If anyone ever figures out what's happening here, HalluciGen will have a lot to answer for. (Not that anyone is really left to hold accountable, there.) But nobody can exactly put a finger on what's come over the town.
Everyone in Sanctuary today is tense and tight-wound, snapping at each other and sensitive to touch, and people keep disappearing in the middle of the damn day, and Danse could not possibly be less impressed by the work ethic on display here. There are crops to weed, damn it, and beds to build, and borders to patrol, and why aren't these people taking it seriously?
But even in his power armor, with its perfectly functional cooling fans, he begins to feel overwarm and sweaty in a way he almost never does--skin tingling, hyper-aware of every vibration of the servos, body thrumming with mounting arousal.
He's no stranger to quick, practical tension relief, during appropriate leisure periods after the perimeter has been secured and all ambient dangers and distractions taken care of. It's the only way he ever does get any relief, for as long as he's been surrounded by subordinates he'd never dream of putting in a position like that or superiors who would never do that to him in turn. But he can't concentrate, can't think, can't make himself useful to the people of this town when his half-hard cock is pressing uncomfortably up against a metal codpiece that tends to be too tight at the best of times and was never designed to accommodate an erection.
He'll just have to be quick about this. He can work all the more efficiently to compensate when he's done. He leaves his power armor outside a house on the outskirts of town, half-rebuilt and with one room where the door actually closes, remote enough to be empty at this hour. When he shuts that door behind him, he leans against it, head tilting back against the wood as he tries to collect himself, pulse already quick and breath slightly shallow.
He palms himself briefly through his flightsuit before he unlatches the fall flap, giving a squeeze with a soft hiss of breath before he slips his fingers inside it. He knows he doesn't have much time, but he needs to ease into this just a little bit first.
When people get irritable in town, Deacon does what he does best; pops a stealth boy and gets the hell out of there. His choice destination is that very same half-rebuilt house, one not marked for any work to be done to it for some time. The only reason it even has a lock is because Deacon himself installed it, a place to run off to and be by himself a bit whenever he's feeling vulnerable, or in this case... well, vulnerable isn't the right word.
He hasn't been with anyone since losing Barbara, hasn't allowed himself to get close enough, and even with Cait's heavy-handed flirting, Deacon continues to deny himself the luxury of relieving himself even with the company of strangers. It's as much a punishment for himself as it is a precaution; in his line of work attachments are deadly.
Just as he begins to settle inside, he hears the familiar clang of metallic armor approaching. He hasn't even secured the door, distracted by his own half-hard erection rubbing against the tight jeans he's wearing, but this calls for investigating. He peeks through a tear in the paper-coated window, spotting Danse's power armor parked outside of it, and by the time he turns around, Danse himself is entering the room.
Deacon's heart rate is elevated, but he tells himself not to panic. There should be enough of a charge in the stealth boy to keep him hidden for a bit longer, but his own rising arousal is only growing more insistent, especially when he watches the way Danse grab himself like that.
The stealth holds, leaving Danse oblivious, but Deacon would have more grace than usual for that anyway. Danse hasn't swept the room for threats, hasn't done his usual checks, and partly that's because he feels safer in Sanctuary than he has anywhere besides the Prydwen in a long while--he should; he maintains half the gun turrets himself--but mostly it's because that squeeze makes him feel all the more needy now, stoking the heat high and fast in a way he should realize isn't natural.
He closes his fingers around himself with a ragged little gasp, sensitive from rubbing up against unyielding metal, pulling his cock free from briefs and flightsuit and giving it a slow tight stroke to slick down his fingers. He settles into a faster rhythm then, with a gentler grip. He's trying to hurry himself along without making the whole ordeal a disappointment, the way it is when he's so efficiency-focused that he might as well not have done it at all. It does the job of clearing his head, when he lets it be purely about the physical sensation, but it doesn't truly satisfy.
He just doesn't know what to think about--lets his mind settle on the last thing that it found arousing before he decided he had to duck in here and take care of the matter, Sturges' massive shoulders and bulging arms in that dirty tattered shirt of his under his overalls, but it isn't long before the picture shifts. Smaller frame, narrower shoulders, a body built for subtlety rather than brute strength. Danse has enough brute strength of his own. He never has needed it in others. He doesn't think about it, though, just lets it keep pushing him onward.
'Jane Doe' sits behind the scope of a sniper rifle, aimed out of a broken glass window of a safehouse somewhere in upstate New York. Doe prefers to travel at night, but with a young synth in-tow, freshly emancipated from the Institute, they are at the mercy of his internal clock. Right now, that clock has him asleep on an old, worn mattress at the back of the safehouse while she keeps watch.
Jane lights a cigarette and looks over the rifle to the horizon. It's a fairly calm night, but stirring behind her has her cursing beneath her breath. The cigarette is dropped and snubbed out with her boot, and then she's pulling a silenced pistol from her hip and moving quickly through the hall to make sure a Courser hasn't snuck through the back.
"Oh-- shit, sorry..." she mutters, lowering her gun once she has eyes on the synth. She hadn't expected him to be awake. "Everything alright there, pal?"
Freedom is a lot of things, so far. 'Uncertain,' predominantly, because they're still so far from the Capital Wasteland yet, and M7-97 doesn't know if he really does have it in him to get that far. 'Dingy' is another thing, compared to the gleaming bright fixtures and vivid lighting of the Institute. And cold, and wet, and smelly, and if he's honest with himself, a complete sensory hell on all fronts. He's rarely been to the surface before. He's not usually assigned to the resource-gathering squad; it's only happenstance that he'd been swapped in for one of the usuals at precisely the right time to make the connection that would change his life.
It's no wonder the coursers hate it up here, when he hears them talk about it amongst themselves. They don't actually talk to M7 about it. He's been told that he washed out of the courser program halfway through, during the psych eval. He wouldn't remember.
He doesn't remember, either, the first time he'd seen the reclamation chair. It's a mark of obedience, a badge of pride for the loyal synths, to remember their first thoughts about the chair. He doesn't remember standing in the doorway, face as white as his high-necked uniform, voice hoarse as he'd asked G5-19 if the grate at the base of it was for what he thought it was. And he hadn't known why he'd asked her, of all the other synths, because everyone knew she'd been put through it before. She'd remember less about it than anyone. But it had made him think she wouldn't judge him for the question, either. And she had been able to answer it.
"Easy cleanup," she confirms grimly, "for the fluids."
"Is there really that much blood?"
"Blood. Spinal fluid, where the needles go. Urine. But you'll never have to find out, M7. They trust you. You listen."
It should be a compliment. He can't quite take it as one. "How are you sure?" he asks, eyes fixated on the needles again, as if there really is any ambiguity about what those would do to an organic body. Her eyes are deep and haunted as she turns them on him again.
"They make me watch."
The beds in the safehouse are rickety, the frames even broken in places. He understands that these things can't be complained about, wouldn't dare even if beggars could be choosers, when Jane has already been kinder and more generous to him than any human he's ever known, and when their travels today have been exhausting enough to knock him out no matter how uncomfortable the bed. But the splintered board right in the middle of it digs into his back, stirring memories that should have been purged, data that can't be as easily deleted from his brain as Dr. Zimmer wants to believe.
He dreams of the pleading, the pain, the blood and worse, back arching off the dirty mattress as if he could possibly escape those foot-long spines. The blanket that had been a kind (if mildewy) concession to his inexperience with the cold surface weather now feels like the hands of the SRB loyalists holding him down, and he struggles desperately free from it, whimpering in his sleep only because the dream is one of those where screaming feels impossible no matter how hard he tries.
He's dazed as he wakes, panting, neckline and armpits of his ragged shirt soaked with sweat, a stitch in his side from where he's writhed nearly all the way out of the bed, and he stares at Jane as if unable to recognize her even after so many days of travel. Faced with the pistol even if only for a second, he puts his hands up in terrified pleading surrender before the recognition and the apology both soak in together, and they lower their hands in tandem.
"I'm not hurt," he says. "It was just--"
He doesn't actually have the words for it. Vehemently opposed as they are to the notion that synths can dream, none of the scientists have ever bothered to mention the concept where he could hear it.
Doe watches the man stumble to explain what had happened behind a pair of sunglasses that are unreasonable to be wearing at this hour, but it eventually clicks into place and she huffs out a relieved breath, reholstering her weapon.
"You had a nightmare," she says plainly. "It's okay, you can come sit with me."
Any tension she had been holding in her body is released as she turns and leads him onward to her lookout spot, bending to pick up the half-crushed cigarette she'd wasted in alarm. She smooths the paper with her fingers and fishes out a matchbook, then relights it as she reclaims her seat behind the rifle on a bench that could fit them both.
"You smoke?" she asks, a touch of humor in her voice as she does. She can say with somewhere around 80% confidence that this man has never touched a cigarette. "Terrible habit. Want one?"
'...we will never acknowledge this again.' Deacon hears in his head, mimicking Danse's voice, as he sends the other man a message via terminal with nothing other than a date, time, and the words 'where it started'. He has no idea if the other man will show up, but he's irritatingly not stopped thinking about it since the incident, made worse by an evening of sending each other lewd messages and a handful of in-person encounters so brimming with sexual tension that they left him positively longing for this.
When he gets to the spot, he's surprised to find that the odd little half-rebuilt home on the outskirts of town has an addition inside of it that he hadn't placed there. Alarmed as he may be by it, it's incorporated into the scene for Danse's arrival. The other man will find him waiting, lounging on the newly-placed mattress in the leathers that Danse admitted to liking him in, a box of fancy lad snack cakes beside him.
"Hey! Do you mind," he shouts as Danse enters, "I'm expecting someone." He smirks, then hisses out a little laugh, "Just messing with you," he corrects, tugging a pack of fancy lads from the box, eyebrows waggling playfully above his glasses. "Wanna split one?"
Danse hadn't known if this was going to happen again or not. In the light of day, the blurred lines of that shared fantasy had seemed clearer, but on the side of 'just a fictional story they'd been telling together,' and without any ability to go back and reread the messages for evidence to confirm or deny that hunch. This had probably been for the best, or Danse would have driven himself insane with overanalysis, as he does.
And the few times he's seen Deacon since then have given him plenty to overanalyze as it is. They haven't had sufficient privacy for him to ask about seeing each other again, always just within risk of earshot of someone they knew, if not actual earshot. Deacon hadn't acknowledged anything aloud, but neither had he acted like there was nothing to acknowledge, and those smoldering little smirks and teasing, purring double entendres had had Danse on the verge of just pushing him against a wall and kissing him.
Had it happened one more time, he would have--but then he gets that message, and his mind is immediately planning, strategizing, even as he looks forward to it with something that borders embarrassingly on desperation. That room had suited their purposes the first time because there was no other option, and even now, it works well enough in terms of privacy, but he isn't going to give Deacon an excuse to hold back from the kind of intimacy he'd spoken of in those messages, even if Danse knows that expecting all of it is too much. Besides which, that couch is one more good fuck from falling apart altogether, and Danse is too large a man to be comfortable on it anyway.
He sources a mattress that doesn't smell like mole rat shit or have any too-identifiable corpse stains on it and lugs it matter-of-factly into the room the night before they're set to meet, and adds the blanket from the bunker for good measure, because he can always find another one for himself. When he arrives for the rendezvous, he leaves his power armor in a far corner of the living room, so that someone would really have to be staring through the window in order to see it. Danse is never one for real stealth or subterfuge, but he can manage some degree of discretion when necessary.
He pauses in the doorway to drink in the sight of Deacon in those tight leathers, always a welcome one but never more so than right now, even better than his imagination had conjured up when stroking himself at his terminal. He, too, is wearing something different than last time; he'd put actual thought into wearing something different and perhaps more appropriate than the flightsuit, even if he doesn't own much. Just the army fatigues he's scavenged from another room in the listening post, faded and tight over his muscles.
"I didn't haul that thing here at two in the morning for someone else to be making use of it," he deadpans, "so you'd better tell them there's a change of plans." His eyes linger covetously on the snack cakes, though he's staring every bit as much at Deacon's fingers as he unconsciously licks his lips at the offer.
"But you bet I do. I was going to ask if you already knew those were my favorite, but on second thought, if you did, I don't want to know how." He joins Deacon on the mattress, sitting with the same stiff-postured awkwardness one would expect, but he'll loosen up.
Deacon feels the need to thank Danse for that pause in the doorway. It gives him an equal opportunity to drink in the tight fatigues that Danse if wearing for him, his own brain pinning red yarn to a board as it determines whether or not those were worn specifically for his benefit. They have to be. Danse has a very dependent relationship with his power armor and Deacon was pretty sure he didn't even own any other clothing.
"Two in the morning!" Deacon laughs, "The commitment. You've gotta respect it."
Years of working with synths, Deacon has noticed a pattern. Call it a hunch, but there was not a chance that Danse was different enough from the other synths that he didn't have a bit of a sweet tooth for snack cakes. Deacon was willing to take this risk, and looks a bit like the cat that ate the canary to learn he's right.
He shifts slightly to make room for Danse to sit, but not nearly enough to put space between them. They both know why they're here. He sighs, shrugging a bit. Deacon moves almost too casual and cavalier, pushing himself upright so that his hand can walk itself over the small space between them and up Danse's chest. "You could say I had a hunch. I know a lot more than I let on..." Which isn't a lie at all, even though it kind of sounds like one.
The hand at Danse's chest presses him gently back and against the wall, his other hand lifting the cake wrapper to his own mouth to bite and tear open. "I suppose you'll want the first bite..."
Danse has never actually seen anyone wear lingerie in person before. His sexual experience before Deacon had been entirely with fellow Brotherhood personnel, wearing the plainest and most utilitarian undergarments imaginable. He's witnessed things like this only in the occasional peek at pre-war magazines and pinups, material that his fellow soldiers would keep hidden away in their lockers and that the bolder vertibird pilots would try to paint onto their crafts before being ordered by the Lancer-Captain to get rid of the offending artwork.
It's for this reason that the style of lingerie is familiar--the kind of thing that was in vogue before the war for those waiting on their soldiers to come home from places like Mambajao, cheeky little messages to promise fidelity, ironic when shown in widely-distributed cheesecake pictures. Danse has never seen it depicted on anyone like Deacon.
But this does not temper his arousal at it. The contrast between fictional expectation and tangible reality, the slight naughty taboo of seeing it in this context, only heightens the turn-on. His eyes sweep thoroughly and smolderingly over Deacon's entire frame, lips twisting into a heated little smirk of their own accord, and he reaches behind him to shut the door slowly without taking his gaze off that embroidery for a second.
"That message can't be intended for me," he murmurs. "Can it?"
This, Deacon reminds himself, is why things with Danse are so much more fun in person. The way those expressive eyes scan every inch of him make Deacon feel like a feast for their consumption, and though this particular set is a bit silly compared to the more traditional sorts found in old suburb homes, it doesn't seem to bother him any. If anything, the comment is encouraging.
Deacon twists his head to the side with a laugh, brief and airy, spreading his arms into a slight shrug. "Oh, I don't know," he teases, "I think it's a bit like the story of Excalibur or whatever," he gestures to the odd zipper on the front of them, "Exceptions are made for those strong enough to remove them."
[ The Enclave invasion of the Commonwealth is easy to miss, when it begins. Easy enough that Danse does miss it, despite having cut his teeth on the war against the Enclave back in the Capital Wasteland and earned his promotion to paladin for his valor in it. To him, it's mostly a matter of complacency--why worry about them anymore when the Brotherhood took care of them so decisively over a decade ago? He isn't looking for a reason to revisit history, and so he doesn't see it.
There's a slight question of desensitization, too. The only reason he hadn't shot the first eyebot he'd seen in the Commonwealth was because Rhys had been quicker on the draw and taken it out first, but the next time the squad had encountered one, they'd heard its message before being able to pinpoint where it was coming from, and it had turned out to be nothing but an ad for Wattz Consumer Electronics. The little floating bastards had proven surprisingly useful, actually, in directing them toward old treasure troves of weapons and supplies, and he's long since fallen out of the habit of attacking them, even if he doesn't bother to listen to what they're broadcasting anymore either.
(Though he has begun to cast a warier eye on them of late, ever since Arcade had explained that the models are prone to explosive self-destruction if not safely taken out at range. Danse has never seen one do that, and he's pretty sure the citizens of Diamond City wouldn't suffer them to hover around the streets if one had ever caused any damage there--but he'll always be more inclined to trust Arcade's scholarly expertise over the reliability of janky pre-war technology. What reason would he have to lie?)
The music doesn't get the chance to set his teeth on edge, either. There's only one specific frequency he needs to tune into for orders from the Castle, and he rarely bothers in his leisure time with anything other than Travis "Much Improved" Miles or the Charles River Trio these days. He'd already more or less managed to avoid the treacly tedium of Enclave Radio back in the Capital, first by having better music options and then by being outright forbidden to listen anyway, but not all of his colleagues had been so fortunate. He recalls the first time Nora had set up a radio beacon to entice new settlers to the region, how proud of herself she'd been for finding pleasant cheerful patriotic music to play between the repeating messages--remembers overhearing, too, as Deacon had gently taken her aside and mentioned that the songs in question "have some not-awesome connotations now, boss," and been interrupted by MacCready's sharp and far less tactful "Turn that crap off!"
But here they are on the airwaves again, shrill renditions of "Dixie" and "America the Beautiful" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and more, on channels entirely unrelated to settlement recruitment and easy to stumble across without really trying. The eyebots drifting across the abandoned highways and through the dirty streets near Goodneighbor are still mostly playing ads for long-defunct and looted businesses, but among them, indistinguishable except that they look a little newer and cleaner, are a few with an ominous new message: "The Enclave is back, America. And no, not just on your radio. Right now, Enclave troops are patrolling the Commonwealth."
The last word is faintly garbled, as if edited in later by a different voice, before the message continues. "These fine men and women have one mission: the restoration of American peace and order. Don't you, my darling America, deserve that? Don't you deserve a future free of war, and fear, and terrible uncertainty? Of course you do."
[ Arcade doesn't miss it. But he has the benefit of years of paranoia, rather than complacency, backing his already heightened skills of observation. And some part of him has always been prepared for the worst.
He's just been wrong this whole time about what the worst would actually entail.
It was foolish of him to think he could disappear and leave his past behind, that he could travel as far as travel would allow, and none of those bad things would ever find him. But it was Rangers he was expecting. Maybe even Brotherhood stragglers, whatever might've been left of the Hidden Valley chapter, after Hoover. Men with guns and no particular love for the source of all the contradictory propaganda now playing on hijacked airwaves across the Commonwealth. Not that Arcade has any, either. But guilt by association is still a crime punishable by death, in the Wasteland. And this far from NCR territory, there wouldn't even be the pretense of a mock trial.
Somehow, though, it's none of that. And having only been prepared his whole life for one version of the worst outcome possible, he isn't braced for this new one. He doesn't hide it well, either, moody and distracted and always too busy, all of a sudden. He has plans to make, though, messages to send. (He's lied about a lot of things, since he found his way to Goodneighbor, chief among them that he came all this way largely on his own.) He has things to unearth and repurpose once again.
It would've been impossible to go unnoticed sneaking an entire suit of original issue Tesla power armor into town with him, and besides that, Arcade's smart enough not to want to. The Remnants no longer keep a centralized bunker, but have split their cache between a few remote locales. (Maybe as a result of having been dug up once, already, none of them felt quite right going back to the status quo.) Arcade's is north of town, at an old Poseidon facility too run down to be host to much wildlife or any raiders. It also contains the least: only his father's armor and a few firearms, ammunition.
He makes the hike there alone, as he intends to do all of this, at least until the reinforcements come. If they do. He hasn't waited for verification, but while he knows it's reckless, he doesn't feel like he can afford to. Every minute he wastes is another minute that "Enclave troops are patrolling the Commonwealth."
The message repeats, staticky on the radio behind him, as he leans into the suit through its open back, checking the lining, the wiring. He may not be a mechanic, but he knows the maintenance of this particular piece of machinery inside and out. Even while he can feel his pulse beating at his temple, anger and anxiety a sickening milieu in his head, he isn't going through the motions. He's meticulous, focused. He doesn't hear the door, doesn't expect there to be any reason someone should've followed him, let alone all the way down to this well-hidden bunker. Or perhaps been pointed in its direction by a well-informed acquaintance. ]
However often or condescendingly Danse might have criticized them in the past, the Minutemen have made peace with him now, both parties swallowing their pride for the common good and recognizing how much they can benefit each other. Danse needs an outlet beyond amoral mercenary work for his martial talents, and the Minutemen need an experienced veteran with the knowledge and ability to train new volunteers, and the General in particular appreciates having someone she can leave at the Castle to handle things like that while dealing with individual settlement issues.
Which is why Danse is stuck there for the full week he'd promised, while Nora returns to Sanctuary after a couple days. The place is really starting to become a thriving and desirable place to live again, enough that the already-repaired space is beginning to fill up even with people sharing what used to be single-family houses. Sturges had mentioned to her at one point that he didn't know who'd planted the garden out behind one of the houses marked for renovation, but nobody had thought much of it at the time, and there are still more pressing issues to deal with.
Danse, meanwhile, has been doing just as Deacon asked him to. When the day's work is done, and he's alone in the small spartan quarters that have been set aside for him, he lets his thoughts drift and sends Deacon the occasional message--
It's a good thing these stone walls are soundproof, because I can't stop thinking about sitting on your face again.
The second I get back, I'm pinning you to the nearest wall and getting on my knees.
Thinking about how much nicer it would be to sleep on you than this cot.
The tone gets subtly but perceptibly more longing as the days progress.
Deacon has caught himself more than twice now staring out the window like a would-be window whose husband had gone off to war. He shakes himself out of it, pounds a coffee, and gets to work doing various settlement chores as needed or requested. He does his best to stay busy, avoiding their claimed meeting spot as much as he can. It had once been his own private getaway spot, but now it just feels empty when he's alone inside of it (he couldn't avoid those messages though, each of them replied to with something filthy or sweet as seen fit).
It starts to eat at him maybe only a day in, the way Danse called it home, and guilt rises in a way that he isn't anticipating. He really misses him, yes, but he's starting to resent having to keep that a secret. A hell of his own choosing, truly.
Just as well that he takes interest in a slightly damaged bed frame he spots amongst the latest cart of salvage. It just needs the rust cleaned from it and a fresh coating, and perhaps then he and Danse won't be sleeping on a floor mattress anymore. He'll take the win... you know, once he works up the courage to explain where it's going.
"You didn't think I was sleeping in the tato field, did you?" he asks Nora playfully, "...which is flourishing by the way. Ol' Farmer Deacon’s still got it. So you think my green thumb's a fair trade for a rusty hunk of metal?"
After months of meeting up with Danse in the house at the edge of Sanctuary, Deacon sort of defaults to it as a place to stay the night when he's in town. It's easier than finding an open cot elsewhere, and more convenient if he plans to leave anything for later. Of course, Deacon is also a night owl, and so there isn't much happening in the way of sleep when he's staying the night. Instead, he reads by lantern light or tends to a few crops in the garden when the sun begins to rise, crashing eventually before it's too high in the sky.
The big cracked mirror in the bedroom bothers him. He tells himself that it's because catching his reflection in it at night tricks him into thinking there's someone else in the room, or that when he does finally doze off, it reflects the light from the windows onto his face. Maybe those things are true, but deep down, Deacon realizes that it really just comes down to facing himself in the mirror at all. He avoids this by draping a worn sheet over it to deal with later. Danse will be joining him tonight, and he intends to be well rested for his arrival.
Danse occupies the house in much the same way Deacon does, at alternate times. When he isn't at the Castle, or providing short-term security to some other settlement in need of help, he sleeps here on this mattress--never in the middle of it anymore, always unthinkingly on one side--and washes and shaves in the dingy little bathroom with the electric razor that seems to just live next to Deacon's clippers in the cabinet now, and drinks his coffee from one of the two chipped mugs in the kitchen.
Deacon is not a man whose presence or absence are supposed to be notable. He's made an entire career out of going unnoticed, and Danse has not typically been one to let him live that down. And yet somehow he manages to fill this house whether he's here or not, because when he's gone, Danse notices all the little things that feel missing, and when he's around, Danse doesn't want to leave his side.
When he arrives that evening, on schedule, after a week's long patrol around the lighthouse and the Slog, nothing in the room looks out of the ordinary to him and he wouldn't notice if it did. There could be a deathclaw standing in the corner with a lampshade on its head, and Danse would still be ignoring it to pull Deacon into his arms and dip him into a kiss.
Sleep has always been elusive for Danse, increasingly more so as the endless nightmare of that recon mission had dragged on. But he's never thought of himself as someone who needed the comfort of a soft mattress or a warm blanket, let alone the feeling of someone else's bare skin or gently-tangled limbs underneath it to make it even warmer.
That was before he had any of that. He can't imagine anymore how he ever managed to rest at all without Deacon beside him, but his body seems determined to make up for lost time in so many different ways now--sleeping soundly in his lover's arms for hours, and waking up not only refreshed, but always hard and heavy against the small of Deacon's back, face nestled into the curve of his neck and palm resting on his stomach to feel the still-asleep softness of his breathing.
He's not trying to wake Deacon, exactly. Just nuzzling a little closer against his throat, with a tender lingering kiss, and letting his fingers play gently and idly with the trail of ginger beneath Deacon's navel.
Similarly, sleep didn't come easy to Deacon, either. There are several contributing factors; nocturnal tendencies, deep paranoia, nightmares all chief among them. There's a comfort though, to having two hundred-some pounds of warm muscle pressed behind him and coiled around him. Deacon hasn't slept this consistently in ages.
There's an almost pavlovian response to feeling Danse's erection against him that Deacon's body seems to reflexively act on even in his sleep. He squirms back against it, his own cock chubbing up beneath where Danse's fingers tease. He barely remembers his dreams when he first wakes, but right now they're sweet from the way Danse touches him. The sort of dream you don't want to end.
What the wolf truly wants, in a way that runs far deeper than Danse has been able to articulate or even understand beyond the occasional glimmer of insight, is a pack. It's a more inherently social creature than Danse himself has ever known how to be on his own, and it's latched in desperation here onto the people he can recognize something of home in, but only insofar as to sand the roughest edges off old grudges and political conflicts and keep them from escalating to violence. It isn't loyalty or kinship or even friendship.
The convoy itself is something like a larger pack to protect and serve, but in a way that doesn't even feel like the military units he's accustomed to--more like providing the kind of impersonal security that would usually be hired, like SecUnit always thought of itself as doing. The gift of the silk as an overture of friendship, even beyond the effort to bind up his wounds here out of kindness, touches something in the wolf that indulges it more than chasing a rabbit or marking a truck tire possibly could. And it touches Danse himself, even if it frightens him a little as well. Friends are a dangerous thing to have. People are too easily lost in a dangerous world, and friends take a chunk of you with them in the process.
He doesn't know whether it's him or the wolf or both that finds it impossible to contain the desire to acquiesce. The tail breaks free of its restraint the second Edward gives it permission whether Danse has or not, wagging swiftly and hopefully at the promise of the scratch, and Danse's mortification at this is tempered by the startled but sincere little chuckle that slips from his throat at Edward's little gallows-humor joke. He doesn't always recognize jokes for what they are, when he isn't comfortable enough with a conversation to be open to them, but when anything makes him laugh, it's a joke like that.
He sizes up that rambunctious hand for a long moment, and relents, with another soft breath of self-deprecating laughter. "I trust you to keep it in confidence. And I know you won't judge. I'd...like that, actually."
In a way, Edward can relate to that desire. He doesn't want a pack, per say, so much as he wants a swarm. Being the only one here with a hive mind and no one to share it with is exhausting on a level he didn't expect; it's as if he's constantly reaching out, and getting no response. So when Danse's tail gives in and starts wagging, Edward's own desire for community latches onto it.
Danse might get a bit of a mind blast from Edward, but it's a far different scene than usual. Instead of the front, or the fear and despair of being injured, the memory that comes surging forward is a very old one: it's a warm room, with a fire crackling in a fireplace. An evergreen tree stands in the corner, perfuming the room with the scent of its needles and resin. The tree is decorated with lights and glass ornaments, all glittering and twinkling in the firelight. This is all seen from a low perspective, as if the person viewing the scene is either very short or very young. It comes with a deep sense of contentment, tinged with excitement and hope about the future.
Edward's breath catches a little when Danse gives him permission, but the left hand needs no further invitation. It shoots upward, immediately going for one of Danse's ears. Once there, though, it's surprisingly gentle; the hand doesn't always obey, but it's still part of Edward, and won't be too rough or aggressive. It rubs its fingers along the back of the ear while the thumb strokes the fluffy, downy hair inside its cup. Edward's eyes widen, and he suddenly breaks into a full, bright smile.
"You're so soft." All three other hands rise to join the first; one hand on Danse's other ear, and the other two bury themselves in his hair, twining through the thick strands. The hands on the ears reposition themselves and get to scratching, and it's clear Edward has scratched a dog or two in his time; he goes for the base of the ears, where they attach to Danse's head, and really digs in. The hands in his hair don't scratch or pet, but start running through it, almost like Edward is trying to smooth it into a different hairstyle.
Deacon wakes with a snort, not realizing he and Danse had dozed off in their afterglow, bodies now stuck together in a way that feels unpleasant to peel away from. He still does, rolling over onto his back beside Danse with a soft grunt. He can't really see his reflection in the mirror on the wall from this angle, but he stares at it for a long minute, rethinking some of the things Danse said to him before until he feels the other man stir beside him.
Deacon props himself up on his side, looking over to Danse with a smirk. He waits until he sees those big, dark eyes begin to flutter open and then with a voice hoarse from his own nap, mimics the sort of tone a child might use on a playground.
"Ooooooo, someone's in loooove~" As if this doesn't apply to him, also.
It's been a better, deeper sleep than Danse has had in weeks, and he's slow to surface from it, only beginning to once Deacon rolls off him and deprives him of that comforting weight and warmth. He needs a moment to recall where he even is, and the baby brahmin eyes are momentarily wide and blank as he processes this sudden taunting.
But once he does, his little breath of laughter in response is happy and free, gaze softening with teasing fondness. "Well, I'm glad you feel comfortable expressing your feelings. I certainly won't hold them against you."
It's not the most sophisticated of banter, but Deacon always does inspire him to try. And the way he rolls over to face Deacon and reaches up to caress his cheek, scooting over again just close enough to feel body heat, serves as a perfectly clear reminder how mutual those feelings are. His eyes skim playfully down over his lover's nude body, taking in the remnants of the mess they'd made.
"We ought to get you cleaned up." As if that doesn't apply to him, also.
It's funny. I dreamed about the time you let your hair grow out for a few weeks and wore those flecktarn camo fatigues. I'd have followed any order you gave me in those.
I gather this "doo-dad" must have been unusually revealing if it made me look that promiscuous. Details?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
for facethefacts, NSFW
Everyone in Sanctuary today is tense and tight-wound, snapping at each other and sensitive to touch, and people keep disappearing in the middle of the damn day, and Danse could not possibly be less impressed by the work ethic on display here. There are crops to weed, damn it, and beds to build, and borders to patrol, and why aren't these people taking it seriously?
But even in his power armor, with its perfectly functional cooling fans, he begins to feel overwarm and sweaty in a way he almost never does--skin tingling, hyper-aware of every vibration of the servos, body thrumming with mounting arousal.
He's no stranger to quick, practical tension relief, during appropriate leisure periods after the perimeter has been secured and all ambient dangers and distractions taken care of. It's the only way he ever does get any relief, for as long as he's been surrounded by subordinates he'd never dream of putting in a position like that or superiors who would never do that to him in turn. But he can't concentrate, can't think, can't make himself useful to the people of this town when his half-hard cock is pressing uncomfortably up against a metal codpiece that tends to be too tight at the best of times and was never designed to accommodate an erection.
He'll just have to be quick about this. He can work all the more efficiently to compensate when he's done. He leaves his power armor outside a house on the outskirts of town, half-rebuilt and with one room where the door actually closes, remote enough to be empty at this hour. When he shuts that door behind him, he leans against it, head tilting back against the wood as he tries to collect himself, pulse already quick and breath slightly shallow.
He palms himself briefly through his flightsuit before he unlatches the fall flap, giving a squeeze with a soft hiss of breath before he slips his fingers inside it. He knows he doesn't have much time, but he needs to ease into this just a little bit first.
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He hasn't been with anyone since losing Barbara, hasn't allowed himself to get close enough, and even with Cait's heavy-handed flirting, Deacon continues to deny himself the luxury of relieving himself even with the company of strangers. It's as much a punishment for himself as it is a precaution; in his line of work attachments are deadly.
Just as he begins to settle inside, he hears the familiar clang of metallic armor approaching. He hasn't even secured the door, distracted by his own half-hard erection rubbing against the tight jeans he's wearing, but this calls for investigating. He peeks through a tear in the paper-coated window, spotting Danse's power armor parked outside of it, and by the time he turns around, Danse himself is entering the room.
Deacon's heart rate is elevated, but he tells himself not to panic. There should be enough of a charge in the stealth boy to keep him hidden for a bit longer, but his own rising arousal is only growing more insistent, especially when he watches the way Danse grab himself like that.
Holy shit.
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He closes his fingers around himself with a ragged little gasp, sensitive from rubbing up against unyielding metal, pulling his cock free from briefs and flightsuit and giving it a slow tight stroke to slick down his fingers. He settles into a faster rhythm then, with a gentler grip. He's trying to hurry himself along without making the whole ordeal a disappointment, the way it is when he's so efficiency-focused that he might as well not have done it at all. It does the job of clearing his head, when he lets it be purely about the physical sensation, but it doesn't truly satisfy.
He just doesn't know what to think about--lets his mind settle on the last thing that it found arousing before he decided he had to duck in here and take care of the matter, Sturges' massive shoulders and bulging arms in that dirty tattered shirt of his under his overalls, but it isn't long before the picture shifts. Smaller frame, narrower shoulders, a body built for subtlety rather than brute strength. Danse has enough brute strength of his own. He never has needed it in others. He doesn't think about it, though, just lets it keep pushing him onward.
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2269
Jane lights a cigarette and looks over the rifle to the horizon. It's a fairly calm night, but stirring behind her has her cursing beneath her breath. The cigarette is dropped and snubbed out with her boot, and then she's pulling a silenced pistol from her hip and moving quickly through the hall to make sure a Courser hasn't snuck through the back.
"Oh-- shit, sorry..." she mutters, lowering her gun once she has eyes on the synth. She hadn't expected him to be awake. "Everything alright there, pal?"
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It's no wonder the coursers hate it up here, when he hears them talk about it amongst themselves. They don't actually talk to M7 about it. He's been told that he washed out of the courser program halfway through, during the psych eval. He wouldn't remember.
He doesn't remember, either, the first time he'd seen the reclamation chair. It's a mark of obedience, a badge of pride for the loyal synths, to remember their first thoughts about the chair. He doesn't remember standing in the doorway, face as white as his high-necked uniform, voice hoarse as he'd asked G5-19 if the grate at the base of it was for what he thought it was. And he hadn't known why he'd asked her, of all the other synths, because everyone knew she'd been put through it before. She'd remember less about it than anyone. But it had made him think she wouldn't judge him for the question, either. And she had been able to answer it.
"Easy cleanup," she confirms grimly, "for the fluids."
"Is there really that much blood?"
"Blood. Spinal fluid, where the needles go. Urine. But you'll never have to find out, M7. They trust you. You listen."
It should be a compliment. He can't quite take it as one. "How are you sure?" he asks, eyes fixated on the needles again, as if there really is any ambiguity about what those would do to an organic body. Her eyes are deep and haunted as she turns them on him again.
"They make me watch."
The beds in the safehouse are rickety, the frames even broken in places. He understands that these things can't be complained about, wouldn't dare even if beggars could be choosers, when Jane has already been kinder and more generous to him than any human he's ever known, and when their travels today have been exhausting enough to knock him out no matter how uncomfortable the bed. But the splintered board right in the middle of it digs into his back, stirring memories that should have been purged, data that can't be as easily deleted from his brain as Dr. Zimmer wants to believe.
He dreams of the pleading, the pain, the blood and worse, back arching off the dirty mattress as if he could possibly escape those foot-long spines. The blanket that had been a kind (if mildewy) concession to his inexperience with the cold surface weather now feels like the hands of the SRB loyalists holding him down, and he struggles desperately free from it, whimpering in his sleep only because the dream is one of those where screaming feels impossible no matter how hard he tries.
He's dazed as he wakes, panting, neckline and armpits of his ragged shirt soaked with sweat, a stitch in his side from where he's writhed nearly all the way out of the bed, and he stares at Jane as if unable to recognize her even after so many days of travel. Faced with the pistol even if only for a second, he puts his hands up in terrified pleading surrender before the recognition and the apology both soak in together, and they lower their hands in tandem.
"I'm not hurt," he says. "It was just--"
He doesn't actually have the words for it. Vehemently opposed as they are to the notion that synths can dream, none of the scientists have ever bothered to mention the concept where he could hear it.
"It...wasn't actually real, I--"
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"You had a nightmare," she says plainly. "It's okay, you can come sit with me."
Any tension she had been holding in her body is released as she turns and leads him onward to her lookout spot, bending to pick up the half-crushed cigarette she'd wasted in alarm. She smooths the paper with her fingers and fishes out a matchbook, then relights it as she reclaims her seat behind the rifle on a bench that could fit them both.
"You smoke?" she asks, a touch of humor in her voice as she does. She can say with somewhere around 80% confidence that this man has never touched a cigarette. "Terrible habit. Want one?"
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NSFW (Gentle, now...)
When he gets to the spot, he's surprised to find that the odd little half-rebuilt home on the outskirts of town has an addition inside of it that he hadn't placed there. Alarmed as he may be by it, it's incorporated into the scene for Danse's arrival. The other man will find him waiting, lounging on the newly-placed mattress in the leathers that Danse admitted to liking him in, a box of fancy lad snack cakes beside him.
"Hey! Do you mind," he shouts as Danse enters, "I'm expecting someone." He smirks, then hisses out a little laugh, "Just messing with you," he corrects, tugging a pack of fancy lads from the box, eyebrows waggling playfully above his glasses. "Wanna split one?"
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And the few times he's seen Deacon since then have given him plenty to overanalyze as it is. They haven't had sufficient privacy for him to ask about seeing each other again, always just within risk of earshot of someone they knew, if not actual earshot. Deacon hadn't acknowledged anything aloud, but neither had he acted like there was nothing to acknowledge, and those smoldering little smirks and teasing, purring double entendres had had Danse on the verge of just pushing him against a wall and kissing him.
Had it happened one more time, he would have--but then he gets that message, and his mind is immediately planning, strategizing, even as he looks forward to it with something that borders embarrassingly on desperation. That room had suited their purposes the first time because there was no other option, and even now, it works well enough in terms of privacy, but he isn't going to give Deacon an excuse to hold back from the kind of intimacy he'd spoken of in those messages, even if Danse knows that expecting all of it is too much. Besides which, that couch is one more good fuck from falling apart altogether, and Danse is too large a man to be comfortable on it anyway.
He sources a mattress that doesn't smell like mole rat shit or have any too-identifiable corpse stains on it and lugs it matter-of-factly into the room the night before they're set to meet, and adds the blanket from the bunker for good measure, because he can always find another one for himself. When he arrives for the rendezvous, he leaves his power armor in a far corner of the living room, so that someone would really have to be staring through the window in order to see it. Danse is never one for real stealth or subterfuge, but he can manage some degree of discretion when necessary.
He pauses in the doorway to drink in the sight of Deacon in those tight leathers, always a welcome one but never more so than right now, even better than his imagination had conjured up when stroking himself at his terminal. He, too, is wearing something different than last time; he'd put actual thought into wearing something different and perhaps more appropriate than the flightsuit, even if he doesn't own much. Just the army fatigues he's scavenged from another room in the listening post, faded and tight over his muscles.
"I didn't haul that thing here at two in the morning for someone else to be making use of it," he deadpans, "so you'd better tell them there's a change of plans." His eyes linger covetously on the snack cakes, though he's staring every bit as much at Deacon's fingers as he unconsciously licks his lips at the offer.
"But you bet I do. I was going to ask if you already knew those were my favorite, but on second thought, if you did, I don't want to know how." He joins Deacon on the mattress, sitting with the same stiff-postured awkwardness one would expect, but he'll loosen up.
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"Two in the morning!" Deacon laughs, "The commitment. You've gotta respect it."
Years of working with synths, Deacon has noticed a pattern. Call it a hunch, but there was not a chance that Danse was different enough from the other synths that he didn't have a bit of a sweet tooth for snack cakes. Deacon was willing to take this risk, and looks a bit like the cat that ate the canary to learn he's right.
He shifts slightly to make room for Danse to sit, but not nearly enough to put space between them. They both know why they're here. He sighs, shrugging a bit. Deacon moves almost too casual and cavalier, pushing himself upright so that his hand can walk itself over the small space between them and up Danse's chest. "You could say I had a hunch. I know a lot more than I let on..." Which isn't a lie at all, even though it kind of sounds like one.
The hand at Danse's chest presses him gently back and against the wall, his other hand lifting the cake wrapper to his own mouth to bite and tear open. "I suppose you'll want the first bite..."
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for facethefacts, NSFW
Danse has never actually seen anyone wear lingerie in person before. His sexual experience before Deacon had been entirely with fellow Brotherhood personnel, wearing the plainest and most utilitarian undergarments imaginable. He's witnessed things like this only in the occasional peek at pre-war magazines and pinups, material that his fellow soldiers would keep hidden away in their lockers and that the bolder vertibird pilots would try to paint onto their crafts before being ordered by the Lancer-Captain to get rid of the offending artwork.
It's for this reason that the style of lingerie is familiar--the kind of thing that was in vogue before the war for those waiting on their soldiers to come home from places like Mambajao, cheeky little messages to promise fidelity, ironic when shown in widely-distributed cheesecake pictures. Danse has never seen it depicted on anyone like Deacon.
But this does not temper his arousal at it. The contrast between fictional expectation and tangible reality, the slight naughty taboo of seeing it in this context, only heightens the turn-on. His eyes sweep thoroughly and smolderingly over Deacon's entire frame, lips twisting into a heated little smirk of their own accord, and he reaches behind him to shut the door slowly without taking his gaze off that embroidery for a second.
"That message can't be intended for me," he murmurs. "Can it?"
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Deacon twists his head to the side with a laugh, brief and airy, spreading his arms into a slight shrug. "Oh, I don't know," he teases, "I think it's a bit like the story of Excalibur or whatever," he gestures to the odd zipper on the front of them, "Exceptions are made for those strong enough to remove them."
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for taediosum
There's a slight question of desensitization, too. The only reason he hadn't shot the first eyebot he'd seen in the Commonwealth was because Rhys had been quicker on the draw and taken it out first, but the next time the squad had encountered one, they'd heard its message before being able to pinpoint where it was coming from, and it had turned out to be nothing but an ad for Wattz Consumer Electronics. The little floating bastards had proven surprisingly useful, actually, in directing them toward old treasure troves of weapons and supplies, and he's long since fallen out of the habit of attacking them, even if he doesn't bother to listen to what they're broadcasting anymore either.
(Though he has begun to cast a warier eye on them of late, ever since Arcade had explained that the models are prone to explosive self-destruction if not safely taken out at range. Danse has never seen one do that, and he's pretty sure the citizens of Diamond City wouldn't suffer them to hover around the streets if one had ever caused any damage there--but he'll always be more inclined to trust Arcade's scholarly expertise over the reliability of janky pre-war technology. What reason would he have to lie?)
The music doesn't get the chance to set his teeth on edge, either. There's only one specific frequency he needs to tune into for orders from the Castle, and he rarely bothers in his leisure time with anything other than Travis "Much Improved" Miles or the Charles River Trio these days. He'd already more or less managed to avoid the treacly tedium of Enclave Radio back in the Capital, first by having better music options and then by being outright forbidden to listen anyway, but not all of his colleagues had been so fortunate. He recalls the first time Nora had set up a radio beacon to entice new settlers to the region, how proud of herself she'd been for finding pleasant cheerful patriotic music to play between the repeating messages--remembers overhearing, too, as Deacon had gently taken her aside and mentioned that the songs in question "have some not-awesome connotations now, boss," and been interrupted by MacCready's sharp and far less tactful "Turn that crap off!"
But here they are on the airwaves again, shrill renditions of "Dixie" and "America the Beautiful" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and more, on channels entirely unrelated to settlement recruitment and easy to stumble across without really trying. The eyebots drifting across the abandoned highways and through the dirty streets near Goodneighbor are still mostly playing ads for long-defunct and looted businesses, but among them, indistinguishable except that they look a little newer and cleaner, are a few with an ominous new message: "The Enclave is back, America. And no, not just on your radio. Right now, Enclave troops are patrolling the Commonwealth."
The last word is faintly garbled, as if edited in later by a different voice, before the message continues. "These fine men and women have one mission: the restoration of American peace and order. Don't you, my darling America, deserve that? Don't you deserve a future free of war, and fear, and terrible uncertainty? Of course you do."
The message repeats. ]
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He's just been wrong this whole time about what the worst would actually entail.
It was foolish of him to think he could disappear and leave his past behind, that he could travel as far as travel would allow, and none of those bad things would ever find him. But it was Rangers he was expecting. Maybe even Brotherhood stragglers, whatever might've been left of the Hidden Valley chapter, after Hoover. Men with guns and no particular love for the source of all the contradictory propaganda now playing on hijacked airwaves across the Commonwealth. Not that Arcade has any, either. But guilt by association is still a crime punishable by death, in the Wasteland. And this far from NCR territory, there wouldn't even be the pretense of a mock trial.
Somehow, though, it's none of that. And having only been prepared his whole life for one version of the worst outcome possible, he isn't braced for this new one. He doesn't hide it well, either, moody and distracted and always too busy, all of a sudden. He has plans to make, though, messages to send. (He's lied about a lot of things, since he found his way to Goodneighbor, chief among them that he came all this way largely on his own.) He has things to unearth and repurpose once again.
It would've been impossible to go unnoticed sneaking an entire suit of original issue Tesla power armor into town with him, and besides that, Arcade's smart enough not to want to. The Remnants no longer keep a centralized bunker, but have split their cache between a few remote locales. (Maybe as a result of having been dug up once, already, none of them felt quite right going back to the status quo.) Arcade's is north of town, at an old Poseidon facility too run down to be host to much wildlife or any raiders. It also contains the least: only his father's armor and a few firearms, ammunition.
He makes the hike there alone, as he intends to do all of this, at least until the reinforcements come. If they do. He hasn't waited for verification, but while he knows it's reckless, he doesn't feel like he can afford to. Every minute he wastes is another minute that "Enclave troops are patrolling the Commonwealth."
The message repeats, staticky on the radio behind him, as he leans into the suit through its open back, checking the lining, the wiring. He may not be a mechanic, but he knows the maintenance of this particular piece of machinery inside and out. Even while he can feel his pulse beating at his temple, anger and anxiety a sickening milieu in his head, he isn't going through the motions. He's meticulous, focused. He doesn't hear the door, doesn't expect there to be any reason someone should've followed him, let alone all the way down to this well-hidden bunker. Or perhaps been pointed in its direction by a well-informed acquaintance. ]
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for facethefacts
Which is why Danse is stuck there for the full week he'd promised, while Nora returns to Sanctuary after a couple days. The place is really starting to become a thriving and desirable place to live again, enough that the already-repaired space is beginning to fill up even with people sharing what used to be single-family houses. Sturges had mentioned to her at one point that he didn't know who'd planted the garden out behind one of the houses marked for renovation, but nobody had thought much of it at the time, and there are still more pressing issues to deal with.
Danse, meanwhile, has been doing just as Deacon asked him to. When the day's work is done, and he's alone in the small spartan quarters that have been set aside for him, he lets his thoughts drift and sends Deacon the occasional message--
It's a good thing these stone walls are soundproof, because I can't stop thinking about sitting on your face again.
The second I get back, I'm pinning you to the nearest wall and getting on my knees.
Thinking about how much nicer it would be to sleep on you than this cot.
The tone gets subtly but perceptibly more longing as the days progress.
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It starts to eat at him maybe only a day in, the way Danse called it home, and guilt rises in a way that he isn't anticipating. He really misses him, yes, but he's starting to resent having to keep that a secret. A hell of his own choosing, truly.
Just as well that he takes interest in a slightly damaged bed frame he spots amongst the latest cart of salvage. It just needs the rust cleaned from it and a fresh coating, and perhaps then he and Danse won't be sleeping on a floor mattress anymore. He'll take the win... you know, once he works up the courage to explain where it's going.
"You didn't think I was sleeping in the tato field, did you?" he asks Nora playfully, "...which is flourishing by the way. Ol' Farmer Deacon’s still got it. So you think my green thumb's a fair trade for a rusty hunk of metal?"
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The big cracked mirror in the bedroom bothers him. He tells himself that it's because catching his reflection in it at night tricks him into thinking there's someone else in the room, or that when he does finally doze off, it reflects the light from the windows onto his face. Maybe those things are true, but deep down, Deacon realizes that it really just comes down to facing himself in the mirror at all. He avoids this by draping a worn sheet over it to deal with later. Danse will be joining him tonight, and he intends to be well rested for his arrival.
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Deacon is not a man whose presence or absence are supposed to be notable. He's made an entire career out of going unnoticed, and Danse has not typically been one to let him live that down. And yet somehow he manages to fill this house whether he's here or not, because when he's gone, Danse notices all the little things that feel missing, and when he's around, Danse doesn't want to leave his side.
When he arrives that evening, on schedule, after a week's long patrol around the lighthouse and the Slog, nothing in the room looks out of the ordinary to him and he wouldn't notice if it did. There could be a deathclaw standing in the corner with a lampshade on its head, and Danse would still be ignoring it to pull Deacon into his arms and dip him into a kiss.
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kinktober - somnophilia
That was before he had any of that. He can't imagine anymore how he ever managed to rest at all without Deacon beside him, but his body seems determined to make up for lost time in so many different ways now--sleeping soundly in his lover's arms for hours, and waking up not only refreshed, but always hard and heavy against the small of Deacon's back, face nestled into the curve of his neck and palm resting on his stomach to feel the still-asleep softness of his breathing.
He's not trying to wake Deacon, exactly. Just nuzzling a little closer against his throat, with a tender lingering kiss, and letting his fingers play gently and idly with the trail of ginger beneath Deacon's navel.
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There's an almost pavlovian response to feeling Danse's erection against him that Deacon's body seems to reflexively act on even in his sleep. He squirms back against it, his own cock chubbing up beneath where Danse's fingers tease. He barely remembers his dreams when he first wakes, but right now they're sweet from the way Danse touches him. The sort of dream you don't want to end.
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for propatriamori
The convoy itself is something like a larger pack to protect and serve, but in a way that doesn't even feel like the military units he's accustomed to--more like providing the kind of impersonal security that would usually be hired, like SecUnit always thought of itself as doing. The gift of the silk as an overture of friendship, even beyond the effort to bind up his wounds here out of kindness, touches something in the wolf that indulges it more than chasing a rabbit or marking a truck tire possibly could. And it touches Danse himself, even if it frightens him a little as well. Friends are a dangerous thing to have. People are too easily lost in a dangerous world, and friends take a chunk of you with them in the process.
He doesn't know whether it's him or the wolf or both that finds it impossible to contain the desire to acquiesce. The tail breaks free of its restraint the second Edward gives it permission whether Danse has or not, wagging swiftly and hopefully at the promise of the scratch, and Danse's mortification at this is tempered by the startled but sincere little chuckle that slips from his throat at Edward's little gallows-humor joke. He doesn't always recognize jokes for what they are, when he isn't comfortable enough with a conversation to be open to them, but when anything makes him laugh, it's a joke like that.
He sizes up that rambunctious hand for a long moment, and relents, with another soft breath of self-deprecating laughter. "I trust you to keep it in confidence. And I know you won't judge. I'd...like that, actually."
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Danse might get a bit of a mind blast from Edward, but it's a far different scene than usual. Instead of the front, or the fear and despair of being injured, the memory that comes surging forward is a very old one: it's a warm room, with a fire crackling in a fireplace. An evergreen tree stands in the corner, perfuming the room with the scent of its needles and resin. The tree is decorated with lights and glass ornaments, all glittering and twinkling in the firelight. This is all seen from a low perspective, as if the person viewing the scene is either very short or very young. It comes with a deep sense of contentment, tinged with excitement and hope about the future.
Edward's breath catches a little when Danse gives him permission, but the left hand needs no further invitation. It shoots upward, immediately going for one of Danse's ears. Once there, though, it's surprisingly gentle; the hand doesn't always obey, but it's still part of Edward, and won't be too rough or aggressive. It rubs its fingers along the back of the ear while the thumb strokes the fluffy, downy hair inside its cup. Edward's eyes widen, and he suddenly breaks into a full, bright smile.
"You're so soft." All three other hands rise to join the first; one hand on Danse's other ear, and the other two bury themselves in his hair, twining through the thick strands. The hands on the ears reposition themselves and get to scratching, and it's clear Edward has scratched a dog or two in his time; he goes for the base of the ears, where they attach to Danse's head, and really digs in. The hands in his hair don't scratch or pet, but start running through it, almost like Edward is trying to smooth it into a different hairstyle.
"What colour is it?"
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aftercare✨️
Deacon props himself up on his side, looking over to Danse with a smirk. He waits until he sees those big, dark eyes begin to flutter open and then with a voice hoarse from his own nap, mimics the sort of tone a child might use on a playground.
"Ooooooo, someone's in loooove~" As if this doesn't apply to him, also.
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But once he does, his little breath of laughter in response is happy and free, gaze softening with teasing fondness. "Well, I'm glad you feel comfortable expressing your feelings. I certainly won't hold them against you."
It's not the most sophisticated of banter, but Deacon always does inspire him to try. And the way he rolls over to face Deacon and reaches up to caress his cheek, scooting over again just close enough to feel body heat, serves as a perfectly clear reminder how mutual those feelings are. His eyes skim playfully down over his lover's nude body, taking in the remnants of the mess they'd made.
"We ought to get you cleaned up." As if that doesn't apply to him, also.
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TEXT
You were wearing one of those old world doo-dads that made that slim waist of yours look extra slutty.
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I gather this "doo-dad" must have been unusually revealing if it made me look that promiscuous. Details?
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