If asked later, Danse can say truthfully that he was already openly staring. He doesn't know how much of the way Deacon seems to disappear into the fog is an illusion and how much is tangibly happening, but he realizes now that whatever is going on with the periodic invisibility and the impossible-to-define blurriness and everything in between is only going to get stranger from here on out. He's starting to feel grateful that the weirdest thing he usually has to deal with himself is a tail that sometimes wags of its own accord.

But with his gaze already lingering on Deacon and trying to focus, the details under that shirt are too hard to ignore. He didn't need the confirmation, no, and he's versed enough in different kinds of weaponry to have been able to visualize which of those blows must have scarred and how, but it still makes him wince to see the old knifework, the slashes from that deathclaw gauntlet. It would feel downright disrespectful to take note of anything else. This does not stop his brain from doing it anyway, but he'll feel guilty about it all the same.

The question snaps him out of that, and he looks back at the machine, thinking of similar fixtures on the Prydwen for lack of a better comparison and drawing on his tinkering experience. "No," he calls back, "I think you're gonna have to."

However suited Deacon might be to muscling things. More so than Danse would have thought, apparently.