forthsofar | but the moon is low and I can't say no

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but the moon is low and I can't say no

There's so much less she can do, in comparison, and Rosie knows that all too well. No magical shattering of bone, no cold and swirling wind, no holding him resolutely in place with the clench of a fist or a murmured string of Latin. All she really has is her anger and shock that it had happened at all, that Nick had been--could ever be--so vile about it.

It's not much, not at all. But maybe it's enough. She owes it to Sabrina to try, at the very least.

She doesn't really have a plan, either, something she only thinks about once she's stormed into the lobby of Nick's building and stabbed her finger viciously at the call button for the elevator. Maybe she doesn't need one. Maybe all she needs is her fury, her love for Sabrina...and the key she still has, silver and shining, on the keyring in her purse. Once the elevator comes and she gets inside, she works the key off the ring; if nothing else, she'll just throw it at him. It's not like she'll need it ever again.

Rosie arrives at the tenth floor, charging out and down the hallway. She doesn't even hesitate, just unlocks Nick's door and flings it wide. The lights are on, dim and golden in the living room and bedroom, signs that he has to be here--not that she wouldn't have waited, seething and furious, until he arrived back home again.

"Nicholas," she snaps, in a voice that for a minute sounds far too commanding to be her own. In any other circumstance, it might have made her smile. "Get out here and explain yourself immediately."

[[tw for gaslighting & dubious consent in the thread]]

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Rosalind. He lifts his head, looking in the direction of the door. He'd been lying sprawled on Scratch's bed, wearing little, enjoying the quiet hiss of the air-conditioning across his bare skin. He sighs, leaning back against the pillows.

"What a terrible noise, Rosalind."

He doesn't even come out to see her, just drawls at her from the other room, and it makes her all the more furious. She kicks the front door shut behind her, letting it slam--letting it make yet another terrible noise that she doesn't even care if he hates--and goes down the short hallway to his bedroom.

"Oh, shut up," she says, glaring at him from the doorway. That he looks so pleased, so contented with himself lying there after having shattered Sabrina so awfully makes her sick. If she notices what little he's wearing, it's only distantly, barely even a secondary thought beneath the weight of her anger. "I don't want to hear anything from you unless it's an explanation for why you're acting like this. Why you're being so horrible to Sabrina, after everything she's already been through."

Her fury is amusing, like a mouse or a bird shouting and snapping and stamping its little feet, and he just lies back and watches her, his head pillowed on one arm. He rolls his eyes and reaches out, his fingers twitching as he reaches out with his power.

"Why don't you shut up and sit down, Rosalind?" he says. "I like you better when you're just a pretty face."

"Don't you--" she starts to say, indignant at the way he rolls his eyes at her, how disgustingly bored he looks rather than remorseful or contrite. Before she even finishes the sentence, his power is slotting into her head--again, that sense of a key in a lock that she's unaware of--and she falls silent, her eyes gone wide and blank.

"Of course, Nick," she murmurs, moving into the room and perching at the foot of the bed, docile and compliant.

She sits down, doe-eyed, quiet, and Lucifer grins, a broad, nasty smile spreading across Scratch's face.

"That's better," he says. "You're such a pretty girl, Rosalind. It's a shame about that mouth."

He smiles at her, and if there's a part of her that notices the danger in it, the evil, wicked edge, it's buried far too deep for Rosie to access it now. Instead, she merely stays looking up at him for a moment before the force of his power brings her head down a little, shifts her posture into something more submissive.

"I'm sorry, Nick," she says, her voice quiet and contrite. "I'm always saying things I shouldn't."

"You are," he says. "But it's nothing we can't train you out of, is it?" He's going to enjoy himself, now he's got her somewhere private. "Why don't you make yourself a little bit more comfortable?"

He keeps up that same steady pressure.

"Thank you," she says, the suggestion sounding nothing but right, exactly the thing she needs to be doing right now. "I will, Nick."

Rosie gets off the bed, but it's only briefly, long enough to toe out of her shoes and put her purse on the chair in the corner of the room. To get a little comfortable, just like he'd asked. She looks in the mirror, fixes her hair a little, paying no mind to the distant glaze of her eyes or the slight pallor in her face. Then she's back at the bed again, crawling up to sit placidly at Nick's feet.

It suits her, he thinks - crawling - and he files that away for later.

"I think we could have some fun together, you and me," he says. "What do you think?"

There'd been another reason she'd come to his apartment, some fury that had sped her to his door and sent her bursting in, shouting and irate, but whatever that was, it's gone now. Maybe it had never really existed, or mattered. Maybe there had only ever been this, Rosie sitting at his feet, utterly trusting.

Something shifts in her head, a greater twist of power, and she lets it move her, nodding her head. "Of course," she says, her voice breathy and soft. "I like having fun with you."

"What kind of fun would you like to have with me, Rosalind?" He asks her, sitting up and leaning in to brush her hair back from her face. "Be honest."

It's an order and he nudges with his power when he says it.

Rosie makes a soft, wanting sound as Nick arranges her hair, makes her all the prettier for him. It's the kind of touch she's hoped for, the kind of thing she knows she's thought about, though the idea of anything more than this moment feels a little distant and dim. She turns her face into his hand, just briefly, before he pulls away.

"Anything you want," she says, but then there's that nudge of power, that command for specificity that she senses rather than hears. "I want you to kiss me, Nick. To tell me I'm yours, to make me yours and take me to bed. To make me come." The words just fall from her lips; she doesn't even blush.

He loosens his control just enough then, just enough to let her come back to herself enough to realise what she'd just said to him.

"I didn't catch that," he says. "Again."

Rosie blinks once, twice, as the sense of something stifled in her head recedes. Her eyes refocus, then go wide as she realizes where she is, how she's sitting, what she'd meant to do and--clearly--hadn't.

What she'd said instead, too.

Rather than repeat herself, she gasps, sharp and frightened. Everything in her wants to move, to run, but the threads of his control are still strong enough to keep her exactly where she is. "What did you do to me?" she asks, looking terrified over at Nick. "Why can't I...what is this?"

"Interesting," he says, tapping his chin with one finger. "I knew what Scratch thought, obviously, but I don't imagine he thinks his sweet little feelings, his secret feelings, are so coyly reciprocated."

"Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?" It's a stupid, ludicrous question given the situation, given the sharp, nasty way he's looking at her, given the fact she still can't move, but it's the first thing she seizes on in her panic. "I don't know what you...how you made me say those things, but you need to stop."

Rosie strains against the invisible something keeping her immobile at the foot of Nick's bed, pulling so hard that she's distantly aware of a twinge in her shoulder, something painful that she may well feel for a long time afterwards. "How dare you make me say them. They aren't even true, now I know how awful you are. Sabrina's heartbroken, do you know that?"

"I really don't know what he sees in you," he sneers. "Pretty face, yes, but mortal women are just so drab." He rolls his eyes. "Sabrina will get over it when she realises what exactly it is she's missing." He makes a dismissive gesture. "Go on. Get out of my sight. And you don't need to remember this, not really. Do you?" He makes a gesture. "Go on. Go. Before I change my mind."

"If this is what you're really like, she's n--" Once more, her retort gets cut off midway. Her eyes roll as he shoves his way into her head again, blanks her memory of the last few minutes, leaving behind only the deep sense of something unidentifiable but wrong.

Rosie whimpers, high and frightened, and then she's running. She has only enough sense to grab her purse--how it got on the chair, how she got to his room, she doesn't know, can't think, doesn't want to ask--before she's gone. It's only when she's halfway home that she realizes she's barefoot.

How it happened, she's not even sure.

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but the moon is low and I can't say no

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