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“How did you get this one?” Savannah asked, trailing her free hand down Danse’s face — ran the pads of her fingers from his brow to his cheek. The scar was raised but even healed she could only guess at how bad it had been when it was fresh. He was lucky he didn’t lose an eye.
It glinted in the candlelight, in the cool moonlight spilling in from the slats of the shack. Oberland Station hadn’t been her first choice of settlements to bunker down at, but Diamond City was still too far to walk in the middle of the night and the Prydwen was even further. She had caught Danse looking longingly at it as they walked, minuscule on the horizon. He had missed it, all that time he had been away. Savannah had only seen it a handful of times, been aboard even less, but to Danse it was the only home he had ever known. If it was up to him she was certain they would’ve trekked through the night just to reach it when dawn crested. Still, he had listened to reason, even if his unease was palpable. Too open, he had said and Savannah had done what she could to fortify the shacks that were only half-built. She’d run out of supplies, last time, only had enough for three walls. Well. Three and a half.
Danse shifted and Savannah moved with him, waited for him to settle back down before cushioning her head on his bicep. The muscles jumped under the weight, reflexive, and Savannah smiled, slow and lazy as she waited for his reply. “A super mutant. Rescue mission gone wrong.”
He didn’t have to say anything else. Savannah had heard the story before. Had heard Cutler’s name spoken in that clipped, curt tone. An old wound, but one that still bled regardless.
“What about you?” He brushed a thumb across an indent on Savannah’s scalp, nestled partially into her hairline. A small, almost crescent shaped scar. She shivered under his touch, the feeling of his hand cradling her cheek, large and gentle. Always so gentle.
“Raiders. Hit me with the butt of their gun when I got too close.” It was one of her older ones, one she had acquired when she was fresh out of the vault. She had shot him after, embedded four bullets in his abdomen and watched him choke on his own blood. Remembered how she’d thrown up afterwards, guilt and nausea churning her gut. She’d never killed anybody before. Now…well, now she’s lost count. It wasn’t a fact she liked to dwell on.
“You’re lucky it wasn’t a bullet.”
Savannah laughed, breathless. “It nearly was. I think he was distracted by the fact I was wearing a vault suit.”
In the light Danse’s eyes widened slightly, mouth parting, and Savannah couldn’t help but allow her gaze to dip — to see his lips bathed in the moonlight, a swirl of silvery shadows and gentle, plush skin. She wondered what it would feel like to close the distance, to step solidly past the line they’d been toeing for months now.
“Your first mission?” He asked and Savannah smiled, allowed her eyes to flutter close under his touch. Mission. God. Sometimes, when she was tired enough or relaxed enough or off her head from the pain of the ‘wealth, she could almost forget that Danse wasn’t Nate. They were nothing alike in looks — Danse was too fair-skinned, too broad, too strong. But the way he spoke sometimes, of duty and honour, the way he treated everything as though it were part of something bigger — a puzzle he didn’t yet have all the pieces to, as though he could figure out the meaning of the universe with only a sense of purpose, was more alike Nate than she could take, sometimes.
The illusion shattered when she opened her eyes. She much preferred the reality, anyway, that soft, open look in his eyes.
“Something like that.”
Danse hummed, content, and let his gaze dip to the scar on her shoulder, a circular mark of patched flesh. “This one?”
“Uh uh,” Savannah chided lightly, catching his hand before it could reach her shoulder. “My turn.”
Danse’s brow quirked, accentuating the scar running through it, the white line catching in the silver glow. She could press her lips to it, could trace it with her tongue. She shivered.
“Is that so, knight?”
She couldn’t resist trailing her hand from his cheek to his hair, sinking into the soft, thick strands, tracing a half-formed pattern against his scalp. It looked almost grey in this light, glinting in a hundred different shades of silver.
“Are you going to pull rank on me, sir?” She asked, breathless and bold. She worried, for a fleeting moment, that she had gone too far, pushed some boundary in this tentative agreement they shared. An unspoken rule and voiceless limits.
But then his breath caught around a groan — half-aborted and choked and his face flushed hotly, a muted scarlet in the shadowed light.
“Anna,” he protested and he was close, so close, that his breath ghosted across her face, mingled with her own. The nickname tightened her chest, bloomed warmly in her stomach, unfurled like a bloodleaf. She moved her hand from his hair, cupped his cheek on the way down and settled it firmly on his chest, the wiry, coarse hairs tickling her palm. Never had she been more thankful for the scorching heat of Boston summers, the humidity that persisted even into the night. Their clothes were draped over the lone chair, his orange uniform an inky black in the shadows, her own folded neatly onto the seat, nothing but a darker shade of black. She traced a short, raised line to the side of his left nipple. His heart thundered beneath her palm.
“What happened here?”
“Self defence,” he replied, watching, rapt, as her thumb edged a millimetre closer to his nipple, the smooth, dusky bud. “Rivet City had its share of thugs. I thought I could scare some of them off with nothing but my fists. I would’ve ended up a lot worse off if it hadn’t been for—“ He stopped abruptly. Savannah hushed him, stroked tenderly along the raised line.
She shrugged her right shoulder, hoping to draw him back to the present, back away from the pain and regrets of his past. “You asked about this one?”
Danse hummed, hesitantly reached out to lay his hand against her shoulder. His palm engulfed nearly all of it, covered the whole joint in calloused warmth. Gooseflesh trailed down her arms.
“More raiders. I was trying to fight my back to Goodneighbor. It uh— didn’t go exactly as I’d planned. Took a bullet. Mac got the brunt of it, though. Jumped down from his vantage point and stood right in front of me, the idiot.” Danse’s grip tightened and Savannah caught the tail end of something possessive glint in his eye at MacCready’s name, the almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw. Jealous. Always, when it came to MacCready. Savannah would have found it frustrating if it wasn’t so endearing.
The candle flickered warningly, cast long shadows up the wall before sputtering out entirely, burned down to nothing but a small mound of wax. There was nothing but moonlight now. Nothing but that alabaster glow. Savannah’s breath caught as she watched the shadows stretch up Danse’s skin; watched them settle in the crevices of his muscles, cast definition across his stomach, his arms, his chest, his legs.
The trail of wiry hairs continued down his chest, tapered off to a line down his abdomen, disappeared under the fabric of his boxers. His stomach jumped under her hand, soft skin twitching and she bit her tongue, shuddered in a breath to stop herself from doing something stupid. Like kissing him. Or rocking herself against his thigh. She was beginning to regret the position they were in. His leg between hers was beginning to feel like a brand, a hot, heavy weight — and the longer she looked at the thick muscle coiled beneath the skin of his thigh the more she wondered how it would feel. How easy it would be shift downwards, to glide her core against his skin.
“This one,” she said, quiet, almost nothing but a whisper. She was scared that anything louder would shatter this, would fracture the moonlight, break this incandescent spell. Her words were a distraction. A badly needed one. In hindsight choosing the silvered scar that ran down his Adonis’ belt wasn’t the smartest idea. Too close to the waistband of his boxers, too close to the other place she wanted to place her hand. The silken heat of that outline. His breath puffed against the side of her face, uneven and shaking.
“Yao Guai,” he replied, clipped and tense. She smiled, hidden from his view by the dark. She ghosted her fingers down it, trailed them further still, dipped to brush the elastic of his boxers. On a mere, half-formed impulse she slipped her fingers under, just barely a centimetre, brushed the small expanse of skin she could reach.
“S-Savannah,” Danse groaned, almost pained and she bit her lip, watched the outline in his boxers twitch, nothing more than a shadowed tent. Unbidden her hips jerked, rolled down against his thigh finally, all strong muscle and wiry hair and she was helpless to stop the gasp that fell from her lips. She was certain he could feel the wetness pooled between her legs. Positive that she had long since soaked through the fabric of her underwear. He did that to her, managed to do it with nothing but a touch or a glance. And now, when she was pressed this close to him, held against him like something precious, like something worth more than anything he had ever seen, she was helpless to stop the arousal gathering in her stomach. The spasming of his fingers around her shoulder told her that he had, in fact, felt it. That and the small grunted breath against her ear.
She was drunk. Drunk on his touch, on his warmth, his voice.
“Here,” he said, trailed his down, between the swell of her breasts, clad only in a bra, past the dip of her sternum, her stomach, to the line above her underwear. She smiled, tucked her face against his chest, listened to his heart thudding beneath her ear.
“C-section,” she replied. She didn’t need to look up to know he was frowning but she did anyway, caught the gentle arch of his brow-bone in the light, the slope of his nose, his cheeks. God, she wanted to kiss him. Wanted it so badly she ached with it. “The surgeons had to cut Shaun out. He wasn’t gonna come out on his own.”
Danse’s touch turned reverent, infinitely more gentle. He traced the horizontal line with his index finger, ran the pad from end to end. She shivered beneath his touch, at the drag of his calloused fingers across such delicate skin. Arched and moaned when he reached down, just as she had, to the fabric of her underwear. He didn’t dip below the line, just skated the backs of his knuckles across her pubic mound in a broad sweep. She had never pegged him as a tease before, but his eyes shone with smug amusement. Her hips rolled against him.
The arm she was laying on tensed, moved underneath her head as he brought his hand to rest along the dip of her waist, the generous swell of her hips.
“And this one?” He asked, bringing a thumb to her bottom lip. Her brain lagged, froze under his touch, under his gaze. All the teasing had gone, and the thought of reminding him it was her turn had vanished along with it. There was nothing else, now. Nothing else that mattered but the way he was looking at her, so close she could almost count his eyelashes.
“Pre-war,” she whispered, felt her lips brush against the pad of his thumb. She accentuated the movements, formed the words with more of a pout than they required just to feel more of it. “Bar fight. Managed to piss off some guy who’d had too much to drink. He smashed a bottle over the table and shoved it in my face.”
Danse frowned, a low, guttural sound rumbling in his throat, his chest. “I trust he received appropriate punishment?”
“The police hauled him out by his arse.” She took a risk, pressed a single kiss against his thumb, felt the rough pad drag across her lips as Danse’s breath hitched. Somewhere, in the midst of the conversation, he had leaned closer, his face centimetres from her own and she could. She could bridge that gap, close it and press their lips together, at last. Could weave her hands into his hair, or trail them down his stupidly broad back, his arms, his stomach. Could let him pin her to the old mattress, press her into it until she remembered nothing but his name.
Her face gravitated towards him, caught in that inexplicable pull, that primal need. Danse moved his thumb from her lips to her cheek, brushed under her eye gently. He didn’t stop her. They both knew nothing would come of this. They both knew it couldn’t. Not with Danse as her superior officer. She wouldn’t mind, didn’t mind — but she could see it in Danse’s eyes every time he looked at her. Could see it now when his gaze dipped to her mouth. That inner conflict, that turmoil. Caught in the trappings of duty and bound by honour.
Still, it was nice to imagine. To let their lips brush over each other, nothing but an echo, a ghost of a touch. So light it was barely there. Danse’s lips were warm and chapped, his breath fanning hotly over her face, nuka-cola and the faint scent of toothpaste. This close and she could feel his stubble brushing at her cheeks, her jaw.
“Danse,” she whispered, just to have an excuse to move her mouth, to allow it to move against his, that barest tease of a touch. For a moment, a brief, ephemeral second, she watched his resolve waver, his eyes darken and glint, hungry, desperate. Before Savannah could try, could push her luck, that perfect, steely look of resolution was back in place.
It was all on the table. Every card they had. Laid out bare without the need for discussion, in the same way they could fight side by side without verbalising a single thing. Share entire sentences in a look. Savannah knew, had always known, that this was off the table. That while Danse was her superior she would never know exactly how his lips felt — could only imagine how the smooth glide of his lips would feel. She conceded, drew back a millimetre and Danse’s eyes flashed in a combination of relief and disappointment.
Instead, she pressed her lips to his brow, trailed kisses down, past his eyelid, to his cheek until every inch of the scar had been covered by her mouth. His hand around her waist twitched, fingers digging into her skin, pressing against the bottom of her ribs. He hesitated, wrought with indecision, preoccupied with weighing up his want against his duty. Savannah waited, poised and quiet, until he tilted her head down with his free hand, kissed the crescent scar on her scalp. Once. Twice. On the third press he allowed his face to rest there, half-buried in her hair, inhaling the scent of the soap she hoped still lingered from yesterday.
When he drew back she caught his eye, asked a wordless question. His breath caught, quiet in the night and almost drowned out by the buzz of cicadas, the distant sounds of perpetual gunfire. It wasn’t an answer in the negative. She smiled and dipped her head, shimmied herself down on the mattress as much as she was able. His chest was warm, exuding a pure, dizzying type of heat and she faltered for a minute, breathed the scent of him in — all metal and oil and soap. The scar was more angry, up close. Raised further than she had realised and she studied it for a moment, took in the jagged edges of the wound, from no doubt a serrated blade. It felt rough beneath her lips, hardened almost, and the way Danse spasmed beneath her made her want to shift across, place her lips firmly over his nipple instead. She didn’t. She couldn’t. Knew for a fact that that would be firmly in the realm of forbidden. Solidly off limits. She brushed her thumb across the bud instead, heard Danse clench his jaw with an audible click as he shivered. He was sensitive, then. Heat gathered in her stomach, pooled in her crotch.
Danse tugged at her, pulled her back up. “Come here, knight.”
“What, no nicknames?” She teased and he opened his mouth. Closed it again. She knew why he used the rank instead. Knew it kept him focused, kept his head out of the haze of lust she was sure he had to be experiencing as well. She soothed the furrow between his brow with her thumb.
Savannah wasn’t a small woman. Not by most standards, anyway. She had always been bigger, complete with more curves than any of the magazines and models she had seen. The commonwealth had honed some of that into muscle, made her denser, so much heavier than she had ever been pre-war. But Danse shifted her like she weighed nothing, all but picked her up and moved her until he could duck his head and press hot, open-mouthed kisses to her shoulder. She would laugh if she possessed the mental coherency. Would find it amusing at the possessive nip of Danse’s teeth, because of course the wound that MacCready helped her treat would be the one he would fixate on. Would also be the one he all but sucked a love-bite over.
“Easy there, soldier,” she gasped, hands cupping his head, tugging at his hair. Who would have thought that her shoulder would have become an erogenous zone? She did laugh at that, breathy and high, more a whine than anything else and Danse grunted in reply, pulled back slightly to admire the flush of her skin in the moonlight, the purpled mark that Savannah could already see forming. He kissed it again, a chaste, gentle press of his lips. It would have been apologetic if he hadn’t looked so smug.
Savannah worked her way down his body before he could stop her, left soft, open kisses in her wake, down the line between his pecs, his abs. If his chest was warm then she had no words for the heat that radiated from his abdomen. It was intoxicating — that warmth alongside an underlying musk, and when she leaned down to brush her lips across the ‘v’ of his hips, along the scar, her jaw grazed the bulge in his pants. The sound that left his mouth was almost inhuman, more animalistic than anything and she closed her eyes, focused on keeping her hips still, on only tasting the skin below her lips. Kept her mind away from the heat of that bulge, the vague outline she could make out this close, thick and hard and—
“Up,” he snarled and Savannah revelled in the rough edges of his voice, the ragged inflection. She had never seen him strain this hard before to keep himself in check, to reel in his self-control, his misguided morals. He softened a moment later, eyes reflecting nothing but warmth, that rich chocolate brown that looked almost black in the light. “We have to stop.” He sounded regretful, so truly and openly full of remorse that Savannah cupped his face, hoped to ease some of the guilt from his expression.
She was aching for him, still. Her core pulsing incessantly and she could see, on the quick glance down she dared to take, the mirrored twitching beneath his boxers, the undeniable proof of his arousal. But she forced it down, swallowed down the thoughts of how he would look, how he would taste, laid out before her and focused on the sticky heat of the air, the fact that there were settlers ten feet from where they lay. Tried desperately to douse the flames of her arousal.
“You owe me one,” she joked, hoped to lighten the mood, to clear some of the tension heavy in the air, ease the tightness around his eyes. He smiled, slow and gorgeous, like the first honeyed light of dawn, a heat like molasses, and hummed in agreement. Brought his own fingers to his mouth and kissed the tips before pressing them against her stomach, repeated the process again and again and again until her entire c-section scar was covered.
“There,” he murmured, so low and quiet that his voice dipped into a whisper halfway through. Savannah returned his smile, blinked owlishly at him and his face smoothed, all the tension draining as he cradled her head, brushed her hair back from her forehead with a large palm. “You need rest, Anna.”
“So do you.” She said the words but knew he wouldn’t sleep. Not properly. Not in the open like this, not sheltered by only three and a half walls. He needed steel to feel safe; the sounds of creaking metal and the swaying of the wind. Tomorrow, she promised herself. She’d get him back there by tomorrow.
“I’ll keep watch.” He shifted, rolled onto his side to keep a better eye on the opening of the shack and Savannah curled against his chest, nestled into that intoxicating warmth. Rested her head against his arm, like they had at when they’d first lain down. “Somebody’s got to make sure we don’t get any new scars.”