forthsofar | the rocket to the moon, with a touch of clair de lune

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neil

the rocket to the moon, with a touch of clair de lune

Rosie's been busy in the week or so since Darrowfest, and not just because of school, or for the usual Nick or Sabrina-related reasons. One of the places she'd applied, the seafood restaurant down by the water at the fancier end of the boardwalk that'd been looking for a hostess and had seemed like such a long shot, actually called her in for an interview--and that had gone well enough that now she was supposed to come by one night next week, too, for a kind of walkthrough and training just to know what she was really getting into. Even though the main reason she's doing it seems terribly far off, that thought of a quiet little house near the woods with enough space for all four of them, it still feels like a step forward.

As distracted as she's been, though, she hasn't missed the change that seems to have come over Neil since the festival. He's been happy, happier than she's really seen him in months, and it feels just a little like he's finally come out the other side of losing Harry and Guy in one harsh blow. She hasn't asked why, but she's noticed, and whatever the reason, she's glad.

Today, she's spent the afternoon at home, most of it reading on the couch. She's still there when she hears the short buzz of Neil's phone that usually indicates a text coming through. She doesn't pay it much mind, but then it happens again not long afterwards.

And again. And once more, just for good measure.

Rosie still doesn't get up, but when she hears Neil coming down the hallway and into their living room, she looks in his direction. "Someone really wants to talk to you," she says, a little amused. "Everything alright?"

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Neil scrubs his fingers into Rosie's curls as he passes, snatching up his phone before continuing on to the kitchen. He can feel the smile, even before it really breaks, the way that it softens his eyes and lifts his cheeks a little bit, and then he's really grinning by the time he's grabbed a soda.

"You want anything?" he calls, already grabbing her favorite and bringing it with a glass into the living room regardless.

"Caleb was showing me how some of the things we put up turned out." He turns the phone so that she can see the pictures, the hung pictures and string lights lit up, a more complete image than they'd been the other day when Neil was there helping to start things out.

She laughs at the scrub of his hand in her hair, swatting at him and missing completely as he keeps moving towards the kitchen. "Just a soda," she says, and smiles at the faint sound of him setting down two cans on the countertop only a moment later.

That new, bright happiness she'd noticed already is abundantly clear on Neil's face when he comes back into the room--and even more so, when he looks back down at his phone. It's only the source that surprises her, a little, and makes her that much more curious. "It looks brilliant," she says, turning her attention to the pictures on the screen. "A little mixed up, all the different styles and everything, but it works."

"What, like we have some cohesive style going on or something," Neil teases with a laugh, leaning back while Rosie goes through the pictures. There's quite a few of them, now that Caleb's got everything up, even if they didn't get all that many things, but there's, well, angles to consider, he supposes.

It's sweet.

"Anyway, he was all worried about it not feeling lived in, and then about nothing going together, and now it's just nice that he got everything up."

"Rude!" she says, amusement spoiling the mock-affronted tone she's been trying for. Their apartment really was a bit of a clash, and they both knew it, but it was home.

Rosie flicks through the pictures, quietly amused at the volume of them and how hard Caleb had tried to capture things from every possible perspective. Once finished, she automatically taps the corner of the screen to close out the image viewer and get back to the message screen. She doesn't snoop, exactly, doesn't try to read any of the texts that'd preceded the flow of pictures, but it's hard not to miss the little contact photo at the top of the screen: Caleb, golden and glowing in the sun, smiling handsomely at something just off-screen.

Possibly even someone.

"It's the first he's really lived anywhere all on his own," she says, setting Neil's phone down carefully--reluctantly, not that she'll admit it--and picking up her soda. "Even when he lived down on the fourth floor, that was just someplace borrowed from a friend of his. It makes sense he'd be anxious about getting everything together."

"That's kind of how it always is when we get here, I think," Neil says with a bit of a shrug. Sure, Rosie and Sabrina and Charlie all had the Home, for a little while at least, but not everyone did. Neil hadn't. He'd gone right into his apartment--though he'd stayed with Goodnight for a little bit.

He laughs, though, soft and kind and gentle, as he picks up his phone and just holds it a moment. "We got everything back to his place and he was so worried that everything not going together meant he was some sort of crazy. But I think it's really fun, you know? Just to find things that are nice."

"If that's all it takes to be some kind of crazy, there's a lot of mad people running about."

Neil picks up the phone, cradling it almost, and Rosie doesn't think she's imagining the sort of hopeful vulnerability in that. Since they'd moved in together, she's tried not to pry into where--and with who--Neil spends his time, aside from the occasional text about which of them was walking Beau or seeing if he wanted to meet her for a film or just an hour or two of sitting in the park on a nice day. Still, it's good to hear about something like this, good that Neil's doing things like this, especially after the misery of the last few months.

"But you're right," she says. "It is fun, and even more when you've got another person to help. I'm glad you're both getting to know one another a little, but I feel a little silly for being friends with Caleb for months and never really having him over that much when you were around. It was always when you were at work or..." She stops herself before she says with Harry. "Out somewhere else."

"Hey, it's not your responsibility to introduce me to the people you hang out with," Neil says with a shrug. He's made decent friends with Nick and Charlie because they were in the plays with him last summer, and he's hung out with them since, but he's more distant from a lot of them, because he's older.

And, like Rosie says, he spent a lot of time out.

"It's been...nice getting to know him. I feel like I haven't made a new friend in a while. Thought I might be out of practice."

"I know it's not, but it's also not the mark of a very good flatmate, is it?" she argues, but it's mild and more of a self-deprecating thing, a faint manifestation of the guilt she still feels sometimes over how wrapped up she can be in things with Nick and Charlie and Sabrina. "Especially since he lived so close until just now."

Rosie echoes the shrug, taking a sip of her drink. "He's a good one to be friends with," she says, not missing the way Neil had hesitated before calling him simply nice. "He's funny, and cleverer than I think he thinks he is, and...really understanding." Once said, Rosie realizes how close it skates to Caleb's secret, but it's also true enough to stand on its own as nothing more than a compliment. "Also ridiculously handsome."

That's true as well--and if it's also just a bit of a nudge, so be it.

Neil smiles, more sheepishly now, and rubs the back of his neck.

"Yeah, I'm...trying really hard to ignore that last part," he admits. "Especially since he likes to go to the gym, and I don't mind him coming running..."

Don't mind is the understatement of the century. Spending time doing athletic, physical things is just as good as decorating the apartment was, or playing video games, and with the added benefit of having this little quiet part of him indulged. A part that he said he wasn't indulging anymore.

"But I've sworn off guys, and anyway, I'm pretty sure he's just being friendly."

"Oh, poor you," she says, gentle and teasing. She can picture it, Caleb out for a run and Neil doing his level best not to stare quite so openly as to be noticed. "I mean, I don't think you have to ignore it completely, if that's not what you want."

Rosie thinks a moment about whether to say anything more. The fact Caleb's interested in guys isn't as much of a secret, or at least not one as vital and worrisome, as the truth about his special abilities--but it's still, maybe, something for him to share with Neil once he's ready.

"I'm not saying to do anything that might stop a friendship before it's already started, but also you're allowed to notice when someone's good-looking even if nothing might come of it. You might've sworn off men, which I still think you shouldn't do, but you do still have eyes."

"I do, and...I might be enjoying looking a little bit."

No shame, but he does blush a little bit. He glances down at his phone and smiles a little bit. It's good to have Rosie assure him--even if part of it is couched in teasing him about his swearing off and distance that he's insisting on, but that seems important.

"I'm not going to tell him, no. You know, like, even if he's interested in guys doesn't mean he'd be interested in me. And it--is it weird to flirt with a mutual friend?"

It's a rhetorical question, and anyway, Rosie's got her own wonderfully complicated romantic situation, so maybe her perspective is different.

"Good."

She watches Neil for a moment, taking in the flush to his cheeks and the quick, private little smile when he looks down at his phone as though waiting for some new message. She's missed seeing that these last few months, all the small ways some kind of contentment could settle within him; the way his expression could be something light and close to happy instead of closed away and bleak. That deep, locked-away part of her heart, the part she'll never share with him, remains glad Harry vanished before anything could come of the vague threats he'd made at Neil's bedside--but the last time she'd seen Neil this happy, it'd been because of him.

She still doesn't know how to reconcile that, and perhaps she never really will.

The question, at least, makes her laugh, bright and easy. "I think just about everyone should be interested in you, but you're one of my best friends and I'm terribly biased because of it," she says. "And compared to what some people at school said once they noticed we'd become friends, just flirting a little with Caleb isn't weird at all."

"Yeah, well, people are school are awful," Neil says, rolling his eyes a little bit. Between all the harassment he went through because of that teacher in his last year at Darrow High, the issues of questioning their friendship, the catty ideas of what Rosie was like because she was from the Home and because of her betrayed relationship, and then the rumors about the sex cult?

He smiles at her gently. "I don't mind you being biased. It's kind of nice."

"And worst of all, I still have a year to go," Rosie says, gratified by the roll of Neil's eyes. She'll make it through because she has to, because she knows when she does it'll mean university in the fall--just Barton, but still--and that's an opportunity she knows she wouldn't have had back home. She can put up with nearly anything for something like that.

The wry lift of her smile softens again when Neil looks her way, and she nods. "I'm glad. It's...not hard to do, when it's someone like you." She pauses, taking another sip of her soda. "I know you don't need my permission or anything. To spend time with Caleb, I mean, or anything that might come of it, even if nothing comes of it. But if you want me to tell you it's alright, I'm telling you it's alright."

"It won't be so bad," Neil assures. Except for letting himself lose his damned mind because of that English teacher, except for spooling entirely out of control, his last year hadn't been terrible. And he hadn't had friends, like Rosie.

When he looks at her again, she has that soft smile, and Neil finds himself blushing a little bit. He feels silly. But he also appreciates the gentleness of her--blessing? Her consideration? He knows he doesn't need her permission, but Caleb is her friend first, and Neil doesn't want to make things strange.

"If it's weird," he says, "you'll tell me, right?"

"It won't be," she agrees, and knows it's probably true. Still, knowing Charlie won't be there every day--in the halls or in class, sharing a table at lunch--feels a little like losing a layer of protection, even if he's not gone like so many others. She doesn't even want to consider how it'd feel if he was.

Neil smiles, and blushes a bit, and not for the first time Rosie's struck with a kind of protectiveness for him, something deeper than affection. As awkwardly as their friendship had started out, her silly little crush coming up against his hesitant reluctance, it's become so much more since then. For both of them.

"If it's weird, I'll tell you," she promises. "And I'll do my best not to, you know, pry about things. With either of you. Unless you want to tell me anything." She laughs. "You know I'll gossip with you about boys anytime you like."

"I do like being able to gossip about boys," Neil says, and he means it, even if possibly talking about cute boys that also happen to be Rosie's friends might be a little uncomfortable.

He puts his phone aside and comes over to the couch, flopping, leaning into Rosie dramatically and taking up as much of her space as possible. It is nice to be in a better mood than he has in weeks, in months. Things feel lighter, because of Caleb.

"It's one of the best pastimes in the world," she says, mock-serious for a moment before she smiles again. "Especially here, where nearly everyone's ridiculously attractive."

Neil flops down, draping against her with the same easy and slightly silly intimacy they've both learned to use with one another; a closeness that never feels forced, and fulfills something necessary for both of them. Rosie giggles, pushing at him in a feeble attempt at moving him out of her space, but it's all feigned. It always is.

"Neil?" she says, after they've stayed just like that on the couch for a long, quiet couple of minutes. "It's good to see you this happy. I just wanted to say that."

"I...like being happy."

It feels a little weird to say, but it's true. He hates that so much of his happiness is dependent on other people and not just himself. He's tried to cultivate the armor to depend on himself, to love himself. Some days are easier than others.

He doesn't want to put everything into the hope for one boy, and he doesn't think that he is. But he likes being friends with Caleb, who's kind and tender and seems genuine. It's nice to let himself be engulfed in being cared about.

"As you should," she says, but it's gentle and soft, nothing that grates against the peace of the moment.

Rosie hasn't tried to forget, exactly, what Neil told her after Guy and Harry's disappearance; the despair, and the desperation, and the irreversible choice. As much as she'd denied it then, reflexive and horrified, and as much as she'd cried about it in the quiet of her room afterwards, it's not something that should be pushed away into oblivion. But she hasn't wanted to think about it, either, the idea of bright, alive, glorious Neil ceasing to be.

This, now, is better. He's happier. Even if it's just a new friendship, even if it's decided between the two of them that it won't be more than that, Caleb's made Neil happier.

"Do you want to order something in, in a bit?" she asks. "Chinese or something? Anything sounds good tonight, I'm not picky."

"I'm always down for Chinese," Neil says with a nod and a grin.

But for right now, it's just enough to be curled against her, enjoying their time together while they've got it. Summer is busy, and Rosie has her own life, and sometimes Neil ends up feeling at loose ends.

"How's everything going being the new hostess and all? Do you like it?" He smiles a little. "I know getting used to the schedule at the cafe was rough for me at first. Do you think you'll stay on into the school year?"

"We'll see if they assume the order's for Perry Wilson again." It didn't happen often, someone misreading the names next to the buzzer at the front door of the building, but that just made it funnier every time it did.

"I've only just started, but...I do," Rosie says, with a sympathetic look when Neil mentions the schedule. "So far, the hardest part's been trying to balance all the sections fairly while still making everyone happy who's coming in to eat. Because of course everybody wants a table by the window so they can look at the ocean, but not everyone can have a table by the window so they can look at the ocean." She laughs softly, a little wry even as she nods. "I want to stay on, probably for fewer hours than I'll have this summer. There's been fewer people interested in having their dogs walked recently, so it feels like time to start doing something more dependable."

She goes quiet a moment, aware of a need to be careful in what she says next--one she's not certain is misplaced. "Nick's been talking about getting a house," she adds. "Not anytime soon, but eventually. So I want to start saving for when that happens, too."

Neil takes on that last bit with a sort of quiet yearning. He's known, since they moved in together, that it probably wasn't going to be a forever thing. Maybe it would have been him moving out, if Harry were still here and had invited him. But it's Rosie, with Nick--and, presumably, with Sabrina and Charlie as attache.

The feeling of loneliness comes and then goes. He smiles.

"As long as I get invited over to hang out sometimes," he says, and smacks a loud kiss on her cheek. "Houses are better for throwing parties in than apartments, anyway. Do you think you'll all looking out in the suburbs, like where Charlie lives, or somewhere like the townhouses downtown?"

"Of course you're invited, as often as you like," she says, her smile brightening as she's kissed. It was hard not to miss the pause that'd preceded it, the wistful sort of loss Rosie knows she'd been anticipating, but at least Neil seems to understand. "Whether for a party or dinner or just to spend time like this."

He's one of her best friends--the first person here who'd really felt like one, even, and no matter where she goes Rosie's determined not to let that fade away.

"Somewhere in the countryside, so even further out than the suburbs," she admits. "Nick's talked about something near the woods, if he can get it. I think he likes the idea of it, the privacy even if we'd all still be able to come into the city easily enough."

"Gosh, all the way out, really?"

Neil doesn't think he ever could, and maybe that's some deep, far back Puritan part of him that still fears the wood, or finds it too primal and visceral--which is silly, given all the nights he and the boys went out to the Indian Cave in the woods behind the school.

"Is that getting to the witchy sensibilities more than anything else?" He laughed a little. "Is that mean? Sorry."

"All the way out," she echoes, with a little bit of a sigh. "And Charlie's the only one of us who knows how to drive, so I guess that'll mean learning sooner rather than later, unless I want to spend forever on the bus getting anywhere."

Strangely, that's the part of the move that feels the most like something real right now. The house itself is a far enough concept that there's still a dreamlike quality to it; it'll happen, and she can't wait until it does, but it's still easy to think of as nothing more than a potential someday. Learning to drive is something she could do now, tomorrow if she wanted, and be ready to put it into practice whenever it's necessary.

She grins, looking sidelong at him. "Maybe it's a little mean, but it's accurate," she says. "Not only are there, you know, magical rituals and things that I know they used to do in the woods back home, it's just...the forest itself is a little spooky, isn't it? Like you'd expect there to be something witchy going on."

"I guess, yeah. Can't say I've gone off to the forest around here very much."

And that's the truth. He's spent plenty of time in forests, like the one back home, but here in Darrow, he's had no particular draw to the one here. It stands north of town, and he and Guy have driven past it on that endless loop, fast and blurring, and he's looked at it from Kagura, but he's never gone to it.

"I guess not," she says. "You wouldn't really have a reason, and even I've only wandered around in there a few times. All because of Sabrina and Nick, honestly, so my perspective's a little off anyway."

There'd been that one horrible afternoon after Sabrina got all those memories from home, Rosie going in search of her down muddy, rocky paths and trying to provide what solace she could once she'd found her. And then Lupercalia, far better and more delightful, even if the memory of what had happened back in Greendale's woods to Nick and Sabrina the year before still lingered over them a little. It didn't feel like a balance, one good thing and one bad, but it was close enough.

"I'm not sure if this is a glowing recommendation to go adventuring or not," Neil says with a smile and a laugh. He smiles, and looks thoughtful. "I suppose Nick is very handsome and could be quite convincing to go through some spooky forest..."

It's a playful bit of teasing, and goes a long way from his whole woe-is-me kind of attitude that he's been languishing for months. Having a new friendship might be hard in the long run, if he loses him, but for now it's doing good things for him, and he can't be upset about that.

"Oh, he can be very persuasive," she says as seriously as she can, only just managing it before she breaks out into another bright, delighted smile. "Even when there's not a spooky forest involved. Especially then."

She wouldn't have been this bold when they'd first met and become friends; wouldn't have known how to, even. Being able to now, to keep the light shift in Neil's mood going just a little bit longer so they can do things like this, laugh and tease and have fun, seems like one of the greater successes she's found in Darrow.

"And even if Nick can't convince you, Caleb seems like he'd be alright on an adventure. Tall, and plays football and all that. You could do worse."

Sure, they're only friends. But Rosie's not letting that stop her entirely.

"Does football translate into hiking?" Neil asks, letting her have her teasing. He knows that Caleb is fit, knows he does spots--they've gone to the gym a couple times, he knows exactly how fit and athletic he is.

"Not that I think rowing and soccer do, either, but at least I spent enough evenings back home hiking out to the old Indian cave and back before we were noticed and got a demerit or something."

He smiles, though. "Shame I've missed out on watching him play, though."

"As if I know," she says, laughing. "Wrong side of the Atlantic for that kind of football, remember, and the closest I even got to sport back home was cleaning up after my brother and his awful friends when they got back from the parks, because goodness knows they couldn't be expected to do that themselves." She makes a face. "And field hockey at school, but the less said about that, the better."

The argument's the kind of easy, low-stakes thing it seems like they both need, full of nothing more than teasing and the chance to quibble about something that doesn't truly matter. It'll all be forgotten by the morning.

"I should've invited you to one of the Petros games," she says. "Although to be honest, that was Drembleydrop, not football, and I don't think there's ever a way to understand what's happening in that game."

"Probably not," Neil says, laughing. He saw one game at Darrow High before he graduated, when he was still dating Patricia, but it made about much sense as anything in Darrow did, which was to say, it didn't make any sense at all.

But he's smiling, and happy, laughing about it.

"Well, maybe the next time he wants to work out I'll suggest we all go on a hike in the spooky woods together or something. And I'll recite poetry, and Nick and Sabrina can be...witchy, or whatever."

Neil says it as a joke, or at least something that sounds close enough to one, but after her initial burst of laughter Rosie actually thinks it over. "That's not a terrible idea," she says, almost surprised at herself. "It might even be fun."

She can picture it, or at least the hazy details of some kind of plan: Caleb doing something tremendously fit and outdoorsy; Nick and Sabrina working on an enchantment or gathering ingredients for spells; her and Neil and Charlie all taking turns at recitation while the other three are off having their own kind of fun. There are far worse ways to spend an afternoon in Darrow, as well they all know.

"Maybe we really ought to."

Neil grins and nods, settled on the idea. "We'll have to find some time when the two of us aren't busy. Do the rest of them even work? Lay abouts."

He doesn't mean it, because they're good friends, all of them, and he's been enjoying getting closer with Caleb in these past week or two. And doing something silly and athletic for all of them will be good. Bonding. Silly.

"Maybe the witches can make sure we don't get bitten by mosquitoes." He pauses. "Do we call Nick a witch?"

"Sabrina does," she says, shaking her head a little at the thought of the rest of them as layabouts, idle and thoughtless in a way she knows none of them ever could be. "She works at the magic shop on Archer a few days a week, and I think Caleb's still doing something at the garage his friend used to work at. But Nick and Charlie don't, yet."

She can see that changing, needing to change, when the four of them make the move to the house. Even with the allowance they all get from the city, paying for a house seems much bigger and costlier than affording rent on a flat. For now, though, it doesn't matter, and so there's no real need for her or Sabrina to lean on either of the boys.

She snorts faintly. "Sabrina's a witch, Nick's a warlock," she says. "I mean, not that I think he cares that much, but I also accidentally called him a wizard once and I thought he was going to pass out from laughter, so. I guess wizards are also a different kind of thing."

"Wizard," Neil says, with a ridiculous sort of voice.

It does seem suiting that Sabrina would work at a magic shop, though he imagines it's the hippie-occult sort of thing, and not the sort of toy store with a magic kit or two. And he thinks that Caleb has mentioned the garage, though Neil probably processed it as working in working on his specific car.

It is a very nice car.

"I suppose they don't really have to," he says. Not that any of them do, with the meager stipend the city gives them all to get by. Neil existed on that alone for almost two years. "Though if you guys are going to get a house..."

"Well, it sounds even sillier when you say it like that," she says, rolling her eyes at Neil's ridiculous, portentous intonation. It's nothing she doesn't deserve, though, at least a little.

Once the silliness passes, Neil hones in on the exact question Rosie knows is looming there somewhere up ahead. "If we get a house, it'll probably have to change," she says. "Another thing that will need to change, anyway. It already feels like an awful lot, and we're not even close to having it happen."

"You've all got time to figure it out," Neil stays with a smile and a nod. Like getting their apartment and getting Rosie out of the Home had taken time and coordination.

"You and the spooky sex cult." He's grinning, teasing, keeping everything as light as he possibly can. He knows how silly that rumor is and how much everyone involved dislikes it.

"It's going to work out," he says. Because he has to keep looking on the up and up. They all do. It's why she's looking for a place with all of them. "But first, we'll figure out some time to go hiking."

"Me and the spooky sex cult."

There are days she minds it terribly, and days she doesn't; times she resents the rest of them for not seeming to care about it at all and others where she wonders if the fault is hers for thinking it mattered so much. One day, maybe, it'll all solidify into something steady. Rosie can't wait for that day to arrive.

Hiking and the distant plans for her future, though, are much easier topics to turn her attention to. She nods, leaning her head against his shoulder. "It'll be brilliant."

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the rocket to the moon, with a touch of clair de lune

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