By the time Danse is again locked in the sights of whiskey brown eyes, they're softer. All of the petty heat he'd seen goading him to cut her deeper has dissipated, burned away into vapor and left a humble understanding in its stead. She isn't the type to hold a grudge but he had expected to find some stubborn remnant of New Years in her expression; resentment, maybe, for further complicating things.

There are months and miles between almost-kisses and this new address. In the interim, he's come to terms with how Nora always pushes him away when he sets their limits. Nothing in this world gets under his skin so easily because he misses her and she leaves a hole in his chest when she goes. She's a frustrating, impossible woman. But he can't be angry when she ambushes him this way. It's still what he wants. She's still what he wants and he's disappointed to learn that she's no easier to dismiss standing small in his doorway than she had been with her hand on his chest.

The way she looks at him is apologetic and eager, a mirror of what he feels on his own face, and it makes him fall apart all over again. If she's ever been so happy to see anyone, he'd be truly stunned. He's missed her as much or more. He can't ever quite conjure the exact way her hair falls on his own or the angle of her brows when she's thinking but he has tried.

He shouldn't have tried but he missed her. Her absence is worse than her presence, he decides. Both burn him up but he only feels the flames in the former. They lick at his bones like kindling but now-

Now, he will have to redouble his efforts not to think about her so much when she leaves. And dammit, this isn't how he imagined seeing her again: half wondering if he's done the right thing, if he's in the right place, with the right person. But he can worry when she's gone. She's not a foot away from him now and it's oxygen to his starved lungs.

"Made you a pie," she gives him a crooked smile and thrusts a circular dish towards him. "Nate said I should bring it by. To congratulate you. On..." she tilts her head and she gestures to the building around her.

She won't say it. He won't either, then.

There's no hint of alarm, no sign that she hasn't known for some time about his new living arrangements. Not an ambush, at least, but they're both still unsure how to be around the other so they'll need to renegotiate.

He takes the pie and steps out of the way, gives her room to decide if she'll stay longer, stay with him and he hopes she does. He's a man of few words but if she'll let him, he'll show her how much he regrets the bitter way he left things. Maybe as much as she does, clear as day in the way she's attempting to make peace with his decisions.

She purses her lips, looking him over, and then steps past him slowly. Her eyes scan over the room and she runs her hand along the wall as she walks, stopping at every decoration, every book stuffed onto the oak shelf near the window. It holds him hostage, the burning need to know what she thinks and how she's feeling. Her fingers trace the spine of a novel and pluck it out to skim the pages like it will explain what he's doing with anyone else. Neither of them know beyond 'why not' but he can't ache for her forever. She replaces it gently, respectfully, and her hand travels over over figurines and crosses and photos of relatives neither of them know.

He isn't sure he likes seeing her among the strange combination of his things and Camila's. Although he'd wanted nothing more than for her to understand exactly how sharp the ring on her left hand is and all the ways it slices him open, he hates what it does to her. She keeps her head low, her limbs as close to her torso as she can and pretends its the temperature because this room, this apartment, what it represents is glacial. She wants to know and she doesn't, a violent clash he's all too familiar with.

He's quiet as she evaluates, gives her space and time.

She looks over her shoulder at him approvingly but there's a melancholy edge he doesn't miss. "It's beautiful."

He drifts nearer to her to test the waters and she stays rooted in place. "I can't say I had much to do with it."

"Wouldn't believe you if you did," she smirks and turns back to admiring the walls.

She crosses her arms over her chest and steps into the kitchen. The staccato click of her heels over the tile is harsh in the silence. He wonders if he shouldn't turn on the radio just to disturb the stillness and ease his nerves. She pauses in front of the island and reaches for the vase of flowers in the center. A bouquet of roses he'd gotten only days prior for Camila's 25th. He burns red down to his neck but she's too kind to react.

"Women are like that," she muses. "They turn everything they touch into something beautiful."

She looks up at him like she's trying, really trying, to be happy for him. The conflict a layer deeper isn't overpowering until she looks back down at the flowers and gently cups one in her hand. When she doesn't move, he steps closer until there's a mere foot of electric space between them.

"Danse, I..." her thumb runs over one petal and then she drops her hand limply to the counter. "I will always care about you. No matter what."

He sets the pie aside to free his hands though he doesn't know what to do with them.

"You know that I'm trying. And I will always try," she continues.

"I know," he says softly, sliding his hand as close to hers on the counter as he dares.

"So," she asks, tucking her hair behind her ear, "do you love her?"

He takes his sweet time to mull over the answer and she finally drags her eyes up, full and curious pupils trained on his.

He wants to tell her that he'd thought about her that first awkward date. That he'd thought about her during first and second and third kisses because Camila tastes sweet and he'd wondered what she tastes like. That he had and still does think about her when the notes of a piano float from the speakers of their radio and when Vault-Tec dominates the news cycle. And he wants her to know that he'd lost his entire damn appetite for the first week in Camila's apartment and that no matter what he does, every time Nate says her name is charged, high voltage, travels through every nerve and thoroughly flusters him.

Every day for four months, he's thought of this woman. Nothing he feels for Camila comes close, even now. That isn't what she asked but it's what she wants to know.

So, he tells her, "Differently."

But there's a heavy implication in that response, one he doesn't catch until his cards are already on the table.

Different than I love you.

Wildly out of place but still absolutely true.

Her eyes are large and confused. They flick between his rapidly and she can't help the way her lips pull up at the corners where a blush is collecting.

She accepts his answer after a moment, simply nods and pulls him with her down the hall where she takes in the procession of photographs against the wallpaper. One picture in particular catches her eye-"you look very handsome here"-and it isn't long before she finds the bedroom. She sits on the foot of the bed and sighs, stretching back fully and staring up at the ceiling.

Danse lingers in the doorway, watches her nervously. Sitting beside her would be harmless and eventually, he does.

"I like it," she says. "Your place, I mean."

He flinches when he feels her fingers bump against his hand before they intertwine with his.

God, he missed her.

"Passed your inspection, did I?"

She laughs. "At ease, soldier. We're off base."

Nothing more is said for beautiful, silent minutes. This-still and content next to Nora-is the most at home he's ever felt. They aren't fanning the flames or running away. It's natural and peaceful and so right.

Until, beside him, he feels her growing restless.

"Danse?"

"Nora?"

"You know that no matter how much changes, you always have me."

The words are tender, make him wonder what they're trying to soothe. He furrows his brow in inquiry.

She opens her mouth to speak but her words fail her and she shakes her head, smiling. She has never looked this way in all the time he's known her and the uncertainty claws at him. To the untrained eye, it's no different than she always appears-blithe and cheery-but Danse has learned the difference between the counterfeit and the real thing. This is genuine. Enough that it won't fit into the words she tries to stretch around it.

And then, she tells him.

"I'm pregnant," she blurts from a smile so large that it looks positively painful.

He doesn't know what to feel, let alone what to say. It had seemed very unlikely that her body was capable of holding life and now that it is, he should be unconditionally delighted. But he only looks shocked, eyes wide and eyebrows raised as high as they'll go.

Dumbfounded, he just manages, "Really?"

She moves her hands beneath her shirt to cradle the barely-there curve of her stomach and her eyes follow, captivated. "Baby Davis," she whispers to herself. "Seven weeks."

She reaches for his hand and moves it over her stomach and he stares dumbly at the splay of his fingers over her skin. This, he thinks, is a privilege for fathers and he isn't the one who helped her create this child. It's a romantic idea; to love someone so much that it takes physical form.

He's suddenly and irrationally jealous.

He would jerk his hand away out of self-preservation if she didn't trap it under hers.

"When are you due?" he asks with all the volume he can muster.

"December."

Soon. Very soon.

This is the change she meant. Not Camila, not new apartments, not roses.

The nerves in his hand are prickling against her stomach as he runs his fingers over the firmness there. He has to know that it's true. That buried inside of her is life. It's impossible to wrap his mind around and brown eyes drift over his face, watch as he works it all out.

Of course he's happy for her. It's all she's ever wanted and it will redeem years of patient, aching, empty arms. He wants as many children for her as she wants herself. But he's lying if he claims that that's all he feels because he has stupidly clung to the hope that he has some place in her future.

This can only cement that he doesn't. That no, he's imagined any sense of fate about the two of them and it drives him to silly dreams founded in fiction.

Nate has always been the one with whom babies and houses are shared.

Camila enters the apartment noisily and he should move but he can't. Not until Nora sits up and tucks her shirt back into her pants and he composes himself so there's no more evidence of how deeply he loves this woman. How it will devastate him to watch her raise a child with someone else.

But it won't really. At least, not any more than it ever has.

If he'd learned anything in those Nora-less months, it's how irrevocable her claim on him is. Only nuclear war will ever keep him from her for so long again. He will watch all of this unfold, die that slow death, because the only alternative is worse.

Nora is too excited not to spill her secret to Camila immediately and they gush, make dinner plans and dream up nursery ideas at a processing speed Danse can't manage.

It doesn't matter.

He has his hands full-his head full-trying to understand the sudden emptiness in his gut.

It can't be fatherhood.