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Deacon would fall for sole first but would never actually admit it, I mean of course he would fall for sole, how could he not? They embody everything he stands for, they rose from the ground frozen and broken and still fought for him when he didn't think he deserved it
It would eat him up inside, the constant fear that something would happen to sole. The thought that if he was to tell them how he felt, it would be more real and easier to take away.
Sole would have to act first, and only after years of being around each other so that deacon could accept that nothing would be able to remove them from his life without a fight
It baffles me when some people think Hancock has zero regrets about becoming a ghoul. Absolutely none at all apparently. Like yeah, he plays it up when you first meet him before he's a companion, but let's be real he plays up pretty much everything in regards to the whole "sexy king of the zombies" image he projects.
It takes travelling with you away from Goodneighbor to give him some time to be introspective for him to finally realize that him becoming a ghoul was just another escape route from himself again. He's got several lines of dialogue that literally reiterate this. It's a key point of his character:
Hell, running from myself is what made me into… into a damn Ghoul.
Well, I mean, I didn't always look this good. The drug that did this to me, that made me a Ghoul, I knew what it was going to do.
I just couldn't stand looking at the bastard I saw in the mirror anymore.
The coward who'd let all those Ghouls from Diamond City die. Who was too scared to protect his fellow drifters from Vic and his boys.
If I took it, I'd never have to look at him again. I could put that all behind me. I'd be free. Didn't seem like a choice at all. Turns out it was just me running from somethin' else in my life.
I mean, after reaching max affinity with you, he realizes that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all (because he's finally got an honest friend he can be open with now). He now feels comfortable where he is - but to imply that he doesn't have at least the tiniest amount of regret? Heck, if you go onto romance him (or attempt to), he stops referring to himself as handsome and literally starts calling himself ugly, which naturally goes entirely against the image he projects:
Why don't we just agree to keep it friendly for now or till they find a cure for ugly? Heh.
You don't want to wake up to this mug every morning. Never wish that on anyone I cared for.
You sure you want to be stuck with this ugly mug?
(You could even say he implies it beforehand with another line of dialogue elsewhere in-game when he says "I'd be mad too if I was that ugly." But that's a stretch I guess.)
Combine that with the fact that 99% of ghouls don’t choose to become ghouls. Hancock did. But he didn't do it for a fun experience. He was already in a bad place when he became a ghoul. He didn't turn to be cool and edgy like he pretended he did when first getting to know him.
He lost his appearance, any connections to his old identity and old friends/people he might’ve been associated with (for better or worse), and in return gained hostility from bigots towards him for merely existing, from an overwhelming majority of the Commonwealth population that hates ghouls. There's the Institute and Brotherhood who want to kill anyone like him on top of that. Plenty of people out there who think he and other ghouls are monsters for just being alive.
Not only that, but something which adds onto this is the fact that he's a client of the Memory Den, and they're very selective with their customers. And what's the whole point of the Memory Den? Reliving past memories. Irma's terminal entry about Hancock, as well as the other two ghoul clients Kent and Daisy, all imply the memories they go back to relive are primarily from their human days. (The one on Hancock straight up says "if you thought he was handsome and dangerous now, you should've seen him before he turned ghoul.")
I genuinely refuse to believe that Hancock has never had any regret whatsoever about becoming a ghoul. The man who's spent a decent chunk of his life running from his own problems instead of confronting them, has NO regrets about taking a drug that alters his entire being and functionality on a biological level and will force him to outlive everyone he knows? This man is FULL of regrets!