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Bong.
Bong.
Bong.
The bell tower of the nearby monastery tolled the late hour of the second vigil over the night-darkened streets of Verona.
Time. A precious commodity they never quite had enough of. Every secreted hour. Every unseen embrace. Never would all those moments amount to anything resembling enough time. They were running on borrowed time. Stolen, even. Each night that they stole away from their respective and respectable homes for even the briefest of moments with one another, the time was not their own.
It belonged to the night-watch guardsmen, the monks at their vigils, and the worried parents, too world-weary for sleep who looked out over courtyards and cobbled squares. But as much as night was a time of the watchers, it was also the time of the unseen. Of those who slipped between watchful eyes, who took freedom in the inky darkness. A time of illicit transactions and clandestine meetings. Of thieves and whores and sinners all the like.
And what were they if not those?
Tybalt took in the way the night wrapped the world in a whirling array of moonlight and inky blackness as he walked carefully through the hidden back alleyways of Verona. An almost violent coming together of such disparate elements, but beautiful all the same. Not unlike his own plans for the night. He laughed softly to himself at the thought, only as loudly as he dared and so no more than a whisper, as he made his way to the spot they had agreed upon to meet. If he was not careful, Benvolio would mock him as a worse romantic poet than Romeo. Then how would he salvage his pride?
Pride be damned. If he was not careful, a million worse things could happen to Benvolio. Things that, coming upon their meeting place in the grove of trees on the far side of a less passed-by wall, he sought to push from his mind. He tried to purge all ideas of bloodshed and violence from his mind when he was with Benvolio. Forget all he had been taught of feuds and hate and the many arts one man might use to harm another. For just this time, he wanted to forget all the ways that Benvolio could get hurt. That he himself could also get hurt mattered significantly less.
He was greeted in the glade with sweet kisses and an evasive answer to the question of where the bottle of wine Benvolio held had come from.
It amazed him every time they were together how Benvolio went pliant in his arms. In daylight, he was always the picture of reserve and control. How many people, he had often wondered, knew how unguarded the usually careful Montague could be. Likely about as many as knew how the Prince of Cats was as loyal as a dog to that same man. And so, he wagered, none at all, save each other.
Before Benvolio, he’d never imagined he’d hear his name said like this. Spoken like a benediction. Whispered along with kisses pressed over his skin. The soft susurrations like a prayer and an accompaniment to the sounds being wrung from his own lips. Normally his name was said at a shout, more often than not with a tone of disapproval or even outright malice. Weighted with expectations from his family and hate from all others. But with Benvolio everything was different. He held no lofty expectations nor demanded any show of strength. He simply took each moment as it came and was grateful for it. And so Tybalt tried, in these small hours, to deserve him.
His cherub. His bright angel. A man who barely believe in God anymore but believed in humanity in spite of it all. They were hellfire and holy water. And it did not take a scholar to decipher which was which. They were not meant to mix without each other’s destruction. But oh if it wasn’t addicting all the same. For the few brief hours they could be together they washed each other clean of the sins of Verona. And if the world wanted to say that they were merely trading sin for sin, then in those brief moments they would gladly be damed to the world.
He’d defy God, law, and both their families for the sake of just a few more minutes of stolen time.