while the whole wide world is fast asleep

[forthsofar]

The combination of relief and exhaustion after her rescue meant that Rosie slept without dreams at first, safe within the warmth of the apartment and giving in to the driving need it seemed all of them had just to be close now that Nick and Sabrina's plan had worked and they were free. But--too soon--she moves from something deep and dreamless to a more fitful slumber. She dreams then, a nightmare that feels all too real and finds her a prisoner once more, surrounded by the glittering, leering eyes of the goblins. She tries to sing; knows somehow that she has to to save herself and Charlie and all the rest, but no notes come.

Pretty bird's been broken, laughs one of the goblins, its hand latching around her throat. Only one use for broken birds. All at once, they're in the hot, filthy kitchens, the goblins holding her down on the worktable as one of them raises a cleaver, honed to a razor's edge. Its voice was sweet but its flesh is sweeter, it taunts as she opens her mouth in a silent scream, as the blade starts its downward arc and the other creatures cheer.

Rosie wakes with a gasp, alone and trembling in the middle of Nick's bed. She sits there for a few minutes, trying to calm her racing heart and convince herself again of her safety. Hearing the faint sound of something from down the hall--a laugh track, maybe, or piece of music--she gets up and wanders towards it.

Comments

[forthsofar]

"Really? I never thought of dances as being particularly magical." That the first thing he thinks to mention is something so simple, so almost normal, though, both surprises and endears him to her all the more. "Or not school dances, at least," she adds after a moment, thinking of the whirl of the Festivity and the strange enchantment of all that had happened that evening.

The light touch of his fingers in her hair sends a faint tingle down her spine; a little strange, but not unpleasant. Still leaning against his chest, she tips her head down slightly, almost unthinkingly, exposing the nape of her neck a little more. Not away from his touch, by any means.

"I'm glad you are too," she says. "They're both...I never had friends like the two of them, back home."

[awickedtime]

"There was just something about it," he says, with a little smile. He takes the tilt of her head as an invitation, and he doesn't take his hand away, still playing with the end of her hair. "Sabrina was wearing this red dress, and it was...Yeah. It was definitely something." He thinks about that for a moment. "No, neither did I. Not really. Not until I met Sabrina."

[forthsofar]

"Something about the dress, or something about the dance?" she teases before she can think about it, just as she might have done--and had, before--to any of her other friends over similar conversations. "Both, I'm sure."

He keeps up the touch to her hair, and she sighs a little, a quiet exhalation of breath as involuntary as the dip of her head had been.

"Brainy girls don't really have friends, back home. At least that's what I'd always been told." If his admission surprises her, she tries not to let it show. He's exactly the sort of person--charming, brave, thoughtful, among other things--that would have been swarmed with attention back in Oxford. It's hard to believe it hadn't been the case in Greendale, even with what little she knows about the town--and even less than that, where the Academy is concerned.

"Thank goodness it's different here, for both of us."

[awickedtime]

"Definitely both," says Nick, remembering both the way that Sabrina had looked coming down those stairs and the way that he'd felt when he lifted her off her feet to swing her in a slow circle. "It's definitely different. Back at the Academy, I felt like...I knew a lot of people, but there weren't a tonne of people that I could really talk to? That I could really trust. You never knew what the Sisters were up to, and most of the other Warlocks were Blackwoods boys, and..."

[forthsofar]

"And from what I've heard of that Father Blackwood, you certainly couldn't trust any of them," Rosie says, wrinkling her nose a little. "It all sounds awfully lonely."

The show he'd been watching, whatever it was, had finished without their noticing, caught up as they'd been in their conversation. Rosie looks over at the television, catching only a glimpse of whatever's airing now--something more dated in black and white, a courtroom scene with a grim-jawed lawyer and his client. It's hardly worth more than that brief glance, and she looks away again, settling a bit further into the way they've curled themselves on the couch.

[awickedtime]

Talking to Rosie is a thing that feels like it's come very naturally, the way it always has with Sabrina, and Nick doesn't hesitate. He stays wrapped around her, his arms on either side of her, keeping her cradled and warm and safe.

"I don't know," he says. "I didn't notice, most of the time. I think I stared to feel it more after I met Sabrina."

[forthsofar]

She nods, turning a little and getting more comfortable within the circle of his arms and the slightly awkward tangle their legs have become beneath the pile of blankets. That they're here like this, entwined like this, talking about someone who's one of Rosie's dearest friends--and something much more to Nick besides--only occurs to her distantly, a thought as far away as the sound of the television.

"I suppose that's what it takes," she says, quiet and thoughtful. "Something disrupting what you thought your life was, to make you see how it might be different."

[awickedtime]

"Something like that," says Nick, still playing with her hair as she settles against him, as they get comfortable in a tangle on the sofa under the blankets. Warm and close and safe. "She had this boyfriend when I met her. Harry. Harvey. I...Yeah. Didn't really take to him."

[forthsofar]

"What was..." She yawns then, the warmth and comfort dispelling what remains of her earlier fear. She hadn't wanted to sleep again, afraid that it'd simply plunge her back into her nightmare or bring on another more terrifying than the last. Now, here, safe and held, Rosie thinks she might be able to sleep for ages once she closes her eyes again.

"Sorry," she murmurs, looking up to smile lazily at him. "What was so bad about Harvey? Just that he was a mortal, or...?"

[awickedtime]

Nick grins when she yawns like that, twisting her dark hair around his fingers.

"Nothing, I suppose. He was just..." He shrugs. "In my way, I guess."

[forthsofar]

"That's a bit of a mercenary way of looking at it," she says, though it comes out far less chiding now than it might have before. "Even if it did work out in the end, clearly."

She closes her eyes at the twist of his fingers in her hair, the slight pull there but light enough not to be painful.

[awickedtime]

"Mercenary? Do you think so?" he says. "I was always alright with sharing. It just took Sabrina a while to come around to the idea."

[forthsofar]

"I do," she says, trying to ignore the growing sense that she's yet again blundering into something and possibly ruining the cozy, pleasant tenor of their night. Or that arguing like this is no way to win friends.

"Even if you might've been interested in...in sharing with him, I don't know that it's fair to anyone to say he was in the way. He just happened to be in a relationship with Sabrina when you met her. That's hardly someone being in the way."

[awickedtime]

"You're probably right, but that's just how...that's just how people like me do things. Did things." He shrugs, combing his fingers through her hair, starting again. "I'm not saying my perspective hasn't shifted; it has. It just...took a long while to come around. And, in my defense, he was pretty shitty to Sabrina. Charlie's a thousand times better."

[forthsofar]

"Good," she says, mollified by the concession as much as the continued touches to her hair. "I'd have been very cross with you if you thought anything of the kind about Charlie."

In truth, comfortable and safe and warm as she is, it's hard to fathom being cross about anything right now. Rosie lets the issue go, having defended her friend--and it had been Charlie she was defending, she thinks--as adequately as she can given the lateness of the hour.

[awickedtime]

"Maybe for a minute or two, but you couldn't meet him and think bad of him, could you?" says Nick, gently, one hand in her hair, the other idly stroking up and down her arm as they talk. "So now we're just...finding the rhythm of it. Figuring it out between us." He glances down the hallway towards the closed door to his spare room.

[forthsofar]

"No, you couldn't," she agrees. The continued trace of his hand along her arm, combined with the gentle tangle of fingers in her hair, pulls another soft and involuntary sigh from her. "Not in the least."

He cranes his neck to look down the hall; slight as the movement is, there's enough of a shift there that Rosie opens her eyes again, looking up at him from where her head's come to rest against his chest. "If anyone could work it out, I think it's the three of you. I really do."

[awickedtime]

The sound makes him smile, and he keeps up the slow and steady stroke of his hands, the little comforting touches.

"It's more Sabrina finding her balance, I think," he says. "Figuring out how she wants it to work. I think me and Charlie are in, come what may."

[forthsofar]

"That makes sense," she says. "Since she's the one at the center of everything, it should be...she should be the one to decide how it all works."

It is, Rosie realizes, what she'd want if ever she found herself in a similar situation--the choice wholly her own, but bolstered by the trust and love of the other people involved. Not that she ever would, with how surprising she still found it that even one person was interested in her, despite all her flaws.

She thinks again then about David, still oblivious to all that had happened to her and seemingly content with the texted excuses she'd come up with to explain her absence the last few days. If there's more to it, another distant thought, another faint twinge of something that might have been guilt if examined too closely, she doesn't focus on it now.

[awickedtime]

"Her and Charlie, anyway," says Nick, idly plaiting a few strands of Rosie's dark hair with quick, clever fingers. "I'm the only one who's got some experience of this kind of situation before, so I suppose...I'm the easy one here."

[forthsofar]

"Was it difficult, last time?" she asks, smiling a little as he continues fussing with her hair, at the way it soothes and settles her even now that the danger of her nightmare has passed. "Working everything out?"

Rosie looks up at him again after a moment's silence, a faint pink tinge to her cheeks. It might just be the warmth of the blankets, the shared closeness and heat; might be something else, too. "You don't have to answer that, if you don't want to. If you'd rather talk about something else, instead of...everything from before."

[awickedtime]

"It was a slightly different situation," he says, waving off the blush, the hesitation. He doesn't mind talking about this; he's never really understood mortal reticence when it comes to being completely open about sex, and the way that people connect because of it. "The Weird Sisters - Pru, Dorcus, Agnes - they're three people, but they're essentially one person. They share most things."

[forthsofar]

"Including a boyfriend," she murmurs, blushing a little harder and feeling all the sillier for it. It hardly mattered to her what he'd done before--or with whom--and to react like this seemed unfair to them both, some dull and conventional discomfort where none would ever be needed. "Goodness."

[awickedtime]

"Boyfriend is a strong word" says Nick, smiling when he says it. "But it was definitely something. We don't have to talk about this if it's embarrassing you, Rosie..."

[forthsofar]

"I'm more embarrassed that I'm embarrassed," she says, laughing softly. Maybe she should pull away a little, given the turn in their conversation. Put a bit of distance between them, in contrast to the sudden intimacy of what it seems they'll be talking about now. Instead, she stays close, unwilling to give up the hand in her hair, the light run of his fingers up and down her arm. "It's silly to be, especially after hearing from you and Sabrina a little of...how it usually works, for witches. How it's sometimes more about--about sex than it is love."

Rosie can feel how hot her face is now, and it only humiliates her further. Still, she doesn't move away.