Chapter Text
“Do you ever take those off?”
Madelyn was fully aware the question had come out of nowhere, splitting the otherwise comfortable silence. Guard duty had a way of making her mind race as she tried to fill the hours, anything to make the time go by faster—especially when patrolling a quiet settlement like Sanctuary.
“What?” Deacon mused. “My pants?”
Madelyn rolled her eyes—of course he’d deflect—Deacon was good at that. She should’ve known better by know. Still, she gestured towards his ever-present sunglasses, turning to face him on their perch. Even where he sat on the little bench, he was close to her full standing height. “You know what I mean.”
“It’s time I tell you something important about my past,” he said, but the flicker of a smirk pulling at his lips had Madelyn doubtful. So she leaned against the rickety railing of the guard post, resting her cheek into her palm—this was sure to be one hell of a story—something else Deacon was good at.
He took that as a good sign to continue. “After the Railroad took me in as a child, they gave me these sunglasses.”
Madelyn decided not to cut him off with the information that he had already told her that he had founded the Railroad over seventy years prior (among other origins). She nodded, finding it surprisingly easy to picture Deacon as a young orphan.
“I haven’t removed them in from of anybody since I was a young boy,” he paused, carefully crafting his story for her. “That’s what you don’t know about the Railroad. It’s like a religion. It is more than a disguise, it is a part of me, and so it can never come off.”
His words were dramatic but punctuated in a way that she knew he was bluffing. And then, with an accentuated, stoic expression, he spoke. “This is the way.”
Half a second passed, but Madelyn was unable to contain her laughter, bubbling through her pursed lips as she doubled over, collapsing into the seat next to him. “That’s got to be the best lie you’ve told me yet.”
“Hardly,” Deacon replied through his own chuckles. “I take great offense to that.”
Madelyn gave a half shrug—but she wasn’t about to give up so easily. “So you’d never let me see your eyes?”
For the briefest of moments, she could see the flicker of something—doubt, trepidation—always hard to discern with Deacon—when she leaned a fraction closer towards him. She wasn’t going to do something crazy like kiss him…but now that the thought crossed her mind, she couldn’t help but feel a flicker of excitement under her skin. But it’s his micro-flinch—that hesitation—that had her leaning away, second guessing her movements. Except, when she does move away, her hair had found its way tangled in the frame of those glasses and her movements nearly swiped them off his face.
“Whoa, whoa,” Deacon laughed, hands snapping up to detangle the dirty-blonde waves from the metal wires, careful to keep his eyes shielded as he always did. Madelyn suddenly looked away, half out of respect, half out of embarrassment until her hair was free but found his hand lingering for a second longer than it should, tucking the lock behind her ear, fingers ghosting along the angle of her jaw.
Wherever that gesture had come from, Madelyn couldn’t decipher in the moment, but this time she didn’t hesitate to reach up, watching her own movements through the reflection of his sunglasses. She gently gripped them, resisting the urge to grin when she noticed that Deacon seemed to be holding his breath. Instead of moving them away as she might have wanted to, she simply adjusted them back into place before tapping her finger once to the tip of his nose.
“Like you said,” she teased, moving to take her guard spot once more. “This is the way.”