that time rosalie and bella fell for each other in math class
pairing: rosalie x bella; twilight-era au
rating: pg-13/t for language and nothing else
It's Wednesday afternoon and there's an interloper in Senior Calculus.
New Girl gnaws her nails to the quick. You can practically hear her hair fraying, twirled taut between those raw-tipped fingers. She's an assortment of tics held together by a blue flannel shirt which sags at the shoulders.
Mr. Whatshisname—they blur together, these teachers with formulae imprinted on their sweater-vests in chalkdust—asks New Girl to introduce herself, and Rosalie finds her flawless vampire ears defeated.
Her name could be Bertha. Or Beth. Or Butter. She's a gold-medal mumbler. Defending world champion of curled-in awkwardness.
Bella, Rosalie thinks.
Then: where the hell did that come from?
.
Rose feels better when Carlisle mentions Isabella Swan in passing.
Not much better, but that's immortality. You clutch the small victories tight, thumbing them smooth as worry-stones until they slide right out of your hands.
.
It's Monday. Bella's been assigned a seat beside Rosalie and a stack of AP-prep workbooks. She looks on the cusp of a cardiac episode, face and cardigan the same violent shade of maroon.
Rose can't help it. "Are you okay?"
"Yes. Yeah." Bella fiddles with the peeling stickers on her calculator—an iridescent swirl of tropical fish—and squares her shoulders. "I'm… look, you're intimidating. Last year, you won the math award here. And that statewide contest. And you had a co-publication."
Vampires think fast. It's a species-wide trait, but Rosalie suddenly feels like an exception for the books.
How long did you spend googling me?
You're a weird one, Swan.
Goodbye; I'm packing my belongings and moving to Denver.
She opts for a smile instead. Admiration curves warm and catlike on her skin.
Bella spends the rest of the class staring staunchly forward, as if making plans to find the nearest church and pray for death when the bell rings.
.
Rosalie doesn't like people.
Well, that's not entirely true. She thought she liked Emmett. Liked-liked in the marriage-babies-shared-graves way. She hadn't updated her descriptions to accommodate her silent heart and bloodless body back then.
So she brought him home.
And Carlisle tore his throat out. Gentleness drags no-one off of Death's front stoop.
Emmett never complains. Rose tells herself she gained a brother and pretends that turning your siblings into stone and thirst and horror is what sisters do.
.
It's Friday, and let the record show that Rosalie is a know-it-all. In second grade, she'd toppled hard out of her chair while raising her hand too vigorously. The boy across the schoolroom aisle had been slow to name the capital of North Dakota.
The universe shifts a little when she asks Bella for help with Question Three.
Two addenda to the record:
Rosalie could answer Question Three with both arms tied and underwater.
Bella knows that. She leans in close and works her way through the indefinite integral, smiling like it's Christmas.
.
"What are you doing for the girls' choice dance?"
It's an ambush of a question, even if its asker is Bella Swan, all of five foot four and modeling another stunning number from her seemingly infinite flannel collection.
"Honestly? It's a coin-flip between staying home and watching TV in a fancy bathrobe or tagging along with my brother in a dress I bought last-minute and hate. You?" Rosalie blurts.
"I was wondering whether you'd like to hang out with me." Bella pauses and grins, shy and impish and—oh shit—perfect. "The fancy bathrobe can come too."
"Sure," says Rosalie. She feels windblown, weak-kneed, wavering.
("You looked so cute," Bella will reassure her, red-eyed and a year later.)