Another night, another dream.
They're in a basement of some kind, his spaceman self and Rose, sometime in the near future. Music is playing and they're standing close, facing each other, in a dance position but yet…not dancing.
Rose has her hair up in some strange way and, somehow, a Union Jack pulled tight across her chest. Her face is outlandishly made up, by his standards; he wants to wash it clean, remove the barrier blocking her skin. There's coyness in her eyes and teasing in her voice. She's pushing buttons she knows well, lighting up at the opportunity, goading him toward overdue action.
He doesn't tease her in return so much as justify, bluster, using his big brain and a superior tone to back her down. She sees the emotion hidden in all of it and allows him nothing. There's a tension building in him and she just keeps stoking it, sure she can handle it, but he thinks she is young and naïve and has no idea the ferocity of what she is working to unleash.
One last casual jibe and with a crooked grin she slides her arms around his neck—smooth, fragrant skin gliding against his; his vision blurs and Rose gets her way—unleashed, he becomes. His lip curls in a faint snarl and he catches only a glimpse of the shock in her face as he pushes her backward, up against the table behind them. Quickly and authoritatively, he hoists her to sit then presses her back to lie, shoves in roughly to stand between her legs. He towers over her a moment to see her splayed and supine and to watch the surprise in her eyes turn to smoulder, then pins her upper body down with his own, arms on either side and slides his lips over hers as though they've always known the way.
His head spins with sensation and his groin floods with torturous excitement. Her mouth comes alive under his and can feel the life in her veins and the frenzy of her heart, taste the surge of her emotions. Without thought his fingers drift by her temples and he catches a glimpse of her soul. He forces himself back from it—not yet, not without her permission—but there's no forgetting the blaze of love that's just poured into him, as pure and strong and fiery as anything he's ever seen and oh Rose, his Rose...he crushes himself to her as her legs lock around his waist.
Her hands burrow greedily under his coat and jumper, her touch and her smell and her breath alighting senses she doesn't yet know he has. He rises briefly to urge her farther up the table; she complies and he climbs on to lay his weight atop her. A shared impulse and he grinds his pelvis down as hers surges up and—
"OH!"
John's body jolted as he cried out his astonishment to the pre-dawn. He felt dazed and frenzied, dimly felt himself erect and straining against his pyjamas and the weight of the sheets. He pushed upward, letting loose a soft, amazed cry at the sharpness of the pleasure it caused; he felt seconds from orgasm. He took himself in hand like a reflex, finding the presence of mind to shove the sheets off himself before he began.
Rose changed the linens, after all.
An amazingly few short, hard tugs and he was jerking, gasping, swallowing her name to prevent it escaping. Tension released, he surrendered against the bed and lay panting, a wet stickiness cooling rapidly across his stomach.
John stared up into the greyness, trying to make sense. What were these magical powers his spaceman self apparently had? He could read minds, hearts? The experience had been...indescribable, and for a moment he intensely wished it were possible. Being close to a woman had never had a thrill to it anything like that.
He dwelt on it a moment, then felt mentally shut that door. No point in wishing for impossible foolishness.
But even in terms of things he was familiar with…he'd never behaved the way his dream self had with a woman, ever in his life. Never that forcefully, or with the idea that rough, brutish behaviour would not only be allowed, but…welcomed? The way she'd responded—he'd even never imagined such a thing. She'd flared to life beneath him, kissing and writhing and panting and...nearly painful arousal shot through him once more.
Something suddenly occurred to him: perhaps this and any further dreams like it would be a blessing. Aside from the, well, obvious enjoyment factor, they could provide an outlet and give him relief from whatever inappropriate thoughts he was apparently harbouring. Perhaps they could keep his lack of emotional discipline from harming her.
Whether he believed that or not, he didn't let himself think.
Standing in shooting class that afternoon, the sharp, endless reports of machine gun fire jarred John's nerves even more than usual. This was already the class for which he had the most trouble staying present, but today… today he had mentally left the country.
He was quite aware he was distracted by his dream from this morning, but also…he never remembered being quite so aware of how much he truly disliked this activity, how strongly it went against everything inside him.
It was dangerous knowledge, this, an idea that once planted could fester. He felt a sharp stab of fear at the idea of not being able to keep himself devoted to this task, of the possibility of the inner life that was revealing itself dictating some kind of rebellion. Oh, not that it was so unusual for a person to have a distaste for guns—they weren't in America, after all—it was more a fear that if he let this one bit of self-determination escape…
…it might open a floodgate.
This was not a place to let one's emotions run riot, and during his youth when his emotions had ruled him, nothing good had come of it.
"What you did before, that wasn't real adventure."
John suddenly could see so far past the horizon...
"Excuse me, sir!"
John shook himself irritably. "Yes?" he snapped. He looked down to find Hutchinson addressing him from his crouched position next to his gun. Latimer hunkered on the other side of it, obviously awaiting unpleasantness.
"Sir, I simply cannot operate under these conditions." Hutchinson sneered in the other boy's direction. "Latimer is being deliberately shoddy. Permission to give him a beating, sir."
John surveyed them both: Hutchinson's eyes were cold and flat and anticipated confirmation; Latimer's were brown and bottomless and helped convey the resignation in his elfin face.
John felt a physical tremor run through him as his decision made itself.
"Mr. Hutchinson!" he erupted in feigned indignation. "Do you presume to usurp my judgment as to who is to be punished?"
Hutchinson clearly would not have been more surprised if John had begun speaking Swahili. "N-no sir," he sputtered in confusion.
John's eyebrow arched above an ice-blue eye in elegant disdain. "Well, to prevent you forgetting yourself in future I think we should make this lesson memorable." He turned to the other boys, who looked nearly as gobsmacked. "The rest of you: class dismissed, all weapons stowed for safety, as Mr. Hutchinson is about to make twelve laps of the firing range, full speed."
He turned back and glared at Hutchinson until the boy rose in utter disbelief and began running for the edges of the firing field. The remaining crowd of boys looked at each other, then hurriedly began stashing the weaponry, ostensibly before John came to his senses. John glanced down to see Latimer positively gaping at him, the word "astonishment" not even beginning to describe the expression on his face.
John shot the boy a wink, then his face erupted into a manic grin. He felt strangely, pleasantly possessed. He turned on his heel and walked back toward the school.
When he did he saw Rose watching him from a window within earshot of the firing range, biting her lip and beaming as though her heart would burst.
John and Rose walked casually, wordlessly into the hall and then to an alcove where they wouldn't be seen or easily overheard.
"I wanted to tell you," Rose half-whispered, clearly struggling to hold in her excitement, "that I thought about it and you really did have a very good point about Latimer needing to learn to defend himself but I have to say you were ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!" Rose's glee burst out in the form of a raised voice and a bounce in her feet. John shushed her in amusement as she grabbed both John's hands and shook them; she sheepishly clamped her mouth shut, both of them looking around.
"Well, I'm sure the boy's father will have something to say about it once he hears," John replied in the same half-whisper, "but in the meantime…" He smiled and shrugged.
Rose fairly glowed at him. "Why did you do it?"
"Oh, because Hutchinson's a ponce," he whispered back, eyes rolling. Rose's lips clamped again to stifle another giggle. "Because I wanted to see the look on his face," he admitted with a grin. His eyes caught hers for a moment and suddenly his expression melted beautifully, helplessly. "To see the look on your face," he whispered, smiling, with an honesty and awe that shocked them both. "Exactly like that."
Suddenly all the air went out of the little alcove.
Neither moved, their gazes locked and held. Rose couldn't ever remember a moment between them that was this electric, maybe not even when they'd first met. It lasted until the faraway sounds of boys re-entering the halls from their classrooms gently brought life back.
Shaking herself, Rose squeezed the hands she still held. "Brilliant," she repeated with a smile. "Thank you."
John grinned back and said nothing. Rose wondered if he trusted his voice. They let go and moved off in opposite directions.
Around the first corner Rose nearly collided with Matron, standing with her back turned. "Oh! Pardon me, ma'am," Rose said politely.
"That's quite all right," Matron replied, just as politely. When Rose was gone she glanced back over her shoulder at the alcove where Rose and John had just stood, letting the expression of crushing disappointment and hurt reclaim her face.
She closed her eyes and reached inside her apron pocket, clasping onto something she kept there. A moment of holding it, and she calmed.
End of the day, twilight outside his room's windows and there was no longer any need or point to pretending he could concentrate; he could hear her.
There was a small room a few doors down the hall that the maids used for storing linens and other necessities, a place where they could get supplies as they made their rounds. Rose was in that room, moving softly. Humming a little. He smiled.
His legs lifted and moved him as though he weren't the one in charge of them. He felt crazy and terrified.
In the quiet hallway, John was soon standing outside the open door to that room.
Rose turned and saw John half-silhouetted in the linen room doorway and wordlessly put down the stack of linens she was holding. She knew something was different.
No one else would have known, but to her his face and posture were a jumble of contradictions, a combination of features and feelings she'd never seen him personify. His eyes were shy, dark and gentle, yet drank her in more openly and unabashedly than he'd ever done. He moved toward her cautiously in the small, shelf-lined space, but with a quiet intensity that felt very much like being stalked. He looked frightened, and vulnerable, and utterly impossible to dissuade. Butterflies began to riot in her stomach.
He stopped within inches of her; she stared up at him and his attention poured down on her. The sparse light from the half-open door cast shadows over the planes of him: the arches of his cheekbones, the slope and droop of his nose, the Adam's apple in his throat. Rose's heart was pounding so hard she vaguely wondered for her health. She could do nothing but stare, lost in those astonishing eyes, now gone navy with the light and the mood. She couldn't believe it was possible for them to look like that, at her. Her gaze drifted to his lips – they'd always looked so soft and full to her, almost feminine. But nothing about his proximity or the intentions within it felt feminine just now.
He laid gentle hands on her waist; Rose gave a soft gasp at the touch. He smiled faintly, nervously, and stepped closer. His face drifted in to nuzzle softly at her nose, moved again brush his cheek against hers; he sighed softly at each contact.
Rose's head spun with both the sweetness of it and with sheer anticipation. He continued to move his face around hers, ghosting her with breath and smell and almost-there touches, slides of skin against skin until she was tortured with goosebumps and craving the touch of his lips so hard that when they finally brushed hers she cried out softly into his mouth.
The instant she did he moaned in response and closed his mouth over hers firmly, properly, arms clutching and locking her to him. She melted gratefully into the vise of his hold, which he took as encouragement to pull her in even more. Their lips met and slid and separated and met again, setting every nerve in her body alight. She ran her arms up his broad back and clutched his shoulders, dizzy with sensation and disbelief. His hands moved to her face, warm palms holding her cheeks, fingers working their way into her hair and pulling loose strands from the updo that kept it neat under her maid's cap. This was the rightest thing that had ever happened to her, ever in her entire life.
With what little conscious thought she had available, Rose fought to remember to let him set the pace of the kiss, the behaviour. She had no idea what constituted a proper kiss in this time period and she didn't want to do anything he thought was odd, or—worse yet—whorish. But when she forgot herself and ran her tongue lightly over his bottom lip, he moaned in surprise and crushed her to him even harder.
A small noise in the hallway stilled them, just for a second. Whatever it was continued down the hallway until it was no longer there.
But by then it was too late.
After a beat John broke away breathlessly, resting his forehead against hers. She could almost hear his mind's gears speeding up, feel his brain filling with "what if?"s because if she were honest, hers was doing, too. She didn't know who stepped back from whom, but soon someone had.
She raised her eyes to his and found his face a heartbreaking combination of want, tenderness and fear. She nodded at him, barely perceptibly. He backed toward the door and her heart was screaming at him not to go, but the sound was buried under the noise in her brain.
A moment later she was alone in the small room, numbly tucking her hair back into place. She waited till she was alone in her bedroom in the maids' quarters to start crying, as she couldn't have him hearing her. No doubt he was already punishing himself enough.