signed_sabrina | (no subject)

The reassurance is nice, even a sort of balm--of course they'd still be the same close foursome they'd grown into over the last few months--but Sabrina's laughter and the joking ease with which she brings up the rumors leaves Rosie quickly and surprisingly stung. "I...they will, won't they," she says, the line of her shoulders growing just slightly tense. "At least--at least we'll be in it together." She looks away, trying to let go of the sudden humiliating swirl of her thoughts. It's not quite as easy as she might have hoped, though the quick shift in topic helps--even as the answer Sabrina gives, that enigmatic shuffling of part of the conversation to some other time, seems to invite a few more questions.

If she wants to wait, though, Rosie's happy to give her that space; it isn't as though they don't have plenty to discuss otherwise. "Alright, good," she says, her smile a little more settled on her face. "I'd want to talk to you. Maybe not about everything, but...most things. I'd hate to think we'd need to give up gossiping about our relationships entirely because of this." It's her turn to laugh now, the sound of it maybe a little faint and tinged with that tension from before; hearing it, she inwardly kicks herself for her own awkwardness. There's nothing for it but to press on, and so she does.

"What sort of--what might he expect of me, when it's..." Rosie blushes again, struggling to put together the question she wants to ask. "Oh, this is ridiculous." She huffs out a sharp, exasperated breath, forcing herself just to talk rather than think. "I know he's good, or expect he will be, really, with all his...his experience. But I haven't much at all, not really, even if I was already with someone, and...I guess I'm just wondering what he...likes."

The more she said, the hotter her face had grown. She doesn't take any of it back; just looks steadily at Sabrina, studying her friend's expression as she waits for an answer.

Sabrina squeezes Rosie's hand. "If anyone bothers you, they'll have me to deal with," she says. "And I happen to think I can be pretty scary." But there's truth in the idea that they will have to put with some of that kind of nonsense, and it's enough to make Sabrina think about other parts of David's body she could break.

She's still thinking about it when Rosie asks her about Nick, and she laughs, a single bubble of delighted sound. "Oh. Oh. I see." Turning, she leans against the back of the couch, swinging her legs up into Rosie's lap to keep her from moving. "He likes you, of course. You'll find the way you want to be together. Not having experience won't be a problem." She folds her hands in her lap, glancing at them. "I had such a hard time at first-- back there-- with how I was feeling, with how much I wanted him. And I can say that I know he wanted me back then as much as he wants me now, regardless of experience or knowledge." Her mouth curves up at the corner. "What Nick likes is making you feel good."

"Oh, you're terrifying," Rosie laughs, letting the squeeze to her hand push away a little more of the sudden tension that had settled within her. "But only in the best way, the way that protects the people you care about."

With Sabrina's legs now draped over her lap and almost pinning her in place, Rosie has no choice but to listen to the rest, none of it really doing much to make her blush any less. It's not quite the answer to the question she was asking, but it's useful and almost comforting information regardless. "And...I want him to make me feel good," she admits, with a small and almost secretive quirk of her lips. "That'll be...well, you know what David was like on that front." Rosie crinkles her nose, making a quick moue of disgust. "And I know it's going to be different, much different, now I'm with Nick. In so many ways. I just...I want to make him feel good too, however...whatever he wants of me."

That he will want something of her is a fact that Rosie doesn't even think to question. Of course he will, even if the timing of it all is her own to set, instead of the almost superficial thing it had been with David--being made to believe her choices were her own, rather than something he'd nudged her into bit by bit until the charade had lost its luster. It won't be that, but it has to be something.

"We talked about that," Sabrina confesses, reflecting for a moment how many of the important conversations in her life have been draped against one of her-- she supposes she'll need some sort of word. "About how you deserved better than that."

It's only then that she quite catches up to what Rosie's saying, and her eyebrows raise up nearly to her hairline. "Wait, what? What he wants of you?" There's a vague crackle in the air, a reminder of the thundering that had happened outside that very nice house one day. "Rosie. No, that's-- that's not how it works. When I say what Nick wants is to make you feel good, that's-- that's it. He doesn't expect anything, like some sort of--" The look on her face suggests that perhaps somewhere in Darrow, David feels a chill down his spine.

"I suppose I can only speak from experience," Sabrina says after a moment, forcing herself to relax, "and that's that what's expected is that you're honest about what you want. You don't have to perform a certain way, and you both get to decide how it goes."

"I know it won't be like it was with David, I just--" The shocked and slightly murderous look that crosses Sabrina's face, combined with the charge in the air that briefly lifts a few strands of her hair, makes Rosie drop the matter rather than continue to talk it through. "Alright, I can...of course I'll be honest with him. I want to be."

Sabrina relaxes, her legs still draped over Rosie's lap, and Rosie lets the tense moment get a little further away before she speaks again. "How long have you and Charlie known?" she asks, breathing out a quiet half-embarrassed laugh. "That Nick and I were...that we were getting close?"

Surprise and then guilt flashes across Sabrina's face at the way Rosie discontinues the conversation and she shakes her head. "No, I'm-- I'm just angry at that asshole who made you think you would owe anyone your body, even someone you love. That he would make you think that it had to be that way."

She'll answer the other question, but this seems much more important.

"Did I tell you much about Lupercalia?"

Seeing Sabrina's expression shift into something so immediately sorrowful makes a cold and heavy guilt settle in Rosie's chest. It's only momentary, at least, banished almost as soon as it occurs as she hears the fierce protectiveness underlying each word of Sabrina's explanation. "I know we've talked about how things like this were different at home for me," she murmurs, one hand curling gently around Sabrina's ankle. "Or even for you, for that matter, with all that staying a virgin for your Dark Baptism business. And I know David used that in his own stupid, awful way to get what he wanted, I do, but..."

She sighs. "When you've always heard that letting a boy have certain...advantages means you can't be surprised if he decides you ought to offer him more, it's not so easy to forget."

Rosie shakes her head in answer to the shift in topic. "You said a little, but not much," she says, her thumb starting to rub a soft, idle circle along the hollow of Sabrina's ankle. "That it's set around Valentine's Day, but it's just for witches, I remember that much. And that you were celebrating it with Nick."

The touch grounds her, and Sabrina would have to admit, if pressed, that it's the secret to defusing any of her moods. By the time Rosie's stroking her ankle, she's half-melted against her and her eyes hooded and content.

"The idea is that witches and warlocks pair off for the festival, and that there are some different rituals and celebrations. Nick asked me to participate with him, and I was still really getting to know him. Anyway, the way it's supposed to end, the warlocks dress up as wolves and we dress up in red cloaks, and we chase the warlocks down and it's-- sort of a big orgiastic ritual." She laughs a little. "Nick swore it'd be how I wanted it to be, and I-- I know I was worried, because I liked him, what if this amazing guy is disappointed if I don't want to have sex? I never had, back there."

Sabrina reaches out to comb her fingers through Rosie's hair. "It's when I really started to fall in love. The parts of Lupercalia we did were easy and fun, if you discount the tragic ending that seems to come with any part of my life, and we did mortal things, and never ever would he have been angry or disappointed with what we didn't do."

"More than a touch of Red Riding Hood in there, too," she says, the corner of her mouth ticking up as Sabrina laughs. Not for the first time, she thinks about how much she likes that sound. More so, when she's the one to cause it. "It all sounds like a lot, especially if you'd never been with someone before."

Rosie keeps up the touch to Sabrina's ankle as she speaks, that gentle circling of her thumb, a few times letting her hand run a bit up Sabrina's calf and back down. If this sort of thing works to soothe Sabrina, the feeling of hands in her hair does much the same thing for Rosie; when the other girl's fingers find their way into her curls, Rosie tips her head into the touch, her eyes closing briefly. "Tragedy aside, and I'm sorry there even was one in the first place," she says quietly, "I'm glad the rest of it happened the way you wanted. That's...how it ought to be."

Rosie feels her own spike of anger at David then, one that's a little more internal than Sabrina's crackling rage from before.

"I don't think Red Riding Hood dressed like we did," Sabrina says, laughing again. "It's probably the reason I love stockings so much, though." She feels so good and warm; how could she have ever worried that things would be wrong between her and Rosie?

It's different, she knows, than things staying the same.

No, the hand on her leg isn't the same, and Sabrina knows that she's never quite carded her fingers through Rosie's hair like this, her hand finding a motion it knows already, gently possessive.

"I didn't-- we didn't, there. Our first time was after he came here. My first time was with Charlie. New Year's Eve. We broke into a hotel room after the cookie attack. I just knew that I wanted him and I knew that I wanted it on my terms."

"I suppose not," she says, her cheeks pinking a little once more. "Not if an...an orgy was the point of the evening." Just saying the word makes Rosie's stomach flip a little; the sensation odd but not wholly off-putting. "Though you do look awfully good in stockings, as I'm sure you know."

There's a shift in the way Sabrina's fingers move through her hair, something slight but faintly--and again, oddly--reminiscent of the way Nick's had twisted in her curls as he held her in a kiss during their evening together only a few days ago. Then, she'd gasped against his mouth, deepened the kiss until she was dizzy and breathless with it. That's not going to happen here, not tonight.

But it could, she thinks, the realization surprising in its suddenness. Sometime later.

Rosie makes herself focus on what else Sabrina is saying, the explanation and reassurances she's continuing to provide in this sharing of her own history. It helps, a little. "Oh, I see," she says. "So when the rest of us were escaping those gingerbread men, you and Charlie were celebrating the turn of the new year in a much nicer way." She nudges Sabrina, teasing, and laughs, hoping the faint note of something strained she hears in the sound isn't audible to her friend. "Good for you."

"I wouldn't have wanted anyone else involved," Sabrina says, a quiet confession, but the tension is strung so beautifully taut here. "But I wanted it that night, with Nick. On the forest floor, under the moon." She can't help the little shiver.

She thinks she sees Rosie's mind wander, and she realizes that she's going to need to break this moment.

Just-- just a little longer.

"Another reason I was so angry on your behalf, honestly," she murmurs. "It is possible, with someone who cares enough, for that to be good. But just because what you went through wasn't, doesn't mean it can't be now. You're still going to have all sorts of firsts, and being with someone who loves you, that's the best kind of first." Her hand moves to Rosie's neck, thumbing her pulse. "I want you to have that."

"Goodness, Sabrina," Rosie says, looking down at her. Pressed as close as they are, she can't help but feel the faint tremor that goes through Sabrina, and it--along with the thought of what that would be like, to be out in the open, under the stars--nearly sparks an answering one of her own.

She has to talk to her about this, and soon. To Nick and Charlie too, maybe. But not quite yet.

When Sabrina's hand twines itself out of her hair, for a moment she thinks maybe whatever this has become since she opened the door to her apartment has passed; that there'll be a distance again, something still close and still intimate, certainly, but veiled in friendship. And then there's the light press of Sabrina's fingertips against her neck, and somewhere at the back of her mind Rosie knows it's only just begun.

"I," she starts, though it comes out more like a sigh than a word. She swallows, and tries again. "I want that too. Whatever firsts there are, whatever ones remain, I want them with someone who cares about me. Who really does, not someone...pretending. Not someone who makes a fool of me." Despite the increasing thud of her heartbeat, when Rosie smiles, it's easy and bright. "And I know I'll have that now."

Sabrina knows she needs to pull back, to remind herself that she's waiting-- she's just not very good at waiting, now when she wants something. And she knows now that this is something she wants, to feel the thud of Rosie's heartbeat get faster under the touch of her fingers, or maybe her lips.

She leans forward to rest her forehead on Rosie's shoulder.

"I think," she says quietly, "that there might be some firsts for us too." Her stomach nearly turns over. "Down the road, if-- if you wanted."

Her eyes go a split-second wide and startled, not at the thought itself but the way it so accurately echoes her own. In a way, the most surprising thing is how unsurprising it is, how natural it already feels to be considering this new alteration in the way they are together.

She never expected this--any of this--that day she came barreling into Sabrina's room at the Home, having heard Salem's meow. But oh, how glad she is to have it now.

"I do," she says, her voice almost as quiet as Sabrina's. The sight of her white-blonde hair against the fabric of her blouse looks so right, so perfect, that it makes Rosie's breath catch just faintly. "If that's...we'll need to talk to Nick and Charlie, or maybe I will, maybe you already have, about how it ought to...fit. How we should be together, as part of all the rest of it." She doesn't know if any of that makes sense, is nearly certain they could be doing much better things than this jumble of half-formed thoughts and practical planning, but something about it grounds her all the same.

Rosie looks down again, quiet for a moment. "But I know I want them. Whatever firsts there are, down the road. If we can have them, I--I want them."

Sabrina's not sure she can lift her head without kissing Rosie, so she keeps her forehead safely where it is, even as she smiles against Rosie's arm. There's a promise here, she thinks. "I already have, some," she admits softly. "Charlie more than Nick. I didn't want to throw Nick for too much of a loop when I was already telling him that he should be with you, too. Nick, though-- I have no doubts he'll like any way we fit together. With ourselves. With him." She can already imagine the look in his eyes.

"And Charlie, as long as he and I stay firm, as long as he's not losing time with me, he understands and is okay." She lets out a shaky laugh. "But I think we need to wait for you and Nick to settle. Which means I'd better untangle before I do anything we're waiting on doing."

"You should," she says, trying her best not to show how much effort it takes to agree to that. She shifts a bit, letting Sabrina have some space. "And Nick and I need to have our time, you're right. We need to find out how we are together, before..." Rosie blushes, a faint pink along her cheeks. "Well, before the two of us do."

She nods at the rest of it, though the thought of Nick liking the idea of her and Sabrina together--other combinations, if we find that works, she hears him say again--makes her head spin, just a little. "I'll talk to them both too," she says. "Charlie, especially. He's my best friend, and I'd never want any of this to hurt him, just like I already knew I didn't want to get in the way of you and Nick, how you are together."

There's a surging wave of love that fills her then, for all of them; something that makes her chest briefly tight. Gently, carefully, Rosie puts an arm around Sabrina, squeezing her once before letting go.