Escaping the Glowing Sea was a relief for everyone. Rose was in especially high spirits, not just because she could stop dosing herself with ridiculous amounts of radiation meds, but also because for the first time since hearing about Kellogg, she had a target and a plan. She chatted animatedly as they reentered the boundaries of the Commonwealth, letting her guard drop a bit even around Danse. Hancock had grown surprisingly quiet, but she didn't seem to notice; she was holding up a conversation with the metal soldier just fine.
"So you were a lawyer, back before the vault? What is that, exactly?" Danse asked her. They had already covered the topic of her 200-year-long nap in an icebox, something that caused her considerably less distress the more time she spent out in the wasteland. It had come up after their meeting with Virgil, after the scientist had passed a comment on her remarkable state of health (given the amount of rads in the air).
"Well specifically, I was training to become the prosecutor for our county… so I would go up in front of a judge and argue why the person on trial was guilty," she replied. "I never got a chance to stand fully on my own- I got pregnant with Shaun before that happened- but I assisted in a lot of cases, and even argued a few of them in court with supervision."
"That sounds like a noble profession."
"It paid the bills. Or it would have, if I had gotten a chance to actually make a go of it." She sighed. "So many hours spent studying law books, and I end up in the anarchy of the post-apocalypse. Figures. I should have spent more time making poor choices with a sorority or something like that."
"What's a sorority?" Hancock asked, curious in spite of himself. The Mentats always made him eager to add new words to his vocabulary… or at least the one he had when he was high.
Rose grinned at him. "In colleges, where people used to go to get educated for jobs like mine, there would be groups of people that I guess acted like really involved clubs. A sorority was one of those groups that's made up of all women… a bunch of twenty-somethings living together in a big house during the school year."
His eyes widened, and she could practically see the impure thoughts crossing his mind. "Is that so?"
"Yep. And they would party pretty much every Thursday through Saturday night… lots of alcohol, maybe a few chems, nothing too hardcore usually. I never went to too many of those parties myself… I wanted to study, get great grades so that I could land a job with a good firm when I graduated." She snorted. "Oh, if the girl I was could see me now…"
"I fail to see what would be so appealing about getting inebriated on a regular basis," Danse remarked stoically.
Hancock rolled his eyes. "Maybe you oughta try it sometime, crew cut. Might loosen you up a bit."
"Not likely."
"It's not for everyone," Rose said neutrally. "Honestly, I couldn't deal with the initiation and the hazing that goes on to join a sorority anyway. Didn't have the patience for it."
"Hazing?" Danse asked, brow creasing. "These women beat each other?"
"No!" Rose laughed. "No, their hazing definitely wasn't violent. It was more like… doing tasks or dares to show you could fit in. Scavenger hunts, being an older girl's servant for a day, things like that. I think one year a bunch of the girls had to break into one of the pools on campus after it got dark and go skinny-dipping without getting caught."
Hancock tilted his head, gaze traveling over her body as he processed that scenario. "You sure you weren't right there with 'em, Sunshine?"
Rose winked. "Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. You're never going to know."
Danse's cheeks reddened. "I'm not certain how that is meant to show your worth."
Rose chuckled and lightly slapped Danse on his armored shoulder. "It's okay, I'm not sure those girls really knew, either."
Hancock hung back a few steps, watching her interact with the paladin and feeling an odd, lingering dissatisfaction. Danse made some kind of reply to her statement, earning a laugh, and Hancock felt a tightness jolt through his chest like someone had slugged him. It wasn't that he didn't like hearing Rose laugh- he fucking loved it, actually- but it was really only good when she was laughing for him. Seeing her talk to Danse with that smile on her face was putting him in an increasingly bad mood. He wasn't sure exactly what had happened between them, but ever since he went to take to the Children of Atom they had gotten more and more friendly.
He had never had a problem with jealousy before… at least not on his end. It didn't tend to happen to much when your relationships lasted an average of a few hours. In the past, he jumped from tryst to tryst, with most of them ending in a chem-fueled one night stand. His charm and reputation usually got him that far… and being fine on his own, he never sought anything more long-lived than that. Up until this point, Rose had been the only one to seem to want him around for any length of time… a lapse in judgment that he questioned on a daily basis. She melded into his life perfectly, like a piece he hadn't known he was missing. He felt more alive around her, and was stupid enough to hope that she might feel the same.
And seeing her with Danse… he knew that the paladin had to remind her of her military husband. The Brotherhood soldier had a sort of rugged-but-clean handsomeness to him that was completely out of reach for someone with skin that looked like jerky. He could see that they worked well together… they both seemed to share a similar strategic mindset in fights, and it was almost like Rose could anticipate what Danse was going to do, in a lot of ways. He had found himself distracted more than once, catching himself watching Rose bob and weave as she alternately used Danse as a weapon or as cover. It sort of reminded him of a dance… a dance with way more blood and brain matter splattering everywhere, but still.
Danse was clearly attracted to her, too. Hancock could see it in the way he kept his eyes fixed on her, in all of the questions he asked just to keep her talking. Rose seemed either oblivious to it, or to be encouraging it, and he wasn't certain which one would be worse.
Danse made some other comment that Hancock didn't care enough to catch. Rose averted her eyes to the ground, murmuring something in return with her lips quirking up in a shy smile. A faint blush pooled into her cheeks, and Hancock saw her stroke the base of her left ring finger with her thumb, subconsciously searching for the gold band she no longer wore. The tightness in his chest deepened, like a mirelurk had its claw around him.
The worst part was that he knew it all made sense. Danse was an asshat, but he was still a prettyboy soldier with a lot of shiny toys at his disposal. He was sure of himself and his role in the world, and he didn't belong to a race that was almost universally mistrusted in the Commonwealth. A lot of women would be drawn to those qualities, and it appeared that Rose wasn't an exception.
Not only that, came an irritating voice in his head, but Danse's mistakes didn't land her in the hands of raiders, either.
Hancock grimaced. He lit up a cigarette and took a long drag, as though the smoke would purl up into his head and white out his thoughts. Danse's eyes flicked back to him, annoyed even by a fucking cigarette, and Hancock flipped him off. Danse's face hardened, but he simply turned back to Rose; most likely he was avoiding a fight to stay on her good side. Prick.
Another half a day had them back at the precinct in Cambridge. Hancock had been almost completely silent during the journey, giving non-committal, monosyllabic answers every time Rose tried to ask what was wrong.
"Listen, Rose," Danse said as they approached the makeshift junk blockades that fenced in the precinct courtyard. "I know you're raring to go after that courser, but if you're up for it, I have something that I could use your help with. My unit has been searching for a deep range transmitter, and before we left Scribe Haylen told me that she had located one in Arcjet Systems. It's not far from here, and I'd be grateful to have a steady gun as backup."
Rose blinked, a little surprised by the request. "Sure," she replied, at the same moment that Hancock growled, "Not a chance."
She looked back at her friend, who was regarding her with an expression that was in equal turns challenging, stubborn, and… hurt?
Brow furrowing, Rose motioned for Danse to head inside, and faced Hancock more fully with her arms crossed over her chest.
"John, just what exactly is your problem?" she demanded. "I know Danse isn't your favorite person in the world, but-"
"That's a fucking understatement if I ever heard one," he scoffed. "So what, you going to let him recruit you now, too? Better be careful, sister; the last thing this world needs is another self-righteous asshole 'cleansing' the Commonwealth."
Her eyes narrowed. "So I'm an asshole, is that what you're saying?"
He rolled his eyes and popped a couple more Mentats into his mouth. "You hated the guy not more than a day ago, and now you jump at the chance to help him with a mission? What happened to helping the Railroad? Or looking for your son? Those priorities playing second fiddle to the Brotherhood now?"
She flinched back like he had swung at her. "I'm not abandoning either of those. Is it so bad to want Danse as an ally rather than my enemy? I don't agree with the Brotherhood's philosophies or Danse's misguided prejudice any more than you do, but from what Danse says, they want to take on the Institute too. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?"
"Just keep tellin' yourself that, sister." It didn't escape Rose that he wasn't using his usual pet names for her- doll, love, Sunshine- and it hurt more than she might have expected. "Might make it easier when you find yourself taking orders from Paladin Dick and his superiors."
She strode forward and roughly shoved his shoulder with her open palm. "Is this jealousy, is that it? You're worried that I'm going to fall for Danse?" She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "How many times do I need to tell you that isn't going to happen? Yeah, I don't hate him quite as much as I did before… turns out he's just as human as you or I."
"You're wrong there." Hancock's expression was set in grim lines, and he reflexively pulled his hat down over his eyes. "The good paladin doesn't believe I'm human. For him, everyone like me is a fuckin' monster. He's tolerating me because he's hoping to get you on your back, but Danse would gladly put a bullet between my eyes if he thought you'd let him get away with it."
Rose felt the blood leave her cheeks. "I would never let that happen."
"You're forgetting that I got along just fine before you dropped yourself on my doorstep." His voice was caustic. "Look, if you wanna go, I ain't gonna stop you. But if I spend any more time around that glorified tin can I'm going to fucking gut him myself."
He turned and began walking away then. Rose stared at his back in shock for a few moments, and then shouted after him:
"So that's it? You're just going to run from me, then?"
"Feel free to look me up when this blows up in your face," he retorted over his shoulder, not breaking stride. "If the Brotherhood doesn't end up brainwashing you, anyway."
"Urgh!" Furious, Rose swung the butt of her shotgun around to her front and rammed it into an already broken window of the building, shattering the rest of the glass. If he wanted to act like a child, then fine. She had enough to worry about without chasing after him to nurse his bruised ego.
With one last look at Hancock's retreating form, she stormed off into the precinct, blinking furiously to keep herself from crying. For now, she had a job to do, and anger would serve her better than tears.