note: this is set in season 2 episode 19
[aka: the one where rocky wants a slow dance from a boy and they travel through the tunnels, except she's too late.]
"Maybe it's just a big lie," Rocky sighs, crossing her arms over her fancy dress. "Maybe… you can't really have it all."
CeCe just smiles weakly at her, shuffles around on her feet. Okay, so, the tunnel plan really didn't work as intended. Instead of living both lives, they just ended up with leg pains and some rusty nail scrapes that were sure to hurt in the morning. But still… Rocky deserves that dance. She doesn't get a lot of things for herself. Maybe because CeCe always stole the limelight, or never let her shine on her own—yeah, something like that.
Not tonight. Rocky deserved her dance, and if CeCe Jones had anything, it was always a plan. She clears her throat and smooths the wrinkles on her dress, turning around on her heel to face Rocky.
"Maybe you can," she says, watching Rocky's eyes perk up.
"What do you mean?" Rocky swallows and looks around like her dance partner will waltz back in at any second. CeCe just stares for a minute, watches how Rocky's eyes flicker around the room, waiting for something CeCe can't give her. Maybe she's cooked up another stupid plan again, but when has she ever been a quitter?
So CeCe raises her hand softly, outstretching it in the streamer lights that Dina's still in the process of tearing down. "You still want your dance?"
It's stupid. But it's all CeCe has to offer.
Rocky hesitates for a second, her arm crooking to take it, but not extending. It's like it's her instinct to just take CeCe's hand—no matter what, no matter the awful plan or the law-breaking plot. She always takes CeCe's hand. She would let CeCe guide her into a volcano, if it was what she wanted.
But… her dance?
She struggles with the way her throat closes up. It's only for a second that she remembers how she'd been taught—that a slow dance is for boys and girls who like each other. A slow dance is for boys and girls who are dating. Boys and girls. It's still stuck in her mind, like glue spilling in the cracks of her brain. She dances with CeCe like friends do, with arm swivels and quick choreography. Not a slow dance. Nothing intimate—like it's been drilled into her mind since preschool.
But it's CeCe. And if anyone could be the one to get her to go against everything she's ever been taught, it's her.
She reaches out and takes CeCe's hand. It doesn't take her more than a few seconds to decide, but she still feels like CeCe's eyes are boring into her when her fingers grip around Rocky's and pull her in closer. Oh.
Okay, Rocky—she tries to remind herself as CeCe pulls up a song to play on her iPod—it's just a slow dance. A slow dance that CeCe is just doing with her because her male date couldn't. That's all. She's danced with CeCe hundreds of times before. Thousands. Millions—
She feels her thoughts bunch up and stop when CeCe's other hand snakes around her waist, and she can feel the grip through the thin fabric of her dress. It's like a branch of her nerves set off and go flickering somewhere in the space between her chest and stomach. CeCe gently sways the both of them to the slow song that pools out of her iPod. Rocky knows this one. She should just focus on the beat, and, uh, swaying to it properly. But she just can't tear her eyes from CeCe's face, especially when CeCe doesn't look away, either.
CeCe looks away for a second to take a glance down at Rocky's hand, which is very conservatively resting on her shoulder. She turns back with a grin that only pulls up one side of her face.
"Rocky, relax. It's not like your dad is chaperoning," she snorts, pulls her hand from Rocky's waist, and uses it to move the hand on her shoulder over to her spine, where her dress has an opening in the back. The feeling of CeCe's skin makes electricity pool in Rocky's stomach, holding a gasp back from behind her teeth. It's buzzing at her fingertips. She's definitely felt CeCe's skin before, but not like this. It's new. Something electric, something that sucks the air out of her chest and leaves her breathless.
What is happening to her?
CeCe pulls her in closer, until their chests are pressed flush together, and the beat takes them back and forth on the gritty floors of their school. Rocky can't help but feel that this is what romance is supposed to be—slow dancing, swaying while pressed together—but she does not think that she should be feeling that about her best friend.
Maybe dancing with her was a bad idea.
CeCe tucks her head into Rocky's neck and whispers, "Slow dancing isn't really your thing, huh?"
Really bad idea.
"Yeah," she agrees, nearly breathlessly. She tries to cut the tension, "I guess I always just imagined it with someone taller?"
CeCe pulls back from her neck with her mouth set in an exaggerated gasp, and it's funny enough to make Rocky snort with laughter. She drags her hand away from Rocky's waist and instead pops it on her hip. "Alright, you'd be lucky to even find anyone as tall as you, stretch."
Rocky snickers, shaking her head. She feels better now, at least—maybe it was just the slow dance messing with her. Yeah, she decides on that. She just… reads too many romance novels where the two characters— unrealistically —kiss after their slow dance. Her and CeCe are friends. She must be really tired from all the tunnel-traveling if she's considering something like being in a relationship with CeCe.
(It wouldn't be the first time. That's neither here nor there.)
CeCe's iPod finishes the slow song abruptly, and shuffles into an upbeat, high-BPM song. They'd danced to it last week on Shake It Up, and gotten a spotlight dance from it, too. Cause that's what her and CeCe are; friends, dance partners, did she mention friends?
"Hey," CeCe exclaims, turning to the iPod. The beats pool out of the crappy speaker, a comforting and familiar tune. She glances back at Rocky, eyes shimmering. "Remember the choreography for this one?"
"Uh, of course," she answers in a half-scoff, and automatically she finds herself following the steps. Left, right, spin, the arm tuck, the movements. When she memorizes something, it sticks.
Their hands break apart from the stuffy slow song, and when CeCe reaches over to turn up the volume, it doesn't even take a minute before they're in their full choreography, greatly welcoming the change from their last dance.
It's much better, Rocky thinks. Easier. There's something to follow, and it requires her to focus on something other than the warmth of CeCe moving next to her. She can sink into the beat and let it carry her dancing. Her whole thing with CeCe has to be over now, probably. Now that she's come to her senses and all.
She thinks so. Until the part of the choreography comes where they're supposed to spin with a male partner on stage, and CeCe inches closer to her. Her partner for this was Rogelio, she remembers. He was a bit too stiff when he spun her, and she did most of the work with the turn. But the only person to do it with now is CeCe—and CeCe is not stiff at all.
She grabs Rocky's hand and twirls her around, twists into the space she's not. CeCe moves with Rocky just like they move when they dance together normally—but Rocky can't help but feel like it's not the same. CeCe stops her at the end of the choreography with a hand on her waist, which curls up to the side of her ribcage and flourishes back down for flair. Rogelio couldn't dream of doing something like that. Rocky's throat tightens up when CeCe's eyes stare into hers, half-lidded and panting. The song is still going.
They're supposed to be repeating the first twelve steps now, after the spin. And the spin is definitely not supposed to last this long. The beat floods out from Rocky's ears, and there's nothing but the way her heart pounds, the way CeCe's hand hasn't left her waist, the way her brain is screaming at her.
She wants to kiss her. Because it's what her heart is telling her, what it's pounding for, what her stomach is getting butterflies for. That's what the romance-novel-reader in her says: kiss her, kiss her already.
But her mind is a different story. Because, in those books she reads, it's never the two girl best friends who kiss at the end. It's never the two princesses who get married at the end of the movie. It's never them.
But CeCe looks so… pretty.
"Rocky. Don't freak," CeCe says. She reaches out and brushes coiled hair from Rocky's face, which is flushed and dulled in thought. CeCe tucks it behind her ear, and she can vaguely feel the touch of her fingers drifting to her chin.
"Okay," she says numbly, if not more of a reflex than anything.
CeCe hesitates before inching forward and pressing their lips together, leaning on her tip-toes to even reach. It's so soft that it drowns out the rest of the song playing, and all Rocky's mind is playing is the sound of her heartbeat thumping.
She shouldn't be doing this. She knows it. She's been raised to like boys, kiss boys, dance with boys—not CeCe Jones. But CeCe pulls back from the kiss with her cheeks flushed nearly the same colors as her hair, and Rocky can feel her heart pumping in her throat, tingles spreading through and up her veins.
She doesn't hesitate again when she pulls CeCe back, lets the fire lighting in her veins swallow her whole, lets CeCe's mouth meld against hers until she's starry-eyed and breathless.
She was taught to kiss boys.
But it's CeCe. And if anyone could be the one to get her to go against everything she's ever been taught, it's her.