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"So you're leaving?"
...
"I have no other choice."
MacCready scowled. "Says who? Desdemona? That fuc- mmph, freaking robot you guys keep in the back room?"
"Says me, MacCready!" Deacon growled. Regaining his cool, he pushed up his sunglasses and sighed. "It's dangerous for me to stay here. You know that. I'm not putting you in the line of fire for some fucking... whatever this is." He gestured between himself and MacCready.
"Yeah, Deacon? What is it that we have here? Because I figured after you kissed me, you felt something too," he hissed. "Or was that just another lie?"
He quieted. After a beat of silence, he repeated softly: "was it another lie?"
Deacon stood, unmoving, his sunglasses masking his expression. Seconds stretched on in silence, the tension growing with each passing moment.
MacCready was the one to break the silence with a small laugh.
"So that's it, then," he chuckled, edging on hysterics. "We spend months traveling together, I let it slip that I'm into you, you kissed me, and now you're leaving?"
Deacon sighed. "Look, RJ, I-"
"Don't!" MacCready shouted, cutting him off. "Don't you dare call me that. You know full god-damn well that's what she used to call me. You keep her words out of your dirty, lying mouth."
Deacon gritted his teeth, turning away to face the exit of the bunker. Scoffing, MacCready sat down on a crate and rested his head on his knees, defeated. The silence grew thick, palpable.
"MacCready..." Deacon turned back towards him, his voice strained.
"What?" he said flatly, not lifting his head from its resting place on his legs.
"I'm not leaving because I want to hurt you. I mean... it's the opposite, pal, you know how I am. No matter how good I've got it, I always find a way to mess it up and get people hurt. And you? I don't ever want to get you hurt."
MacCready sighed into his slacks before raising his head up with a withering glare. "Deacon, I'm a mercenary. Not some 'damsel in distress.' I can handle myself."
"But if you get killed, that's on me, man!" Deacon snapped, his voice rising. "I'd have killed my best-fucking-friend!"
"Yeah?" MacCready yelled. "Best friend? That's why you're leaving, huh?! I don't care what happens, douchebag! It's my choice, and I choose to stay with you!"
Deacon and MacCready glowered at each other, both tense with rage.
"No."
"No? No, asshole? Why the hell not?!"
Deacon whipped around violently, his sunglasses nearly falling off from the force. "Because I'm in love with you, jackass!" He tore off the offending glasses and buried his head in his hands. "Everything I love fucking dies, Robert. And I- I won't kill you because I was stupid enough to let myself fall for you."
MacCready fell silent, the anger in the lines of his face falling to confusion.
"You... what?"
"You heard me," Deacon quietly said. Sighing, he replaced the glasses back to their spot on his face and turned around, trudging towards the exit.
MacCready stood, shell-shocked. "Wait, man, we've got to talk about this. Don't leave."
"There's nothing left to talk about," Deacon muttered. "This whole fuckin' deal was cursed from the beginning." Without a glance back, he slipped out into the Wasteland's night sky, nothing but footprints in the dirt to prove he'd even been there at all.
MacCready stared as the door shut quietly behind him, and he was left alone in the small bunker. Walking -nearly tripping- backward, he sat back down and stared into his hands. Somewhere in the silence of the night, a spy crept, grief-laden tears in the dirt marking his passing.
And still, the Wasteland's night moved on.