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The coffee cup clutched in Arthur’s white-knuckled fist is empty for the fourth time today.
He stands stiff-limbed in a garage littered with parts and half-assembled fragments of the war robot that, as a boy, sheltered him beneath its massive form on the long, lonely days when Sarah was out on a mission and Elder Lyons had precious little time to scarf down lunch, much less listen to the fictional tales woven by a ten-year-old boy. Dr. Li’s stare slices through him like a bayonet slices through a radroach. She insists that she is not a member of the Brotherhood of Steel and never will be, that she does not answer to him, that these things take time, that such a massive undertaking should not be rushed if it is to be done right, that if he is so concerned about timely project completion he ought to leave her to her work. The icy bite to her words does something to his head. In an instant, he’s that ten-year-old boy again, rocking back and forth from his heels to his toes, the enthusiastic sparkle snuffed out of his wide blue eyes as the scientist brushes him away from the electromagnetic limb actuator she’s tinkering with and snaps, “I don’t have time to play twenty questions. I am not your babysitter and this is not a toy, so get out of my lab.”
A sickening crack shatters the memory, jerking Arthur back to the present as if from a dream. Delicate parts scatter across the concrete floor. A Prime scribe lies sprawled out atop the remnants of a military-grade circuit board that another scribe had apparently decided to leave sitting on the ground for half a dozen pairs of combat boots to crush. Arthur’s head throbs. He stares accusingly into the bottom of the empty coffee mug. He fights down the urge to scold, to shout, to massage his temples with the tips of his fingers. Instead, he is steady, controlled, calm, as a leader should be.
Then, he takes his leave.
As the vertibird begins its ascent to the Prydwen, the December breeze blows Arthur’s hair into his eyes and seeps beneath the seams of his armored coat, raking its frigid tendrils through his body. He shivers and grits his teeth to keep them from chattering. His jaw protests, pulsing angrily. His head follows suit. All he can think of is Danse, muscled arms enveloping him and holding him to his sculpted chest, lips pressed softly to the frozen tip of his nose, callused hands cupping his cold-flushed cheeks. In a moment of dreamy bliss, he lets his eyes fall half-lidded as he recalls the way his love chases the chills from his body like he’s Arthur’s own personal radiator, warming him from the inside out better than a cup of hot vanilla tea, and twice as sweet.
The vertibird rumbles to a halt at the flight deck. The wind blows harder. Arthur smothers a grimace and shoves his hands into his sherpa-lined pockets. His fingers brush crumpled cardboard. At this, the smallest smile curves his lips. He withdraws the pack of cigarettes and fishes with the other hand for his lighter. And even though his face feels numb, he lingers in the cold a moment longer to smoke a cigarette down to the filter, exhaling frosty clouds of nicotine relief into the afternoon air.
When he steps back inside, his hands are shaking. He can’t tell if it’s from the cold, the nicotine, the caffeine, the lack of caffeine, or the lack of sleep. Maybe all of it, somehow, all at once.
Halfway to the mess hall for a coffee refill, Captain Kells stops him in his tracks to report that another lancer has crashed another vertibird, this time out near Quincy. One of the knights on board died in the resulting explosion. As Kells suggests a meeting to discuss improved training, Arthur’s mouth does a convincing imitation of the Mojave Desert. His bones liquify to jelly. The steel floor beneath him beckons, inviting his knees to meet it. But he stays on his feet. He has to. He can’t afford anything else. And even though his tongue has gone as numb as his still-frozen nose, his voice comes out steady, controlled, calm.
The coffee in the mess hall is cold and stale, but Arthur gulps down another mugful anyway. The throbbing in his head ceases, and the pressure there eases.
He starts toward the command deck. A flurry of voices call out “Elder Maxson” and “Elder” and “Elder, sir,” rattling him as deeply as a December gale. Faces loom before him in an endless blur. Hands reach out to seek his attention, skimming his shoulders and arms. One settles on his forearm over one of the places where, seven years ago, a deathclaw tore into him, staining itself crimson in his blood, etching a tale of sleepless nights and gasping breaths and flashbacks and chest-aching terror permanently into his skin. His armored coat softens the sensation, but his mind reacts like he’s standing naked in the middle of the Prydwen with a record of the worst thing that’s ever happened to him on display for all his subordinates to see. Burning pain sears along his forearm. His pulse reverberates in his ears. He jerks away from the knight’s touch. Then, he recovers enough to answer the soldier’s question, steady, controlled, calm. “Long day,” he explains. His hollow words sound unconvincing to his own ears. Nonetheless, the knight is convinced. Or, she pretends to be.
They both move on. Or, they pretend to.
Arthur gazes over Boston’s ruined skyline by the waning light of a later winter afternoon, looking at everything, seeing nothing. His body is there on the observation deck, awaiting another stream of soldiers with comments and questions and concerns, but his mind has carried him away to the privacy of his and Danse’s shared quarters to a time when the man he loves lets his hands wander along Arthur’s sides, tracing circles and spirals and love letters onto his bare skin. On a night like this, if Danse weren’t out on a mission, he’d scoop the young Elder into his arms, lay him down in the middle of their bed, and unzip his jumpsuit in slow motion, scattering kisses across every newly exposed bit of skin. He’d whisper “Daddy’s here now” and “let me take care of you, baby” against the curve of Arthur’s neck as he peels the black fabric away from his body. Then, when Arthur’s wearing nothing but his gray boxer briefs, Danse would kiss with tender reverence everywhere the deathclaw had carved its personal signature into his body, murmuring “you’re so beautiful, Arthur” and “you take my breath away” and “I love every inch of you” as he moves his mouth carefully over the marks that will never completely fade. And Arthur lets him every time. He lets his love kiss where he won’t let anyone else touch. He lets Danse be gentle with him. He lets Danse love the parts of him that he can’t love. Those full lips melt away the hurt in him like the springtime sun melts winter snow.
Afterward, Danse would lie down next to him, and he’d rest his head on the older man’s powerful chest, nuzzling into his neck and drawing deep breaths of his familiar scent. Feeling that steady heartbeat beneath his cheek would touch something deep deep inside of him, something that recalls being held in Danse’s arms the night after the deathclaw gave him those scars. Then and only then would he feel at peace enough to shut his eyes and—
“Elder Maxson?” calls an initiate.
Arthur swallows down a sigh.
Danse isn’t due back for another two nights. Tonight there’s no chest to lay his head on. No lips to kiss his scars. No deep voice to whisper sweet nothings in his ear. No rough hands to wander softly across his skin. No warm body to keep him from shivering.
“Yes, Initiate Ross?” he responds, his voice steady, controlled, calm. He shifts subtly from foot to foot and squeezes his hands into fists at his sides, the first cracks in the dam of the young Elder’s steely composure.
Two hours and one last cup of coffee later, when he finally drags himself back to his too-empty quarters, he collapses into his desk chair and sets his aching eyes to the stack of reports before him. His leg bounces anxiously under the desk. He tries at intervals to make it stop, but the motion always starts again. The more he reads, the harder it is to stay still. The words leap from the page and flood his mind in a chaotic jumble. His head is throbbing again. He presses the heels of his hands into his temples and at long last allows himself to groan. It’s only now that Arthur realizes he hasn’t taken one sip of water yet today. He resolves to fetch a carton of purified water from the shelf at the opposite end of the room—after he finishes reading the report in front of him.
His eyelids are so, so heavy. No matter how many times they try to fall shut, he pries them open again and retrains his gaze on the page.
Too much… Everything is too much…
The words fade into blackness.
Arthur startles awake and promptly face-plants into his stack of reports. He sits up straight and tries to rub the blurriness from his eyes like a child who has stayed up long past his bedtime. When he stands, the room tilts on its side, and he has to grip the metal edge of his desk to stay on his feet. “My love, you’re dehydrated,” he can nearly hear Danse say. “Please try to take better care of yourself. If not for you, then for me. I worry about you, you know.”
Dutifully, Arthur grabs the carton from the shelf and nurses it at his desk like it’s the last glass of whiskey at the end of a long night. One more report, he tells himself. I’ll read one more report and then try to sleep.
Finally, everything feels bearable.
Until he reads one particular sentence that makes his entire body lock up like a stuck hydraulic shock on a power armor leg piece.
“Just outside the building, we encountered and eliminated an especially tenacious fully grown deathclaw.”
Without any further warning, Arthur’s mind carries him away to the one place he very much does not want to go.
Burning-hot tendrils of agony slice through his small body. His heart hammers so intensely it threatens to burst out of his chest. His fingers tingle and tremble. Crushing pain invades the spaces between his ribs. His breaths come in frantic gasps. The deathclaw swipes at his face. Arthur raises an arm to block it, but in his weakened state, he’s not quick enough. A razor-sharp talon carves into his cheek. A scream pierces the boy’s eardrums. Dimly, he realizes it had come from his own quivering lips.
The phrase “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die” rushes through his mind again and again and again like a sickening stuck record.
Then, defiantly, he tells himself, “I’m not going to die!”
Drawing on energy reserves he didn’t know he had, his mind reeling, his body reacting on instinct alone, he pushes his left thigh up and toward the deathclaw. With its attention drawn now to his leg, Arthur frees his arms from beneath its scaly limbs. He reaches for his holstered 10mm pistol, even as the massive creature claws all the way from the top of his thigh down to his knee. The pain is earth-shattering, but somehow he doesn’t scream this time. The world around him pulses in and out of focus. He clutches the grip of his gun in both hands to combat his shaking and jams it directly against the deathclaw’s head. Before the beast has time to pull away, he fires as rapidly as he can. It recoils and lets loose a gruesome roar. Arthur shifts to fire into its open mouth. He fires and fires and fires and fires again and again and again. He fires until he hears the horrible click of an empty clip.
It’s only then that the deathclaw’s lifeless body tumbles forward, crushing him beneath it.
A haunting stillness envelopes the Maryland springtime afternoon.
“Danse,” he croaks, voice weak and wavering. “P-P-Paladin Dan—”
His world plunges into blackness.
Arthur’s quarters recede into nothingness, and suddenly, he’s there in the quiet of that Maryland afternoon, lying beneath the stripped-bare trees whose branches await the life-giving kiss of springtime. His chest heaves as though the deathclaw is still lying on top of it. His breaths shudder. His heart races. He squeezes his eyes shut, then pries them open again. For an ephemeral moment, he finds himself in the safety of his quarters once more. But then his mind slips again, and he’s trapped in an endless loop of unspeakable pain and unimaginable terror with the prospect of death looming at the darkened corners of his vision.
The next thing he knows, there are a pair of strong arms enveloping him, scooping him up from the cold floor, pulling him close against a broad, muscled chest. Instinctively, he nuzzles into the warmth that radiates from the body holding him. “It’s okay,” a deep voice whispers ever so tenderly. “You’re okay, baby. I’m here now. I’m here. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
“Paladin, did…did I do good?” he mumbles. His eyelids are so, so heavy. Dimly, he realizes he’s shaking all over. He fixed his gaze on Danse’s face like he’s lost at sea and those chocolate eyes are twin lighthouse beacons that guide him home. “What…what happened to your power armor? We have to get back to the Citadel and—”
“Shh,” Danse coos. Soft, plush warmth surrounds him. Still, he can’t stop shaking. Danse cradles Arthur’s head to his chest as he combs his fingers gently through sweat-damp hair. “You’re far away from that deathclaw,” the older man murmurs against the shell of his ear. “You’re safe with me, baby. I’ll never let anything hurt you ever again. I promise.”
“Please, Paladin,” Arthur whimpers as he grabs fistfuls of Danse’s jumpsuit, clutching white-knuckled at the orange fabric against the agony that burns through his body, “please don’t let me die… I don’t wanna die… Hurts… It hurts… It hurts…”
“You’re not going to die,” Danse whispers, “and I know the pain feels so real, but it’s just a trick your mind likes to play. It’s 2287, sweetheart. We’re in our quarters aboard the Prydwen here in the Commonwealth. Liberty Prime is in the process of being reassembled down at the airport, and you are safe in my arms. You’re the love of my life, Arthur Maxson. My soulmate. My precious baby. And I’m here, baby. Daddy’s here. Daddy’s right here. Daddy’s got you.”
“Daddy?” Arthur echoes numbly. Then, he lifts his head and blinks back the bleariness in his eyes, and the world he knows materializes in slow motion, filled in piece by piece like a life-sized puzzle. The covers are drawn snugly around them. The muted glow of his desk lamp scatters soft yellow light across the otherwise dark room. Freezing rain patters gently against the steel exterior of the airship. The man he loves gazes at him so tenderly, his smile calm and persistent despite the worry that shimmers so plainly in his eyes.
“D-Daddy,” Arthur whimpers, voice breaking. Then, he’s sobbing into Danse’s chest, and his love is letting him, cooing comforting words between kisses to the top of his head. “You’re safe,” he whispers. “I’ll protect you, baby. Nothing will even touch you so long as I’m around. It’s okay, just let it all out. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
And Arthur does, because he couldn’t hold it in even if he wanted to, because the burdens of the day have already wrecked him, stripping him down to his barest, most vulnerable self. Because Danse is the only one who has ever seen beneath his mask of perfect poise to study the bleeding heart he keeps hidden from the world. His tears soak a wet patch into the orange fabric of the older man’s jumpsuit. He sniffles and whimpers and sobs until there’s nothing left in him, no tears left to cry, no energy to spend, no composure to collect, nothing. Then, he rests his head on Danse’s chest and lets him brush the slick trails from his cheek, first with the pad of his thumb, then with his lips.
Then and only then does Arthur start to feel okay again.
The pressure in his chest dissipates. His breaths steady to match the rhythmic rise and fall of Danse’s chest beneath his cheek. The wild beat of his heart calms to thump-thump in perfect sync with his love. His grip on the older man’s jumpsuit loosens, but his fingers stay knotted into the fabric, as if begging silently, Stay with me. I need you.
And Danse answers that silent plea in the words of the King himself, his singing voice soft and deep and stunningly beautiful: “Time goes by so slowly, and time can do so much. Are you still mine? I need your love, I need your love, God speed your love to me.” He punctuates the verse with a slow, sweet kiss to Arthur’s lips. “Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea, to the open arms of the sea. Lonely rivers cry, wait for me, wait for me. I'll be coming home, wait for me.”
By the end of the tune, Arthur’s cheeks are dry and his sore, aching eyes have fallen mercifully, peacefully shut. Danse’s hand trails in soothing motions along his back, no longer saying anything, just caressing Arthur’s exhausted body, bringing him back to himself piece by piece with every gentle touch. The young Elder breathes a wavering sigh and nuzzles deeply into the curve of his love’s neck, shutting out the rest of the world.
Nowhere in the world feels like home apart from Danse’s open arms. Not the long-forgotten deserts of the West, not the Citadel, not the Prydwen, not even his own quarters when his love is gone from them. And when the days grow long, when there are too many voices ringing in his ears, when his painful past comes barreling in to wreck his present self, when he’s drowning in the middle of the open ocean, Danse comes home at just the right time, his soulful eyes guiding Arthur back to himself. He’s drawn to his love as inexorably as the waters of a lonely river are drawn to the sea.
When their bodies meet, when Danse captures his lips softly with his own, when he whispers “I love you, baby” into the scant space between them, Arthur’s loneliness washes away as the rain washes the pain of the day away into the river and all the way down to the open arms of the sea.