Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 31: Birds Of A Feather

Showering once proved inadequate to rid him of the stink and stain that clung to his skin, so he risked overusing his weekly allocated shower-time for another round. Danse pressed both hands against the cubical wall and leaned his weight in as he let the water beat down on him, staring at the oily blood it washed away. Watching it swirl the drain was numbingly simple, almost therapeutic. He sighed. So much had occurred in one day that his mind was lagging in processing it all.

Kelly.

He had taken great pains in steeling himself against the inevitability of seeing her again, even after deploying from the vertibird over the quarry in order to save her life from those specimens, he had avoided clashing eyes with her face.

But in the end, it had been futile. As he had known all along.

Her face. It had been like the sun to his gloom. And her eyes, those sapphires, radiant stars to split his mantle asunder. It was as if he hadn't seen her in years.

Damn it all. No matter how he kept himself occupied, he couldn't get her out of his head. Couldn't stop thinking of the way she had slipped her small, warm hand up the back of his neck while the world fell down around them. The way she had looked into his eyes, a deep need there that had thundered into his heart. What he had nearly done next still haunted him now. He had meant to kiss her. Harper. His former charge and subordinate soldier. It was wrong on so many levels, an indecorous offense to his code... Yet she had been so close, so bold yet vulnerable, with that look in her eyes, and those lips...

Danse shuddered with the abrupt spike of arousal in his being. Then came the subsequent flare of guilt and disgust with himself. He felt dirty, impure. He couldn't be thinking of her in that way. Just what the hell was happening to him? He had never felt this way about a woman before, never felt so powerless, not even when those dreams wreaked havoc in the nights.

He remembered the running water and promptly switched off the flow, reaching a hand up to slick back his hair from dripping thick globules of water down his face. That headache was acquainting itself with his brain again, right at the base of his skull, a dull throbbing that was so familiar it was almost comforting.

Almost.

It seemed to come on whenever he so much as thought of his dreams and nightmares. It was more prevalent upon waking from them, however. It was as if his brain was not adapted to dreaming, like the very notion was a design flaw on nature's part, and his brain had evolved to dream of it's own accord and the headaches were growing pains.

He shook his head and reached for a towel. Now, that was a foolish sentiment. And very hypochondriacal. There was nothing wrong with his brain. It was just stress. That was all. He was just stressed. Battle fatigue, his ass.

Unguarded, his mind wandered on to Kelly again while he dried himself off. He remembered the feel of her hands on his face, after he had knocked back that raider suicider and nearly cooked himself from the fallout in the process. Everything had been pain, the ringing, squealing in his ears from the blast, the aching in his muscles after the shockwave had shunted him down to his knees, the acute stabbing of his headache... and then there she was, holding him steady, bringing him back to life. Her emotion had stunned him. He had been impaired many times in battle, and she had nearly always been there to stab him with Stimpaks and haul him back to his feet, but she had never been so... intimate before.

What did that mean? Was it more than just attraction toward him for her, too? He wasn't completely dense, contrary to popular banter both aboard the Prydwen and in Sanctuary. Harper wasn't as discreet with her nuances as she might think she was, and then there had been all the instances of blatant flirting on her part; she had always been a brazen woman. There was nothing wrong with a little bit of an attraction for a colleague, but as her superior officer, it was his job, his duty, to refrain from encouraging her and to keep their interactions strictly professional.