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"Hey, Lieutenant-"
"Don't call me that, Danse."
He let out a gravely chuckle, pleased to see you were still awake. The night was dark, you had both stopped during your rounds of collecting Minutemen volunteers to sleep. The musty shack you had found was a fine place, it had multiple rooms and even had some leftover food and drink for you both to share. The air was humid and thick and the smell of ozone filled your nostrils. This mixed with the rich scent of the grass carried through the busted window of the shack, it made the night feel almost like those pre-war summers when you were in the military, drinking what you could afford while stuffed in a foxhole.
"So, I've been thinking."
Danse said suddenly, and you replied with a curt "Oh no, don't do that." He shot a look towards you, "We should try something wild together. " you blushed and felt the air become just a little thicker. "Wild? What do you mean?" "I need to discover myself, Y/N. I don't know if this sort of thing... if this will even work because of my... I'm a synth."
You knew it was a hard thing for him to say, but months of working with him through the trauma had helped him immensely. You remembered his months of nearly sleepless nights, the dark hole he fell into upon the discovery of his true body. He still seemed stuck on figuring out who he is, however, likely out of a sense of wanting to make a difference, not to be just a clone of someone else. His eyes went from your face to the floor.
"So what is it?"
"I wouldn't regularly advocate for substances.. but I wanted to try something they call 'LSD.' I just- don't take this the wrong way- I've tried everything, you know?" He almost panicked, his mask slipping momentarily. He thought you would react like one of his higher-ups in the Brotherhood and you silently related, reminded of the times your Drill Sargent would go ballistic if you asked a wrong question.
You made quick work of resting a hand on his shoulder, and pulling him into you like a mother would a child. "Of course, Danse. We used to take that back in my day. The soldiers on base would sneak away to take it or other drugs, come back to formation in the morning barely able to stand." The memory made you both laugh a little, slightly improving the mood. "If you feel like this is the best avenue for you, I'm with you." His face went from dull and sulky into a smile, something you only saw in these private moments between one another.
It wasn't like you were dating- Danse had just been your sponsor for a while. You helped him escape the Brotherhood and you bonded, that's all there was to it. He never made any uncomfortable advances, and it was nice to have someone like that with you- he was trustworthy, strong, and you both bonded through the horror of your pasts. Without one, the other would die. You hadn't dated someone since leaving the vault, and Danse hadn't even felt romance since he killed Cutler. Of course others would dog on you for it, but it meant very little to you. They didn't know him.
The night passed on, you both falling asleep after a time. When you woke, Danse was already prepared for your daily trek. He would usually wake up early to get ready to wear his power armor all day, you could only imagine just how sweaty it must get in there! "So, about last night.." he spoke quickly, with an air of excitement and nervousness. "We are going near Goodneighbor on route today. I figured, since we had agreed to try it, I could get us some bottle caps to buy us the.. well, you understand." The change of tone and diction in his voice made you laugh to yourself, he was usually such a leader.
"Danse, are you sure you're ready for this? This seems... sudden." You asked him from across the room, while gathering the small amount of belongings you had taken out. "It's pretty intense, you know." He seemed not to mind, and you figured that it honestly was pretty likely it wouldn't affect him at all, due to his being a synth. "We have shared lots with each other. You and I both know we have withstood a lot. Don't joke with me, Lieutenant. We can handle it." His momentary speech made you feel emboldened, even though you did let out an angry huff at the nickname. Danse really believed in you, and if you were doing this together, you could believe in him too.
By the time you reached Goodneighbor, the sun was already halfway down the sky. You had set aside some caps for your trip tonight, and Danse made an effort to contain his own excitement. The others at Sanctuary wouldn't have much to say if you returned a day or two late. When the stars began to fill the sky, you went into the Third Rail to meet with the ghoul you'd be buying from. MacCready had mentioned something about a dealer ghoul some time ago,, and you figured she was the best to trust. You left Danse behind; he had less of a problem with ghouls nowadays, but his old Brotherhood mindset still remained in the back of his mind. Unlearning things like that takes time.
You handed her your caps after some friendly small talk in the corner of the dark stairwell, and she handed you a plastic bag. The baggie had nothing in it besides some pieces of tinfoil, presumably wrapped around the product. You shoved it into your pocket and made it back to Danse, who had already taken the time to have rented a room in the Hotel Rexford. Before then however, you stopped to buy some essentials such as water, blankets, and sweet food. If Danse wanted this, you wanted his experience to be good. He had been through a lot, and he deserved the closure. The idea of him having a bad trip was scary, more for him than for you.
Standing in line at Daisy's Discounts, you remembered the first few missions you ever went on with Danse. Of course, fresh into the Brotherhood, he was suspicious of you. He used to be rather rude, commanding, but you later learned it was for your own good. He pushed you quite hard during those months of his being your sponsor, but once you showed your true colors, Danse became a part of you. Even now, after years of companionship, he still is by your side- his loyalty is and always was unmatched. The night he escaped the Brotherhood was a night that would permanently change you both, and none of the others at Sanctuary could ever understand your bond. He was who you learned from, and you regularly saved each other, as if your hearts beat in tandem.
Damn, you really do love him.
Upon arrival at the hotel room, you knocked on the thin door. Some light colored paint chipped off where your knuckle had struck the wood, and Danse pulled it open almost immediately. You stepped through the threshold, taking in the dim lighting of the room. He had a look of both anticipation and happiness, filling the dingy room with a sense of excitement. "Here, I got us these-" you set the baggie with the drugs on the small table near the window "-and I got some essentials here." Danse's face lit up, and he asked sheepishly: "When should we start?" His boldness in this whole situation was admirable, if not a little weird to see.
You knew he had reformed since the Brotherhood, but it was almost uncanny to see someone who was so intent on rule-following and on being the best become someone you drink casually with on the weekends and take drugs with during recruitment runs. You weren't complaining, but he sure had come far.
"Are you really sure you're ready for this?" He nodded, and you unwrapped the small tinfoil into his hand. Out came two small gel tabs, both being forest green with a red swirl. Almost looking metallic, they glinted under the light in the room. He handed yours back, and you inspected it, hoping that it was pure. You remember that back in the pre-war days there used to be test kits, but nowadays all one could do was hope. You knew the folks of Goodneighbor however, and they knew you- with Hancock swearing to protect you, it was unlikely you'd receive laced product.
Danse inspected it as well, turning it around in his hand. You reached out towards him, your other hand outstretched towards the soldier. He looked shocked for a moment at the openness, and then grasped your hand in his own. His hands were large and somewhat engulfed yours, the thick skin of his calluses rubbed against your palm like living sandpaper. On a count of three, much like you used to in the military, you both pressed the tabs onto your tongues.
"Now what?" He sounded almost funny, trying to talk with the tab resting on his tongue. "Now- now just wait. Don't swallow it or anything, let's move somewhere nice." He seemed confused for a moment, but trusted you after a few seconds of contemplation. "It'll take around 45 minutes, maybe a little longer with your body weight. Care to see what we used to do back in the Army?" Danse nodded, and you coaxed him to the middle of the floor. You laid down some old blankets, most of their softness lost in the last two hundred years, and created a small nest in the floor.
While lining it with pillows, you felt your limbs begin to feel heavier and heavier. Danse seemed to be slowing down as well, changing from his usual flight suit and armor to a more relaxed t-shirt and pants. His face began to flush slightly, and he put a hand on his forehead. You felt the effects start to come on too, and stared around the room in amazement at the sudden development of colors. They moved in rays of all colors, across the room, and highlighted the floor nest.
"Here, come on, Danse, come on.." your speech sounded more rushed than usual, and you were startled at the sound and reverberation in your chest when you spoke. "Here. Just... just lay down.." he looked up at you, removing the hand from his face, and his eyes were blown wide. The effects hadn't fully started on, but you figured he was definitely being affected. I suppose synths can experience things like this. You both slowly made your way to the blanket nest, and your legs felt like limp noodles under your weight until you sat down. Upon sitting, Danse's head immediately fell to rest on your chest, which was more intimate contact than you've had in a long while. Of course you said nothing, as you were more distracted by the developing hallucinations around the room. You both started staring at one another, his pupils almost enveloping the entirety of his dark irises. The feeling of it wasn't uncomfortable, but felt more like a rush of energy was bouncing between you both.
You took his hands again and sat criss crossed, resting them atop your thighs. "Let me show you before I forget.. Set your intentions... breathe deep." He seemed confused, but followed. Danse had been oddly quiet throughout this time, but you figured it was because it was your chance to really show him something amazing. Another look around the room and you saw the walls begin to pulse, the curtains morphing in and out of the windows as the shelves danced in your peripherals. You looked down again at the man atop you, and were caught in the ever-moving beauty of his pores and hair. Danse had never seemed so beautiful- almost as if the lights of the room had all come down on him, reflecting every emotion etched into his face. You both breathed together, and you could almost see the air exit his body upon every exhale. Your breaths sped up as the effects became stronger, and the chorus of breathing was like a beautiful duet to your ears.
You tried to focus on Danse, but were brought back by his heavy breaths matching with yours. He stared back into your eyes, his expression unreadable, and he gently began to stroke a hand along your arm. The sensation of skin on skin was explosive under the influence, and you watched in amazement as the man front of you morphed from an angelic being into someone you had to protect. Fuck, you had to protect him. How could you ever forgive yourself if you didn't? You felt the tethers of your mind become loose, the physical feeling very similar to exploring Kellogg's brain in the Memory Den. Tears began to quickly gather in your eyes, your mind involuntarily making you imagine those horrible things he told you when you drank together. Of course, that was why you had stopped drinking together in the first place. After he got kicked from the Brotherhood, Danse had become too close with alcohol, and it ended in a horrific blackout, lots of vomit, trauma-dumping, and anger.
Suddenly, Danse grappled at your face, pulling you from your thoughts. The sensation was strange, and his hands pressed and kneaded into your skin as if to make sure you were real. "Never did I... Never thought I would see something… Never like this.." you assumed that the tab had really begun taking effect around this point, not that he was peaking. He hadn't spoken all that much until now, preferring you to take the wheel on something you evidently had an understanding of. Perhaps he simply wasn't lucid enough to speak.
Danse wasn't necessarily sheltered from drugs, he had seen how drugs could affect people and had been offered before, but he truly hadn't ever had an experience like this. Growing up alongside scrappers and addicts in Rivet City was enough to repel him from the stuff for the first thirty-some-odd years of his life. Until, of course, the Brotherhood kicked him out.
You reached for a blanket and attempted to drape it over his body, but the world wouldn't come to a stop. Everything was constantly moving, wiggling, stretching, and all in a burst of color. The whiteness of Danse's skin made him stand out in your vision, the rays around him turning to flickering movements not unlike those of hot pavement in summer. You failed to drape the blanket over him, your depth perception failing you as the world moved in and out, and it coiled on the ground like a massive snake. You tried to focus on your breathing again, your body beginning to feel like a thousand frequencies at once all radiating from the same point.
"You... you okay?"
You hadn't expected Danse to be the one to ask this. He seemed to be in it deeper than yourself, his eyebrows knit together as he searched your skin with a desperate expression. The rasp of his voice spooked you out of your thoughts, and you sloppily moved your head to meet his eyes. The motion sickness was real- you saw every individual frame when you moved from place to place.
"I'm.. I'm alright, Danse. You?"
You pushed out the words with what strength you had to give, eyes moving toward the long-busted out light cover on the ceiling. The design danced and moved, and you didn't hear whatever it was the soldier had said. You both sat there in the blanket nest for a time, silent, embarking on your own journeys. You both sat so close yet so far, and although you wanted to be closer, you feared scaring the man. You wished you could see Danse's mind right now. Not that yours was any better than you assumed his was, judging by the look on his face.
As you relaxed, flashes of color invaded your vision, mixed with the pulsing aura of the world around you. The picture frames and shelves reached up the walls, stretching to fill the space. The face of a painting was moving, you could see the eyes darting around quickly. The painting encapsulated you, seemingly real. You tried to read some text nearby, astounded whenever the words changed into little more than little wriggling worms on paper before you had a chance to read. The wood floors under you turned into a labyrinth of sprawling paths, the woodgrain texture completely distracting you. Your body felt both unbearably heavy and amazingly light, the sensation of bodily movement became a slideshow in your mind. You tried to slip into the depths of your thoughts with what little lucidity was left, intent on self-discovery, when you heard the distorted noise of a sob come from beside you. You tried quickly to turn your head, but were greeted with the twang of motion sickness, emphasized by the ongoing peak of your high. The shuttering of the frames when you moved were hard to look at, and impossible to think about.
Danse was there, red faced, irises blown and tears streaming down into his beard. His beard was scary looking, every individual hair looked like it was trying to escape his face when you focused too hard. You were too high to begin to comprehend how or why he was crying- but you needed to help. "Danse? Danse? Oh God, oh God, okay…" words fought their way out of your throat, as trying to piece together something would have simply been too difficult. You gave up on talking and instead reached out to hug him, pleasantly surprised when he tightly wrapped his arms around you and cried. The emotion, the purity, the tornado of thoughts you felt inside your head- you began to bawl alongside him, the room had become a sacred place. "I just don't- I can't… Oh God, oh God, Cutler..." he began to cry again, grasping at your hand like a lifeline. The tears streamed down your face but you barely felt them, the intense body high settling in as a precursor. You were peaking, but what about him? How many hours had it already been? He pulled on you again, staring directly into your eyes, as if searching for something he lost. His grip was much harder than he meant for it to be, almost painful, he was losing control of his strength. He grimaced as if bracing for a blow, and untensed again.
You tried to stare at him, at his body and how it rippled and moved. You saw the parade of pores on his skin, all moving across his body like a beautiful show, enhanced by the colors that shifted everywhere at once. His hands displayed every wrinkle as clearly as day, and you soon realized you could see the real definition in his body while under the effects of the drug. His clothes seemed almost plastic against him, unbelonging. "Don't… leave… Never again… suffer.." he tried to communicate again and failed, going quiet after a time, tears still streaming down his face. The glint on the tears became a sparkle, the tears seeming to turn into rivers of light, illuminating him. You did what you could to help the soldier by cleaning up his face, but it only went so far.
You tried again to move the blanket, this time wrapping it around the both of you. The blanket stunk and was raggedy, but one could only ask for so much in a world after nuclear war. It was hard to notice the scent anyway, when the visuals of everything were so vivid. The fibers began to dance in your vision, again reaching up and down, snaking around on your skin. They then seemed to grow into hairs, brushing against your neck in the same way a spiderweb may gracefully stick to someone walking through it.
Danse seemed to calm a little when you got the blanket over the both of you, his eyes screwed shut and his breath evening out slightly. He placed a hand on your thigh again, and you looked over. You wished he would open his eyes. The look of the creases and wrinkles in his face was unnatural and uncanny, the creases reaching farther than they ever should and moving all the same. "Danse, hey.." he made a grunt of acknowledgement, peeling open his eyes with apparent effort. You attempted to speak, caught off guard when the burly man next to you made another sudden reach for your face.
You didn't realize in time- before you knew it, his lips were against yours. The drug enhanced the feeling, the intertwining spirit, the sensation of his lips against yours. You kissed back of course, making a weak attempt to grasp at the dark, well-pomped hair atop his head. His beard scratched against you, feeling uncomfortable ans burning under the effects of the drug. Neither of you were quite sober enough to know what you were really doing, but it felt so right.
The world twisted behind him, all in a blur of color and morphing shapes beyond comprehension, his form being the only constantly still thing in the room, still surrounded by an aura of light. Looking around made you feel nervous at the size of the world, but in his arms, things felt safer. They always did.
He pulled away quickly, and his face was stained with the look of fear. "You… I didn't mean.." you tried to shush him, sloppily running a finger over his lip. They seemed abnormally red, and the movement of his eyes and mouth were hard to follow. They all melded into a blur, and again came the tears. "Always got you, Paladin.." you choked this out through a flow of tears, tears you yet again hadn't had the awareness to notice until Danse held your hand and used it to wipe them away. He seemed to lose his fear ever so slightly, face softening when he realized that you indeed did kiss back.
Danse distantly remembered the last time he made an outward advancement toward someone, that someone being Cutler. He clenched his fist at the memory, trying to stay strong like he should be. Like he always was.
Danse felt the drug break through his thoughts, infecting and rushing into his mind like a warm liquor. Just like the whiskey he drank, alone in his barracks, after killing Cutler.
He remembers the taste of the alcohol, the smell of the backroom of the shop he and Cutler owned in the shantytown of Rivet City. He remembered the look on Cutler's face, Danse too drunk to stop himself, when he had tried to kiss him. Cutler drew back with a horrified expression, "You're drunk." And left, leaving Danse alone in the musty room. Of course things had changed over time, at least before Cutler had died, but Danse had never tried to make a move after that. Of course, the next time he would, it would be under the effects of drugs again. Thing is, he didn't have half a mind to care.
He had you. He always did. He always would. "Always got you, Lieutenant… I love you."