Reading body language is less Danse's forte than anticipating lies based on observable patterns (or noticing obvious contradictions.) He's not completely convinced by Deacon's attempt at casual breeziness, but he's not flatly certain it's false, either.
Easing up off his knees, and leaning down for a brief kiss, he pulls the sheet from the mirror with a quick no-nonsense movement and tosses it over onto the bed. They can wrap themselves up in it for warmth when they're done, but it's extraneous for now. He joins Deacon on the bed now, sitting beside him rather than kneeling in front of him, and looks over at him, gauging his reaction from the side--able to see something of his eyes behind the glasses at this angle--and what he can see in the mirror, out of the corner of his own eye.
"You know, I always thought you should see yourself when we do this," he ventures. "The way I get to."
Deacon takes a deep breath after sharing in that quick kiss and watches Danse as he tugs down the sheet. Everything is fine until Danse suggests Deacon seeing himself in any way, shape or form. It causes his muscles to tense and his lips to pull tight, face turning slightly to look at Danse with a slightly knitted brow.
"Why's that?" he asks, because it's not an outright no; if anything, he's actually intrigued by why Danse may want such a thing. He thinks he understands, because he is given a front-seat view of Danse's big, beautiful eyes and all their expressiveness, a sight so precious he almost feels guilty keeping to himself. Almost.
The fact that it isn't a no is encouraging, like when the glasses came off for the first time. A no would have left Danse dwelling on the reasons and implications, but he wouldn't have pushed. There's no answer Deacon could have given either way that wouldn't make Danse want to praise and flatter and build him up, but he looks particularly encouraged to be asked, as if he's always wanted to expound on the subject even if he doesn't quite trust himself to articulate it well.
"Because you're stunning," he says, able to manage that much without thought or hesitation. It isn't about looks; he knows that's not what Deacon needs reassurance about, even if Danse enjoys being poetic about those too for the hell of it. "You're never holding anything back when I have you like this. You don't hide the things you think you should. Everything you show me in bed is the truth, and it's beautiful for that." A pause, because he doesn't mean for this next to sound teasing or moralizing, even if it could serve for either. There's nothing but sincerity in it.
Danse's reasoning is heartfelt and lovely and all of the things that Deacon needs to hear, but he can't help feeling like it isn't entirely true. He shifts, rolling onto his side to look Danse straight-on, even though he hasn't removed his glasses. They're protecting him, now.
"It's not, though," he starts, trepidation in his voice, "I mean, I get what you're saying, but I've never been honest with you about who I am. About who I used to be." Deacon pauses, looking down at his own hands. "The truth is, I don't think you'll be able to look at me at all again if you knew it all, let alone still think of me as 'stunning'. I can barely look at myself."
Danse looks ever so slightly taken aback, those expressive eyes dark with confusion at the genuine, audible worry in Deacon's voice. They don't really talk about politics, such as those are in the Commonwealth, or about the particulars of personal morality beyond broad notions like protecting civilian life and giving aid to the needy.
However they might have clashed before about the diametrically-opposed philosophies of the organizations they'd given their lives to, there had been no really sharp teeth to it. Not when Deacon had been willing to concede that Lyons' Brotherhood had done respectable work, and Danse had grudgingly come to accept that he would have been nowhere himself without the Railroad's help, and hardly any of it mattered anymore once the Institute was a smoldering crater.
"I don't understand," he says. "What is it you've done that you think I don't already know about? I mean...nothing you've done for the Railroad would shock me so much as to make a difference. It can stay in the past and I won't judge you for it." They are still dangerous anarchists to Danse's mind, not exactly the shining-armor good guys, regardless of what he owes them. "How much worse could you have been before?"
"Worse." He sighs, and is quiet for a moment as he's clearly trying to build the composure to let it out. He wants it to stay in the past. He'd be thrilled about that. But he doesn't think he'll ever be able to feel better about it all until Danse knows, because it's his past. The real and honest one, not the made-up bullshit he's always spouting. Honesty is important to Danse, he knows, as much as he knows that Danse is burdened with a fake past of his own. That's a whole other rabbit hole. Baby steps.
"You won't judge me out loud maybe, but you'll think I'm a hypocrite. Because as much as I've mouthed-off about the Brotherhood, I was worse." He starts, his voice low, "...A bigot. A violent one at that. Without all the military glory."
It's a along story, but Deacon decides it best to kill the damn mood and recite it. All of it. Of the Claws, of Barbara, of what drew the Railroad's attention. Danse deserves to know, deserves to be angry, disappointed, or any other emotion these tales may summon. Deacon hasn't been vulnerable with him like this ever, but that doesn't mean he's owed forgiveness.
"I don't deserve half the praise you give me. I don't deserve a pass on judgement. Hell, I don't deserve you." And he means it. He can't even look at Danse as he says it.
If Danse were to judge the Deathclaws' motivation for what they did, he would have no right to talk about hypocrisy, military glory or no. A self-respecting soldier of the Brotherhood would be horrified at the thought that a human innocent might have been caught up in that storm of hatred and lynched in place of a synth, but none of them would have shed any tears had the gang been right about that man with the bulging eyes, or had the same crisis of conscience over it that Deacon had.
But it is jarring, unsettling, hard to wrap his mind around the thought of Deacon being so hands-on in his violence, so sadistically gratuitous. The thought of Deacon being cruel is where his mind stalls with refusal to accept it. Danse has known countless aimless troublemaking youth in need of redirection, recruited enough of them over the course of his career to crew the whole Prydwen, but he wouldn't have touched ones like this gang. And yet whenever he fights alongside Deacon, it never is alongside him, because Danse is the one drawing fire and mowing the distracted enemy down with near-feral bloodlust while Deacon picks them off quickly and painlessly from the shadows.
The rest of it would leave him reeling gently were he not already numb from the beginning--the new knowledge that Deacon was married once, the horror of what happened to the poor woman, the strange coincidence that Danse isn't the first synth to fall for Deacon, the further evidence of how chillingly lethal he's capable of being--but the refrain about the past being left in the past still keeps trying to surface in his mind.
"How much material good have you done for people since then?" he asks. Even were he not obligated now to leave behind the Brotherhood's standards of 'material good,' knowing that his own freedom isn't included in them, he's heard Deacon talk with unfalsifiable passion about making the Commonwealth a better place for everyone. He's watched Deacon work for it.
"At what point can you weigh the decades you've spent fighting for the greater good against the years you spent fighting against it, and admit that the former is who you are now? I praise the actions I see, Deacon. You give me reason to do it. They aren't canceled out of the record now because of what you did in your youth."
Danse is so patient with him that it only makes him feel more guilty. He shrugs at the questions he's asked and shakes his head, unsure. "I don't know if it will ever be enough. Nothing erases what I've done."
But perhaps Danse is uniquely positioned to understand, both of them having been lonely and isolated, then indoctrinated by a bigoted group that made them feel like family, only for that group to betray them in the end. It's part of the reason why Deacon has always sympathetized with Danse after all, and been far more patient with him than others have been. Maybe it's not so unheard of that Danse can stomach this too.
His stomach is in knots, and then Danse says something that feels so accepting of him that he melts just a little, eyebrows pinched above his glasses. "You're seriously okay with this?" he asks, still kind of disbelieving.
The incredulity in Deacon's voice breaks Danse's heart. He understands the way certain deaths can drag the soul down in a way others don't, a burden impossible to set aside through any kind of atonement or rationalization.
But he knows now, too, what the power of someone else's belief can do to ease the weight. He's been lucky enough to benefit from grace and patience he hasn't even fully earned, from Deacon's faith in him while he comes to understand just how many apologies he owes to the people around him. And he believes in turn, with every fiber in his heart, that Deacon is a good man.
"Come here," he whispers, reaching out to lay a hand alongside Deacon's face, thumb tracing softly over his cheek. "I know nothing erases it. Nothing erases anything that anyone does. It doesn't have to be erased for the world to be better now with you in it."
Deacon is drawn forward even before Danse beckons him closer, just by the touch to his cheek. He's unbelievably lucky, he thinks, in the same sort of way he felt lucky to be loved by Barbara. Danse looks at him much like she did, both of them with their big, dark, expressive eyes that make Deacon want to dive inside of them and waste away.
His hands find Danse's waist, arms curling around it. The self-proclaimed 'not a hugger' can be rather cuddly these days, but only when the two of them have privacy, and there's a comfort that Deacon can't verbalize in the way Danse holds him that he seeks out more than he thought he ever would.
"I lnow you believe that," he mutters against Danse's chest, trying to lighten the mood, "Because you're a terrible liar. You'd think I'd have rubbed off on you by now, and yet..."
If Danse were willing to let the mood lighten enough here to be brushed off, this would be an opportune moment for the kind of double entendre Deacon has been teaching him to experiment with. But this is not a satisfactory answer to him. Not with Deacon still deflecting, subjectivizing, displacing the forgiveness back onto Danse as if his worthiness of it is only in the eye of the beholder.
He kisses Deacon's forehead as he's held tight, and tilts his face up to press one to his lips, too. "This," he murmurs, "is exactly why I want you to look in that mirror and see what I see when I make love to you." He turns Deacon's face gently toward the mirror again, his lips winding a path of soft warm kisses down the side of his neck. "I'm not stopping until you believe it too, Deacon."
His other hand slips down to skim over Deacon's stomach and rest on the fly of his jeans, a silent request for permission before undressing him.
There's a sort of scoff of irritation at that reply, because he'd just assumed that Danse would let it go without further argument, and his pouting makes that evident. It's still present on his lips as Danse turns him to face the mirror, but it eases slightly as he watches Danse via their reflection, at an angle he's not typically seeing the other man's affections from. It isn't so difficult then for him to relax a bit, even if the next thing out of Danse's mouth makes his heart beat a little faster.
"You have your work cut out for you," he taunts slightly, his own hands pushing beneath Danse's clothes with renewed desire.
"Are you calling me a slacker?" There's a hint of reciprocal teasing, as Danse lets himself be stripped, tenderly pushes Deacon's shirt up and over his head in turn and and slips easily back to his knees to pull his jeans and underwear down and off. From the floor, he gazes up with aching affection as he kisses a trail gently up Deacon's calf and thigh, eyes as dark and wet as he can make them when he knows Deacon loves that the most of all his features.
"Eyes on the mirror," he commands, lips brushing over the juncture between hip and thigh as he pushes Deacon's legs further apart, his breath warm and soft against Deacon's cock. "I'm trusting you, you know. If I catch you looking at me, I might just find myself needing to get up and take a walk."
"I'm saying that I know you appreciate a challenge, that's all," Deacon retorts, a hand sliding into Danse's hair to scratch lightly at his scalp as he watches him trail those kisses higher and higher.
"You can't really expect me to look away from this--" he huffs, "And there's your first mistake. You can't trust everyone."
He's being snarky of course, because he does want Danse to trust him, and that little ultimatum does inspire Deacon's to pry his eyes from the beautiful image between his thighs, but not without a groan of displeasure.
The sight of himself in the mirror is a distracting one. It feels torturous not to watch Danse, moreso than it is to be sentenced to watching himself. Deacon takes a deep breath, exhaling loudly. His eyes focus anywhere but his own face, eventually locking onto the ugly scarring left by his fellow Deathclaws when he tried to break free of them. He's changed his face at least a dozen times, but the scar is a constant reminder of who he'd once been.
"I don't trust everyone," Danse replies, without missing a beat. "I trust you."
If he tried, he might be able to peek behind Deacon's shades from this angle, to track where his eyes are directed and ensure he's doing as Danse asks. But to do so already would be to undermine what he's just said, and he lets himself have faith.
He hasn't ordered Deacon to look at his own face specifically, even if he longs for him to see just how beautiful he looks when he lets go and surrenders to guileless pleasure. There will be time for that. Danse knows how to ease into a maneuver when strategy beyond blunt force is required. And he can tell from the agitation in that sigh that Deacon isn't looking at something he wants to see.
He mouths gently over Deacon's sack, letting his voice vibrate low against the sensitive skin. "Good," he murmurs softly. "I knew I wasn't wrong. Because you don't lie when it matters. Not to me, not even to strangers." He draws one of Deacon's balls into his mouth, teasing, sucking, rewarding him with the sensation.
"I trust you" Danse says, and the sound that Deacon makes is akin to the air leaving his lungs. It isn't that he doesn't believe it or that it's very shocking, but it hits him deep someplace he isn't expecting and leaves him somewhat stunned.
The more Danse speaks on the matter, the more breathless he becomes. It wouldn't matter if Danse wasn't touching him at all, because the words themselves are reverent and feel as warm as Danse's lips in a way.
"Fuck--"
A soft, desperate noise leaves Deacon's lips and his fingers tighten their grip as Danse's hot mouth surrounds him, and Deacon reflexively looks down for a single second, which is all it takes for the image of Danse to sear into his memory as he forces his head back up. God, he can't disappoint him, now.
Even as a commander, even in military matters of life and death, Danse is a forgiving man. He isn't so easily disappointed as that, not when he can hear how hard and how courageously Deacon is trying. One little slip, done for the sake of this mutual passion, is nothing, and he gives no acknowledgment that he's noticed it.
"Listen to yourself," he whispers against the flesh of Deacon's thigh, reaching up to close a thumb and forefinger around his cock and stroke readiness into it. "Do you have any idea how often I hear your voice in my head when I'm on patrol? This is how I remember it. This is what keeps me going when I'm exhausted. You, sounding like this--the way you swear, the way you talk without thinking. The way you sound, right now, is exactly what I'll think of to keep me warm, next time I have to leave you."
He looks up now, not to keep Deacon on the straight and narrow but to let him have a rest, reaching up again to touch Deacon's face and guide it back down to watch as Danse takes his cock into his mouth.
Deacon doesn't realize just how much noise he makes when under Danse's affections until he's forced to. He doesn't know if he should feel embarrassed or not, but he shivers at the things Danse says, his cock straining before Danse is even stroking at it.
"Ngk--" the choked-off noise is followed by a short gasp, and then with all of the focus he can summon, Deacon snarks back; "Shouldn't you like, be listening for ferals or something? Straggling mirelur--" His voice cuts off abruptly as Danse reaches up and redirects his focus.
"Goddamn-" he breathes, watching himself disappear between Danse's lips. Both hands card into his hair and pet adoringly at it, while Deacon makes short. breathless sounds until he can find his words again.
"You're so fucking beautiful," he says, as if in disbelief, "You can't expect me to not want to admire you like this..."
The pointed arch of Danse's eyebrow is all the response he will make to the snark--bait he would usually take, and the validity of which he will debate at another time. The rest of it deserves further reward, and Danse is so far from immune to it even when he's taking charge, shuddering softly at this heartfelt praise and letting go of Deacon's face to stroke at himself with that hand.
It's never any less beautiful when Deacon lets him hear what's underneath the levity and see what's beneath the mask, never any less desperately arousing to hear that awestruck undercurrent in his voice, and he swallows Deacon as far back as he can as if it could sustain him like rations. Maybe it could. Maybe he does need this more than food, more than sleep, more than the Institute ever intended him to crave. Maybe there's poetry in the fact that Deacon's atonement has led him here, to a second chance at showing a synth what it feels like to love and be loved.
"You'll have time," he promises, his voice well-used and rough when he finally pulls back. "You'll always have time to look at me as much as you want. But tonight is for admiring you."
He lets go with a last worshipful kiss to Deacon's stomach, straightens up, retrieves the lube before joining him on the edge of the bed. Shifting his weight to anchor himself, he guides Deacon into his lap, hands gentle and confident in their command as he positions him and spreads Deacon's legs apart for easier reach.
Just the sight of Danse stroking at himself makes Deacon's cock twitch, leaking a bead of precome. It's so searingly hot to watch him, to see just how needy Danse can be when it comes to anything Deacon says or does.
There's an unspoken promise in what Danse says then, of a future together that Deacon still doesn't feel deserving of. He told himself that he wouldn't get close to anyone this way, and yet here he sits, tumbling futher and futher toward something he's afraid to label and spoil yet yearns for all the same.
"I just don't think I can spare even a night," he sighs, teasing as he crawls into Danse's lap and nuzzles against his throat. Deacon presses a kiss over Danse's pulse before easing back again, making sure he savors every moment he isn't forced to stare at his own reflection.
"You can," he says, his voice equally warm and replete with facetious reprimand. "I'm not going anywhere." He'll make that unspoken promise more explicit, needing Deacon to know it without a shred of doubt. Danse doesn't believe in tempting fate.
He did, at one point, believe in avoiding tragedy to the best of his ability by holding people as far at arm's length as Deacon does, never so much as giving fate a chance to get within stabbing distance again. Cutler's death had long since disabused him of the notion that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. He doesn't know how Deacon snuck past those defenses, except that it wasn't with manipulation or subterfuge or disguise. He'd walked straight into Danse's heart as himself. Danse wants to convince him of that.
He indulges in that kiss, melts into it and lets it linger as much for his own pleasure as for Deacon's, his own cock hard and hot at the small of Deacon's back the way it so often is when they wake up in this bed, but he isn't so easily swayed that he doesn't finally take Deacon's chin and turn his face back toward the mirror. His slick fingers begin to circle slowly, with now-practiced skill, around Deacon's rim.
"Perfect," he whispers in Deacon's ear as he dips a finger inside. He's said it often enough now to pick up on the way it seems to strike deeper than other praise.
There goes another throb of that pesky muscle in his chest. Danse has just heard his darkest and most shameful secret, and he's not going anywhere. This alone makes Deacon's soft vocalizations slip from his lips, but there's a chain reaction that follows; another short gasp as he's turned to face himself again, the slick touch of Danse's fingers making him shiver, and the use of the word perfect. That is what makes him whimper in Danse's arms, his brows knitted tightly, creasing his forehead.
"Now you're taunting me," he jokes with a sort of hiccuping laugh, just about all he can manage before the tease of Danse's fingers have him shuddering again.
"Am I?" Danse's cock jerks again at the sound of that whimper, at the tight heat of Deacon's body around his finger as he seeks out the spot he's so familiar with by now. Even if he himself were capable of convincing dishonesty, his body couldn't be, pressed as close against Deacon's as it is and so passionately candid in its response to every gasp and shiver and that beautiful laugh.
"Am I taunting you every time I tell you how perfect you are to me? I never mean it any less than I do now." He strokes deliberately over that sweet spot, again and again, and once more, nose tucked in close against Deacon's bare temple.
"You said it yourself. I'm a terrible liar." Not that he even tries. "It's the truth. There's not one damn thing I'd change about you, Deacon."
Deacon can feel that press of Danse's cock at his back, making him yearn for it. He can feel the way it reacts to every sound that he makes, validating Danse's claims.
"Yeah-" he starts, but that perfect stroke of Danse's thick finger makes him groan again, hips pushing out needily for more.
His arm gropes behind him, wrapping itself around Danse best it can. "You're certifiably insane. Probably." he mutters in response, even though that praise makes his stomach quiver and his heart rattle at its enclosure. "I wouldn't have you any other way, for the record."
He squirms again, his breathing growing heavy, "Don't make me wait, baby brahmin. You can be insane and not cruel."
Danse's laugh is a bare soft breath in Deacon's ear at this, but it's the kind of laugh Deacon wrings from him so easily, so frequently, more in these past months than in all the rest of his life combined. And yet he still won't admit that he's worthy, the bare minimum of the praise Danse could gladly keep lavishing upon him.
There's nothing he craves more than to give Deacon what he wants, to the point where he nearly moves to do so before his brain can catch up with his body--but at that pleading, he stops himself. He doesn't move to meet that searching rock of Deacon's hips, or fill him with another finger. Maybe it's cruel to hold back, but it's cruelty with the best and tenderest of intentions, and he leans in for another kiss before he speaks.
"Not until you admit something to me," he says softly. "Tell me that I'm lucky to have you."
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Easing up off his knees, and leaning down for a brief kiss, he pulls the sheet from the mirror with a quick no-nonsense movement and tosses it over onto the bed. They can wrap themselves up in it for warmth when they're done, but it's extraneous for now. He joins Deacon on the bed now, sitting beside him rather than kneeling in front of him, and looks over at him, gauging his reaction from the side--able to see something of his eyes behind the glasses at this angle--and what he can see in the mirror, out of the corner of his own eye.
"You know, I always thought you should see yourself when we do this," he ventures. "The way I get to."
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"Why's that?" he asks, because it's not an outright no; if anything, he's actually intrigued by why Danse may want such a thing. He thinks he understands, because he is given a front-seat view of Danse's big, beautiful eyes and all their expressiveness, a sight so precious he almost feels guilty keeping to himself. Almost.
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"Because you're stunning," he says, able to manage that much without thought or hesitation. It isn't about looks; he knows that's not what Deacon needs reassurance about, even if Danse enjoys being poetic about those too for the hell of it. "You're never holding anything back when I have you like this. You don't hide the things you think you should. Everything you show me in bed is the truth, and it's beautiful for that." A pause, because he doesn't mean for this next to sound teasing or moralizing, even if it could serve for either. There's nothing but sincerity in it.
"It suits you."
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"It's not, though," he starts, trepidation in his voice, "I mean, I get what you're saying, but I've never been honest with you about who I am. About who I used to be." Deacon pauses, looking down at his own hands. "The truth is, I don't think you'll be able to look at me at all again if you knew it all, let alone still think of me as 'stunning'. I can barely look at myself."
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However they might have clashed before about the diametrically-opposed philosophies of the organizations they'd given their lives to, there had been no really sharp teeth to it. Not when Deacon had been willing to concede that Lyons' Brotherhood had done respectable work, and Danse had grudgingly come to accept that he would have been nowhere himself without the Railroad's help, and hardly any of it mattered anymore once the Institute was a smoldering crater.
"I don't understand," he says. "What is it you've done that you think I don't already know about? I mean...nothing you've done for the Railroad would shock me so much as to make a difference. It can stay in the past and I won't judge you for it." They are still dangerous anarchists to Danse's mind, not exactly the shining-armor good guys, regardless of what he owes them. "How much worse could you have been before?"
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"You won't judge me out loud maybe, but you'll think I'm a hypocrite. Because as much as I've mouthed-off about the Brotherhood, I was worse." He starts, his voice low, "...A bigot. A violent one at that. Without all the military glory."
It's a along story, but Deacon decides it best to kill the damn mood and recite it. All of it. Of the Claws, of Barbara, of what drew the Railroad's attention. Danse deserves to know, deserves to be angry, disappointed, or any other emotion these tales may summon. Deacon hasn't been vulnerable with him like this ever, but that doesn't mean he's owed forgiveness.
"I don't deserve half the praise you give me. I don't deserve a pass on judgement. Hell, I don't deserve you." And he means it. He can't even look at Danse as he says it.
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But it is jarring, unsettling, hard to wrap his mind around the thought of Deacon being so hands-on in his violence, so sadistically gratuitous. The thought of Deacon being cruel is where his mind stalls with refusal to accept it. Danse has known countless aimless troublemaking youth in need of redirection, recruited enough of them over the course of his career to crew the whole Prydwen, but he wouldn't have touched ones like this gang. And yet whenever he fights alongside Deacon, it never is alongside him, because Danse is the one drawing fire and mowing the distracted enemy down with near-feral bloodlust while Deacon picks them off quickly and painlessly from the shadows.
The rest of it would leave him reeling gently were he not already numb from the beginning--the new knowledge that Deacon was married once, the horror of what happened to the poor woman, the strange coincidence that Danse isn't the first synth to fall for Deacon, the further evidence of how chillingly lethal he's capable of being--but the refrain about the past being left in the past still keeps trying to surface in his mind.
"How much material good have you done for people since then?" he asks. Even were he not obligated now to leave behind the Brotherhood's standards of 'material good,' knowing that his own freedom isn't included in them, he's heard Deacon talk with unfalsifiable passion about making the Commonwealth a better place for everyone. He's watched Deacon work for it.
"At what point can you weigh the decades you've spent fighting for the greater good against the years you spent fighting against it, and admit that the former is who you are now? I praise the actions I see, Deacon. You give me reason to do it. They aren't canceled out of the record now because of what you did in your youth."
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But perhaps Danse is uniquely positioned to understand, both of them having been lonely and isolated, then indoctrinated by a bigoted group that made them feel like family, only for that group to betray them in the end. It's part of the reason why Deacon has always sympathetized with Danse after all, and been far more patient with him than others have been. Maybe it's not so unheard of that Danse can stomach this too.
His stomach is in knots, and then Danse says something that feels so accepting of him that he melts just a little, eyebrows pinched above his glasses. "You're seriously okay with this?" he asks, still kind of disbelieving.
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But he knows now, too, what the power of someone else's belief can do to ease the weight. He's been lucky enough to benefit from grace and patience he hasn't even fully earned, from Deacon's faith in him while he comes to understand just how many apologies he owes to the people around him. And he believes in turn, with every fiber in his heart, that Deacon is a good man.
"Come here," he whispers, reaching out to lay a hand alongside Deacon's face, thumb tracing softly over his cheek. "I know nothing erases it. Nothing erases anything that anyone does. It doesn't have to be erased for the world to be better now with you in it."
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His hands find Danse's waist, arms curling around it. The self-proclaimed 'not a hugger' can be rather cuddly these days, but only when the two of them have privacy, and there's a comfort that Deacon can't verbalize in the way Danse holds him that he seeks out more than he thought he ever would.
"I lnow you believe that," he mutters against Danse's chest, trying to lighten the mood, "Because you're a terrible liar. You'd think I'd have rubbed off on you by now, and yet..."
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He kisses Deacon's forehead as he's held tight, and tilts his face up to press one to his lips, too. "This," he murmurs, "is exactly why I want you to look in that mirror and see what I see when I make love to you." He turns Deacon's face gently toward the mirror again, his lips winding a path of soft warm kisses down the side of his neck. "I'm not stopping until you believe it too, Deacon."
His other hand slips down to skim over Deacon's stomach and rest on the fly of his jeans, a silent request for permission before undressing him.
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"You have your work cut out for you," he taunts slightly, his own hands pushing beneath Danse's clothes with renewed desire.
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"Eyes on the mirror," he commands, lips brushing over the juncture between hip and thigh as he pushes Deacon's legs further apart, his breath warm and soft against Deacon's cock. "I'm trusting you, you know. If I catch you looking at me, I might just find myself needing to get up and take a walk."
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"You can't really expect me to look away from this--" he huffs, "And there's your first mistake. You can't trust everyone."
He's being snarky of course, because he does want Danse to trust him, and that little ultimatum does inspire Deacon's to pry his eyes from the beautiful image between his thighs, but not without a groan of displeasure.
The sight of himself in the mirror is a distracting one. It feels torturous not to watch Danse, moreso than it is to be sentenced to watching himself. Deacon takes a deep breath, exhaling loudly. His eyes focus anywhere but his own face, eventually locking onto the ugly scarring left by his fellow Deathclaws when he tried to break free of them. He's changed his face at least a dozen times, but the scar is a constant reminder of who he'd once been.
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If he tried, he might be able to peek behind Deacon's shades from this angle, to track where his eyes are directed and ensure he's doing as Danse asks. But to do so already would be to undermine what he's just said, and he lets himself have faith.
He hasn't ordered Deacon to look at his own face specifically, even if he longs for him to see just how beautiful he looks when he lets go and surrenders to guileless pleasure. There will be time for that. Danse knows how to ease into a maneuver when strategy beyond blunt force is required. And he can tell from the agitation in that sigh that Deacon isn't looking at something he wants to see.
He mouths gently over Deacon's sack, letting his voice vibrate low against the sensitive skin. "Good," he murmurs softly. "I knew I wasn't wrong. Because you don't lie when it matters. Not to me, not even to strangers." He draws one of Deacon's balls into his mouth, teasing, sucking, rewarding him with the sensation.
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The more Danse speaks on the matter, the more breathless he becomes. It wouldn't matter if Danse wasn't touching him at all, because the words themselves are reverent and feel as warm as Danse's lips in a way.
"Fuck--"
A soft, desperate noise leaves Deacon's lips and his fingers tighten their grip as Danse's hot mouth surrounds him, and Deacon reflexively looks down for a single second, which is all it takes for the image of Danse to sear into his memory as he forces his head back up. God, he can't disappoint him, now.
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"Listen to yourself," he whispers against the flesh of Deacon's thigh, reaching up to close a thumb and forefinger around his cock and stroke readiness into it. "Do you have any idea how often I hear your voice in my head when I'm on patrol? This is how I remember it. This is what keeps me going when I'm exhausted. You, sounding like this--the way you swear, the way you talk without thinking. The way you sound, right now, is exactly what I'll think of to keep me warm, next time I have to leave you."
He looks up now, not to keep Deacon on the straight and narrow but to let him have a rest, reaching up again to touch Deacon's face and guide it back down to watch as Danse takes his cock into his mouth.
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"Ngk--" the choked-off noise is followed by a short gasp, and then with all of the focus he can summon, Deacon snarks back; "Shouldn't you like, be listening for ferals or something? Straggling mirelur--" His voice cuts off abruptly as Danse reaches up and redirects his focus.
"Goddamn-" he breathes, watching himself disappear between Danse's lips. Both hands card into his hair and pet adoringly at it, while Deacon makes short. breathless sounds until he can find his words again.
"You're so fucking beautiful," he says, as if in disbelief, "You can't expect me to not want to admire you like this..."
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It's never any less beautiful when Deacon lets him hear what's underneath the levity and see what's beneath the mask, never any less desperately arousing to hear that awestruck undercurrent in his voice, and he swallows Deacon as far back as he can as if it could sustain him like rations. Maybe it could. Maybe he does need this more than food, more than sleep, more than the Institute ever intended him to crave. Maybe there's poetry in the fact that Deacon's atonement has led him here, to a second chance at showing a synth what it feels like to love and be loved.
"You'll have time," he promises, his voice well-used and rough when he finally pulls back. "You'll always have time to look at me as much as you want. But tonight is for admiring you."
He lets go with a last worshipful kiss to Deacon's stomach, straightens up, retrieves the lube before joining him on the edge of the bed. Shifting his weight to anchor himself, he guides Deacon into his lap, hands gentle and confident in their command as he positions him and spreads Deacon's legs apart for easier reach.
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There's an unspoken promise in what Danse says then, of a future together that Deacon still doesn't feel deserving of. He told himself that he wouldn't get close to anyone this way, and yet here he sits, tumbling futher and futher toward something he's afraid to label and spoil yet yearns for all the same.
"I just don't think I can spare even a night," he sighs, teasing as he crawls into Danse's lap and nuzzles against his throat. Deacon presses a kiss over Danse's pulse before easing back again, making sure he savors every moment he isn't forced to stare at his own reflection.
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He did, at one point, believe in avoiding tragedy to the best of his ability by holding people as far at arm's length as Deacon does, never so much as giving fate a chance to get within stabbing distance again. Cutler's death had long since disabused him of the notion that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. He doesn't know how Deacon snuck past those defenses, except that it wasn't with manipulation or subterfuge or disguise. He'd walked straight into Danse's heart as himself. Danse wants to convince him of that.
He indulges in that kiss, melts into it and lets it linger as much for his own pleasure as for Deacon's, his own cock hard and hot at the small of Deacon's back the way it so often is when they wake up in this bed, but he isn't so easily swayed that he doesn't finally take Deacon's chin and turn his face back toward the mirror. His slick fingers begin to circle slowly, with now-practiced skill, around Deacon's rim.
"Perfect," he whispers in Deacon's ear as he dips a finger inside. He's said it often enough now to pick up on the way it seems to strike deeper than other praise.
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"Now you're taunting me," he jokes with a sort of hiccuping laugh, just about all he can manage before the tease of Danse's fingers have him shuddering again.
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"Am I taunting you every time I tell you how perfect you are to me? I never mean it any less than I do now." He strokes deliberately over that sweet spot, again and again, and once more, nose tucked in close against Deacon's bare temple.
"You said it yourself. I'm a terrible liar." Not that he even tries. "It's the truth. There's not one damn thing I'd change about you, Deacon."
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"Yeah-" he starts, but that perfect stroke of Danse's thick finger makes him groan again, hips pushing out needily for more.
His arm gropes behind him, wrapping itself around Danse best it can. "You're certifiably insane. Probably." he mutters in response, even though that praise makes his stomach quiver and his heart rattle at its enclosure. "I wouldn't have you any other way, for the record."
He squirms again, his breathing growing heavy, "Don't make me wait, baby brahmin. You can be insane and not cruel."
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There's nothing he craves more than to give Deacon what he wants, to the point where he nearly moves to do so before his brain can catch up with his body--but at that pleading, he stops himself. He doesn't move to meet that searching rock of Deacon's hips, or fill him with another finger. Maybe it's cruel to hold back, but it's cruelty with the best and tenderest of intentions, and he leans in for another kiss before he speaks.
"Not until you admit something to me," he says softly. "Tell me that I'm lucky to have you."
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