An Ealing Comedy
Rokesmith

Disclaimer: The Sarah Jane Adventures are property of the BBC.

Author's Note: This story – which is really a sequence of five loosely connect ficlets – was written because one of the many tragedies of the series' end is the lack of closure for the characters and their development. We may never know where Clyde and Rani were heading or how they'd get there, so I felt compelled to speculate on what might have happened. I've done my best to reconcile this with the events of the series and other things that Clyde and Rani would probably have been dealing with at the time that the episodes didn't have time to cover. As such, it contains minor spoilers for fourth and fifth season of the show.

A Note on the Title: The film studios located in Ealing have become synonymous with the comedies they produced in the fifties. However, in this context, 'comedy' is meant in the Shakespearean sense: a light, ultimately happy story about lovers coming together, such as Much Ado About Nothing.

Step One: Pair

After 'The Empty Planet'

"Clyde, I don't get why you want to go see a film about aliens attacking Earth. Don't you get enough of that, you know, normally?"

"Yeah, so?"

Rani sighed. "I don't mind a film, but isn't there anything else on?"

"Like what?" Clyde responded. "Pretty-boy vampires and teen wizards?"

"You're the one who's got them all on DVD."

"Just in case my cousins come round."

"Sure."

Clyde didn't answer, he just stopped and pointed down one of the roads that led through Ealing town centre. "Come on, Rani."

"Cinema's that way," she waved in the other direction.

"Yeah, but pizza's this way!" Clyde called back.

"Boys," Rani said to herself, and followed him.

Twenty minutes later, they were sitting over a shared Hawaiian pizza looking out of the window at the Saturday afternoon shoppers trail past in different directions. Rani found herself looking up every few minutes, just to reassure herself they were still there. Then Clyde glanced through the window too, caught her eye and they shared an awkward smile and went back to their lunch.

"So why are you so keen to go see this film?" she asked Clyde in the gap between slices. "We've both seen alien invasions for real."

"So's everyone else," Clyde answered. "But they keep making them."

Rani sipped her drink. "But why do you want to go see this one? Honestly?"

"Because this one's about some American fighting aliens with a whole squad of Marines and the entire US military behind him. And last week you and me saved the world by ourselves with just Sarah Jane's sonic lipstick."

"So you just want to sit there and be smug?"

Clyde grinned. "Yeah. Personally, I hope when they get around to making the movie about us, they cast Will Smith to play me."

"Oh yeah?" Rani responded. "And what about me and Luke?"

"Luke would be… who's the guy who played Spock in the last Star Trek movie? Him. And you…" He looked carefully at Rani. "Kira Knightly."

"Oh, thanks a lot."

Clyde just grinned over his pizza at her and, as always, Rani smiled back.

"So what about this new rom-com then?" she asked. "I hear it's meant to be quite good."

"Rani, romantic comedies fail their own definition. They aren't romantic, and they aren't funny."

"And what would you know about romance?"

His smile softened, and Rani found her cheek tingling where he'd kissed her before running away from the robots. He hadn't mentioned it afterwards, and Rani had spent the last week telling herself that it was just something that had happened in the heat of the moment and resolved not to say anything if he didn't.

"Yeah… well…" Clyde said awkwardly, "I don't take lessons on saving the world from movies so I don't see why I should take them seriously on anything else either."

"So what are we going to see then?"

Clyde sat back. "I miss Luke. If he were here, we'd have a tie break."

"I'll tell him you said that. And anyway, he'd just tell you that there's no point in going to see how Hollywood thinks you should fight an alien invasion."

"But he wouldn't want to go see a rom-com either."

"How do you know? He's a softie, is Luke." She let Clyde stew for another moment and then smiled. "Okay, a compromise. How about that film with Colin Firth playing the king with the stutter? I was going to see that with my dad but I don't mind seeing it twice, and you might like it. You said you liked Geoffrey Rush."

"When he's a pirate, yeah." Clyde sighed, then nodded. "Alright, I trust you. I think. And if your dad likes it, it'll give me something to talk to him about next time I'm sent to his office."

"I'm sure he'll love that."

"Come on then, let's go see when it's on."

"Yeah, hang on." Rani reached into her handbag, felt around for a moment and then looked inside. "Damn, I think I left my purse at home. It must be in my backpack."

Clyde shrugged. "That's alright. I can pay for your half."

"But what about the film?"

"I think I've got enough for that… yeah."

"Clyde," she said.

"What?"

A touch of uncertainty crept into her voice. "Clyde… there's a word for when two people go out for a meal and a movie but only one of them pays."

"Oh…" Clyde looked at her carefully. "But this isn't… that, is it?"

Rani forced a laugh. "Of course not. It's just… us, like always. I'll pay you back when we get home, yeah?"

"Sure." Clyde dropped some money onto the table. "Come on then, let's go see C-C-Colin F-F-Firth."

"That's not funny, Clyde."

"Yeah it is. You just don't appreciate my genius."

"Whatever."