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The cat has found the most comfortable spot in the house.
Danse is wearing the long johns he likes to wear to bed, which are thin and snug enough to be a good compromise between Danse's discomfort with nudity and Michael's desire to feast his eyes on Danse's absolutely magnificent body. He'd prefer to see skin, but the long johns do as little as possible to disguise Danse's form, including the hollow where the small of Danse's back meets the upward slope of his buttocks, as he lies face down on the bed, his head pillowed on his arm. Apparently that hollow is designed not only for maximum aesthetic appeal (Michael has a newfound respect for the work of the Robotics Department, since taking up with Danse), but for maximum feline comfort. The cat is reclining against Danse's gluteal swell, her paw over her nose, her tail wrapped snugly around her, her eyes shut tight.
Danse's eyes are shut, too, but Michael can't tell if he's asleep. He stays so quiet and still, either way; sometimes Michael only knows he's drifted off because he whimpers faintly.
He could say, "Are you still awake?" or just try to stop reading and see if Danse reacts, but he worries Danse wouldn't, either way. Danse is so hesitant to be a burden, seems to feel that if anything brings him real pleasure, it must be a correspondingly great bother to the person providing the pleasure.
It isn't. Michael loves reading aloud to Danse, when it's just the two of them. He'd be self-conscious with anyone else-- he never volunteers to be the one to read when the family sits in the library, the air warm and cozy with so many synths together, their mother flushed pink with their ambient heat, and he listens to his brothers and sisters' voices become the voices of panthers and cobras, badgers and toads, dalmations and Sand-fairies and spiders and Lilliputians and the North Wind.
Not with Danse, though. He isn't self-conscious with Danse, who lies still and watches him with those clear, deep, lovely eyes as he reads, until his eyes drift shut and he falls away from Michael, into rest, and dreams. Danse says having Michael's voice there, steady and clear and gentle, helps him relax enough to sleep.
He hasn't ever quite said it, but he gasps, sometimes, when he wakes, and looks around frantically, and-- Michael prefers to be here when he wakes up, too. It's no hardship to guard the perimeter of Danse's sleep.
He reads, "She was struck, quite struck, when, on returning from her walk and going into the East room again, the first thing which caught her eye was a fire lighted and burning. A fire! it seemed too much; just at that time to be giving her such an indulgence was exciting even painful gratitude."
If Danse were awake and listening, Michael thinks he'd react to that. A smile, a murmur. But Danse doesn't stir. He must be asleep.
Michael put his dried leaf in to mark his place, and picks up A Passage to India. It's the next one he intends to read to Danse, once they finish Mansfield Park. He hasn't finished it yet, so he may change his mind, if there isn't a happy ending. But there's a part, near the beginning, where a young man becomes angry with a woman for-- desecrating, disrespecting-- the place where he worships, by not taking off her shoes there. It turns out that, in fact, she has taken her shoes off, before entering, and he has simply assumed the contrary. He apologizes. He says, "So few ladies take the trouble, especially if thinking no one is there to see," and she says, "That makes no difference. God is here." The young man cries, "Madam! Oh, can I do you some service now or at any time?"
Michael thinks Danse will like that.
.
He's reading about an unsuccessful bridge party when the cat suddenly leaps up from her perch and races off into the shadows, possibly clawing Danse in her hurry, since Danse jerks, gasps, and blinks awake. Michael puts out a hand and runs it over Danse's hair, and Danse breathes in, and relaxes.
(He doesn't always awaken not knowing where he is, but when he's startled awake, it's never good.)
"The cat..." he says, plaintively, craning his neck to the spot she's vacated. She's improved Michael's view, but at the expense of distressing Danse, it isn't worth it.
"Did she hurt you?" Michael asks. Their mother says there's no way to teach a cat courtesy and consideration, but if she's scratched Danse, he's going to clip the sharp points off her nails, her prowess as a mighty hunter be damned.
Danse shakes his head. He looks wistful.
It isn't a cold night, but Michael drags the afghan Emily crocheted them from the foot of the bed. She used strips of old, worn-out T-shirts, so it's soft and surprisingly heavy, and Danse likes to be underneath it. Maybe it will compensate for the loss of the cat's weight and warmth.
He spreads it over Danse's back and legs, and then up over his equally magnificently sculpted arms and shoulders, and Danse looks up at him as if such an indulgence was exciting even painful gratitude. Michael smiles at him.
"I can't move," says Danse.
It doesn't sound like a complaint, so Michael says, "Good."
Danse's eyes widen a bit, and he smiles, and shifts under the blanket, almost as if he's struggling in vain against the restriction. But if he really wanted to throw off the blanket, he certainly could.
It gives Michael an idea. He isn't absolutely positive it's a good idea, but he'll be careful. He won't give Danse reason to distrust him, not seriously, not ever. But nothing venture, nothing have.
He slides the afghan up off Danse's thighs, and his bottom, pooling the excess in the curve where the cat was resting. Now his top half is covered to the neck, his arms pinned to his sides at least nominally by the weight of the blanket, and his legs in their long johns are exposed again, so Michael can see them. His feet, of course, are bare. Michael starts there.
Danse sighs softly as Michael begins to massage his feet, one and then the other. He used to say things like "you don't have to," until, one day, Michael cupped his jaw with a firm though gentle hand (Danse's eyes widening, his breathing quickening) and told him it was, frankly, disrespectful of him to imply that Michael thought he had to do anything he didn't wish to do, for Danse. He hasn't said anything like that since, and he doesn't now, as Michael gives him a thorough foot massage, and then slides the thin, worn cotton of his long johns up towards his knees, to massage and caress his darkly furred calves.
He takes his time, because next is the tricky part, the part he'll have to do slowly, and very attentively. Danse can say no, of course, can say stop or Michael or please, to bring him to a halt, but that doesn't absolve Michael of the responsibility of reading subtler signs of distress or unease.
He puts his hand on Danse's upper thigh, cupping the hard muscle there, below his buttock, and squeezes lightly. Danse sighs, and thrusts up a little, into his hand; Michael squeezes again, kneads the muscle through the cloth, and Danse squirms, pushing back. This is encouraging.
Michael puts his hands on the buttocks themselves now, fills both hands with them, and Danse moans out loud, and then gasps as Michael slides his fingers up under the waistband of his long johns, and begins to ease them off.
Danse is breathing hard as he lifts his hips enough to let Michael pull down his pants, and the fabric snags on something Michael thinks is probably an erection. He doesn't address it directly, just adjusts the cloth a bit so that it slides free, and then pulls the pants the rest of the way off. He folds them carefully, sets them down on the bed.
Then-- with some reluctance, given the glorious sight he's just unveiled-- he slides the blanket from the small of Danse's back, down over his naked buttocks and thighs, and tucks it in around his legs before slipping the top half of it down off his shoulders and upper back. Pooling it in the same spot as before.
He pulls at Danse's shirt, and Danse lifts up to let him slide it off, bit by bit. Slips his arms free of the sleeves, pulls the neckline up over his head. He folds the shirt, too.
"Michael," says Danse, voice quivering, and Michael says, "I'm being careful with your clothes, dear heart. See, they're right here. They're yours."
(He made the mistake, once before, of tossing Danse's clothes aside carelessly, which made Danse feel-- they finally determined, after Danse could speak coherently again-- as if they weren't his any more, had been stripped from him and cast aside because he didn't deserve them.)
He runs a hand over Danse's gorgeous back, then two hands, then rubs, gently.
"Talk to me," says Danse quietly. "Please."
"You're perfect," says Michael. "Magnificent. Thank you for letting me touch you. Look at you and touch you."
Danse breathes out a little laugh.
"Does it feel good?" Michael asks, massaging.
"Yes," says Danse.
Michael thinks his voice, as well as his touch, are keeping Danse happy and calm, so he keeps talking as well as touching, asking questions so he can hear Danse's voice, too, in case a note of distress creeps in. He might catch that even if he missed the body language.
"Do you trust me?"
"Yes," says Danse. His eyes have fallen shut.
"Do you know I want to take care of you?"
"Yes," says Danse, sounding peaceful, as if he's speaking from a dream. A good dream.
"And protect you?"
"Yes."
"Do you know why?"
He expects because you care about me or, maybe, if Danse is feeling confident, because you love me.
Danse says, "Because I'm dear to you."
"Yes," says Michael, feeling an abrupt surge of emotion at the words-- it's his word, dear, and it makes him want to hear from Danse-- "Who am I?"
"Michael," Danse murmurs.
Michael smiles. "Who are you?"
Danse's answer is unexpected again, takes Michael aback: "M7-97."
He keeps rubbing. He doesn't want to make Danse feel as if he's gotten something wrong. It's Danse who startles, as if awakening from a trance, opens his eyes, and says, sounding slightly panic-stricken, "Danse. Saul Danse."
"It's all right," says Michael, hands gentle on Danse's skin, soothing the rippling, quivering muscle underneath. "Both are true. Danse, and M7-97."
Danse smiles with his eyes closed.
Michael slides the blanket back up over Danse's shoulders, tucking it in around his arms, pinning them to his sides, and then, gently and carefully, pulls the rest of it back off his legs, and his magnificent bottom. Danse doesn't open his eyes.
He runs a hand over Danse's naked thigh, thumbs the soft, sweet crease where it meets the buttock. Danse makes a sound.
"Should I stop?" Michael asks.
"No--" Danse catches his breath.
"You want me to keep touching you?"
Danse pushes up into Michael's hand.
"Yes?"
"Yes please," says Danse, "please, sir, X9-21--"
Please, sir, X9-21--
"Michael?"
Michael. He's Michael. Michael Bowman.
Danse is peering over his shoulder, looking anxious, since Michael just pulled his hand away as if he'd been burned.
"I'm here," Michael says, and he is, he knows where he is now, and who, after that one dizzying, sickening moment. He's Michael Bowman. His mother's son.
Danse was-- teasing. Danse doesn't even remember the Institute, doesn't remember having to call coursers sir, doesn't remember being afraid of them. If he was ever one of the synths foolish enough to try to seduce a courser, to be spared something worse, he doesn't remember that either.
"I-- would strongly prefer," Michael says, carefully, "that you not address me as X9-21, when we are being-- intimate."
"I'm sorry," says Danse, sounding as abject as if he really were the frightened synth Michael mistook him for, a moment ago.
Michael puts his hand back on Danse's leg, carefully. The calf. Lets it rest there, lightly, to reassure them both: Danse that Michael isn't angry with him, and Michael that Danse relaxes, doesn't tense or flinch, at his touch.
"You need not apologize," he says. "I did not anticipate that I would-- react, as I did. How could you have--"
He takes a breath. Danse watches him.
"When I was a courser," Michael says, and usually there would be a sting to those words, humiliation and hurt flaring up again at the reminder of his disgrace, but at this moment, it's nothing but relief. He isn't a courser. The Institute is gone. It's the past, like Danse's hurts at the hands of the Brotherhood, like a dream from which a sleeper awakens.
He's Michael Bowman. His sister lets him read the poetry she writes; his little brother leaps up into his arms; synths and former Railroad agents drift off to sleep in his presence, joke and look up at him to see if he's smiling. Hey, Michael. Michael, you want one of these? Hey Michael, do you know where mom is? Hey, Michael's here, is that all of us, can we start?
"When I was a courser," he says again, steadying himself, "it would have been-- very wrong--" Wrong is an inadequate word, insofar as it can be used to mean anything less utterly wrong than what he thought for a second he was doing, but it serves. "For me to-- touch. A synth. In a-- in an intimate manner."
Danse says, "Will you lie down with me? Please? For a moment?"
Michael lies down, carefully, on his back, next to Danse. It's good for his body to lie down sometimes, for the same reasons it's good for other bodies to lie down, minus the need to sleep, but it still feels sinfully luxuriant, a bed, with pillows. Synths didn't need beds in the Institute, aside from special cases like Eve and Shaun. Coursers certainly didn't.
But he isn't a courser. Not any more.
"Why would it have been so wrong?" asks Danse, and adds, "Or would you rather not talk about it?"
It isn't that he minds talking about it. It's just that he can't possibly convey to Danse, whose context is the Brotherhood, superiors and inferiors who were all (or at least all believed themselves to be) human, how wrong it would have been. What Dr. Coulton did to little Y4-15 was very wrong, and Michael would cheerfully have dismembered Dr. Coulton with his bare hands for it if his sister had proved amenable, but Dr. Coulton is human, and humans are naturally undisciplined and undependable, at the mercy of their whims and urges. For a courser to have displayed such simultaneous weakness and dishonor, such profound corruption-- he would have to be destroyed, of course, but even his destruction wouldn't blot out the stain on the Institute's integrity he would represent.
"I'm not afraid of you," Danse says.
Well, Michael knows that, of course. He wouldn't have done anything with Danse if he hadn't been absolutely sure of that. Wouldn't have kissed him, not even on the forehead, not even when asked. Even with his mother's loving authority over them both, as shield and safeguard, it would have been criminally reckless of him to have done so.
Danse knows he knows. He's being-- reassuring. The way Michael reassured him when he panicked over his clothing, saying things Danse already knew: It's yours, dearest. It won't be taken away. Not ever. You're safe, you're here with me.
It's strange to receive kindness like this, from Danse. Not because Danse is not a kind person-- he is; he's unfailingly considerate, and his generous and merciful disposition is the only reason the Brotherhood remnant is now thriving-- but because Michael doesn't think of himself as someone who needs to be handled with care. His mother's gentleness with him has never quite stopped taking him by surprise, and now Danse is being gentle with him, too.
"Thank you," he says, for the kindness.
Danse's scarred forehead is furrowed with worry, as he watches Michael. Michael doesn't like to worry him.
He says, "Please rest assured, I never meant to reproach you for using my designation. Only to ask that you not do so again. Not in-- that context." He hesitates. "Again, without reproach-- may I ask why you did so?"
Danse has to think about that. Michael wonders if human love affairs involve this much fumbling uncertainty about what the participants are even doing, and then realizes, with amusement, that it's most likely the other way around; it takes a love affair to reduce synths to the level of fumbling uncertainty where humans spend their whole lives.
"I was ashamed of being a synth," says Danse finally. "Until I met you. Being called M7-97 was-- it meant I was-- disgusting. Had no right to exist."
That's what it would have meant, if an Institute courser had touched a synth the way Michael touches Danse. That he-- the courser-- had no right to exist. Fundamentally, inherently: like a floor that didn't support weight, like a gun that melted or disintegrated when its trigger was squeezed. Wrong not only as a human can be wrong, worthless not only as the raiders who dare attack his mother's holdings render their lives worthless, but sickeningly, vertiginously wrong, an offense to daylight. Michael never really understood, before, how Danse used to see himself.
"And now it-- it doesn't mean that to me," Danse is saying, shyly. "That's all I meant. That-- you're a synth-- and that means being a synth is-- can be--" He's blushing. Michael loves it when he blushes. "Like you. Magnificent."
"My dear," says Michael, smiling. That's his word too, and it adds to the sweet flattery. "Yes, I see." He considers, then says, "I can address you by your designation, if it means that, for you. Sometimes."
"Not if it will make you feel you're doing something wrong."
"No," says Michael. He's fairly sure-- "It won't recall the past. I hardly knew you, then. It can be part of the future, instead. Your future. Having your designation spoken with love, by your--" He still stumbles over the word, it seems such an absurdity, but it, too is part of the future. "Boyfriend."
Danse smiles, brilliantly, and Michael has one of those moments, more and more frequent as his life progresses, when the magnitude of his own happiness seems to exceed his total previous capacity for emotion of any kind.
He's in bed with his boyfriend. With this precious, vulnerable, gentle, courageous, magnificent synth, who's smiling at him, with joy and trust and love. He's Michael Bowman, and if he didn't exist, or if Danse didn't, it would be what his stepfather calls a cryin' shame.
He sits up. Not too suddenly, because Danse doesn't like to be startled, but decisively. Where were we.
"You don't have to--" Danse begins, and Michael says, mock-sternly, "What did I tell you about that phrase?"
Oh, it's good to see Danse smile and squirm and blush and catch his breath under Michael's playful scolding, and his firm, molding touch. How is it possible that this glorious body, this bright, precise mind, this sweet and generous heart, have given themselves to Michael, who's only barely begun to learn to be a person at all, let alone a good one.
Humans have birthdays, when they celebrate the beginnings their brains were too unformed to remember, but Michael, who remembers his creation, his activation under sterile light, seems to begin over and over. He was born in the Castle courtyard, in his mother's first clumsy embrace, and at her wedding in Diamond City, when she made him dance with her. In the woods of Far Harbor, the first time he made her laugh; at the gates of Acadia, the first time she cried in his arms; on the floor of a dirty storage room, the first time she said his name. The first time his lips touched Danse's scar. He's being born right now, as M7-97 says, "Michael--"