Deacon cannot resist the call of a clothing store. He isn't focused on the necessities that Danse is (He'll grab some later as an afterthought), right now he's too excited about the possibilities of disguises to add to his collection, which since leaving the Commonwealth has dwindled to like three outfits that aren't extremely useful in the convoy. Never let this guy near a Spirit Halloween, he'll probably go apeshit.
He's overwhelmed by the choices, but already has slung a pair of denim jeans over his shoulder that he's now setting aside so that he can shrug on a matching jacket for the full Canadian Tuxedo when he hears Danse's call. He smiles to himself, making his way through the racks and swiping himself an insane assortment of items on his way until his arms are piled high with options.
"What if I want your expert opinion on the fit?" he asks, moving into view. There's a curtained of section to their left, and Deacon makes his way to it, shifting the clothing to one arm to push the curtain open. Inside is a bench where he throws the hoarded clothing and a mirror, which he immediately uses to scope out the fit of the jacket he's shrugged on.
"I hope you realize you've just committed yourself to a whole-day affair."
The heavy sigh Danse lets out at the sound of Deacon's voice could probably rattle the items off the shelves and alert monsters to their presence, but fortunately neither of these things happens yet.
Knowing that Deacon already owns more clothing than all of his other civilian acquaintances combined, and not for any reason Danse wants to think about, he expects to turn and see a sizable armful of it, but this is beyond even his expectations. "Is it too late to rescind the offer?" he asks, stonily.
The question is clearly rhetorical, though, as evidenced by the fact that he...does not do this, or leave, or even ignore Deacon to keep browsing for himself, but looks back somewhat against his will to assess what Deacon's found. It's a sturdy jacket, respectable enough by Danse's standards to go without criticism. Danse wonders what exactly qualifies his opinion on the fit as 'expert,' thinks about the possible answers, and opts not to ask.
"Looks like it has decent range of movement to me, but I'm not the one who has to aim in it. Where are you even going to store all that?"
There's merely a chuckle at the concept of a rescinded offer, as if Danse is making a little joke. Deacon knows he isn't, but it makes him laugh all the same.
"Ye of little faith. Haven't you seen the vehicle they gave me? You can't fucking miss it." The last three words are hissed with mild annoyance. Deacon doesn't like being perceived, and though the wienermobile is, as he once called it, 'majestic', it's the least conspicuous vehicle in the entire convoy. "Anyway, there's tons of room in there, and these aren't all going to be winners. I was actually thinking some of this might fit you."
He shrugs the denim off his shoulders, tossing it in a separate pile (his 'winners'), and then straightens out the t-shirt he's pulled on over his own that had been previously obscured by denim. In bold letters, it reads 'DOG DAD'.
"I know." Rarely is there ever quite such a smug, audible smirk in Danse's voice, but there's also rarely anything quite so satisfying to him as the thought of someone who relies on dishonorable sneaking tactics being thwarted in that by whatever passes for cosmic authority around here. The fact that the thwarting comes in the form of a huge bus shaped like a hot dog is just the icing on the cake. Or the mustard on the bun. Whatever. It's funny to him, and so few things ever really are.
It does not take long for Danse to be paid back in full for that smugness. The smirk first drops off his face at the idea of trying on anything of Deacon's choosing--just on principle, honestly, but also vividly remembering that moldy hi-vis vest that had proved worse than just walking around the power plant in his underpants--but when he actually sees the shirt, and knows Deacon must have chosen it on purpose, and remembers even more vividly that description of the 'good boy ears' that have now returned to his head as furry and pettable as ever, his face flushes as unflatteringly red as it had back in the lake.
And he can't even dive underwater to get away from it now, either. Truly, he can't even decide whether this or the 'good boy' had been worse, but either way, he knows he's giving Deacon precisely the reaction he wants, and so Danse turns back to the clothing rack with a scowl.
"I think you and I have very different standards for what constitutes usefulness in an item of clothing," he mutters. "Not to mention propriety."
"You're not wrong..." Deacon sighs, pretending that there is absolutely nothing strange or wrong about the shirt he's wearing. "If you had it your way, I'm sure you'd have welded a few garbage cans together and called it a day. I guess I'm biased but... I think I have better taste."
He grabs at the curtain and yanks it closed behind him while he changes, throwing the completely irritating tshirt back over the curtain to land vaguely in Danse's proximity. "Not everything has to have utility on the battlefield, soldier," he calls over the curtain, which is pulled back a few moments later to reveal the change. Deacon is now in a pair of dress slacks and a button-up shirt, which he's actively knotting a tie atop. He grabs thr matching blazer and throws it on, sizing it all up in the mirror.
"Maybe this in particular has less utility here, but back home this sort of thing got me taken way more seriously in some crowds..."
The shirt lands close enough to Danse for him to kick it under a shelf, and so he does. "There's nothing wrong with improvised body armor if it works," he retorts, before Deacon even makes it into the dressing stall, draping a couple promising pairs of cargo pants over his arm and looking for tops that might match them fatigue-style. Truly, Deacon, don't give him ideas. He will start hoarding trash bins.
He would at least concede that for other people, there probably are reasons to wear something other than power armor or a flightsuit. Sometimes. Overalls for farmers and white coats for doctors and that sort of thing. He is not braced for an example like this, any more than he was prepared to watch Deacon shirtlessly show the boiler room machinery who was boss, and Deacon can enjoy rendering him speechless once again.
He doesn't know how a frame like Deacon's can look so differently good in so many things, and just as good in an entirely different way than any of those when stripped half-bare. Danse has never thought about the particular skill it takes to blend seamlessly into a crowd, or that it takes skill at all, despite the fact that it's not something he's ever been able to do in his life or ever could--but Deacon isn't blending into anything right now. If he walked into a room wearing a suit like that, sharp and clean and making him look taller than he is but still appealingly trim, Danse would take notice. Anyone would.
Danse doesn't want to approve of the look, let alone the context in which it must have been useful back home, but it takes a good minute to remind himself of this. "What crowds," he says, "the Triggermen?"
It's a semi-legitimate question. It is completely undermined by the fact that he is only now managing to tear his eyes away.
"I have my doubts," he sighs, picturing a very imaginative image of Danse parading around in a dumpster and smiling to himself. It's frankly all he has to cling to, because somehow even (or especially) when Danse was stripped down to his briefs in the power plant, he looked good. Deacon has to keep up on his surgeries and everything else to keep his mug handsome, and Danse was spit out of the Institute printer looking like the sort of guy the Romans built shrines for. Not that he envies the guy for that, he knows it comes with its own baggage.
"You're thinking too small," he hums, admiring the suit for a moment longer before sighing and tugging off the tie. He loves it, but unless they come across Convoy Corporate HQ, it's not worth keeping and he knows it. "A suit like this means caps. A high-rise in the green jewel. Vault-Tec remnants. Political connections. High-stakes poker games." He glances over his shoulder at Danse with a smirk, "Stories for another time."
The curtain is closed again and Deacon takes his time disrobing, which gives Danse a reprieve. Then he's trying on some of his scavenged jeans, mostly to make sure he can move about in them before he starts sorting through the pile again.
In spite of himself, Danse is curious to hear those stories. It's all just another stark illustration of the difference in their methods and philosophies, blunt force versus subtlety, conquering versus infiltrating. He's never had to know more than the most basic outline of the Commonwealth's political situation, because the goal was always for the Brotherhood to supplant it anyway.
For the good of the people, he'd told himself, because whatever system was in place clearly wasn't getting the job done--and maybe that was the Institute's fault, but that was only all the more reason for the region to be controlled by the only power capable of stopping them. Detailed intel wasn't necessary. Blending in would have been counterproductive. Intimidation was the idea. Everything Deacon talks about here is utterly foreign to Danse, and he's made it known exactly how he feels before about what he considers the cowardice of misleading and not showing one's full might upfront, luring people into a false sense of security, all of that--
But it feels different now, when he has a worm's-eye view of how frightening and dangerous things really can get for certain people under Brotherhood rule. People Deacon cares about, even if Danse didn't until he knew he numbered among them. He's somewhat subdued now as he keeps poking through the rack. He finds a shirt in the exact same homesick-familiar shade of burnt orange as his flightsuit was, a color that's always looked good on him. He doesn't pick it up.
"I imagine you're an absolute menace at poker," he says, when Deacon's been quiet for a minute. Honestly, he doesn't even have to imagine; he just knows. "What else do you have in there?"
"You alright over there, big guy?" Deacon asks, having noticed Danse has slowed down since their arrival in the grove. He hasn't seemed right since they took a rest beside a tree that Deacon decided to forage as many boxes of macaroni and cheese that he could reasonably fit in his pack as possible, which now makes him feel a bit guilty. If that tree dusted Danse in some sort of pollen and this wasn't just exhaustion from their travels, then Deacon knows he's to blame. He also is well aware that Danse hasn't been sleeping, so either way, this can't be a good thing... Well, fuck.
"I don't think we have that far to go, I can see one of our markers up ahead. Think you'll make it?" He's thankful they had the wherewithal to mark the route as they moved in, but if he has to fashion some sort of cart to haul the larger man out with him, he's shit out of luck.
It's taken Danse longer than it's taken Deacon to realize that something's wrong, even though he's the one feeling increasingly foggy and leaden-limbed. That hasn't been so out of the ordinary for him lately, after a tentative trial run at testing the boundaries of the Institute's bold 'synths don't need sleep' boast. He'd made it almost 48 hours before deciding he'd rather be sharp when driving on the mountain road he could see up ahead, but that isn't enough to satisfy him--he's seen Haylen hold out for longer, and much as he admires her, she's still human. He'll try again once the convoy's road smooths out.
He'd considered running the 'how long can I go without food' experiment instead, but then once Deacon had hit on the idea of foraging for hooch-enhancing ingredients along the convoy's previous path, Danse had decided it would just be miserable to do that while hungry, and eaten a normal breakfast. Nonetheless, he hasn't been at his best this week. And he wouldn't blame Deacon for noticing, except that his brain is finding it difficult to focus. Why is he still so tired, after a rest he already should have found unnecessary? He doesn't think the tree had done anything, and he isn't accustomed to getting sick.
Still, if Deacon's going to put things like that, it's a matter of pride now. He straightens up from his uncharacteristic slouch and picks up the pace as best he can. "I'm in better shape than you'll be after eating an entire box of carbohydrates," he says, as if he hasn't marched on a meal of Instamash and potato chips before. That's one thing his synth constitution seems to handle unusually well. But he feels like he's experiencing the kind of food coma he's only known since arriving here, and there's nothing to account for it right now. He pauses again to rub his eyes, yawns, and loses his train of thought.
Deacon's expression is skeptical. After all, it doesn't take very long after that little gloat for Danse to look about ready to collapse again. The eyeroll behind his glasses is damn-near audible. He's going to need to think on his feet, here.
"Get it together, soldier!" he barks in a passably-military tone. A touch smug, he nudges Danse with his elbow to jostle him. "What do I gotta do to wake you up?" he asks, demonstrating a little slap to his own cheek as if that's an option. If he does it to Danse, there is always the chance that his hand gets bitten off. Maybe he's ticklish?? God. Now is probably not the time.
But Deacon is worried. He's never seen Danse like this, and given the way he's seen the world they find themselves in effect those around them, he highly suspects it's gotten to him somehow... which means to could hit Deacon next. They need to hustle.
The jostling isn't necessary at that exact moment, when that bark startles him enough to make him flinch--mostly with its volume, but it is just passably military enough to take Danse back to his initiate days and being hollered at by Paladin Krieg when he wasn't digging latrines fast enough. It is not an experience he looks back on with fondness, however much he might otherwise miss that old bastard.
"Well, you don't need to hit me," he says, with the irritable tone of someone being denied a request for five more minutes of sleep. God, that would be nice. Just five more minutes of rest under one of those other trees, in their comforting shade. What harm could it do?
Deacon's elbow brings him back to reality just long enough for a chill to creep down his spine at the brief realization that this could, in fact, do a lot of harm. He isn't supposed to be feeling like this. It isn't natural. And he does need to listen to Deacon, who might be a gadfly at the best of times, but who would never just leave him here to pass out and be devoured by carnivorous plants.
"Just--keep talking. And don't get smug about it. This may be the only time you'll ever hear me say that to you, so don't rub it in."
Deacon might commonly make a quip or three, but he's not the sort of guy who will just talk a person's ear off, far from it. He prefers silence, mystery, and all things that generally come with the 'guy who wants to be anyone but himself' persona. So at that reply, he dramatically clutches his pearls and gasps.
"Smug? Me? Never." he replies, "Fine, fine..."
The military stuff seemed to work, at least. Deacon straightens up, moving a few steps ahead of Danse with a light jog and puts on his best drill sergeant voice. "Don't just stand there with your teeth in your mouth, soldier! Get a move on! We have daylight to stomp out! I want to see those knuckles off of the ground and those feet move like there's a Deathclaw on your tail."
This works to get Danse moving not so much because of the voice--which he will think about in more detail later, because it's doing something to him and he does not want to analyze it--but because parsing the nonsensical phrasing takes enough brainpower to keep him from losing focus again for the moment.
"If there was a deathclaw on my tail," he mutters, "I'd probably let it rip the damn thing off and keep it. God knows I don't want it."
He wonders sometimes if the wastelanders here, himself included, have gotten a little complacent now that they don't have deathclaws to worry about. Nothing that's ever burst out of a husk at Danse has been remotely as problematic as a deathclaw. But he can at least remember what it feels like to run from one, so he does his best to channel that energy, even if he can't quite muster a jog.
"How are you so chipper? I'm not complaining, we'd be in big trouble if you weren't, but..." He's slowing down again, sounding as drained as if he's just taken the entire Freedom Trail at a run, even if he isn't out of breath.
"Is that an argument, soldier?" Deacon barks, if only because now is not the right time to tell Danse that he finds the tail charming, especially when it wags against his will in response to something Deacon has done. He'd never thought of himself as a dog person, and yet...
"Next time you're surrounded by territorial Deathclaws and your battle buddy, who is bleeding from multiple wounds, tells you that he needs to make it back to his wife and children, are you going to look him in the eye and tell him you'll let the damn things tear you apart because you don't want your tail???" Deacon isn't even sure that the Brotherhood is allowed to have a home life, but that shouldn't matter. Danse has soldier hammered into his head, so whatever drill sergeant Deacon is channeling right now is irrelevant. It's the tactics that matter, here.
Deacon slows down at Danse's questioning, noticing Danse slowing down as well. It's more unusual to see this other man this tired. "Oh don't worry, you owe me for this one..." he mutters, falling back to Danse's side so that he can shove close enough to shout directly into his ear.
It's not that Danse doesn't remember that dress, or everything it had been a part of, in detail so vivid he's mortified to still be out in the open when this flightsuit puts even the barest stirrings of arousal on full display.
He's remembering it now, anyway. So much about this place is feeling concretely real again only when he's reminded of it, as Deacon does now. Before, it might have felt like a shared dream, except more distant than the ones he remembers going through here. He'd seen Deacon yesterday, and it had been...
It hadn't been unpleasant. He'd told himself that he would be happy to see any familiar face, after a week alone in the bunker. But he hadn't been able to account for why he was happier to see Deacon's than he would have been Haylen's or Nora's, why it had been accompanied by a flutter in his chest that neither of them had ever provoked, why it felt like so much more familiar a face all of a sudden than it ever was before. As if Danse had seen behind those sunglasses and knew the whole map of him perfectly, when he knew that couldn't possibly be the case.
He edges sideways through the truck door, rallies the last bit of his strength to carry Deacon to the stolen mattress in the back rather than depositing him in a seat, and wastes absolutely no further time in plucking those sunglasses off Deacon's face before kissing him more deeply than he could have brought himself to do in public. "You refresh my memory," he murmurs against Deacon's lips, "and I'll refresh yours."
Deacon has no idea how long it's taken to get back to the car. At some point he started staring at the way Danse's pupils seemed to grow larger at the mention of that dress and before he knew it, he was on his back. His legs tingle, feeling trying to return while his heart pounds in overtime to get his circulation going. The eyes behind those dark glasses are still pupil-less, but there is a longing present that can't be denied, especially once Danse is kissing him and he's practically panting against his lips.
"Do you want me to change?" he asks, voice even more sultry in their privacy, his hands kneading over Danse's shoulders and biceps after all their hard work. "Or maybe you'd like to reacclimate yourself with the real thing, first? I'm not picky."
Deacon kisses each corner of Danse's lips, "All I want is you."
"I want the real thing," he breathes, without a second of hesitation as he melts under Deacon's hands. "I always want the real thing." And he has a true understanding now of just how lucky he is to get that, how truly unique that privilege actually is anymore, when the last person who can really be said to have had it died twenty years ago.
Wild as he'd gone for Jane Doe, everything about her form and her scent and her taste, Danse had spent too many long months before that wanting Deacon exactly as he was, exactly as Danse thought he'd always known him. He'd wanted nothing but Deacon stripped bare, as real as he could possibly get, dreamed about those vicious scars even with the full knowledge of where they came from, dreamed about those lean farmer muscles even though he knows how tragically that career ended, dreamed about that soft ginger hair and those hubflower-blue eyes that have never been any less beautiful to him for the changes this place has wrought on them.
He's wanted to skim his hands up over those wiry thighs exactly as he does now, hooking fingers into wet denim and peeling it down and off, tugging underwear along with it and rubbing vigorously at Deacon's legs from calves all the way up to his hips. He's all too happy to feast his eyes on the sight as he does, eager already to get his mouth around Deacon's cock, but still pleased as punch in the meantime to reacquaint himself with that ginger happy trail he's always so admired.
Deacon's breath catches in his throat as Danse replies, not expecting those words to be so impactful. He's spent decades pretending to be anyone but himself, to the point where he isn't even certain that he knows who that is anymore, but Danse's vocalized desire for the real Deacon feels like Danse has excavated layers of defenses and dug his fingers into the soft tissue of his heart. There's a painful realization to come to terms with about himself as much as there is a deep ache of emotion and longing; touched and falling fast in a way that feels too vulnerable or dangerous and yet he can't stop and wouldn't want to.
"You never need to ask," he breathes, his shivering soothed by the way Danse's hands work to warm him up. His legs still tingle slightly, feeling returning and still cold to the bone, but he can move them, squeezing around Danse's sides as his lips are on his lower belly and making the rest of his body melt beneath them.
"I'm yours-" he gasps, a hand carding into Danse's hair, his cock filling out between them, "All of me."
He draws in a quick trembling breath at that squeeze to his waist, both arousing enticement and reassuring evidence that Deacon's regaining his circulation just fine--though nothing is better proof of that than the way he's already hardening under Danse's warm, tender touch.
It's deeply gratifying, something that always strikes Danse right to the core, both the way Deacon can't hide or downplay the eagerness with which his body reacts, and the way he trusts now that Deacon wouldn't. What more could he have to hide anymore that Danse doesn't already know?
"I know," he says, a deliberate exhale of hot breath over Deacon's growing erection, as his hands pause to grip with gently-bruising strength at those narrow hips. "I promise, I know." He believes it. He closes his eyes and nuzzles briefly against Deacon's stomach with nothing but affection, sheer pleasure and gratitude to be touching him again after what feels like longer than it's really been (for all either of them knows, or can gauge.)
What he has to hide isn't foremost in his mind, but it's only been held back from Danse out of consideration. Danse reacted so poorly the last time he'd heard of his own forgotten past that Deacon had been afraid to share his knowledge of it at all, but it's moments like these that Deacon convinces himself that the version of Danse he'd known was a different person altogether.
"Danse-" Deacon tries to bellow his lover's name sternly at the feeling of heated breath against his sensitive skin, but it's far closer to a whimper, too desperate to be mistaken for anything but. Nails scratch at Danse's scalp as Deacon gasps with fangs bared, his body arching into his touch.
It feels far too real to be a dream, but Deacon's hands pet admiringly over those soft ears, scratching behind them and gazing down over Danse with adoration. "I never have dreams as sweet as you, Baby Brahmin," he whispers, "I'm here..."
Everything he's being newly reminded of here feels like digging up some small treasure, after the details had evaporated in their absence and are only now coalescing again, but this feels like finding a particularly special cache, like an old store of powerful weapons in a bunker or a bottling plant with a chestful of unlooted caps. He doesn't know whether it's the tender, personal pet name or the physical stimulus to his ears that sets his tail thumping reflexively against the mattress, but either of them would have been more than sufficient.
And the romantic sentiment, too, making him look back up with meltingly soft eyes and stretch upward to steal a kiss from Deacon's lips before sliding back down to finally take his cock into that too-hot mouth, slow and sweet and almost reverently deep, with a soft blissful noise around him as those wide brahmin eyes drift closed.
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post-event, after the shield has been salvaged
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Jayce tells me he has something new in the works. I'll let you know once I have more details.
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July Event // Get some clothes on...
Deacon cannot resist the call of a clothing store. He isn't focused on the necessities that Danse is (He'll grab some later as an afterthought), right now he's too excited about the possibilities of disguises to add to his collection, which since leaving the Commonwealth has dwindled to like three outfits that aren't extremely useful in the convoy. Never let this guy near a Spirit Halloween, he'll probably go apeshit.
He's overwhelmed by the choices, but already has slung a pair of denim jeans over his shoulder that he's now setting aside so that he can shrug on a matching jacket for the full Canadian Tuxedo when he hears Danse's call. He smiles to himself, making his way through the racks and swiping himself an insane assortment of items on his way until his arms are piled high with options.
"What if I want your expert opinion on the fit?" he asks, moving into view. There's a curtained of section to their left, and Deacon makes his way to it, shifting the clothing to one arm to push the curtain open. Inside is a bench where he throws the hoarded clothing and a mirror, which he immediately uses to scope out the fit of the jacket he's shrugged on.
"I hope you realize you've just committed yourself to a whole-day affair."
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Knowing that Deacon already owns more clothing than all of his other civilian acquaintances combined, and not for any reason Danse wants to think about, he expects to turn and see a sizable armful of it, but this is beyond even his expectations. "Is it too late to rescind the offer?" he asks, stonily.
The question is clearly rhetorical, though, as evidenced by the fact that he...does not do this, or leave, or even ignore Deacon to keep browsing for himself, but looks back somewhat against his will to assess what Deacon's found. It's a sturdy jacket, respectable enough by Danse's standards to go without criticism. Danse wonders what exactly qualifies his opinion on the fit as 'expert,' thinks about the possible answers, and opts not to ask.
"Looks like it has decent range of movement to me, but I'm not the one who has to aim in it. Where are you even going to store all that?"
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"Ye of little faith. Haven't you seen the vehicle they gave me? You can't fucking miss it." The last three words are hissed with mild annoyance. Deacon doesn't like being perceived, and though the wienermobile is, as he once called it, 'majestic', it's the least conspicuous vehicle in the entire convoy. "Anyway, there's tons of room in there, and these aren't all going to be winners. I was actually thinking some of this might fit you."
He shrugs the denim off his shoulders, tossing it in a separate pile (his 'winners'), and then straightens out the t-shirt he's pulled on over his own that had been previously obscured by denim. In bold letters, it reads 'DOG DAD'.
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It does not take long for Danse to be paid back in full for that smugness. The smirk first drops off his face at the idea of trying on anything of Deacon's choosing--just on principle, honestly, but also vividly remembering that moldy hi-vis vest that had proved worse than just walking around the power plant in his underpants--but when he actually sees the shirt, and knows Deacon must have chosen it on purpose, and remembers even more vividly that description of the 'good boy ears' that have now returned to his head as furry and pettable as ever, his face flushes as unflatteringly red as it had back in the lake.
And he can't even dive underwater to get away from it now, either. Truly, he can't even decide whether this or the 'good boy' had been worse, but either way, he knows he's giving Deacon precisely the reaction he wants, and so Danse turns back to the clothing rack with a scowl.
"I think you and I have very different standards for what constitutes usefulness in an item of clothing," he mutters. "Not to mention propriety."
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He grabs at the curtain and yanks it closed behind him while he changes, throwing the completely irritating tshirt back over the curtain to land vaguely in Danse's proximity. "Not everything has to have utility on the battlefield, soldier," he calls over the curtain, which is pulled back a few moments later to reveal the change. Deacon is now in a pair of dress slacks and a button-up shirt, which he's actively knotting a tie atop. He grabs thr matching blazer and throws it on, sizing it all up in the mirror.
"Maybe this in particular has less utility here, but back home this sort of thing got me taken way more seriously in some crowds..."
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He would at least concede that for other people, there probably are reasons to wear something other than power armor or a flightsuit. Sometimes. Overalls for farmers and white coats for doctors and that sort of thing. He is not braced for an example like this, any more than he was prepared to watch Deacon shirtlessly show the boiler room machinery who was boss, and Deacon can enjoy rendering him speechless once again.
He doesn't know how a frame like Deacon's can look so differently good in so many things, and just as good in an entirely different way than any of those when stripped half-bare. Danse has never thought about the particular skill it takes to blend seamlessly into a crowd, or that it takes skill at all, despite the fact that it's not something he's ever been able to do in his life or ever could--but Deacon isn't blending into anything right now. If he walked into a room wearing a suit like that, sharp and clean and making him look taller than he is but still appealingly trim, Danse would take notice. Anyone would.
Danse doesn't want to approve of the look, let alone the context in which it must have been useful back home, but it takes a good minute to remind himself of this. "What crowds," he says, "the Triggermen?"
It's a semi-legitimate question. It is completely undermined by the fact that he is only now managing to tear his eyes away.
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"You're thinking too small," he hums, admiring the suit for a moment longer before sighing and tugging off the tie. He loves it, but unless they come across Convoy Corporate HQ, it's not worth keeping and he knows it. "A suit like this means caps. A high-rise in the green jewel. Vault-Tec remnants. Political connections. High-stakes poker games." He glances over his shoulder at Danse with a smirk, "Stories for another time."
The curtain is closed again and Deacon takes his time disrobing, which gives Danse a reprieve. Then he's trying on some of his scavenged jeans, mostly to make sure he can move about in them before he starts sorting through the pile again.
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In spite of himself, Danse is curious to hear those stories. It's all just another stark illustration of the difference in their methods and philosophies, blunt force versus subtlety, conquering versus infiltrating. He's never had to know more than the most basic outline of the Commonwealth's political situation, because the goal was always for the Brotherhood to supplant it anyway.
For the good of the people, he'd told himself, because whatever system was in place clearly wasn't getting the job done--and maybe that was the Institute's fault, but that was only all the more reason for the region to be controlled by the only power capable of stopping them. Detailed intel wasn't necessary. Blending in would have been counterproductive. Intimidation was the idea. Everything Deacon talks about here is utterly foreign to Danse, and he's made it known exactly how he feels before about what he considers the cowardice of misleading and not showing one's full might upfront, luring people into a false sense of security, all of that--
But it feels different now, when he has a worm's-eye view of how frightening and dangerous things really can get for certain people under Brotherhood rule. People Deacon cares about, even if Danse didn't until he knew he numbered among them. He's somewhat subdued now as he keeps poking through the rack. He finds a shirt in the exact same homesick-familiar shade of burnt orange as his flightsuit was, a color that's always looked good on him. He doesn't pick it up.
"I imagine you're an absolute menace at poker," he says, when Deacon's been quiet for a minute. Honestly, he doesn't even have to imagine; he just knows. "What else do you have in there?"
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Wake up, sleepy head.
"I don't think we have that far to go, I can see one of our markers up ahead. Think you'll make it?" He's thankful they had the wherewithal to mark the route as they moved in, but if he has to fashion some sort of cart to haul the larger man out with him, he's shit out of luck.
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He'd considered running the 'how long can I go without food' experiment instead, but then once Deacon had hit on the idea of foraging for hooch-enhancing ingredients along the convoy's previous path, Danse had decided it would just be miserable to do that while hungry, and eaten a normal breakfast. Nonetheless, he hasn't been at his best this week. And he wouldn't blame Deacon for noticing, except that his brain is finding it difficult to focus. Why is he still so tired, after a rest he already should have found unnecessary? He doesn't think the tree had done anything, and he isn't accustomed to getting sick.
Still, if Deacon's going to put things like that, it's a matter of pride now. He straightens up from his uncharacteristic slouch and picks up the pace as best he can. "I'm in better shape than you'll be after eating an entire box of carbohydrates," he says, as if he hasn't marched on a meal of Instamash and potato chips before. That's one thing his synth constitution seems to handle unusually well. But he feels like he's experiencing the kind of food coma he's only known since arriving here, and there's nothing to account for it right now. He pauses again to rub his eyes, yawns, and loses his train of thought.
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Deacon's expression is skeptical. After all, it doesn't take very long after that little gloat for Danse to look about ready to collapse again. The eyeroll behind his glasses is damn-near audible. He's going to need to think on his feet, here.
"Get it together, soldier!" he barks in a passably-military tone. A touch smug, he nudges Danse with his elbow to jostle him. "What do I gotta do to wake you up?" he asks, demonstrating a little slap to his own cheek as if that's an option. If he does it to Danse, there is always the chance that his hand gets bitten off. Maybe he's ticklish?? God. Now is probably not the time.
But Deacon is worried. He's never seen Danse like this, and given the way he's seen the world they find themselves in effect those around them, he highly suspects it's gotten to him somehow... which means to could hit Deacon next. They need to hustle.
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"Well, you don't need to hit me," he says, with the irritable tone of someone being denied a request for five more minutes of sleep. God, that would be nice. Just five more minutes of rest under one of those other trees, in their comforting shade. What harm could it do?
Deacon's elbow brings him back to reality just long enough for a chill to creep down his spine at the brief realization that this could, in fact, do a lot of harm. He isn't supposed to be feeling like this. It isn't natural. And he does need to listen to Deacon, who might be a gadfly at the best of times, but who would never just leave him here to pass out and be devoured by carnivorous plants.
"Just--keep talking. And don't get smug about it. This may be the only time you'll ever hear me say that to you, so don't rub it in."
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"Smug? Me? Never." he replies, "Fine, fine..."
The military stuff seemed to work, at least. Deacon straightens up, moving a few steps ahead of Danse with a light jog and puts on his best drill sergeant voice. "Don't just stand there with your teeth in your mouth, soldier! Get a move on! We have daylight to stomp out! I want to see those knuckles off of the ground and those feet move like there's a Deathclaw on your tail."
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"If there was a deathclaw on my tail," he mutters, "I'd probably let it rip the damn thing off and keep it. God knows I don't want it."
He wonders sometimes if the wastelanders here, himself included, have gotten a little complacent now that they don't have deathclaws to worry about. Nothing that's ever burst out of a husk at Danse has been remotely as problematic as a deathclaw. But he can at least remember what it feels like to run from one, so he does his best to channel that energy, even if he can't quite muster a jog.
"How are you so chipper? I'm not complaining, we'd be in big trouble if you weren't, but..." He's slowing down again, sounding as drained as if he's just taken the entire Freedom Trail at a run, even if he isn't out of breath.
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"Next time you're surrounded by territorial Deathclaws and your battle buddy, who is bleeding from multiple wounds, tells you that he needs to make it back to his wife and children, are you going to look him in the eye and tell him you'll let the damn things tear you apart because you don't want your tail???" Deacon isn't even sure that the Brotherhood is allowed to have a home life, but that shouldn't matter. Danse has soldier hammered into his head, so whatever drill sergeant Deacon is channeling right now is irrelevant. It's the tactics that matter, here.
Deacon slows down at Danse's questioning, noticing Danse slowing down as well. It's more unusual to see this other man this tired. "Oh don't worry, you owe me for this one..." he mutters, falling back to Danse's side so that he can shove close enough to shout directly into his ear.
"Now MOVE."
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ice ice baby, nsfw
It's not that Danse doesn't remember that dress, or everything it had been a part of, in detail so vivid he's mortified to still be out in the open when this flightsuit puts even the barest stirrings of arousal on full display.
He's remembering it now, anyway. So much about this place is feeling concretely real again only when he's reminded of it, as Deacon does now. Before, it might have felt like a shared dream, except more distant than the ones he remembers going through here. He'd seen Deacon yesterday, and it had been...
It hadn't been unpleasant. He'd told himself that he would be happy to see any familiar face, after a week alone in the bunker. But he hadn't been able to account for why he was happier to see Deacon's than he would have been Haylen's or Nora's, why it had been accompanied by a flutter in his chest that neither of them had ever provoked, why it felt like so much more familiar a face all of a sudden than it ever was before. As if Danse had seen behind those sunglasses and knew the whole map of him perfectly, when he knew that couldn't possibly be the case.
He edges sideways through the truck door, rallies the last bit of his strength to carry Deacon to the stolen mattress in the back rather than depositing him in a seat, and wastes absolutely no further time in plucking those sunglasses off Deacon's face before kissing him more deeply than he could have brought himself to do in public. "You refresh my memory," he murmurs against Deacon's lips, "and I'll refresh yours."
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"Do you want me to change?" he asks, voice even more sultry in their privacy, his hands kneading over Danse's shoulders and biceps after all their hard work. "Or maybe you'd like to reacclimate yourself with the real thing, first? I'm not picky."
Deacon kisses each corner of Danse's lips, "All I want is you."
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Wild as he'd gone for Jane Doe, everything about her form and her scent and her taste, Danse had spent too many long months before that wanting Deacon exactly as he was, exactly as Danse thought he'd always known him. He'd wanted nothing but Deacon stripped bare, as real as he could possibly get, dreamed about those vicious scars even with the full knowledge of where they came from, dreamed about those lean farmer muscles even though he knows how tragically that career ended, dreamed about that soft ginger hair and those hubflower-blue eyes that have never been any less beautiful to him for the changes this place has wrought on them.
He's wanted to skim his hands up over those wiry thighs exactly as he does now, hooking fingers into wet denim and peeling it down and off, tugging underwear along with it and rubbing vigorously at Deacon's legs from calves all the way up to his hips. He's all too happy to feast his eyes on the sight as he does, eager already to get his mouth around Deacon's cock, but still pleased as punch in the meantime to reacquaint himself with that ginger happy trail he's always so admired.
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"You never need to ask," he breathes, his shivering soothed by the way Danse's hands work to warm him up. His legs still tingle slightly, feeling returning and still cold to the bone, but he can move them, squeezing around Danse's sides as his lips are on his lower belly and making the rest of his body melt beneath them.
"I'm yours-" he gasps, a hand carding into Danse's hair, his cock filling out between them, "All of me."
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It's deeply gratifying, something that always strikes Danse right to the core, both the way Deacon can't hide or downplay the eagerness with which his body reacts, and the way he trusts now that Deacon wouldn't. What more could he have to hide anymore that Danse doesn't already know?
"I know," he says, a deliberate exhale of hot breath over Deacon's growing erection, as his hands pause to grip with gently-bruising strength at those narrow hips. "I promise, I know." He believes it. He closes his eyes and nuzzles briefly against Deacon's stomach with nothing but affection, sheer pleasure and gratitude to be touching him again after what feels like longer than it's really been (for all either of them knows, or can gauge.)
"I just don't want this to be a dream."
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"Danse-" Deacon tries to bellow his lover's name sternly at the feeling of heated breath against his sensitive skin, but it's far closer to a whimper, too desperate to be mistaken for anything but. Nails scratch at Danse's scalp as Deacon gasps with fangs bared, his body arching into his touch.
It feels far too real to be a dream, but Deacon's hands pet admiringly over those soft ears, scratching behind them and gazing down over Danse with adoration. "I never have dreams as sweet as you, Baby Brahmin," he whispers, "I'm here..."
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Everything he's being newly reminded of here feels like digging up some small treasure, after the details had evaporated in their absence and are only now coalescing again, but this feels like finding a particularly special cache, like an old store of powerful weapons in a bunker or a bottling plant with a chestful of unlooted caps. He doesn't know whether it's the tender, personal pet name or the physical stimulus to his ears that sets his tail thumping reflexively against the mattress, but either of them would have been more than sufficient.
And the romantic sentiment, too, making him look back up with meltingly soft eyes and stretch upward to steal a kiss from Deacon's lips before sliding back down to finally take his cock into that too-hot mouth, slow and sweet and almost reverently deep, with a soft blissful noise around him as those wide brahmin eyes drift closed.
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