[ The concession, when he knows Arcade wants to protest, prompts a distracting ripple of grateful relief; the request makes him wish the location were a shade more secure. The bedroll isn't large enough to share, but neither are half the surfaces they've managed to sleep jointly on before. His thumb rubs softly and longingly over Arcade's cheekbone before his hand drops. ]
Absolutely.
[ It doesn't take him long. Danse leaves Arcade to set up where he wants to, while he arms himself more thoroughly from the supplies and swaps out the bracers of his suit for the type of upgraded Tesla model he's never gotten to see up close before.
It's the sort of thing he would want to spend ten minutes excitedly expounding on, under more opportune circumstances--under his previous impression that Arcade's expertise about it would have been more about the underpinning scientific theory, not firsthand experience with the armor itself, and that they could meet somewhere in the middle. His mind is still reeling slightly from the revelation that this isn't the case.
It's worth sticking a pin in, because he wants to talk about it. He wants to learn more, wants to watch Arcade lock into that suit and see what he can do, wants to hear what he could say about it when he doesn't have reason to change the subject or hide what he knows, but neither of them can afford that distraction yet. Danse gathers the maps and papers neatly from the table and takes them over to the bedroll instead, sitting on the floor by the head of it to read.
As he absorbs himself in the information, overlaying what he knows about the local settlements and mentally mapping out an order to the operation, he finds himself reaching over with the hand that isn't rifling pages and letting it rest wherever he can on Arcade's back or shoulders, just for the reassuring steady warmth of the contact. It helps him focus. ]
All right. I think I've determined an optimal course.
[ This after a couple of hours, his voice low as he glances over to be sure Arcade isn't asleep. It's not quite dawn yet. ]
[ There's a half empty supply closet off the banker's main room, nothing but a crumpled metal shelf in one corner, an ancient exhaust fan turning slowly in an overhead vent in the other. That's where Arcade sets up the bedroll, out of the brightest swath of the lights he's set up, where there's a hint of sky through that half-buried vent - so when daylight starts to creep through, he'll know. Not that he doubts Danse will warn him well ahead of time. But he's already come this far paranoid and prepared. What's a little further?
He doesn't really sleep, but it's easier to doze than he would've expected. The floor is hard and the bedding minimal, but it's been so long since he let himself settle that the weariness doesn't bother holding rest out of his grasp. The intermittent sounds of familiar work, mechanical noise, lull him into a place between awake and not with an unexpected swiftness.
He's more on the awake side of that drifting, in-and-out consciousness, when Danse speaks up. At some point, Arcade pulled the hand from his back into one of his own, and his grip tightens as he blinks, expression sharpening again. ]
[ Deep as Danse's focus has been, having spent this time almost wholly absorbed in catching up to speed and formulating strategy, that unconscious reach for his hand had temporarily derailed him. There had been no room for martial thoughts until the startlingly fierce affection welling up in his chest had calmed itself again, and he could have told himself more easily that he was just taking a break to rest his strained eyes if he had actually closed them instead of spending the next ten minutes pensively adrift and watching Arcade doze.
What would I do if something happened to him? He's asked himself the question before, but never until now had a truly pressing reason to dwell on it.
He hasn't let go of that hand for the past forty-five minutes, and he doesn't now, only returns the squeeze. He's satisfied already that the rest seems to have done Arcade some good. ]
It's counterintuitive, because if you're right about where this radio signal originates, there's an encampment closer to this location than the one I recommend we prioritize. But if we target it last, we'll be near two well-fortified settlements to spend the night and recuperate as necessary.
The one I think we should make for first is on the west end of Malden--near the hospital, if god forbid we need more supplies than you already have. I know the area particularly well.
[ Though the path there from here doesn't quite need to take them within sight of the listening post he'd once thought would be his grave. Just within about a quarter mile. He leaves that thought aside, in favor of a more immediate and deeper concern that he's been working through. ]
Do you have a way to...securely leave word here, for your allies? [ He's not quite sure how to phrase that, or what to call them, but that's his best effort. ] Explain our plans, so there's no danger of them deciding to assault the same locations? I don't want to risk friendly fire if I can't immediately distinguish who's on our side.
[ As Danse explains his plan, Arcade starts to shake himself more deliberately awake to listen. Breaking their careful connection, he reaches for his glasses, scrubbing a hand over his face and sitting up. When he sits forward, his eyes are fixed on the map, tracing between the points Danse outlines, following the path he's already built in his head. It takes a moment for him to respond, as he plays over his own (readily scrapped) course and reworks it to fit.
That intense focus breaks like clouds parting after a storm. It's relief and gratitude and a hint of lingering want, like he'd lean over and kiss Danse if they had any more time. Instead he starts to brush himself off, as he pushes to his feet, sidestepping his maps and heading back toward the radio. ]
Give me fifteen minutes.
[ He spends ten of them hastily drafting a message and the other five fiddling with the radio, then relaying the words he's scribbled out to it. It sounds like nonsense, a mixture of old military code and something clearly made up, and the flat tone in which Arcade speaks makes him sound eerily like some Pre-War relic. He could be an old holotape spinning its wheels in the dark, somewhere, message as meaningless as it is incomprehensible, in the current age. Nothing anyone else will think twice about, if they stumble on the adjacent frequency, where his voice plays back in an even stranger and more distant echo. He only listens for a second before shutting it off. Just long enough to be sure the power's still on, and the recording will play at all.
Then he steps back from the table, glancing back at the armor behind him, before his gaze slides to Danse. ]
I guess that's everything. Unless you've thought of anything else?
[ Danse spends those last five minutes listening to this with fascination, even if it unnerves him as well. It's one thing to hear Arcade explain the way he's spent his whole life running and looking over his shoulder, but another to catch a glimpse into the true depth of paranoid subterfuge it's made necessary, layers upon layers of bitter context built up like scar tissue over those thirty years.
Part of him had been ready to ask, hesitantly, if there might be a good spot to designate as a rendezvous point when this is over, to let him meet these people for reasons more personal than mission-related, as if this were some pre-war joke about bringing your boyfriend to Thanksgiving dinner and trusting him not to argue politics with your uncle. But the notion feels too silly to speak aloud right now, even if the desire remains.
A thought comes to mind--I don't really know him at all, do I?--but it's gone in another moment. It would be true if Danse had found him down here preparing to join the soldiers in those camps, or aid them, but this passionate determination to root them out at any cost is still exactly of a piece with the Arcade that Danse knows and loves--
This thought, too, he silences, not for the first time. Danse has never been a superstitious enough man to believe in the concept of tempting fate, but he tells himself that it would be foolish to say something distracting right when they both need all their faculties about them. Maybe even worth the regret of holding back, if there never comes another chance.
...no. Not so worth it that he won't take this last minute before they lock into their armor, and answer that question with the kiss that Arcade had foregone. They've made all the preparations they're equipped to except for this one, Danse's fingers sliding into Arcade's already-disheveled curls and anchoring there just a shade too tightly in their desperation, tongue slipping between his lips as he lets it say everything he isn't going to articulate right now.
If this kills us, it's been an honor.
He lets go, and steps back into his power armor. ]
I know a shortcut that can get us there well before noon, if complications along the way are minimal.
[ He glances toward Arcade's armor as well, the direction of his gaze obvious even when helmeted, and the anticipatory warmth in his tone audible even under the buzz of the vocoder. ]
[ He doesn't expect the kiss, but he doesn't realize he's simultaneously hoping for it, anyway, until Danse's fingers are tightening in his hair and their lips meet in such a desperate crush that he bows against Danse as if the jolt of electricity that the kiss sends through him has magnetized him as well. It's over too quickly, and he's forced to let go of the white-knuckled grip he's taken on Danse's shoulders with too much left that he wants to say (but doesn't want to say).
Danse steps into his armor, and Arcade takes a last look around, collecting something like himself while all the pieces still feel scattered around. At Danse's prompting, though, he nods, gaze settling back on his father's old armor. His armor, now, technically for longer than his father ever had it, in the first place. ]
Don't get too excited. I'm pretty rusty.
[ That edge of warmth he detects is more exciting than it has any right to be, at a time like this. He can blame the sense memory of Danse smelling like grease and metal and old, cracked leather - a strong hit of which he inhales, as he steps up to his own suit, taking a little more care as he slips inside. But it runs much deeper than that.
With a steadying breath, he flexes an armored hand, reaching for his helmet, latching it on and disappearing completely behind the heavy, metal facade. ]
You've said that before. You didn't disappoint then, either.
[ Maybe he's blurring the lines too much with that, defeating the purpose of not letting that kiss linger too long, of forcing himself to pull back before he could melt into it any further and risk letting desire and longing sap his focus from what they need to do.
He's hard-pressed enough to keep that steady as it is, watching Arcade climb into that suit with obvious experience, with visible competence and strength underneath that rusty caution, everything Danse has spent half a lifetime sublimating his libido into admiration of before Arcade gave him both reason and permission to express it openly again. Never would he have expected the two to combine like this, except in the occasional fantasy he's been too embarrassed to mention.
Even now, there's a less sensual earnestness to the appreciation as well, acknowledgment of the skill and the training it takes even for this much fluid movement in a walking tank. Like you were born for it, he could say admiringly, and nearly does, but blessedly catches himself as he remembers just how literally true the Enclave must have intended that to be. No need for either of them to dwell on that now.
The sight of Arcade's fingers flexing in the armor makes Danse feel the throb of that bruising-tight grip on his shoulders all the more acutely. They have hours of travel ahead of them for him to collect himself and sharpen up again, but he wants that sensation to linger as long as it possibly can. He leads the way out, setting a course for Malden with the rising sun at their backs.
It's a little while before he speaks again, partly to save breath on a tough portion of the hike, partly because silences with Arcade can be comfortable--though this has never been tested in circumstances quite so serious--but mostly because his thoughts are racing, in light of everything he's learned and the million new questions it all raises. ]
Tell me more about...you called them the Remnants?
[ It's not as if he hadn't asked about Arcade's family with genuine curiosity before, after all, on those first early dates. He just hadn't gotten much of an answer. ]
[ It's a relief to be tucked safely into the obscurity of his armor when Danse rattles that one off - though his face is still visibly red, even angled away, before he can disappear beneath the helmet, too. If they live through this, he'll have more than an emotional deficit to make up for, after these past few weeks.
He feels an uncharacteristic flare of claustrophobia, as the layers of steel and padding cut him off from the outside world completely - and, more specifically, from the opportunity to reach out and actually touch Danse again. The terrifying notion that that may well have been the last time, just moments ago, tries to rise to the surface of his mind on a bubble of fear-clouded doubt. But Arcade brushes it aside, taking a deep breath as he checks his weapons, and then turns to follow Danse, leaving the bunker behind.
The silence that spins out between them as they move is comfortable - for the most part. Arcade can't help all of the worries that creep in as the minutes wear on, step after step. What comes after is chief among them, still a blank space, a dark void of wild uncertainty. But when his gaze slides sideways, latching on to the familiar silhouette of now familiar armor, most of that uncertainty settles. Questions for later can wait until the job is done.
Questions for now startle him out of his forward-facing focus, a slight hitch in his step before the crackling sound of him clearing his throat breaks his silence. ]
Like I said, they were my father's old troop. Loyal to each other, first. And then to my mother and me. Now - just me.
[ A fact for which he has never managed to feel (or sound) any less guilty. But who is he to deserve that kind of deference? That loyalty? Just his father's son, really. ]
There are five of us left, myself included. You, uh. May have even met a couple of them, already. Daisy used to be a pilot. She's a scrapper, these days, orbiting the settlements closer to Sanctuary, usually. And Judah's taken up residence in Diamond City. He was their captain, though he's living like a real retiree, these days.
[ It's easier to talk about them than it ever has been himself, and the more he speaks, the easier it gets. Some minor floodgates open, and he feels even more of the night's exhaustion fall off him like water, somehow, as if this is the real relief, even more so than those few spare hours of thin sleep. ]
Doc Henry and Ca— Uh, Johnson aren't such social butterflies. Henry's doing what he always did, curing the incurable, solving the unsolvable, just because he can. Or, science can, I guess.
Johnson's even more of a hermit. Given everything he's been through, though, it's not exactly a surprise he lost his taste for polite society a long time ago. I feel bad dragging any of them back into all this, but him maybe most of all.
[ To a man who has always been brimful-overflowing with that kind of loyalty to give, easily seduced with promises that a military company could and would fill the void where blood relatives should be, nothing about that brand of devotion sounds undeserved or guilt-worthy or difficult to explain, even when it outlasts the original obligations that fostered it.
(To a man who already knows what there is to love about Arcade and why someone would, the answer to that question would seem all the more self-evident. Surely, who would know all of that better or feel it more than the people who seem by this account to have raised him from childhood? Even viewed through the lens of merit, by someone with no firsthand experience of being anyone's parent or anyone's child, it isn't difficult for Danse to wrap his mind around why the Remnants would follow Arcade across the country and fight at his back.)
He listens with the same sharp attention as he always has, always does, but there's a little frisson of something that calls back to that early infatuation when he'd simply wanted to know everything he could about the man preoccupying his thoughts. The freedom with which Arcade elaborates now on what he'd deflected about all those months ago is exciting, even before Danse's mind manages to connect any dots. ]
--I have met Daisy.
[ Startled, pleased, as he runs through his mental list of the vendors in the area that's become his home. ]
I mean, we've only ever made small talk, but she's the reason I don't have to drag myself all the way to Bunker Hill for military-grade junk worth the price anymore. I told her how I used to be a scavver myself, so she knows I have the manners not to ask about her sources, but I suppose this makes sense...
[ Not, of course, that he doesn't know better than to bring any of this up in public next time he's in the market for armor components. He trails off, considering the rest. ]
Anyway. I don't know, I...what makes you think this Johnson would have a harder time than the others? Reclusiveness I understand, but this business is about as far from dealing with polite society as it gets.
[ Not for being helpful, but - Arcade clears his throat, reluctantly clarifying. ]
She's been telling me for weeks that she has a regular I should... get to know. If I'd thought there was a chance it could be you, I wouldn't have taken the bet.
[ The brief, fond smile fades out of his tone when Danse promptshim again, though. ]
It's not that I think he'll have a tough time with it. It's that I feel bad for asking at all.
Johnson was always the one who struggled the most with our lot in life. Fleeing the Enclave, everything that came after - I think it left deeper scars on him than any of us.
[ Danse is grateful right now for the helmet, knowing as he does that he lacks a good poker face. Though he isn't sure exactly what his face is doing right now, besides prickling with a surge of unpleasant heat, at the knowledge that the person Arcade talks to about these things still thinks he's single, and that apparently not even sustained prodding about his love life or repeated attempts to set him up with an unknown quantity had induced him to tell her anything about the man already occupying his bed.
There's no other response coming to mind that he thinks would be helpful, and so he doesn't. He considers the rest of this in silence as they continue on.
Our lot in life, reminding Danse again how unwilling yet inexorable that service could be. He has not been encouraged to consider that beyond the abstract before, and without all of this, might never have. But the Enclave uniform would look no different on a true believer than on someone with no way out and nowhere else to go.
It's easier to forget that, coming from the chapter of the Brotherhood that leans hardest on willing, eager recruits--but even the East Coast detachment has squires, raised with no other options but to serve. Even they let themselves be led by a man whose strongest claim is a bloodline, treated like a binding prophecy from the moment of his birth.
He isn't yet willing to accept what similar sides of the same coin the Brotherhood and the Enclave have become. But the already-evident parallels make him think this isn't so alien that he can't speak on it, even if he joined willingly himself. ]
Look, I know battle fatigue. But...even for someone drafted into service, who never chose it, I don't know if that's enough to wash away the part of being a soldier that gets burned into you. There's something about it that never leaves you.
I can't speak for someone I don't know, but I have to imagine there would be some kind of...vindication in this, for him, if he was already so opposed to the cause. You were about ready to throw down a gauntlet at the idea of being held back from your duty here, and you think someone who was forced into combat for them wouldn't want the same thing you do?
[ There's a crackle of static in his response, the trailing end of a sigh. ]
None of us want this. We're just short of better options.
[ And adding more bodies to any of their individual (or collective) tallies isn't going to leave any of then better off. But they have a duty to Arcade, and he has a duty to himself. To proving that they're better than the whole they are remnants of. That it's possible to be, even with so much blood on their hands.
That adding more won't make any of them less broken is not something Arcade is certain he can properly convey, though. Trying to explain to someone once so devoutly a pillar of the Brotherhood that there's no glory in battle, and victory is more an obligation than an achievement—
He'd rather focus on keeping his breath, not exhausting himself hours before the end of this long hike. ]
[ It's not a line of argument Danse was ever likely to be wholly sold on, no matter how Arcade might have conveyed it. There's a degree of irony, one he'll never be aware of, in the fact that the Institute had deemed him too softhearted to be a courser--but then, coursers aren't even meant to concern themselves with collateral damage, let alone honor or glory.
But there is a separate layer of irony in the fact that the purchase that cut-off protest does find with Danse is because of his service to the Brotherhood, not in spite of it. He'd never once been able to tell himself there was any purpose or glory or good, not even a false gold-foil sheen of it, in what happened with Cutler. Or Worwick, or Brach, or Keane, or Dawes, pointless messy tragedies layering like a snowdrift and leaving nothing but a frostbitten ache in his bones. Even the theoretical prospect of avenging his own father figure on this mission has been a distant afterthought, going through half the motions and then abandoning them anyway. It isn't about that.
His reasons for letting the silence settle again for the next mile or two are diverse. There's no impulse to lash back or defend the righteousness of the fight, but particularly not at that subjective. What would Danse know about what these people want? He doesn't know them, nor they of him. He's hardly going to find himself arguing the matter with Johnson in person.
With the wind of curiosity taken out of his sails, there's little else to ask, except for what his own further fretful analysis teases out from the statement he'd let drop before. It had been nagging at him then despite his attempts to leave it, but after even a fair bit of distance and exertion and a brief tangle with a pack of feral mongrels fails to dislodge it from his brain-- ]
Why did you take that bet? [ He's been pushing ahead, just far enough to make conversation impractical on purpose, but he waits now to close the distance between them again. ] What would you have done if it hadn't been me she had you meeting?
[ It takes Arcade a moment to respond, as deeply entangled in his own thoughts as he's become. Playing out all of the day's worst case scenarios and potential bad turns and trying to come up with a thousand ways to mitigate the damage hasn't left a lot of room for contemplating their last, brief conversation's potential nuances. So he blanks, briefly, head turned toward Danse beneath his helmet as a confused frown creases his forehead.
Oh, right. That bet. ]
Uh, meeting?
[ The logical leap is really more of an ambitious step, and Arcade could kick himself for not realizing how that sounded sooner. He isn't immediately wondering whether Danse has been as quiet as he has for specifically that reason - but he'll get there. ]
I wasn't planning on meeting anyone. We were just... you know, uh, kidding around?
[ Or maybe it was more like she was ever so gently nagging him, and he was dodging those well-meaning efforts to convince him to maybe engage with the rest of the world a little more. Not as necessary as usual, but how could she know that? ]
Daisy's had to hear enough about my past run of not so great relationships, over the years. The last thing she'd want to be responsible for is the next one.
[ But that doesn't sound right, either, and Arcade manages to catch it this time, immediately amending (with maybe too much emphasis): ] Hypothetically. Obviously you're not... in that number.
[ The clarification about the blind-date-that-wouldn't-have-been elicits a distinctly more relieved-sounding oh this time than the dull, flat one of earlier, prompt enough to be slightly embarrassing. Though it's been a while since Danse bothered worrying about showing too much emotional candor with Arcade, where any feelings but the very deepest are concerned.
Those, he still does keep walled-off and private, with the same kind of discipline that served him well enough as a paladin but leaves him now largely unable to relate to the rest of this. He doesn't really know what it feels like to have a proper relationship history or anyone to talk to about it, for good or ill.
That second faux pas gets caught before any hurt feeling can register, and there's something almost more reassuring about the over-emphasis there than about the words themselves, the clearness of the desire to make sure Danse doesn't feel slighted. ]
Well, I...can't say I'm not glad to hear that. I would say the same, but I don't really have a number to speak of, so the comparison wouldn't do much.
[ It's earnest, mostly; he doesn't quite have facetiousness in him at the moment, but the explanation salves most of what's been keeping him quiet. It's difficult to see body language relaxing in a suit of power armor, but Danse somehow manages to make it visible, as much of a second skin as it is to him. ]
If we're talking hypotheticals, though--
[ Having misinterpreted that earlier conversation, Danse isn't sure now that he wants to trust his own judgment about other assumptions he's been operating under. He's not always been the best at understanding things beyond the literal, and he realizes now that he's allowed a reading between the lines of an oblique sarcastic territory-marking joke to become something of a load-bearing pillar in his understanding of this relationship. ]
You wouldn't, right? If she were to introduce you to someone else, or if anyone asked you, you'd...well, you'd turn them down, wouldn't you? It's what I've been doing, but I suppose I never actually asked you to, I just thought...
[ This time, it's not a sigh, but a distinctly uncomfortable, surprised cough of sound that echoes out of his helmet. It shakes with his head, as he slows to a stop, considering Danse (or the armor hiding him) at an angle. ]
I'm not sure how often you think the rest of us are being propositioned, on an average day, but it... hasn't exactly come up.
[ Arcade himself has something to do with that, of course - he doesn't exactly make himself available to that kind of thing. Nor does he cultivate the easiest-going, most approachable appearance, otherwise. Still, though. Beyond the occasional joke, he hasn't had to fend off a lot of unwanted suitors since leaving Vegas (and even then, it was only ever the casual passing glances with drunks at the bar).
And it's been even longer since he was anywhere near to entertaining that kind of thing with any sincerity, besides. ]
Not that I wouldn't still turn them down, sure. But... You're the only person I haven't turned down in - longer than I care to admit. And I wasn't planning to change the trend.
[ Danse doesn't have much to base his idea of the norm on here, given how little of his life he really has spent free to fraternize with civilians, and how oblivious he was to interest even before that, the way Cutler used to laugh at him for spectacularly failing to notice women flirting with him at the Muddy Rudder. Only now that he's shed enough of his Brotherhood reputation and begun to venture out without his power armor has he started catching the occasional overt remark or offer of a drink from strangers and Mel the Robot Guy.
There are a lot of factors still skewing his sense of average here. But still, the notion that nobody else on this side of the country has worked up the nerve to make a move on Arcade catches him off-guard. ]
I'm certainly not saying it happens to me often, but--you're one of the best-looking men in the Commonwealth.
[ By his standards, "one of" is fainter praise than deserved, but he will allow that some degree of that might be his heart speaking more than his eyes. His reflexive loyalty as a partner leaves him briefly almost offended on Arcade's behalf. ]
You can't tell me not a single other guy has wanted to take a chance. You could tell me you sent one packing and he came back for a second shot and I'd believe you.
[ Not that Danse would have been pushy enough to do that himself, if he'd been rejected--but then, as he's being reminded now, he hadn't been. It hasn't occurred to him before to think he could be exceptional in that regard. He isn't used to being an exception, not often and never like this, but whatever Arcade's reasons for letting him be one, the import does gradually sink in. Danse's face colors under his helmet again, as warm as before but with pleasure now, lost for words but intent on finding them considerably sooner this time. ]
I'm lucky as hell you thought I was worth bucking the trend for.
[ Between keeping busy and pretty much dodging any kind of social call that isn't mandatory for maintaining his generally boring, inoffensive presence or spending time with Danse, he's kept to a lot of the old habits that have helped him dodge potential entanglements, romantic or otherwise, in the past. (And the lattermost of those activities has become a recent addition to that list, as well, he suspects. Maybe hitting on Danse directly is just marginally less daunting than hitting on the guy he spends so much of his free time keeping company. Either way, it's a convenient added bonus that he's also become a deterrent to unwanted romantic intentions.)
He shrugs, the effort barely a sketch of a motion beneath the armor - but obvious to someone used to reading body language through all those layers of metal and padding. It's a relief to have his helmet on, now, stifling as he always finds it - his embarrassment muted by the same phenomenon. ]
Beyond a handful of awkward run-ins, I haven't exactly given any other guys a chance. I sort of - stopped thinking it was worth the trouble, a long time ago.
Lovers make poor confidants. I could never be truly honest with anyone without it blowing up in my face. But luck's not what made you different.
[ The notion of being a deterrent himself is not really an angle that has occurred to Danse. His jealousy is not the type that would manifest in actual fighting or threatening of anyone who might try to horn in on his partner, and he can just imagine what Arcade would have to say if it did--but he does rather look like a guy who might, and he certainly is big enough to make someone who might otherwise have taken that gamble think twice just to be safe.
The majority of the interest he's deflected has been from women who don't know him, when he hasn't been in Arcade's company, but anyone who's tried has been met with the same awkward firmness about being flattered but unavailable. (Nobody who's ever seen him with Arcade around Goodneighbor has bothered to try. When he's talking to Arcade, whether they're touching or not, Danse rarely gives the impression of noticing or caring that anyone else exists in the vicinity.)
But he understands now, with this further explanation--or understands at least what Arcade would have had to fear, why romance might have seemed futile at best and dangerous at worst, why it could have seemed easier to avoid the eventual expectation of transparency by never letting anyone get close enough to feel entitled to it. What Danse still doesn't understand in light of that is why he of all people would have been different, when he'd turned up at the door in full Brotherhood uniform (no matter how quickly he'd stripped down to half of it.)
Except that he hadn't hesitated once they got talking to explain that his actual membership in it was a thing of the past, even if he'd saved the why of it for after the first date. And he remembers, too, how willing he'd been to set his own unexpected attraction aside for the chance to just talk more, to take that offer of a book loan and pleasant educational conversation at face value and appreciate the company if that was all Arcade intended it to be. He would have come back for that and been glad of it. Still, he doesn't know what it is that Arcade means by this, and his tone--neutral though he wishes he could keep it--has both audible hope and a tinge of wariness to it. ]
[ There are a lot of answers he could give, to that question. But none of them feel satisfying or, really, like the whole answer. The truth is, it was a lot of little things, all of them adding up - a snowball effect he wasn't prepared for, when he thought maybe at best they could leave things at a convenient hook-up and a pleasant end to a years-long dry spell. That was never going to be the case, and maybe he saw the signs of it right from the start. Ignoring them was just as much of a choice as it wasn't.
But maybe there's one thing that turned the tide a little more decisively than the rest. Something a little more than a passing notion or a minor detail. Arcade sketches the motion of another sigh, but it's inaudible, this time, as he shakes a fragment of tension out of his impossibly heavy arms. (The weight of the armor feels the same as it always does, heavy and somehow easy, at the same time. Comforting, now.) ]
Just you, I guess. I knew after that first night that I was going to tell you. All of this - you're the first person I've met in years who I thought could understand.
[ Never, in the three quarters of his life that he's been using it, has Danse felt this desperate to get out of a suit of power armor--never found the weight an impediment or the bulk in any way restrictive until now, as it walls him off from the touch he suddenly aches to give. His gauntleted hand reaches out for Arcade's pauldroned shoulder in a pale mechanical imitation of what he really wants, the best he can do at the moment.
Even if his brain had curiously filed away odd turns of phrase or bits of unexpected knowledge that came up in conversation, it never had struck him as strange that Arcade had been patient with him in his hopeless and adrift moments, his lingering confusion and despair at finding himself with no anchor and no compass and nothing familiar left, his frightening new normal of feeling like the walls have eyes for designated enemies of the Brotherhood.
Arcade had seemed as if he knew that kind of rudderless loss more than just secondhand, and nobody travels clear across the country anymore on a mere whim, but even taking those details into account, Danse had attributed it more to the empathy he's seen Arcade display often enough elsewhere. It had comforted him either way, whether to think Arcade truly knew what he was going through, or could simply imagine it well enough to say things that helped. That question is answered now, in a way that steels Danse with the utter determination to give that comfort back to him somehow, to be the trustworthy ear and shoulder that Arcade had hoped he someday could be, and ensure his faith isn't misplaced. ]
It's all right. The timing doesn't matter.
[ His voice is a little hoarse, throat a tiny bit tight, though perhaps it can be passed off as the electronic buzz of the helmet. He swallows. ]
And I won't let you regret it. I promise you.
[ It's more than simply I won't give you a reason to regret it. He doesn't intend to let anyone else, either. ]
[ It feels hollow and silly and like far too little, but he's too afraid that saying much more would turn his own voice into an unsteady, cracking waver that a thin buzz of feedback wouldn't cover.
Behind his armor, Arcade ducks his head, gesturing with the arm not paralyzed by his side for want of reaching for the hand on his shoulder. ]
Let's try to survive today, first, though.
[ They have too much left ahead of them to fall apart, now. No matter how much he wants to, in the moment, there's no turning back. He's spent enough of his life running. ]
[ The faint little huff of gallows-humor breath at this is only just audible, but Arcade's right. Danse leads on. The journey is mostly able to proceed along the highway until its last leg, which diverts into some unpleasantly marshy territory that Danse would ordinarily avoid like the plague if it weren't saving them hours, but the only derailment aside from the bogging mud is a skirmish with the occasional mirelurk. In the distance, as they reach the edge of a vast pond, Medford Memorial Hospital is just barely visible, though not the easiest trek from where they're standing.
It's not where their objective lies, anyway. Danse gestures to call a halt before they can skirt any further around the edge of the water, because the tip of the rocky ridge overlooking it is encircled ominously with black military barricades--but he knows better than to think there won't be turrets locking onto their movements when they get in range to trip the sensors, and the vantage point of the camp is such that the humans inside it, however many there are, can see for miles when they decide to look.
He ducks quickly for cover behind a tree that isn't really wide enough for the purpose, jerking his head toward the only other one of similar size nearby. ]
Well, we can't have expected them not to know what they're doing when it comes to entrenchment. Damn it.
[ The same can't be said for any attempt at subtlety, but that really doesn't seem to have been a priority at all. The overall effect is more one of brazen dick-waving, spared only in the unlabeled simplicity of the dark walls. What Danse can see of the camp is encouragingly small, though, if nothing else. ]
Brotherhood regulations for an encampment that size would have limited the personnel to...three, maybe. If that. We shouldn't be too outnumbered. We just need to maintain the element of surprise for as long as we can.
[ He pauses, looking over as if he can discern anything about Arcade right now underneath the armor. ]
[ There is something horribly, eerily familiar about the outpost. It's not exactly something he's seen, before, but it has an unpleasant nostalgia about it all the same. Makes all of this feel far more real and concrete than the long miles of walking it took to get here from the bunker. He's caught up in his own thoughts when Danse prompts him, and the second it takes for him to respond makes it obvious, even with the armor obscuring him.
He shakes his head, easier to telegraph than a nod. ]
As well as can be expected.
[ He isn't in crisis, and he hasn't changed his mind. But calling this good would be too blatant a lie even for power armor to mask.
Still, he hasn't been completely in his own head, either. ]
But, uh, you might be overthinking this. They're out here recruiting, right? And, no offense, we both look the part.
[ In armor as well as out of it, though he doesn't press that clarification too hard, as he gestures between them. ]
Look at it this way - if nothing else, the Enclave really hates leaving their technology in enemy hands. And even if, worse case, they think they can get two functioning suits of armor off our corpses without a fight damaging them, they're just as likely to let us walk right in.
[ And getting the drop on them from the inside, while only slightly outnumbered, at worst, sounds ever so slightly less suicidal than trying to attack from afar only for them to dig in behind their barricades. ]
[ It's a satisfactory answer to the question of whether Arcade's ready for the fight, and an almost-satisfactory one to the concern for his emotional well-being--Danse believes him, but it's true that there's only so okay he can reasonably be--so he accepts it without further probing.
The proposed plan, though, blindsides him into momentary silence, so different is it from anything the Brotherhood would have done or anything that would have occurred to him on his own. It's the sort of thing he thinks of when he says "subterfuge" to Deacon like it's a swear word, the sort of thing anathema to a man who has unironically charged into battle before shouting "FOR HONOR! FOR GLORY!"
It is not a bad plan in the slightest. It is, in fact, a vastly better one than any alternative they've got. It just requires an unusually radical reorientation of his expectations.
And at another time, maybe he might have protested it, made some more noise about the notion of honor. But that other time was when he had less, on a personal level, to live for. When he might have thought he could do more good to the world as a name immortalized in the Codex than an actual presence in anyone's life; when he was still so knee-deep in blood and steeped in numbing loss that it made sense to think harder about his legacy after death than anything he could do beforehand.
He wants this fight to be over. And he wants both of them to be alive and well and together at the end of it. If that means bending a few unnecessarily steely principles to make it happen, he can. The truth of the matter is what it is, too, the clarification unnecessary but no offense taken when it does apply to them both for essentially the same reason. He considers. ]
The recruitment is a pretense, I'm sure--at least for the vast majority of people who might hear it. But you're right. We do have an in that the wastelanders don't.
[ He looks over at Arcade again, with a wary tilt of his helmet. ]
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Absolutely.
[ It doesn't take him long. Danse leaves Arcade to set up where he wants to, while he arms himself more thoroughly from the supplies and swaps out the bracers of his suit for the type of upgraded Tesla model he's never gotten to see up close before.
It's the sort of thing he would want to spend ten minutes excitedly expounding on, under more opportune circumstances--under his previous impression that Arcade's expertise about it would have been more about the underpinning scientific theory, not firsthand experience with the armor itself, and that they could meet somewhere in the middle. His mind is still reeling slightly from the revelation that this isn't the case.
It's worth sticking a pin in, because he wants to talk about it. He wants to learn more, wants to watch Arcade lock into that suit and see what he can do, wants to hear what he could say about it when he doesn't have reason to change the subject or hide what he knows, but neither of them can afford that distraction yet. Danse gathers the maps and papers neatly from the table and takes them over to the bedroll instead, sitting on the floor by the head of it to read.
As he absorbs himself in the information, overlaying what he knows about the local settlements and mentally mapping out an order to the operation, he finds himself reaching over with the hand that isn't rifling pages and letting it rest wherever he can on Arcade's back or shoulders, just for the reassuring steady warmth of the contact. It helps him focus. ]
All right. I think I've determined an optimal course.
[ This after a couple of hours, his voice low as he glances over to be sure Arcade isn't asleep. It's not quite dawn yet. ]
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He doesn't really sleep, but it's easier to doze than he would've expected. The floor is hard and the bedding minimal, but it's been so long since he let himself settle that the weariness doesn't bother holding rest out of his grasp. The intermittent sounds of familiar work, mechanical noise, lull him into a place between awake and not with an unexpected swiftness.
He's more on the awake side of that drifting, in-and-out consciousness, when Danse speaks up. At some point, Arcade pulled the hand from his back into one of his own, and his grip tightens as he blinks, expression sharpening again. ]
...Yeah? Let's hear it, then.
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What would I do if something happened to him? He's asked himself the question before, but never until now had a truly pressing reason to dwell on it.
He hasn't let go of that hand for the past forty-five minutes, and he doesn't now, only returns the squeeze. He's satisfied already that the rest seems to have done Arcade some good. ]
It's counterintuitive, because if you're right about where this radio signal originates, there's an encampment closer to this location than the one I recommend we prioritize. But if we target it last, we'll be near two well-fortified settlements to spend the night and recuperate as necessary.
The one I think we should make for first is on the west end of Malden--near the hospital, if god forbid we need more supplies than you already have. I know the area particularly well.
[ Though the path there from here doesn't quite need to take them within sight of the listening post he'd once thought would be his grave. Just within about a quarter mile. He leaves that thought aside, in favor of a more immediate and deeper concern that he's been working through. ]
Do you have a way to...securely leave word here, for your allies? [ He's not quite sure how to phrase that, or what to call them, but that's his best effort. ] Explain our plans, so there's no danger of them deciding to assault the same locations? I don't want to risk friendly fire if I can't immediately distinguish who's on our side.
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That intense focus breaks like clouds parting after a storm. It's relief and gratitude and a hint of lingering want, like he'd lean over and kiss Danse if they had any more time. Instead he starts to brush himself off, as he pushes to his feet, sidestepping his maps and heading back toward the radio. ]
Give me fifteen minutes.
[ He spends ten of them hastily drafting a message and the other five fiddling with the radio, then relaying the words he's scribbled out to it. It sounds like nonsense, a mixture of old military code and something clearly made up, and the flat tone in which Arcade speaks makes him sound eerily like some Pre-War relic. He could be an old holotape spinning its wheels in the dark, somewhere, message as meaningless as it is incomprehensible, in the current age. Nothing anyone else will think twice about, if they stumble on the adjacent frequency, where his voice plays back in an even stranger and more distant echo. He only listens for a second before shutting it off. Just long enough to be sure the power's still on, and the recording will play at all.
Then he steps back from the table, glancing back at the armor behind him, before his gaze slides to Danse. ]
I guess that's everything. Unless you've thought of anything else?
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Part of him had been ready to ask, hesitantly, if there might be a good spot to designate as a rendezvous point when this is over, to let him meet these people for reasons more personal than mission-related, as if this were some pre-war joke about bringing your boyfriend to Thanksgiving dinner and trusting him not to argue politics with your uncle. But the notion feels too silly to speak aloud right now, even if the desire remains.
A thought comes to mind--I don't really know him at all, do I?--but it's gone in another moment. It would be true if Danse had found him down here preparing to join the soldiers in those camps, or aid them, but this passionate determination to root them out at any cost is still exactly of a piece with the Arcade that Danse knows and loves--
This thought, too, he silences, not for the first time. Danse has never been a superstitious enough man to believe in the concept of tempting fate, but he tells himself that it would be foolish to say something distracting right when they both need all their faculties about them. Maybe even worth the regret of holding back, if there never comes another chance.
...no. Not so worth it that he won't take this last minute before they lock into their armor, and answer that question with the kiss that Arcade had foregone. They've made all the preparations they're equipped to except for this one, Danse's fingers sliding into Arcade's already-disheveled curls and anchoring there just a shade too tightly in their desperation, tongue slipping between his lips as he lets it say everything he isn't going to articulate right now.
If this kills us, it's been an honor.
He lets go, and steps back into his power armor. ]
I know a shortcut that can get us there well before noon, if complications along the way are minimal.
[ He glances toward Arcade's armor as well, the direction of his gaze obvious even when helmeted, and the anticipatory warmth in his tone audible even under the buzz of the vocoder. ]
Let's see what you've got.
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Danse steps into his armor, and Arcade takes a last look around, collecting something like himself while all the pieces still feel scattered around. At Danse's prompting, though, he nods, gaze settling back on his father's old armor. His armor, now, technically for longer than his father ever had it, in the first place. ]
Don't get too excited. I'm pretty rusty.
[ That edge of warmth he detects is more exciting than it has any right to be, at a time like this. He can blame the sense memory of Danse smelling like grease and metal and old, cracked leather - a strong hit of which he inhales, as he steps up to his own suit, taking a little more care as he slips inside. But it runs much deeper than that.
With a steadying breath, he flexes an armored hand, reaching for his helmet, latching it on and disappearing completely behind the heavy, metal facade. ]
Let's get moving.
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[ Maybe he's blurring the lines too much with that, defeating the purpose of not letting that kiss linger too long, of forcing himself to pull back before he could melt into it any further and risk letting desire and longing sap his focus from what they need to do.
He's hard-pressed enough to keep that steady as it is, watching Arcade climb into that suit with obvious experience, with visible competence and strength underneath that rusty caution, everything Danse has spent half a lifetime sublimating his libido into admiration of before Arcade gave him both reason and permission to express it openly again. Never would he have expected the two to combine like this, except in the occasional fantasy he's been too embarrassed to mention.
Even now, there's a less sensual earnestness to the appreciation as well, acknowledgment of the skill and the training it takes even for this much fluid movement in a walking tank. Like you were born for it, he could say admiringly, and nearly does, but blessedly catches himself as he remembers just how literally true the Enclave must have intended that to be. No need for either of them to dwell on that now.
The sight of Arcade's fingers flexing in the armor makes Danse feel the throb of that bruising-tight grip on his shoulders all the more acutely. They have hours of travel ahead of them for him to collect himself and sharpen up again, but he wants that sensation to linger as long as it possibly can. He leads the way out, setting a course for Malden with the rising sun at their backs.
It's a little while before he speaks again, partly to save breath on a tough portion of the hike, partly because silences with Arcade can be comfortable--though this has never been tested in circumstances quite so serious--but mostly because his thoughts are racing, in light of everything he's learned and the million new questions it all raises. ]
Tell me more about...you called them the Remnants?
[ It's not as if he hadn't asked about Arcade's family with genuine curiosity before, after all, on those first early dates. He just hadn't gotten much of an answer. ]
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He feels an uncharacteristic flare of claustrophobia, as the layers of steel and padding cut him off from the outside world completely - and, more specifically, from the opportunity to reach out and actually touch Danse again. The terrifying notion that that may well have been the last time, just moments ago, tries to rise to the surface of his mind on a bubble of fear-clouded doubt. But Arcade brushes it aside, taking a deep breath as he checks his weapons, and then turns to follow Danse, leaving the bunker behind.
The silence that spins out between them as they move is comfortable - for the most part. Arcade can't help all of the worries that creep in as the minutes wear on, step after step. What comes after is chief among them, still a blank space, a dark void of wild uncertainty. But when his gaze slides sideways, latching on to the familiar silhouette of now familiar armor, most of that uncertainty settles. Questions for later can wait until the job is done.
Questions for now startle him out of his forward-facing focus, a slight hitch in his step before the crackling sound of him clearing his throat breaks his silence. ]
Like I said, they were my father's old troop. Loyal to each other, first. And then to my mother and me. Now - just me.
[ A fact for which he has never managed to feel (or sound) any less guilty. But who is he to deserve that kind of deference? That loyalty? Just his father's son, really. ]
There are five of us left, myself included. You, uh. May have even met a couple of them, already. Daisy used to be a pilot. She's a scrapper, these days, orbiting the settlements closer to Sanctuary, usually. And Judah's taken up residence in Diamond City. He was their captain, though he's living like a real retiree, these days.
[ It's easier to talk about them than it ever has been himself, and the more he speaks, the easier it gets. Some minor floodgates open, and he feels even more of the night's exhaustion fall off him like water, somehow, as if this is the real relief, even more so than those few spare hours of thin sleep. ]
Doc Henry and Ca— Uh, Johnson aren't such social butterflies. Henry's doing what he always did, curing the incurable, solving the unsolvable, just because he can. Or, science can, I guess.
Johnson's even more of a hermit. Given everything he's been through, though, it's not exactly a surprise he lost his taste for polite society a long time ago. I feel bad dragging any of them back into all this, but him maybe most of all.
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(To a man who already knows what there is to love about Arcade and why someone would, the answer to that question would seem all the more self-evident. Surely, who would know all of that better or feel it more than the people who seem by this account to have raised him from childhood? Even viewed through the lens of merit, by someone with no firsthand experience of being anyone's parent or anyone's child, it isn't difficult for Danse to wrap his mind around why the Remnants would follow Arcade across the country and fight at his back.)
He listens with the same sharp attention as he always has, always does, but there's a little frisson of something that calls back to that early infatuation when he'd simply wanted to know everything he could about the man preoccupying his thoughts. The freedom with which Arcade elaborates now on what he'd deflected about all those months ago is exciting, even before Danse's mind manages to connect any dots. ]
--I have met Daisy.
[ Startled, pleased, as he runs through his mental list of the vendors in the area that's become his home. ]
I mean, we've only ever made small talk, but she's the reason I don't have to drag myself all the way to Bunker Hill for military-grade junk worth the price anymore. I told her how I used to be a scavver myself, so she knows I have the manners not to ask about her sources, but I suppose this makes sense...
[ Not, of course, that he doesn't know better than to bring any of this up in public next time he's in the market for armor components. He trails off, considering the rest. ]
Anyway. I don't know, I...what makes you think this Johnson would have a harder time than the others? Reclusiveness I understand, but this business is about as far from dealing with polite society as it gets.
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[ Not for being helpful, but - Arcade clears his throat, reluctantly clarifying. ]
She's been telling me for weeks that she has a regular I should... get to know. If I'd thought there was a chance it could be you, I wouldn't have taken the bet.
[ The brief, fond smile fades out of his tone when Danse promptshim again, though. ]
It's not that I think he'll have a tough time with it. It's that I feel bad for asking at all.
Johnson was always the one who struggled the most with our lot in life. Fleeing the Enclave, everything that came after - I think it left deeper scars on him than any of us.
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[ Danse is grateful right now for the helmet, knowing as he does that he lacks a good poker face. Though he isn't sure exactly what his face is doing right now, besides prickling with a surge of unpleasant heat, at the knowledge that the person Arcade talks to about these things still thinks he's single, and that apparently not even sustained prodding about his love life or repeated attempts to set him up with an unknown quantity had induced him to tell her anything about the man already occupying his bed.
There's no other response coming to mind that he thinks would be helpful, and so he doesn't. He considers the rest of this in silence as they continue on.
Our lot in life, reminding Danse again how unwilling yet inexorable that service could be. He has not been encouraged to consider that beyond the abstract before, and without all of this, might never have. But the Enclave uniform would look no different on a true believer than on someone with no way out and nowhere else to go.
It's easier to forget that, coming from the chapter of the Brotherhood that leans hardest on willing, eager recruits--but even the East Coast detachment has squires, raised with no other options but to serve. Even they let themselves be led by a man whose strongest claim is a bloodline, treated like a binding prophecy from the moment of his birth.
He isn't yet willing to accept what similar sides of the same coin the Brotherhood and the Enclave have become. But the already-evident parallels make him think this isn't so alien that he can't speak on it, even if he joined willingly himself. ]
Look, I know battle fatigue. But...even for someone drafted into service, who never chose it, I don't know if that's enough to wash away the part of being a soldier that gets burned into you. There's something about it that never leaves you.
I can't speak for someone I don't know, but I have to imagine there would be some kind of...vindication in this, for him, if he was already so opposed to the cause. You were about ready to throw down a gauntlet at the idea of being held back from your duty here, and you think someone who was forced into combat for them wouldn't want the same thing you do?
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None of us want this. We're just short of better options.
[ And adding more bodies to any of their individual (or collective) tallies isn't going to leave any of then better off. But they have a duty to Arcade, and he has a duty to himself. To proving that they're better than the whole they are remnants of. That it's possible to be, even with so much blood on their hands.
That adding more won't make any of them less broken is not something Arcade is certain he can properly convey, though. Trying to explain to someone once so devoutly a pillar of the Brotherhood that there's no glory in battle, and victory is more an obligation than an achievement—
He'd rather focus on keeping his breath, not exhausting himself hours before the end of this long hike. ]
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But there is a separate layer of irony in the fact that the purchase that cut-off protest does find with Danse is because of his service to the Brotherhood, not in spite of it. He'd never once been able to tell himself there was any purpose or glory or good, not even a false gold-foil sheen of it, in what happened with Cutler. Or Worwick, or Brach, or Keane, or Dawes, pointless messy tragedies layering like a snowdrift and leaving nothing but a frostbitten ache in his bones. Even the theoretical prospect of avenging his own father figure on this mission has been a distant afterthought, going through half the motions and then abandoning them anyway. It isn't about that.
His reasons for letting the silence settle again for the next mile or two are diverse. There's no impulse to lash back or defend the righteousness of the fight, but particularly not at that subjective. What would Danse know about what these people want? He doesn't know them, nor they of him. He's hardly going to find himself arguing the matter with Johnson in person.
With the wind of curiosity taken out of his sails, there's little else to ask, except for what his own further fretful analysis teases out from the statement he'd let drop before. It had been nagging at him then despite his attempts to leave it, but after even a fair bit of distance and exertion and a brief tangle with a pack of feral mongrels fails to dislodge it from his brain-- ]
Why did you take that bet? [ He's been pushing ahead, just far enough to make conversation impractical on purpose, but he waits now to close the distance between them again. ] What would you have done if it hadn't been me she had you meeting?
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Oh, right. That bet. ]
Uh, meeting?
[ The logical leap is really more of an ambitious step, and Arcade could kick himself for not realizing how that sounded sooner. He isn't immediately wondering whether Danse has been as quiet as he has for specifically that reason - but he'll get there. ]
I wasn't planning on meeting anyone. We were just... you know, uh, kidding around?
[ Or maybe it was more like she was ever so gently nagging him, and he was dodging those well-meaning efforts to convince him to maybe engage with the rest of the world a little more. Not as necessary as usual, but how could she know that? ]
Daisy's had to hear enough about my past run of not so great relationships, over the years. The last thing she'd want to be responsible for is the next one.
[ But that doesn't sound right, either, and Arcade manages to catch it this time, immediately amending (with maybe too much emphasis): ] Hypothetically. Obviously you're not... in that number.
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[ The clarification about the blind-date-that-wouldn't-have-been elicits a distinctly more relieved-sounding oh this time than the dull, flat one of earlier, prompt enough to be slightly embarrassing. Though it's been a while since Danse bothered worrying about showing too much emotional candor with Arcade, where any feelings but the very deepest are concerned.
Those, he still does keep walled-off and private, with the same kind of discipline that served him well enough as a paladin but leaves him now largely unable to relate to the rest of this. He doesn't really know what it feels like to have a proper relationship history or anyone to talk to about it, for good or ill.
That second faux pas gets caught before any hurt feeling can register, and there's something almost more reassuring about the over-emphasis there than about the words themselves, the clearness of the desire to make sure Danse doesn't feel slighted. ]
Well, I...can't say I'm not glad to hear that. I would say the same, but I don't really have a number to speak of, so the comparison wouldn't do much.
[ It's earnest, mostly; he doesn't quite have facetiousness in him at the moment, but the explanation salves most of what's been keeping him quiet. It's difficult to see body language relaxing in a suit of power armor, but Danse somehow manages to make it visible, as much of a second skin as it is to him. ]
If we're talking hypotheticals, though--
[ Having misinterpreted that earlier conversation, Danse isn't sure now that he wants to trust his own judgment about other assumptions he's been operating under. He's not always been the best at understanding things beyond the literal, and he realizes now that he's allowed a reading between the lines of an oblique sarcastic territory-marking joke to become something of a load-bearing pillar in his understanding of this relationship. ]
You wouldn't, right? If she were to introduce you to someone else, or if anyone asked you, you'd...well, you'd turn them down, wouldn't you? It's what I've been doing, but I suppose I never actually asked you to, I just thought...
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I'm not sure how often you think the rest of us are being propositioned, on an average day, but it... hasn't exactly come up.
[ Arcade himself has something to do with that, of course - he doesn't exactly make himself available to that kind of thing. Nor does he cultivate the easiest-going, most approachable appearance, otherwise. Still, though. Beyond the occasional joke, he hasn't had to fend off a lot of unwanted suitors since leaving Vegas (and even then, it was only ever the casual passing glances with drunks at the bar).
And it's been even longer since he was anywhere near to entertaining that kind of thing with any sincerity, besides. ]
Not that I wouldn't still turn them down, sure. But... You're the only person I haven't turned down in - longer than I care to admit. And I wasn't planning to change the trend.
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[ Danse doesn't have much to base his idea of the norm on here, given how little of his life he really has spent free to fraternize with civilians, and how oblivious he was to interest even before that, the way Cutler used to laugh at him for spectacularly failing to notice women flirting with him at the Muddy Rudder. Only now that he's shed enough of his Brotherhood reputation and begun to venture out without his power armor has he started catching the occasional overt remark or offer of a drink from strangers and Mel the Robot Guy.
There are a lot of factors still skewing his sense of average here. But still, the notion that nobody else on this side of the country has worked up the nerve to make a move on Arcade catches him off-guard. ]
I'm certainly not saying it happens to me often, but--you're one of the best-looking men in the Commonwealth.
[ By his standards, "one of" is fainter praise than deserved, but he will allow that some degree of that might be his heart speaking more than his eyes. His reflexive loyalty as a partner leaves him briefly almost offended on Arcade's behalf. ]
You can't tell me not a single other guy has wanted to take a chance. You could tell me you sent one packing and he came back for a second shot and I'd believe you.
[ Not that Danse would have been pushy enough to do that himself, if he'd been rejected--but then, as he's being reminded now, he hadn't been. It hasn't occurred to him before to think he could be exceptional in that regard. He isn't used to being an exception, not often and never like this, but whatever Arcade's reasons for letting him be one, the import does gradually sink in. Danse's face colors under his helmet again, as warm as before but with pleasure now, lost for words but intent on finding them considerably sooner this time. ]
I'm lucky as hell you thought I was worth bucking the trend for.
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[ Between keeping busy and pretty much dodging any kind of social call that isn't mandatory for maintaining his generally boring, inoffensive presence or spending time with Danse, he's kept to a lot of the old habits that have helped him dodge potential entanglements, romantic or otherwise, in the past. (And the lattermost of those activities has become a recent addition to that list, as well, he suspects. Maybe hitting on Danse directly is just marginally less daunting than hitting on the guy he spends so much of his free time keeping company. Either way, it's a convenient added bonus that he's also become a deterrent to unwanted romantic intentions.)
He shrugs, the effort barely a sketch of a motion beneath the armor - but obvious to someone used to reading body language through all those layers of metal and padding. It's a relief to have his helmet on, now, stifling as he always finds it - his embarrassment muted by the same phenomenon. ]
Beyond a handful of awkward run-ins, I haven't exactly given any other guys a chance. I sort of - stopped thinking it was worth the trouble, a long time ago.
Lovers make poor confidants. I could never be truly honest with anyone without it blowing up in my face. But luck's not what made you different.
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The majority of the interest he's deflected has been from women who don't know him, when he hasn't been in Arcade's company, but anyone who's tried has been met with the same awkward firmness about being flattered but unavailable. (Nobody who's ever seen him with Arcade around Goodneighbor has bothered to try. When he's talking to Arcade, whether they're touching or not, Danse rarely gives the impression of noticing or caring that anyone else exists in the vicinity.)
But he understands now, with this further explanation--or understands at least what Arcade would have had to fear, why romance might have seemed futile at best and dangerous at worst, why it could have seemed easier to avoid the eventual expectation of transparency by never letting anyone get close enough to feel entitled to it. What Danse still doesn't understand in light of that is why he of all people would have been different, when he'd turned up at the door in full Brotherhood uniform (no matter how quickly he'd stripped down to half of it.)
Except that he hadn't hesitated once they got talking to explain that his actual membership in it was a thing of the past, even if he'd saved the why of it for after the first date. And he remembers, too, how willing he'd been to set his own unexpected attraction aside for the chance to just talk more, to take that offer of a book loan and pleasant educational conversation at face value and appreciate the company if that was all Arcade intended it to be. He would have come back for that and been glad of it. Still, he doesn't know what it is that Arcade means by this, and his tone--neutral though he wishes he could keep it--has both audible hope and a tinge of wariness to it. ]
Yeah? Then what was it?
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But maybe there's one thing that turned the tide a little more decisively than the rest. Something a little more than a passing notion or a minor detail. Arcade sketches the motion of another sigh, but it's inaudible, this time, as he shakes a fragment of tension out of his impossibly heavy arms. (The weight of the armor feels the same as it always does, heavy and somehow easy, at the same time. Comforting, now.) ]
Just you, I guess. I knew after that first night that I was going to tell you. All of this - you're the first person I've met in years who I thought could understand.
I just, uh, wish I'd gotten around to it sooner.
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Even if his brain had curiously filed away odd turns of phrase or bits of unexpected knowledge that came up in conversation, it never had struck him as strange that Arcade had been patient with him in his hopeless and adrift moments, his lingering confusion and despair at finding himself with no anchor and no compass and nothing familiar left, his frightening new normal of feeling like the walls have eyes for designated enemies of the Brotherhood.
Arcade had seemed as if he knew that kind of rudderless loss more than just secondhand, and nobody travels clear across the country anymore on a mere whim, but even taking those details into account, Danse had attributed it more to the empathy he's seen Arcade display often enough elsewhere. It had comforted him either way, whether to think Arcade truly knew what he was going through, or could simply imagine it well enough to say things that helped. That question is answered now, in a way that steels Danse with the utter determination to give that comfort back to him somehow, to be the trustworthy ear and shoulder that Arcade had hoped he someday could be, and ensure his faith isn't misplaced. ]
It's all right. The timing doesn't matter.
[ His voice is a little hoarse, throat a tiny bit tight, though perhaps it can be passed off as the electronic buzz of the helmet. He swallows. ]
And I won't let you regret it. I promise you.
[ It's more than simply I won't give you a reason to regret it. He doesn't intend to let anyone else, either. ]
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[ It feels hollow and silly and like far too little, but he's too afraid that saying much more would turn his own voice into an unsteady, cracking waver that a thin buzz of feedback wouldn't cover.
Behind his armor, Arcade ducks his head, gesturing with the arm not paralyzed by his side for want of reaching for the hand on his shoulder. ]
Let's try to survive today, first, though.
[ They have too much left ahead of them to fall apart, now. No matter how much he wants to, in the moment, there's no turning back. He's spent enough of his life running. ]
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It's not where their objective lies, anyway. Danse gestures to call a halt before they can skirt any further around the edge of the water, because the tip of the rocky ridge overlooking it is encircled ominously with black military barricades--but he knows better than to think there won't be turrets locking onto their movements when they get in range to trip the sensors, and the vantage point of the camp is such that the humans inside it, however many there are, can see for miles when they decide to look.
He ducks quickly for cover behind a tree that isn't really wide enough for the purpose, jerking his head toward the only other one of similar size nearby. ]
Well, we can't have expected them not to know what they're doing when it comes to entrenchment. Damn it.
[ The same can't be said for any attempt at subtlety, but that really doesn't seem to have been a priority at all. The overall effect is more one of brazen dick-waving, spared only in the unlabeled simplicity of the dark walls. What Danse can see of the camp is encouragingly small, though, if nothing else. ]
Brotherhood regulations for an encampment that size would have limited the personnel to...three, maybe. If that. We shouldn't be too outnumbered. We just need to maintain the element of surprise for as long as we can.
[ He pauses, looking over as if he can discern anything about Arcade right now underneath the armor. ]
You doing all right?
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He shakes his head, easier to telegraph than a nod. ]
As well as can be expected.
[ He isn't in crisis, and he hasn't changed his mind. But calling this good would be too blatant a lie even for power armor to mask.
Still, he hasn't been completely in his own head, either. ]
But, uh, you might be overthinking this. They're out here recruiting, right? And, no offense, we both look the part.
[ In armor as well as out of it, though he doesn't press that clarification too hard, as he gestures between them. ]
Look at it this way - if nothing else, the Enclave really hates leaving their technology in enemy hands. And even if, worse case, they think they can get two functioning suits of armor off our corpses without a fight damaging them, they're just as likely to let us walk right in.
[ And getting the drop on them from the inside, while only slightly outnumbered, at worst, sounds ever so slightly less suicidal than trying to attack from afar only for them to dig in behind their barricades. ]
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The proposed plan, though, blindsides him into momentary silence, so different is it from anything the Brotherhood would have done or anything that would have occurred to him on his own. It's the sort of thing he thinks of when he says "subterfuge" to Deacon like it's a swear word, the sort of thing anathema to a man who has unironically charged into battle before shouting "FOR HONOR! FOR GLORY!"
It is not a bad plan in the slightest. It is, in fact, a vastly better one than any alternative they've got. It just requires an unusually radical reorientation of his expectations.
And at another time, maybe he might have protested it, made some more noise about the notion of honor. But that other time was when he had less, on a personal level, to live for. When he might have thought he could do more good to the world as a name immortalized in the Codex than an actual presence in anyone's life; when he was still so knee-deep in blood and steeped in numbing loss that it made sense to think harder about his legacy after death than anything he could do beforehand.
He wants this fight to be over. And he wants both of them to be alive and well and together at the end of it. If that means bending a few unnecessarily steely principles to make it happen, he can. The truth of the matter is what it is, too, the clarification unnecessary but no offense taken when it does apply to them both for essentially the same reason. He considers. ]
The recruitment is a pretense, I'm sure--at least for the vast majority of people who might hear it. But you're right. We do have an in that the wastelanders don't.
[ He looks over at Arcade again, with a wary tilt of his helmet. ]
As long as you do the talking.
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