forthsofar | while the whole wide world is fast asleep

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nick

while the whole wide world is fast asleep

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.

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"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."

"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."

"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.

"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.

"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."

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."

"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.

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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..."

"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.

"I had girlfriends before Sabrina, but I was never in love with anyone before her," he says. "She taught me how to do that. Helped me figure it all out."

The idea sounds like something out of a romance novel, the handsome rogue being taught to love through his relationship with the heroine, someone good and kind and perfect. The thought of it actually happening, and to someone she knows, is ridiculous--and perhaps just a little dizzying.

"That's something, then," she says, her eyes slipping closed again as she rests against him. "Something good."

"Something good," he echoes. He shifts his weight a little, getting more comfortable on the sofa, since he's loathe to ask Rosie to move, to disturb anything about this moment. "What's your something good, Wilson?"

Nick moves, and so does she, a slight shift in position that curls her into the hollow between Nick's body and the back of the couch, her arm coming to rest curved around his waist. It's close, and a bit of a tangle, but secure in a way she'd only felt in fleeting moments over the last few days.

"This," she answers, soft and sleepy and without thought. "All of us together, safe and warm after...everything."

"That doesn't give you much to look forward to, does it?" he says, quietly, gently teasing. He strokes his fingers through her hair, his other hand coming down to curl around her arm where it's tucked around him.

"Suppose not," Rosie says, looking up at him and smiling at his teasing. "Unless..." She shrugs and blushes a little at what she's thinking, how silly it's likely to sound when said aloud.

"Unless it's all just the start to something good."

"It's definitely something," says Nick, his thumb stroking against her arm. "The four of us here together. You blushed when you said that, by the way."

"I blush at a lot of things, Nicholas," she retorts, laughing a little, her face resting against his chest. "We haven't known each other very long, though, so I suppose it's best you're learning that early."

"Sabrina only ever calls me Nicholas when she's mad with me," he says, grinning. "I much prefer Nick. Some people call me Nicky." He shrugs. "But I will definitely bear blushes in mind. I can't promise I won't occasionally try and provoke them, though."

Right now, he's not sure that he'd do anything to deliberately startle her out of the warm, safe bubble that they've created.

"And I'm only ever Rosalind when I'm in trouble," she says, though she thinks, too, of her time in Anterwold; how familiar she'd become after only a short time with being the Lady Rosalind and all it seemed to imply. "So, alright. I'll call you Nick. Even if you do end up trying to make me blush terribly on occasion."

Ordinarily, Rosie dislikes embarrassment almost as much as she hates being frightened. Now, comfortable and safe after several days of terror, the idea of some future provocation--especially from the boy holding her close and warm--doesn't seem entirely bad.

"It's a pretty name, though," says Nick, smiling at her, still playing with her hair. "Better than plain old Nicholas, anyway." He shifts against the sofa, reaching back with his free hand to adjust the cushions under his head.

"I didn't always think so," she admits, smiling again at the unexpected compliment, the continued run of his fingers in her hair and the way she's curled, so comfortable and safe, against him on the couch. "It seemed like the kind of name grandmothers had. I kept wishing I'd been named something more exciting, like..." Rosie laughs, soft and low, at the memory. "Like Sandra. I thought that was so much more interesting than Rosalind."

Nick shifts and pulls the cushions up, and she looks up at him, lifting her head a little, not enough to dislodge his hand from her hair. "Is this...I'm not crowding you too much, am I?"

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