.
Butch couldn’t resist snickering, butting in his own commentary.
“I guess they frowned on three-ways back then, huh?”
“If you would listen but a moment longer, you would hear how he would legally marry them to one another—“ Mr Brotch stressed, eyes narrowing at the young delinquent. “—and thus, prevent the husbands from being recruited to the military, as they granted dispensation for married men.”
“Getting married makes your balls fall off?” Butch can’t keep himself from asking, insolent grin spreading across his cheeks. His Tunnel Snake buddies snicker to themselves, whispering ‘good one!’
“No. Just yours. Good reason to keep your hands to yourself, right?” cuts in a familiar sing-song, know-it-all voice. Butch grits his teeth, feeling a dull throb in his head form.
It just wasn’t fair. The bitch might be an egghead, sucking up to Mr Brotch and Amata—even wearing her hair the same as Amata’s, for crying out loud!— all the time, but she was also good with her fists. He could still remember the burning humiliation of being beaten by a ten year old girl—and the fact that he too was only ten at the time didn’t make it sting any less. And she could always twist things around, giving him all sorts of snappy zingers that he couldn’t figure out how to respond to until late at night, when he stayed awake staring at the ceiling and trying to ignore his mom’s drunken snores.
The only time he ever managed to one-up her was when he called her Jinx. A run of bad luck, a curse, plain and simple. But somehow she liked the name, and ended up turning it into a nickname instead of a bullying name.
He knew he should’ve stuck with Fatty back then.
“Enough, both of you,” Mr Brotch adds decisively, giving both of them a stern look. Even if everyone knows it’s really only meant for Butch.
As Mr Brotch turns back to the chalkboard, she twists in her chair to give Butch a raised eyebrow. There is no malice in her, really—just sometimes an insufferable urge to not shut up.
Which makes it worse, really—egghead, scrapper, joker, and not even anything personal in it.
She shrugs, heedless to Butch’s disgruntlement, and mouths ‘better luck next time’ with a wink. Not a flirtatious wink, or even a teasing one—but overly familiar, almost taunting.
The rest of the lesson passes in silence, and then there is the usual Valentine’s cards being handed out to various ramshackle paper boxes. They are all at the age now that no girl gives a guy a card unless they mean it, or vice versa, so it all passes very quickly. Not that Butch and his buddies give any cards; way too wussy. No, the cards are for the girls. Cooing over various stupid bits of pink paper with lace or curlicued writing emblazoned on it.
He watches as the doc’s daughter gives one to Amata. Amata starts to open it, ready to read her best friend’s card in class, but Jinx hastily shuts it, shaking her head and leaning in.
“No. This one’s personal. Read it when you’re alone, okay? You’re… my best friend, and I want you to know how much you mean to me, alright?”
Eyeing that reaction, Butch ponders why the normally never-shut-up Jinx would clam up. If Jinx were a boy, he would’ve thought…
Nah. Couldn’t be.
Later that evening, Butch sidles on down to the reactor level. It’s out of the way enough that his mom won’t find him right away, and he’d rather eat his pilfered treats in silence. Little heart-shaped cookies covered with red sugar crystals—might look like junk, but damn if they didn’t taste good.
In addition to the quiet hum of the generators, he hears a whimpering sound, a barely suppressed sniffle. He’d think it was some little kid, except that the Vault doesn’t have any kids right now…
Nah. Couldn’t be.
It was.
It’s Jinx, her snarky, too-cool-to-care demeanor all in shambles. She jerks up to stare at him, her pale, blue-grey eyes shining with tears, which even now are dripping down her ashy cheeks. She must have been operating on some instinctive defense mechanism, since he could swear he hadn’t made a sound.
“Come to laugh at me, Butchie?” she mutters, pushing herself to her feet. Her fists dangle loosely, body twisting to the side. There is no heart in her fighter’s stance—a far cry from the weird manic joy she normally takes, like a mini-Grognak. She might be too small and wiry to be a real barbarian hero, but didn’t stop her from trying to fight like one.
“Nah. Didn’t even know you were here, honest,” he replies carefully. Teasing her might be fair game, or even pushing her around a bit. You know, in the open. The two of them, both able to put up a real fight. Not down here, with her still hurting from something more than fists.
He’s not that dumb. Might not be as smart as her, but he’s not that dumb either. Finally putting two and two together ain’t hard.
“So, she shoot you down?” he asks cautiously. Just as she has entered her own loose fight stance, he responds. Angle the torso, form a loose fist—and keep the cookies in his left hand, dammit. Protected and behind him.
“Yeah,” she says listlessly.
Neither need to elaborate on who ‘she’ is.
Butch shuffles restlessly. What do you say to a girl, really? Maybe the same thing he’d say to one of his gang members.
“…uh, she was a bitch anyway.”
Immediately her eyes light up, rage taking the place of desolation. Even with her tears still shining on her cheeks, there is enough fight left in her to raise her fists, body coiled like a tensed spring.
“Whoa, whoa, cool it!” Butch yelps, shocked at how far the mood swing went. Instinctively, his hands go up in the air, body surrendering before his conscious mind even has a chance to process it. “Cool it, Jinx! I just meant you can do way better! You’re smart, you got a great ass, and if that bitch don’t see you got all that, well then, fuck her! You can do way better’n her!”
The words are all out there, hanging in the air. Unable to be taken back. So much of it an attempt to calm an emotional teenage girl, some of it… what? Heartfelt?
Butch has never been one for introspection. All he knows is that the psychotic rage is out of Jinx, and she is looking at him with confusion and shock on her face. A ‘snrk’ sound escapes, and she starts laughing, more snickers escaping.
“Really. A great ass? That’s what you try to say to make it all better?” she snorts, crossing her arms in front of her. At least the fists are down now. Rather than offended, she appears bemused.
“Well, yeah. You got no tits,” the Tunnel Snake mutters, lowering his hands to scratch behind his neck awkwardly. It’s not even an attempt to flirt; just plain, unvarnished truth. There aren’t a lot of girls to choose from in Vault 101, so it’s not like even a would-be dame-chaser has too many options, but Jinx… well, she never really rated in the tops for him. He’d always thought the old, Prewar pin-up girls were the thing to drool over, and Vault suits just didn’t fit her scrawny frame tightly enough to show anything interesting.
“…dunno about all that, but thanks. It... helps, really,” she finally says, after far too long a silence.
“You’re welcome,” he replies, just as awkwardly. “Uh… want a cookie?”
He extends his left hand, uncurling his fingers to display the slightly-crushed treasures within. Her lips quirk upward in what barely counts as a smile—maybe a half-smile? She takes one of the broken half-cookies—the smaller half—and pops it in her mouth, not even bothering to bite down first.
There is just more awkward silence, both of them chewing, just standing and staring at each other. Then she leans against the wall, sliding down until she’s sitting on the floor. She pats the ground beside her invitingly, and Butch sits.
They slowly work their way through a cookie each before he finally breaks the silence.
“So, uh… you into dames, huh?”
“Dunno. Dunno if it’s just dames, or just Amata,” she says quietly.
“What, no dudes?”
“Dunno. Some dudes, I like. Others…. Well, it’s people, alright? Maybe I just like people. Maybe it’s not about… dudes, dames, whatever. Just people.”
Despite her hesitancy, the carefully measured weight of each word tells Butch it has been something she’s been thinking about for a while. He doesn’t really have the vocabulary to deal with it, so he just does the only thing that feels like maybe, just maybe, it’s the right thing. He leans over, giving her a friendly shoulder punch. Like cheering up a dude, right? She responds in kind, giving a choked giggle that turns into a snort as she puts a little more ‘oomph’ into it. He turns, intending to playfully shove her down, but she grabs the back of his coat, and somewhere along the line they just start wrestling on the floor.
They’re not ten years old anymore; he’s bigger than her now; heavier and stronger, but she’s a wiry, squirmy thing, not above using her sharp elbows and knees to jab at tender points. It takes a bit longer than he’d have thought, but he eventually gets on top, pinning her arms over her head. By this point, she has just started laughing, her tears and heartbreak all but forgotten.
“I yield, I yield! Dammit Butch, when did you get so big?”
“I’m all grown up now, baby. And don’t you forget it,” he says with a mock-menacing growl, trying to channel the guttural tones of the old taped movie stars. Only instead of being the manly baritone he’s aiming for, his voice cracks somewhere in the middle. Like going through puberty again, but triggered by the sudden realization of how intimate this position is, and how it would look if anyone came in. His cheeks start burning and he shoves himself off hastily.
Jinx props herself on her elbows, one eyebrow cocked in understanding of exactly what’s going through his head.
“Don’t worry about the tough-guy act, Butchie,” she says, voice more solemn than he’d have thought. She’s not even grinning or trying to play it off as a joke. “I know you got your rep, but I’m not telling. This is our secret.”
“Shit. There’s nothing to be a secret,” he mutters.
The next day, he nearly steps on a card that’s been slipped through the door of his living quarters.
At first, he doesn’t even recognize it’s a Valentine’s Day card. It’s too globby and organic, anatomically correct with the little chambers and blood vessels going off it. He’s not book-smart, and can’t remember the difference between the aorta and the coronary vessels—or even spell some of the words—but quickly realizes it’s a heart. Not a sentimental pink crappy thing with lace and ribbons on it, but the real thing.
Inside is just a brief scrawl in black pen.
‘Happy Valentine’s, Butch.’
No signature.
But he knows who it’s from. And realizes it’s the first Valentine’s Day card he’s received from a girl since it got old enough to matter.
A tentative friendship, born out of the awkwardness in the dank recesses of the vault. Even if they never openly hang out, and just take quiet, stolen moments of privacy. Talking. Listening.
And when she finally leaves the Vault, he feels a piece of himself breaking away.