teenagerenegade | (no subject)

Things have always been easy with Charlie, comfortable and close, their friendship unchanged even when plenty of things around them have shifted until they're far different than what they'd been before. It's a constant, as solid as Charlie himself is, and occasionally Rosie's struck by how important having exactly that has been for her. When he sits up, she shifts to give him room, settling a little further into the corner of the sofa.

"Please," she says to the offer of clothes, smiling at him as he stretches, his hair already tousled from how they'd been lounging. "And of course I'll stay."

"Okay," says Charlie, standing up. "You know where everything is if you want to grab another drink or something." He pads off to his bedroom and, a few minutes later, comes back in sweat-pants and a t-shirt, a hoodie half zipped over it. Under his arm, he's carrying roughly the same for Rosie to put on. "Here you go."

Rosie nods to show she's heard him, already leaning over the arm of the sofa to grab her phone. While he changes, she texts Neil to let him know she won't be home--for however much it matters, considering he's probably spending the night at Caleb's anyway--and heads towards the kitchen. When she gets back, a soda in one hand and an already-opened bag of chips in the other, she gives Charlie a smile.

"Thanks." Setting the food down on the coffee table, she takes the clothes from him. "Be back in a minute."

Rosie goes off to change and Charlie potters around in the kitchen, grabbing himself another soda and a handful of cookies, settling himself back into his corner of the sofa and idly flicking through the channels on the TV.

It's so normal to her now, changing in his room like this, something so completely ordinary that she's half-undressed before the thought even occurs to her at all. She leaves her clothes in a neat pile off to one side, pulling on the t-shirt and sweats, pushing up the long sleeves of the hoodie as she walks back down the hallway.

"Anything interesting?" she asks, watching him flip from one channel to the next.

"Three hundred channels. Nothing but cats," says Charlie, and then realises that they definitely don't have The Simpsons where Rosie comes from. Sometimes, he forgets where they both came from, how far apart that is. "Nothing good."

She doesn't understand the reference but laughs anyway, knowing it's meant to be funny. These moments of disconnect happen less and less often now, the reminders that she's from somewhere much longer ago than a lot of the people she loves, but Rosie's also gotten better at not minding when they do. "Oh well," she says, curling back up on the couch and taking her soda from the table. "We can always just have something on for noise. Or nothing at all."

"Whatever you want," he says, holding the remote out to her as he bites into the first of his cookies. "We've got tonnes of junk food, bad tv and Newt and Kav are off doing...you know...married people shit. The world's our oyster."

"Spoiled for choice, truly," she says, and grins. She blushes just faintly at the mention of Newt and Kav and whatever they're up to--and Rosie's sure he's not wrong--but takes the remote when it's offered. After a few more minutes of searching, she settles on a nature program, something interesting and scenic, but easy enough to mostly ignore. Putting the remote down, she takes a handful of chips out of the bag before leaning back against the arm of the couch.

"I still wonder how they film things like this," she says, gesturing towards the television, the screen full of a lush and obviously tropical landscape. "I mean, where do the people who're actually from Darrow think this is?"

"I mean, they think there's a world out there, right?" says Charlie. "Like...Petros had Geography classes and stuff. They just...haven't got any interest in going there."

"No, that's true," she agrees, continuing to study the documentary for a moment as though she can work out another, more complex answer. "It's just weird, knowing the city's really all there is."

After another minute, she stretches out one leg, nudging Charlie gently with her foot. "Where would you go, if you could? Say you could go anywhere."

Without really thinking about it, Charlie curls his hand around her foot - a gentle sort of pressure. He thinks about it for a second. "Home," he says. "Play my piano, hug my mom. That's a lame answer, but it's true. What about you?"

"I don't think that's lame, I think that's sweet," Rosie says, smiling at the warm, gentle contact of his hand. Her own answer takes a little bit of time, weighing the few places she'd been before against all the ones she dreamt for years of seeing, all the adventures she'd wanted to have. It had felt silly to want so many things so badly, when she'd been fifteen and trapped in Oxford, and it might be even sillier now that she's in Darrow--older, yes, but truly stuck rather than just feeling that way.

"The Pacific Ocean," she says. "Some little island, tropical and warm, where I can sit and watch the sun set into the water. I know I can do that here, go down to the boardwalk and everything, but it's not the same."

"Yeah, you're right," he says. "Definitely not the same. We used to do holidays to the West Coast when my dad was around, and I always felt like the Pacific had a totally different feel to it to the Atlantic. Which...I guess this is? It feels like it, anyway."

"I wouldn't know either way," she points out, but she's smiling. "We'll say you're right, though. As much as anything's like anything in Darrow, other than just a little bit strange around the edges."

There have been plenty of times Darrow's been more than just a little strange, when it's worked to hurt either or both of them, but it's not anything Rosie needs to point out now.

"I don't know if I've ever told you, but I've been to England," he says. "When I was...ten? My dad had business over there, and he took my mom and me. To London."

Charlie doesn't talk about his father hardly at all, or to almost anyone at all--just her and Sabrina, possibly, and Nick when he'd still been here--and for good reason. It's always a little surprising when he does come up, like being entrusted with a confidence Rosie knows she has to work hard to deserve.

"I don't think you ever have," she says, after thinking about it for a moment. "What did you think of it? I'm sure it'd be much different from anything I remember, from the few times I was even there at all."

"I mostly remember the food and an open top bus tour we took," admits Charlie. "And..the Tower? Where they keep the Queen's crowns and stuff."

Rosie nods, smiling a little. There is something comforting in how normal it is, how the things he remembers are completely ordinary, exactly what you might recall from a holiday you'd had years and years ago.

"I used to think it would be so...so interesting, living somewhere like that. Like I could be someone there that I couldn't in Oxford," she says, and for a moment she feels both amusement and sorrow for how young and foolish she'd once been. "But I suppose it's really just like living anywhere else."

"That's how I felt about New York before I went to school there," says Charlie, rolling one shoulder in shrug. "Then it turned outthatitwasjusta city. Oxford is supposed to be really pretty, though?"

"Oh, New York," Rosie says, letting out a long sigh as she collapses overdramatically back against the sofa. "I'd have loved to go there. Just a city or not." She grins, sitting back up again. "No, Oxford is lovely, especially the bits around the university, all the old buildings and stone and the funny little streets. I didn't think it was when I was living there, but now that I'm away from it..."

She shrugs, looking idly towards the television for a moment. "It's funny, how you can't appreciate a thing until you're not there any longer."

He feels a pang, feels like he's made her sad, which was never what he wanted. He squeezes her ankle again. "One day, we might get to go there together," he says. "The three of us. Oxford. New York. Greendale. Show each other around."

Rosie smiles at the squeeze to her angle, shifting her foot just slightly in his grip. She hadn't needed the reassurance, but she's glad of it anyway, the easy understanding that's flowed between the two of them for almost as long as they've known each other. "That would be something, wouldn't it?" she says. "Seeing the places we'd all come from, instead of just wondering."

The thought of being in Greendale at all, seeing a version of Nick that might not remember her, doesn't ache as much as she might have feared. It's a realization she doesn't know what to do with, and she sets it aside for now.

"Yeah," he says, nodding. "Especially since..." He considers for a moment, trying to find the exact words that he's looking for. "Everything's kind of...mundane where I come from. You and Brina? There's real magic there." The mundanity of life had always hurt Charlie, a little bit. He'd always desperately wanted there to be something more, tried to create that through the way he'd behaved, the way he'd carried himself.

"More magic where Sabrina's concerned than me, I think," Rosie says, but it's gentle, understanding what he means by it. There were always adventures she'd wanted to have, things she'd wanted to be and do and live for once. Anterwold hadn't been any of those things, any more than Darrow is, but it had been something. "But you're right."

She looks at him, thinking, before turning to set her drink back down on the table and moving closer to his side of the couch. "Sabrina wouldn't love it any less, you know," she says, her head coming to rest on his shoulder. "Seeing where you come from. All the normal, everyday things you used to do. And neither would I."

"Oh, I know that," he says, secure in the knowledge that there's no way that Sabrina would ever love either of them any less. "I do. And, honestly, there'd be something nice about mundane after all the chaos this place can cause, right? I could introduce you to my mom. Maybe persuade her to fill the swimming pool."

"Right," she says. "Like a vacation, where the most difficult thing to happen is the three of us trying to agree on...something completely ordinary. How long to spend at the pool, maybe, because that's definitely happening."

"We've...actually got two," says Charlie, with the good grace to look embarrassed. "I spent a lot of time in the inside one, but the outside one is bigger."

"Two?" she says, but even the little amount of disbelief in her voice is gone a moment later as she laughs. "Even better. The hardest choice we'll have to make is whether to start the day at the inside pool, or the outside one."

After giving him a final squeeze and taking a cookie from the stash piled on the table in front of him, she moves back to her side of the couch. "You know, I'm really starting to like this plan."

"Yeah, I...Wasn't joking when I said we had a lot of money," says Charlie, rolling his eyes. "It didn't all go away when my dad...You know...either. A lot of it was my mom's to start with. "What else do you want to do? Shopping? Fifth Avenue?"

"Right," says Rosie, giving the mention of his dad only as much attention as Charlie does, a weight that passes over them briefly before it's gone again. The thought of more is a happier one, anyway, and she takes the time to think, her lip snagged in her teeth for a moment. "Maybe a bit of shopping," she admits. "At least walking along and looking at everything in the windows. Tiffany's, especially. Other than that, I'd want to go to the Met and spend all day just...wandering. Seeing as much of it as possible, maybe getting lost for a bit."

It sounds silly, too dreamlike and romantic, and she laughs a little. "And I'd love to see something on Broadway. I had the records, My Fair Lady and The King and I and all the rest, but it's not the same as really seeing it."

"Oh, man, yeah," says Charlie, grinning. He'd always loved going into the city with his mom to see something. "I don't know what's playing right now, but I bet The Lion King and Wicked are still there. You'd love both of those, I think."

"I don't know anything about either of those." It's a kind of reminder how far apart in years she and Charlie are, at least where their lives before Darrow are concerned. She feels less self-conscious about it now than she might have once, but the reminders, when they happen, always take her a bit by surprise.

How quickly the world changes, everything familiar becoming old-fashioned before you even know it.

"I believe you if you think I'd like them, though. Of course." She smiles. "You know me better than almost anyone."

His relationship with Rosie, other than that one time, has always been more siblings than anything else. Growing up as a lonely only child, Charlie has relished learning what it would have been like to have had a sister all this time.

"I think..." He considers it for a moment. "Wicked. It's set in this place called OZ. Magical world, and it about a witch who just wants to be able to..." He pauses, looking for the right words. "Write her own story."

The Wizard of Oz, she knows, having read a few of the books years ago, but the story Charlie describes sounds like and unlike anything she can recall. It sounds exactly like the kind of thing she'd be drawn to even now--maybe more so, with everything she's learned and done and felt in the last few years. All the times she's tried, and sometimes failed, to shape the way her own story's gone.

Which Charlie knows, of course, better than anyone. "That sounds perfect," she says, her smile just a little wry at the edges. "Magic and everything."