#ofmemcries

He hadn’t meant to make such a mess... He was just trying to modify his radio equipment to switch over from one tape to another without him. So he could leave it alone and let the Radio Plays go without him so he wouldn’t have to lean over it the whole time to make sure he was there when one ended. He didn’t want his listeners to be inconvenienced by having to wait for his shaky hands to unload one tape, make sure the next one is rewound and loaded and play it. 

Unfortunately he got some bad parts somewhere in the mix of odds and ends he’d scavenged together and not only did it fall apart but it created a tragic domino effect around his room. Knocked over his standies, which fell on the equipment which tipped forward, scraping up the wallpaper and then scattering across the floor..

At least none of the tapes were damaged at least.

    “You know I aim to please.” The witty repartee came to him easily - always had, with Irma - but today it sounded automatic, distracted, as if he were performing a script by rote. He’d wanted to see her, spend a little time with an old friend that was really his, remind himself that there were parts of him that the old Nick had had nothing to do with, but now that he was here all the tension of the last few days seemed to have melted away into a weary malaise he didn’t know what to do with.

    “They like to stick around and skimp on rent - guess you’d know that better than most.” He tried for a smile, but only met her eyes for a moment - he could see the concern there, and he couldn’t say what he wanted said and look at her at the same time. Turned out that if you dedicated enough of your life to taking care of other people, you started to forget how to ask for support yourself. “Sorry, Irma. Didn’t mean to come by and be bad company - been a rough couple of days.” He sighed, and the fakeness of it - usually nothing but a background irritation these days - grated on him more than it should have. He didn’t need to breathe, but he couldn’t stop faking it. Energy wasted on something he didn’t need, trying to be more like something he wasn’t.

    “Started going over the old Winter files again.” He’d promised to stop, maybe more than once, but he could never seem to stay away. “One of my contacts got back to me on the holotapes - only new one he managed to track down ended up in Quincy. Would need a damned army to get in there, now. If I’d known a little sooner-” He pressed the pads of his fingers to his temple, as if hoping to rub away a migraine, then laughed - an unpleasant sound, bitter and weary. “Should’ve known MacDowell would manage to thwart me one more time, the fat prick.” And there was the problem: he could feel the old Nick’s memories starting to leak into his own daily experiences again. Watching Vadim Bobrov talk with his mouth full and thinking of the corrupt, pissant “detective” his counterpart had had to work with two hundred years ago - seeing his quiet, reasonable partner instead of Yefim. His friends, taking on faces of a past that wasn’t really his.

     He had been noticing, lately, how easy it was to get lost in her. His focus was normally so acute, so focused on everything around him, but in Irma’s presence his world seemed to grow smaller, more intimate: he could close his eyes and let there be nothing but this, nothing but this warmth and comfort in a life than had had very little of either, and his fingers gently traced her spine up and down as she kissed him, lavished affection on a face he had never found particularly worthy of admiration.

     He scarcely noticed when she removed his tie, peeled away one layer of the outfit he used to impose some individuality on a body that had never felt like his, but he looked down at the new one, first with a surprised blink, then a soft, slow-blossoming smile, catching it between the fingers of his good hand and wishing he could experience the texture. It looked good, added a little color to an otherwise drab ensemble - the way she had added her color to his life, rich red and gold against a backdrop of dirty grays - and before he spoke he cupped the back of her neck with his skeletal hand and kissed her, slow and tender, an old man who had learned to treasure that which was beautiful and good, because he knew how little of it there was in the world.

     “Looks like you beat me to the punch, darlin’.” He reached out for his coat where he had discarded it on the divan, and pulled from an inside pocket an impossibly ancient book - held together, it seemed, with little but duct tape and dreams. But the book wasn’t important: what mattered was what was there when he opened it, secreted away between the pages where fallout and the rigors of two hundred years had been unable to touch it. It was a dried rose, perfectly pressed within the book and hidden like some great treasure - as if it had been waiting, waiting for the next person to whom it would give as much pleasure as it had to the one who had preserved it.

     “You always know just what to say, don’t you?” The smile he offered her was thinner and more strained than he would have liked. Today was one of the bad ones, the ones that made him feel out of sync with the world, like he’d been caught up in a gray fog he couldn’t shake, muffling everything but his own fatigued, spinning thoughts. Irma’s presence felt just as muffled to him now, but if he worked at it, if he really listened when she talked to him like this, he could remind himself that good things existed beyond the cloud, and that he’d eventually come out the other side, just as he always had. Maybe Irma didn’t have the power to make this go away, but she could make it a little easier to endure: she was here, and she loved him, and that mattered. That made all the difference. 

     “I hope you don’t have to look too hard to see how crazy I am about you.” There was no more hesitation in the way he took her hand, lacing his fingers between hers as if he finally believed they belonged there. It was a self-assurance he’d been settling into a little at a time over the last few months, finally accepting that his touch wasn’t just welcome, but desired, and the simple freedom of being able to pull her hand up to his lips and kiss her palm was something he could appreciate even now. She’d be able to feel hot air vent from the gaps in his neck when he sighed, eyes squeezing briefly shut as he leaned a little into that hand, holding onto the sensation of warmth.

     Much as he might consider Diamond City his home, hard-won and dear, both Goodneighbor and the night offered their own charms, their own freedoms - just to be able to hold the hand of someone he cared for more than he had ever expected he could, to take her arm in his and lace their fingers together without the fear of harassment or degradation. To be allowed to have an evening like this, just another battered drifter in the land of misfit toys - trading barbs with Whitechapel Charlie, shooting the breeze with Daisy and KLE-0, sitting in a smoky corner with Irma and talking away the night in an intimate closeness he wouldn’t have dared in the Dugout.

     Nights like these were the ones that made him so deeply appreciative of his photographic memory that all the things he lacked seemed unimportant - to get to keep tonight, perfectly preserved, and return back to it when the days got hard and he needed to be reminded that there were places he belonged, that this was what he meant when he said “my people”. 

     Something had changed after their dance that evening in the Den - nothing dramatic, just some final, vital piece gently clicking into place, setting some delicate machine in motion. He felt it as he’d been feeling something approaching all night, the culmination of something that had been a long time coming, and he thought he ought to have been more afraid. God knew he had been before, but now that some change felt inevitable, even immediate, he found himself…content. Perhaps even eager, but unhurried, in no rush to reach the conclusion.

     “So did I.” Just as brief, and holding just as many things left unsaid, but writ large on a face that, worn though it might be, had rarely looked so untroubled. In his eyes there was nothing that could give the impression of warmth, even if they wanted to, but the cracked crow’s feet that deepened around them were remarkably, earnestly human, and his smile could only have been called soft. In the seconds between her painted fingers taking hold of his tie and her lips pressing into his, he could have stopped her, wondered if he should - and didn’t. And it was right.

     It occurred to him, dizzying, that no matter how many kisses he thought he remembered, this was the first that was truly his own, and he felt no apprehension about the hands he had placed that privilege in. The hands that also held whatever an old tin man might call his heart, and that he trusted to keep it - rusting, oily thing that it was. He didn’t think about the things that were missing, about what the old Nick might have been able to feel in his place, didn’t fear her disgust, and somewhere inside of him a dam broke. Not violently, but a gentle giving way, the simple letting go of armor that was no longer needed.

     The skeletal fingers of his right hand found her waist, and held it, and when he reached up with the hand that still resembled flesh to gently frame the curve of Irma’s jaw, to slide into her hair and wonder what it felt like, he chuckled wryly into her mouth, realizing he had had to push himself up on his toes to reach. 

     He thought the old Nick had felt some kind of urgency, in moments like these, some instinctive passion that he lacked, but whatever his body might fail to feel when pressed against hers, his mind took up with a sensation like soaring. This was warm, and beautiful, and too good, too good for him, but in this moment he didn’t feel at all unworthy. In fact, he felt a greater sensation of worth in this moment than he could ever have hoped for.

     When she pulled away his fingers remained curled at the base of her neck, glowing eyes intense and focused - she might well have been the only thing in the world, if only for a few moments. He realized he wanted to kiss her again - not necessarily now, but again, and again, and he thought about the words someday is good enough for me, and felt a heart he didn’t have trying to burst.