Briar-Rose King (tribal_rose) wrote in astor_ridge, @ 2011-02-11 17:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | bas, bas and rose, rose |
Who: Briar-Rose and Basile King
What: Twin gossip-y time
Where: The King household
When: BACKDATED to when Nell and Kale were visiting
Rating: PG
Status: Complete
Something was up.
Family friends of the Kings came over to visit on a fairly regular basis, and that included Kale and Penelope: two people that had been in their lives since she and Bas were little. Kale now owned Sabre, and Nell worked with him as his protege and co-owner, giving them plenty of opportunity for friendly visits, especially after the young pair of tattooists returned from traveling over seas. But this time, there was a distinct tension in the air, like a thundercloud that surrounded both their guests as they spoke quietly in the den after arriving.
Rose had considered eavesdropping, especially when Daddy dropped her a fifty and suggested she go have fun with her friends, spur of the moment. She smiled at him the same way he smiled at her: genuine, but tight and clearly mulling over something--then he left his daughter in her room in favor of knocking on her brother’s. Presumably to bribe him out of the house the same way he had with her.
One thing was for sure--Rose had no desire to go to the mall.
She stood at the crack of her door, watching the tank-thick figure of her father wander back down the hall to the Den and close the door behind him. Only when she heard the door click shut did she slip into the hall herself, then right through Bas’s door. Of course, without knocking.
She wasn’t dressed for winter (or going out): just a pair of her old, distressed jeans and a white tank-top that always had a tendency to slip off one shoulder. Her favorite rainbow toe socks peeked out from under the frayed hems, wiggling after she plopped herself down Indian style dead center on her twin’s bed.
Her hair swallowed her shoulders (and nearly the rest of her, to the waist) in feathery disarray, framing inquisitive eyes over a face that clearly expressed her reason for being there.
“Why the frown, Rosie Rose?” Bas was slipping the money into his wallet, looking pleased, his expression the polar opposite of his sister’s.
“I’m not frowning.” She was pouting. There was a difference.
He pulled a face for Rose’s benefit, exaggeratedly sad, trying to provoke a snort or giggle from his twin. “No, you’re just the saddest rose in the garden.” With Rose parked on his bed, he went to his door and leaned against the jamb, casual, and tipped his head out. “I don’t hear anything -- so Dad’s not pissed. Yet.” He turned back to his sister. “What’re you sulking for?”
“I’m not sulking.” Maybe she was, but no way was she admitting to it--besides, she wasn’t anymore, since the epic eye-roll of being called the ‘saddest rose in the garden’ had wiped her face of any desired moping.
She started playing with his open laptop, mindlessly glancing over the open IM windows blinking for his attention since it’d been pulled away by Dad. Typical nosey curious sister-stuff. “Kale didn’t say hi to me.”
“Hey--” He frowned and crossed the room when Rose messed with his laptop, and he pushed it aside as he dropped down next to her on the bed. “And?” Turning, he gave his sister a long look, suspicious, and asked: “He didn’t say hi to me, either, and I’m not crying.” His watery green-gold eyes searched her face.
Another branch of her curiosity was instantly perked when he deflected the computer screen--naturally wondering just what she was missing. That could wait though: back on target. “I’m not crying, either.” She punched at his arm for emphasis, but couldn’t suppress the lopsided smile on her lips.
“They always say hi, but not even a word this time--and now Dad’s giving us money?” Her expression pleaded with him to be as interested in this mystery as she was.
“Obviously something’s wrong, Marshmallow Head.” His voice scoffed but he draped an arm around Rose’s shoulder. “Dad’s practicing his best business professional skills and buying our cooperation, which, we both know, won’t work.” Winking, he squeezed her hard then released her shoulder. “Go to the den and pretend you want more money. Dad’ll give it to you.” His grin grew. “You have to split whatever he gives you.”
The freckles on Rose’s nose wrinkled. “He’d give me more money anyway,” she corrected, making efforts to sweep most of her hair to one shoulder and comb through it all, thanks to Basile’s affectionate (dishevelling) squeeze. “Don’t you care what is wrong?” Rose winced a little when her fingers caught a tangle, squinting one eye up at her twin. “God, it feels like someone died.” Maybe she was exaggerating, but Rose didn’t like tension. Her knee-jerk reaction to uncomfortable situations was always the same: fix it fix it fix it NOW.
“Yeah, I care.” Bas sounded wounded and he gave his sister the closest thing to a dirty look he could manage without feeling guilty. Her admission, and the dead-puppy expression on her face kill him and he hugged her once more, begrudging. “Rosie Rose McRoserton, what do you want to do?” With his twin, one could never tell if she had a plan or was in need of one; but she was usually game once something was created.
Rosie Rose McRoserton always needed a plan, and when she didn’t, whatever it was in her mind could only loosely be called that. Now was just like usual, and the way her brows tilted up in the middle showed that chaotic desire to make what was bothering her go away, and having no idea how to do it.
“I dunno,” now she sulked--or half-sulked--and mindlessly went to rolling a piece of her hair between two fingertips, watching as she did. On thinking about it, she really didn’t want to put herself in the middle of whatever conversation was going on in the Den. Maybe they should go out.
She looked up at her brother, wrinkling her nose a bit. “What do you wanna do?”
What he really wanted was to get back to the promising IM conversation with the girl from his Econ class; with a little more teasing, he was pretty sure she’d agree to phone sex -- but clearly, that wasn’t something to share with Rose. She’d be curious in all the wrong ways.
“Want to go say hi to Kale?” Since that seemed to be the thing that provoked his sister’s disappointment--
He frowned and narrowed his eyes, standing and circling the bed. “Why’d you care that he didn’t say hi?”
That question knocked her train of thought off it’s track--but only a little. Rose squinted up at him, tracking the circle-y movements with a lighter version of the suspicion he was now eye-balling her with. Of course, all the slitty-eyed suspicion in the world couldn’t hide the subtle blaze beneath her cheeks. She made a face by pressing her lips together in a straight line and arching her brows: the closest thing to a facial shrug as she could muster.
Truth was, ever since Nell and Kale had come back from Belize or India or wherever the hell they had gone in the last six months, the younger King twin had definitely been paying closer attention to her father’s old apprentice.
“Oh, really?” Bas sounded exasperated; he huffed and rolled his eyes, throwing up his hands. He was confused about his own feelings for Nell, and thus Kale; Rose’s confusion only highlighted his own. He hated that feeling of unsureness.
“You’ve got a crush on Kale?” His voice hinted at disbelief, betrayal, even disdain.
Rose’s automatic reaction, of course, was denial. She scrunched her face up at her brother, emulating everything she heard in his voice with expression: wanting, naturally, to be on his side.
“No! Er--I dunno. No.” Frustrated, Rose started twisting a piece of her hair again. The truth was, she had no idea. She just really liked being around their father’s friend lately, and a lot of it had to do with the intensity in his eyes (and the way he filled out those t-shirts). Now she wanted to talk about something else.
Watching Rose was like watching a little kid; every emotion and thought flickered across her face. It made teasing Rose hilarious -- but moments like this, maddening. “Well, do you or don’t you?” He pointed at her, mock menacing, and waited: usually that was enough to provoke her into confessing something.
Of course, it worked.
“I don’t know, okay?!” Geeze, who cared if she did or not? Rose eyeballed her brother with that scorned puppy look, and plopped a pair of willowy (if freckled) hands in her lap, exasperated. “Can we move on, please?”
Bas grunted, noncommittally, but flopped onto the bed next to his sister, sprawling out as much as he could. He shoved a knee into her thigh, half teasing, half taunting, and bounced it a few times to annoy her. “Move on to where, Rosie Rose McRoserton?” Stretching, he folded his arms behind his head and sighed. He was being purposefully obtuse; he wanted to torment Rose a little more in hopes of distracting himself from his own aggravating circle of uneasy emotions. “Move on outside of here and say hi to Kale?” He bobbed his knee against Rose again. “Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”
Rose smacked him, right on the stomach. “MOVING ON...” As if her emphasis wasn’t enough, since he was getting hooked on a subject she did not want to talk about (in this context), and Rose didn’t have the mind-organization to sling equally annoying retorts in her brother’s face, she opted for action.
She unfurled on his bed, belly down with rainbow-y feet on his pillow and a long, awkward reach for the half-open laptop. “Lets find a movie or something.”
“Hey!” Bas sat up, reaching for his laptop, all thoughts of Rose’s crush momentarily pushed from mind by the real possibility of her seeing something she shouldn’t. “We shared a uterus but that doesn’t mean what’s mine is yours,” he huffed, spiky and offended.
“Ew, please don’t talk about Mom’s uterus,” she replied, undaunted by the hypocrisy in his fluster (and holding onto the laptop with a new vigor): there was only a thin line of privacy between the two of them, and he was as much an offender as she was.
Plus, now she was curious. “What, you lookin’ at something you shouldn’t?” Out came the impish grin.
Payback was a bitch, even if Rose’s idea of payback was not nearly as painful as Bas anticipated. Still, she could be a terrier when she wanted, and he could tell from the look on her face she’d found her bone.
“I’m not lookin’ at anything,” he growled, which was, technically, true. It was the typing that he wasn’t keen on her seeing, and when it came clear to him he wasn’t going to be able to wrench the laptop from Rose’s grip, he stretched his hand desperately toward the touchpad in a feeble attempt to minimize the R-to-X rated IM window he had going with Lindsay Richardson.
“Oh reeeally,” his sister teased, spurred by his growl as if it were her badge of victory with a light flailing of long hair and limbs to bat his hand away. It was a mighty struggle--but one she stopped dead, stunned, when she saw the name at the top of the front-most instant message. Also a few choice phrases in the text box.
“Oh BAS!” There were times when her curiosity wasn’t always a good thing. She lurched away from the laptop like it had the plague, and looked at her brother like he knew that, and still let her touch it.
“I warned you--” Aggrieved, Bas yanked the laptop toward him, hating the wounded look on Rose’s face. “I told you not to--” He hadn’t, so he couldn’t be that angry at her, and now embarrassment mingled with irritation. Worse, Lindsay logged off after receiving no response to her very choice message and Bas let out a pathetic sigh.
“One day, you’re going to open something and really regret you didn’t just leave things alone...” With a series of impatient clicks, he exited out of AIM and opened up Netflix on his browser, then turned the laptop toward his sister, apologetic. “Here-- find something--” He sounded gruff but his expression was chagrined.
Still a bit bristled from the small snippets of a conversation she did not want running with her imagination, Rose scrunched her nose at her brother, just barely restraining her urge to call Lindsay herself and demand an explanation (which she probably didn’t want either). His apologetic look diffused a bit of her ire, but not completely.
“Lindsay, Basile? Really?” Out came the full name and a gruff expression to match his. “How bout I start IMing your friends, hm?”
All feelings of apology evaporated at Rose’s threat; he sat up and glared at her. “Really, Briar-Rose, really?” He wasn’t above tit-for-tat at moments like this; he made another patented huffing noise, all pained imposition and aggravation. “What do you care? You said she’s no good--” He paused and got a sly look on his face. “And really, really, it’s a lot better than getting hot for Ka-a-a-l-e.” He drew out the other man’s name into a dreamy sigh meant to piss off and provoke, Rose-style.
Basile was suddenly the recipient of Rose’s Glare-Of-Doom. “I never said she was no good, but I hafta friggen’see her every day y’know...” Somehow that argument didn’t seem to carry as much umph as Rose wanted, so she shifted on her knees and snatched her cell phone from her back pocket.
“But fine,” she said down at the slide-out keyboard, her thumbs darting over it quickly while she maneuvered off the bed and started for his door. “Have fun with that: Matt’s been wanting to get coffee anyway.” Take that.
“Matt?” Bas’ voice was outraged; he slid off the bed and darted after his sister. “Rosie, the guy’s a total tool, he’s going to talk trash about you later--” He grabbed Rose’s arm and pulled, trying to see her phone’s screen. “Come on-- don’t send that--”
For one reason or another, that was the reaction she wanted, even though Rose could never explain it if she tried. The ghost of an entertained-slash-smug grin was on her lips as she ducked, pivoted, and spun smoothly under her brother’s attempts to grab her phone, with a last minute change from her right hand to her left--which held it away from him. Her eyes wide and expectant on his face. “Oh? He’d talk trash about me in front of you?” Poke, poke poke.
It was a constant source of irritation for Bas that Rose’s dancing only made her better at evading capture; he kept grabbing, throwing out a bony hip and muscled arm in hopes of pushing her off balance. “He’d probably talk trash about you to my face,” he growled, “he’s that much of an ass.” Righteous now, and indignant, he quit trying to tackle his sister and instead stood in the center of his room, arms crossed. “Go head, make a coffee date. But don’t come crying to me later when he upsets you.” Should that happen, of course, he’d be on Rose’s side in a heartbeat, but he didn’t say that out loud.
Probably somewhere in the back of her mind, Rose knew he was right. Matt just happened to be the douche-iest of his ‘friends’, which is probably why she chose him to work out Bas’ ire in the first place. Unfortunately, reverse psychology was one of her brothers many tactics that actually worked on her. It wasn’t uncommon for her to follow his advice blindly.
She looked at him, then at her unsent text message, then recovered quickly. Like nothing had happened. “How bout we go get coffee?”
Bas let out an audible sigh of relief, battle won, and he nodded. “Yes.” Firmly closing his laptop -- he didn’t need his Dad stumbling over anything -- he started digging through his closet for just the right jacket to go with his shirt and jeans. Casual, but classy -- his new mantra, really -- and he gave Rose a sidelong look. “You going out like that?”
After banishing the unsent message and her phone to her pocket, she gave him the expected quizzical look. “...and a jacket, but yeah.” Her lips pursed in that there and gone fashion, lazy confusion with why he insisted on acting like the dress police. Again. “So what.”
“You look like a hobo!” Bas threw his head back and slouched his shoulders, groaning to the ceiling. “People will think we live in a trailer and that Dad’s a trashy tattoo artist who can’t keep a real job or his kids in real clothes.” Pleading, his face wrinkled and eyes wide, he pushed Rose out of his room, toward hers. “Less rainbows, less holes, more--” He paused and grinned at his sister. “More of whatever you planned to wow Matt with.”
Naturally, Rose looked down at her outfit, confused. “I do not look like a hobo...” Though there was a subtle question in her voice. She’d worn this to Target with Mom earlier in the day and no one complained. She looked back at him, wondering just what was wrong with rainbows--but as per usual, she was curious as to his supposedly better idea. “Well what should I wear?”
Bas rumbled a non-answer and shrugged. “You’ve got friends. What do they wear?” He smirked a moment, thinking of Lindsay Richardson; only, he didn’t want Rose dressing like her. Hot on someone else, not on his sister.
“You’re just such a baby, sometimes, Rose,” he started, sort of pompous, all-knowing. He couldn’t help himself. “Do that thing that girls do, and--” He shrugged and released her into her Rose wild, urging her into her bedroom. “I’m going to go see if I can hear what’s happening the den. Don’t come out until you look reasonable.”