signed_sabrina | (no subject)

(no subject)

Once a month, Sabrina sleeps at Leviathan, for her turn on the weekly overnight shift. It usually falls on a weekend, but she's leveraged her assigned shift last Friday night for tonight, a Tuesday. She expects no trouble; winter break has already started, and the solstice has passed. Nothing in the store seems particularly likely to escape; nothing has tasted human flesh so far as she knows.

When she bundles herself onto the air mattress in the back, after setting out all of those little projects that require someone to be here overnight-- some of them, she suspects, needing a magical presence nearby to develop-- Sabrina really, truly thinks that the worst of her problems is that she has to be awake at 5:30 for a morning shipment of particularly fragile teeth.

She falls asleep quickly, with Salem a warm and comforting weight against the small of her back.

Her phone alarm goes off at 5:30 as planned, but even as Sabrina rubs her eyes and reaches for it, something feels off. Why is it so far away? Is Salem feeling particularly large and lumpy beside her?

The next few observations come quick-quick-quick. Her phone is too big, and it doesn't recognize her face. The hoodie she's stolen from Charlie and the pajama bottoms she's stolen from Rosie are also too big, and she ends up in a tangled mess on the floor, panting and unsure.

Moments later, when she's keyed in her passcode and is using the camera to look at herself, it comes together. "Fuck," she says, and winces at the small, piping voice that comes out. "What am I, five?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This time, Rosie has a perfectly reasonable, perfectly ordinary excuse for missing Sabrina's messages when they come through. She's asleep, luxuriating in the laziness of having a break from school and her alarm and everything else, and she slumbers on as her phone lights up in the early-morning dark.

Discovery of the messages comes a few hours later, once she's mostly awake, fumbling for her phone where it rests on her bedside table. She skims the texts, then reads them again more closely, sending a short message to Charlie (??? better get to Leviathan) before letting Sabrina know she's on her way. Emergency is one of those words Sabrina uses for a lot of things, but hardly ever in the middle of the night. Whatever it is, it's not something Rosie thinks she can ignore.

After a quick taxi ride downtown, Rosie stands in front of Leviathan, looking through into the darkened shop with no small amount of wariness. She tries the door, and finds it locked, lifting a hand to knock on the glass once, then twice.

Whether Salem actually knows how to unlock and open doors is a bit of an ambiguous area, but when the door opens for Rosie, it's the cat who greets her, with a worried, almost-yowling sort of sound. From where Sabrina sits, having managed to climb up onto the main counter, she's positive he's just worried it'll catch him too.

"We have a problem," she announces, as soon as Rosie's properly inside and in her line of sight. "I didn't do anything, first of all, and second of all, I woke up this way." She's still in Charlie's hoodie, which is now massive on her, but she's managed to spell Rosie's pajama pants to be the right size. "Third of all, there's about to be a delivery of teeth, and I need you to sign for them, please."

She's relieved and concerned in equal measure when Salem greets her at the door, his yowl managing to sound both urgent and displeased as he trots a few steps forward. "I'm coming," she says when he looks back at her, the sudden memory of those frogs making her choose her steps a little more carefully in the gloom. Her head snaps back up at the sound of a voice, strangely familiar and unfamiliar all at once--much like the girl in front of her now.

Miraculously, she doesn't burst out laughing.

"I should say so," she mutters, listening to Sabrina run through each issue in turn with an efficiency that suggests a bit of rehearsal and practice. Though, Rosie supposes, she'd have had time for that. "Okay. Teeth first, and I don't want to know what those are for at all, and then..." She waves a hand at Sabrina. "We figure out what's gone wrong here?"

Sabrina allows just a bit of a smile to glimmer through on what's otherwise a possibly pouting face. She really hadn't wanted to explain the variety of carefully wrapped teeth-- though she's not sure it's the reputable supplier today. Please, please don't let it be a mixed box of teeth that needs sorting.

She nods, folding her legs up in front of her, a pose that comes too naturally to this particular iteration of her body.

"All you'll need to do is answer the door and sign my name," she says. "They won't be worried about matching a face. As for the other part, I'm going to guess it's a Darrow thing."

"I suppose if it can turn Charlie into a girl, it can turn you into a child," Rosie muses, her smile coming a little more easily now that she can see Sabrina's lack of concern. If it was magic, it's at least magic the other girl knows, or trusts will solve itself without too much issue. "And I can sign your name. Do you know when they're--"

The question answers itself with a knock on the door, and Rosie looks from it to Sabrina. "Here we go." She opens it, nods yes to the gruff You Spellman? from the man on the other side, then scribbles down something on the delivery invoice that looks enough like Sabrina's name to pass muster.

Small and irritated though she may be, Sabrina can't help the warmth in her chest at the sight of Rosie signing her name. She waits until there's a box on the floor and the door is closed and locked again before she starts wiggling off the counter.

"Thank you," she says, and then grins. "It feels very comforting when you commit fraud for me."

Out of probably nowhere, Sabrina's suddenly wielding a large boxcutter. "Okay, I just need to get a look in here and then we can lock up. Will you help me get back home?"

"Good grief, do not call it fraud," she sighs, leaning back against the now-closed and relocked door and shutting her eyes. For as exasperated as she's trying to sound, she can't help grinning. "No matter if it is true, in a technical and actual sense."

The small thud of Sabrina's feet hitting the ground makes her open her eyes. Even if she knows it's a change in the other girl's body only, that she's just as capable and mature as she would've been otherwise, a small thread of panic runs through her at the sight of someone that small holding something that sharp. She manages to stop herself from reaching for the box cutter, from saying something stern and patronizing like We don't touch sharp things, but only just. "Of course I'll help you get back home," she says instead. "To Marcus's, or should we go to the Kavinskys and see if someone can take us in the truck?"

Rosie thinks for a moment, watching Sabrina slit open the tape holding the box shut. "...you have warned Charlie already, haven't you?"

Click-ick-ick-ick-ick goes the boxcutter as Sabrina pushes the blade out, ever admiring of dangerous things, and she's already pulling out bubble-wrapped packs of teeth, squinting at the labels as Rosie asks her that.

"I warned Charlie. I texted you and Charlie and Marcus, but you got here first." She holds up a particular bundle, and after holding it very close to her face for a few moments, she stands back up. "There, this is the one I was worried about the most. It need to be in the freezer."

She fixes Rosie with a very strange look.

"You know, on account of the chattering."

"That was hours ago," Rosie says, regretting that she hadn't seen the messages sooner, knowing that being the first one here means Sabrina had been alone for all this time. At least she didn't seem upset--quite the opposite, as she digs into the box of teeth and starts sorting the contents, Salem observing from the safer elevation of the countertop behind her. Rosie answers Sabrina's strange look with one of her own.

"Do I want to know what the chattering's about?"

"No," says Sabrina after a moment of thought. "I don't think you do, probably. I'll just go put them away. Um, maybe don't look too deeply into the box. I can't promise what's in there or not in there."

She pads off into the backroom again, Salem trailing her after he murrs a bit at Rosie, clearly trying to impart some kind of information. And maybe there's a little more banging around, but both girl and cat emerge victorious within minutes.

"Can you tape it back up? Then we can go."

See, if she keeps focused on business, there's no freaking out. Right? Right.

"None of this is any more reassuring," she murmurs, but she's smiling just a little as she says it. She nods in response to whatever Salem tells her, understanding the tone of it even if the meaning isn't clear, and keeps a respectful distance from the box once both girl and cat are gone.

She remembers the frogs, along with all the other stories Sabrina's had to tell after a particularly difficult day at the shop, and she's not taking any chances.

The pleased, determined expression Sabrina's wearing when she gets back looks odd on that young of a face--but still right, somehow. "Sure," she says, going to the counter and gingerly opening a drawer, holding her breath as she sifts through the contents. The tape gun was knocked towards the back, and it's a minute or two before she's able to extract it. As quickly as she can, she tapes the box flaps back down, adding an extra layer once it's sealed just to be doubly certain.

Frogs and toads of all sorts really do seem to be a problem at Leviathan, though it's something management won't admit to, not to Sabrina.

Not yet.

Right now, Sabrina's focused on how strange it is that while she's certainly got the situation more under control, with Rosie's help-- she's starting to get a peculiar, anxious sensation. She knows she'd been a happy child, if prone to stubbornness and fits of pique, but sometimes the world around her had been just too strange to take.

Her stomach feels like it's flipping over and over and spinning, and she really hopes that the sudden sniffling sound is covered up by Rosie with the tape gun. "It looks good," she says, and unfortunately, her determination not to sound wavering just sounds little and unsure.

"Hopefully it holds," Rosie says, catching the waver in Sabrina's voice just a moment too late. She's seen her sad, and scared, and unsteady before--never mind the appearance she tries to put forth for everybody else--but somehow in this body it's even closer to the surface. Leaving the tape on the counter, Rosie goes to her, bending just far enough to put her arms around her.

"Oh, Sabrina. It's...you'll be alright."

"I know," says Sabrina, but her voice is still wobbly, and she absolutely burrows into Rosie's arms. "I'm sorry, this is probably really weird, and it screws up the holiday, and I'm still me, but I think maybe I feel younger on the inside too."

She sniffles.

"I want to go home, can you, can you help?"

And stay, she thinks, but she's not sure how hard to push there.

Sabrina presses closer, and Rosie holds her tight as she kneels there on the floor, running a hand down her back to soothe her. "It's weird," she says, because she won't pretend it isn't. "But you haven't ruined anything, and it's alright to feel younger than you know you really are." She can't and won't kiss her properly, not like this, but she lays something soft and chaste against Sabrina's cheek and judges it an appropriate substitute.

"Of course I'll help get you home," she says, pulling back to look at her. "We'll get a taxi, and I'll let Charlie know on the way so he doesn't come here and worry."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only