Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 48: Emotions, Dreams

"Emotions, dreams, Danse. That's life... You are alive."

If only his emotions weren't killing him. If only his dreams weren't killing him.

Danse watched over her as she slept. Across the bunker, on the opposite wall and through the shroud of darkness, Kelly lay serenely in her slumber. Her dark hair fell past her jawline to drape features that were clad in scarred but dewy, healthy skin. Intense, hardened, but emotive eyes were resting off-duty behind calm, closed lids that were underlined by full, black lashes. Luscious lips, marred only by a small, singular scar that slit up from her upper lip line, were slightly parted to free soft breaths. She was beautiful to watch.

Admittedly, Danse could find respite in watching her sleep for hours while he himself could not. Sleep was as rare for her as it was for him, and so watching her in the midst of that elusive paradise gave him an inkling of it, if only to taste it.

He was caught in the limbo of wanting nothing more than to sleep, yet finding himself irritatingly unable to grasp it and lock it down. He just wanted to take that blank exodus from himself, if only for a moment.

Danse also knew that part of him didn't even want to sleep. Yes, it was blissful to escape from the dreary agony of simply existing, but the escape was only momentary. He knew where that escape would take him. Back into the super mutant hive. Back into the ambush. Back to Cutler.

A flash of gore, rotting flesh and decay. The stink. The stain. The memories like grating nails down a chalkboard. The snap of combat. Chaos. Where is Cutler? Am I shooting Cutler? Was that him? So many faces, so many voices, all the same, all with lasers and plasma in their brains. Cutler? Cutler!

His pulse mounted from a trot to a canter at the mere thought of that memory, threatening to pickup into a gallop. Time and relentless occurrences had trained him to snuff out the panic-reflex of such fleeting recollections, and he focused on his breathing while shifting his thoughts.

He trailed his eyes over the curvature of Kelly's form beneath her sleeping bag, from the rise of those soft, wondrous breasts, down to the narrow dip of her waist, then sliding up again to the arch of her hips. Perhaps this wasn't the most ideal place to shift his thoughts... Yet no matter how he tried to smother the taboo-thought of slipping off her covers to reveal what lay inside, to touch and explore her body to find what pleased her most and exploit it, he couldn't stop himself. That night on the Prydwen had awoken something in him. She had awoken something in him. Something so base and primal he had thought it was beneath him and his honor.

She had unravelled the bonds of a dormant creature in him, a creature that yearned for the rich depth of intimacy, a raw, carnal desire that filled his blood with heat he never knew could burn so hot. But not just any desire. Desire only for her. To wrap her in his hold, cherish the very atmosphere of her, and absorb every detail of her, and to ravish her and drown her in pleasure, to take her to where she lost grip of her sanity in that timeless burst of rapture, and to lose himself in her. He had suppressed it for so long. Too long. Though, he didn't wholly understand the nature of it. This was all so new to him. It grew from an ephemeral spark and then roared hotter and brighter until he quelled it with reality.

Synth. Machine. Riddled with glitches, representing the atrocity of creation, symbolizing the fall of humankind. Kelly deserved better. She deserved a man. A great man.

A man like Arthur...

The thought had snuck up on him from nowhere. Kelly and Arthur. Something was transparently brewing between them, though whether or not it was mutual remained to be seen. Arthur had barely spared the time for women throughout his life, always too preoccupied with his work-much like himself. Danse had never seen Arthur mingle. It would have been unbecoming of him, in his position. Did he want Kelly? Did Kelly want him? More pressing, could Danse bear the reality of them coupling?