forthsofar | only held by gravity, faded with uncertainty, no longer young and not that pretty

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neil

only held by gravity, faded with uncertainty, no longer young and not that pretty

The plan had always been for all of them to stay the night at Nick's, movies and dinner and all of them either piling close or pairing off, then spending the next day together at least through the afternoon. It made it easier, once the three of them realized how very wrong everything had gone, for Rosie to avoid even the thought of telling anyone else. Of telling Neil.

He didn't need to know. Didn't need to hear it from a text message or over the phone, especially not all these months after his own pair of losses, and even less time since the agony of that bizarre videotape they'd watched together. And if Caleb had stayed, they both needed her sadness even less, something crashing in over all that happiness. It was better, easier, to leave her phone in her bag; to cling to Charlie and Sabrina, all three of them huddled close in Nick's bed, at Nick's apartment--and was any of it even Nick's any longer? She didn't know--none of them sleeping very much as the night went on. They stayed together through the next day, until Sabrina decided to go home to Marcus and Dan, to start the process of sharing their loss with the other people who matter. Charlie drives her back, then drops Rosie outside Candlewood, helping her unload the few things she claimed from Nick's apartment from the trunk.

It's nothing special, just the gift she'd bought him for Christmas and a few of his shirts and sweaters. She doesn't think about how small a remembrance it seems, taken all together.

Unlocking the door, she nudges it open with her foot, then kicks it closed once she's inside. It makes a louder sound than she'd anticipated in the closing, and she winces, aware it's going to pull Neil's attention if he's even here at all.

"Sorry," she calls, her voice sounding awfully small in just that single word.

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Neil is, in fact, around. He'd been in and out, busy, over the past few days, and between Rosie's job and her own consistent and constant in and out, her not having been there when he'd been between work and seeing Caleb before his last overnight hadn't been too strange.

But the door slamming is hard enough to skip the record he's just put on, something bright and lively to keep his good mood going after finally getting home from Caleb's. Beau looks up from the floor, whines softly, as receptive to Rosie's upset as he ever has been to Neil's.

"Hey," he says as the music goes back to playing with a momentary wobble.

The record skips, a short stutter in the music coming from their living room, and when Neil calls out to her a moment later, Rosie can't answer him at first. She could go again, or sneak down the hallway and into her room, or something else entirely--but she needs that brightness, that warmth, even if what she's about to say is going to wreck it for both of them. With Nick's shirts still draped over one arm, and the poster she'd bought for him tucked under the other, she goes into the living room.

"Hi," she gets out, just before her eyes fill.

It's a sort of halting pause, a sort of repose and form, that Neil is all too familiar with, and Rosie to an extent as well. Neil doesn't recognize the shirt in the way that it's crumpled and draped and held over her arm, or the rolled up papers under the other, but he knows the look on her face, the agony of it that he's worn too many times.

It doesn't wipe his joy, miraculously. But he pushes it back, puts it far back, because the glassy wet in her eyes is visible from across the apartment, and he hurries over without a single thought.

He hugs her before he speaks, careful of the things she's holding but pulling her in under his chin like she belongs there. She's his best friend, after all, and she's hurting. He knows how miserable that feels. "Who was it?"

Rosie tries to go to him even before he's closing the distance himself, his bright, joyful expression fading away into something more concerned. As it is, she manages a step or two before he's there, pulling her in and not minding the awkwardness of the things she's holding. There's understanding in the contact, and sympathy, and Rosie knows it's real; not just wishful thinking or born of some kind of resignation on Neil's part.

"Nick," she says, and her heart fractures a little further letting his name out into the air. "We all...we met at his apartment for our usual stupid movie thing, you remember, and by the time all of us were there he'd already gone." She burrows into him, her eyes closing and spilling tears down her cheeks. "We didn't even get to say goodbye. I didn't get to...I had so many things I wanted to say to him."

"Oh, Rosie," Neil murmurs, voice tender as he holds her close and lets her melt with the agony of it. It's miserable, every time, to lose someone, but especially someone so very, very close like that. And to lose them when you're expecting to see them?

At least she was with people when it happened, but does that really make it any better? They could share the burden of it together, but all that means is they all had that same misery. Neil appreciates that he gets to share a bit of it, too.

"I know," he says, nodding a little, nuzzling into her hair. "I know how awful that is."

He's kind about it, and she'd expected him to be kind, and somehow it still makes the hurt a little sharper. It's just for a moment, something that has her crying a little harder as Neil keeps holding her and murmuring soft words into her hair.

"I know," she says when she can speak again, face still pressed to the cotton of his shirt, soft under her cheek with the solidity of his chest just beneath. "I know you do, and altogether too recently. It shouldn't be anything either of us know."

"No, it shouldn't," Neil agrees, but it is. It's something they know too well, and that's been too close to both of them. At least they have each other, which is something, but that doesn't make it better, not really. That just makes it a little easier to drag themselves out of the mire of grief when they have to keep existing.

He keeps holding her close and tight, like he can squeeze the sorrow out of her. Like his soft joy can bring things around for her--though he refuses to speak of it, now, when she's barely holding herself together as she is.

"C'mon," he says. "Sit down, I'll make you tea."

"Thank you," she says, and it's for the tea, and the understanding, and the way he's holding her tight; all of it, all at once. He steps away to start the kettle, and she remains standing even without his arms around her to keep her up, even managing to lay Nick's clothes over the back of an armchair and prop up the poster in its frame just below. It shouldn't feel so monumental.

Going to the couch, she slips out of her shoes before curling up on the cushions to wait for Neil. Beau pads over a moment later to sit on the floor in front of her, his solid, spotty head coming to rest on her knee. "Good boy," she murmurs, petting the soft velvety fur of his ear. "You always know just what to do."

Neil busies himself in the kitchen while the music on the record player goes on, the soft, gentle croon of Rufus Wainwright quiet and soothing and enough to remind them of a world outside of this moment, outside of Darrow and everything they knew back home and here in this place and space and time.

He makes tea he knows she likes, staring at the electric kettle like that will make it go faster. Losing Nick doesn't hit as hard for him as it does for Rosie, of course, but he likes to think they were becoming fairly good friends, so it still hurts like losing anyone.

When the tea is ready, he comes out and sets it down on the coffee table, climbing onto the couch to drape across Rosie like an oversized, over-heavy blanket.

As she waits, her fingers tracing over the sleek fur of Beau's head, she listens to the music filling the room, undercut occasionally by the sound of Neil in the kitchen, getting mugs down and looking through the pantry. It's all soft, and gentle, and normal most of all--they'd listened to this record together before, made tea and sat on the couch together before. Went through something this hard together before, too.

She doesn't want that part to feel normal. It's starting to.

Neil comes back, setting down the mugs, and before Rosie can reach for hers he's on the couch and leaning against her, enfolding her and keeping her close in the way they've both learned is a comfort. It's just as reassuring as every other time.

"I know this isn't the case," she says after a minute or so, her head resting against him, "not really, but I feel a little like...of course this happened, after that night I saw David at work and got so upset. Like I brought it on."

"Darrow does a lot of shitty thing," Neil agrees, "but I don't think that it does things like that, taking people away just because you saw your ex who was a shitheel anyway, and felt a bit frustrated and mean about it when it happened."

He's quiet for a moment, just holding onto her the way that they naturally tangle up like they have every other time. He hates how normally they fit together like this, but they fit together like this even when the world isn't falling apart, so he can't be all mad about it.

"...we can totally blame it on David, though. We can say this one is his fault."

"It was more than that," she protests, but it's feeble and sad, exhaustion backing it more than disagreement or irritation. "Than just being frustrated and mean."

It doesn't matter now, not really, with Nick gone and everything else feeling like it's waiting to break in response. Whatever she might have had to say about the last year, all the things she's realized she gave up because she wanted to or had to or thought she needed to, maybe none of it's worth saying any longer.

"Sure," she says instead, giving in, the knowledge of it bitter at the back of her throat. "We can say it was David. Another awful thing he did to me."

It's not what he meant, but it's all they've got, and Neil knows better than most how the agony can turn into a wallow. Sometimes, it feels good to lay yourself in. Well, not good. Safe. It feels comfortable to be stuck down in the mud of misery, because at least then you're already there when the next misery comes.

Neil runs his fingers through her hair, slow, carding them this way and that and rubbing the tips of his fingers against her scalp like that will help with any of this.

Neil doesn't ask what it was, and despite the slow, soothing reassurance of his fingers in her hair Rosie's momentarily hurt by that. Not that she could have told him anyway, not tonight when there's been so many other things to eclipse it; fresher and deeper injuries, losses that are still so new her grief hasn't had time to scab over, or form some kind of callus. But he could have asked, even if she couldn't have explained.

"Sabrina took it hardest," she says after a minute, trying to relax into the touch of his hand and the solid weight of him as they stay tangled up on the couch. "For obvious reasons. And Charlie had to be steady for us both for...up until he dropped us off at home, I think. Which wasn't fair, but he did it."

"You say that like they've got more right to it than you do," Neil says. It's an awkward thing, talking about it. Not the relationship, per se, but just that he doesn't really have the words for all the complexities involved.

Neil can barely articulate his own affections, on a good day, but something in watching the close and clever knot of the four of them had felt good to him. Knowing that people could be that close, not just as friends but as the complex something else that they were trying to figure out together.

"And even if Sabrina does have more reason to take it harder, that doesn't mean that you can't take it hard."

"It isn't about having more right to it, it's just that she knows what he's gone back to," Rosie says, letting out a sigh, frustrated with her own inability to make things clear. Not that she's ever really had that, even when her life wasn't in shambles. "Better than Charlie or I. And that's a terrible thing to know."

Neil's trying to help, she knows that, and so she doesn't argue much further. It's better just to be held, to let him comfort her in this way they've found works so well--after all their practice, after everything Darrow's done to them both.

Neil nods, understanding that at least, but he still stands by what he means to. Even if Sabrina knows what home is like, for obvious reasons of being from there, Neil doesn't quite think that means she gets the lions share of upset.

But he can tell that, mostly, he's just putting his foot in it.

He eases up, finally, though he doesn't pull away really. Just gives her the space that she can sit up and get to her tea before it goes cold.

Neil lets go of her after another minute or so, just enough that she can lean forward to get her mug from the table. She settles back against him once it's in her hands, the ceramic still retaining enough heat that it's a comfort just to hold.

"Thank you for being here," she says. "It would've...I'd have understood if you were out with Caleb, but I didn't want to come back to no one here at all." She knows she'd have made the best of it, curled up just like this on the couch or in her bed and held onto Beau for all she was worth--just as she did almost a year prior, after everything with David--but she hadn't wanted to. Not this time.

"If I wasn't here, you could have asked me to come home," Neil says, soft but emphatic. Caleb's his boyfriend, but Rosie is one of his best friends in the world, as close as any of the boys back home he thinks, and if that doesn't mean coming at her beck and call he doesn't know what it means.

He knows he's spent a lot of time being absent, too, and it should be different. Caleb, at least, would know and understand that, he thinks.

"I know," she says, as certain of that as she is of the fact she's not sure she would have. They deserve their happiness--especially Neil, but Caleb too--and the thought of interrupting that would've been enough to make her hesitate.

If it had come to that, which it hadn't, so it wasn't entirely worth thinking about.

"How is it so far, with him?" she says, turning a little to look up at him, a faint and wavering smile on her face. "I could...I think I could use hearing something good right now."

"Good," Neil says, a little squeak of a word when Rosie asks that and then pins him with that faint smile. A flush works over his cheeks, quick and sudden and telling.

"Um, things are going really good, yup."

Up until now, the idea of laughing at anything felt impossible. Nick was gone, the pall that had already come over her that night on the beach only grown stronger as a result of it; Sabrina pale and quiet in a way that only suggested there was an explosion of grief waiting to happen, and Charlie trying to hold together all the fractured pieces of what they used to be. None of it should allow her to laugh, but then Neil blushes hard and stutters out his answer, and Rosie giggles despite herself.

"I didn't even mean anything sordid," she says, watching the spreading pink on his cheeks. "But, you know, good for you. Both of you."

"I don't know if it was sordid," Neil says. Certainly it wasn't quite the same sort of things that would have evoked sound cancelling headphones and teasing commentary in the morning. But it's still enough to keep him blushing.

He's quiet a moment, like he feels guilty to keep talking about it. When he speaks, it's tender and private, like speaking the weight of it might hurt one or the both of them.

"I really like him a lot," he says. "But liking me is a lot for someone that can't tell I'm feeling all the time. So I doubt it'll last very long at all before he gets tired of trying to navigate that."

"Well, good, because I would still like to look Caleb in the face." Neil keeps blushing, and for a moment everything feels a little easier. Not normal, because nothing had ever been--not for a long time, anyway--but simpler than the last day or so had been.

Neil gets quiet, then confessional, and Rosie understands the gravity of what he says. "I don't think it's like that at all," she says, equally careful and hushed. "Or it shouldn't be. It's different, even being friends with him is different when you know what he can do, but that doesn't mean he'll get tired of you. He just...understands more than someone else might. For good and bad."

"It probably never should be," Neil says. But he's spent so much time worrying about that, even before things got very bad. And yes, now that he's seen that dumb video, he knows that his friends missed him and were upset--but that doesn't mean he doesn't still worry about being a burden on his friends here.

He smiles a little and shrugs, in the end. Probably it's just silly worry, and Rosie's right about that. He's perfectly happy to have this mutually knowledgeable relationship with Rosie, open and understanding and communicative.

He leans over and kisses her forehead.

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only held by gravity, faded with uncertainty, no longer young and not that pretty

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