"Uh-huh." This is pretty much the reasoning he expected Deacon to deploy, and after shrugging on the jacket to test the (comfortable and unusually good) fit, he folds his arms across his chest. It has the added benefit of testing the range of motion in the arms, but he just wants to make sure he's properly conveying skepticism here. "I think I once heard a scribe make that same argument when explaining why Grognak the Barbarian can't wear a shirt. I didn't think it was particularly sound then, either."
Not that Danse wants to admit to reading Grognak comics. Or lingering long enough while he was supposed to be on duty to pay attention to a heated nerd debate about superhero costumes. It's probably too late to deny that if pressed, though, so he slips the jacket back off and folds it carefully over his arm and shifts the subject.
"But all right, fine. You've earned some consideration. If it's along similar lines as this, I'll hear you out."
"He can't wear a shirt because he's a barbarian, duh." Deacon huffs, as if he's annoyed by this, but he's just being playful. As he leaves Danse's side, he starts to shrug off the matching jacket. "We should get back patches if we're gonna do the matchy-matchy thing. With some kind of cool team name. I pitched Nora Death Bunnies at some point, but I don't think it stuck." Maybe he should get one in her size...
The jacket goes in his yes pile, and then Deacon starts rummaging through what's left in his assortment. A good bulk of it doesn't need to be tried on now that he knows what fits and doesn't, and he can sort through it later. Eventually, he comes across the items he had in mind: a pair of leather pants and a matching leather jacket.
"Sooooo, on the subject of leather, it's a decent alternative to armor. Sturdy, not easily punctured, but moveable. And you can still add plate over it if you're picky." He grabbed a couple sizes, since the nature of the fabric will make the fit less flexible, and waggles a larger set at Danse to entice him.
"I can't imagine why," he says dryly, though the concept of having matching jackets or a team name for the three of them is not actually unappealing in and of itself when Deacon suggests it. He knows it's a joke, and maybe it would be a little on-the-nose anyway, but it's not all that much different in nature than 'Recon Squad Gladius' and their field uniforms, and he misses being part of something like that even more here than he did back home.
He doesn't know what he's expecting when Deacon fishes it out of the pile, and the jacket is not an immediate no, but he is not entertaining the idea of trying on those pants. "You might have a point about the sturdiness," he concedes, "but I can't believe those pants would have more mobility than other material."
As if he wouldn't be clanking awkwardly around in a literal suit of metal right now if he could. And as if he hasn't spent fifteen years casually walking around in skintight orange canvas with an external thong-strap wedgie, when the metal isn't available.
He reaches for the jacket, but notably makes no move whatsoever to touch the pants. And he doesn't put the jacket on, either. He holds it up to scrutinize the details. "I feel like this would make me look like a delinquent," he grumbles.
"It's all in the name, babygirl," Deacon hums, "He's a barbarian, how else will they convey that he is barbaric??"
He definitely wasn't joking about a team name. Without the railroad and therefore a purpose, he's feeling a bit lost and kind of just wants to be part of something again. But admitting this would be vulnerable, and he's had enough vulnerable moments in front of Danse recently to last a lifetime. Moments he is actively pretending never happened.
"Moreso than what you're used to," he replies, then shakes the pants again in Danse's direction. "Um... forgetting something?" he asks, only to be dramatically scandalized by the next statement with a loud pearl-clutching gasp.
Danse has taken a lot of Deacon's nicknames for him in stride. He has taken a lot of other people's less-flattering epithets stoically as well, as one just learns to do when representing and recruiting for one of the most unlikable organizations in the country. 'Babygirl' might actually break him, as he mouths it silently with utter bafflement while Deacon just keeps on going.
The direct request for input snaps him out of it, though, and he reaches unthinkingly for the pants as long as they're being held out, but then recalls what he's meant to be doing with them. He still gives no indication of willingness to try them, and would explain himself if the crazy train weren't still chugging.
"You know that's not what it's short for," he interjects, unable to help himself, and then, in rapid what am I thinking succession-- "I mean, it's not short for anything. It just is. And I assume someone from the Railroad must have chosen it, so let me just make it known that I would have appreciated something harder to make fun of."
The puns, Deacon. They have followed him like a swarm of bloodbugs for his entire life. That guy in the checkerboard jacket asked him to tango.
"In any case, I'm not putting those on. I couldn't if I wanted to." He gestures vaguely and with deep annoyance to the tail behind him. He could have just swished it out into view, but doing anything akin to wagging it feels kind of like letting it win.
"Do you ever, like... just have fun, or does everything have to be an educational lecture?" Deacon responds, wading back to his little dressing room and brushing off Danse's bitterness with the Railroad so that he doesn't turn this into another one of their patented arguments.
He's sorting through his pile as Danse continues to bring down the vibes, giving him a sideways glance as he tugs his shirt off to change again, pulling a muscle tee over his scarred torso. "Oh, right," he scoffs, "I forget about the tail."
He chuckles for a moment, shaking his head. "You know for a bit, I was wondering what weird appendages I was gonna grow. Maybe some whiskers, or like... giant crab claws or something? I mean there was the invisible thing..." he trails off, then turns to face Danse again. "It's weird right? I mean, the changes themselves, but even moreso the fact that no one seems to talk about them. And there's something else. Something new... but I'm still figuring it out."
Danse is a little chagrined by the fact that he can't argue with this, and slightly chastened too, because he'd thought they kind of had been having fun a minute ago. Or he had, anyway. As much as he ever does. It's not very much.
It is not exactly fun to watch Deacon casually change with the curtain open now, giving Danse an even fuller view than before of those wiry muscles and deep scars. But it's...something, and while Danse isn't willing to think too hard about what that something is, he's not averting his eyes either. He probably should, but--it doesn't feel as disrespectful in this context, at least, and even if he can't say he's only human, he is still organic.
The shirt doesn't look bad on him. Of course it doesn't. Deacon doesn't have quite the build Danse would associate with a top like that, and he can observe with neutrality rather than pride that he could pull it off better himself, but it's still worth looking at, drawing Danse's attention to the sigil on Deacon's arm when he's never had occasion to notice it before. The design of it looks oddly familiar, but he can't place where he might have seen it before, never having taken enough notice of the railsigns in the Commonwealth to store them more vividly in his memory.
The mark is vastly different from his own, too, though he doesn't have much other basis for comparison when most of the other drifters usually have clothing covering theirs up. It's all part and parcel of the changes Deacon's talking about, and Danse can't really argue with that either, when he certainly tries to talk about it as little as possible. Other people might, but certainly not to him or where he can hear it, except for the occasional discussion he catches on the radio. But he's had more of a front-row seat than usual to Deacon's weird transformations, unlike any he's seen on anyone else, and this piques his interest now, because he knows there must be more to come.
They were having fun, which is the point. If Danse could just let go a bit, it could even stay that way. Not that Deacon thinks the other man ruined their time, not at all. Call it his own form of lecturing.
"More of the same, I guess?" he shrugs, glancing at himself in the mirror. "It's easier if I just show you..."
It's similar to when he'd turned invisible, or perhaps more similar to the time his outline seemed to blur like there was something in Danse's eyes when he'd been looking upon him. But what differs now is that when he returns to focus, he's changed. In this case it's subtle enough; he's filling out that shirt that had been loose on him a moment ago. Deacon appears more muscular than he had before, and he wonders if this was too subtle a change for Danse to notice. Maybe he should've grown hair, instead.
"I haven't managed to take this to any extremes," he begins, "But I could give it a shot now... before you go tearing holes in pants to fit your furry butt..."
It is absolutely not too subtle for Danse to notice, when he is already staring right at those muscles, acquainting himself thoroughly with that they ordinarily look like. Given this sudden difference, he will realize later, when he thinks about it, that he actually prefers them as normal.
But this is the last thing on his mind right now, as the full stunning implications of this actually hit him. "Jesus," he says, simultaneously awed and a little bit horrified. "Now I know whatever brought us here doesn't have good intentions. Letting you, of all people, do that--it goes beyond irresponsible into downright pernicious."
Of course, there's not really anything nefarious he can imagine Deacon using it for here, and if anything, making Deacon more terrifyingly effective is more likely to be a good thing for the convoy as a whole in the long run. But in the short term, and on a more personal level, this is the last thing in the world that Danse needs Deacon being able to do.
And Deacon immediately demonstrates this, leaving Danse's eyebrows raised with belated alarm if Deacon's suggesting what he thinks he is. "Wait. Give what a shot? You don't mean--"
For a moment before Danse speaks, Deacon wonders if flexing a bit is too on-the-nose, and decides that no one needs that right now, because this is already weird enough, probably.
And yet in the same breath of air, he's considering testing his ability to mimic Danse's form. So simultaneously not weird enough? The train is barreling into the station; buy the ticket, take the ride.
Deacon barks a laugh at Danse's response, shrugging a bit with just his oversized shoulders. "I love how much faith you have in me," he snarks lightly, "Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside."
A spin on his heel to face Danse, eyes scanning his body from behind his glasses, making sure to observe the details he's considering replicating, even if Danse doesn't seem thrilled by it. "Duh," he mutters with a smirk, "Twinning, obviously."
"For god's sake." There's really no way he or anyone else here can stop Deacon now from taking on their form for the purpose of prank chaos, and he can envision the worst-case scenarios entirely too easily, but...no, when he thinks it over, that's more something he would have worried about back home before he knew Deacon better. He has the sense now that if he did ask Deacon in earnest not to do this, he'd be listened to.
It doesn't keep him from feeling weird about the notion of Deacon shapeshifting into his own body to try on clothes he can't put on himself for practical reasons, but as invasive as it seems in a way he can't entirely put his finger on, it's not as if Deacon hasn't seen him in his underpants before. Half the Brotherhood has seen him in even less. And it would serve an undeniably useful purpose. He sighs heavily.
"All right, but I'm not just giving you free rein to put on whatever you want. I reserve the right to make you quit this at any time. I'd like to maintain some dignity here."
"Well, in case you change your mind..." Deacon reaches into his pile, grasping the hanger with the sundress, and hangs it prominently where Danse can see it. But he says nothing more, leaving it to grab the leather outfit he'd handed Danse before and returning to the dressing room. He gives Danse a long glance. "Wish me luck," he sighs in a 'here goes nothing' sort of way, then closes the curtain.
Behind it, he changes first. The leather outfit is definitely too big on his current form, so he focuses on that first; fitting into it so that it isn't falling off of his hips and so on. But then he's picturing Danse in his mind. The way he looked outside of the dressing room, watching this all unfold. The way he looked climbing out of the water, then dripping dry on the floor of the power plant. Or what his features looked like up close and personal before Deacon was dropped back into the water. Why this specific imagery comes to mind is something he'll contend with at some point. Whenever he's ready to stop lying to himself about how attractive Danse is.
That might be sooner than he thinks. Because when his eyes open and the reflection in the mirror is looking fine as hell in all leather and sunglasses, he nearly goes into cardiac arrest.
"Jesus Christ," he hisses in his own voice from behind the curtain; his turn to be alarmed. He turns to the side, to get a glimpse at the fit in the back. Is it hot in here? "Um... Are you sitting down??"
This thought process is completely inscrutable to Danse, who has probably broken some record for the shortest time it's ever taken for 'sure, I guess' to give way to 'what was I thinking,' and who has no idea what the shapeshifting process entails or how it works or how accurate it's possible to make it. He assumes it will be a good enough likeness just because he's never known Deacon to be anything other than committed to effectiveness in his disguises, but that only makes him wonder all the more how Deacon could recreate his frame well enough to use it as a tailless clothing mannequin.
He doesn't know what to think about the notion that Deacon's been observing him closely enough to make it look real, as if Danse hasn't just been doing the same thing in his own way for less innocent reasons. And he can't help snapping sharply and disconcertedly out of this reverie at the sound of Deacon's voice, because of all the things he might have expected to hear, this is...not one of them.
"What's wrong?" It certainly sounds like something is. "Are you...stuck like that, or something?" It's the first thing that comes to mind that could account for that note of alarm in Deacon's tone. He was half expecting Deacon to sound like him, too, and it feels like a slight relief that he doesn't, but the rest of this scenario is kind of making up for that.
Deacon scoffs in reply, hesitating another moment while he gawks at the reflection. "No, no... I just really nailed this. I don't want you to freak out on me," he replies, which is a half-truth, because yeah, he did nail it, and yeah, he doesn't want Danse to freak out... but he's omitting the fact that he's having a bunch of realizations right now and those are his real cause for alarm.
Without further ado, he whips the curtain back in a grand reveal, smirking in a way he most definitely has never seen Danse smirk, and mocking the other man's deeper voice.
This is not entirely reassuring him. "Why would I freak out, if it's that accurate? I've seen myself in a mirror before. I thought that was the objective here." Though he hasn't been inside the dressing room yet, and he rarely does actually get the chance to see himself in a full-length mirror, especially not outside of power armor. Danse has less reliable or objective a perspective on his own body than he might.
And whatever he looks like, he thinks when Deacon pulls back the curtain, it can't possibly be...that. (Surrealism entirely aside, which is proving difficult enough to process, between the outfit he's never worn anything like and the expression he's not even sure how to make.) Surely Deacon's pranking him after all, having a little laugh, just an extension of the little 'stick up your backside' and 'furry butt' jabs. It would go hand-in-hand with the way he's being mimicked after all, and he scowls reflexively, even if the imitation of his voice and his catchphrase wouldn't get more than a faint eye roll on its own.
"You're not funny, you know." He's been subject to enough teasing about his ass in the barracks and the showers over the years to be mostly inured to what he sees as a magically-enhanced version of it, at least. "All right. You've had your joke. Now make the proportions accurate so I can get some use out of this, or knock it off altogether."
Danse scowls and Deacon mirrors it, pointing a finger at Danse with a sort of glare.
"First of all, I'm hilarious," he replies, "And second, I got the proportions perfect, bud. You're stacked."
He turns again to look at his reflection, then whips his head back and forth between it and Danse. "Literally. Come get the side-by-side if you don't believe me."
"...Seriously?" There's a lot encapsulated in that 'seriously.' It's about the only response he can make to that too-accurate mirror of his expression, but also to the compliment, which leaves him otherwise speechless.
And to the image in the mirror, when he pushes into the dressing room to prove Deacon wrong, and finds himself completely unable to do so. He turns away, faintly mortified.
"Well--" He has no idea what to say. "Fine. I shouldn't have...doubted you." He folds his arms, glance even further averted.
"Honestly, even if you've got a point about the defense value of the leather, I think you'd pull it off better yourself. You should take it."
Deacon laughs, all-too pleased with himself. "Haha! Aahhh. Yes." Seriously.
It's alarming to Deacon the way that Danse can hardly look at himself. The sort of way he himself has trouble looking in a mirror. He watches curiously as Danse turns away, looking ashamed somehow. Boggles the mind.
"Oh, I plan to find myself some..." he replies, "But this one fits you far too well for you to leave it behind. And anyway, you look good in it. Dare I say cool." He shrugs off the jacket and tosses it at Danse, then nudges him with the back of an arm.
"Now get out of here so I can change into something and someone else. This is weird even for me."
It never used to be hard to look at himself, when he thought his muscles were the normal, human kind of genetic gift maintained by his own hard work. He doesn't want to think about why the Institute made them this way, how every aspect of his appearance was a deliberate design choice by his enemies, or how he's never had any of the control he thought he had over the shape of his own body.
Mostly, though, it's because he suddenly feels intensely awkward talking about his own attractiveness with Deacon, and he doesn't think he should be looking too hard or standing too close as he does. Particularly not if Deacon is going to tell him he looks cool. Danse is many things, but he has never been cool a day in his life, not even when he perfected that maneuver to toss his helmet in the air and catch it before putting it on.
All right. Maybe he will keep the jacket.
"It is," he readily concedes about the weirdness, backing out of the dressing room again and letting Deacon close the curtain. He folds both jackets carefully in his own small 'yes' pile, surprised to see it composed this much of things Deacon's picked, and leans against the wall outside the room for a minute.
"How far can you go with that?" he ventures, curious. "How different could you get?"
"Uuuhhh... let's see." Deacon replies, taking another lasting glance at Danse's ass in leather before he closes his eyes again. The other man may choose not to keep these, but Deacon's vehicle has plenty of storage room to stow them away in just in case he changes his mind.
How different could he get? Well, Danse's form was about as different as he could be from his own form, he thought, but it occurs to Deacon that he's looked varying degrees of different throughout the years, some surgeries leaving him much more unrecognizable than others. Maybe its the presence of Danse that inspires it, but one form in particular comes to mind.
The leather drops from his hips and pools around his feet behind the curtain, and when Deacon opens his eyes again, his reflection has softer, more feminine features. A reflection he hasn't seen in about two decades. His focus shifts to the dress he'd hung over the wall earlier, and when the curtain opens again he's wearing it.
The woman Danse will see is reminiscent of Deacon in all the ways his imitation of Danse himself was. Sunglasses, posture, mischievous smirk. She's slightly tall for a woman, lean, with muscles toned from frequent activity, and her red hair is buzzed short on the sides, longer tufts along the top and back that curl behind her ears. She clears her throat to get Danse's attention.
It's the faintest but strangest sense of deja vu Danse has ever experienced. But he can't tell if it's really familiarity--he's sure he would remember if he'd ever met a woman who looked like this--or just interest, a spark of attraction the way he'd felt at the sight of Deacon in the suit, too, but heightened somewhat now at the strangely erotic sight and sound of pants hitting the floor, and the contrast between soft flared cherry-print dress and the muscle of someone who fights.
And the smirk. The smirk looks good on that face, too. Danse's eyes have swept slowly up to it from the floor, taking in every detail along the way. The dress--in a way the other outfits so far somehow haven't--just adds to the sense of forbidden thrill in admiring someone in civilian clothes, when he's never been allowed to fraternize. It's pretty and impractical and he's never let himself want to see that kind of thing on anyone until just now.
"Well," he murmurs, after a moment. "That's...that's pretty different, all right."
He has so many internal questions--how deep does the illusion go? What does it feel like to inhabit? And what would it feel like to touch? It's this last one that makes him realize he can't ask any of those questions out loud. Decorum is hanging on by a thread, but Danse still clings to it.
A humored exhale leaves her lips, and when Deacon speaks, he calls upon memory of how he'd done so when he'd been this woman before. Her voice is deep, but not as deep as Deacon normally speaks; more sultry than anything. There is a brightness to the tone that makes it more feminine.
"Excellent observation, " she teases, stepping out from the curtain and swaying a bit so that the dress billows around her, "Well? Does it look good on me? I'm still not certain it wouldn't have been cuter on you."
There's a playfulness to the way Deacon steps towards him, gesturing to his tail. "Sure you don't want a turn? You don't even have to cut a hole in the back..."
There's something about the voice that makes him think of the way Assaultrons talk. This is not, he's surprised to realize, a bad thing in this context. Not at all.
The playfulness has a different energy to it now, separate enough somehow from their usual banter--and with Deacon looking different enough for Danse not to be fully reading him as the same person--that the flirtatiousness doesn't prompt the same strength of what are we doing that it otherwise might. (Not that Danse has any room to be talking about that, for as long as he'd let that kiss linger when Deacon still looked and sounded exactly like his usual self.)
Danse is not ordinarily a guy who knows how to flirt or be flirted with and not get tongue-tied about it. But some people have the right kind of charm to warm him up and make it easier, and Deacon's been doing that since he showed up with his armful of clothes, whether Danse admits it or not.
"Trust me," he says, voice softer than it's been. "It definitely looks better on you."
Deacon's eyebrows rise above her glasses, Danse's reply not at all what she was expecting. First of all, why did his voice do that. And second, because it did, that sounded nothing like the typical Danse-patented deflecting she's used to and more like a compliment. Like if Deacon didn't know any better, Danse was flirting with this form. And obviously there's only one way to find out for sure: encourage more of it.
"If you say so..." she sighs, keeping herself from showing any signs of panicking as she wades backwards into the dressing room. "Go ahead and have a seat, I've got another one to try on that I think will take me a bit longer to get into."
The way she closes the curtain is slower, a bit more lingering. Buying time while she makes a plan. It's not until it's fully closed that the little smirk drops from her expression and she stands frozen for a minute, letting herself feel some of the internal screaming happening in her own mind. There are a lot of racing thoughts, but she doesn't have the time to unpack them all, here.
There is no reason Danse should want to see this, honestly, let alone feel a little tingle of anticipation at the idea, but he takes a seat in the old plastic chair outside the stall without thinking to protest.
The surprise in Deacon's expression--the ginger brows rising above the glasses, making Danse wonder how he'd never known Deacon was a redhead before seeing those visions in the water--is not completely lost on him, but if anything, there's a faint satisfaction in that. It's not often that Danse manages to surprise anyone, let alone anyone as usually-collected as Deacon is, though that seems to have taken something of a blow in a place like this and Danse doesn't usually want to push too hard at his composure.
He doesn't know where he's going with this. He's almost never this impulsive in how he talks to people, and never one to take liberties or push the boundaries of propriety with flirting. But he's a civilian now, more free in that sense than he's been for as long as he can remember, and none of this is real anyway, is it? They're joking around. It's banter. Danse never has a great grasp on how to do that normally.
If he still had any memories of Deacon in this form, they would be wildly different from this. Whatever capacity M7-97 had for sexual desire, he was in no position to explore it, least of all with the agent who'd felt more like family for the duration of their journey, with whom he'd cuddled close for warmth on a safehouse mattress with no other thought in his mind but that simple comfort. It's the martial training he's had since then, the time he's spent in the Brotherhood, giving him a taste for the GI Jane type who'd taught him everything he knows now about sex with women. He's still decorously trying not to think too hard about that. It isn't easy.
"Is it that complicated?" he asks, of the dress, more just to break the silence.
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Not that Danse wants to admit to reading Grognak comics. Or lingering long enough while he was supposed to be on duty to pay attention to a heated nerd debate about superhero costumes. It's probably too late to deny that if pressed, though, so he slips the jacket back off and folds it carefully over his arm and shifts the subject.
"But all right, fine. You've earned some consideration. If it's along similar lines as this, I'll hear you out."
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The jacket goes in his yes pile, and then Deacon starts rummaging through what's left in his assortment. A good bulk of it doesn't need to be tried on now that he knows what fits and doesn't, and he can sort through it later. Eventually, he comes across the items he had in mind: a pair of leather pants and a matching leather jacket.
"Sooooo, on the subject of leather, it's a decent alternative to armor. Sturdy, not easily punctured, but moveable. And you can still add plate over it if you're picky." He grabbed a couple sizes, since the nature of the fabric will make the fit less flexible, and waggles a larger set at Danse to entice him.
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He doesn't know what he's expecting when Deacon fishes it out of the pile, and the jacket is not an immediate no, but he is not entertaining the idea of trying on those pants. "You might have a point about the sturdiness," he concedes, "but I can't believe those pants would have more mobility than other material."
As if he wouldn't be clanking awkwardly around in a literal suit of metal right now if he could. And as if he hasn't spent fifteen years casually walking around in skintight orange canvas with an external thong-strap wedgie, when the metal isn't available.
He reaches for the jacket, but notably makes no move whatsoever to touch the pants. And he doesn't put the jacket on, either. He holds it up to scrutinize the details. "I feel like this would make me look like a delinquent," he grumbles.
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He definitely wasn't joking about a team name. Without the railroad and therefore a purpose, he's feeling a bit lost and kind of just wants to be part of something again. But admitting this would be vulnerable, and he's had enough vulnerable moments in front of Danse recently to last a lifetime. Moments he is actively pretending never happened.
"Moreso than what you're used to," he replies, then shakes the pants again in Danse's direction. "Um... forgetting something?" he asks, only to be dramatically scandalized by the next statement with a loud pearl-clutching gasp.
"A delinquent?! Dansetopher. It's convoy-chic!"
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The direct request for input snaps him out of it, though, and he reaches unthinkingly for the pants as long as they're being held out, but then recalls what he's meant to be doing with them. He still gives no indication of willingness to try them, and would explain himself if the crazy train weren't still chugging.
"You know that's not what it's short for," he interjects, unable to help himself, and then, in rapid what am I thinking succession-- "I mean, it's not short for anything. It just is. And I assume someone from the Railroad must have chosen it, so let me just make it known that I would have appreciated something harder to make fun of."
The puns, Deacon. They have followed him like a swarm of bloodbugs for his entire life. That guy in the checkerboard jacket asked him to tango.
"In any case, I'm not putting those on. I couldn't if I wanted to." He gestures vaguely and with deep annoyance to the tail behind him. He could have just swished it out into view, but doing anything akin to wagging it feels kind of like letting it win.
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He's sorting through his pile as Danse continues to bring down the vibes, giving him a sideways glance as he tugs his shirt off to change again, pulling a muscle tee over his scarred torso. "Oh, right," he scoffs, "I forget about the tail."
He chuckles for a moment, shaking his head. "You know for a bit, I was wondering what weird appendages I was gonna grow. Maybe some whiskers, or like... giant crab claws or something? I mean there was the invisible thing..." he trails off, then turns to face Danse again. "It's weird right? I mean, the changes themselves, but even moreso the fact that no one seems to talk about them. And there's something else. Something new... but I'm still figuring it out."
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It is not exactly fun to watch Deacon casually change with the curtain open now, giving Danse an even fuller view than before of those wiry muscles and deep scars. But it's...something, and while Danse isn't willing to think too hard about what that something is, he's not averting his eyes either. He probably should, but--it doesn't feel as disrespectful in this context, at least, and even if he can't say he's only human, he is still organic.
The shirt doesn't look bad on him. Of course it doesn't. Deacon doesn't have quite the build Danse would associate with a top like that, and he can observe with neutrality rather than pride that he could pull it off better himself, but it's still worth looking at, drawing Danse's attention to the sigil on Deacon's arm when he's never had occasion to notice it before. The design of it looks oddly familiar, but he can't place where he might have seen it before, never having taken enough notice of the railsigns in the Commonwealth to store them more vividly in his memory.
The mark is vastly different from his own, too, though he doesn't have much other basis for comparison when most of the other drifters usually have clothing covering theirs up. It's all part and parcel of the changes Deacon's talking about, and Danse can't really argue with that either, when he certainly tries to talk about it as little as possible. Other people might, but certainly not to him or where he can hear it, except for the occasional discussion he catches on the radio. But he's had more of a front-row seat than usual to Deacon's weird transformations, unlike any he's seen on anyone else, and this piques his interest now, because he knows there must be more to come.
"What do you mean? What's happening to you now?"
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"More of the same, I guess?" he shrugs, glancing at himself in the mirror. "It's easier if I just show you..."
It's similar to when he'd turned invisible, or perhaps more similar to the time his outline seemed to blur like there was something in Danse's eyes when he'd been looking upon him. But what differs now is that when he returns to focus, he's changed. In this case it's subtle enough; he's filling out that shirt that had been loose on him a moment ago. Deacon appears more muscular than he had before, and he wonders if this was too subtle a change for Danse to notice. Maybe he should've grown hair, instead.
"I haven't managed to take this to any extremes," he begins, "But I could give it a shot now... before you go tearing holes in pants to fit your furry butt..."
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But this is the last thing on his mind right now, as the full stunning implications of this actually hit him. "Jesus," he says, simultaneously awed and a little bit horrified. "Now I know whatever brought us here doesn't have good intentions. Letting you, of all people, do that--it goes beyond irresponsible into downright pernicious."
Of course, there's not really anything nefarious he can imagine Deacon using it for here, and if anything, making Deacon more terrifyingly effective is more likely to be a good thing for the convoy as a whole in the long run. But in the short term, and on a more personal level, this is the last thing in the world that Danse needs Deacon being able to do.
And Deacon immediately demonstrates this, leaving Danse's eyebrows raised with belated alarm if Deacon's suggesting what he thinks he is. "Wait. Give what a shot? You don't mean--"
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And yet in the same breath of air, he's considering testing his ability to mimic Danse's form. So simultaneously not weird enough? The train is barreling into the station; buy the ticket, take the ride.
Deacon barks a laugh at Danse's response, shrugging a bit with just his oversized shoulders. "I love how much faith you have in me," he snarks lightly, "Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside."
A spin on his heel to face Danse, eyes scanning his body from behind his glasses, making sure to observe the details he's considering replicating, even if Danse doesn't seem thrilled by it. "Duh," he mutters with a smirk, "Twinning, obviously."
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It doesn't keep him from feeling weird about the notion of Deacon shapeshifting into his own body to try on clothes he can't put on himself for practical reasons, but as invasive as it seems in a way he can't entirely put his finger on, it's not as if Deacon hasn't seen him in his underpants before. Half the Brotherhood has seen him in even less. And it would serve an undeniably useful purpose. He sighs heavily.
"All right, but I'm not just giving you free rein to put on whatever you want. I reserve the right to make you quit this at any time. I'd like to maintain some dignity here."
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Behind it, he changes first. The leather outfit is definitely too big on his current form, so he focuses on that first; fitting into it so that it isn't falling off of his hips and so on. But then he's picturing Danse in his mind. The way he looked outside of the dressing room, watching this all unfold. The way he looked climbing out of the water, then dripping dry on the floor of the power plant. Or what his features looked like up close and personal before Deacon was dropped back into the water. Why this specific imagery comes to mind is something he'll contend with at some point. Whenever he's ready to stop lying to himself about how attractive Danse is.
That might be sooner than he thinks. Because when his eyes open and the reflection in the mirror is looking fine as hell in all leather and sunglasses, he nearly goes into cardiac arrest.
"Jesus Christ," he hisses in his own voice from behind the curtain; his turn to be alarmed. He turns to the side, to get a glimpse at the fit in the back. Is it hot in here? "Um... Are you sitting down??"
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He doesn't know what to think about the notion that Deacon's been observing him closely enough to make it look real, as if Danse hasn't just been doing the same thing in his own way for less innocent reasons. And he can't help snapping sharply and disconcertedly out of this reverie at the sound of Deacon's voice, because of all the things he might have expected to hear, this is...not one of them.
"What's wrong?" It certainly sounds like something is. "Are you...stuck like that, or something?" It's the first thing that comes to mind that could account for that note of alarm in Deacon's tone. He was half expecting Deacon to sound like him, too, and it feels like a slight relief that he doesn't, but the rest of this scenario is kind of making up for that.
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Without further ado, he whips the curtain back in a grand reveal, smirking in a way he most definitely has never seen Danse smirk, and mocking the other man's deeper voice.
"Outstanding, no?"
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And whatever he looks like, he thinks when Deacon pulls back the curtain, it can't possibly be...that. (Surrealism entirely aside, which is proving difficult enough to process, between the outfit he's never worn anything like and the expression he's not even sure how to make.) Surely Deacon's pranking him after all, having a little laugh, just an extension of the little 'stick up your backside' and 'furry butt' jabs. It would go hand-in-hand with the way he's being mimicked after all, and he scowls reflexively, even if the imitation of his voice and his catchphrase wouldn't get more than a faint eye roll on its own.
"You're not funny, you know." He's been subject to enough teasing about his ass in the barracks and the showers over the years to be mostly inured to what he sees as a magically-enhanced version of it, at least. "All right. You've had your joke. Now make the proportions accurate so I can get some use out of this, or knock it off altogether."
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"First of all, I'm hilarious," he replies, "And second, I got the proportions perfect, bud. You're stacked."
He turns again to look at his reflection, then whips his head back and forth between it and Danse. "Literally. Come get the side-by-side if you don't believe me."
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And to the image in the mirror, when he pushes into the dressing room to prove Deacon wrong, and finds himself completely unable to do so. He turns away, faintly mortified.
"Well--" He has no idea what to say. "Fine. I shouldn't have...doubted you." He folds his arms, glance even further averted.
"Honestly, even if you've got a point about the defense value of the leather, I think you'd pull it off better yourself. You should take it."
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It's alarming to Deacon the way that Danse can hardly look at himself. The sort of way he himself has trouble looking in a mirror. He watches curiously as Danse turns away, looking ashamed somehow. Boggles the mind.
"Oh, I plan to find myself some..." he replies, "But this one fits you far too well for you to leave it behind. And anyway, you look good in it. Dare I say cool." He shrugs off the jacket and tosses it at Danse, then nudges him with the back of an arm.
"Now get out of here so I can change into something and someone else. This is weird even for me."
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Mostly, though, it's because he suddenly feels intensely awkward talking about his own attractiveness with Deacon, and he doesn't think he should be looking too hard or standing too close as he does. Particularly not if Deacon is going to tell him he looks cool. Danse is many things, but he has never been cool a day in his life, not even when he perfected that maneuver to toss his helmet in the air and catch it before putting it on.
All right. Maybe he will keep the jacket.
"It is," he readily concedes about the weirdness, backing out of the dressing room again and letting Deacon close the curtain. He folds both jackets carefully in his own small 'yes' pile, surprised to see it composed this much of things Deacon's picked, and leans against the wall outside the room for a minute.
"How far can you go with that?" he ventures, curious. "How different could you get?"
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How different could he get? Well, Danse's form was about as different as he could be from his own form, he thought, but it occurs to Deacon that he's looked varying degrees of different throughout the years, some surgeries leaving him much more unrecognizable than others. Maybe its the presence of Danse that inspires it, but one form in particular comes to mind.
The leather drops from his hips and pools around his feet behind the curtain, and when Deacon opens his eyes again, his reflection has softer, more feminine features. A reflection he hasn't seen in about two decades. His focus shifts to the dress he'd hung over the wall earlier, and when the curtain opens again he's wearing it.
The woman Danse will see is reminiscent of Deacon in all the ways his imitation of Danse himself was. Sunglasses, posture, mischievous smirk. She's slightly tall for a woman, lean, with muscles toned from frequent activity, and her red hair is buzzed short on the sides, longer tufts along the top and back that curl behind her ears. She clears her throat to get Danse's attention.
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And the smirk. The smirk looks good on that face, too. Danse's eyes have swept slowly up to it from the floor, taking in every detail along the way. The dress--in a way the other outfits so far somehow haven't--just adds to the sense of forbidden thrill in admiring someone in civilian clothes, when he's never been allowed to fraternize. It's pretty and impractical and he's never let himself want to see that kind of thing on anyone until just now.
"Well," he murmurs, after a moment. "That's...that's pretty different, all right."
He has so many internal questions--how deep does the illusion go? What does it feel like to inhabit? And what would it feel like to touch? It's this last one that makes him realize he can't ask any of those questions out loud. Decorum is hanging on by a thread, but Danse still clings to it.
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"Excellent observation, " she teases, stepping out from the curtain and swaying a bit so that the dress billows around her, "Well? Does it look good on me? I'm still not certain it wouldn't have been cuter on you."
There's a playfulness to the way Deacon steps towards him, gesturing to his tail. "Sure you don't want a turn? You don't even have to cut a hole in the back..."
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The playfulness has a different energy to it now, separate enough somehow from their usual banter--and with Deacon looking different enough for Danse not to be fully reading him as the same person--that the flirtatiousness doesn't prompt the same strength of what are we doing that it otherwise might. (Not that Danse has any room to be talking about that, for as long as he'd let that kiss linger when Deacon still looked and sounded exactly like his usual self.)
Danse is not ordinarily a guy who knows how to flirt or be flirted with and not get tongue-tied about it. But some people have the right kind of charm to warm him up and make it easier, and Deacon's been doing that since he showed up with his armful of clothes, whether Danse admits it or not.
"Trust me," he says, voice softer than it's been. "It definitely looks better on you."
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"If you say so..." she sighs, keeping herself from showing any signs of panicking as she wades backwards into the dressing room. "Go ahead and have a seat, I've got another one to try on that I think will take me a bit longer to get into."
The way she closes the curtain is slower, a bit more lingering. Buying time while she makes a plan. It's not until it's fully closed that the little smirk drops from her expression and she stands frozen for a minute, letting herself feel some of the internal screaming happening in her own mind. There are a lot of racing thoughts, but she doesn't have the time to unpack them all, here.
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The surprise in Deacon's expression--the ginger brows rising above the glasses, making Danse wonder how he'd never known Deacon was a redhead before seeing those visions in the water--is not completely lost on him, but if anything, there's a faint satisfaction in that. It's not often that Danse manages to surprise anyone, let alone anyone as usually-collected as Deacon is, though that seems to have taken something of a blow in a place like this and Danse doesn't usually want to push too hard at his composure.
He doesn't know where he's going with this. He's almost never this impulsive in how he talks to people, and never one to take liberties or push the boundaries of propriety with flirting. But he's a civilian now, more free in that sense than he's been for as long as he can remember, and none of this is real anyway, is it? They're joking around. It's banter. Danse never has a great grasp on how to do that normally.
If he still had any memories of Deacon in this form, they would be wildly different from this. Whatever capacity M7-97 had for sexual desire, he was in no position to explore it, least of all with the agent who'd felt more like family for the duration of their journey, with whom he'd cuddled close for warmth on a safehouse mattress with no other thought in his mind but that simple comfort. It's the martial training he's had since then, the time he's spent in the Brotherhood, giving him a taste for the GI Jane type who'd taught him everything he knows now about sex with women. He's still decorously trying not to think too hard about that. It isn't easy.
"Is it that complicated?" he asks, of the dress, more just to break the silence.
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