forthsofar | I'd left him dreaming; a dangerous feat

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I'd left him dreaming; a dangerous feat

Most mornings, she and Neil keep, if not the same hours, at least similar ones; close enough that there's sometimes a good-natured battle between them for the bathroom, or that it's easy for one or the other to make an extra few pieces of toast while they're putting together their own breakfast. And when they differ, when Neil's been out late or Rosie's spent the night at Nick's, they know each other well enough not to be concerned. Those quieter mornings can even be nice sometimes, a chance to settle into the day at the very start, to have some time without another person around.

All this to say, if it hadn't been for Beau, she might have simply gone to school and left him.

The dog had parked himself just outside Neil's closed bedroom door, something Rosie could only think of as concern in the low note of his whine. "Come away," she'd said, trying to call him over first with words, then the click of her tongue, then finally by taking hold of his collar and pulling. He resisted it all, settling the weight of his stocky body along the floor in a way that made him nearly immoveable. Finally, she'd tapped on the door, listening for the sound of anything within before she pushed it open. "Neil? I'm not trying to--oh."

This had happened before, but she'd been on the other side of it then. Now, it seemed it was her turn to be the one left behind. In a way, she's almost glad for the recentness of her experience, the way it keeps her fear mostly at bay. After looking up the number for Darrow General, she calls for an ambulance: Yes, someone else who won't wake up, please hurry if you can. As she waits, she sends texts to Sabrina, Nick, Charlie; calls Neil's work and makes up a plausible enough excuse as to why he'll be missing his scheduled shifts today and tomorrow. It's only what she knows he'd done for her, not long at all ago. When the paramedics arrive, Rosie follows them down, riding in the back of the ambulance and holding Neil's limp hand the entire way there. He's booked into a room, has an IV set up for hydration, and though the nurses encourage her to leave, claiming he'll be just fine in a matter of days, all she does is pull a chair over to his bedside and settle in.

Perhaps a bit shamefully, she doesn't think about Harry until just then. For all that he's been a little distant to her--and still she thinks it's awfully rude, the way he sometimes acts the few times he's been over when she's there, almost as though it's she who has no business being in her own flat--Rosie knows Neil cares about him. He deserves to know what's happened. Having brought Neil's phone with her just in case, she taps in his passcode, looking up Harry's number. In the hopes of avoiding confusion, she texts him from her own phone; a few short messages, all in quick succession.

Hello Mr Starks, it's Neil's friend Rosie, he's in hospital (unconscious but othrwise fine), wanted you to know
Room # is 387, have put you on visitor list if you'd like to stop by
Please don't worry, it's something the city does at times, very stupid

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The phone buzzes just as Harry is cleaning up the bar of his club. It's something Hannah usually does, but she has a day off. He doesn't mind it. In fact, he doesn't mind it at all. If his gang at home ever heard of it they would probably be shocked, but Harry finds himself quite content with his club and he doesn't mind having to do most of the work to keep it going. It's not the Stardust; but it's his at last and he likes it. Honest work - no schemes. (Well, one small scheme on the side, but it's not noteworthy.)

Maybe it's the medication. It's better than the shit he used to have to swallow in the sixties; ah, the advances of medicine. His pills don't give him the shakes, but so far they've managed to keep him from going into one of his black moods all the same.

He picks up the phone and checks the message. Despite Rosie's reassuring text, Harry is instantly worried; something happened to Neil.

He manages to compose himself and his first reaction is to thank the girl by text and leave it at that. He's not one for hospitals. His worry quickly wins over his hesitation and he sets out to the hospital moments later.

Rosie's there when he comes into the hospital room. He doesn't dislike her, but her presence is uncomfortable to him. He's never before had a boy who had a life outside of Harry's world. Someone whom he could enjoy, but who was still very much his own. Rosie is a manifestation of that (he lives with her, after all) and Harry doesn't really know how to handle that.

Still, she did text him and he was grateful for that and Harry had been taught manners. "Rosie. Thank you for texting me. How is he?"

The text she gets in reply is polite but faintly terse, and Rosie thinks she might be forgiven for rolling her eyes at it, just a little. If that's all he wanted to say, though, so be it. Rosie slips her phone back into the pocket of her coat and curls up in her chair, legs tucked under her and one ear always listening for any change in the slow beeping of the monitors by Neil's bedside.

By the time Harry arrives, she's found a book someone left behind in the room--some middle entry in a Darrow-set mystery series, easy enough to follow without much context and diverting enough to be a distraction--and is reading quietly. A shadow falls across the page, and she looks up, her expression startled for a moment before she realizes who it is. "Mr. Starks, hello," she says, because she too has been taught the virtues of politeness. "He's...he's as alright as can be expected." Realizing how that sounds once it's been said, she frowns, ducking her head. "Like I said, it seems to be something the city does on occasion. It happened to me, just the other week."

The memory of it is still recent enough that she can't quite suppress the shiver that goes through her.

He doesn't approach or lean in to kiss the motionless boy as he might have, had they been alone. Everything's open and no one minds that he's queer, but he's ever cautious. He keeps to his side instead.

"So, when did you wake up?" He's more comfortable sticking to business.

He stays where he is, so rigid it's almost enough to make Rosie uncomfortable in sympathy, and while she can understand the desire to be cautious--of course she can, of course she's learned more of what would have been at stake for both men were the times more like they had been back home--there's nobody else here, nobody that would care, and it's all just slightly tiresome. But she can see the way Harry's eyes stray towards Neil's prone form, his guard slipping just enough to show a flash of concern, and that's enough to mollify her for the time being.

"Two days after I'd first gone to sleep," she says, putting the old bus pass she'd been using as a bookmark back into the book and setting it aside. "But it...when I was asleep, it felt like longer. Weeks. Like one of those dreams that seems to go on for days, but then you wake up and it's only just morning."

Harry would argue that there isn't 'nobody there'. There's Rosie. And she might be a lovely girl, but Harry doesn't know what she makes of it all. And hospitals put him one edge. So. Reserve is in order.

"He's dreaming?" He asks, and he can't hide his concern. "What's he dreaming?"

"I don't know that I can say for sure," she admits, her tone softening just a little bit more at the evident concern in Harry's own voice. At least there's a sign there that he does care, even if he's being otherwise insufferable about it. Not everyone needs to quite wear their hearts on their sleeves--or can--to the degree that Rosie does, though, and she concedes the point. If quietly, and only to herself.

"If it's anything like what happened to me, though..." She trails off, chewing briefly at her lip as she tries to find the best way to explain it all. "I told you it was something the city does, one of those nasty little surprises it likes to give people from time to time. When it happened to me, I woke up along with some other people from Darrow in...well, back at the place one of them had come from. My friend Jamie. He used to live on this island, and we all woke up there."

"But you woke up?" Harry needs to know. "Right? Nothing was wrong with you when you woke up."

"Yes, obviously I woke up," she says, fixing him with the kind of look only a seventeen-year-old girl who speaks well before she thinks can. "I'm here." It isn't the question he's asking, though, and she knows it. Hears it, too, when he keeps speaking. She has the decency to look contrite, her tone softening considerably.

"Sorry. No, nothing was wrong when I woke up, aside from remembering everything that'd happened." Rosie sighs. "While we were...away, there on the island, Jamie got his hand cut off, but it didn't...stick, I guess. He's still got both hands." She looks down at the floor, studying the faint speckles in the linoleum tile like they'll have a better answer she can give him. "I still remember trying everything possible to keep him from bleeding to death there on the beach, but none of it mattered at all once everyone woke up."

Right. Harry rubs his face. So, at the very worst, Neil will come back traumatized from some horrible experience. That doesn't really give him much comfort. But Rosie is being honest and Harry appreciates that.

"Can I get you a cup of tea, Rosie? Or coffee?" He decides he needs a little time to process this information.

She can see how little her honesty is helping--even though she's trying, she is, just like she always does--and for a moment Rosie wishes she'd chosen some convenient lie instead. Maybe it'll be something different for Neil and whoever else from the city he's gone with, but based on everything she knows and everything she's heard, she doesn't hold out much hope.

"Tea would be lovely, thank you," she says when he asks, and nearly leaves it there before some instinct moves her to speak again. Given how closed-off he is, it may well backfire just like everything else she'd said since the minute he walked into Neil's room, but she has to try. "If you'd rather, you should. Go, I mean, but if you wanted to...to be here with Neil, I already know where the hospital cafeteria is. So I could bring something back for you, instead."

The truth is appreciated. It's why he offered a cup of tea; a peace offering of sorts. At least something to let her know he's not going to demand that she should leave as well as a confirmation that he isn't going to leave either.

Her next suggestion actually manages to soften the terse look on his face. "Cup of tea would be nice," he says and then, as an afterthought, he adds.. "Thanks, kid." He appreciates a moment alone to set wrap his mind around this situation and a moment to... well, just touch Neil's face or something. See if he's not cold or too warm. Hope for any indication that he might wake up.

That he calls her kid isn't entirely appreciated, but she understands the effort there, the sense of an attempt made under otherwise unnerving circumstances. It's enough, especially combined with the slight ease that settles in his expression. "Cup of tea, then," she says, unfolding herself from the chair she'd been curled up in next to Neil's bedside. "One for each of us."

She takes another look at Neil, hoping that maybe it'll all be different for him, that maybe he'll simply wake up now after only a short jaunt wherever he'd gone to. Instead, there's nothing but the gentle rise and fall of his chest and the faint blip from the monitor measuring his heartbeat. She sighs, and turns towards the door.

"I'll be back as soon as I can."

When the girl is out of the room, Harry takes the other seat next to Neil's bed. He reaches out and caresses his hair. He's warm, but not too warm. He looks to be asleep, breathing peacefully, and that serene look might be mistaken to mean he's alright and comfortable.

He puts his hand on the boy's hand and keeps it there, rubbing light circles over his knuckles.

"So, I hired a new girl. She's... well, she'll keep punters coming, that's for sure. Very pretty. Sings and all." It's stupid sentimentality to talk to unconscious people. It's not like they can hear you. And yet he keeps talking, stupid little things, about the club and daily business. Nothing too heavy, just simple things.

Rosie takes her time--partly by choice, partly by necessity, having gotten to the cafeteria around the same time as a group of nurses and doctors on their break--but before long she's back in the elevator with a paper cup of tea in each hand as it makes its way back up to the third floor. She can hear the gentle murmur of Harry's voice just as she reaches the doorway to Neil's room, if not the words, and rather than simply barge in, she waits for a moment out of sight until it fades to as natural a pause as can be expected in a situation like this.

If she also makes sure to clear her throat a bit, providing some evidence of her return just in case he wants it, it's only polite.

"I can't promise it's very good tea," she says, setting one of the cups down on the small table between the two chairs, "but it's hot, which counts for something."

Rosie announces her return and Harry stops talking, but he keeps his hand over Neil's. He's cautious, but he's not ashamed and he's not about to pull away.

"Haven't had a decent cuppa since I got here," he says. He doesn't add he wouldn't have had a decent cuppa where he'd been going just before arriving to Darrow. That's beside the point. "But it's warm," he agrees. He even tries a mild smile.

The fact that Harry doesn't pull away, keeping his hand still covering Neil's even after she enters the room, raises him a bit more in Rosie's estimation. It isn't everything, but it's something. "I think we're obligated to have high standards for tea, considering," she says, answering his faint smile with a slightly warmer one of her own. "But you're right, it'll do for now." She sits back in the chair she'd been curled up in before, hands curled around her own cup.

It'd be easy to leave things there, to descend into vague small talk and slightly strained cordiality while Neil slumbers on; in a way, it might even be what's expected. Neither of them really knew each other, after all, their only points of commonality a vaguely shared homeland and an affection for the young man in the bed beside them, and perhaps it's foolish to press for more than that. But Rosie can't quite help wanting to make the effort.

"You really do care about him, don't you?"

Harry wouldn't have been uncomfortable in the silence, to be honest, but he doesn't mind it as such that she talks. He doesn't know what she means by that question, but he answers it honestly. "Yeah, I do. He's..." he ponders his reply for a moment and in the end just shakes his head lightly. "I'm lucky to have met him."

She'd asked it in the same way she says so many things; unguardedly, and without much thought for how it might sound once spoken aloud. It's an impulse she often regrets, one that's led her into arguments she didn't intend, but when Harry answers her honestly Rosie's glad she'd done it after all.

"Good," she says, punctuating the word with a nod. "He's one of my best friends, one of the first people I really called a friend here, and...I suppose I just want to make sure everyone thinks as well of him as I do. If not more."

That actually causes a little smile to form on Harry's face; he's being vetted by a girl half his age. "Yeah, well. Don't worry about that."

He wants to leave it at that, but he thinks it's only polite to extend the conversation. "He speaks very highly of you."

"I won't, then. I hadn't, really, but...you know what I mean." Rosie would've done this--and had, and would again should whatever Harry and Neil were doing come to a conclusion--regardless of any gap in age or lack thereof. It's only what she'd want someone to do for her, and only what she wishes someone might have done before she'd been so foolish just this last summer. To her mind, it made perfect sense.

"Does he?" she says to the polite, mild compliment. The thought of it pleases her, of course, but isn't quite enough to keep her from following her question with yet another thoughtless and unguarded comment. "I would've thought you'd prefer to hear as little about me as possible."

"Well, I've never been able to stop him from talking if he wanted to," Harry replies evenly. It's impossible to tell if he's joking.

Though her comment was thoughtless and impulsive, Harry's reaction surprises her little. "I don't know that anyone can," Rosie says, rather than apologize, then takes a sip of tea. "It's one of the things I like best about him, really."

"In my time he would have been decked for mouthing off. Not just him," he adds, looking at and referring to Rosie too.

"Different times," he muses.

Just like that, there's the faintest ripple in their veneer of cordiality; slight and gone as soon as it's come, but just enough that Rosie notices. Just enough that she almost imagines he wanted her to notice, a thought that's nearly as disquieting as the thing he'd so casually said.

She doesn't call it a threat, not consciously, but the idea is there and taking root at the back of her mind.

"Very different," she says at last, a little quieter than she'd been speaking before. She doesn't dare get up, doesn't dare leave the room--no matter how much, suddenly, she wants to.

The best threats are open to interpretation while being perfectly clear at the same time. Effective while leaving the option open to claim innocence. He did say these are different times; implying he's not hitting anyone anymore, while pointing out that he might at the same time. Well. She got the gist.

He honestly doesn't mean to hit a girl, but he likes keeping people on their toes and he doesn't need a cross-examination of his relationship with Neil from a girl who barely knows him.

"What's your year?" He asks, casually, as if the threat had been just a story of old times. "When did you come from?"

There'd been a point--only a minute ago, two minutes ago, but somehow it feels like ages--when Rosie might have argued that she barely knows him because he'd chosen that. He'd been the one to opt for those few stilted mornings, acting as though she hadn't a perfect right to be in her own flat, before Neil had done as he always does and found a solution that eased things for everyone. She'd only ever tried as hard as she always tries; to be pleasant, to be welcoming, to make people like her.

Had she been thinking any of that now, she might have considered what a clearly wasted effort it had all been.

"1960," she says after a moment's pause, their conversational ground having once again shifted abruptly beneath her feet. "Oxford. Not that far away from...from Neil. In terms of year, not geography." Rosie makes herself look Harry in the eye. "What about you?"

"1970," Harry says and sits back a bit. "London," he adds, though he knows that much is pretty obvious from his accent. "Bet you got into all sorts of trouble back home." An opinionated, mouthy girl would have.

Technically, the greatest trouble she'd ever gotten into before Darrow--when she was louder and ruder than she'd ever been in her life--hadn't been back home at all. It's not a correction that's worth making, and not an explanation she's interested in giving, and so she merely shrugs.

"Not as much as people might've expected from me, but perhaps more than I should have."

"Ever been to London?" Harry asks casually. Neil moves then - or Harry imagines that he did - and instantly his attention shifts entirely to the boy, forgetting anything and anyone else in the room.

Unfortunately, whatever it was, Neil shows no sign of waking and it all just leaves him thinking he's far too invested in the kid and it's showing. He sighs. "Got him under my skin, Rosie," he admits and shakes his head briefly.

"Not often," she says, having no reason to lie. "A family trip, just for the day. And once for a school competition." She hesitates, if only for a moment. "I thought about going to live there someday, when I was older and on my own."

Harry's attention is drawn to Neil then, something both tense and hopeful in the shift of his posture and the turn of his head, and Rosie's not even sure he'd heard her at all. She pushes back the thought--one she thought she'd mostly rid herself of since coming to Darrow--that it hardly mattered anyway; that she wasn't saying anything of importance, at least not to him. Neil sleeps on, unaware of either of them, and when Harry sighs and turns back once more Rosie takes another moment to consider her words before she speaks.

"Speaking purely for myself," she says carefully, "I wouldn't call that a bad thing. Caring about someone that much, I mean."

Jimmy; cut up into bits - they never found his torso. Or his murderer, who had suffered his own painful death at the hands of Harry, who did not take kindly to one of his boys being killed. Then there was Tommy, whose murder was his own fault, but whose death Harry did count amongst the regrets in his life. He never blamed Ruby for pulling the trigger, though; she was acting in self-defense. And then there were others....well.

Boys around him had a tendency to disappear, inspector Mooney said. No lie there.

"Depends on how many people you loose along the way," he said, eyes on Neil who was sleeping sweetly still.

"Perhaps it does," Rosie says. She's been fortunate on that count; maybe more fortunate than she knows. Despite all the disappearances that happen here in the city, the only one that had struck close enough to hurt had been Daine, who'd returned after only a matter of months, her knowledge of the friends she'd left behind still mostly intact, if foggy at the start. And at home...

Well, at home it might have been Rosie who'd vanished without a trace, after what had happened in Lytten's cellar. It might be that she'll never know for sure.

"That might just make it mean more, though. When you find someone new to care about."

He eyes Rosie for a moment. She's being quite friendly despite everything. That makes her rise in Harry's estimation. The caution that is evident in her voice is only self preservation. Smart girl.

"Yeah?" He sighs. "Not in my experience... But it's a nice thought," he concedes.

There's almost something in the way he looks at her that makes Rosie think she's passed some kind of test--not one she'd known she was taking, perhaps not even one she's entirely sure she wants to pass in the first place. Whatever it is, it seems to resolve something between them, and for now that's good enough for her.

There's still that sense of danger taking root at the back of her mind, of course, but it's quiet and faint for now.

"I hope you'll have a different experience here, then," she says. "As much as the city will...to say let you sounds mad, but with the kinds of things that happen, it's not untrue." Breathing out another sigh, she takes a sip of her tea, her gaze going back to the still-sleeping Neil.

Well, he's got himself a nice flat and a lovely boy, so whatever this is, it's better than where he was heading. Twenty in D block - nicknamed the Submarine for lack of oxygen and daylight. No, this was infinitely better. "No, you're right," he can concede that. "How about you, Rosie?"

She's still cautious and uncertain about him--more so, even, than she had been before today--but the question prompts a genuine smile from her. In another circumstance, she might have even laughed. "There's very little about my life in Darrow that's anything like it might have been at home," she says. "I like it that way. For the most part."

Harry arches an eyebrow. She has no obligation to talk about anything, but she does end her words in a cliff-hanger, so he wonders if there's more. "Oh?"

Harry quirks that skeptical eyebrow at her and Rosie's thoughtless impertinence almost charges its way to the fore again, held in check at the last moment by the caution she's only just relearned. "I could do without things like this, that's all," she says, looking back over at Neil as he lies there in bed. "The nastier things that happen in Darrow. People going to sleep and not waking up for days, awful gifts from home or memories of things that had yet to happen. Friends getting hurt."

Something occurs to her, a question she thinks carefully about phrasing before she asks it. "Is this the first one you've been through, then? When the city does something bad to someone you know?"

"No," Harry says, and it's a moment before he continues. "There was that thing in the summer." That thing. That thing that got Neil abducted - and Rosie too, he knows. Neil still won't talk about it, but Harry knows it was bad.

And Harry? Did he fight, did he help, did he save the boy he claimed to hold so dear? No, Harry had been overcome by a black mood, and had done nothing much except lying in bed, drinking brandy and forgetting to take his pills. He's not proud of it, but he knows he can't really fight it.

Rosie herself had a summer full of altogether too many things, but she knows what Harry's referencing. The others had been either her own private humiliations, or traumas shared by only a close handful of people. Only one had threatened the city at large.

"Of course," she says. "Lots of people got caught up in that. In one way or another."

"Neil won't talk about it," Harry observes as he watches Neil again. The boy had come back covered in bruises and looking as if he'd been tortured. It bothered Harry a lot that he didn't know what happened. It bothered him that he couldn't kill whoever was to blame for it.

"He hasn't said much about it to me, either," she admits, her features settling briefly into an expression of concern that's not unlike Harry's, if sprung from a different source. "Even if he had...it wouldn't be my story to share, I don't think."

Rosie glances down at the cup of tea still in her hand, her own memories of those terrifying few weeks filling her head. "I didn't even know until it was all over that he'd been taken too," she says quietly. "Up at the...dungeon, or castle, or whatever that horrible place was, they kept us separate. I was in something like a throne room, or a banquet hall. In a cage."

Her words get to Harry more than she probably thinks it might. He thinks of Neil in a cage, he thinks of the bruises and the misery he so obviously felt. It had been hard to come out of it. But Neil's misery had somehow cured Harry's black mood - as if he had no time for it any more. The pills might have something to do with it also, but he prefers to think it's Neil's doing.

"Let's not dwell on that, ey?" He suggests. "You all came out alive - thankfully."

"That's true," she says, offering Harry a small smile of thanks. "Bad as it was, we all got past it. And Neil will too, where this is concerned. Whatever it is, wherever he's gone."

She says it with as much confidence--and no small amount of hope--as she can manage.

Harry nods thoughtfully. "I hope so."

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I'd left him dreaming; a dangerous feat

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