forthsofar | in days to come when your heart feels undone

At first, she'd given that late-night text from Caleb--a friend in trouble, Caleb okay but out of school for the week--a healthy amount of sympathy, but no real concern. She sought out Clint in the senior hallway and divvied up the task of collecting assignments and notes from Caleb's classes, ignoring to the best of her ability the vague sniggers about sex cults she overheard from a few of the other members of the team as she walked away.

It was all working rather smoothly, with very little room for worry--until she stopped by Caleb's apartment that night and actually saw him. Whatever had happened, it left him drawn and tired, something almost lost behind his eyes. Rosie hadn't pried, despite the flurry of questions that rose to her mind, just handed over the collected assignments and made the appropriate vague noises of sympathy before he pushed the front door slowly shut again. Still, the sight was enough to make her worry, to increase that faint concern from before to something far harder to ignore.

Clint had agreed to drop things off the next two days, leaving Rosie time to think--and to plan. By Thursday, she had at least the seed of an idea, something that might provide Caleb with a little more comfort after a situation that had so clearly rattled him. She got Clint's half of the assignments from him after school, then stopped by the small market a few blocks from Candlewood to pick up a few additional things before heading home.

That night, she loads everything into a few tote bags she and Neil had picked up from one Darrow event or another and heads downstairs. She knocks once, twice, then tries the knob, finding it unlocked and barging in before she can quite stop herself.

"It's just me," she calls, nudging the door shut with her foot.

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"Definitely playing Quidditch with Alice," he says without even needing to think about it. "Or, sometimes just being in that green place." He realizes she probably has no idea what that means, so he explains, "Adam's feelings are blue. Mine are yellow. We... make green, and... it's nice." That's an understatement, and he knows she knows it, because his voice is soft and sweet and warm when he says it, cheeks coloring a little.

She gives him a confused frown when he first mentions the green place, and for a moment she thinks of Anterwold, wooded and lovely and bathed in a sunlight that hadn't felt real even when she was standing in it. What he describes is better than that, sweeter and more meaningful, and Rosie's faint frown turns into a much steadier grin. "You compliment each other, or...blend together," she says. "Like some kind of...soulmates sounds ridiculous, maybe, like something from a storybook, but it's not such a bad word for it."

Blushing a little too, she ducks her head, wishing she'd said something a bit less silly. "And what was the other thing? Quidditch, right? What's that?"

"Oh, yeah," he says, recovering a little from her reaction to his explanation. Fuck, he misses Adam. "It's a sport, from a book series my sister and I like. It's not real, the author made it up, but there's all these rules and stuff, so we played it together. You're supposed to ride flying brooms, but..." He shrugs with a grin. "We made do."

"All those people with all those abilities, and not one of you has the power to fly?" Rosie teases, giving him a laughing, pointed look. "I'm terribly disappointed."

They'd talked a little about their families before, hanging out at school or when one of them had been over at the other's to work on something for French class, and there's something nice about this added bit of information. Rosie and her own brother had interests too separate from one another--whether by choice or circumstance, she didn't know--to have the kind of closeness it seemed Caleb and Alice had, but that had been the way of things at home, in her own time. He did the things boys did, and she took on more girlish pursuits, and that's how it ought to be.

"It sounds absolutely ridiculous," she says after a moment. "But a lot of fun."

He grins and shakes his head. "No, like, it's about this school in England, where witches and wizards learn how to cast spells and stuff, and they've got this whole culture all their own, completely separate from Muggles — that's, that's what they call non-magical humans, is Muggles." He stops suddenly, eyes widening. "Oh, shit. Atypicals should totally find a word to call non-Atypicals!"

His enthusiasm is ridiculous, and infectious, and Rosie giggles at the expression on his face. "Just promise you'll tell me once you come up with something," she says. The timer on her phone goes off, and she drains the water from the pasta into the sink, a cloud of steam rising up. "And make sure it's a little less ridiculous than Muggle."

She tosses the noodles in the colander, letting them drain further, then goes to stir the sauce one final time before flicking off the burners. "And as someone who actually went to school in England, I wish I'd learned spells. It would have been much more interesting."

"That would be kinda cool, huh?" he says. "Damn... I don't think the Harry Potter books or movies exist in Darrow. I'd totally watch them with you, if they did. It's pretty cool."

"It's funny how not everything from wherever we came from is here in Darrow, isn't it?" she says. Most of the time, when she can't find something she'd recognize from home, Rosie assumes it's due to the vast difference in years between where she'd come from and where she is now. "And other things are changed, just a little."

"Oh my god, right?" he agrees, taking another sip. "Like, at home, we have this streaming service called Netflix? And here, it's called FilmFix, but it's the exact same thing." And it's creepy and weird, like he'd just walked into a funhouse mirror version of reality.

"I thought FilmFix was just its own thing!" she admits, her eyebrows going up slightly in surprise. "At home, all we had was the cinema in town, so even FilmFix was new to me. I like it, though, getting to watch films at home whenever you want."

She grates a generous pile of cheese for them to top their pasta with, then finds a pair of bowls in one of the cabinets. "Well, dinner's on," she says, looking over at him with a grin. "Such as it is."

in days to come when your heart feels undone

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