Rosie Wilson (
forthsofar) wrote2021-04-17 02:47 pm
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Entry tags:
go get your ribbon box, go get your wounded heart
In the end, Rosie doesn't ask Anne about particularly slow and vengeful ways of killing someone, or go to Sabrina for a hex involving boils or scrofula or something equally vile, or any of the other gruesomely creative things she'd thought about in the space between finding out about Neil and Caleb's breakup--and the reasons therein--and now. She hadn't replied to any of his messages beyond that first one, and even that was a starkly ominous we will talk about this later; in the last day or so, he'd moved on to leaving voicemails, and she hadn't listened to any of them either. There was a kind of glee in letting him stew, in ignoring him in favor of making sure Neil got back on his feet and recovered as much as possible from the blow he'd been dealt.
Eventually, she decides to take him off of whatever agonizing hook he'd placed himself on--not that he hadn't deserved it--and sends him another message, just as short as the last. If you're not home, get there. I'm coming over.
She doesn't wait for a reply, just heads out the door and towards Caleb's building.
Eventually, she decides to take him off of whatever agonizing hook he'd placed himself on--not that he hadn't deserved it--and sends him another message, just as short as the last. If you're not home, get there. I'm coming over.
She doesn't wait for a reply, just heads out the door and towards Caleb's building.
no subject
The flowers that Neil had brought are still in the glasses he's using for vases, but they're wilted, petals littering the counter top along with whatever pollen they're dropping. He's kept them watered, but their appearance matches his state of mind pretty well, of late. (Yes, that's pathetic, and yes, he knows.) He debates clearing them out plenty of times, but it seems somehow rude or disrespectful. They're a gift from Neil.
When he gets the text from Rosie, he sits bolt upright on the couch. He'd called off work to pitifully wallow on the couch, thinking and overthinking about all of this, and he's pretty sure he's been crying, because his face feels tight and a little itchy. There's a cowardly part of him that wants to tell her no, that if she wants to talk, they can do it over the phone. He's honestly not sure if he can handle the full brunt of Rosie's emotions. But he's just going to have to.
He doubts she'd oblige him, anyway. Right now, she's Neil's friend, and he's Neil's ex boyfriend. If Rosie is still his friend, it's not today, so she's not going to be pulling any punches. He responds to her text with I'm home and debates for way longer than he should on whether he should thank her for finally saying something to him. He opts not to, leaving the message feeling short and unfinished to him.
But he changes into somewhat presentable clothes, and wipes his hands over his face. The apartment doesn't look too bad, at least. It doesn't look like he's been wallowing in his own stupid misery this whole time... even though he has been.
no subject
"Well, good," she mutters, putting it away again. She raises one hand, and knocks.
no subject
He walks over to the door in time to hear her mutter something to herself, and he pulls the door open the moment she's finished knocking, even before she can lower her hand.
no subject
"Caleb."
no subject
Or, fuck. Call the cops on him.
no subject
"When you said you liked him, I told you one thing," she says, her voice flat and cold. "One thing that was important to me that you do. Do you even remember what that was?"
no subject
"Yeah, I remember," he says. "You said 'be kind to him.'" He feels his chin tremble and he clenches his jaw to stop it, because that's not what this is about right now. He's not going to let himself cry, no matter how much he wants to as he remembers that night.
no subject
She pulls herself to a momentary stop, staring at him, deliberately not focusing on the tremor in his jaw or the liquid woundedness of his eyes. "And to call it cheating on top of it."
no subject
These are just excuses, and he knows it. This is nothing like telling someone about his ability. That's a secret people can understand. Keeping Adam from his boyfriend — ex-boyfriend, he reminds himself — is very different, and it'd been hard enough trying to talk this through with Neil, and he'd been as understanding as anyone could be in that situation. Rosie doesn't want to understand, at least not yet. She wants to be angry with him, and she's going to be, until it's burned itself through. But he still needs to explain. He hugs himself, making sure to focus on his breathing so that anger doesn't sweep him up. He doesn't want to fight with her. He wants to just talk.
"I said it feels like cheating because it does feel like cheating," he says. "Even if he's not here, Adam's still my boyfriend. I can't just pretend he's not. I... I honestly thought I could. You wanted me to be kind to him; how is it kind to stay with Neil when I can't break up with Adam? When I find myself thinking about Adam instead of Neil, of missing Adam when I'm sitting right beside Neil?" How is he supposed to be with anyone when Adam is a ghost hanging over them, always?
By now, he's crying, and he's trying so fucking hard not to, fingers clutching at his arm to ground himself, because this isn't a pity play and he doesn't want her to think it is.
no subject
It's easy to snap at him like this, to dispense judgement she knows, in a corner of her mind she's not acknowledging now, she ought to apply to herself in a slightly different form. At least her anger and righteous indignation, combined with Caleb's own sadness, should be enough to mask the twist of guilt she feels just for a moment as he continues to speak. Her expression still set and hard, she looks away as he starts to cry, giving him that little bit of privacy--for the sake of their usual friendship, if nothing else.
"It would've been kinder to be honest from the start, Caleb," she says. "To...I don't know, let both of you go into it knowing that it wasn't going to be permanent. That if Adam showed up one day, it would be over. That there were things you couldn't...be to each other. Something."
no subject
He wipes his hand across first one cheek, then the other, composing himself as well as he can. His careful breathing wavers, and her anger flares inside his chest before he shoves it away again.
"I fucked up," he says. "I know that, Rosie. From the fucking start, I fucked up, but I can't change that." He wipes his face again, sniffles, and angles his body slightly away, like that will help shield him from her feelings. Of course it doesn't. "So I tried to fix it, the kindest way I could."
no subject
She moves a short half-step, following the turn of his body. "I mentioned Adam without thinking and it was like I'd said something horrible. Neil was...I've seen him hurt, more times than I should, but not betrayed like that. And all because you didn't have the courage to say anything about him."
no subject
"I'm sorry you had to experience that," he says instead. The weariness she feels — that they both feel — is bleeding into his voice, but he still means it. He sniffles and wipes his face again.
no subject
Rosie sighs again, looking up at Caleb. "Kind of like how I came here to shout at you because I love you and you're also my friend. Even though I shouldn't have had to, because you shouldn't have been an idiot."
no subject
He's done enough damage to it already.
"I know," he says, voice soft and quiet. The truth is, if she does feel any love for him at all, he can't feel it under everything else. That's probably the most depressing part.
no subject
"Neil said you wanted to be friends," she says after a long silence. "I hope you can be, eventually."
no subject
He wants to tell Rosie that he still loves Neil, but he's afraid of the scoff, the roll of her eyes, the 'you've got a nice away of showing it.' He's still breathing carefully, still making sure her feelings don't sweep him up — but that doesn't mean they don't still hurt. He feels bruised, and he doesn't know how to make it stop.
"At his pace, though," he adds softly. "I'm the one that hurt him, so. His pace."
no subject
Rosie watches Caleb hunch and sniffle, standing in the middle of the pathetic ruin of his living room. Though there's still a hard nugget of anger resting at the pit of her stomach--at him, and at Neil, and a bit at herself, along with all the situations where simple honesty might have solved a problem before it began--even that is fading quickly. "You'll...sort it out," she says, awkward as she loses hold of a little more of her fury. "Whatever it has to be from here. Both of you."
no subject
Slowly, like it's painful, he steps the short distance to his table and sits down.
He should ask her to leave. He should be alone right now, so he can get these feelings out of him and be more himself again. Then, maybe, he can clean his apartment and air it out of the stink of his misery — literally and empathically. He should ask her to leave.
"You're my first friend here," he says instead, staring at the tabletop. The whorls of the wood grain remind him a lot of the different feelings Rosie's feeling the longer this conversation goes on. "I've known you longer than anyone else in the city. I've known you longer than most of my friends back home, at this point. Is... is that ruined, now?"
He doesn't mean to sound so small, so pathetic and afraid, but he is. His green eyes are huge with tears as he finally looks up at her. It's no less than he deserves, he thinks, for his own cowardice, his own idiocy, to cost him not one, but two friendships. He's just lost Neil. It was his own fault, but it was still a loss. He's not sure he can handle losing Rosie, too.
no subject
It doesn't get any better when Caleb actually starts talking. Rosie bites her lip against a flood of words, forces herself--again, always again--to listen even as her stomach clenches. "Caleb," she starts to say, and then he looks up at her with tear-filled eyes and she's closing the space between them after all, leaning down to seize him in a tight, fierce hug.
"I wouldn't be this mad at you if you weren't my friend, you stupid boy," she says, her voice a rough and shaky whisper in his ear. "Shame on you for thinking otherwise."
no subject
He's babbling, he realizes too late to stop, telling her he'd never meant for this to happen, it'd all just gotten away from him, and he's so sorry. The words just spill out of him until they don't anymore, his regret and his sorrow and his confusion tripping over each other to be heard until they finally peter out, and he just clings to her instead. Maybe he's expecting too much — maybe she's still too angry with him to accept any of this, but she's hugging him, and right now, that's all he can let himself focus on.
no subject
no subject
"Sorry," he mumbles once he has. He feels cored, now. Not just empty of his own feelings, but actually carved out. Bits have remained behind, like meat clinging to bone, but mostly, he just feels... numb.
It's not better.
no subject
"It wasn't fair to put me in the middle, and it wasn't right to keep Adam from Neil, and I know you know both of those things but I'm saying them anyway," she says. "And I forgive you."
no subject
"Thank you," he whispers. There's someone else he wants to forgive him, too, but he feels like that's too soon. Eventually, he and Neil probably will be friends. Eventually, Caleb will be able to think of Adam and not feel haunted by him. But right now, he's just glad that Rosie doesn't hate him, and isn't disgusted by him.
He feels like it takes a long time before his feelings start to trickle back into his body. There's that familiar shame he's felt all week, guilt, too, and sadness — a unique mix of sorrow and depression, tinged with regret. But he still believes he made the right choice, as hard as it was at the time and as hard as it is now to deal with the consequences of that choice. He needs to work on himself, really and genuinely, before he can be with anyone the way that they deserve.
After another moment or two of sitting quietly, he sniffles and looks at her.
"Can I ask... um. Why did you feel guilty? Earlier. You don't— you don't have to say," he adds, fingers tightening almost imperceptibly on hers, like he's afraid she'll pull away. He is.
no subject
"You're really too good at that," she says. "I'm not...I've been over it with more people than is really right for it to have taken already, so it's no use going into details again. Basically, I realized I was judging you for something I maybe, a little bit, ought to judge myself for too."
no subject
no subject
She laughs, soft and mirthless. "Well, I do, but it should be to Sabrina and not you. But you know what I meant."
no subject
no subject
no subject
He leans against the counter while he waits, and watches her.
"I'm not trying to be pathetic for pity points," he says, sounding a little more like himself. He sounds a little wry, but his expression is still drawn and miserable. "I'm just actually this pathetic."
no subject
no subject
It helps that this was just a breakup — 'just,' like it isn't that big of a deal, but compared to what happened to Michael, Caleb isn't sure it is. Or maybe it's just a different kind of big deal. He doesn't really have a frame of reference for 'my best friend was kidnapped by a secret lab and then cut open' vs 'I broke up with my boyfriend because I'm hung up on a boyfriend in a different city.'
"This city is fucking weird," he mumbles, shaking his head.