#vinny drabble

[sol-tani]

⟡ : boyfriend texts with vinny !

pairing. vinny hong x gn!reader

genre. smau/texts, fluff, some angst, established relationship

warnings. arguing (it’s quick), playful threats (fighting, hitting, etc. but never seriously), vinny may be ooc but I don’t think so…

𖤓 – please let me know what you think of this! vinny is one of my favorite characters so I was excited when anon requested it :) If you have requests for any of the people I write for, please send them in and I’ll try my best to make them !!

© sol-tani — all content belongs to this blog, don’t steal, copy, repost, translate, or claim as your own.

[vinnysouther]

but in reality......HE WAS

Mondays were for cleansing the Commonwealth. Mechanical whirring, distant footsteps, someone typing, and a few soft meows from the proctor’s office fused into one low-simmering background noise on the nearly-empty airship. Dim red light filled the steely corridors, muffling any sound into whispers.

The silence was short-lived. Knight Vince Souther was the first to boom through the door to the Prydwen’s main deck; his power armor, pockmarked with dents from bullets and fallout from explosions, crashed heavily as he descended to the mess hall. With a grunt, he yanked off his helmet and tossed it to a nearby squire. Strands of hair glued themselves to his forehead with sweat. “No you don’t get it, I’m so goddamn hungry, I haven’t eaten since--”

One of Vince's squad mates--a tall, moon-faced woman with a scar over the bridge of her nose and blunt bangs stuck in every direction--voiced her agreement as she followed suit. “Seriously, I’m starved and all, but I don’t think I can even look at another Salisbury steak…”

“There was a surplus,” the mess cook growled as the squad clanked into the hall. “For the millionth. Fucking. Time.”

“Ol’ Hawk Ears, over here. I happen to like Salisbury steak, sir,” Vince puckered his lips at the cook as he swiped his food from the counter and headed to “their” table to eject from his suit.

“Don’t fuck with me, Souther. I know where you sleep.”

The knight’s eyes brightened and he giggled mischievously as he slid onto the bench. “Oh my god, he was totally hitting on me. Dottie, remind me to trim the weeds tonight.”

“I don’t know what that means. And if it’s about your pubes, then I definitely don’t want to know,” his squad mate replied flatly, hopping out of the back of her armor. Even without the added height of the suit, Dottie still had a solid four inches on Vince. She slipped her finger under the cardboard flap of a box of snack cakes she’d grabbed and held the box open to him. “I know you’re gonna ask, so just take one.”

With a sinister cackle, Vince obliged. He took two. “Have I told you lately that I love you?” he sang.

Dottie choked around her own snack cake, struggling not to spit it out as she laughed. “God. Your singing’s worse than your B.O. You shoulda spared us all the agony and hit the showers before you came around all these people eating. I mean, their mouths are open, Vince.”

“This is the smell of victory, sweetheart.” Vince grinned and ran a hand through his sweaty hair, then leaned across the table to wipe it on Dottie’s uniform.

“Guh!” Dottie exclaimed, dodging to the side with a snicker. “You smell like wet pennies.”

“The fuck’s a penny?”

Their banter was interrupted by the squire that had caught their helmets scurrying up to their table. She was a little girl of about thirteen, stony-faced with a shaved head. “Knight Souther, Paladin Berkowitz said to put your suit away and meet him in his office.”

Vince half-screamed an exaggerated groan that was, luckily, muffled by his second snack cake. “Can’t a man eat his dinner without getting called to the chopping block? Just for one day. Just once.” He knew he wasn’t going to get a reply from the squire—this one took her vows notoriously seriously, which had always annoyed him. Weren’t kids supposed to like cherry bombs and comic books and knives and jokes and shit? Without waiting for a response, he got to his feet. “Whatever, alright. Let me see my helmet.”

-

His paladin’s “office,” if they could even be called that, were tucked away in a far corner of the living quarters. A desk with a terminal and a bookshelf were set up around his bed to create some illusion of a private space. Vince wasn’t one to compliment others on their accomplishments, but even he had to admit it was actually sort of cozy.

When the knight rounded the corner of the bookshelf the paladin, a stocky young man not too much older than Vince’s eighteen, tucked his cigarette in an ashtray and stood from his terminal. “Souther. Have a seat.” Berkowitz greeted him with a brief handshake and immediately sat back down. Vince’s brow furrowed. Usually the paladin was much more chummy than that, all jokes and smiles. It was often a welcome reprieve from…well, the rest of the officers on board.

After a quick glance around the quarters, Vince cleared an alarm clock off a nearby end table and tugged it over to the other side of the paladin’s desk. “I’m not uh…in trouble, am I, Berk?” he joked with a weak smile. There was no reason for him to be, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Berkowitz hadn’t called him in to congratulate him on a job well done. Vince squinted, racking his brain to remember any civilians he might have hit. Wait, I don’t do that shit. What the hell?

Berkowitz didn’t answer for a long moment: something on his terminal screen seemed to have occupied his thoughts. When he finally realized he was being spoken to, the paladin looked up at Vince. “Hm? Oh, no. Not at all. Er.” He fished the pack of cigarettes from his desk drawer and shook one loose. “Cigarette?” he offered.

The suspicion that had been gnawing at Vince’s brain was now tinged with annoyance. “I don’t smoke, Berk. What the hell is going on? You’re acting like a fuckin’ spaz.”

Again, Berkowitz fell silent and studied the terminal screen in front of him. The soft sound of power tools being used on armor floated down from upstairs; even fainter than that was the boisterous chatter in the mess hall that now seemed so far away. Vince swore he could hear the minutes of his life ticking away. Fed up, he moved to leave before the paladin stopped him with an absent shake of his head.

Berk spoke. “Paladin Nylund’s squad cleared that middle school up near Malden Center today."

Vince reseated himself, fiddling with the holotags around his neck. “Yeah. Tarek told me they’d be going up there. Bunch of Gunners, right?”

The paladin nodded, eyes still trained on the screen. “Yeah, Tarek—Knight Abraham actually was the one...he found a vault down there. Tons of tech. Lot of blueprints. He did some really good work today, took out a ton of Gunners…” He trailed off, pinching his cigarette from his ashtray to drag off of it. Berk’s fingers trembled as he lifted it to his lips.

Oh fuck. Something in Vince’s mind completely rejected the obvious truth sitting right in front of him. It was as if there was a brick wall completely blocking all access to that line of thought—don’t say it, don’t spell it, don’t even think about it and it won’t be true. He opened his mouth and stuttered—too dry to talk—then swallowed to try again. “So uh, what do you want me to do, blow him? Shouldn’t…I mean I love the guy to death, but we’re not married, heh—I don’t need to hear about his…”

“Vince, you know where this is going.” God damn that Berk. He couldn’t just let a guy live in his denial for fifteen seconds? The was a long pause followed by a deep sigh. “Abraham was KIA today. He’s—I’m so sorry.”

The rest of the paladin’s words dissolved in the air. “I know you two were close.” Sugar in lemonade. “I haven’t told his family yet.” Paper in water. “I just—wanted you to be the first to know.” A loud, dark buzzing filled Vince’s ears, blocking out any other sounds, any other words, any—he couldn’t hear it right now. His body wouldn’t hear it.

Out of nowhere, Vince’s left cheek went ice cold. The sensation barely registered. Neither did the feeling of his throat going raw, as if it were being ripped apart from the inside. All he could feel, all his body would let him feel was a black hole in his belly, consuming as it grew. Hot streaks began to burn his face where it had frozen—what was Dottie doing here?

“Get his other arm, Dot, get him upright, I—medic! Medic!” “What happened? What happened to him? Vinny, it’s me, what happened? Is his arm broken?” “Just help me stand him up—where the fuck is the medic?!”

-

“Has that ever happened to you before?”

Vince blinked. He was on his back, now staring at that familiar view of the rafters high above his bed. He moved to prop himself up on his elbows and felt a tug around his mouth. Whoever had put an oxygen mask on him was gone now: only Dottie sat at the foot of his bed. Her hands were folded on her lap. She never did know what to do with them. It was one of her “things,” Vince remembered.

She’d asked him a question. Vince slipped the mask down around his neck to speak. “Has what?” he croaked.

The corners of Dottie’s mouth tugged downwards. “Sometimes, when something really…really really terrible happens, people can kinda—” She cringed, unable to articulate. “You know. Like you aren’t in your body, like you can’t really feel. You sometimes don’t know what’s happening...” The blank stare she was being met with confirmed Dottie’s theory. “You fell on the floor. Started screaming. The medic gave you those little…cat pee things to smell because you wouldn’t breathe right. Then they put you on the oxygen.” Another pause. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve done it too. It’s some kind of survival thing. Fight or flight.”

Vince seemed to have tuned out. He rubbed his fingertips across his bottom lip—scaly. God, he was thirsty. It was quiet again. He couldn’t even hear the engineers working on power armor anymore: where was everyone?

It was as if Dottie could read his thoughts. “Everyone’s kind of walking on eggshells. Not hiding, but…you uh, took a swipe at Berk. At me.” She turned the cheek furthest away from him. There was a bright red welt about the size of a bottle cap perched on her cheekbone. With a lame chuckle, she added, “I didn’t even know you could hit like that. Figured you were all talk.”

The knight winced at the bruise. Berk, whatever, but he’d hit a woman? “Aw fuck, Dot, I’m so sorry, that—that’s fucked up. God, if my ma were here…”

“Well I’m…I mean, I’m a soldier, Vin. I’ve gotten punched before.” Dottie looked puzzled, then brushed it aside. Her face softened. “I’m…dang. I’m so sorry about Tarek. I’m so sorry.”

Vince looked at Dottie for a moment, studying her face. “What about him?”

Taken aback, Dottie mumbled, “Well. He’s…dead, Vinny.”

He continued to stare at her, his expression unreadable. Silently, he lay back down flat and stared at the rafters. Dot waited for a response, shifting uncomfortably on the edge of the bed and debating whether or not it would be in bad taste to leave. Clearly he had a lot on his mind—

Then Vince broke the silence. “No,” he said, his tone unusually casual. “No, he’s not.”