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Even when her phone rings at two in the morning on a Saturday, Clara marvels, opting, clumsy-fingered and bleary-eyed, to answer the call, she will pick up when it's Rose Tyler on the other end of the line.
“Hullo?” Clara says, shakily raising her cellphone to her ear. Her voice is hoarse. “Rose?” She rubs her eyes with the knuckles of her free hand in an attempt to chase the sleep from them, but her effort is in vain. Unsurprising, given that it's two in the bloody morning. She refocuses. “What's up?”
“Can I come over?”
Clara starts, in large part at the question, but also at Rose's tone. She can't tell for certain in her current state of wakefulness, even heightened as it is compared to several moments prior, but the shaky pitchiness of her friend's voice makes her think Rose has been crying, or is trying to hold back tears. She glances at the digital clock on her bedside table to confirm the time is what she already knows it is. “Can you what?” she says sharply, keeping her suspicions to herself for now. She knows Rose hates being called out on her tears. “It's two in the morning, Rose.”
“I know, but –” Rose bursts into violent tears, taking Clara by surprise. She puts a hand to her breast to feel her racing heartbeat and concentrates on it, and on her breathing, until it slows.
“Breathe,” she tells Rose as comfortingly as she can. “What's wrong?”
“It's Jimmy,” Rose sobs, and Clara finds that her concern for her friend for once overwhelmingly overpowers her distaste for Rose's boyfriend. She doesn't even have to bite back a sigh, a groan, or an eye roll before listening fully to Rose, who continues to cry into the phone. “I told my mum I was spending the night at Shareen's because Jimmy and I were gonna – gonna –” Rose erupts into sobs, which is really just as well, Clara thinks guiltily, feeling like she's been punched in the gut. Despite her stellar friendship skills, she doesn't know how she'd handle the end of that sentence, especially on an hour and a half of sleep. Poorly, probably.
“Breathe, Rose,” she tells her friend, willing away the tension in her stomach.
Rose inhales deeply; Clara can hear her sniffling and blowing her nose. She takes another breath. “We were gonna – hic – well, you know, his – hic – parents were – hic – out of town and everything, but then – hic – he – he – he broke up with me! Just – hic – like that! Can you – hic – believe it? Anyways, I wasn't gonna – hic – spend the night at Shareen's and she's probably out with some other – hic – mates, anyways, and so I don't have anywhere to spend the night and I didn't know who else to call and – hic – please, Clara, let me come over and stay the night I'll owe you forever, please?” Her words are broken up by hiccups and sniffles and Clara can feel her heart melting, as it always does when Rose is concerned.
“All right,” she says, and Rose emits a hiccupy little squeal that makes Clara smile. “Come on over, you,” she says, laughing. “We'll sort this all out, you hear?” She pauses, then adds lightly, “Do you want me to kill him for you?” The offer is, admittedly, slightly more genuine than she'd ever tell Rose – but not really.
Rose laughs. “No,” she says. “You couldn't take him, anyways. Although –” she stops a moment to laugh at herself before continuing – “if you could get him to give me back my corsage, that would be lovely.”
“Sure thing,” Clara blusters. “I'll be your knight in shining armor, Rose Tyler. That knave will never keep your favor.”
Rose laughs again, and, even with the traces of sadness still lingering, it's the most wonderful sound Clara has ever heard: like sunlight or the first days of summer or kittens all curled up on top of one another, napping in a basket. “I'll be there in ten,” Rose tells her. “I can't thank you enough, Clara. Love ya! See ya!”
“See you,” Clara says, smiling. The warmth of her melted heart spreads through her body until she can feel it tingling in her fingers and toes.
The drone of the television as Rose flips aimlessly through channel after channel of garbage is only white noise to Clara; when she gets involved in a good book, people have told her, she sinks into her own world and it's damn near impossible to get her out. And this book is one she has to finish before it's due to be returned Tuesday – she's flat out of renewals.
“Will you go to prom with me?”
Clara looks up, startled, from the library copy of Wuthering Heights. “Pardon?” she says, closing the book and laying it down in her lap. So much for reading time, she thinks, trying to ignore the race of her heart and the way the world seems to have come into sharper focus.
Rose turns the TV off and sets down the remote. She tilts her head back to look at Clara. “Will you go to prom with me?” she repeats. Then, when Clara quirks an eyebrow at her, “as friends, I mean. Not in a weird way or – a gay way, just – so I don't feel odd about going, you know? I've already bought my dress and all, and I wouldn't want it to go to waste.”
“You couldn't wear it next year?” Clara asks. “Not,” she adds hurriedly, “that I object to doing things with you as friends, of course, it's just that prom's a week from today and I don't have a ticket or a dress or a dinner reservation or a limo service or –”
Rose cuts Clara off with laughter. “All you gotta worry about is the ticket and the dress, mate,” she says. “I don't need dinner or a limo or nothing. It's not like a date, you know?”
Clara's heart deflates. “Right,” she says, trying not to sag, “of course. Sorry, I got a bit carried away there.”
“Especially for someone who's never, not for one second considered going to prom,” Rose teases, badly mimicking Clara's voice. Clara whacks her upside the head with Wuthering Heights.
“I haven't!” she insists. “But you've dragged me to enough silly movies that I know what's involved.”
“Sure, sure.” Rose rolls her eyes. “Anyways, just get yourself a dress and get me a corsage, yeah? White and purple. I'll trade in the boutonniere I got Jimmy and get you a corsage, too. What color do you want?”
Clara racks her mind. “Blue,” she decides. She looks down at Rose, hoping both that she's made an appropriate choice and she isn't showing Rose how keen she is on the other girl and her approval. Rose nods.
“Got it,” she says, with all the solemnity of a courier tasked with informing someone of the death of a loved one. Clara has to bite back a laugh. More lightly, she adds, “We'll meet at the hotel? If my mum knows we're going together, even if it's not, you know, together-together, she'll have a fit.”
“Fine by me,” Clara says with a smile, imagining what Rose describes. Jackie would go absolutely bonkers. “My dad would ambush us with his camera; we'd never get out of there.”
“True,” Rose agrees. Her phone rings; she looks down at it, rolls her eyes, and groans. “It's mum. Better go see what she wants.” She stands and grabs the jacket Clara's lent her from where it was slung over the arm of the couch. “See you in school!”
“I look forward to being your prom date,” Clara says, knowing Rose won't know how true the words are.
Without turning, Rose laughs. “It's not a date,” she insists. “Anyways, love ya!”
“Love you, too,” Clara says quietly as Rose shuts the door behind her. Clara goes back to her book, trying to ignore the uneasy, disappointed feeling in her stomach.
Clara stands outside the hotel, glad that the late May evening is on the warm side so she isn't left shivering in her knee-length dress while she waits for Rose. She shouldn't be surprised that Rose is late, she supposes, twisting her rhinestone bracelet idly around her wrist for lack of anything else to do to keep her occupied – Rose is always late.
“Hullo, stranger.” Clara looks up, and instantly forgets how to breathe. If she fancied Rose before, she's in love with her now – the other girl looks radiant, like a storybook princess or a fairy queen. The flower in her glamorous, Audrey Hepburn-style updo matches her strapless, floor-length gown; she's a goddess in lavender, Clara thinks. She blinks. She gives Rose a solid once-over, and inhales. “Wow.”
“Wow, yourself,” Rose giggles, flushing slightly. She opens her purse and pulls out Clara's corsage; Clara extends her arm, allowing Rose to shimmy the floral ornament over Clara's hand and around her wrist. It fits perfectly. Clara repeats the exchange for Rose, who looks admiringly at the white-and-purple pansies Clara has bought for her.
“They're lovely,” she tells Clara, grinning. Her tongue pokes out from between her teeth – on anyone else, Rose's trademark smile would look silly, Clara reflects, but on Rose it looks effortlessly graceful. “Although not as lovely as us, of course.” Rose offers Clara her elbow.. “Will you accompany me into the dance, madam Oswald?”
Clara grins back at her and links elbows with Rose. “It would be my honor, madam Tyler.”
The two girls enter the hotel, and then the ballroom: a dark, swirling vortex of music and laughter and finery of the likes Clara has never seen on her classmates before. She looks up at Rose, who is gazing around in awe.
“I went last year,” Rose says, when she notices Clara's expression, “but I didn't remember at all how amazing everything was. Of course, I was with some year twelve boy I didn't really like and I was scared half out of my wits, but – you'd think grandeur like this would be impossible to forget, wouldn't ya?”
“Shall we dance?” Clara says, before she can say something stupid and flirtatious and make Rose not want to remember tonight. Rose starts; she looks down at Clara as if she's almost forgotten the other girl is there and her cheeks pinken. She inhales deeply and nods.
“Yeah. That sounds great, yeah. That is what you do at prom, ain't it?” She laughs nervously and unlinks herself from Clara to tug on her friend's hand. “C'mon. Up by the DJ is where the real party is.”
Clara follows Rose deeper into the throng of people, some dancing in large groups with their friends, some grinding on each other like they'll never have a good lay again, and some grinding in large groups like they're at some fucking Roman orgy party. Clara wrinkles her nose at that last. People.
Rose glances over to see what has drawn Clara's attention. “Oh, god,” she says. “They've got less decency than my mum.” She pulls harder at Clara's hand, leading her into the pulsating mass of people at the front. Clara shimmies around a bit, unsure of what to do with her body; Rose throws herself wholeheartedly into the most endearing graceless dancing Clara has ever seen.
“I know I'm rubbish!” she yells over the music when she catches Clara's eye. “But I have good fun!” She reaches out and grabs both of Clara's hands in hers, spinning the shorter girl around. “Dance with me, will ya?”
Clara follows Rose's lead, careful to keep her knees and elbows to herself, although Rose and the others in the crowd don't really seem to care. As time passes and one song fades into another, she grows freer with her movements, until both she and Rose are spent and sweaty and badly in need of a drink. Rose leads Clara over to the refreshments table and pours punch for both of them. Clara looks at hers dubiously, tilting her cup back and forth and watching the fruity liquid slosh to either side. Rose snorts.
“No one's spiked it, you know. That's a movie myth.”
Clara raises the cup to her lips and takes a sip from it; then, when she is confident it has not been laced with any immediately mind-altering substances, down its contents completely. She makes a satisfied noise and tosses the cup in the bin, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She looks up at Rose, when, abruptly, the song that had been booming from the speakers fades out and is replaced with a slow song. Rose raises her eyebrows at Clara, who responds in kind.
“Well?” Rose demands, holding out her hand. Clara's heart beats fiercely in her chest.
“I'd be honored,” she says, crossing to Rose and taking Rose's extended right hand in her left one. She cups Rose's waist with her own right hand, marveling at how close she is to the other girl. Rose giggles.
“You're supposed to put your hand on my shoulder. I put my hand on your waist,” she tells Clara, demonstrating. At Clara's befuddled look, she prompts, “because I'm taller?”
“Oh,” Clara says, flushing scarlet but finally remembering to breathe; her breaths remain light and shallow. “Oh. Right.” She puts her right hand on Rose's shoulder. Rose smiles fondly down at her.
“I imagine you'd like to lead?”
Clara laughs. “No clue how,” she admits, “but you know me well. Of course I'd like to lead.”
She finds that slow dancing isn't as hard as she might have worried; Rose begins a little forceful, like a leader, but gradually relinquishes control to Clara. The other girl is so close, Clara thinks, staring, entranced, into Rose's eyes. They glimmer with happiness – Rose's whole face, in fact, radiates joy, and the world outside the outside the two of them – outside of Rose smiling that thousand-ship-launching-smile at her, outside of Clara smiling her own smile back up at Rose, outside of the sway of their bodies and the lightheadedness that comes both from spinning and from proximity to Rose, whose face takes on an elated, frightened look Clara barely notices, wrapped up as she is in herself and her love. When the dance ends, she pushes back a strand of Rose's hair that has come loose from her bun and Rose starts away, snapping Clara back into reality.
“Is something wrong?” she asks, brow furrowing. Rose bites her lip.
“I need to use the loo. Come with me.”
Confused, Clara follows her friend back out through the throng of people and out into the hallway of the hotel. They turn several corners and are a good enough distance away that Clara can only faintly hear the noise of the event when Rose suddenly stops and turns back to face her friend. Clara glances at the nearest doors. “This isn't the loo,” she says. “What's going on, Rose?”
Without speaking, Rose leans in and cups Clara's face in her hands; Clara realizes what is happening just in time to close her eyes before Rose's lips meet hers. The kiss is starved on Rose's part, shocked and blissful on Clara's. She reaches up to threat her fingers through Rose's hair, moaning at the insistence with which Rose is kissing her. It's – aggressive, but not unenjoyable. Rose's lips are chapped, but soft, and she smells like shampoo and flowery body wash, tastes like grape-flavored lip balm and punch and maybe a little bit like barbecue potato chips, which Clara hates but which Rose won't. stop. eating. Clara puts a hand on Rose's back and can feel the pounding of the girl's heartbeat through her shoulder blade. She's almost out of air, but she doesn't even realize until Rose pulls away, chest heaving and lipstick smudged, leaving Clara gasping for breath with her hands on her knees.
“Wow,” Clara says, nonplussed. “I was not expecting that.”
“Me neither,” Rose admits with a breathy laugh. She throws her head back and shakes out her hair. “Guess I was lying.”
“About what?”
Rose grins, her tongue poking out from between her teeth. “About this not being a date.”
Clara smiles so wide, it's a miracle her face doesn't split right in two. “Really?” she asks, like a child at Christmas.
Rose chuckles. “Really.” She offers her elbow to Clara. “Shall we return to the dance, madam Oswald? As –” her smile widens, and she looks around quickly, as if about to divulge a secret – “girlfriends?”
Clara laughs elatedly. “It would be my pleasure, madam Tyler,” she replies, interlocking her arm with Rose's. The two share a giddy smile, then turn in the direction from whence they came to return, as girlfriends, to the dance.