dw - call me but love (prologue)
Title: Call Me But Love
Rating: T
Characters: Ten/Rose, Jack, Martha, Mickey, and many others.
Word Count: 4,826
Beta(s): nylana , professor_spork
Genre: Romance, AU
Summary: Two households, both alike in dignity. Between dance parties, old movie theaters and the beaches of Verona, there develops the most famous love affair in history. However, there is more to this ancient feud than meets the eye, and a force that transcends time and space itself.
A/N: Where we lay our scene: Once upon a time, a prompt by the lovely mylittlepwny spawned into a fic titled Thou Givest Fever. Though it was fully intended as a silly sort of one-off tribute to both my idol and favourite play, it instead turned into something altogether different. Many thanks to nylana 's amazing and patient eye, and professor_spork , for being awesome and providing the title. And also to everyone who commented and enjoyed TGF; none of this would've come about without your incredible support ♥.
The prologue takes place immediately prior to the events of TGF.
Right from the very beginning, Rose knew this party wouldn’t be about her.
It would be about what every party worth celebrating has been about; another degree of separation from the past, another bottle of overpriced champagne. Yes, her family might be the definition of nouveau riche and all the negative connotations that come with it, but at least her mother’s proclivity for ice sculpturing and expensive cheeses could now be indulged. At least her brother will never experience the diatribes of a welfare line. The Capulet compound is no longer a cramped, two room apartment above a café in the Piazza delle Erbe. But Rose knows she doesn’t remember enough from those early days to truly understand how far they’ve come; not the night noises from the decaying streets, nor the reliefs crumbling under the bacteria of time.
(Though sometimes she still dreams of the sculptured fountains below her old bedroom window; the long shadows of the Virgin and Saint Peter criss-crossing on her bedroom floor, like the most secret and treacherous of embraces in history.)
But her mother does. Jackie remembers all of it. And thus the imported wine, the DJ, the guest list filled with expensive friends and backers they can’t afford to displease.
Thus the hate and anger towards the family across the Ponte Pietra, so unlike from them except in pride. That ominous shape perched atop the hill, overlooking Verona’s edifices with dark, ancient eyes.
Tonight, as the foyer is transformed into a dance floor, as the strobe lighting flashes and Rose pulses along to the thrumming music, faceless and careless, these details feel very far away and inconsequential. She knows that everything that happens inside her walled life is just one part of the whole. She thinks she knows what lies beyond it, the lights and the asphalt. The testaments to the endurance of memory; crumbling Roman aqueducts dwarfed by skyscrapers, the recurring shape of a woman with kind eyes and open hands, receiving centuries’ worth of prayer. And even further beyond that lie the silence of the beaches, the soft, foaming collisions of the Mediterranean upon the sand. All of this, gridlocked in the clutches of the future.
But here - here is everything. Here is a moment that she makes hers.
Slowly, Rose moves as the strangers around her move, as the music moves them. Her chest soaks the deepening bass as her own pulse. Throwing her head back, she becomes her own center of gravity, a heart that opens and marvels. A thousand million facets of gleaming light rain on her upturned face. She smiles.
Rose knew from the very beginning this party wouldn’t be about her - and she wasn’t concerned in the slightest. As long as there would be plenty of dancing, she wouldn’t mind if no one here even knows her name.
---
There is a man, and there is her father’s Roman plinth.
There is a man in a suit, sitting cross-legged on her father’s beloved 5th century Roman plinth, with a tray of canapés perched on his lap.
Rose snaps her jaw shut as the door behind her does the same, immediately muffling the raucous sounds of the continuing festivities and sending a gust of hot, stale summer air gusting around the hem of her party dress. Her recently removed mask dangles from her fingers, which had obscured his presence from her as she’d snuck out of the mob of inebriated guests and into the seemingly-vacant corridor.
But he was already looking, long before she knew where to look in the darkness of the cloister. The man offers the plate of whatever it was towards her, as if he’d been waiting all night for this acknowledgement.
“Nibbles?”
Quickly regaining her composure, Rose declines with a smile and a wave. “I’m alright, thanks.”
Humming thoughtfully, the man picks up one of the canapés delicately with his thumb and forefinger. Holding it up to eye level, he examines it from every possible angle, like a jeweller handling a diamond with many facets. “Oh, I think you might be absolutely right on that call,” he remarks. Popping it in his mouth, he makes a face - or at least she assumes so, judging by the way his mouth skews painfully and his exaggerated swallow. The white mask covering most of his upper face makes it difficult to tell for sure. “Fig, cilantro, cream cheese, and - ugh, what is that? Spiced pear?” Gagging, he upends the entire platter into a wooden box at his feet. Into her family’s priceless, antique Provencal wine case. Rose bites down a grin.
The opening strains to ‘Vogue’ are distantly heard, accompanied by more stifled cheering. Rose rubs up and down her bare arms in an imagined chill. Standing there uncomfortably, she doesn’t know what to do with this man in the corridor, but neither does she feel inclined to rejoin the party. Things always tend to get a little too crazy for her tastes when they delve into the Madonna set list. But the stranger turns with her, regarding the door with the same air of bemusement. “Aren’t you going to head back out there?” suggests Rose hopefully, after a beat of silence.
“Nah, I think not,” the man replies with a disdainful sniff. “I was always more of a Cyndi Lauper fan myself.”
“I mean,” she tries again, “Won’t they be expecting you at some point?” When the man angles his head confusedly, Rose gives the upturned platter and the scattered hors d’oeurves a pointed look.
“Oh!” The man ruffles the back of his head sheepishly, as if only just realizing what he’d done, “I suppose they will, won’t they? Strange,” he muses to himself, yet audibly, “I never really considered - free nibbles, I thought, and well, you know what they say; if you ever want to hear what’s really going on at a party, you work in the kitchen. I didn’t consider the fact that I’d actually have to do things beyond listening in and scarfing down as many hors d’oeurves as I could possibly manage.”
“Why, are you a spy or something?”
She was teasing in every way, but the man jumps almost visibly. “No! No, I’m not. It’s just - well,” He shrugs, “It’s been years since I’ve been back in Verona, and I thought this way was as good as any to reacquaint myself.”
“There are simpler ways.” The man obviously isn’t leaving, but Rose finds herself warming to his company. He doesn’t stare agape at her trademark Capulet eyes when he is speaking to her, or at her chest like most of the very few young men she has encountered have done. But this might still have something to do with his mask - again, it’s hard to tell. “You could’ve asked for an invite.”
He pauses for a long moment. “You know, if I were a spy, purely theoretically of course,” he adds hastily, “I’d know a thing or two about security and what not. And, if I were a reasonably well informed professional in the art of espionage, I’d say that for a party of this sort of class, it’d be rather easy for just about anyone to slip in, wouldn’t it?”
“Not a chance. Do you know much of the man who is hosting this party?” Why she says it like that, she doesn’t know for sure. It’s like playing a game, or weaving a tale. And what was this masquerade about if not games and fantasies? When he shakes his head, Rose continues, mimicking the man - her own father’s - grave tone, “There’s very little he hates more in the world than gatecrashers, oh yes. Other than cradle robbers and Montagues, of course. That goes without saying”
“Then you’d think he could’ve made it a hell of a lot easier for himself.” The man says, gesturing to his mask. “And for me too, mind. I’ve got a bloody big closet.”
Rose giggles, dropping the façade; “I’m sorry about that - trust me, it wasn’t my - it’s all a bit too - It makes his wife happy, I’ve heard.” She stops, enjoying herself too much to reveal everything now. “But then I guess you should’ve read the fine print in the job description before applying.”
“Who has the time these days? But in all seriousness now,” he leans back on his perch, and says with a decibel less energy, a touch of strange softness, like he’s really, really asking. “What should I do now?”
Something about his tone and body language makes Rose uncertain as to whether or not they’re still talking about the same thing. Come on, vogue. Let your body move to the music, hey, hey, hey. “You seem a bit too -” Rose catches herself about to say gorgeous, despite the fact she hasn’t even seen his face properly. With such a nice smile and his lanky silhouette, her mind has written in the rest. But that’s got nothing to do with it, and not to mention utterly inappropriate, obviously, “- young, for a mid-life crisis.”
“Well, it was more like a moment of cosmic angst anyway.” His grin comes bright and quick, like a star searing across an evening sky. “But they pass, as they must always. And what about you, miss? Weren’t you enjoying yourself?”
“M’alright,” Rose shrugs, hugging her arms around herself. “I needed a bit of a breather from all that dancing, that’s all.”
Uttering a small ‘oh’, as if embarrassed to have been caught forgetting his manners, the man slides over, indicating to the space on the plinth beside him with an angled head. Rose hesitates, before thinking what the hell; “Like a Virgin” is coming up next anyways, and joins him.
It’s his magnified presence that makes Rose become acutely aware of how alone she is. The companions she’d started out with earlier in the night are lost; her parents preferring the upper stories, where they could pretend that if they weren’t seeing it, the wanton dancing below wasn’t actually taking place. Mickey is probably dry-heaving in a toilet and swearing off shellfish for the rest of his life. The only other guest she’d recognized, she knew better than to disturb; Jack Harkness, oddly unmasked, was deep in conversation with a dark-skinned woman back in the dining hall, wedged between two blow-up palm trees. Occasionally the two of them would look up from where their heads were bent together and scan the crowds searchingly before returning to their private tête-à-tête.
“You know, I never really understood it.”
Startled out of her thoughts, Rose glances over to him. The gleaming moonlight being shed on his face reveals a thoughtful mouth and the smallest hint of freckles. “Understood what?”
“Dancing. I mean, I love a good party as much as the next person, but dancing. It’s funny, how it’s become something so,” He gesticulates freely into the air, as if the right word could be plucked out like a stray thread from his tapestry of thought, “- ritualistic. Written in some form across all culture and continent, all because of the funny ways human bodies react to stimulus. You shake a limb to a beat and hup!” Rose jumps, startled by his sudden exclamation and nearly topples off the plinth. “Suddenly you’ve got serotonin shuttling across your million, billion interneurons, and pheromones practically ricocheting off the walls. A veritable hormonal free for all, for any Margaret or Madge, Dick or Dave.”
She grins, “You know, the sort of people who say things like that are usually the cynics who can’t dance.”
“Not me, oh no.” he drawls languorously, “Let me assure you, I’ve got the moves.”
“Oh yeah?” Teasingly, Rose bumps her shoulder against his, taking care to be gentle. There isn’t much room for both of them on this perch of theirs. Two knees press against each other, her bare one against the dark cloth of his trousers. “Then maybe you should take the time to assure me sometime tonight.”
One knee, each with one hand resting upon it. His little finger drifts, gently grazing hers like he wants to take it, but always roving back before any real contact. She pretends she doesn’t notice; not really encouraging, but not pulling away entirely either. “Well, I’d hate to be a show off. Plus, I’m supposed to be working, remember?”
“Please, like you were being so incredibly diligent before.”
He’s utterly still for a moment. Then, as if he’d suddenly had an epiphany, the man sits up a little straighter, swivelling his upper body so he’s facing her. “You’re absolutely right,” he says, “But would you mind if I told you the truth?” Before she can open her mouth to reply, he rushes on, his voice quiet and even. “It’s a short one, as they go; of a time I got a bit distracted - more than a bit distracted, more distracted than I’d let myself be in ages. All because there was this party a couple of my friends got invited to and I - well, I just didn’t. Lost in the mail, maybe. Something to do with my aimless, delinquent youth, probably.” There’s no mistaking it; his eyes are staring right into hers, stilling even the breath in her lungs. “Anyways - and so I found myself out here, so distracted I didn’t realize I had a plate of pears on my lap, trying to tell myself it’s all just music and chemical reactions across a synapse, when the truth was.” He pauses, as everything about him softens - his posture, his frenetic tone of voice - all softening to his hushed sincerity.
“When the truth is, that I never saw true beauty until this night.”
She’s sitting on her father’s beloved Roman plinth. He’s staring at her like she’s the one who is concealed, but like he’s halfway to making her out completely. The wind picks up again, and Rose shivers.
“Might I give you a piece of advice?” he begins again quietly, leaning ever the tiniest bit closer. “You should dance like you did earlier tonight; more than often, and as often as you’d like.”
The cicadae in the cloister sing in the Mediterranean evening, trampling over the dying notes of “Material Girl”. Then, as abruptly as the applause that bursts out from the inside, he stands - no, bounds to his feet, as if his body were just one long, lanky, wound up spring. “Now,” the cheery tone being cause to nearly knock Rose off the plinth again almost as much as the sheer force of his action, “I suppose I’ve got duties to perform.”
With a quick nod, he begins to stride quickly away. “Hold on!” Rose leaps to her feet, and strangely enough, her heart with it. He doesn’t turn around, so she addresses the tense horizon of his shoulder blades instead. “What’s your name?” She asks with a strange kind of tenderness, like he’s some creature shivering in the night and she’s harkening him away from the shadows.
“I’m -” A hand goes up and fumbles with his mask. He stumbles over his words, and somehow Rose already knows this isn’t something that happens often. “I’m a doctor.”
“So not a server after all,” she grins, her tongue making an appearance out of the corner of her mouth. “Alright then, doctor what?”
“Just the Doctor.” He looks over his shoulder, and gives her the briefest of smiles as he pulls the door open, the sound spilling out into their moment. “Have a lovely evening, miss.”
---
And she does. A half an hour later, Rose finds herself once again in the middle of the dancing, her arms swirling lazily in the air and lost amongst unfamiliar bodies. Tendrils of hair cling to the nape of her neck, damp with sweat. It’s easy to forget things, like aching in the legs or dryness of the mouth or the necessity of breathing when the music is moving you so, carrying you so, begging for you to come along with it like an undertow.
But then there are some things you cannot forget so easily. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots him with his bowtie jerked out of his collar, standing next to the iced swan with his hands in his pockets. She doesn’t need for his mask to be off to know that he’s looking at her, not after his hushed confession in that darkened corridor. And all of the sudden she feels audacious. Rose feels beautiful and overheated and just the right amount of out of her mind to do what she’s about to do.
Rose weaves her way through the dancers, and though she can feel his eyes follow her as she approaches, he still appears startled when she’s finally before him, slipping her hands into his. They fit perfectly, to her surprise; even though her palms seem so small and too warm to be sliding against his, betraying the slightest tremble at her own audacity. His fingers, so long and cool to the touch, furl automatically around her own but responds with only the smallest of pressures, like she’s something that ought to dissolve to the touch, or not exist at all. These misgiving are something she wants to amend, immediately. She tugs on his hands, starts to pull him into the crowd. “Come dance with me,” she shouts.
For a brief moment, one of his hands flies out of hers and to his mask. “I don’t -,” he says loudly over the music. “I really don’t know if this is such a good idea.”
“How come?”
“I’m cursed.”
“What?”
“This tux,” he shouts, “Nothing good has ever happened to me while I’ve worn this tux. I’m almost completely sure it’s cursed.”
“Almost?” He nods. “Completely?” He nods again, a little less fervently. “What, is it rigged to explode if the Doctor dances?” Rose grins up at him teasingly. When he has no reply for her, she reclaims his hand and pulls him into the crowd again. This time, he follows.
Rose brings them deep into the crowd, right into its heart. He stands there stock still, looking unsure of the situation still and even more of himself - she dearly misses his confidence. Taking both his hands into hers again, she places them at her waist and slides her hands to his shoulders. The music brings them to move, as do the pulsing lights, the pulsing bodies. Like everything was moving in favour of bringing them to move.
She wonders if he’s as hyperaware of their proximity as she is. Something about it should make her feel uncomfortable, to be so close to someone when she’s been taught to hold the world at a distance. But his hands on her waist stay exactly where they are, so light it’s like he’s barely touching her at all. Except that Rose gets the feeling like he very much wants to touch her, and she herself is aware of the fact that she probably wouldn’t be at all opposed to him touching her; even just a hand on her hand, maybe drawing her even closer still.
It’s the mystery, not being able to see his eyes, discern exactly what he wants out of this. So instead her eyes trail down to his lips, and is suddenly struck with the thought that my, they look rather lovely. So that’s where all the rambling issues forth from. She wonders if it would still taste like pear and cilantro and fig, or if she’d taste the genuine article. Rose doesn’t see or know for certain whether or not he’s thinking the same thing - not until those lips are on hers and then she knows absolutely nothing at all.
He kisses like it is the official language and she is the foreigner in a foreign land. Is it him or the banana daiquiri she tastes in her travels of his mouth? Seized with a desperate desire to become fluent, Rose gives herself over completely, armed with only an outdated map and knowledge accrued from midday telenovelas, trembling in the heat of his answer. This is probably still within the parameters of acceptable behaviour, but if it isn’t, well - no one can see, no one knows who she is and no one probably cares. His syllables and consonants nip at her bottom lip as she gasps out the dialect of nonsense back into his mouth.
Their noses bump strangely, one of porcelain and the other of skin, as their lips speak and they say absolutely nothing while disclosing absolutely everything. Her hands run up his arms, around his shoulders, up into his thick, soft hair, until they stutter over the knot fastened securely there.
Rose pulls away, just far enough, though he attempts to follow. “Can I?” she gasps breathlessly, asks without really asking, because before he can reply she already has it undone. The mask falls from his face and she releases him without thinking, catches the mask as it tumbles down. But it makes no difference; the dance floor is too dark, the lighting too inconsistent, for her to see clearly. She holds his disguise in her hands and he holds her in his and they are already much too far, much too deep, to see clearly anymore.
In some dim retrospective, Rose might’ve felt his hands, pressed firmly against her waist, tense; a small noise of protest somehow heard underneath the thudding bass. But all that is lost when she frames the face she can hardly make out in the half-life but already knows for a fact is beautiful; gently places her hands on either side of that face, leans up and touches her lips to his once again. Its softness is a strange, strange thing in the midst of the unforgiving music, in counterpoint to the grinding of alien bodies around them.
Just as it seems he’s about to reciprocate, as his mouth begins to unfurl under her own, Rose pulls away. Her hands slide to his chest, creating space between them from the waist up, where his hands are still holding her flush against him. He’s utterly intoxicating and she needs a breather in order to get this right. She needs this space between them to figure out just exactly what’s going on with her tonight, needs to gather her bearings and coordinate herself and maybe get a good look at his face, maybe get his name. But he seems reluctant to let her move away too far; the man holds her so close that they’re practically cheek-to-cheek. Rose finds some solace in the fact that he sounds nearly as out of breath as she does.
“Please.” As he speaks, Rose is not entirely sure whether or not she feels or hears it first, either carried by his breath into her ear or by the vibrations, absorbed from her palms over his chest. But either way, she discerns the hesitation, hovering somewhere between a statement of fact and a plea. “Please, I -”
“Shh,” she says, running a shaky hand up and down his arm, when it’s all she knows to say at the moment. When her soul is sense and she really can’t not be touching him. “It’s alright, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”
He pulls back a fraction, and at that moment a fluorescent pink spotlight cartwheels around where they’re standing. Rose catches a glimpse of a spray of freckles over an angular nose and eyes, wide with wonderment, staring back into hers.
And it’s enough. She wraps her arms around his neck, drawing him closer again, his mask dangling from her fingers. Rose is now acutely aware of the fact that they’ve stopped dancing entirely, but by the way he’s leaning towards her, that she doesn’t quite care. Because as much as she loves dancing, Rose thinks, her eyes fluttering shut, she might’ve found something here tonight that she loves even better.
---
Despite this, they’re shocked into further stillness when the needle lifts and the music comes to an abrupt stop.
---
“YOOHOO. ROSE, DARLING!”
She’s already pushed herself out of his arms when the proper lights begin rising up, when the dance floor loosens its frenzied knot and begins their disoriented dispersal, groping in the light. He seems as dazed as any of them, his arms still holding onto the space where she once occupied. Brown, she notices. His eyes are brown. Rose is still facing him as she begins to hurriedly back away, jostling into the people behind her. “Sorry, I’m so sorry,” she apologizes to everyone, but especially to him. “I’ve got - I’ve got to -”
“Where are you, sweetheart?” Her mother’s magnified voice rings through the party, “It’s time to blow out the candles!”
Without bothering to finish the sentence, Rose turns around and runs away.
---
Rose remains huddled behind the iced swan, even as she’s hearing her name being carried across lips and glances. Wringing her hands, she tries to slow her frantic breaths because no, she is not hyperventilating over a snog on a dance floor, she is just not.
But what exactly is wrong with her tonight, she thinks, the hysteria nearly bubbling over. Whatever happened to being the sheltered heiress of urban myth and social legend, hidden away from roving eyes (and mouths and hands and - oh god, Rose buries her face in her hands, moaning softly).
Candles. Birthday cake. Mum and Dad and Tony. Concentrate, she steels herself. A kiss is a kiss, a dance is a dance, and a man is just a man. Rose leans against the wall and slowly starts to sink to the floor, feeling like her knees have abandoned her for one last reel across the dance floor. Maybe if she crawled under the buffet table, they could forget the cake nonsense, forget her entirely and just be done with this night.
But then suddenly, a hand clutches an arm and whirls her about - and for a half-moment, she thinks (or fears or hopes) it’s him, until her eyes adjust on the thunderous expression before her. This face she knows well and has seen in its entirety almost all her life. And she doesn’t need precedence to know that it’s not happy with her; not in the slightest.
Letting out a noise of disgust or frustration or whatever, Mickey shakes his head and pulls her to the stairs. “Have you got any idea who that bloke was?” he hisses over his shoulder.
“No, why?” Her parents and Tony are waiting on the landing, beaming from across a thickly-iced cake. It’s pink, she notes blurrily, with marzipan flowers and little ball bearings.
But Mickey has already passed her over to her father’s waiting arms. “Happy nineteenth, sweetheart,” he says over the clapping of hands, pulling her into a one armed hug she barely has sense enough to reciprocate. Tony bounces at her side, begging for her to be quick, and that he wants a slice with plenty of the purple icing, please. Someone holds her arms from behind, positions her at an optimal angle for either the cake or the pictures, she’s not sure. Her mother materializes at her side, wraps her arm around her waist and murmurs into her ear through her plastered grin; “Smile for the cameras, Rose.”
Jackie turns away to blow a kiss to someone particular in the crowd. Tony tugs on her dress. Mickey, hovering behind her like a shadow, leans over and whispers in her other ear; “He was a Montague, Rose.”
Her name passes from lips to lips like a parcel from hand to hand; not like a kiss, not like the ones she’s known tonight. All below them, their guests are removing their masks, shaking their sweat-damp hair out of their eyes. The game is over, the war is won and they will soon be making their retreats to their black Cadillacs, disillusioned as much as happy drunks often are. But first, there is no man’s land to be crossed, and who knows what lies beneath the dirt of the opulent? It stretches on and on, like his name in her ear; its vowels and consonants, hills and valleys, sand and stone. They whisper across Verona, chasing away all delusion.
Then, Rose suddenly spies him again; standing at the forefront of the gathering crowd. Rose holds his gaze over the flickering light of her birthday candles - still, half his face is swamped in shadow, but he’s staring at her, oh yes, the same way she knows she’s staring right back. Dawning realization only makes up half of the whole, and the rest - she shivers.
Suddenly, Jack and the woman in the green feathered mask cleave the crowd; they tug at his arm, mouth something to him that is lost, utterly lost to him and to her both.
Her mother moves her arm to her shoulder. “Make a wish, love.”
Obediently, she leans over the cake, blows out the candles and plunges the room into darkness. A switch is flipped, a candle is lit; the party materializes in the light.
And he is gone.
---
Next: Thou Givest Fever
Rating: T
Characters: Ten/Rose, Jack, Martha, Mickey, and many others.
Word Count: 4,826
Beta(s): nylana , professor_spork
Genre: Romance, AU
Summary: Two households, both alike in dignity. Between dance parties, old movie theaters and the beaches of Verona, there develops the most famous love affair in history. However, there is more to this ancient feud than meets the eye, and a force that transcends time and space itself.
A/N: Where we lay our scene: Once upon a time, a prompt by the lovely mylittlepwny spawned into a fic titled Thou Givest Fever. Though it was fully intended as a silly sort of one-off tribute to both my idol and favourite play, it instead turned into something altogether different. Many thanks to nylana 's amazing and patient eye, and professor_spork , for being awesome and providing the title. And also to everyone who commented and enjoyed TGF; none of this would've come about without your incredible support ♥.
The prologue takes place immediately prior to the events of TGF.
Right from the very beginning, Rose knew this party wouldn’t be about her.
It would be about what every party worth celebrating has been about; another degree of separation from the past, another bottle of overpriced champagne. Yes, her family might be the definition of nouveau riche and all the negative connotations that come with it, but at least her mother’s proclivity for ice sculpturing and expensive cheeses could now be indulged. At least her brother will never experience the diatribes of a welfare line. The Capulet compound is no longer a cramped, two room apartment above a café in the Piazza delle Erbe. But Rose knows she doesn’t remember enough from those early days to truly understand how far they’ve come; not the night noises from the decaying streets, nor the reliefs crumbling under the bacteria of time.
(Though sometimes she still dreams of the sculptured fountains below her old bedroom window; the long shadows of the Virgin and Saint Peter criss-crossing on her bedroom floor, like the most secret and treacherous of embraces in history.)
But her mother does. Jackie remembers all of it. And thus the imported wine, the DJ, the guest list filled with expensive friends and backers they can’t afford to displease.
Thus the hate and anger towards the family across the Ponte Pietra, so unlike from them except in pride. That ominous shape perched atop the hill, overlooking Verona’s edifices with dark, ancient eyes.
Tonight, as the foyer is transformed into a dance floor, as the strobe lighting flashes and Rose pulses along to the thrumming music, faceless and careless, these details feel very far away and inconsequential. She knows that everything that happens inside her walled life is just one part of the whole. She thinks she knows what lies beyond it, the lights and the asphalt. The testaments to the endurance of memory; crumbling Roman aqueducts dwarfed by skyscrapers, the recurring shape of a woman with kind eyes and open hands, receiving centuries’ worth of prayer. And even further beyond that lie the silence of the beaches, the soft, foaming collisions of the Mediterranean upon the sand. All of this, gridlocked in the clutches of the future.
But here - here is everything. Here is a moment that she makes hers.
Slowly, Rose moves as the strangers around her move, as the music moves them. Her chest soaks the deepening bass as her own pulse. Throwing her head back, she becomes her own center of gravity, a heart that opens and marvels. A thousand million facets of gleaming light rain on her upturned face. She smiles.
Rose knew from the very beginning this party wouldn’t be about her - and she wasn’t concerned in the slightest. As long as there would be plenty of dancing, she wouldn’t mind if no one here even knows her name.
---
There is a man, and there is her father’s Roman plinth.
There is a man in a suit, sitting cross-legged on her father’s beloved 5th century Roman plinth, with a tray of canapés perched on his lap.
Rose snaps her jaw shut as the door behind her does the same, immediately muffling the raucous sounds of the continuing festivities and sending a gust of hot, stale summer air gusting around the hem of her party dress. Her recently removed mask dangles from her fingers, which had obscured his presence from her as she’d snuck out of the mob of inebriated guests and into the seemingly-vacant corridor.
But he was already looking, long before she knew where to look in the darkness of the cloister. The man offers the plate of whatever it was towards her, as if he’d been waiting all night for this acknowledgement.
“Nibbles?”
Quickly regaining her composure, Rose declines with a smile and a wave. “I’m alright, thanks.”
Humming thoughtfully, the man picks up one of the canapés delicately with his thumb and forefinger. Holding it up to eye level, he examines it from every possible angle, like a jeweller handling a diamond with many facets. “Oh, I think you might be absolutely right on that call,” he remarks. Popping it in his mouth, he makes a face - or at least she assumes so, judging by the way his mouth skews painfully and his exaggerated swallow. The white mask covering most of his upper face makes it difficult to tell for sure. “Fig, cilantro, cream cheese, and - ugh, what is that? Spiced pear?” Gagging, he upends the entire platter into a wooden box at his feet. Into her family’s priceless, antique Provencal wine case. Rose bites down a grin.
The opening strains to ‘Vogue’ are distantly heard, accompanied by more stifled cheering. Rose rubs up and down her bare arms in an imagined chill. Standing there uncomfortably, she doesn’t know what to do with this man in the corridor, but neither does she feel inclined to rejoin the party. Things always tend to get a little too crazy for her tastes when they delve into the Madonna set list. But the stranger turns with her, regarding the door with the same air of bemusement. “Aren’t you going to head back out there?” suggests Rose hopefully, after a beat of silence.
“Nah, I think not,” the man replies with a disdainful sniff. “I was always more of a Cyndi Lauper fan myself.”
“I mean,” she tries again, “Won’t they be expecting you at some point?” When the man angles his head confusedly, Rose gives the upturned platter and the scattered hors d’oeurves a pointed look.
“Oh!” The man ruffles the back of his head sheepishly, as if only just realizing what he’d done, “I suppose they will, won’t they? Strange,” he muses to himself, yet audibly, “I never really considered - free nibbles, I thought, and well, you know what they say; if you ever want to hear what’s really going on at a party, you work in the kitchen. I didn’t consider the fact that I’d actually have to do things beyond listening in and scarfing down as many hors d’oeurves as I could possibly manage.”
“Why, are you a spy or something?”
She was teasing in every way, but the man jumps almost visibly. “No! No, I’m not. It’s just - well,” He shrugs, “It’s been years since I’ve been back in Verona, and I thought this way was as good as any to reacquaint myself.”
“There are simpler ways.” The man obviously isn’t leaving, but Rose finds herself warming to his company. He doesn’t stare agape at her trademark Capulet eyes when he is speaking to her, or at her chest like most of the very few young men she has encountered have done. But this might still have something to do with his mask - again, it’s hard to tell. “You could’ve asked for an invite.”
He pauses for a long moment. “You know, if I were a spy, purely theoretically of course,” he adds hastily, “I’d know a thing or two about security and what not. And, if I were a reasonably well informed professional in the art of espionage, I’d say that for a party of this sort of class, it’d be rather easy for just about anyone to slip in, wouldn’t it?”
“Not a chance. Do you know much of the man who is hosting this party?” Why she says it like that, she doesn’t know for sure. It’s like playing a game, or weaving a tale. And what was this masquerade about if not games and fantasies? When he shakes his head, Rose continues, mimicking the man - her own father’s - grave tone, “There’s very little he hates more in the world than gatecrashers, oh yes. Other than cradle robbers and Montagues, of course. That goes without saying”
“Then you’d think he could’ve made it a hell of a lot easier for himself.” The man says, gesturing to his mask. “And for me too, mind. I’ve got a bloody big closet.”
Rose giggles, dropping the façade; “I’m sorry about that - trust me, it wasn’t my - it’s all a bit too - It makes his wife happy, I’ve heard.” She stops, enjoying herself too much to reveal everything now. “But then I guess you should’ve read the fine print in the job description before applying.”
“Who has the time these days? But in all seriousness now,” he leans back on his perch, and says with a decibel less energy, a touch of strange softness, like he’s really, really asking. “What should I do now?”
Something about his tone and body language makes Rose uncertain as to whether or not they’re still talking about the same thing. Come on, vogue. Let your body move to the music, hey, hey, hey. “You seem a bit too -” Rose catches herself about to say gorgeous, despite the fact she hasn’t even seen his face properly. With such a nice smile and his lanky silhouette, her mind has written in the rest. But that’s got nothing to do with it, and not to mention utterly inappropriate, obviously, “- young, for a mid-life crisis.”
“Well, it was more like a moment of cosmic angst anyway.” His grin comes bright and quick, like a star searing across an evening sky. “But they pass, as they must always. And what about you, miss? Weren’t you enjoying yourself?”
“M’alright,” Rose shrugs, hugging her arms around herself. “I needed a bit of a breather from all that dancing, that’s all.”
Uttering a small ‘oh’, as if embarrassed to have been caught forgetting his manners, the man slides over, indicating to the space on the plinth beside him with an angled head. Rose hesitates, before thinking what the hell; “Like a Virgin” is coming up next anyways, and joins him.
It’s his magnified presence that makes Rose become acutely aware of how alone she is. The companions she’d started out with earlier in the night are lost; her parents preferring the upper stories, where they could pretend that if they weren’t seeing it, the wanton dancing below wasn’t actually taking place. Mickey is probably dry-heaving in a toilet and swearing off shellfish for the rest of his life. The only other guest she’d recognized, she knew better than to disturb; Jack Harkness, oddly unmasked, was deep in conversation with a dark-skinned woman back in the dining hall, wedged between two blow-up palm trees. Occasionally the two of them would look up from where their heads were bent together and scan the crowds searchingly before returning to their private tête-à-tête.
“You know, I never really understood it.”
Startled out of her thoughts, Rose glances over to him. The gleaming moonlight being shed on his face reveals a thoughtful mouth and the smallest hint of freckles. “Understood what?”
“Dancing. I mean, I love a good party as much as the next person, but dancing. It’s funny, how it’s become something so,” He gesticulates freely into the air, as if the right word could be plucked out like a stray thread from his tapestry of thought, “- ritualistic. Written in some form across all culture and continent, all because of the funny ways human bodies react to stimulus. You shake a limb to a beat and hup!” Rose jumps, startled by his sudden exclamation and nearly topples off the plinth. “Suddenly you’ve got serotonin shuttling across your million, billion interneurons, and pheromones practically ricocheting off the walls. A veritable hormonal free for all, for any Margaret or Madge, Dick or Dave.”
She grins, “You know, the sort of people who say things like that are usually the cynics who can’t dance.”
“Not me, oh no.” he drawls languorously, “Let me assure you, I’ve got the moves.”
“Oh yeah?” Teasingly, Rose bumps her shoulder against his, taking care to be gentle. There isn’t much room for both of them on this perch of theirs. Two knees press against each other, her bare one against the dark cloth of his trousers. “Then maybe you should take the time to assure me sometime tonight.”
One knee, each with one hand resting upon it. His little finger drifts, gently grazing hers like he wants to take it, but always roving back before any real contact. She pretends she doesn’t notice; not really encouraging, but not pulling away entirely either. “Well, I’d hate to be a show off. Plus, I’m supposed to be working, remember?”
“Please, like you were being so incredibly diligent before.”
He’s utterly still for a moment. Then, as if he’d suddenly had an epiphany, the man sits up a little straighter, swivelling his upper body so he’s facing her. “You’re absolutely right,” he says, “But would you mind if I told you the truth?” Before she can open her mouth to reply, he rushes on, his voice quiet and even. “It’s a short one, as they go; of a time I got a bit distracted - more than a bit distracted, more distracted than I’d let myself be in ages. All because there was this party a couple of my friends got invited to and I - well, I just didn’t. Lost in the mail, maybe. Something to do with my aimless, delinquent youth, probably.” There’s no mistaking it; his eyes are staring right into hers, stilling even the breath in her lungs. “Anyways - and so I found myself out here, so distracted I didn’t realize I had a plate of pears on my lap, trying to tell myself it’s all just music and chemical reactions across a synapse, when the truth was.” He pauses, as everything about him softens - his posture, his frenetic tone of voice - all softening to his hushed sincerity.
“When the truth is, that I never saw true beauty until this night.”
She’s sitting on her father’s beloved Roman plinth. He’s staring at her like she’s the one who is concealed, but like he’s halfway to making her out completely. The wind picks up again, and Rose shivers.
“Might I give you a piece of advice?” he begins again quietly, leaning ever the tiniest bit closer. “You should dance like you did earlier tonight; more than often, and as often as you’d like.”
The cicadae in the cloister sing in the Mediterranean evening, trampling over the dying notes of “Material Girl”. Then, as abruptly as the applause that bursts out from the inside, he stands - no, bounds to his feet, as if his body were just one long, lanky, wound up spring. “Now,” the cheery tone being cause to nearly knock Rose off the plinth again almost as much as the sheer force of his action, “I suppose I’ve got duties to perform.”
With a quick nod, he begins to stride quickly away. “Hold on!” Rose leaps to her feet, and strangely enough, her heart with it. He doesn’t turn around, so she addresses the tense horizon of his shoulder blades instead. “What’s your name?” She asks with a strange kind of tenderness, like he’s some creature shivering in the night and she’s harkening him away from the shadows.
“I’m -” A hand goes up and fumbles with his mask. He stumbles over his words, and somehow Rose already knows this isn’t something that happens often. “I’m a doctor.”
“So not a server after all,” she grins, her tongue making an appearance out of the corner of her mouth. “Alright then, doctor what?”
“Just the Doctor.” He looks over his shoulder, and gives her the briefest of smiles as he pulls the door open, the sound spilling out into their moment. “Have a lovely evening, miss.”
---
And she does. A half an hour later, Rose finds herself once again in the middle of the dancing, her arms swirling lazily in the air and lost amongst unfamiliar bodies. Tendrils of hair cling to the nape of her neck, damp with sweat. It’s easy to forget things, like aching in the legs or dryness of the mouth or the necessity of breathing when the music is moving you so, carrying you so, begging for you to come along with it like an undertow.
But then there are some things you cannot forget so easily. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots him with his bowtie jerked out of his collar, standing next to the iced swan with his hands in his pockets. She doesn’t need for his mask to be off to know that he’s looking at her, not after his hushed confession in that darkened corridor. And all of the sudden she feels audacious. Rose feels beautiful and overheated and just the right amount of out of her mind to do what she’s about to do.
Rose weaves her way through the dancers, and though she can feel his eyes follow her as she approaches, he still appears startled when she’s finally before him, slipping her hands into his. They fit perfectly, to her surprise; even though her palms seem so small and too warm to be sliding against his, betraying the slightest tremble at her own audacity. His fingers, so long and cool to the touch, furl automatically around her own but responds with only the smallest of pressures, like she’s something that ought to dissolve to the touch, or not exist at all. These misgiving are something she wants to amend, immediately. She tugs on his hands, starts to pull him into the crowd. “Come dance with me,” she shouts.
For a brief moment, one of his hands flies out of hers and to his mask. “I don’t -,” he says loudly over the music. “I really don’t know if this is such a good idea.”
“How come?”
“I’m cursed.”
“What?”
“This tux,” he shouts, “Nothing good has ever happened to me while I’ve worn this tux. I’m almost completely sure it’s cursed.”
“Almost?” He nods. “Completely?” He nods again, a little less fervently. “What, is it rigged to explode if the Doctor dances?” Rose grins up at him teasingly. When he has no reply for her, she reclaims his hand and pulls him into the crowd again. This time, he follows.
Rose brings them deep into the crowd, right into its heart. He stands there stock still, looking unsure of the situation still and even more of himself - she dearly misses his confidence. Taking both his hands into hers again, she places them at her waist and slides her hands to his shoulders. The music brings them to move, as do the pulsing lights, the pulsing bodies. Like everything was moving in favour of bringing them to move.
She wonders if he’s as hyperaware of their proximity as she is. Something about it should make her feel uncomfortable, to be so close to someone when she’s been taught to hold the world at a distance. But his hands on her waist stay exactly where they are, so light it’s like he’s barely touching her at all. Except that Rose gets the feeling like he very much wants to touch her, and she herself is aware of the fact that she probably wouldn’t be at all opposed to him touching her; even just a hand on her hand, maybe drawing her even closer still.
It’s the mystery, not being able to see his eyes, discern exactly what he wants out of this. So instead her eyes trail down to his lips, and is suddenly struck with the thought that my, they look rather lovely. So that’s where all the rambling issues forth from. She wonders if it would still taste like pear and cilantro and fig, or if she’d taste the genuine article. Rose doesn’t see or know for certain whether or not he’s thinking the same thing - not until those lips are on hers and then she knows absolutely nothing at all.
He kisses like it is the official language and she is the foreigner in a foreign land. Is it him or the banana daiquiri she tastes in her travels of his mouth? Seized with a desperate desire to become fluent, Rose gives herself over completely, armed with only an outdated map and knowledge accrued from midday telenovelas, trembling in the heat of his answer. This is probably still within the parameters of acceptable behaviour, but if it isn’t, well - no one can see, no one knows who she is and no one probably cares. His syllables and consonants nip at her bottom lip as she gasps out the dialect of nonsense back into his mouth.
Their noses bump strangely, one of porcelain and the other of skin, as their lips speak and they say absolutely nothing while disclosing absolutely everything. Her hands run up his arms, around his shoulders, up into his thick, soft hair, until they stutter over the knot fastened securely there.
Rose pulls away, just far enough, though he attempts to follow. “Can I?” she gasps breathlessly, asks without really asking, because before he can reply she already has it undone. The mask falls from his face and she releases him without thinking, catches the mask as it tumbles down. But it makes no difference; the dance floor is too dark, the lighting too inconsistent, for her to see clearly. She holds his disguise in her hands and he holds her in his and they are already much too far, much too deep, to see clearly anymore.
In some dim retrospective, Rose might’ve felt his hands, pressed firmly against her waist, tense; a small noise of protest somehow heard underneath the thudding bass. But all that is lost when she frames the face she can hardly make out in the half-life but already knows for a fact is beautiful; gently places her hands on either side of that face, leans up and touches her lips to his once again. Its softness is a strange, strange thing in the midst of the unforgiving music, in counterpoint to the grinding of alien bodies around them.
Just as it seems he’s about to reciprocate, as his mouth begins to unfurl under her own, Rose pulls away. Her hands slide to his chest, creating space between them from the waist up, where his hands are still holding her flush against him. He’s utterly intoxicating and she needs a breather in order to get this right. She needs this space between them to figure out just exactly what’s going on with her tonight, needs to gather her bearings and coordinate herself and maybe get a good look at his face, maybe get his name. But he seems reluctant to let her move away too far; the man holds her so close that they’re practically cheek-to-cheek. Rose finds some solace in the fact that he sounds nearly as out of breath as she does.
“Please.” As he speaks, Rose is not entirely sure whether or not she feels or hears it first, either carried by his breath into her ear or by the vibrations, absorbed from her palms over his chest. But either way, she discerns the hesitation, hovering somewhere between a statement of fact and a plea. “Please, I -”
“Shh,” she says, running a shaky hand up and down his arm, when it’s all she knows to say at the moment. When her soul is sense and she really can’t not be touching him. “It’s alright, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”
He pulls back a fraction, and at that moment a fluorescent pink spotlight cartwheels around where they’re standing. Rose catches a glimpse of a spray of freckles over an angular nose and eyes, wide with wonderment, staring back into hers.
And it’s enough. She wraps her arms around his neck, drawing him closer again, his mask dangling from her fingers. Rose is now acutely aware of the fact that they’ve stopped dancing entirely, but by the way he’s leaning towards her, that she doesn’t quite care. Because as much as she loves dancing, Rose thinks, her eyes fluttering shut, she might’ve found something here tonight that she loves even better.
---
Despite this, they’re shocked into further stillness when the needle lifts and the music comes to an abrupt stop.
---
“YOOHOO. ROSE, DARLING!”
She’s already pushed herself out of his arms when the proper lights begin rising up, when the dance floor loosens its frenzied knot and begins their disoriented dispersal, groping in the light. He seems as dazed as any of them, his arms still holding onto the space where she once occupied. Brown, she notices. His eyes are brown. Rose is still facing him as she begins to hurriedly back away, jostling into the people behind her. “Sorry, I’m so sorry,” she apologizes to everyone, but especially to him. “I’ve got - I’ve got to -”
“Where are you, sweetheart?” Her mother’s magnified voice rings through the party, “It’s time to blow out the candles!”
Without bothering to finish the sentence, Rose turns around and runs away.
---
Rose remains huddled behind the iced swan, even as she’s hearing her name being carried across lips and glances. Wringing her hands, she tries to slow her frantic breaths because no, she is not hyperventilating over a snog on a dance floor, she is just not.
But what exactly is wrong with her tonight, she thinks, the hysteria nearly bubbling over. Whatever happened to being the sheltered heiress of urban myth and social legend, hidden away from roving eyes (and mouths and hands and - oh god, Rose buries her face in her hands, moaning softly).
Candles. Birthday cake. Mum and Dad and Tony. Concentrate, she steels herself. A kiss is a kiss, a dance is a dance, and a man is just a man. Rose leans against the wall and slowly starts to sink to the floor, feeling like her knees have abandoned her for one last reel across the dance floor. Maybe if she crawled under the buffet table, they could forget the cake nonsense, forget her entirely and just be done with this night.
But then suddenly, a hand clutches an arm and whirls her about - and for a half-moment, she thinks (or fears or hopes) it’s him, until her eyes adjust on the thunderous expression before her. This face she knows well and has seen in its entirety almost all her life. And she doesn’t need precedence to know that it’s not happy with her; not in the slightest.
Letting out a noise of disgust or frustration or whatever, Mickey shakes his head and pulls her to the stairs. “Have you got any idea who that bloke was?” he hisses over his shoulder.
“No, why?” Her parents and Tony are waiting on the landing, beaming from across a thickly-iced cake. It’s pink, she notes blurrily, with marzipan flowers and little ball bearings.
But Mickey has already passed her over to her father’s waiting arms. “Happy nineteenth, sweetheart,” he says over the clapping of hands, pulling her into a one armed hug she barely has sense enough to reciprocate. Tony bounces at her side, begging for her to be quick, and that he wants a slice with plenty of the purple icing, please. Someone holds her arms from behind, positions her at an optimal angle for either the cake or the pictures, she’s not sure. Her mother materializes at her side, wraps her arm around her waist and murmurs into her ear through her plastered grin; “Smile for the cameras, Rose.”
Jackie turns away to blow a kiss to someone particular in the crowd. Tony tugs on her dress. Mickey, hovering behind her like a shadow, leans over and whispers in her other ear; “He was a Montague, Rose.”
Her name passes from lips to lips like a parcel from hand to hand; not like a kiss, not like the ones she’s known tonight. All below them, their guests are removing their masks, shaking their sweat-damp hair out of their eyes. The game is over, the war is won and they will soon be making their retreats to their black Cadillacs, disillusioned as much as happy drunks often are. But first, there is no man’s land to be crossed, and who knows what lies beneath the dirt of the opulent? It stretches on and on, like his name in her ear; its vowels and consonants, hills and valleys, sand and stone. They whisper across Verona, chasing away all delusion.
Then, Rose suddenly spies him again; standing at the forefront of the gathering crowd. Rose holds his gaze over the flickering light of her birthday candles - still, half his face is swamped in shadow, but he’s staring at her, oh yes, the same way she knows she’s staring right back. Dawning realization only makes up half of the whole, and the rest - she shivers.
Suddenly, Jack and the woman in the green feathered mask cleave the crowd; they tug at his arm, mouth something to him that is lost, utterly lost to him and to her both.
Her mother moves her arm to her shoulder. “Make a wish, love.”
Obediently, she leans over the cake, blows out the candles and plunges the room into darkness. A switch is flipped, a candle is lit; the party materializes in the light.
And he is gone.
---
Next: Thou Givest Fever