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The wind gets knocked out of her and electric blue light flashes in her eyes as Rose slams against the concrete. Nausea almost reaches a snapping point in her gut, a sharp ring sounds in her ears, and she scrapes her fingers against the ground.
A hand grasps her shoulder and an arm wraps around her midriff as someone lifts her upright. Familiar voices force their way through her daze as her mind starts to clear.
“Rose! Can you hear me?”
She peels her eyes open and tugs herself away from the grip of Preston. He has a horrified look in his eyes that quickly changes to relief as she nods her head and balances herself against the ground with her hands. Her stomach settles, but in a sense, she still wants to throw up. At the sight of Sturges and others around her, though, she can’t let herself break down. Tough girl. Cool girl. Breathe in.
Rose runs a shaky hand through her hair, unusually smooth and soft thanks to the Institute’s environment. “I’m good. Just teleportation feels weird. Yeah.” Not exactly a lie: Sturges is skilled, but not skilled enough to build a teleporter that doesn’t make her feel like she was sent on a roller-coaster that goes 100 miles an hour for five rounds straight.
She blinks a few times and looks around. She’s back in Sanctuary, blanketed in the dark of late evening. Aside from Preston and Sturges, she sees Dogmeat padding up to her, Nick and MacCready watching in the distance, and a few of the settlers whose names she has trouble remembering. Rose frowns and looks at Preston.
“Where’s John?”
Preston’s brow furrows and he glances around. Not a good sign. “He, uh…he went somewhere. Not sure where, exactly. He was stuck like a statue waiting around here for just about forever. Maybe he just…I don’t know. I’m sorry, Rose.”
Her lips purse, but she nods. She has enough on her mind right now with what she came back from. There’s a pit in her stomach, but she’ll worry about that later. Maybe he thought something happened to her. “He’ll…he’ll turn up eventually. Thank you, Preston.”
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Preston inclines his head, his focus back on her. “What did you find out?”
Rose shakes her head as she presses her hand against her aching head. “A lot. Too much. I’m still trying to process all of it. I’ll probably need some time.” Some time back in the good old dead Commonwealth. It’s gotten to the point where she feels weird to not have its dirt settled in her skin.
Strangely enough, she feels like she needs a shower. A shower to help her sort things out in her head, with Commonwealth water to wash the Institute off her. Rose doesn’t care about being clean like she did in the old days anymore. This is her home now.
Preston offers her a hand, but Rose shakes her head with a weak smile and gets to her feet by herself. The air is less tense than when she first came out, but she still feels awkward lumbering away from the teleporter with one hand clutching the opposite arm.
She approaches Sturges, pulls the holotape out of her pocket, and presses it into his hands. He stares at it for a moment before he nods. She gives him a smile as well, then steps back from the scene in favor of the direction of her house.
It’s the place she lived in before, but fixed up as much as she could manage. At first, she was apprehensive towards diverting resources for the settlement towards providing her with some comfort in what was her pre-war home, but some of the more grateful and benevolent folks she’s helped were insistent on it.
Sturges fixed up a lot of what was in her home for nothing in return, something she still intends on alleviating someday.
Rose shuts and locks the front door behind her, then leans back against it with a long sigh. There’s still stuff all over the floor due to her own fault – mechanical parts, weapon parts, comics, and other junk she’ll clean up eventually.
The couch is torn up, but a staple of her home she can’t get rid of. Holes in the walls are unheard of where painted boards are nailed, and it's quiet aside from the faint hum of a generator or a turret positioned somewhere outside.
She sets her bags and weapons down by the door, along with her jacket. Rose brushes her hair out from behind her tank-top and stretches her arms into the air as she meanders down the hall to the bathroom and hums a tune to distract herself. Don’t think about Shaun. Don’t think about John. Kind of weird how their names rhyme.
In the bathroom, Rose strips everything off her. She runs her hands down her face and looks at herself in the small, grimy mirror she insisted on keeping in it. She looks clean and soft – too clean and too soft, but like shit at the same time. The bags around her eyes are the most prominent they’ve ever been in her life despite the comfort of the Institute’s beds.
Her body aches from stress and lack of sleep. Her hair has been left untamed with split-ends and her bangs in her face, but that’s not a huge deal. She’ll feel better once she’s gotten back into the swing of things…if her discoveries at the Institute don’t drastically change everything.
She lowers her head. If anything, this has taught her that going back to the past isn’t an option. This world is her home now, and if these months with her friends have taught her anything, she has no problem with that. She can live with that. Rose smiles to herself as she steps away from the mirror to turn the shower on. She runs her hand underneath the spray. Lucky for her, it runs hot without a wait, and she steps in.
Rose faces towards the water and lets her eyes fall shut as she pulls her hair back away from her forehead. She stands there and lets the water run over her, focusing on the sensation, until she notices a shadow shifting in the dim bathroom light. She pauses, and peels her eyes open as her heart skips a beat.
John.
He slides his fingers along her jaw and presses his forehead against hers. Rose beams as she presses one hand against his cheek with utmost gentleness, and rests the other on his shoulder. Even only seeing me makes her feel like a huge weight has been lifted off her shoulders.
“Four days.” His voice is low and laced with worry.
Rose wraps her arms around him and pulls him against her as the water runs against them both. She nuzzles his neck as he buries his face in her hair and releases an unsteady breath. Is he…shaking? Did she really cause him that much worry?
Duh. You walked right into the lair of the ‘Commonwealth’s Boogeyman.’
“It’s okay now,” she says as she pecks the crook of his neck, “I’m here. I’m home. I was worried you gave up on me. But I’m home now.”
“Give up? Never.” He chuckles into her hair, before he pulls his face out of it to give her an uncharacteristically chaste kiss. “You just scare the hell out of me.”
Rose kisses him back, but open-mouthed, and he responds in kind. “Come on, you love me for it.”
“Maybe. But next time you go on some dangerous mission? Take me with you.”
John in the Institute? No way. After this she wants to do everything she can to keep him as far away from them as possible. “I’ll…try.”
“Promise me,” he breathes as he moves his lips away from hers and down the line of her jaw instead. Warmth blooms where his skin touches hers, noticeable even when they’re being bombarded by hot water and surrounded by steam.
Rose exhales and closes her eyes. “And then what? I lose you to some Courser bastard?”
He moves his attentions to her neck and slides his fingers into her hair. “See? And that’s how I feel when you throw yourself into danger.”
John urges her back towards the wall and she lets him. Her back touches cool tile and he strokes a hand up and down her ribs. He lifts his head to kiss her again, languid and drawn out. Rose knows where this is going, and by God, she needs it.
“Whatever you need to face, we’ll face it together.”
She runs a hand over his head as she tries to keep her breath even. “Okay…I promise.”
He pulls back from her and looks her in the eyes as he caresses her cheek with his thumb. His face is serious. “Good.”
Rose doesn’t want to talk anymore – she loops a leg around John’s waist and pulls him in for another kiss. He meets her eagerness as he forces his body against hers, back further on the shower tile, and uses one hand to support the leg she offered him while the other palms her breast.
Their hips touch and his knee goes between her thighs. He breaks the kiss several times to instead bite at her neck, her shoulder, or her collarbone, and she responds with soft whimpers and her nails digging into his skin.
She missed him.
They grind against each other. He rubs against the spot she wants him most, a sensation that almost makes her lose it with how hot it already is, along with not having the barrier of clothing between them. Her breasts are against his chest and his free hand roams everywhere before it nestles itself in the curve of her back for what seems like the longest time as they kiss.
Rose recalls the first time they did this. You’re too damn soft and too damn smooth, he had muttered against her stomach with humorous irritation in his voice. You’re gonna drive me crazier than I already am. I know it.
John’s actual voice brings her back to the real world. He’s pulled away from her with his head leaning against the tile and his hands clutching her hips. “More?”
She nods without hesitation. He inches his hips away from hers as he goes back to holding up her leg and runs his fingers, slowly, tentatively, down the center of her torso until he reaches the curls in between her legs. Her groin burns hot, but John still decides to stroke her at an agonizing, methodical pace until her breath is no longer even.
Rose’s head lolls back with her lips parted in a near-inaudible sigh. “John…”
He smirks against her neck. Bastard.
The muscles in her arms and legs go painfully tense as he pushes a finger inside of her, but keeps rubbing tight circles against her clit with his thumb. Rose’s back arches up off the tile as she caresses his neck and tilts his head up to kiss him again.
John indulges her with his tongue on hers and his teeth on her bottom lip while the unbearable pressure begins to build at the base of her spine. She struggles for air every time they part, and by the sound of it underneath the running water, he’s doing the same.
John adds another finger, deep but gentle, and removes his other hand from her leg to instead thumb her nipple. His touch sets her skin ablaze. She would lock her legs around his waist and keep him where he is all day if she could, but John doesn’t have the strength to hold her up like that for as much time as they need right now.
Her eyes start to roll back from the sensation of everything, but then he stops. John withdraws both of his hands and her eyes snap open as rage flashes in them. He returns the one that held up her leg to trace circles on her hip, as he pulls back from her and raises the fingers he put to good use to his mouth.
John has the most aggravatingly smug look on his face as he traces his tongue along both of them while he keeps eye contact with her.
“Asshole,” she growls.
John snickers. “You know you love it. Shall I continue?”
“You better.”
“As you wish.” He kisses the frown off her face. “Turn around for me, baby.”
He steps back to give her room, and she does as he says. John loves to play games, to toy with her, but it appears even his patience is wearing thin as he fits himself against her once more. His teeth and tongue are on her neck and a hand on her breast in seconds. He kisses her with intense, burning affection as he parts her legs and slips a hand between them.
Rose’s breath hitches when the tip of him touches her while he positions himself. She bends her knee against the wall while her heart pounds against her chest. She would prefer to face him while they do this, but he makes up for it by tilting her head back towards his and kissing her.
It muffles the noise she makes when he pushes himself inside her, slow but deliberate. He presses a hand up against the wall and breathes hard as a groan that sounds like her name escapes him.
Oh, how she missed this. Oh, how she missed him.
He starts off at a tentative pace while he helps balance her leg on the shower tile. John’s body shields her from the shower water as he thrusts into her in a steady rhythm. Their kiss breaks and her head flops back against his shoulder while he drags his teeth along her neck and shoulder.
"Rose…” he rasps, “…you…feel amazing.”
John starts to pick up the pace. She gasps for air between moans as she presses back against him with desperation. The friction between them sends her into a daze and she cries out when he adds more force to his movements. Her body starts to jerk without rhyme or reason as a feeling like static spreads across it.
Her teeth clench and her spine arches to its greatest extent. “J-John, I- “
Something inside her snaps. Her muscles constrict as she cries out and stars burst behind her eyelids. Rose splinters in his arms, but he’s there to support her with a vice-grip on her torso while he finishes as well. He shudders and mutters something she can’t catch as he drops his head to her neck and presses light kisses on her skin.
“Don’t go running into Hell without me,” John says once he has air to breathe, “never again.”