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Time has not been kind to either of them this month, himself and Church both. There's so much to do, so many check-ins and meetings and miscellaneous brahminshit that keeps piling on higher and higher. Air support has been minimised and transport cut to the minimum, and spooling out the miles across the western front of the Commonwealth on foot only culminated in a mean spirited argument that lasted all the way to Sanctuary’s front gate.
Danse knows he's tired. He's overdue for proper downtime, irritable and tense, and he can't help but rise to the bait that everyone sets out for him including, he suspects, Church. Even now he's on edge, keyed up and spoiling for a fight he doesn't really want to have, wearing out the kitchen tiles as he paces the room.
He should go, he tells himself. Get out of Church’s house, go drink himself loose and make stilted conversation with the locals. He should go recruit. He should jerk off in the latrines and have an early night in the chilly trader’s dormitory.
“Sit,” says Church. He doesn’t look up from his paperback, and that more than anything else makes the metallic tang of irritation flood Danse's mouth and set his fists itching. “Get the cushion,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. He presses his fingertip to his tongue, wets it enough to turn the page.
There’s a worn cushion tucked behind the arm of the couch, out of sight enough that Church’s infrequent visitors won’t comment on it. Danse sits on it a lot. It's his, as much as anything in Church’s house could be considered his. The toothbrush in the bathroom. The pink towel Codsworth launders to scratchy stiffness. His cushion with golden sprigs of embroidered ivy, faded by time to a muted dusty square and restuffed with corn husk and brahmin hair. Church said that it used to be bright purple and filled with cheap foam; some hideous object of high design that a neighbour gifted him when he was a late blooming newlywed with no furniture to offer his groom.
Times change though, he said, the first time he made Danse kneel on it. No use in being sentimental when things need a new use.
It's… it's stupid, really. It's just a prop, but that hasn't stopped him from infusing the hideous old cushion with his own foolish romanticism. Sometimes it's just a place to sit that isn't a worn couch with springs that loudly advertise his every movement. Sometimes he uses it to sit at Church’s knee, content to get an inattentive scratch at his neck while he listens to old sports holotapes about the feats of players long dead. Sometimes it's just a place to sit and stretch and ease out the knots made by the miles in armour long overdue for a service and tune, and nothing more than that.
It's a lot of things, some of them he's still not sure how to feel about.
He drags the coffee table away from the middle of the rug, and tosses the cushion down with a touch of theatrics.
Church doesn’t even raise an eyebrow.
Danse takes a seat, legs crossed, and tries to empty his mind. He sits upright, spine straight, hands on his knees, and watches the trees from beyond the kitchen window.
There are a few yellowed leaves amongst the leaves, a sign that fall is on its way. Then, inevitably, his thoughts turn to his deployment. How long he'll remain in the Commonwealth. When he'll be sent back to the Citadel, or Adams, or if his request to join the next caucus with the Chicago chapter will finally be honoured. If he'll stay in the Commonwealth through the winter.
His back begins to ache.
“I can hear you thinking from here,” says Church after a while, mild as milk.
“Responsibilities don't stop just because you want them to,” he says sharply. He regrets the words the moment they fall from his lips, tart and tin. If anyone he knows could appreciate the heavy weight of responsibility and obligation it's the fella sitting just out of his eyeline.
“I apologise,” he says stiffly. “That outburst was uncalled for.”
Danse wants to turn around and gauge Church's expression - the knit of his brow, the tight set of his jaw, tiny little details that Danse is slowly learning to read - but somehow that feels like he'd be admitting defeat and giving in too quickly. He keeps staring out the kitchen window, watching the breeze in the trees.
“Horseshit,” says Church. He gets up from the sofa with a grunt and tosses his paperback to the side table with a flutter of fragile paper. “Christ, you're in a mood. Put your hands on your knees. Palms up.”
There's a bowl of fruit on the bench, stacked with big plump mutfruit left to ripen until they were juicy and sweet and on the edge of turning rotten. Church eats them like that by the handful, much to Danse's disgust.
Church takes his time to choose two pieces of fruit, setting them in of Danse's palms. “Hold these,” he says. “Get comfortable.” He steps around him, picks up the little yellow alarm clock that sits on the kitchen bench, and puts it next to the fruit bowl.
Danse looks at the fruit to Church and back again. “I'm not hungry,” he says.
“Didn't ask if you were hungry,” he says. “I asked you to hold them. Don't break the skin, don't drop them.”
The mutfruit is soft and fragile, the skin close to splitting. If he closes his fingers they'll break and burst. If he relaxes his wrists, he'll drop them to the floor. He cups his palms just enough to hold them.
“This is a test,” Danse says finally.
Church mhmms in agreement, taking up his spot on the sofa again. There's the rustle of old cardboard, the flick-flick-flick of his lighter failing to spark.
“What happens if I break them?”
He senses, rather than sees, the shrug this earns him. “Then they're broken.”
It's Danse's turn to go mmhmm, already looking for the catch. “And there's no… punishment involved?” He tries not to colour his words with too much hope.
Church snorts. “Failure is its own punishment, Paladin.”
Oh. Okay. He feels stupid. “And I should hold these for how lo--?”
“Danse. Christ. Just hold the damn things until you can’t.” He picks up his paperback and swings his legs onto the sofa, favouring his left knee, and sighs low and slow when he gets comfortable.
Just gone four, Danse notes, looking at the alarm clock. The sun outside is starting to turn yellow and syrupy, casting long shadows against the yard outside.
He rolls his neck and squares his shoulders, and feels the soft flesh of the fruit in his palms like two heavy weights.
Time passes. The shadows grow longer.
His wrists ache like fire, twisted out just enough that the joints strain. If he turns them inwards to ease the ache then the fruit will tumble into his lap or his fingers will pierce the peel. If he relaxes then the fruit rolls in his palm, tips off balance, threatening to split and stain his skin with purple juice, sticky and sweet.
There’s no real reason to do this, he knows. There’s no reward at the end. There’s no punishment either, a reward in itself whether it occurs or not. There’s just the burn in his wrists and the desire to prove himself because…
...because. Because, because.
He focuses on the ache. This, at least, he knows how to handle. Trained to withstand cold and heat, locked in an unpowered suit with no conditioned air and no exhaust in the middle of the Citadel courtyard under the July sun until his superiors signed him off as ready for heavy cavalry. Learning to power through conditioning training to the point of breakdown, knowing when to seize his second wind and knowing when he’s edged close to the point of pissing out his own broken muscles, watching other soldiers blow past that limit and pay for it dearly.
This is just a small ache. It’s nothing. This is him holding overripe fruit because his… his compatriot, his subordinate asked him to. Ordered him to.
That last thought sends a slow roll of heat through his gut, an illicit little twist that makes him set his jaw and stare out the window.
Long breaths, deep to the bottom of his lungs, a small hurt in itself. Absorb the ache, shape it, accept the needle-sharp silver bite that’s spiking up through his forearms, turn it into something that he can master. Danse files the pain off in his mind, knocks off the sharp edges. He makes the ache round and grey and compact, a stone tumbled along a riverbed.
Danse rides each breath, in and out, again and again, until there's nothing left in his mind more complicated than the stone and the river, the weight of the fruit in his palms a heavy anchor against his knees.
He drifts, and doesn't think about his work.
It takes time to come back to the world. His eyes feel gritty and dry, and he blinks rapidly, shaking his head to clear the fog in his mind.
The light outside the window is watery and thin. Dark clouds have rolled over, sapping the trees outside of their brightness. The clock reads quarter to five.
Church is in the kitchen, sawing off a piece of bread from a dark grainy loaf of local sourdough. Linda, Danse thinks fuzzily. Linda bakes the bread, three doors down.
He spreads his slice with salt butter and tarberry jam layered thick enough to leave teeth marks behind, and licks the flat of the butter knife clean before tossing it into the sink.
“That's a bad habit,” says Danse, his voice scratchy, like he's just woken up from a deep sleep. “Licking a knife. You'll cut your tongue.”
“Good,” says Church, putting the loaf back into the bread bin. “Then I won't have to make conversation.”
He leans against the counter and takes a bite, teeth flashing white as he chews through the thick crust. Danse gets the impression that he's sizing him up, reading him, making a note of every little detail for further analysis.
He feels ok with that. He's not sure he should feel ok with that. He's too tired to care.
“You want a hand up?”
It takes a while for the question to percolate through the mist in Danse’s mind, making every thought as slow as syrup. “No,” he says. Not right now. Maybe not ever.
Church nods at that, seemingly satisfied. He eats the last of his slice of bread and licks his fingers clean.
“Do you want me to take the mutfruit?”
Danse looks down at his hands dumbly. He'd forgotten about the heavy fruit, sort of. The skins are intact, his hands dry and not kissed by the sticky purple juice that stains everything it touches. Church takes the fruit anyway, gently placing them back into the bowl. They'll be eaten by tonight.
He wants to stay down here, Danse realises. His headache has receded. His wrists hurt, sure, but everything else feels heavy and honeyed, golden and warm.
It's pleasant. He hasn't had reason to think of anything being pleasant in a long, long time.
Church looks at him thoughtfully, fingers tapping at the scar on his chin. Danse pages back through his memory. A snapped wire, he remembers. A trap at neck height, laid down by rebels sabotaging an energy plant. It broke under tension, whipping his face and slicing his chin to the bone.
He told him about it months ago. It's one of the few things Church has said to Danse about his time from before. The war before the war, far from the front lines, fought piece by piece in tar sands and suburban streets against everyone but soldiers.
The more things change, he thinks.
“Stay there,” Church says eventually. He digs through a kitchen drawer, rattling through pencils and tape measures and everything else Danse has seen him pull from his pockets and drop in the third drawer down with the justification that loose buttons and old spark plugs might be useful some day.
He finally finds what he's looking for. A cut down yardstick, two inches wide, no longer than his forearm. Church pats it across his palm a few times.
“Paladin,” he says quietly. “Would you like me to use this on you?”
He nods, distrustful of his mouth to say yes, yes please without tripping over the words in his eagerness, unsure if he can form the right sounds through the pleasant fade in his mind and the unspooling heat in his belly.
“Right,” says Church. He stops at Danse's side, scratches him behind his ear and rubs his thumb along his cheekbone. Danse turns into his palm, breathes in the scent of old cigarettes and dusty yellowed paperback pages that cling to his skin.
“When you're ready,” he says, sounding for all the world like he's talking to someone else, anyone else but Danse. “I want you to--”
“I know,” says Danse quickly, taking a gamble on cutting him off. If Church actually voices the bland mechanics involved, dropping his drawers and arranging himself over Church's knees, then his courage is going to flee and he's never going to get up.
The huff of laughter Church breathes out is both unexpected and welcome, and reassuringly normal. For their given shared value of normal, anyway.
“Take your time,” he says, carding his nails through Danse’s hair.
Danse stares out the window and listens to the sounds of the worn coffee table being dragged behind his back, and muffled cussing when the rag rug caught and tore. Church getting settled back on the sofa. Cushion springs creaking, a lighter snapping shut. All reassuringly normal.
He watches the last of the watery afternoon light play on the leaves outside, and waits the scent of tobacco smoke to fade in the living room.
The alarm clock reads twenty past five. Danse's knees protest when he gets to his feet, and he looks anywhere but at Church's expression when he stands on one foot then the other, peeling off his socks and shoving his jeans down without any fanfare. He keeps his shirt on, the hem hanging not quite low enough to hide his soft cock.
Laying over his lap is awkward, his own bulk oversized against Church’s leaner frame. He almost gets up when he accidentally elbows Church in the gut, ready to write this off as a misstep - a wish too far, something better held as a fantasy instead of the awkward maneuvering of reality - but Church moves him into place with a hand on his shoulder and a hand on his hip.
“Fold your arms, head down.”
Church smooths his palm over the thin cotton of his shirt, mapping the bunch and rise of Danse’s muscles, down the curve of his flank, pushing up the hem of his shirt to knuckle at the dip of his spine. He strokes him from neck to ass in long passes of his fingertips. It doesn't skip Danse’s notice that it's almost - almost - the same way he absentmindedly pets Dogmeat when the hound sleeps cosy at Church's feet under the bench in his garage.
That, inexplicably, does more to soothe Danse's nerves than any words. He turns the thought over in his mind, samples the taste and shape of it, and feels the heat crawling up his neck before he can help it.
If Church notices the colour staining Danse's cheeks or the swell of his dick against his thigh, he declines to comment. He isn't sure if he even wants him to notice on it, or take it as a hint, or put it away on his mental file to be dissected later. All of the above would be better and worse, in equal amounts. He turns his head and breathes hard into the fold of his arms, willing himself into what semblance of dignity he can muster while bare assed over his subordinate’s lap, ready to have his skin reddened in whatever way Church deigns to give.
Time passes, and eventually he realises that Church is waiting for him. For once he's not radiating pure impatience. If it was anyone else he'd say that he's relaxed, but this is… calm. Neutral. It's almost peaceful.
“When you're ready, Knight,” he says, and grins into the crook of his elbow when Church mumbles something unkind under his breath.
Danse braces for a solid hit - he's done this before, he’s intimately familiar with the heavy bite of something striking hard against his ass - but, surprisingly, Church settles for a firm pat, rhythmic and steady.
“You can hit harder,” says Danse, a touch unnecessarily. He blinks, tries to get up on his elbow to earnestly make his case. “I want--”
“Quiet,” says Church. His free hand pushes firm between his shoulderblades, a steady anchor pressing him down.
Except that's the thing, isn't it? Here, behind closed doors, he'd stay down regardless. Down over Church's thighs, down on the cushion, down on the floor. It felt good to just… stay down. Nothing more needed of him, or expected of him, than to do what he wanted to do, and willingly at that.
The ruler continues against his skin, no stronger than the irritable drum of Church’s fingertips that Danse is so familiar with. There's nothing for him to do but close his eyes and rest his cheek on his folded arms. The river stone comes unbidden to the front of his mind, rolling and rounded, meditative and peaceful.
Slowly, surely, the cut down yardstick coaxes out a new sensation on his ass and thighs. No harder, no faster, but the blood rushing to his skin gives it a fulsome frisson of heat that inches across his skin. He sinks into his mind, sinks into the river.
He's nearly asleep, loose limbed and heavy, when Church stops and drops the ruler and grasps Danse's ass with his hand. Fingertips to palm to thumb, stretched wide, covering as much of his flushed cheeks as possible with skin against skin. He squeezes, and squeezes hard.
Danse's skin catches fire. It hurts, really hurts, all that gradual layering of contact blooming forth like a spark in dry grass. His nerves sing high and tight and taut, and his hips snap in the air as he lets out a ragged gasp that catches in the back of his throat.
“Good,” says Church. His voice sounds deeper, coarser. “Very good.”
Danse runs hot at that, swallowing hard in case he opens his mouth and blurts out all the things that are bubbling in his brain. More, and harder, yes, but good and thank you as well. Church's dick is firm against his side.
“Again,” says Church. A question yet not a question. The ruler touches the back of his thighs, held so the thinnest edge taps against his skin. “Danse. Again?”
“Please,” says Danse, said quick enough that his tongue trips over the word. “Yes, please.”
The fine edge of the ruler taps on his flushed skin. No harder, no faster, but it leaves a suggestion of a bite that lingers, building up with every pass. Layer upon layer edging into acute discomfort until the ruler is gone and Church’s fingers are digging into the meat of his cheek, pushing the red heat deeper into his muscles until the bite and the burn shine like a deep burnished gold, filling him from the inside.
Danse rolls his neck and arches his spine as the river flows over him, around him, sweeps him along in dark cool water. He floats, steered to the shore by Church's hand on his back, the gentle scratch of his fingertips against the stubble on his chin.
“C’mon,” he says after a while. “Be a good dog and sit up.”
He arranges Danse over his thighs, knees wide, his reddened ass snug to the stiff canvas of Church’s pants. The fabric scrapes his skin with every slight movement, and Church’s arm around his midsection keeps him in place, his hand under his shirt and firm to his stomach.
Church jerks him off slow and loose. He holds himself still, mindful of his weight and his size, ‘til Church says will you relax, jesus christ, and tugs him back against him, pressed together from neck to knee. His head lolls back into the curve of Church's neck and Danse blindly mouths at his jaw, at his ear, breathless and flushed. Every time he murmurs that he's being so good it makes the heat in Danse's gut twist hotter, makes the heat on his cheeks burn sweeter.
When he comes it's easy as breathing, his orgasm rolling out like a ripple on the river as thick rivulets of cum paint Church’s fingers, smearing down his dick. Church takes it easy on him, makes a pleased noise in the back of his throat as he wipes his hand clean on Danse's shirt and admires the sight of him, boneless and spaced out with the crisp curls of hair nestled around his cock pearled with semen.
“Leah forward,” he says. “Feet flat by mine, hands on the table. Keep your back straight.”
It's an awkward position. Folded in half at the waist, he stretches forward until he can grip the edge of the worn coffee table. The chipped formica is low enough that his diaphragm feels like it's on the edge of crushing, his breathing laboured. His soft dick hangs between Church's thighs. Between the cool air drying his cum and his ass on display unhindered for Church's observation, Danse feels like he's on the very knife edge between fragile vulnerability and an increasingly unshakable, dizzying faith in his readiness to do whatever is asked of him here in this room. He is the stone and the river, both.
Church unbuckles his belt, unzips his pants. He holds up one palm, and says yeah, that's it when Danse cranes sideways, eager to wet it with his mouth. The head of his cock is blunt and warm against Danse's hole, and it doesn't take long for him to jerk off to completion, painting his ass with stripes of semen that cool on his flushed skin.
Danse stays like that for a long time, content to be still and unthinking as his chest labours to draw breath, until Church pats at his hip and says what a good dog with something almost bordering on vague affection.
Church cleans up him up. He roughly wipes him down with a damp towel and helps him into his jeans when he's tidy enough to be presentable, and tolerates Danse’s arm across his shoulders for balance when he gets up from the sofa all lightheaded and limp.
He feeds Danse a slice of bread and leaves a beer by his elbow, and fixes himself a cup of coffee. Church looks tired, the overhead light catching every line under his eyes and the frown worn between his brows.
“For future reference, you can hit me harder,” says Danse eventually, judging that the best way to broach this line of conversation was to kick the metaphorical door down. “I wouldn't find it intolerable.”
Church snorts into his coffee cup at that magnanimous declaration. “If you say so.”
“I'm serious.” Danse pauses, trying to find the right words. That he was big enough. That he was conditioned enough. That he'd endured more before and enjoyed it greatly, and would very much like to experience any tender mercies that Church might extend in that regard. “I would… I would like it.”
“I wouldn't.” Church puts his mug down and stares at Danse over the top of his glasses. “That's not me. No whips, no props.”
“But--”
“I like control, Paladin.” He waits for Danse to say something or nod in agreement, and makes a noise that speaks of great inconvenience when it's clear that he's going to have to explain further. “Christ, okay. I could lash you down with a rope and you can thrash all you want, but the rope keeps you there, right.”
Danse nods cautiously.
“Or I could ask you to hold yourself in place, no binding. The only thing that keeps you there is your self control, under my control. That's it.” He shrugs noncommittally, more interested in the curdles of unskimmed cream scumming the surface of his coffee than continuing this line of thought.
If Danse knew him just a little better, or if he knew him at all beyond a few old service records and a hundred miles of silence, he might be able to discern whether that was the faintest hint of self-consciousness set into the line of his shoulders.
Ah. Suddenly a whole lot became crystal clear.
The first time he'd… he’d fraternised with Church - when he'd come up with the clumsiest of reasons for blowing his subordinate, forever staining the knees of his uniform with an incriminating mark of mud and grass - he'd willingly let Church hold him and guide him and use his mouth. He'd struggled with physically holding his body in a position that tested his strength while Church jerked him off, but he'd done it because Church wanted him to, and because he wanted to demonstrate his capabilities in return.
And god, so many other times. The afternoon where he'd been indulged with being allowed to watch Church and his boyfriend fuck close enough that he could smell their sweat and breathe in their unhurried intimacy, except the condition was that he stay seated with his zipper untouched and he'd done it, because Church asked him to do it.
No whips, no props. Just the binding weight of expectation, as heavy as any rope. He enjoyed it. He wanted it. He wanted the… the…
Danse couldn't find the right words in his own head, let alone be able to articulate them. He wanted the order. He wanted the rigidity of expectation that wasn't his own. He has no idea how to say it.
Church sips his coffee and stares past Danse's shoulder. “It won't bruise,” he says, changing the subject. “You're not going to have a mark.”
“I wouldn't be upset if there was,” says Danse. Church looks singularly discomfited by the idea, an unmasked fleeting expression that shines out like a beacon in the night, a brightly lit warning to avoid, avoid, avoid.
Danse wisely lets the subject drop, and turns his attention to finishing his bread. An hour ago and he would've needled Church into a roaring argument about the merits of tanning his hide raw. Maybe he was getting sentimental. Maybe a few swats on the ass was really all he needed to be steered into calmer waters.
“I should go,” he says, and surprises himself by not feeling offended by the fact that Church looks relieved to hear it. He dusts his hands free of crumbs. “I’ll be joining a recovery team south of here tomorrow morning. You’ll be pleased to hear that you aren't required to attend.”
“Good,” says Church. “Got too much stuff to do here.”
“You and Sturges,” says Danse, and grins when Church pointedly ignores him in favour of patting for the cigarette packet in his shirt pocket. He gets off the uncomfortable bar seat, stretches out his shoulders. His knees still feel like they might buckle, and his ass feels pleasantly tender.
“Change your shirt,” says Church around his cigarette, nodding at the filmy smear down Danse's stomach that's beginning to dry and flake. “Or don't. You should put in for some leave.”
“I'll take your uniform assessment under advisement, Knight,” says Danse, avoiding the thorny subject of his overwork altogether. There's no point in arguing with his subordinate about why relaxation and downtime is unfeasible right now, and from the slight arch of Church’s brow he knows it as well.
Danse makes to brush the mess of dried cum off his shirt but thinks better of it, and presses his fist to his chest in a smart salute instead. He’ll take the scant dignity of cleaning up when he gets outside, away from the knowing look Church is giving him from behind a plume of fat lopsided smoke rings. He takes the beer for safekeeping. “I'll be in the bunkhouse if you require me this evening.”
“Right, right,” says Church, and salutes him back, the motion made sloppy by the lighter in his fist. He nods approvingly when Danse stops put the old ratty cushion away with more care than it deserved, and straightens the coffee table for good measure.
“Semper invicta, Knight Church,” says Danse, already halfway out the door. Dogmeat immediately noses between his boots, eager to break the rules and get into the house.
“Take a break, Paladin,” says Church, and claps for Dogmeat to get out. “Book some leave.”
It's Danse's turn to dismissively say right, right, and he closes the door with Dogmeat still inside. He brushes the worst of the mess on his shirt all over Church’s doorstep. It’ll keep, same as Church. The bunkhouse is only a few houses away, and he drinks his beer as he walks, his ass still pleasantly warm.
It's not proper leave - real time off might not happen for months, not with this deployment, and the oncoming winter, and the Chicago caucus on his mind - but at least there are moments of quiet rest and no responsibility that he can snatch now and then. There is always the stone and the river, and a faded cushion embroidered with sprigs of golden ivy.