there's no controlling the unrolling of your fate, my friend

[forthsofar]

Just like last year, the return of Movies in the Park was one of the main topics of chatter that day at school: groups of people making plans or shouting lines back and forth at one another in the hallway; gossip about who was going with whom (or who might say they were going and forgo the movie for other, more private entertainments); a few intensely enthusiastic people from the AV club discussing going in costume as one character or another. Strange though it was, as Darrow traditions went it seemed, at least, fairly innocuous. Especially after the summer that’s just passed, things like that seemed more and more of a rarity the longer she stayed in the city.

For a moment, Rosie considers attending herself, but when she hears that Charlie and Sabrina had already made plans to go--and that the movie scheduled for tonight was one of the blood-soaked horror films Sabrina loved so much--it’s all too easy for her to drop the idea entirely. Her offer to spend the evening at Nick’s is met with a lack of resistance, especially from Sabrina, that she might have thought suspicious under any other circumstance. Relieved as she is at having avoided a night of watching wholesale cinematic slaughter, though, she barely pauses to question it.

Hardly notices, too, the slight spark in Sabrina’s eye and the quiet look of planning both her best friends exchange as they turn away at the end of the lunch period.

When she gets to Chelsea that night, it’s just in time to say a quick hello in the lobby to Sabrina and Charlie on their way out. They’d done things like this on numerous occasions over the last two weeks, briefly checking in or updating one another on how Nick was feeling; this time, at least, it’s for a slightly lighter and easier reason. Rosie waves them happily out the front door of the building, then takes the familiar elevator ride up to the top floor and lets herself in to Nick’s apartment.

“Shift change,” she calls out to him, laughing a little. “Let me just put my bag down, and then I’ll be…” She trails off, noticing the neat pile of things on the coffee table: takeout menus, DVD cases with cover art that looks nearly as lurid and gory as that of the movie playing in the park, even a set of disposable cups and plates and a folded picnic blanket. And, prominently displayed, a note in Sabrina’s familiar handwriting exhorting them both to Have fun tonight!

“Oh, good grief.”

Comments

[awickedtime]

"Good grief what?" asks Nick, doing a passable impression of Rosie's English accent as he shuffles into the doorway from his bedroom. He's managed to take a shower today, plastic taped over the healing wound in his side, and he's dressed in fresh pajamas. He smiles when he sees her. "Not going to the movie? I'll be okay if you want to catch up with Charlie and Sabrina."

[forthsofar]

Her expression turns briefly concerned at seeing him upright and standing in the doorway; though he'd been steadily improving over the past two weeks, helped along as much by rest as his own magic, Rosie still found plenty of opportunity to worry. Her momentary worry passes quickly enough, shifting into a bright and genuine smile and a laugh at Nick's--admittedly, quite good--impression of her.

"I don't mind staying," she says, putting her bag down by the side of the couch. "They ought to have their date night to themselves, and I wasn't all that keen on watching...is it the camp counselors who get murdered in that one, or everyone at prom? Either way." She laughs again. "Of course, it seems that Sabrina decided if you couldn't go to the park to see the movie, it all ought to come to you."

Picking up one of the DVDs from the table, she holds it up for Nick to see. "Or to us."

[awickedtime]

"That's the one where it's everyone at prom," he says, nodding towards the DVD case in her hand, a broad grin spreading across his face as he takes in the other things that she's left for him. "I think the meaning's pretty clear, isn't it?"

[forthsofar]

"Oh, of course, because it's got..." Rosie turns the DVD in her hand, looking at the case. "A tiara covered in blood on the front. Wonderful." Dropping it back onto the table, she picks through a few of the other choices--most of them other equally gory parts of the same film series--before looking back up at Nick. His grin is bright and fond, easy for her to echo with one of her own.

"I think it is," she says, her stomach doing a faint, strange flip that she tries to ignore. "As long as you're up for a night of awful food and even worse movies, I am too."

[awickedtime]

Nick's got a fluttering in his own stomach, the conversation that he had with Sabrina pretty much all he'd been thinking about until he heard Rosie's key in the door.

"Can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing, Wilson," he says.

[forthsofar]

Beneath the silliness of everything Sabrina had left for them, the idea of a movie night that's almost but not quite the same as the event happening in Petros Park, there's something between the two of them now that Rosie can't entirely place--a charge, maybe, or a shift. Whatever it is, it makes her blush, if faintly, though her smile stays as genuine as before.

"I suppose we start by deciding which one of these to watch," she says, taking a seat on the couch. "And what we want to eat."

[awickedtime]

Still moving carefully, Nick lowers himself onto the sofa next to her.

"I'll pick the movie," he says, holding out his hands for the cases. "You can pick the food."

[forthsofar]

Rosie nods, watching him as he moves to the couch and ready to assist him if he needs it. "I'm placing a lot of trust in you not to pick the worst one of these, Nick," she says, mock-serious, once he's sitting down, before passing the stack of movies over. Their hands brush gently as he takes them from her, and again Rosie feels that odd flutter in the base of her stomach.

She lets out a quiet breath, then picks up the takeout menus and starts flipping through them. There's almost as many options as there are movie choices, all of them appealing in one way or another, and Rosie takes a few minutes to decide. "Let's go with pizza," she suggests, looking over the menu from a place only a few blocks away. "Does pepperoni sound good, or...they've got some fancier ones, if we really want to be ridiculous."

[awickedtime]

"Surprise me," says Nick, shuffling through the pile of DVDs that Sabrina left for them. He settles on a movie about a group of friends who go off to spend a weekend in an remote cabin. "I think there's beer in the fridge too."

[forthsofar]

"Alright, then," she says, studying the menu for another minute or so. There's one with arugula and prosciutto that sounds good; a small step up from plain cheese or pepperoni, if perhaps a little classier than their movie choice really deserves. Rosie turns, leaning over the end of the couch to get her phone out of her bag. "You stay there, I'll call it in. And get us beers."

Giving him a smile, she taps the pizza place's number into her phone, then gets back up and heads towards the kitchen.

[awickedtime]

And if he gets distracted, a little bit, watching her go, then maybe no-one would blame him.

"Can you grab my glasses?" He asks. "I think I put them down in there somewhere."

[forthsofar]

"Of course," she says, glancing back at him. For just a moment she thinks she sees something in his expression, some flicker that makes her blush again, a little more strongly. But then the kid at the pizza place answers the phone, and the moment, whatever it is, is lost. "Oh! Yes, hello, I wanted to...for delivery, yes. The number seven, with the..."

Still talking, Rosie goes into Nick's kitchen, pulling open the refrigerator door. As he'd said, there's most of a six-pack on one shelf. She takes out two bottles, placing them on the counter as she finishes up their pizza order and looks through the drawers for a bottle opener. His glasses, she finds on the windowsill above the sink.

With the drinks and her phone, her hands are already full; feeling both resourceful and a little silly, she puts Nick's glasses on. While his prescription is strong enough that she goes a little dizzy looking through the lenses, she navigates her way back to the couch easily enough, sitting back down next to him before setting the bottles on the coffee table. "Pizza should be here in about twenty minutes," she says, taking his glasses off and handing them to him with a soft, amused laugh. "Do you want to wait, or start the movie now?"

[awickedtime]

"Those suit you," says Nick, taking his glasses and sliding them onto his own nose. Back home he'd always been vain about wearing contacts or using spells to avoid wearing them around people, but he doesn't feel like he has to hide that way around Rosie and Sabrina and Charlie.

He leans forward, wincing a little, hand pressed against the dressing under his shirt as he reaches for his beer.

"We can start it," he says. "Let's not pretend that we're going to watch every second of it."

[forthsofar]

"I'm fairly certain they don't, Nick," she says, light and teasing and a little contrary, even as she smiles at the compliment--such as it was. "But thank you."

When he leans forward and winces, Rosie makes a small, involuntary hum of concern; she nearly moves to get his beer from the table for him, but he manages on his own before she can. Instead, she picks up the DVD case and opens it, taking out the disc inside. It still seemed altogether ridiculous that an entire movie could fit on something so small. "I'm certainly not going to watch every second," she says, getting up from the couch again to put the movie in. "Not once the killer or the ghost or whatever it is in this one shows up, anyway."

She presses the play button on the DVD player, then sits back down on the couch--perhaps a little closer to Nick this time than she had before.

[awickedtime]

She sits down and he automatically shifts to give her room to settle beside him, his arm draped along the back of the sofa. It's felt natural to want to be close to her for months now...even if he has only just figured out what the implications of that might be.

[forthsofar]

It's easy to take his slight shift in posture for the invitation it feels like it is. The invitation it's always seemed to be, at least for the last few months. Since just after Kagura, really.

Rosie thinks about bad dreams and late night television, borrowed clothes and the touch of fingers in her hair; once again, there's that gentle flutter of something in her stomach. Despite that, she settles a bit more, her head resting gently against his shoulder.

Onscreen, the characters pile camping gear and coolers of food into a truck, talking and laughing and making plans for their weekend in the woods.

[awickedtime]

He wraps his arm around her, enjoying the neat, natural way she fits against his side.

"So," he says. "Sabrina and I have been...we talked."

[forthsofar]

Unlike Sabrina's friend from home, the girl she can't help but think of as the other Rosalind, Rosie doesn't have the ability to see the future, to divine things before they happen or intuit someone's innermost thoughts. But when he says what he does, in the way that he does, she doesn't need any sort of mystical power at all to hear the weight behind it.

"You talk all the time," she says, but even as the words leave her mouth she knows it's a flippant sort of deflection, a shield for the way her heart's started to race just slightly. She takes a sip of her beer. "What, um. What...what about?"

[awickedtime]

"About..." And then he finds that, in that moment, he doesn't have the words to express it to her. His stomach flips in the way it had when he'd first been feeling things out with Sabrina. There's just something about mortal girls, even if it's only half of who they are.

In the end, he just turns his head and brushes a kiss against her jaw.

[forthsofar]

He starts to speak, then goes silent, and then his lips land so gently--almost hesitantly--along her jaw and it's better than anything she thinks he might have had to say. She gasps once, a soft, surprised inhale of breath.

"Nick, are you...really?" She turns to look at him, his face still so close to hers. "We can--you can...this is okay?"

[awickedtime]

"I mean...I'd like to?" He says, quietly. "We'd need to...talk about it, obviously. But I'd like to. And Sabrina's okay with it because...well. Because it's you."

[forthsofar]

Rosie can feel herself starting to blush, the slight, creeping warmth heating her face; this time, at least, the cause is something more wonderful than it is embarrassing. "We'll need to talk about it," she echoes, her dark eyes searching his own. "Of course we will. We should. But I also...I'd like to, too. Very much."

There's something pleasant and wonderful about the way he says because it's you; something special, too, in the sense of permission granted. They're all connected to one another already, wrapped in each others' lives in a way she'd never known before, and this is just...something new.

She tilts her head up, waiting just a moment before she presses her lips gently to his.

[awickedtime]

It's a sweet kiss, soft and barely there, and Nick drags in a breath through his nose before he leans in, pressing it just a little bit deeper.

[forthsofar]

That he deepens the kiss, even slightly, feels like its own kind of permission too. She makes a soft sound against his mouth, something almost instinctual and without thought.

[awickedtime]

It would be so, so easy to get carried away, to let it go too far too fast, but Nick is intensely aware of both the dressing under his shirt and his desire to this properly. He breaks the kiss, leaning his forehead against Rosie's for a moment, then pressing another kiss to the tip of her nose.

"Yeah," he says. "We definitely need to talk about this."