forthsofar | 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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"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.

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

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