However often or condescendingly Danse might have criticized them in the past, the Minutemen have made peace with him now, both parties swallowing their pride for the common good and recognizing how much they can benefit each other. Danse needs an outlet beyond amoral mercenary work for his martial talents, and the Minutemen need an experienced veteran with the knowledge and ability to train new volunteers, and the General in particular appreciates having someone she can leave at the Castle to handle things like that while dealing with individual settlement issues.
Which is why Danse is stuck there for the full week he'd promised, while Nora returns to Sanctuary after a couple days. The place is really starting to become a thriving and desirable place to live again, enough that the already-repaired space is beginning to fill up even with people sharing what used to be single-family houses. Sturges had mentioned to her at one point that he didn't know who'd planted the garden out behind one of the houses marked for renovation, but nobody had thought much of it at the time, and there are still more pressing issues to deal with.
Danse, meanwhile, has been doing just as Deacon asked him to. When the day's work is done, and he's alone in the small spartan quarters that have been set aside for him, he lets his thoughts drift and sends Deacon the occasional message--
It's a good thing these stone walls are soundproof, because I can't stop thinking about sitting on your face again.
The second I get back, I'm pinning you to the nearest wall and getting on my knees.
Thinking about how much nicer it would be to sleep on you than this cot.
The tone gets subtly but perceptibly more longing as the days progress.
Deacon has caught himself more than twice now staring out the window like a would-be window whose husband had gone off to war. He shakes himself out of it, pounds a coffee, and gets to work doing various settlement chores as needed or requested. He does his best to stay busy, avoiding their claimed meeting spot as much as he can. It had once been his own private getaway spot, but now it just feels empty when he's alone inside of it (he couldn't avoid those messages though, each of them replied to with something filthy or sweet as seen fit).
It starts to eat at him maybe only a day in, the way Danse called it home, and guilt rises in a way that he isn't anticipating. He really misses him, yes, but he's starting to resent having to keep that a secret. A hell of his own choosing, truly.
Just as well that he takes interest in a slightly damaged bed frame he spots amongst the latest cart of salvage. It just needs the rust cleaned from it and a fresh coating, and perhaps then he and Danse won't be sleeping on a floor mattress anymore. He'll take the win... you know, once he works up the courage to explain where it's going.
"You didn't think I was sleeping in the tato field, did you?" he asks Nora playfully, "...which is flourishing by the way. Ol' Farmer Deacon’s still got it. So you think my green thumb's a fair trade for a rusty hunk of metal?"
Even if space is at a bit of a premium in Sanctuary, there's an unspoken understanding that the people who were instrumental in taking down the Institute have earned the right to live where they damn well please. It isn't like they're all household names or anything now--particularly not someone like Deacon, whose contributions were by their very nature secretive--but Nora wouldn't begrudge any of her friends a nice house at the edge of town, if they asked for it.
This just doesn't quite constitute asking yet. Not enough for her to connect the dots, anyway. She's seen Deacon helping out often enough in the broader and more communal tato patches in the settlement, and to be perfectly honest, would not actually put it past him to have been sleeping out there this entire time. Only just now is it beginning to occur to her to wonder where he lives these days.
"Part of me has just envisioned you sleeping in a coffin like a vampire," she says. "I mean, the frame is all yours if you want it, but out of curiosity, where is it going?"
"Were one available, I wouldn't put it past me," Deacon laughs, sighing slightly as a hand comes up to scratch at his head. "I've kinda been staying in that blue house out by the perimeter..."
Deacon feels nervous, suddenly. He wants to tell Nora that Danse is staying there too, because while the bed frame is nice, Danse not having to sneak around when he returns would be a better gift to him than anything material. He stutters for a moment, then forces the words out.
"I picked it out for privacy, you know? A place to just bug out and be alone for a while... but, um, I have company sometimes-- Most of the time. I was trying to keep the whole thing hush, but it's better that you know. Just nod and agree with that so I don't have second thoughts."
This is all falling into place in a way that makes sense enough, particularly in light of the little garden and the other small signs of peaceful unintrusive squatting that she's filed away to address at some other time--ironically, she probably would have asked Deacon himself to investigate it, as the best intel-gatherer she knows. She's already inclined to nod and agree, and if Deacon hadn't continued, the whole matter would have ended there.
But this is gossip too surprising and intriguing to let go, even for someone who doesn't count Piper Wright as a kindred spirit, and her eyes widen with surprise. This is Deacon, after all, the man so walled-off and seemingly impervious to flirtation that she hadn't even tried (and doesn't know anyone besides Cait who would.) She'd teased Danse once about the unexpectedness of finding that he had a heart beating under all that armor, and gotten a sheepish acknowledgment that he deserved that, but in some way, it feels even more unexpected to see evidence of one in Deacon, despite the lack of literal steel shielding to hide it.
"Company, huh?" And not just occasional company, but regular company at that. Most-of-the-time company. "No arguments here, it is definitely better that I know, but...come on. You gotta give me a hint about who it is."
Deacon deflates slightly, truth doesn't come easy to him. He has a very complicated relationship with it to begin with. But he has to remind himself that his relationship with Danse did come easy. That it hadn't felt complicated at all once the dam broke, as long as he ignores the moments he questions what exactly they are to one another. He thinks he might know, now. Or at least, he thinks he knows what he wants, now.
"I don't want this to be a game," he shakes his head, "No hints, no guessing... no whispering around the settlement so that I feel eyes on the back of my head everywhere I go. You can tell everyone, I guess. As long as no one makes it too weird." Deacon takes a breath, having psyched himself thoroughly up now, and holds himself more confidently. He can do this. Nora probably won't believe him, anyway.
"Danse has been staying with me. So I wanna get this thing over there before he gets back. I don't want it to feel like a hide-out anymore."
He's right about one thing, to be sure. The buildup has her listening raptly, but the end of it, to her, feels almost like a punchline--like the words on the note he'd told her was his recall code, with all the attendant detail and hype beforehand. A lesson, meant to keep her on her toes. A lie for the sake of lying, as he does, but never about anything serious. It'll be just him in the house, then, but that's all right. She won't take back the agreement.
"Cute," she says, with a fond you got me sort of tone. "You're losing your touch a little, you know? You went too big there. Just about anyone else and I would've bought it, but you had to go with Danse." She shakes her head. "I remember. 'You can't trust everyone.'"
It was good advice, at the time. It's served her well since he gave it. She lifts one side of the bedframe off the salvage cart, offering to help lug it in even if she doesn't actually believe there's any kind of time crunch or anyone who'll be using it except Deacon himself.
He should take this as a win. A compliment in a way, that he's trained her so well that she doesn't believe a word he says anymore. Maybe that's fine. He should take the out and move on, right? But for some reason he can't, and he isn't able to pinpoint why.
"Right. 'Cause he couldn't possibly enjoy my company," he mutters, getting in his head about it. "Whatever. Forget I said anything." Deacon lifts the other side off the cart, shuffling off silently. He's in his head, rethinking tactics, a sort of bile growing heavy in his stomach.
"He doesn't enjoy anyone's company. He's still living in that godawful freezing depression bunker because nobody can convince him he deserves to see sunlight once in a while. Believe me, I've tried, but he doesn't listen."
She had tried, and perhaps made a little more progress than she'd thought, but there's a difference between being told he's still a person who deserves to be cared for, and being simply and freely and tenderly treated like one, and only once he'd had a taste of that from Deacon had Danse begun to feel like he really wanted to live again. The bunker had become unbearable only in comparison to the little blue house once he'd experienced them both, and only Deacon's company had made the house feel like the joyful haven it now is.
"Come on, Deacon, it's not a slight on you. There are plenty of people who like you a lot and didn't once tell me I was the only thing keeping them from burning Railroad HQ to the ground. Danse is not one of them."
That's how it started, didn't it? Danse in his bunker, Deacon in his hidey house, messaging one another in the dead of night and pretending as if what had happened between them was real. It felt real, that night. He's almost certain it became real shortly after.
There are several moments where he feels a knee-jerk instinct to tell Nora she's wrong. Danse does listen. Beautifully, in fact. And he's not anything like the man she describes. He's soft, sweet, and he deserves so much more than simply seeing sunlight.
"You're really confident about this," he replies, "He'll be back before the week is over. You can interrogate him yourself."
"Oh, I'm gonna. Trust me." She'd faltered slightly a minute ago when Deacon had sounded genuinely hurt, but this makes it sound like a challenge again, like commitment to the bit, and far be it from her not to call his bluff. Besides which, the prospect of Danse being as baffled and flustered by the question as he surely will be is an amusing one.
This is the scenario that greets Danse when he returns to Sanctuary five days later, having been counting down the very minutes as he'd promised before he left, and having also messaged Deacon from the Red Rocket to let him know he was about twenty minutes away. It's broad daylight, and so he knows that just walking up to the door of the house is out of the question, but he can't possibly bear to wait until dark to see Deacon again, and he knows that eagerness is mutual--there's got to be somewhere else in town that they can meet up and get their hands on each other without breaking their cover.
It would be a beautiful thing if they didn't have to worry about that any longer. Danse honestly isn't sure why they still do, except that Deacon is such an intensely private person by nature, and if it makes him feel more secure and comfortable not to let anyone around him know he has a love life, Danse wants to maintain that for him. He doesn't have to understand it to indulge whatever makes his lover feel less vulnerable.
But it's Nora he encounters first when he crosses the bridge, not Deacon, and if she notices the brief longing glance he casts toward the blue house, she doesn't say so. "Welcome back," she says. "You know, I heard the craziest thing the other day."
Where this is going, he isn't sure, and faint alarm bells are beginning to ring in his head before she continues. "I thought maybe you were just stopping in town for a rest before heading back to the listening post, but someone told me you've actually been living in this house here for a while now. It seemed strange, because I didn't think you'd move in without saying anything...but I also heard you were living there with Deacon, so I don't know how reliable that information can possibly be. Is it actually true?"
She's keeping the source as vague as possible here, because while she might think Deacon is bullshitting in his usual fashion, she's still thinking of it as more of a game--she doesn't want him having to contend with Danse's anger at being the subject of a lie.
Danse has virtually no experience with lying, himself. He's never so much as tried, out of both moral opposition and a conviction that he would be terrible at it. But he feels cold from his core outward at the awful thought that he's somehow failed to be careful enough, that the jig is up, that Deacon might be upset with him--or just upset at all; he imagines Deacon would probably forgive him, but that doesn't change the fact that he explicitly wanted this kept secret, and now people know. The only recourse Danse can think of is to lie to the best of his ability, and lie he does.
"Of course not," he says. His pulse is speeding, but his typically monotone voice serves him well, making him sound more convincing than exaggerated offense would. "I've never even set foot in that house. I don't know where you heard that."
Deacon himself is flustered for other reasons, playing homemaker when he receives the message and making last-minute changes around the house. He's spent the week accumulating more furniture and fixtures, the beginnings of a living area taking shape. There aren't many books on the new shelf, but he's in the process of arranging them when he realizes that Danse will probably be walking through that door any minute now...
Deacon moves across the room to the window, taking a paranoid peek out of the window, when he sees Nora obstructing Danse's path home. His heart seems to be doing jumping jacks, and Deacon scrambles to the door, flinging it open before he remembers to play it cool and not look like a madman racing toward them. He moves quickly, but in a quiet, casual way, idly scratching at the week's worth of peach fuzz sprouting about his head.
When he finally makes it to Danse's side, heart pounding and cheeks flushed, he leans up on the tips of his toes and presses a kiss to Danse's cheek. "Hey."
By their powers combined, Nora and Deacon have finally managed to short out Danse's brain by pulling him in enough different directions to leave him completely frozen. On the one hand, there's the mortification of being immediately, undeniably caught out by his boss in the first lie he's ever told, and that sure is a thing.
On the other hand, there's everything else about the situation. The joy of laying eyes on Deacon again after missing him terribly all week, the shock and accompanying wave of intense attraction at that visible regrowth of ginger hair, the sweetness and casual domestic affection of the kiss, the public claiming of it when he's been longing for that since before he'd even believed it could ever be real--
"I thought you wanted discretion," he says stupidly, the first thing his mind manages to supply him with when it feels like it's running like a giddy hamster on a wheel. Beside him, Nora's hands are covering her mouth, but if she's doing him the courtesy of not addressing his blatant lie--and she is, for now--then he can wait and explain himself for it another time.
"...I'll leave you guys to it," she says, and disappears to do precisely that. She owes Deacon...something, probably, by way of apology for doubting him, but that too can wait. Once alone, Danse turns back to Deacon with thoroughly baffled wonderment.
"Does she just...know about us, now?" The hope in his voice is audible.
"TTFN!" Deacon calls after Nora before giving Danse his full attention, a smile growling on his face that is somehow both giddy and bashful.
"You were gone a long time. I mean, it felt like a long time. And I convinced myself of all kinds of wacky stuff..." he replies and reaches for Danse's hand while easing into a walk back to their house. "Like um, for starters, I'm kinda crazy for you. And the house didn't feel like home without you in it, no matter what I did to make it more home-y. So, I dunno, it's probably for the best I drop the act, that way, you could come home. Like, really come home. If you wanted to, I mean. But just know that if you don't, Nora will think this whole thing's a big joke, and my punishment involves getting a lower back tattoo."
He'd told Nora, the first time he'd brought her up to the Prydwen, that the ship was the only home he knew. After that had ceased to be true, he hadn't thought of himself as having a home anymore at all, rootless and adrift and alone now whether he was sleeping at the bunker or the Castle or a settlement. Then he'd begun to think of Sanctuary as a home in the more general sense, especially with these increasingly-frequent rendezvous between them giving him more and more reason to come to town.
But when he'd told Deacon a week ago that he couldn't wait to come home, he hadn't been thinking just of coming across that bridge; he'd been thinking of this little blue house. And he'd been thinking of opening the door to see Deacon there waiting for him. That, now, is what his mind thinks of as homecoming, whether he'd truly realized it at the time or not.
He hadn't said it in full consciousness of what he meant by it, but neither would he have said it at all if he hadn't thought Deacon felt similarly. But there's a difference between the quiet deep-down conviction that he isn't alone in his true feelings, and hearing it confirmed so effusively aloud in the same broad daylight he's longed to be able to hold hands in, exactly like this. Crazy for you. It almost echoes, as sweet as it feels to hear.
"How could you possibly think I wouldn't want to, when it's all I've been able to think about for a week straight?"
He knows what Deacon means, the mindset that would make him doubt, but maybe the smile on Danse's face will be enough to assuage that. It's the bright unguarded grin nobody but Deacon gets to see, and the only reason that might no longer be true is because they're in public now--it's still aimed solely at him, as Danse catches him giddily around the waist and sweeps him in close.
"She damn well better not think it's a joke, after I lied right to her face because I thought you'd want me to. That's about as real as it gets."
Deacon gives Danse a goofy little grin at that question, the way Danse is looking at him making his heart race just a bit. He knows that smile is just for him, but only because he's never seen it expressed anywhere else. But as much as he likes having something secret, he finds that doesn't mind anyone else seeing Danse smile at him this way, at least not while he has something to prove.
"Dunno, maybe you really wanna see me get a lower back tattoo." Deacon laughs, it turning airy once Danse draws him in close. His own hands creep up his chest, feeling over strong muscle on their way around his neck.
"You lied for me?" he asks almost huskily, looking up at Danse from beneath his dark glasses, "I am so proud of you," he teases, but what he means is that he finds it deeply romantic, and he tugs Danse down into a firm kiss that risks getting a touch out of hand for the middle of the street.
It's the first and only public display of affection Danse has ever engaged in, when ordinarily he'd be loudly and firmly citing decorum and protocol and telling any too-amorous subordinates to conduct themselves with more discipline. He has been in that position before, and been shocked by the notion that anyone could get so carried away as to do that sort of thing right out in front of people's eyes.
Now he understands. Now it makes sense to him how two people could need each other so badly as to be unable to wait the extra minute or go the extra distance for privacy, knowing that whatever onlookers might think matters less than feeling the full weight and pleasure of the moment, sinking into it and indulging themselves for once when they're both so painfully familiar with self-deprivation.
He could sternly tell Deacon not to get used to the lying, their usual sort of banter, and if Deacon sounded any less genuinely smitten by the gesture, he might--but he recognizes what Deacon really means by it, and hearing that kind of praise still melts him no matter what its underlying meaning is anyway. He squeezes Deacon gently and hums with delight into the kiss before it breaks.
"Your lower back is perfect the way it is," he says solemnly. "I wouldn't let anyone else touch it. Let's get inside."
Probably the first Deacon has indulged himself in. Maybe not ever, but certainly in about as long as Danse has been alive. It's certainly less about the lying and more about the fact that Danse has sacrificed his values for the sake of Deacon, and that's such a meaningful gesture that it affirms every decision Deacon has made in the past week.
The comment about his back makes him laugh in a sort of disbelief though, because the continued confirmation that there is something very solid between the two of them still feels very surreal. He hopes that once he gets Danse through those doors, it'll start to feel more normal. Deserved.
"Maybe you'll just have to put your own mark there," he purrs, taking Danse's hand again, "And, I alluded to this earlier, but, I have made some changes while you were out, with you in mind..."
He gets the door, gesturing for Danse to enter first and take stock of the new furniture. Deacon will follow him inside, making sure that the door is shut behind them.
Danse wouldn't have expected it of himself, if asked. His values are all he's ever had--his honor, his sense of duty, his inflexible moral code, and he's never been able to imagine a situation where bending those would be the right or necessary thing to do.
But this isn't so big or important a lie, and even if it were--Deacon is a person who deserves to be sacrificed for. It's a revelation Danse hasn't been able to shake the weight of. For as long as Deacon has been sacrificing for others, his time and his safety, his face and his body, his very sense of self, nobody ever does it for him in turn. Danse still doesn't know why Deacon does it, what atonement he feels like he still owes, why he runs from himself the way he does--but what he knows is that Deacon ought to be a priority to someone. In and of himself, as a person, not an agent. And Danse wants to be that someone.
He follows, uncomprehending so far and not knowing what to expect by 'changes,' but when he enters the room, his eyes widen in that guileless open-book way of his, stunned to silence by the effort Deacon has put in and the thoughtfulness of the choices. A shelf for the kind of books he always finds himself wanting to borrow from Deacon's collection, a space to read them on his own, a real bed for them to curl up in and talk about them and wake tangled up together in the mornings--Danse doesn't even know which new addition feels the most important, but his throat is suddenly tight, and he has to swallow hard around it.
There's guilt in not telling Danse his own history. It never seems like the right time, but of course now that (he hopes) they'll be spending a lot more time together, he'll find the opportunity to. For now, though, he wants to bask in his partner's return and that precious, stunned look on his face.
Like Danse, he similarly wants to be the person to provide his partner with the sort of attention and care he knows Danse has never been given. To make him his priority. He hadn't realized how badly he wanted to until Danse was out of his reach, but now, it couldn't be more clear.
"If you'll call it that," he murmurs in response, moving behind Danse to gently slide a hand around his slim waist and hold him close. "...Are you hungry from your trip? Can I get you anything?"
They've roleplayed this, indulgently, tongue-in-cheek, with all the silliness of invented neighbors and their pre-war rosebushes. Danse as the war-weary returning soldier, Deacon as the faithful wife keeping the home fire burning. And it wasn't that it didn't feel real in its own way--even then, it had been a turning point, felt so real that it had shaken them, made them realize just how badly they both wanted it to be.
Danse just hadn't known what it really would feel like. There's teasing and groping and joking and over-the-top playacting and desperately gasped endearments in the throes of passion, and then there's the quiet way Deacon fits in against his side as if they were crafted as a matching set, arm anchored around him as if to reinforce that he's staying, and offers to cook as if Danse has just come home for dinner like he does every night. Like he will, every night.
And that's why there will be time for that later. Years of time, as much as anyone in the wasteland is granted those, if they can keep each other safe. Danse slips an arm around Deacon's shoulders in turn, meaning to just stand there with him for a moment, but it morphs unexpectedly into a full, tight hug, burying his face against the top of Deacon's head and rubbing his cheek gently against that regrowth of red and just holding him.
"You can test our bed frame with me," he murmurs, pulling back and sliding hands up to cup Deacon's face. "Then maybe dinner."
Deacon isn't sure what response he's expecting, but it isn't this. Not that he's complaining to be surrounded by those big, burly arms and given a face-full of Danse's chest, which he relaxes against and breathes in the heady scent of him. It's a smell he started to miss over the course of the week as the pillows and sheets aired out and smelled less and less like him every night. It makes Deacon kind of melt there, his arms clutching at Danse's back and resting happily against him until his face is pulled up to look at Danse, his cheeks flushed red.
"If you insist," he murmurs back, "I've only got an appetite for you, anyway..."
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for facethefacts
Which is why Danse is stuck there for the full week he'd promised, while Nora returns to Sanctuary after a couple days. The place is really starting to become a thriving and desirable place to live again, enough that the already-repaired space is beginning to fill up even with people sharing what used to be single-family houses. Sturges had mentioned to her at one point that he didn't know who'd planted the garden out behind one of the houses marked for renovation, but nobody had thought much of it at the time, and there are still more pressing issues to deal with.
Danse, meanwhile, has been doing just as Deacon asked him to. When the day's work is done, and he's alone in the small spartan quarters that have been set aside for him, he lets his thoughts drift and sends Deacon the occasional message--
It's a good thing these stone walls are soundproof, because I can't stop thinking about sitting on your face again.
The second I get back, I'm pinning you to the nearest wall and getting on my knees.
Thinking about how much nicer it would be to sleep on you than this cot.
The tone gets subtly but perceptibly more longing as the days progress.
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It starts to eat at him maybe only a day in, the way Danse called it home, and guilt rises in a way that he isn't anticipating. He really misses him, yes, but he's starting to resent having to keep that a secret. A hell of his own choosing, truly.
Just as well that he takes interest in a slightly damaged bed frame he spots amongst the latest cart of salvage. It just needs the rust cleaned from it and a fresh coating, and perhaps then he and Danse won't be sleeping on a floor mattress anymore. He'll take the win... you know, once he works up the courage to explain where it's going.
"You didn't think I was sleeping in the tato field, did you?" he asks Nora playfully, "...which is flourishing by the way. Ol' Farmer Deacon’s still got it. So you think my green thumb's a fair trade for a rusty hunk of metal?"
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This just doesn't quite constitute asking yet. Not enough for her to connect the dots, anyway. She's seen Deacon helping out often enough in the broader and more communal tato patches in the settlement, and to be perfectly honest, would not actually put it past him to have been sleeping out there this entire time. Only just now is it beginning to occur to her to wonder where he lives these days.
"Part of me has just envisioned you sleeping in a coffin like a vampire," she says. "I mean, the frame is all yours if you want it, but out of curiosity, where is it going?"
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Deacon feels nervous, suddenly. He wants to tell Nora that Danse is staying there too, because while the bed frame is nice, Danse not having to sneak around when he returns would be a better gift to him than anything material. He stutters for a moment, then forces the words out.
"I picked it out for privacy, you know? A place to just bug out and be alone for a while... but, um, I have company sometimes-- Most of the time. I was trying to keep the whole thing hush, but it's better that you know. Just nod and agree with that so I don't have second thoughts."
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But this is gossip too surprising and intriguing to let go, even for someone who doesn't count Piper Wright as a kindred spirit, and her eyes widen with surprise. This is Deacon, after all, the man so walled-off and seemingly impervious to flirtation that she hadn't even tried (and doesn't know anyone besides Cait who would.) She'd teased Danse once about the unexpectedness of finding that he had a heart beating under all that armor, and gotten a sheepish acknowledgment that he deserved that, but in some way, it feels even more unexpected to see evidence of one in Deacon, despite the lack of literal steel shielding to hide it.
"Company, huh?" And not just occasional company, but regular company at that. Most-of-the-time company. "No arguments here, it is definitely better that I know, but...come on. You gotta give me a hint about who it is."
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"I don't want this to be a game," he shakes his head, "No hints, no guessing... no whispering around the settlement so that I feel eyes on the back of my head everywhere I go. You can tell everyone, I guess. As long as no one makes it too weird." Deacon takes a breath, having psyched himself thoroughly up now, and holds himself more confidently. He can do this. Nora probably won't believe him, anyway.
"Danse has been staying with me. So I wanna get this thing over there before he gets back. I don't want it to feel like a hide-out anymore."
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"Cute," she says, with a fond you got me sort of tone. "You're losing your touch a little, you know? You went too big there. Just about anyone else and I would've bought it, but you had to go with Danse." She shakes her head. "I remember. 'You can't trust everyone.'"
It was good advice, at the time. It's served her well since he gave it. She lifts one side of the bedframe off the salvage cart, offering to help lug it in even if she doesn't actually believe there's any kind of time crunch or anyone who'll be using it except Deacon himself.
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"Right. 'Cause he couldn't possibly enjoy my company," he mutters, getting in his head about it. "Whatever. Forget I said anything." Deacon lifts the other side off the cart, shuffling off silently. He's in his head, rethinking tactics, a sort of bile growing heavy in his stomach.
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She had tried, and perhaps made a little more progress than she'd thought, but there's a difference between being told he's still a person who deserves to be cared for, and being simply and freely and tenderly treated like one, and only once he'd had a taste of that from Deacon had Danse begun to feel like he really wanted to live again. The bunker had become unbearable only in comparison to the little blue house once he'd experienced them both, and only Deacon's company had made the house feel like the joyful haven it now is.
"Come on, Deacon, it's not a slight on you. There are plenty of people who like you a lot and didn't once tell me I was the only thing keeping them from burning Railroad HQ to the ground. Danse is not one of them."
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There are several moments where he feels a knee-jerk instinct to tell Nora she's wrong. Danse does listen. Beautifully, in fact. And he's not anything like the man she describes. He's soft, sweet, and he deserves so much more than simply seeing sunlight.
"You're really confident about this," he replies, "He'll be back before the week is over. You can interrogate him yourself."
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This is the scenario that greets Danse when he returns to Sanctuary five days later, having been counting down the very minutes as he'd promised before he left, and having also messaged Deacon from the Red Rocket to let him know he was about twenty minutes away. It's broad daylight, and so he knows that just walking up to the door of the house is out of the question, but he can't possibly bear to wait until dark to see Deacon again, and he knows that eagerness is mutual--there's got to be somewhere else in town that they can meet up and get their hands on each other without breaking their cover.
It would be a beautiful thing if they didn't have to worry about that any longer. Danse honestly isn't sure why they still do, except that Deacon is such an intensely private person by nature, and if it makes him feel more secure and comfortable not to let anyone around him know he has a love life, Danse wants to maintain that for him. He doesn't have to understand it to indulge whatever makes his lover feel less vulnerable.
But it's Nora he encounters first when he crosses the bridge, not Deacon, and if she notices the brief longing glance he casts toward the blue house, she doesn't say so. "Welcome back," she says. "You know, I heard the craziest thing the other day."
Where this is going, he isn't sure, and faint alarm bells are beginning to ring in his head before she continues. "I thought maybe you were just stopping in town for a rest before heading back to the listening post, but someone told me you've actually been living in this house here for a while now. It seemed strange, because I didn't think you'd move in without saying anything...but I also heard you were living there with Deacon, so I don't know how reliable that information can possibly be. Is it actually true?"
She's keeping the source as vague as possible here, because while she might think Deacon is bullshitting in his usual fashion, she's still thinking of it as more of a game--she doesn't want him having to contend with Danse's anger at being the subject of a lie.
Danse has virtually no experience with lying, himself. He's never so much as tried, out of both moral opposition and a conviction that he would be terrible at it. But he feels cold from his core outward at the awful thought that he's somehow failed to be careful enough, that the jig is up, that Deacon might be upset with him--or just upset at all; he imagines Deacon would probably forgive him, but that doesn't change the fact that he explicitly wanted this kept secret, and now people know. The only recourse Danse can think of is to lie to the best of his ability, and lie he does.
"Of course not," he says. His pulse is speeding, but his typically monotone voice serves him well, making him sound more convincing than exaggerated offense would. "I've never even set foot in that house. I don't know where you heard that."
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Deacon moves across the room to the window, taking a paranoid peek out of the window, when he sees Nora obstructing Danse's path home. His heart seems to be doing jumping jacks, and Deacon scrambles to the door, flinging it open before he remembers to play it cool and not look like a madman racing toward them. He moves quickly, but in a quiet, casual way, idly scratching at the week's worth of peach fuzz sprouting about his head.
When he finally makes it to Danse's side, heart pounding and cheeks flushed, he leans up on the tips of his toes and presses a kiss to Danse's cheek. "Hey."
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On the other hand, there's everything else about the situation. The joy of laying eyes on Deacon again after missing him terribly all week, the shock and accompanying wave of intense attraction at that visible regrowth of ginger hair, the sweetness and casual domestic affection of the kiss, the public claiming of it when he's been longing for that since before he'd even believed it could ever be real--
"I thought you wanted discretion," he says stupidly, the first thing his mind manages to supply him with when it feels like it's running like a giddy hamster on a wheel. Beside him, Nora's hands are covering her mouth, but if she's doing him the courtesy of not addressing his blatant lie--and she is, for now--then he can wait and explain himself for it another time.
"...I'll leave you guys to it," she says, and disappears to do precisely that. She owes Deacon...something, probably, by way of apology for doubting him, but that too can wait. Once alone, Danse turns back to Deacon with thoroughly baffled wonderment.
"Does she just...know about us, now?" The hope in his voice is audible.
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"You were gone a long time. I mean, it felt like a long time. And I convinced myself of all kinds of wacky stuff..." he replies and reaches for Danse's hand while easing into a walk back to their house. "Like um, for starters, I'm kinda crazy for you. And the house didn't feel like home without you in it, no matter what I did to make it more home-y. So, I dunno, it's probably for the best I drop the act, that way, you could come home. Like, really come home. If you wanted to, I mean. But just know that if you don't, Nora will think this whole thing's a big joke, and my punishment involves getting a lower back tattoo."
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But when he'd told Deacon a week ago that he couldn't wait to come home, he hadn't been thinking just of coming across that bridge; he'd been thinking of this little blue house. And he'd been thinking of opening the door to see Deacon there waiting for him. That, now, is what his mind thinks of as homecoming, whether he'd truly realized it at the time or not.
He hadn't said it in full consciousness of what he meant by it, but neither would he have said it at all if he hadn't thought Deacon felt similarly. But there's a difference between the quiet deep-down conviction that he isn't alone in his true feelings, and hearing it confirmed so effusively aloud in the same broad daylight he's longed to be able to hold hands in, exactly like this. Crazy for you. It almost echoes, as sweet as it feels to hear.
"How could you possibly think I wouldn't want to, when it's all I've been able to think about for a week straight?"
He knows what Deacon means, the mindset that would make him doubt, but maybe the smile on Danse's face will be enough to assuage that. It's the bright unguarded grin nobody but Deacon gets to see, and the only reason that might no longer be true is because they're in public now--it's still aimed solely at him, as Danse catches him giddily around the waist and sweeps him in close.
"She damn well better not think it's a joke, after I lied right to her face because I thought you'd want me to. That's about as real as it gets."
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"Dunno, maybe you really wanna see me get a lower back tattoo." Deacon laughs, it turning airy once Danse draws him in close. His own hands creep up his chest, feeling over strong muscle on their way around his neck.
"You lied for me?" he asks almost huskily, looking up at Danse from beneath his dark glasses, "I am so proud of you," he teases, but what he means is that he finds it deeply romantic, and he tugs Danse down into a firm kiss that risks getting a touch out of hand for the middle of the street.
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Now he understands. Now it makes sense to him how two people could need each other so badly as to be unable to wait the extra minute or go the extra distance for privacy, knowing that whatever onlookers might think matters less than feeling the full weight and pleasure of the moment, sinking into it and indulging themselves for once when they're both so painfully familiar with self-deprivation.
He could sternly tell Deacon not to get used to the lying, their usual sort of banter, and if Deacon sounded any less genuinely smitten by the gesture, he might--but he recognizes what Deacon really means by it, and hearing that kind of praise still melts him no matter what its underlying meaning is anyway. He squeezes Deacon gently and hums with delight into the kiss before it breaks.
"Your lower back is perfect the way it is," he says solemnly. "I wouldn't let anyone else touch it. Let's get inside."
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The comment about his back makes him laugh in a sort of disbelief though, because the continued confirmation that there is something very solid between the two of them still feels very surreal. He hopes that once he gets Danse through those doors, it'll start to feel more normal. Deserved.
"Maybe you'll just have to put your own mark there," he purrs, taking Danse's hand again, "And, I alluded to this earlier, but, I have made some changes while you were out, with you in mind..."
He gets the door, gesturing for Danse to enter first and take stock of the new furniture. Deacon will follow him inside, making sure that the door is shut behind them.
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But this isn't so big or important a lie, and even if it were--Deacon is a person who deserves to be sacrificed for. It's a revelation Danse hasn't been able to shake the weight of. For as long as Deacon has been sacrificing for others, his time and his safety, his face and his body, his very sense of self, nobody ever does it for him in turn. Danse still doesn't know why Deacon does it, what atonement he feels like he still owes, why he runs from himself the way he does--but what he knows is that Deacon ought to be a priority to someone. In and of himself, as a person, not an agent. And Danse wants to be that someone.
He follows, uncomprehending so far and not knowing what to expect by 'changes,' but when he enters the room, his eyes widen in that guileless open-book way of his, stunned to silence by the effort Deacon has put in and the thoughtfulness of the choices. A shelf for the kind of books he always finds himself wanting to borrow from Deacon's collection, a space to read them on his own, a real bed for them to curl up in and talk about them and wake tangled up together in the mornings--Danse doesn't even know which new addition feels the most important, but his throat is suddenly tight, and he has to swallow hard around it.
"You really did make it home," he says softly.
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Like Danse, he similarly wants to be the person to provide his partner with the sort of attention and care he knows Danse has never been given. To make him his priority. He hadn't realized how badly he wanted to until Danse was out of his reach, but now, it couldn't be more clear.
"If you'll call it that," he murmurs in response, moving behind Danse to gently slide a hand around his slim waist and hold him close. "...Are you hungry from your trip? Can I get you anything?"
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Danse just hadn't known what it really would feel like. There's teasing and groping and joking and over-the-top playacting and desperately gasped endearments in the throes of passion, and then there's the quiet way Deacon fits in against his side as if they were crafted as a matching set, arm anchored around him as if to reinforce that he's staying, and offers to cook as if Danse has just come home for dinner like he does every night. Like he will, every night.
And that's why there will be time for that later. Years of time, as much as anyone in the wasteland is granted those, if they can keep each other safe. Danse slips an arm around Deacon's shoulders in turn, meaning to just stand there with him for a moment, but it morphs unexpectedly into a full, tight hug, burying his face against the top of Deacon's head and rubbing his cheek gently against that regrowth of red and just holding him.
"You can test our bed frame with me," he murmurs, pulling back and sliding hands up to cup Deacon's face. "Then maybe dinner."
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"If you insist," he murmurs back, "I've only got an appetite for you, anyway..."