Archive of Our Own

Ros is at the end of her rope; nails digging into her temples and foot tapping against the desk leg as she stares down her assigned reading, about to blow a fuse when her phone buzzes against the page.

It’s propping the page open, lighting up with the text, and she has read the same line five times with blurry eyes without taking in a word of it. The glow feels like a saviour. She’d take anything over reading another thirty pages of needlessly long academic bullshit by yet another old white guy. At least, she thinks so until she reads who the message is from: Benvolio Montague.

He only has her number from the last time he had to come and pick up the drunken idiots he calls friends from outside her house, and she half-regrets giving it to him. Ros sighs, mentally argues Ben vs Homework, and decides that one sounds slightly less torturous than the other. Slightly. She replies to him.

What’s it to you, Montague?

By the end of the brief conversation, Ros is more confused by Ben than by her books.

Pushing away her textbook, she instead grabs her laptop and pulls up any information online about visa extensions. She’d known Ben wasn’t actually Romeo’s brother, everyone did: they were inseparable, the Montague boys, the three of them thick as thieves all the way through high school and managing to get on every one of her nerves during those years. They’d talk loudly in classes, cause chaos, and Romeo’s obsession with her in their junior year had been a nightmare. Simply put, she hated them; they seemed to delight in pissing her off. Given their family history, it had just been an accepted thing in their classes, and the war spread into their teenage years – but although they acted like brothers, it was a commonly known fact around the school that Ben was not a ‘real’ Montague.

It mattered little. Romeo treated him like family anyway.

Finding out that he was only fostered and Mr. Montague had not adopted Ben, even when his place in the country was threatened, was a surprise. She figured that Romeo must not know about it. Ros couldn’t imagine that he would sit by while Ben was in this kind of trouble, so easily solved by a piece of paper and a family name, and the only conclusion she could draw was that Ben had kept his troubles to himself. That she could understand, at least. Needing to solve your own problems and stand your own ground was a corner she had been backed into many times.

Something akin to sympathy prickled in her stomach as she glances over visa forms and information, although she does her best to push it down. A favour was just that – it seemed that with Juliet and Romeo’s recent romance, she wouldn’t be rid of the Montages for a while – and it could be useful for him to owe her a favour in that regard. Her vision swims as she takes it all in, minutes trickling into hours in the blink of an eye –

A knock on the door startles her. Jules’ head appears in the crack a moment later.

“You busy?”

Not knowing why, Ros quickly shuts down the tab she had open and slams her laptop closed. It felt like an invasion of Ben’s privacy to share this. Careful to hide her fluster, Ros tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, hoping Juliet hadn’t seen what was on her screen; turning to her cousin, Ros forces herself to smile and push it aside.

“Not at all.”

“Good,” Juliet grins, letting herself in. Throwing herself onto the bed opposite the desk Ros sat at, she tucks her legs up to her chin and her expression smoothes out into a pleading look. “So, Ros. About the party tonight-”

“The thing your dad is throwing for his work friends?”

Juliet rolls her eyes, “Yeah. His chance to show off the new conservatory and prove just how much money we have, more like –you’re coming right? I have to go, and you know that you love me too much to leave me to that torture alone.”

The uneasy feeling in Ros’ stomach multiplies. When they were kids, Mr. Capulet would parade her and Liv around at his parties, sure to mention loudly to anyone who would listen how good he was to have taken them in and how important family was to him. It made her feel like one of the expensive pieces of art hanging on the wall. For those hours, she was our precious Rose – a pretence dropped at the moment that the last guest left. But Ros struggled to say no to Juliet, she always had, so she rolls the wheels of her chair and drops her gaze.

“I have work to do, Jules.”

“You always have work to do! And you always get it done,” Juliet reasons. “That’s why you were top of our class in school, every year. You can have one night off.”

“I’m not a big fan of parties,” Ros tries, looking up to see her cousin sitting up now, watching her mournfully. It was the truth – during their senior year of his school, things had been different – she would go to parties with Escalus and things were good, even if the Montague boys did show up to crash most of the time. But since then . . . she put all of her energy into her degree; getting the grades she needed to one day get out of this town. Parties weren’t really her scene. “I’d just bring everyone down if I went, Jules. You’ll find a way to have fun without me, I’m sure.”

Juliet stands, walking over until she is standing behind Ros and spinning around her chair until Ros is faced with her own reflection in the mirror above her desk. Lounging against the back of the chair, face appearing behind Ros’ neck, Juliet wears her most pitiful and scheming face, eyes wide and expressive and lips pouting.

“Ros, please, I might have fun without you, but it would be more fun if you were there. You’re my cousin! I love you, and I worry about you, sitting up here all the time, always working . . . when was the last time you went out?” Pausing for effect, Juliet hugs her from behind, not even giving Ros a moment to think about the question before she continues. “I don’t remember! It’s our last year of college, who knows what will happen after? We should be making memories now, while we’re young . . .”

Ros narrows her eyes, starting to get suspicious. The last time Juliet had been so vocal about something, she had gotten secretly married the next day.

Juliet looks at them both in the mirror, “And besides, Livia wants you there, too.”

“Liv’s going?”

The words left Ros’ mouth sharp and louder than she expected, as she knew that her sister had hated the parties as much as she had when they were younger. Her surprise has the intended effect, and she sees the fleeting smirk that lit up Juliet’s face in victory. Her cousin stands straighter, looking away with a perfect pantomime of innocence, shrugging.

“I think so, she said that she was. Paris is going, after all . . .”

Of course her sister was going. Ever since she had met him at Mr. Capulet’s annual Christmas party, Livia had been chatting to Paris Lorde online and blushing at her phone during dinner. It was sweet, and worrying, and Ros feels her stomach drop with the realisation that now she had to go to the party – someone had to watch her sister’s back. If Mr. Capulet found out that Livia was flirting with the son of one of his wealthiest clients, she was not sure what he would do, but she suspected that he wouldn’t be happy about it; she had assumed from the way Jules’ dad spoke about Paris, that he had wanted Paris and Juliet to get together eventually. He would probably be angry if he discovered that Jules’ had eyes only for her Montague, and Livia had beaten her to the Paris punch.

Ros sighs aloud.

Behind her, Juliet grins and claps her hands together, immediately beginning to talk at a hundred miles an hour and rifle through Ros’ closet for something for her to wear, but it all just fades into background noise. Already feeling a headache coming on, Ros closes her eyes in defeat and rubs at them, wondering on a scale of one to the Montagues how badly tonight could go . . .

*

Benvolio Montague didn’t want to be at the party.

He’d come because who else was going to look after the assholes that were his family, and because he was offered free food and booze. Of all of the things he had expected with a plastered Mercutio and Romeo sneaking off to Juliet’s bedroom within the first five minutes – fights, arson, shouting, running from the Capulets – what he didn’t expect was to be cornered in the kitchen by a stony-faced Rosaline Capulet.

Underneath the faintly glowing fairy lights being used in way of lighting, her cheeks are flushed, with alcohol or anger he didn’t know for sure, but he strongly suspects the latter from the vicelike grip she has on his arm. All he had done was go for a beer. The next thing he knew, she was pulling him to the corner and pointing at him angrily, voice steel.

“Montague. What the hell are you doing here?”

And because he had spent most of his formative years dating Mercutio, after all, Ben responds by forcing a smug grin on his face and shrugging, “I came for the party.”

“You know damn well that you shouldn’t be here,” Rosaline hisses, stepping closer. Eyes darting around the crowded kitchen to check they were not overheard, she turns back to him with eyes flashing, “If you get caught, Jules’ dad will lose it. Nothing but trouble will come from you being here. Why would you bother?”

“Young love. Haven’t you heard it’s all the rage these days?”

If it were possible, she looks even more incensed at that. “Are you telling me that Juliet was behind this?”

When Ben doesn’t reply out of some strange loyalty that held his admittedly slipping tongue, Rosaline takes his lack of reply for an answer. Her face went very still. As she stepped away, arms falling to her sides, it was a scarier look than her rage – because underneath it, he could see the concern carved into the sharp lines of her cheekbones, shining in the depths of her eyes -

“Of course she did. My sister, too?” She asks, answering her own question. In reply, Ben nods sheepishly, caught off guard by . . . well, the caged storm that was the woman in front of him. Rosaline huffs. “Fucking Montagues.”

“Hey, I didn’t want to come,” he argues, because after all, it hadn’t been his idea. Hearing his own name on her lips as a curse was quite unsettling. Ben holds up his hands in peace, tilting his head to one side and offering, “Listen, I don’t want the hassle either. Help me find them and we’ll get them out before shit hits the fan, yeah?”

Although she looks entirely annoyed by it, Rosaline sends him a reluctant nod.

“Alright.”

It is at that moment that the shouting starts.

There is a crash from upstairs, audible even over the blaring music, followed by Mr. Capulet’s booming voice. Ben caught only a few words, ‘Montague’ ‘bastard’ and ‘police’ being among them. It was all he needed to hear. Feeling the alcohol fade abruptly from his system, the sharp edge of fear the words struck into him as good as dunking his head in one of the fountains outside in the garden, he felt his blood run cold at the same time all of the light drains from Rosaline’s eyes.

“Shit,” he murmurs quietly.

Her face mirrors his own as she turns her eyes on him. “Shit, indeed.”

In the chaotic five minutes that follows, Ben sees Romeo being chased by Mr. Capulet and a bunch of Juliet’s cousins as a crowd gathers to watch the show, during which time Rosaline Capulet takes a grip on his hand and drags him towards a staircase in all the confusion. When he tries to pull away, words of worry for his friends stammering out of panicked lips, she grimly shakes her head and tells him plainly that they would either make a run for it or get arrested, but that his best option was to hide in the house. Faces pass, the record skips, and the next thing Ben knows, he is being pushed into a closet.

If he were there right now, Mercutio would have made a joke about that. The thought sends a sliver of ice sliding down Ben’s spine.

Before he even has time to think no, no, no, no – the battle is fought and won.

Ending up unceremoniously falling on his ass, wood against his back and clothes surrounding him, legs tucked up to fit in, Benvolio shuts his eyes tightly and wills his mind away from there. Panic rises up, making his heart pound and a light sweat to break out on his forehead at the prospect of being shut in there. Every atom of him screams that anything would be better than being locked in. Even as the memories surfaced, of Mr. Montague’s voice and darkness and the confusion in Romeo’s voice when he asked Ben why he had bloody knuckles, his hammering heart and the racing of Ben’s pulse kept him glued to the present, in which he was about to be locked in Capulet’s closet and he couldn’t breathe, it was all too much and the air was too thin and he couldn’t do this –

When he opens his eyes a crack, still feeling the light rush of air from outside of his face, he finds the Capulet standing over him, hovering with her hand on the doorknob, ready to close it. But she hesistates. For a moment, she holds his gaze. Then something in her eyes softens.

Ben makes a small noise of confusion when Rosaline follows him into the closet, resolve burning in her eyes. He barely has time to blink before she is sliding into the confined space beside him, sitting with more grace than he did to his right before she pulls the door until only a crack of light remains, but not closing them in entirely. It’s just enough to illuminate her silhouette in the semi-darkness. Rosaline turns to him, light catching on her eyes as she moves and showing the worry lingering inside, before quickly moving a few of the items of clothing hanging between them, making more room.

Although his chest is tight and his insides are just warm enough to be tipsy, Ben instantly feels like he can breathe better with the new space.

“Thanks,” he says, sending her a rough nod. His voice is hoarse. “I’m not a fan of confined spaces.”

“It’s the best I can do for now. I’m afraid you’re stuck here until everything’s died down outside.”

The word stuck clogged his head and makes his thoughts foggy. Stuck was really just another way of saying trapped. Sitting in a coffin-like wooden box with a girl who clearly disliked him and a group of men outside looking for a Montague to take out their frustrations on, Ben certainly felt trapped. At his sides, a gap between him and the Capulet girl, his hands clench into fists.

When he sits for five minutes, taking shallow breaths until the world stops spinning, Rosaline doesn’t comment on it. She stares straight ahead at the crack of light, giving the impression that she does not notice his panic. It’s almost convincing. If it wasn’t for the way he could see the tension in the line of her shoulders, rolling off her in waves; she way she was pointedly not looking at him, he almost could have scraped by with his dignity intact. But the world couldn’t have that.

Ben is saved from having to explain himself by her phone buzzing. Rosaline turns her attention to it without the falseness of her focus before, glaring at the sudden bright light radiating off the screen before tapping out a reply. She tells him in a whisper.

“Your friends got away. Mercutio set off firecrackers, apparently, and Mr. Capulet is chasing Romeo, ‘though I doubt he’ll catch him.”

“Thank god,” Ben sighs quietly. Pressing his head against the wall behind him, he closes his eyes briefly, feeling the dread drain out of his bones. When he opens them again, Rosaline is watching him oddly again, so he deflects with a nod to her phone. “Anything else?”

Another wave of relief hits when she rolls her eyes and lets it go, moving on.

“My sister is defending you boys. Says that you at least make these parties fun with your annual attempts on Mr. Capulet’s grey hairs.”

A snicker forces its way out of his throat, as he almost chokes on his shock. He hadn’t thought about it in that way before. Ben supposed that it was true; crashing Capulet parties had provided vivid memories, good and bad, in the past few years. A wry grin works its way onto his lips.

“Tell her I said thanks.”

“I will.”

Shaking her head, there is a fond sort of exasperation on Ros’ face as she taps on her phone, causing Ben to wonder how much of the disdain she expresses for them is residual anger from their high school years. It was safe to say that it was only in the past few years that their relationship had been anything even close to amicable. Age had mellowed out a lot of the more immature nature in him and his friends, and since high school, Ben had seen her and the other Capulet’s a handful of times. They were not friends – never that – but she didn’t seem to hate him anymore.

She didn’t like him, either, but he would take casual indifference over the boiling hot looks of anger she had used to send them in class.

Trying to distract himself with her, Ben remembered that Romeo had once tried to write a poem for Rosaline, and paid a guy to recite it during lunch break – fair Rosaline, my beauty queen, your eyes are bright and peachy keen – it had been stopped there by her hurtling towards Romeo and landing one solid punch. She had broken his nose. If anything, Romeo’s infatuation had only gotten worse after that. Ben stifles a sharp bark of laughter. It was fair to say that Romeo has at least got better at rhyming over the years. He is still a hopeless romantic and chasing Capulet’s, but at least he hasn’t tried to rhyme Juliet with anything yet. It was such an absurd thought, the words ringing in his ears like it was just yesterday, that Ben barely manages to bite down the bubble of laughter that rose up in his chest; just about able to disguise it as a cough.

Rosaline was now giving him one of those looks again, like he was something she had stepped in, but it was worth it. Ben shrugs at the question in her eyes and asks a question of his own instead.

“Why did you help me?”

It seems to throw her off-guard. Looking away, she loops her arms around her legs, placing the half-empty bottle of vodka she had been carrying beside her. Ben picks it up, takes a swig, and waits for her to answer – it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go. As he settles more comfortably in the hiding place, twisting so that he is angled towards her instead of the closed doors, he can’t help but be curious about the answer.

“If they’d have caught you in here, it either would have ended in a fight or the cops getting called,” Rosaline shrugs in answer. It’s a fair assessment. “None of which is worth the trouble it would have caused. It’s better this way.”

“Awww,” he smiles back, hand over his heart, “you do care. And here I thought you hated me.”

Rosaline snorts, makes an ‘ugh’ noise, and bites her cheeks to keep from laughing. “I don’t,” she says firmly. “Care, or hate you. I’m like Switzerland. Completely neutral.”

And Ben has to laugh at that, slowly and silently, his shoulders shaking just enough that they brush against hers in the darkness. Figuring that he owes her something now, he plays with the bottle cap, flicking it between his fingers, and throws out casually.

“I’d understand if you did, though. Hate me. We were assholes in high school.”

“Yes, you were,” she agrees. Although she isn’t looking directly at him, lips pulling up into a wry sort of smile, Ben can see the way her eyes glaze over with memory or thought. When she turns that gaze on him, her eyes are clear of anything but the slightly hazy expression that came from drink. “But so is everyone.”

He didn’t know where his admission that she should hate him had come from, it leapt spontaneously, but I’m sorry was hidden in there somewhere. After all – the Capulet was saving his skin. At the very least, he wanted to make amends for the past. The words begged to be addressed and longed to be disagreed with, drenched with the quiet feeling that hatred was the mean to which everyone in his life returned to, sooner or later. But she releases him with a soft smile and candlelight eyes, and Ben can breathe again.

“Not you,” he replies easily. “You were always top of the class, smiles for anyone but us, spending your weekends helping sick little animals, probably . . .”

“Actually, it was an orphanage.”

“Of course it fuckin’ was,” Ben chuckles, shaking his head slightly, awe carved into the way he was looking at her. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re sickening, Capulet? Too good to be real. Sweeter than saccharin.”

“And that’s enough of that,” she says, but there is a breathy sort of laughter in her tone. If he didn’t know better and trusted the light, Ben would swear that she flushed at the compliment. “And I thought Romeo was the sap of your family. Don’t go making me admit I was wrong about something.”

Despite himself, and the unexpected company, and the walls pressing in on his beating heart, Ben has the sudden inexplicable urge to smile.

Rosaline continues, “Although I still don’t understand why you came in the first place.”

He holds up his hands at the dry sarcasm in her tone, “Not my fault! You know what Romeo’s like once he decides that he’s in love, he won’t stop for anything. As soon as Juliet asked him to come-”

“He was halfway here already,” she finishes for him, rolling her eyes. “Montagues.”

It’s the third time she had used his name as an insult, and Benvolio snorts, wondering if she knew that they used to do the same. Back in highschool, the most common thing to overhear was Romeo sighing ‘Capulets’ followed by him and Merc saying it in an entirely different tone. The world had changed without him even noticing. Feeling his lip twitch up nostalgically, Ben holds out the vodka bottle between them, shaking it slightly as way of apology and truce, all at once.

Rosaline shoots him a ‘not likely’ look in reply.

“Come on,” Ben says, careful to keep his voice low. “Have a drink, Rosaline. We both need one.”

After a pause, during which Rosaline glances from the bottle to him, eyes squinting when they came to rest on his face, searching for some deceit, she reaches out and takes the bottle. His fingers brush against hers as she does. As he shifts, Ben hopes that the tingling in his fingers hasn’t spread to his face, rubbing a hand through his hair to distract himself while she unscrews the bottle cap. Rosaline takes a much larger gulp than he expects, barely wincing as she passes it back, before saying shortly.

“Ros.”

“Hmnnnn?” Ben hums in confusion, his lips around the bottle. Without Romeo and Mercutio around to look out for, he has no worries whatsoever about drinking himself into a nice warm oblivion. And if the Capulet was the only drinking partner available . . . well, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

“Call me Ros. Nobody calls me Rosaline anymore.”

“Oh,” Ben says softly. Then, with a nod, “Okay. Call me Ben, too.”

A companionable sort of quiet was agreed upon between them, sitting in the dark. They passed the bottle between them, and Ros found a bag of Doritos somewhere, which was also swapped. Music thudded through the floor beneath him, pounding against the walls of her closet, some old song he half-remembered, and Ben found himself humming along half-heartedly.

“What are you doing?”

She was looking at him again, and Ben shrugs. “Filling the silence. It helps. Unless you’d care to talk to me.”

He says it as a joke, assuming that an evening sitting in a closet with him would only add kindling to any ill-will Ros feels towards him, but she winces a little at the words. Ros was still sitting curled up, hands resting on top of her knees when they weren’t wrapped around the bottle, but shifts so that she is facing him now.

“Okay,” she says, only a hint of apprehension in her voice. “Since we’re gonna be here a while. I was looking up stuff for your visa today.”

Ben feels his face fall. He’d almost forgotten about that. “Ah.”

“And you have options, either extending your application or-”

“Listen, Ros,” he cuts in, sending her an apologetic glance. “I’m grateful for you helpin’, really fucking am, but – not right now, okay? I can’t even fucking think about that right now. It’s too much.”

And Ros just gives him this look, like he’s a windowpane, like she can see right through him – before she giving him a small incline of her head. Ben breathes a sigh of relief. It’s a reprieve for tonight: tomorrow, he may have to face the future hurtling towards him and the stack of problems quickly forming a wall around him, but for now there is nothing between him and Ros, and he can put it all aside. Ben is so busy trying not to be crushed by that weight that he doesn’t notice her moving until he feels her –

Ros’ hand is warm as she slides her palm into his much larger one, giving it a brief but firm squeeze. Lost until that moment, Ben’s head snaps up to find her still looking at him, but her eyes have softened from the scrutiny of before, an understanding in them now as she holds the connection for the space of a few heartbeats. It both sends jolts of electricity through him, feeling everything was more than before, to the way the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up to the blood rushing through him; but it also calms him, anchoring him in a way he had never felt outside of Romeo and Mercutio. Ben is both galvanised and centred, surged awake and yet calm; the panic fading to a distant discomfort, far away, draining out of him in waves as he stares back at her, only able to blink dumbly in shock at the tenderness of her actions. She is a kindness he does not deserve, he knows – but just as soon as it had begun, the moment was over as Ros’ lip twitched up on one side, and she lets go of his hand.

The half-smile on her face isn’t pity, that he couldn’t take – but there’s something more there. It’s understanding in a way most people didn’t, where usually he was met with confusion and a distance, Ros is right there in front of him and he can see the same fractures in her that he can feel underneath his own skin. There’s a story in her, one he doesn’t know; one he guesses few do – but suddenly, he wants to know more about her. He wants to know her better.

But Ros smiles, and speaks before he gets the chance. “It will be alright, you know.”

“What?”

“Everything.”

It’s such an absurd notion that he laughs, although there is a bitterness inside of it that he can’t quite shake as his head falls back against the wall. Ben runs a hand through his hair, using it as an excuse to drop her gaze and hope that she doesn’t see the deep dark hollow inside of him that hears the words and echoes them back mockingly: everything will be alright. Yeah, right. It doesn’t make sense in his philosophy of ‘expect the worst, be surprised’.

“I mean it!” Ros argues, whispering loudly back to him. Ben keeps chuckling darkly, hoping that she doesn’t notice his knuckles cracking as he clenches and unclenches the hand at his side, as if the motion could wring out the frustration he feels. “I know, okay? I know what it’s like to feel like the world must be against you. That for so many things to go wrong you must’ve pissed someone off on a cosmic level, or that you have no choice, no . . . other option. Nowhere else to go.” There’s finality to those words as her eyes unfocus, the words strung together loosely, earnestly, said as she thinks them. By the time she pauses, her jaw is locked as tightly as his coiled fist. After a pause during which her mouth makes a hard, angry line, Ros blinks and turns back to him, grim features lightening. “I’ve been there. I am there. Do you wanna know what I do?”

Feigning nonchalance, Ben rolls his eyes dramatically. “Pray tell, Capulet.”

Ros ignores his rudeness, leaning forwards slightly as determination sets her every movement on fire, “I remind myself why I have to keep trying.”

“And why’s that?”

“For my sister,” she says, “the same reason you do. For them.”

His confusion must have shown on his face, because Ros smirks and shrugs, adding. “Come on, it’s obvious how much you love them. Romeo and Mercutio. Just look at the way you reacted tonight – you didn’t even think about running yourself, you were so busy trying to chase after them.”

Ben can’t help but return the look, turning it back to her with a wry smile. “And here you are, risking getting caught in a closet with a Montague because Juliet would get into trouble if I were caught here.”

Ros’ mouth hangs open, moving with words she doesn’t quite say as she stares back, thrown. In the cracked light, her expression is open and honest, and so close he can’t help but notice the way she swallows hard, her throat rising and falling. In honesty in a world like the one they lived in, there was beauty. Until tonight he had never understood the allure of Capulet’s. Juliet he couldn’t speak for – but Ros was a walking contradiction of honesty and caution; anger and laughter; and he felt his curiosity grow with each second.

Eventually, her face changes as she decides how to react. As it seems was her nature, Ros gives a small smile and jokes. “Oh yeah, you’re right. I redact my ‘everything will be alright’ statement – if Mr. Capulet catches you in here, everything will very much be not alright and you’re screwed. Sorry.”

It’s the pragmatic, deflective sort of humour he wears like armour, and Ben can’t help but laugh along. His eyes never quite leave her, as he admits with an exasperated smile.

“Quite a pair we make, Capulet.”

Ros tilts her head to one side, snorting derisively. “A pair of idiots, maybe.”

“Nah,” Ben says, shaking his head. In the last five minutes, he has become increasingly aware of how close they were sitting to each other, his knee brushing against hers every time he turned to speak with her. “Me, maybe, but not you. Caring isn’t a bad thing. Not for the right people.”

The softness is back in her eyes again as she looks back at him, and although it is for someone else, it makes his hard heart melt a bit.

“You’re right. It seems not all Montagues are idiots.”

Ben sniggers. “Not all Montagues.”

“And you ruined it!” Ros says, throwing her hands up, but there are dimples dancing on her cheeks from the smile she was struggling to keep down. “It was a great – oh, thirty seconds, while it lasted.”

“At least nobody is getting married tonight.”

She laughs. It’s not a particularly strong laugh, or one made to break down walls and shatter glass; it does not stop his heart or change the world, but – she laughs, and it’s a real laugh, reaching her eyes as she stifled it with a hand to stop them from being discovered, and it warms his blood as well as anything in the bottle. Rosaline Capulet has a nice laugh, he decides.

It’s the last thing he remembers before falling asleep.

*

Ros shows up at the coffee shop at the waterfront. She’s not even really sure why she’s there, craning her head as she walks through the door and looking for a Montague of all people. There’s a first time for everything, she supposes.

It’s busy in there, because everywhere close to the beach is busy at the start of the summer especially on a day where the sun is so fierce that it seemed to be trying to boil the sea, and she breathes a sigh of relief at the blast of air conditioning on the back of her neck. All around, people talk and laugh, as music plays through a speaker crackling with static; chairs scrape back, spoons tap on the edge of cups – movement flurries from all sides, a chaos of bodies and sounds, yet somehow she spots him right away. As if by magic, Ben looks up as she walked in, eyes meeting hers, and on a day like today the deep pools of his gaze are like a mercy.

He’s leaning against the edge of the counter, wearing skinny jeans and a stupid blue beanie hat despite the fact it’s over a hundred degrees outside and she almost laughs at that as she heads towards him, but to her surprise – his lips curve into a smile, too.

“Montague,” she greets him simply, “who the fuck wears a hat on a day like this?”

And now Ben really laughs, throwing his head back to chuckle. Those still pools are hidden by the scrunching of his eyes as he does so, crinkling at the edges unashamedly, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as he pushes away from the counter and takes a step towards her, blinking in the sunlight. By the time he regards her again, and she notices the way he looks her up and down, eyes skimming over her body, his eyes are steady but bright.

“It’s good to see you too, Capulet.”

She rolls her eyes and orders an iced green tea, and he has a double chocolate chip iced frappucino with a mountain of whipped cream on the top, grinning at her as he takes his first loud slurp. And oh, she hates him.

Ros hides a smile.

Ben jerks his head towards the door. “Want to sit outside?”

Although the air conditioning is blissful, scattering pin-pricks of goose-bumps down her arms and filling her lungs like glacier air, like drinking cold water after chewing gum, she nods. Ros tells herself that she agrees because it’s too nice a day to spend inside and not because of the way his eyes keep darting to the people around them, fingers drumming manically against the countertop. Benvolio has something on his mind – a mind probably baked to death under that hat - but everything about how he is standing screams that he needs to get away.

Ros recalls the way he reacted to her closet, the panic in his eyes and the tremors in his long fingers as they passed the rapidly emptying bottle between them, and thinks she understands why he wants to go outside. With the oppressive heat and the pure amount of people crammed in there, the coffee shop gave the vague feeling of being trapped inside a fishbowl – too enclosed, not enough air, just crowed enough for her to be uncomfortable, let alone him - so when he leaves, she follows.

It’s her idea to sit by the waterfront, where at least the waves bring a breeze and there’s nothing but sky in sight. She tells Ben only the first reason. Ros has her demons, the things that make her shut herself off and the reason her fingernails are bitten down to the skin, red at the beds, and she knows how she would feel if somebody poked at them. So she simply lets it slide.

Once he is outside, the clench of Ben’s jaw loosens.

“I always liked it. The ocean, I mean,” he says as they sit on a bench, eyes locked onto the waves crashing in front of them. Ros watches the change come over his entire being. The nervous energy fades; the ticks and tapping fingers still, and his eyes are almost calm. “It was one of the only good things about being here. Wanted to learn to surf, when I was a kid, before I found out I was right shit at it. But I always liked the ocean. How it seemed not to end. Felt like an escape, when we were kids.”

Ros blinks salt from her eyes, murmuring quietly. “I know what you mean.”

When Ben’s head snaps towards her, the movement catches on the edges of her vision, as she feels his gaze stay on her for a long moment in which she holds her breath. She couldn’t see his face; didn’t want to break the quiet by looking at him, but she could feel the way his eyes linger on her at those words, searching. Her quiet admission seems like an overstep, until he coughs and speaks softly.

“Yeah,” Ben says, voice hoarse and heavy with feeling. “Reckon you do. And I’m sorry that’s true.”

Ros knew they were approaching the territory bordering on feeling, so laughs vaguely, remembering when they were in high school instead: “Didn’t you boys steal a boat from the marina once?”

“Christ, I’d almost forgotten about that.” Ben jumps at the change in her tone, but he begins laughing anyways. It feels safe enough for Ros to incline her head towards him; but it was a mistake – his shoulders are shaking and he has the same crinkles in the corners of his eyes, pulling the hat from his head and running a hand through his hair. With the proximity of the bench, he was sitting close to her, their knees touching as he twists to face her and leaning forwards as he laughs. Underneath his fingertips, Ben’s hair caught in the sun and ends up a mess. “Yeah, we did. It was a shitty little thing, had an engine that flooded halfway out of the marina and I ended up rowing like hades when the police showed up – we made it almost six miles down the coast before they caught us. All we wanted to do was see if there was anything on the Island.”

Said ‘Island’ is barely that: a shoddy mud-patch that stubbornly refused to be swallowed up by the sea, scattered with a few grisly and knarled looking trees and the only thing on the Verona horizon. It didn’t even have a name. Legally, nobody could build on it, nor could they get rid of it. It existed in spite of the town. The children of the city told ghost stories about the Island, and the seniors put a mascot on it as a graduation joke every year – in their case, the Montagues had managed to get to the Island a second time and light a twenty foot flaming elegy of Mr. Capulet. Ros had found it amusing privately. Jules’ dad had not. Criminal charges would have been brought against the trio if it hadn’t have been for the equally scary prospect of pissing off Mr. Montague, and the time-tested phrase ‘boys will be boys’.

Ros had never been there. But, although it was slightly out of view of their chosen bench, the Island remained resistant against tide and capitalism.

“I’ve never been,” she admits, hearing the wistful sound of her own voice. Biting her lip, she glances back at him teasingly, “So, did you find any ghosts?”

Ben shakes his head mournfully, “We never did make it to the Island, in the end. Saw blue lights before we even made it out of the marina and ran instead. It wasn’t ‘til graduation that we even got close, but I was too cut to remember it, an’ we had to leg it as soon as the statue was on fire before anyone got out there and caught us.”

“You did get caught, though.”

“Only because Romeo signed the bloody thing! Idiot,” Ben shakes his head as he chuckles lowly, still teasing his hair with his fingers. Almost by accident, he had stayed close to her while telling his story, like it was for her alone; when he laughs, his breath hits her face. It’s incredibly distracting. “Seems a shame now that we didn’t stay to watch it burn. Never did find out if there was anything out there.”

His gaze finally turns away from her, as he leans forward even closer, craning his head to try and catch a glimpse of the Island behind her shoulder. It was hidden by the bend of the beach. Ben’s hand rests on the back of the bench, behind her, and he moves forward to try and see – telling herself that it was the heat causing her to flush, Rosaline clears her throat loudly.

Moving away, Ben appeared genuinely apologetic, an almost guilty look filling his eyes, and she believes that he had simply been too lost in thought to realize he was imposing on her personal space.

“Sorry, Ros.”

Maybe it was the wind picking up his voice, or the insanity that was them sitting together like old friends, or the heat, or any number of possibilities and variables pressing down on the fine grain of sand that was that moment, but Ros was struck with a sudden notion.

“Let’s go,” she says, quickly turning her attention on him. Ben has red in his cheeks and hair still tussled, eyes in his lap abashedly until she speaks, but his head shoots up at her words. Ros rolls on, caught up in the moment and knowing it was madness – but when was the last time she did anything truly mad? She was due a moment of unadulterated freedom. “Right now. I’ve never been and yours didn’t count, and it’s like a rite of passage around here to go to the Island. Let’s get a boat and go.”

Ben’s face is blank with shock, but he gives an incredulous little half-laugh that splits his chapped lips. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not. I want to go.”

She stands decisively. It seems like a good idea, a fuck-you to the world and her last name and a way to blow off steam at the start of summer; to shake off exams and Mr. Capulet and the weight that had settled between her ribs at some point during their teenage years and never quite left. Maybe it would even work – they would go, and that one moment of teenage rebellion, late as it was now they were twenty three, would be the thing that cast off the invisible chains tying her to this place.

Maybe this was what she needed to do to finally feel free.

“I’m going,” Ros announces, glancing down at the stunned Montague. “You can come or you can stay here, but I’m hiring a boat and going to the Island.”

With that, she turned on heel and began marching down the beach. After a heartbeat or two, Ben’s footfalls pounded after her, and a heat appeared at her side as he twists to look her in the eye, his longer legs easily keeping pace with her power march.

“But it’s illegal! They banned people from the Island after all the trouble kids have caused over the years-” When Ros snorts at that, he rolls his eyes and amended. “Okay, the trouble we caused. But my point still stands: nobody is allowed on there anymore.”

“Which is why they call it breaking the rules, Montague. Surely you’re familiar with that?”

She quirks an eyebrow, feeling high, almost skipping down the baking pavement. Ben makes a noise of exasperation.

“Yes, but I never expected it would be you who would be breaking the rules with me! You know those stories everyone tells about us and I get blamed for?” His eyes flick to her, steady in comparison to her own giddy senses, and she nods in return, not trusting her voice not to crack under a gaze like that. Ben’s face broke into an irritated sort of grin. “Eight times out of ten, it was Mercutio’s idea and he just managed to run away in time. God-damned track team bastard.”

Ros laughs out loud, shaking her head slightly. It sounded about right. They were almost at the bend now; the Island would be in sight in a minute or two. Ben seems to sense the time pressure at the same time she notices the distance, skipping a step ahead of her and planting his feet in the path. Blocking the way, he holds out his hands to stop her.

“Listen! Point is: Mercutio gets away with things because he’s fast, and Romeo gets away with shit because he’s Montague’s son. We’re neither of these things. This – this is crazy, Ros, we’re going to get arrested.”

“Not if we’re careful,” she argues, pausing in front of him. Ben is effectively blocked her way, taller than her by far with this democratic look on his face that only made her want to do it more. Ros steps towards him but doesn’t try to pass, just getting into his space and tilting her head slightly, “Come on, you know you want to do it as much as I do. And we’ll only get in trouble if we get caught - which we won’t, because unlike you Montague boys I don’t go crashing headfirst into things. We’re going to very calmly hire a row boat like any other young couple out on a day like this and make like we’re heading down the coast. We’ll loop around and approach the Island from behind.”

She was close enough to hear the mechanisms ticking in his head, to see the twitch in his jaw where he either wanted to smile or kiss her, and Ros knew that she had won, side stepping him with a grin.

“Keep up, Montague.”

Ben follows her. They smile as they hire a rowboat and when she tucks her arm around his waist, Ben wraps his around her shoulders and gives the manager of the marina a wide, false smile. Gushing about the day and celebrating summer in what Ros called her ‘Juliet voice’ – romantic and dreamy – she swindled the keys and an hour long hire for twenty bucks. Nobody suspected a thing as the pair took off from the unstable, jittery wooden dock.

“Good acting back there,” Ben gripes from his position in the middle of the boat, rowing. He sends her a smug smile, “Almost believed you were in love with me.”

From her position at the head of the boat, angling to make an arc towards the Island with the rudder and quietly enjoying the show of his muscles rippling under his skin, because it was free to look and Ben wasn’t the man she had thought him to be, Ros smirks back at him.

“Keep dreaming.”

It is late afternoon by the time they get to the Island.

The wooden boat hits mud and Ros jumps into the water to pull them further ashore – after all, she was the one being sensible and wearing shorts in the sun, unlike Ben’s skinny jeans, which would only get soaked by the waves. As she drags them a foot or two onto the sand, she glances up to notice him watching her – only to look away at being caught. Sweat gleamed against his skin from the heat and getting them there, but she doubted that the flush on his face had to do with either of those things. As she turns away, Ros suppresses an amused smile and busies herself looping the moor line over a rock until she has control over her expression – but Ben is still blushing when she turns back to him.

Graciously, Ros offers him a hand to dismount, bowing slightly with a grin and calling him ‘Lord Montague’. Ben flips her off and begins stomping up the beach. She cackles as she follows him from the surf, running a few steps to catch up, and tells herself that her gait and the uneven slope is the reason that her hip bounces against his side as she reaches him.

As it turns out, there’s nothing much on the Island but mud and rocks. There isn’t even sand. It was ugly, in all honesty; a scar in the sea. This only served to make it better in Ros’ mind, enjoying the spiteful monument and feeling that her feet striking the mud was making tracks unfound before. It isn’t true, but this moment was hers and hers alone – almost. Ben walks beside her as they make their way to the top of the hill that constitutes the Island, until at last Verona came into view on the other side. There was sea and sand and buildings stretching as far as the eye could see - but Ros found that she much preferred the view right here.

Ros turns her head to glance over to Ben, whose eyes have taken on a sad glint while looking at the city. She asks, softly.

“You don’t think of it as home, do you?”

“No,” he replies after a long pause. Ben shakes his head, finally looking over at her. In his eyes, she saw herself reflected perfectly. Names be damned, history scratched out: kindred was the only word to describe them right then. “It’s just a place where I’ve lived. It’s where my family is, and sometimes I love it, but it isn’t home. It’s not for you, either.”

He doesn’t phrase it as a question; he knows.

“Where is home for you, then?”

“Haven’t found it yet.”

There’s a quiet moment broken only by the faint sound of the water lapping against the shores in which she doesn’t think he is going to say anything more than that. It was enough as it was. He was. Ros felt herself seeing the Montague with new eyes – seeing Ben as he is, not as he was or what his name meant he should be. Something twists in her guts.

Then, amazingly, he speaks again. “Shall we?”

Shaken from her thoughts, Ros blinks hard and follows his hand as he points to the biggest tree on the Island.

From where they stand, the tree seems to be a different colour than the other trees around it. It’s shades lighter and stands out as a result. Amid the brown and dead-looking green of the trees around it, this one appears like a ray of sunlight filtering through a forest, bright and strange; it’s not until they get closer that she see’s that it looks so different because its trunk has been carved over nearly every inch with names. Simply put: it’s beautiful.

She gasps, reaching out a hand to touch it.

“Wow.”

Ros walks in a circle around the tree, reading names. Most of the carvings look years-old and weather-worn by the elements, but others were freshly carved, lighter and stark against the faded names. There’s a few she recognises – when she sees her parent’s names, Ros stops dead, having to swallow the lump in her throat before she moves on. It’s a different marker for the place they used to be than the graveside she usually visits, but leaves her feeling their absence acutely all the same. It takes a lot to keep moving after that.

By the time she gets back to Ben on the other side of the trunk, the unshed tears in her eyes have been blinked away, and are erased entirely by the brightness of the smile on his lips. Ben is laughing at something, shaking his head fondly.

“Look,” he says, pointing. “God knows when they found the time to do it.”

She turns to where he is pointing and joins him in laughing at the sight of their friend’s names. The carvings look fresh: Romeo + Juliet, carved inside a larger heart towards the top of the tree, and she vaguely wonders how they managed to sneak away to here. Considering her cousin’s romance had been going on for a whole two months, it must not have been too long ago.

Ros comments dryly. “Somehow, I’m not surprised at all.”

“Me neither.”

Ben shares a long-suffering look with her. No matter what else he was, they had this in common – they both loved their cousins, as dearly as siblings and for every other family member that they no longer had. They both loved their family, small as it was, and put up with a lot of shit as a result. Family made them both who they were. An understanding passes in Ben’s eyes as he looks at her. It is a genuine moment, perhaps the first, in a string of awkward conversations that edged on heartfelt. Something changed, standing there on the Island.

It was the start of something, although she doesn’t know what.

She calls it friendship for lack of a better name.

“So,” Ben says, coughing to break the tension and gesturing towards the tree. “Do you wanna?”

It’s a tradition, and that’s what she came here to do, so Ros nods. She is looking around for a sharp enough stone to leave an impression in the bark when Ben clears his throat pointedly, reaching into his bag and bringing out – a math compass.

Despite herself, she chuckles at him. “I thought you were going to pull out a knife.”

“I don’t believe in carrying weapons,” Ben replies seriously, with a shrug that makes his words sound more casual. As she sets to work hacking at the bark, he leans with one shoulder against the trunk, watching her. “All that stuff about protection and the constitution is bullshit. Nobody carries a weapon looking for peace. And nobody carries a knife not intending to cause harm.”

“Well said,” she grants. “Not everyone in your family would agree with that statement.”

“Nor everybody in yours.”

It’s not a lie. Relenting, Ros finishes carving her name in the tree and steps back. She hands out the compass to him. “You’re right. They’re both as bad as each other, our families . . . but you’re not, Ben. I was wrong about you at least.”

Ben takes the compass, lip twitching up, “Rosaline Capulet saying I was right about something? I feel like I should document this moment.”

“Ass,” she laughs as he begins to put the compass away. “I won’t be saying it again, don’t worry. What are you doing?”

A deer in the headlights, Ben pauses and drops his gaze, hand halfway back to his backpack.

“I, er, I’m not really bothered about . . .” he starts, waving a vague hand in the direction of the trees. There’s a bashful quality about the way he shrugs. “Seems a little too permanent to me. Risky considering we’re not even supposed to be here. And it doesn’t mean anything, not to me.”

Ros watches him carefully. Eventually, she takes one step closer and speaks.

“Ben. You’re really telling me that you rowed all this way to not put your name on the stupid tree?”

He slowly lifts his gaze to hers, “It’s not a big deal.”

“Yes it is! It’s tradition, it’s what we were supposed to do when we were seniors and never got the chance to, it’s why we came here in the first place-”

“It’s why you came here,” he points out. “I was just following you.”

Quick to push down the strange feeling that makes her stomach drop, Ros grabs his wrist where he holds the compass and lifts it to the tree, beside her own name.

“Come on, Montague. Live a little. Maybe the end of all this shit starts with deciding on your own name.”

By the time they make it back to the boat, there are two new names on the tree. Until the next class graduates, they will be the brightest marks on the trunk. Ros and Ben. No last names. Together – who’d have thought that?

In the dappled sunlight, it’s like a work of art.

At the boat, Ben jumps in first as Ros pushes them away again – when she trips as the boat lurches out, he catches her hand and pulls her in. Standing on the rocking waves, her hands in his, Ros looks up to find his face close to hers, but Ben isn’t pulling away. He stares back, keeping their hands together, and turns it into a handshake.

“I know that you said you didn’t hate me. But I want more than for you to just not hate me – this thing between our families - it’s gone on for so long now that nobody can even remember why. So. Truce?”

Ros grips his hand tighter and corrects with a smile.

“Friends.”

*

Ben realises that proposing by text, platonically as he meant it, may have pissed Ros off.

This series of events finds him at the Capulet mansion after she blocked his number. He goes in spite of his friends teasing him, not because of them. Over and over, he tells them, tells himself, that he does not like Rosaline Capulet. Not in that way.

But she said friends and that was more than just a word, so he tries to make amends.

Going to her house is impulsive and reckless and something that Mercutio would do, but he goes anyway, scaling their walls and hiding in the bushes until he see’s Mr. Capulet leave for work. He’s not suicidal, after all. Once the big danger is passed, he hopes that only the girls were in as he creeps across the vast expanse of lawn, trying to remember which window is Ros’. However, his memories from the party are too vague to place it, so he settles for stage-whispering through the letterbox.

“Ros? You home?”

When he gets no answer, Ben swallows his pride and sanity and begins ringing the bell and shouting on the porch.

“Come on, Ros. I’m sorry! I was an ass and it was a joke - unless you’re down - but I was tactless! Ros? I was a real Montague about this one. You’d laugh at that . . . if you’re here. Ros? Ros? I’m sorry!”

In the end, he shouts for almost twenty minutes before Paris pissing Lorde of all people emerges from the house with a frown, telling him to leave. Ben backs away down the steps, but doesn’t run away.

“I’m here to speak to Rosaline. It’s important.”

“You need to leave,” Paris replies. “I wasn’t asking.”

And Ben has had just enough stick from just enough of Montague’s new rich friends that he puffs his chest up at that and stands his ground. “No.”

“No?”

“Yep. Well, I mean no, I’m not leaving until I’ve talked to Ros.”

All it does is remind Ben why he doesn’t pick fights, as he fumbles his words and feels a flush creep up his neck. Glancing over Paris’ shoulders, he searches for any sign of her – but the doorway remains empty. The house is as unyielding and cold as the shoulder she is apparently giving him. Ben is so distracted looking for her that he doesn’t realise that Paris has gotten close until a hand grips his arm.

“You’re leaving-”

“Get off me!” Ben shouts, breaking the grip and pushing Paris away. He really doesn’t like being touched without permission. Quickly, he turns back towards the house. “Ros! Come on, Ros, please-”

In the end, he is chased away from the Capulet’s by a moderately pissed off Livia Capulet wielding a lighter and an aerosol can.

He’s a brave man, but that is where he draws the line. Firmly. With a wall built around it and sentries every ten feet. Capulet’s were dangerous in more ways than one, and he did not doubt for a second that his ass would have been flambéed if he had stayed a second longer.

Naturally, Ros shouts at him when she does talk to him again. It’s just his luck that the conversation ends with her agreeing to marry him – but at the cost of his car.

Confused and with a strange prickling of fear and with a head full of her words, Ben Montague fell into an uneasy sleep, and dreams of her.

*

When the wailing starts outside, Ros has been staring at her homework for hours and is just about ready to jump out of a window. She is so failing tortes. Then Romeo fucking Montague shows up at the house blind drunk and reciting fucking poetry and she’s going to kill him –

At least he’s not shouting it at her, this time.

Juliet seems quite charmed, leaning out of her balcony to listen as Romeo sways on their lawn, talking about her hair in the moonlight and something about the summer. After listening for a minute, Ros blocks him out, miming that she felt sick to Mercutio, who was standing beside his friend with his phone out, recording. Although he was just as drunk, Mercutio laughs and throws her a wink in reply.

Thinking that being sort-of engaged made an ally of Ben to her, she texts him to fetch his boys. In his reply, he sounds just as exasperated as she feels, so instead of dragging herself back to her desk to bang her head against it, Ros goes to wait for him at the gate. In the background, Romeo’s voice carried on shouting piss-poor poetry.

By the time Ben arrives in his car, she is stifling laughter and feels better for the distraction. Maybe these Montague boys weren’t so bad, after all.

“It’s okay,” she tells Ben, standing as he pulls up and hurtles out of the car, looking flustered. The concern in his eyes is one she recognises. Ros holds out a placating hand, explaining, “Nobody is home right now but us, they won’t get into any trouble. Unless the gardener snitches. But I doubt she will, since she’s been laughing at Romeo’s poetry for the past half-hour.”

Giving him a smile, she tries to calm him as he gets closer – Ben pauses only when he reaches the gate and sees his friends are okay, although he does close his eyes at their current state, giving a tired little sigh. Ros walks up next to him, patting him twice on the shoulder sympathetically. It wasn’t even a patronising act – it was solidarity; it was yeah, I get you, our friends are the worst.

Ben slumps against the metal, finally gracing her with a closed lipped, exhausted smile. Next to the dazzling sunlight and his brighter grin the other day, it felt like an eclipse to see him in this way.

“Thank you for calling me.”

There is sincerity in his voice that almost stops her heart; blinking hard, Ros forces her head down from his with a nod. “What else are friends for?”

“I’ll have them out of your hair in no time,” he promises, eyes flicking with worry towards the house. “Did it disturb you much? I’m sorry, I should have kept a better eye on them.”

“You’re not their dad, Ben. It’s not your job to watch them.”

“Yeah, it is.” Ben shrugs and gives her another dim smile. “I’m not good for much else, really. Except rowing, perhaps.”

A more genuine smile catches on the words, and she grins back, thinking of the other day. It had been the best one she could remember in a long while. Already in her memory, those hours sneaking out to the Island and screaming I WAS HERE into the world were sun-soaked and rose-tinted, a memory to be saved away for a darker day. It was a memory that sung of hope.

She wants to tell him that he’s good for a lot more than that, but the words die on her tongue. It isn’t the right time, not when she is still so unsure where they stand, and who he is. Ros thinks that she is starting to know Ben better now, down to the names kept inside his beating heart, but some things about him remain a mystery.

“There’s no hurry,” Ros tells him instead, “Why don’t you stay a while?”

An olive branch may have been more poetic, but it had the same effect. Together, they make their way up towards the house, as the sound of their idiot friends grew louder. Romeo was now shouting about the sound of Juliet’s voice, staggering on his feet; as they get closer, Ben began to smile more, dimples lining his cheeks. It was hard to look away from him.

“BEEEEEEEN!”

Mercutio spots them first, running about four steps across the grass before overbalancing and falling over. He skids the rest of the way across the damp grass until he lies at their feet, upside down but grinning at them dazzlingly.

“Hey, Merc,” Ben replies, and that smile, the rare one that reached his eyes, it could have made it rain in an endless drought. “You guys have no self-preservation, do you?”

“Absolutely none.”

Ben laughs and offers his friend a hand. Unsteady on his feet, Merc sways and looks to Ros, sending her a massive grin and a suggestive eyebrowed look, “Ah! The future Mrs. Montague! What a hot couple you two make, if ya know what I mean.”

Immediately, Ros rolls her eyes at him and reaches out a finger. It was all it took. Prodding him on the collarbone, she pushes him back and forth until Mercutio was rocking on the balls of his feet, all the while smiling as she disorientated him and Merc smugly looked between them. After a minute of this, Ros simply stepped back.

Mercutio falls over the second she steps away. Beside her, Ben snorts loudly with laughter.

“The next time you think of making a smug comment, remember this,” Ros leans over him, “and don’t.”

Mercutio is blinking up at her as if he couldn’t work out how the ground had gotten so close, eyes wide, stunned into silence for a whole thirty seconds, which was an accomplishment in itself. The grin returns then, and he lets out a low whistle.

“Wow,” he grins, features awestruck as he dazedly stares at her. “You are something else.”

“That she is,” Ben agrees softly, his whisper just loud enough that Ros hears it. Before she can ask what he had meant, he’s lifting Mercutio to his feet again and turning his disdainful eyes towards Romeo. “And that just leaves idiot number 2.”

Ros shrugs, admitting honestly. “I’m just relieved that it isn’t directed towards me this time.”

It’s meant to be a joke, but Ben’s jaw clenches at her words. He speeds up his steps, dragging Mercutio along with him, leaving her struggling to keep pace. Twisting his body away from her as they walk, Ben trudges up towards the source of the noise and grabs Romeo by the ear while keeping a hold of Merucutio by the sleeve. All this did was begin a chorus of shouting.

“Hey!”

“We’re leaving, you shouldn’t have come here,” Ben says to Romeo loud enough that she hears, pulling his friends back down towards the gate. “What would you have done if Capulet was here? Drunk, both of you, at the Capulet’s. You’re just asking for trouble.”

“It was for love, Ben! You wouldn’t understand.”

“Damn right I don’t understand,” Ben mutters darkly, “If love makes you a moron, then I’m glad I don’t. Walk. Gate. Now.”

And with that, the three Montague boys file into the car waiting at the end of the driveway. As they left, Ros holds up a hand in parting. Ben has his hands on the wheel, and doesn’t return it.

*

Ben is nervous as he waits, drumming his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. He’d parked a few streets away from the Capulet’s house ten minutes ago, careful not to be seen, watching for her in the rear-view. If he was caught there, both Capulet and Romeo’s dad would punish him for it. Ben’s stomach rolls at the thought, and his tapping intensifies. Every second stationary feels like pins down his spine, the air crackling, just waiting for the moment in which he got caught.

When Ros rounds the corner, the sun starts shining.

She taps on the window before she gets in, a small gesture not to startle him. He notices. Ben turns as she slides into the passenger seat and gives him a tentative look which turns into something slightly teasing.

“So, ready to ‘romance the shit’ out of me?”

Ros uses air quotes and a sarcastic tone that her lips work to move around. At having his own words echoed back at him, Ben cringes. Scrunching up his eyes at how the words sounded out loud, he slams his head against the steering wheel and groans, which causes laughter to erupt beside him and warm the pits of his belly. Ros’ laugh is loud and unashamed when she is out of sight of Mr. Capulet. It fills the car. Feeling a gentle pat on his shoulder, Ben lifts his head and hopes that she cannot tell how her touch feels like fire against his skin.

“I did say that, didn’t I?”

“Yup. I have screenshots.”

Ben puts on his most charming smile, his ‘game’ face, as he puts the car into gear. “In that case, love, prepare for the best date of your life. I’m a man of my word – even the less-poetic ones.”

She makes noises that equates to suuuure, but rolls down her window and hums during the journey, relaxing in the passenger seat. Ros is wearing a summer dress just modest enough to draw his eyes to her thighs, and just low enough that her collarbones were on show, hair piled up into a bun which directed his attention to the silver bars and blue stones in her ears. Ben had never noticed that she had so many piercings before, but he sure did now.

“Eyes on the road, Montague.”

And just like that, the leaden weight in his guts fades as they get further out away the city. By the time they pull up, Ben has a distracted sort of smile on his face, singing along every few words to the song she is humming. They fall into the rhythm. It’s all too easy. He wonders vaguely if it is always supposed to feel this easy, and that he’d just been missing it – missing her – for all these years. How much time had they wasted as strangers?

The Verona Book Festival was held in a field a few miles inland of the beach, white marquees and tents pitched to make stalls and rooms for author talks. A collection of cars line the entrance, from pick-up trucks to cars that were owned by Verona’s elite; sports cars and personalised number plates, and Ben wishes he had thought to wash his car this weekend as he parks, ashamed of the shabby red box that is his car.

Ros is on her feet and charging forwards before he’s even turned off the ignition. Ben watches her go, then has to fumble and hurry when she pauses to wait for him, running over to her with his wittiest smile.

“M’lady,” he says, offering his arm. Ros laughs, flips him off, and uses her hip to push him away as they head through the gates.

The next few hours is spent walking from tent-to-tent, browsing through stalls or sitting in talks he barely follows. In those first few hours, the most notable moment was when Ros got to the display at an antiques book stall and just about fainted at the book taking the prized place, right in the centre. She practically skipped a few steps ahead of him to get another look, as curiosity bubbled in Ben’s stomach as he caught up, until the title came into view – Mrs. Dalloway. Apparently, luck was on his side.

Romeo had told him that Mrs. Dalloway was Ros’ favourite book, but he would have guessed it even if he hadn’t known. The look on her face said more than words could comprehend. Ros’ mouth fell open as she lightly pressed her fingertips against the glass case the book rested in, lips absent-mindedly falling into a smile, a natural one, and it was brighter than anything. Brighter than the stars or the moon. Brighter than the sun.

And her eyes – they shone.

Even after they moved on, that moment followed him around. It was a shame that when he discreetly asked, the bloody book also came with a grand price tag; one that was out of his current financial situation. He would have liked to keep that smile on her face.

But it was not possible, so he tried to keep it there in other ways as they made their way around the festival. Ben walked and sat and listened, but couldn’t for the life of him understand some old book having such an effect on a person. Literature was never really his thing. It wasn’t that he was dumb – stories were excuses. They told kids that everything would be okay because something magical would one day happen and save them. Stories lied. There was no life-changing moment, and the only magic was the magic people made for themselves.

So no, Ben wasn’t big on fiction, he liked facts –

“Stop scowling,” Rosaline’s voice cuts in, soft as her lips brush against his ear. Ben flinches from staring blankly ahead as some author spoke, half-asleep, but quickly gathers himself to find her face close to his own. She glances towards the stage and whispers, “You’ve been giving the speaker a death glare for the past ten minutes. I think he thinks you’re planning to kill him.”

Amusement instead of admonishment laced her tone, surprising him, as Ros’ lip quirks up.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Not a fan of fiction.”

“You’re at a book festival.”

“There’s more than one type of book,” he replies simply. Ros levels a gaze at him for a long moment, before taking his hand and leading them out of the tent, whispering apologies for disturbing the talk. People glare at them as they pass; the interruption goes very much noticed as they leave, until he asks in the safety of the next tent.

“What did you do that for? We didn’t have to leave.”

“You weren’t enjoying it,” she replies, shrugging like it was nothing.

“But you were.”

“I’d rather we found something we both enjoyed, wouldn’t you?” Ros challenges, eyes flicking away from him. Head turning in a wide arc, she looks at the signs above the surrounding tents, reading what lay inside. Eventually, they land back on Ben. “So, if you don’t like fiction, what do you like? And I mean – who doesn’t like stories?”

“Me, apparently.” Ros keeps looking at him, not letting him slide, until Ben finally sighs and turns the question back on her, crossing his arms. “What’s so great about stories?”

“Uh, everything,” Ros argues, eyes wide. She’s standing close to him, wheat fields behind her and the breeze tugging at the edge of her dress, corn-blue sky stretching luxuriously out, dotted with clouds as she tilts her head and motions for them to walk left. As they go, Ben matching her stride for stride, she speaks. “Stories give us hope. They let us walk out of our lives and into better ones, to slay dragons or fight monsters and see things we ordinarily never would. I used to read a paperback a night when were teenagers. Everything I could get my hands on: sci-fi, classics, comics, shitty romance novels. With the no-fun rule at Fort Capulet, there wasn’t much else to do – stories were my way out of that house. Stories can set us free.”

With that, she looks back up at him, strolling casually with her clutch in her hands and light in her eyes. Ros is beautiful. He’d known it – everyone who had seen her knew it – but with those words he understood that her beauty was soul deep, the light spilling out of her at the seams so much that he had to blink and look away, like he was gazing at the sun instead of at her.

To hide this, because they were friends and that was good and he poisoned every damn thing he touched, Ben forces a smirk onto his face and leaned in teasingly, “You know Capulet, I never had you pegged for an optimist.”

“And what are you, then? And why don’t you like stories?”

“I’m a realist. That’s the answer to both questions.”

Ros’ mouth is open, listening, but clicked shut with a pursed lip look of knowing at his words. As her jaw locked, her eyebrows move downwards, pitching almost comically into an expression that was both reading and knowing, and she stops walking entirely. Ben had no choice but to pause on the path ahead, turning back to face her.

“What?” he asks.

“You!” she replies, stepping closer as her lips fought to curve into a smile. “Are you telling me that you don’t believe in hope? That you really think you’re just a realist?”

“I don’t believe in lies. Stories tell you that there’s gonna be this saving grace, this magic, this thing that can save you – but its bullshit! You’re supposed to save yourself. All we have is ourselves and what we make of the time we get, and some people waste that time endlessly searching for a magical fucking solution instead of living it.”

Ben shoves his hands deep into his pockets, rocking on his heels with an angry, teeth-baring grin plastered onto his face. Blood roars through him, surges through his veins, and this was what they were used to – arguing. But as he watches, Ros doesn’t look angry, only shaking her head and releasing a breath at his rant, something crushed in her features as she steps away. The superiority of her brow deflated into confusion, as she walks backwards a few steps, gaze dropping from his as Ben’s heart sank in his chest – this wasn’t what he had wanted. He was being honest, which had always sounded a whole lot like angry to him, but he hadn’t meant to hurt her.

Holding his hands out in peace, he takes a step towards her.

“Ros-”

“You’re right,” she says quietly, cutting him off. Her voice, which usually could strike earthquakes, is small. “You’re probably right. We do have to save ourselves. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t hope.”

“No, of course not,” Ben amended. Slowly, he reaches out until his hands rest lightly on her shoulders, giving them a reassuring squeeze. “I was wrong. I’m not a realist, I’m a pessimist, and an angry dick when I want to be.”

“You’re not a dick,” she says, hand swiping at her eye before she looks up at him with darkly romantic eyes. “And you’re not a pessimist. Nobody who looks at someone the way you look at Romeo and Mercutio could be so hopeless.”

Ben freezes at that, not really sure how to reply. He wonders what look she’s talking about, and if he is giving her the same one right now. Swallowing a lump in his throat, Ben coughs and let her go, arms dropping back to his sides, skimming down her arms as he does so. Aiming for a smile, he fixes his statement from earlier.

“I’m not a fan of fiction, but maybe I just never found the right story. I stopped reading for fun when we were in school and I realised that fairytales were cons. I’ve not tried to read anything since. Not fiction, anyways. But I am enjoying myself, here, with you. And not just because of that dress.”

At this, Ros’ face changes from open-mouthed shock to a wild laugh to punching him in the shoulder in about ten seconds. But the heavy moment has passed, a grey cloud bursting in a thunderstorm to wash the world away, and he rolls with the movement and throws an arm around her shoulders as they made their way towards the next tent, her laughter putting a spring back in his step. Even the books didn’t seem so boring after that.

Ben buys her the copy of Mrs. Dalloway before they leave.

It is an easy decision to make, almost as easy as falling for her had been.

*

The barista gives them a look, a hooked eyebrow and glance up from the counter, and asks if they want their regular orders. It is at about this time that Ros realises that she has been there enough times with Ben in the past month for them to be considered regulars. She manages to stammer out a ‘yes, thank you’, absolutely not looking at Ben as she pays and waits for their drinks at the end of the counter, but his fingers are in the corner of her vision anyway, drumming against the countertop. She has a feeling that he is smirking.

Later, she would blame her distraction for the fact that she then reached over and put her hand over his own to stop the nervous tick. It ends with her holding her iced green tea in one hand, and Ben’s hand in the other.

Strangely enough, it isn’t a terrible feeling.

“So,” he says, twisting in her direction as they stroll along the waterfront. It’s become their thing – she really needs to stop this train of thought, because they don’t have a thing, this is all pretend and they’re just friends – “Are you free next Saturday?”

Not expecting the question, she presses her lips together and hums while she thinks. Ros can’t think of anything, and even if she could – she thinks that spending the day with Ben would be better. The past few weeks have flown by, the important moments measured by times she had made him smile, and summer was passing by in a blink. Ros found that she wanted to spend time with him now, not even for show or pretence, just because it was fun and she liked it. It was rather freeing.

“I believe so,” she says casually instead, looking back at him curiously. “Why?”

“I was thinking we could get married.”

And if Ros had been aiming for casual, Ben was owning it. As he says it, tossing the words out as if he was discussing the weather, he ran the hand not in hers through his hair and turned his eyes towards the sea. Even as she choked, stopping suddenly, Ros could see the edge of his lip struggling to stay down as he pauses, turning to her with a face desperate to stay straight. Ben manages it just long enough to blink innocently and ask.

“What’s wrong, beloved?”

Ros splutters incomprehensively for ten seconds; tries to walk away, but found that her hand was still enveloped in Ben’s as he tightened the grip, finally breaking out into laughter, and gently pulling her back towards him. Ros ended up with her hands between them, held in his, close enough to see the light scattering of freckles under his eyes. Ben looks entirely too pleased with himself.

“You -you asshole,” she manages finally, half-choking out the words between the lump in her throat. Ros felt her cheeks burn, but her lips twist into a disbelieving smile. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t resist,” Ben laughs, tongue poking out between his teeth. “I knew you’d react to it, and I needed a good laugh. You’re adorable, Capulet.”

Ros plays along, nodding sarcastically. “Like you didn’t put so much effort into that joke! I could see you trying to keep a straight face.”

“It’d be the only straight thing about me.”

Ben makes the joke because he can’t resist it, and she knows it is Mercutio’s voice in his head as he does. She wonders when he became so transparent to her. It only makes Ros want to laugh, but she resists. She’s supposed to be mad at him for playing a joke like that on her, after all.

“You see how you’re the only one laughing, Montague? It’s ‘cos your joke sucked.”

“Oh, I wasn’t joking. Friar Lawrence at the church says that he had a wedding cancelled for next Saturday and we can have the slot if we want it – which would mean that Escalus could be spared the awkwardness of marrying us – if you want to, that is. I know it’s sooner than you expected.”

Ben is completely sincere as he says it, casual still, but this time there isn’t a punch line. Just the implication that by next Saturday they could actually be getting married – if she says yes. Ros appreciates that he is asking again, making sure that she hasn’t changed her mind; but guilt tumbles in her stomach as now she is thinking about marrying him for entirely different reasons. The sham doesn’t seem such an act anymore, especially not with Ben standing so close with flecks of paint in his hair and freckles across the bridge of his nose and the way she has to blink hard to bring the world back into focus.

“You’re serious?”

“Yep,” he replies, popping the ‘p’. “Come on, Capulet. You know you can’t wait to marry me.”

Ros rolls her eyes on instinct, “Oh, I’m counting the hours.”

Ben smirks, but it lacks the brightness of his laughter and the edge of his grin. As he shifts from one foot to another, glancing down to his shoes before looking back at her, he nervously lets go of her hands self-consciously, stepping away. She burns with the absence of his hands locked in hers. Ros sucks in a breath, waiting for the reply she could see him formulating.

“Listen, I-” Ben starts, stops. “I know this is a big thing. I know I act like it’s a joke, but it isn’t – think about it before you decide. I appreciate you considering this, Ros, I know this can’t be easy for you-”

“It’s not as hard as you think,” she cuts him off, smiles gently. “You’re pretty easy on the eyes, Montague.” He laughs, a belly-laugh, good and long, until she takes his hand again and steers them back to the path, continuing. “But if we are getting married, I am not having Mercutio and Romeo make a farce of it.”

“I’m sure the thought hasn’t even crossed their minds.”

There’s a beat before they both burst into laughter.

Ros wipes a tear from the corner of her eye and goes on, “Anyway, I have some self-respect. I’m not having our fake-wedding made into a spectacle. So, I’ll talk to Friar Lawrence and arrange the details, and you keep your friends busy for the week. Deal?”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Ben admits. “Although I have the distinct feeling that I’ve pulled the short straw here. You know my friends are going to be insufferable about this, right?”

“Yeah, I wonder what that’s like.”

“Hey! I’m not that bad.”

“You literally sprung a wedding on me five minutes ago,” Ros points out, nudging him playfully in the ribs with her elbow. It was a cool afternoon, the heatwave finally wearing off, and Ben’s body heat radiated into her from the contact. If it wasn’t for his personal space issues, she probably would have walked closer to him. “And besides, it’s not like I could do anything about Mercutio and Romeo. I’m going to have enough on my plate with my sister and Juliet when they find out.”

“We could just not tell them,” he suggests, “you know, pull a Romeo and Jules and have a secret wedding. None of them would even have to know until we were already married and their chance to ridicule us is over.”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll never hear the end of this either way.”

Ben snorts and inclines his head. “That’s true. But at least we can face them together.”

“Please. I intend to use you as a shield against them and throw you to the wolves at every available opportunity.”

“Thanks, wife.”

“Not for another week,” Ros smiles at him sweetly, not missing a beat. It’s almost too easy, just talking to Ben like this, joking as if they had skin so thick the world couldn’t break it. He never takes his eyes off her as he laughs, shaking his head as if in wonder, and she considers leaning forward and kissing him for a moment, to hell with what anyone thought. It would be so easy. But this isn’t real, she reminds herself sternly, biting her lip and looking away. “After that, though, it seems you’re stuck with me for a while.”

“I don’t like the world stuck. It implies this is something I’ve been trapped in, not something I’ve chosen,” he replies, and the butterflies in her stomach multiply. “And I chose you, didn’t I? This was my idea. So being married to you isn’t so bad, Capulet.”

She forces her tone to stay steady. “No?”

“Not by a long shot,” Ben waits for her to look up at him before he grins, “After all – I could have ended up marrying Mercutio.”

And despite herself, Ros laughs and laughs and laughs, as they walk hand-in-hand beside the sea, telling herself that this is fine. She and Ben are friends, and she is grateful for that – anything else is messy, and could ruin it, like everything else she cared about. So Ros holds her tongue, and doesn’t kiss him even when she wants to, and her smile is genuine when he bids her goodnight at the gate and presses warm lips into the skin of her hand.

Ros doesn’t notice the way he watches her walk all the way up the path to her house, and waits until her light flicks on upstairs before leaving, hand resting lightly on his own lips as he turns away.

*

Ben drives a fifteen year old car with its left mirror hanging on by duct tape and an engine he had rebuilt himself; a car he pulled from the junkyard and paid a hundred bucks for when he was sixteen; a piece of shit that rattled along the roads and made a worrying creaking noise when it turned corners – and something he loved wholeheartedly. It was a shitty car, but it was his shitty car. It was the product of his own two hands and he patted it affectionately as he sat on the hood, pulled up in an empty space by the beach and watching the tide come in.

It’s a spot he knows well. Over the years, he had worn a rut into the grass with the wheels of the car, marking a space at the side of the road that was his alone. It was down the coast a while from the most busy part of the beach, as before him were jagged rocks instead of smooth sand: it was an angry place, a place for roaring and raving, not laughter, suiting his moods and contemplation. He had driven there many times to breathe the sea in until his lungs were salt and the world miles away.

Now, as he heard the waves crash against the beach, all he can think about is how Ros’ voice should be ringing with them.

But she cannot be here. God knows he wishes she could be sitting there beside him, sides pressed together, talking about something or other and holding the world at bay with the sound of her voice, the low candence, the easy words and genuine smiles and way she could bring him to laugh when he felt like crying, but this is something she cannot know about. Ben doesn’t want to put that weight on her, the choice he is making; she carries enough as it is. And it is not a burden – it is a gift.

Ben looks at his bank information on his phone; at the numbers printed in black and white. His funds are low and he knows that he’s going to have to cancel one thing to afford another – the travel agency will refund his holiday with the boys if he asks, he knows – the only reason he hesitates at all is that he hates to let them down. But Romeo and Mercutio have had fifteen years of his time. They would have other holidays, other moments: but the look on Ros’ face when she saw the book was priceless.

So he makes the call, and cancels his booking as he looks at the sea. The memory of her smile, brighter than the sun, louder than the waves, warmer than any home he’d ever known - it lingers. From where he sits, he can see for miles and miles, and yet the only thing he really wants to see is out of sight, but never out of mind. It is an easy call to make, in the end.

It’s almost as if she can hear his thoughts, because Ben’s phone buzzes ten minutes after he makes the cancellation, and it’s her name flashing up on his screen. He accepts the call with a well-worn smile on his lips.

“Capulet. I was just thinking about you.”

“Keeping it PG-13, I hope,” she replies without a pause, and he can hear the moment she realises what she has just said. Ros takes a sharp breath as he begins to laugh loudly, and he can hear the glare she’s giving him down the phone. It makes him laugh harder, and he’s half-in love with her, but he’s keeping it to himself for now, in case telling her means that laughter is gone from his life forever. Ben doesn’t think he could take that. But Ros is huffing down the phone for now, and his legs begin to swing where they hang over the hood of the car. “Oh, shut up, Montague. It wasn’t that funny.”

“Yes it was,” Ben argues, because that is what they are. An easy laugh on a hard day. “And I assure you, I’m not the one here with my mind in the gutter. Honestly Capulet, if you want me, all you had to do was ask.”

Ros laughs, and he knows she doesn’t want to, so it rings all the sweeter. “I hate you.”

“Nah, you don’t.”

She doesn’t argue. It means something.

“I just – I wanted to tell you something, but if you’re gonna be an ass about it-”

“Okay, okay! I’m done now,” Ben promises, promptly ceasing his chuckling, although the smile remains firmly on his face. He can’t seem to push it down when she sounds so close he can almost feel the warmth of her skin beside him. “I promise, I’ll be good. What can I do for you, Capulet?”

“It’s the other way around, actually. I – I want you to know that you can keep your car.”

“What?” Ben blinks hard, not expecting that. Standing quickly, the world tilts beneath his feet as he walks a few steps, pacing beside his car with his fingers grazing against it gently. “I don’t understand. Is this your way of telling me that the wedding’s off?”

“No!” she says, too fast to mean nothing, “I just – I don’t need that part of our deal anymore. I don’t want your car – it’s yours. You keep it.”

“But I thought . . .”

“If I ever need a ride, I’ll call. You promised, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, breathless. Ben’s mind is going too fast for him to keep up. Sense leaves him in the dust, and his ears ring, and he aches for thinking of her. “I did. But the car was all you wanted for marrying me.”

“And now it’s not,” Ros says simply.

“Then why?”

“Because you’re my friend, and I want to help you. And because I can. I choose you, too.”

“Oh,” he sighs softly, because all words dry out his throat. Ben swallows painfully, and he still can’t think of anything to say: it’s dangerous, because he’s a heartbeat away from saying something he’ll regret, like ‘I love you’. “Then thank you, Ros. I – I don’t really know what to say.”

“It’s okay,” she tells him; he can hear the smile in her voice. “There’s nothing you have to. But I have to go, Jules is sneaking out to go to the club tonight and I can’t let her go alone.”

Ben says knowingly, “The things we do for them.”

“Die for them, probably.”

“Yeah.”

She echoes back, “Yeah.”

“Maybe I’ll see you there,” he says, and he’s hoping that he will. “I have no plans for tonight. And I’m sure if Jules is going, Romeo will be too. Between the two of us, I think we can just about manage to avoid disaster, don’t you?”

Ben was, as it turns out, wrong.

The club is half-full and nobody else from their families are there to see them, thankfully, because he’s pretty sure Romeo and Jules are trying to be tongue-tied in a literal sense; Mercutio is dancing on a table, because why not, Ben?; and Ben himself was standing in the corner watching Ros dance with Escalus Prince.

And he’s not jealous. He’s not.

It’s just that his stomach twists at the easy way Ros acts with Escalus, throwing her arms around him and grinning widely as he spins her around on the dance floor, making inside jokes while Ben grits his teeth and pretends to smile. Still, Escalus shakes his hand when they’re introduced and buys a round for the group in good-will, and he is kind and nice and Ben would be all over a guy with lips that look so soft usually, but he knows that Escalus and Ros were a thing and he’s currently white-knuckling his grip on his beer bottle as he watches them dance.

But no, he isn’t jealous.

“It’s a party, not a funeral.”

And his glare has become so unfocused that Ros had managed to sneak up on him, appearing an inch away from his face, with streaks of gold glitter on her cheeks and a green dress that clings to her hips. She grabs his hand, teasing the bottle from his fingers and downing what remained in it before pulling him towards the dance floor before Ben can even protest properly.

“Ah, no, I’m not really a dancer-”

“Ben,” she says, spinning so she is facing him, chest-to-chest. Ros is drunk, eyes hazy and lips loose enough that the tension she seems to carry around has left her, and under the lights, she shines. He might be a little tipsy himself. “Dance with me.”

He doesn’t even hesitate. “Okay.”

Ros grins as she places his hands on her hips, and leans slightly into him as an upbeat song blares through the speakers, too loud to be comfortable and trying too hard. They dance all the same. It’s more of a sway, as they vaguely hold onto one another and shuffle side to side with the ebb and flow of the beat as it fades and recedes like the sea, and once again, all he can hear is her and the waves.

“You’re smiling,” Ros says, hand moving to his head and ruffling up the back of his hair, fingers curling in his hair and lingering there. Her touch is like fire, and he misses a beat. “It suits you. Letting your hair down.”

“You too,” he honestly replies. In fact, she’s breathtaking. Ros has literally and figuratively let her hair down, and it tumbles down to her shoulders in tightly coiled spirals flecked with gold. There had been times when he had seen her more at ease than the way she usually presented herself, but never this uninhibited, and never quite so close. Ben hopes he isn’t blushing too obviously as he idly catches one of her curls between two fingers, moving it out of her face.

When his fingers brush her face, she stills under his touch, and her eyes do not move from his, staring back as openly as he was marvelling at her, and she’s so close it hurts to look at her and not close the distance, but he aches when she is gone, too. Ben isn’t entirely sure when he had come to care about her so deeply. He could not pinpoint a single moment in the string of days with her that left him feeling something like faith, or a single look, touch, word from those lips that captured him, body and soul. In the end, the moment didn’t matter – only the person. There was now a space in his life that was hers alone; a part of his cracked heart beating since she dusted it off and placed it back in his chest, and Ben couldn’t imagine his life without her.

He wonders if love is supposed to hurt this much.

Ros opens her mouth slowly, as if savouring the words. “Ben . . .”

“-Time to go!” Mercutio interrupts whatever Ros had been about to say, appearing in a blur and grabbing them by a hand each and hurrying them towards the door. “Jules’ cousin just showed up, we gotta leave.”

Ben frowned. “The one you punched?”

“The one I punched.”

It’s easy enough to get a cab outside of the club. The harder task is fitting seven people into it. Ben ends up wedged between a somehow-still-making-out Romeo and Juliet, and Ros. As she squeezes in beside him, as the faux leather seats creak and he tries to make more room for her, which results in having an arm on the back of the seat and her half-sitting on his lap. It’s not entirely uncomfortable.

“So,” Ben says, turning his head so that he can speak to her. She’s close enough that his lips graze against her skin when he speaks, whispering in her ear against the music the driver is playing and the assorted noises of their friends. “You started to say something in there . . .”

“It was nothing important,” she replies. Although her lips do not brush him in the same way, he can feel her breath on his cheek, and it’s all he can do not to close the distance between them. Ros smiles, and despite the fact that the cab reeks of cigarettes and creaks every time they move, it’s perfect. She’s perfect. “Just that I’m glad that this all happened. That we became friends, and . . .”

“Yeah,” he says, breathless. “Me too. I can’t believe that we almost missed each other.”

“What a tragedy that would have been.”

Her lips curve into a half-smile for an almost-joke, but he has never been more serious. “I mean it. Ros, if we’d have never spoke that night, if I’d have never really known you-”

“I know,” she says, the smile fading, although the fire in her eyes did not. Ros’ face grew very still as she looks at him, so close, that it is almost as if they were the only people there. Her hand takes his and squeezes. “I’m so glad I met you, Ben.”

Before he can reply, the cab pulls up, a few minutes’ walk away from the Capulet’s house. It isn’t far, and they live in a neighbourhood that is safer than most, but he still starts to follow her out to walk her home before Mercutio catches him by the wrist and gives a small shake of his head. He is holding Romeo back similarly with his other hand, exasperated expression on his face. Ben turns back to the open window as Ros shuts the door and leans over to say goodnight.

“Thanks for coming,” she says, tucking a curl behind her ear. “I know it wasn’t your plan for the night, and well-”

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

The edges of her lips twist up, as dimples appear on her cheeks. “See you soon?”

“See you on the flip side, Ros.”

“What does that even mean?” she laughs. It’s too late. The cab is pulling away, stealing his reply even as he leans out of the window, Mercutio cursing and trying to pull him back inside by his shirt, but Ros’ laugh carries on the wind all the way to him, and Ben doesn’t blink until she is out of sight.

*

Ros stares at her phone for ten minutes.

The world spins at 1,600 kilometres an hour on its axis as it hurtles at 18.5 miles a second around the sun, as night and day dance and sway across the globe, and people talk and shout and cry and fight and fall in love, all while the universe expands infinitely from an explosion still happening from the start of time. All of these things stop for Rosaline as she sits at her desk, brightness of her phone screen making her wince as a headache brews behind her eyes; everything is numb, she is numb – because it makes no sense.

Why would Ben do all of that for her?

Ros liked knowing where she stood with people: what she owed and how to act. The clearer the lines were drawn in the sand - usually between them - the better. But this was foreign territory, it was unmapped regions and here be dragons because it didn’t follow the pattern of their relationship: they talked, they joked, they had a good time – but this was more than that, a thousand dollars more than the sun-soaked simplicity of hiring a boat to get away for an afternoon, sending them further out into uncharted waters. There was no precedent; no boundary for her to feel comfortable in.

It scared her. She couldn’t understand why Ben would blow his holiday money on a book for her – there had to be a catch, a condition, a cost.

With shaking hands, Rosaline pushes herself to standing. It was early evening, the sky outside just tinged pink as the sun died over the hill, soon to be swept blue and star-dotted. Looking out of her window, she turns her eyes to the horizon – her room faces towards the ocean, something she had always liked about it, but she could see down the shoreline to the hill which bordered Verona to the east, a large mound visible from almost everywhere in the city. The Hill watched over them and kept the sun safe at night, or at least that was what her mother used to tell her.

Rosaline knew where to run to.

She was grabbing her coat within a minute, tearing down the stairs with steps as loud as her hammering heart –

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Mr. Capulet’s voice stops her short. Her gut-wrench reaction is to put more distance between them and keep running, but her body betrays her fear; Rosaline stops at the door, hand resting on the handle, as her racing heart shudders to a stop. Ice floods her veins. This house was cold; he made it cold, so much that his voice could frost over the warmth that Juliet and Livia brought into the house.

Slowly, keeping one hand on the exit, Rosaline turns around until Mr. Capulet comes into view.

“I’m going out,” she states, as calmly as she is able. Mr. Capulet is standing in the kitchen doorway, the light off in the room behind him and the moonlight flooding through the glass windows casting his face into shadows, making his already pale skin bone-like and ghostly. To the outside observer, he was an imposing man, but not a threatening one – tall, carrying himself to generate a presence in the room. Now, his shadows made him stand like a giant, and her hands shook.

“At this time of night?” Mr. Capulet says, again, his voice an eerie calm that only she found fear in. An eyebrow moved in the darkness. “Curfew is at ten. You know that.”

“I’m twenty-three.”

“And as long as you live under my roof, you’ll abide by my rules. This is still my house, even if you do pay some rent now – you’ll do well to remember that.”

His lips sneered around some, like he hadn’t been pocketing half of her wages from her part-time jobs since she had turned sixteen. It makes her stand a little taller, spine turning to steel – because this was her control; he no longer had the power over her to say she lived from his generosity alone, because she paid her way and her debts and made sure that she didn’t owe the pathetic man in front of her a penny. It was his excuse, when she was a teenager – that he had taken her in, and she and Livia would be in care or separated or on the streets without him, so she had to smile when she was told and do most of the chores in the house and follow the rules. Bite down the bile in her throat. Ignore the four walls which were as good as a prison.

For the longest of times, she had believed that lie. She had done exactly as he said and been the perfect niece and did it all with thank you on her lips because all he ever did was tell her that she should be grateful -

Ros swallows, hard, and forces herself to look him in the eyes. Boiling anger and confusion and a decade of biting her tongue gave her courage now; filling her lungs and making her eyes sharp. She would be brave. She would stand up for herself. She would not be locked in by him, never again.

“I pay rent, and I’m an adult. I’m going out.”

Capulet took a step closer to her, just one, but it was enough for Ros to flinch further away, until her body presses into the door hard enough to leave an impression on the skin of her back. Her hand is still tightly clasped around the handle. She isn’t as afraid of him as she once had been – the worst he could do was to kick her out - but then, where would she go? Ros had been saving for years to pay her own college tuition and save for Liv’s, too, but she had another year before she graduated during which she was stuck in Verona. She was still trapped in this house.

“You’re an ungrateful child, as you have always been. Stop this nonsense and go back to your room, Rosaline.”

Like a slap in the face, she was violently reminded why she had shortened her name and refused to answer to that one anymore, because from Mr. Capulet’s lips, it felt like an insult. He only ever used it when he was giving an order, or when he was speaking of her in front of guests – and it wasn’t a name, then, no, she was just another thing, another possession. She would not be owned by him or anyone. Ros moved before her mind could catch up, opening the doorway and stepping out backwards onto the porch, leaving the door banging on it’s hinges and glaring back into the house at him.

“I am no child, and you are not my family! You never have been. I’m leaving, and if you try to stop me, I’ll make sure the right people find out that you’re going into liquidation and had to use a loan shark to slow the process.”

Waiting just long enough to see his face fall; to see the fear on his face that she knew had been on her own for so many years, Ros gave a smile that could have been a snarl and turned on her heel, storming out into the evening. Night had truly taken a hold by now. As she strides down the lawn, breaking into a run at the gates and thanking the heavens for all of her years doing cross-country as she ran through the emptying streets of the town, blue turns to black overhead like a bruise, and she doesn’t stop running until she reaches the foot of the Hill.

Like the Island, it was one of those places that probably had a name at some point, but over the years had taken up residence like an member of the community and was now simply known as ‘the Hill’. With such a looming presence over the city, it was a hard monument to ignore. The Hill was fenced off by a small wall and iron bars, but over the years, places had been worn down and broken, and nobody bothered to replace them. The sun was already in the belly of the Hill by the time Ros arrives.

Using her phone as a flashlight, as there was nothing on the Hill but grass and stones, the town behind her now, Ros picks her way to a chink in the armour. Three or four bars are missing from the fence, and she squeezes through the gap with ease, walking with care until she reaches the stone path winding through the graves.

Because where the sun went to rest in the east of Verona, so did its citizens.

The Hill was the largest graveyard in town; and the one with the best view, watching over the city and the sea. She knows the path like the back of her hand. Ros knew which steps to skip because the paving slabs were loose and where the trees had overgrown and made it impossible to follow the path, winding her way through the graves to get to where she needed to be.

“Hey, Mom,” Ros whispers, sitting down in front of the pair of graves. She nods to the second one, sad smile making her lips tremble, “Dad.”

For a little while, she doesn’t say anything else. Ros kneels in the overgrown grass at her parent’s graveside until her breathing has evened out and grown steady, the wind picking up and drying her tears before they even passed her cheeks. It wasn’t until that moment that she realised how exhausted she was. She was tired – of that house, of her life, of Verona. It was a decade since her parents died, and she had moved in with her cousin.

Ros felt every one of those years. She felt it in the anger inside of her and the way she still couldn’t just trust that Ben’s intentions were honest, even now.

She had come intending to ask her parents what to do, but in the end, Mr. Capulet had made that decision for her, just like he had been doing for half of her life. Ros pulls out her phone and sends Ben a curt, sharp text. He replies in moments, and although she could see the confusion in his words, she can’t trust it – nobody does anything for nothing, she tells him, and it’s true. They argue; and she slams the door between them shut and nails it down for good measure.

If he hates her now – at least he couldn’t hurt her. Not anymore that it already had to send those messages in the first place.

In a world that was kinder to both of them, she would have loved him. She wouldn’t be the mess she was, sobbing at a graveside and even now stifling her tears, a little voice telling her not to be too loud or take up too much room; she would be able to trust his actions as affection and not plotting, and she would smile, and run to him, and things would be okay. But the world was rarely soft. Not for her, anyways.

Ros broke her own heart and sat on the Hill for hours, eventually returning to the house that could never be her home as dawn began to erase the stars with shades of grey.

*

The world is hazy.

It is the way Ben always feels when he is drunk – not tired or manic, not happy or sad, just numb. Just as if he is watching everything from far away, aware in every moment what his body is doing, yet somehow not quite feeling it. Almost as if he is watching another man walk around in his shoes.

The waves still roar, and her voice should be there.

He staggers as he reaches the shoreline of the beach, bottle in hand, and grips the railing until his knuckles turn white, eyeing up the drop on the other side. There is a fall of twelve feet between the pavement and the sand on the other side. I could survive twelve feet, a small part of him whispers, but the rest of him replies, only if you want a broken ankle.

He is still arguing with himself when Romeo and Mercutio show up.

“Ben! What the actual fuck, get down from there!”

There’s a hand on his arm and he’s falling into Merc so hard they almost overbalance, until Romeo catches him on his other side, and he manages to stand between the two of them. Swaying, Ben throws his arms over both of their shoulders, a mad grin stretching over his face, cracking wind-chapped lips. “Heeeeeey guys.”

“Fucking hell,” Romeo curses, trying to make him walk towards a nearby bench. “How much have you had to drink? I do not want to spend tonight watching you have your stomach pumped, dude.”

“That’s it Benny-boy, small steps,” Mercutio encourages from his other side, voice tight.

Ben is snapped back momentarily to the present by them being there, but his head starts drifting again as they take lurching steps forward. Digging his nails in as he holds on tightly, as if that could somehow tether him and stop him drifting, he puts one foot in front of another, one foot in front of another, until he is dropped not unkindly onto a flat wooden surface. It’s a bench, and Mercutio takes a seat beside him as Romeo paces, fidgeting with his phone and sparing Ben sharp, worried looks every few seconds.

“I came here,” Ben says, foggily. He blinks as he scrutinises the wood of the bench, eyes flicking, searching for a familiar swirl or pattern. As he does so, his head sways, until there is a hand on his cheek and Merc is pulling his face around, dark eyes for once serious as his iris’ flick over Ben’s face.

“What? Ben, keep looking at me.”

“I came here. With her.”

“Ros?”

Ben hiccoughs, sighing softly. “She hates me.”

“No, she doesn’t. Nobody could hate you.”

“She does,” he argues back, irate in the way only drunk people can be. Ben pouts, trying to pull away from his friend, but Mercutio has a strong grip on his arm and face, sternly keeping Ben in one spot. It only makes him redder in the face. “Fuck, Merc. I thought – you know. I thought she liked me. That we could be . . .” Ben trails off, blinks heavily. “Am I really so unloveable?”

“What? Ben, no, of course not. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Mercutio is usually about as soft and subtle as a brick to the head, but he is quiet when he speaks now, almost tender. There was a time Ben had thought he had been in love with him, too. “You are loved. By me, and Romeo, and someone will be the person you deserve, some day. Ros doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

“You didn’t, though,” Ben says, grimacing in a gentle way. An honestly he cannot hold back grips him, looking at Merc and seeing the state he was in reflected in dark eyes. “Love me. Not like that.”

For a moment, there is quiet. The waves still crash, and Romeo is on the phone now a few steps away, his back to them, and Ben can feel his chest heaving as he breathes, sucking in huge breaths like a drowning man, but it is quiet all the same. A lonely sort of sound, but an honest one. The kind of noise in which there is nowhere to hide the truth.

Mercutio sighs, shaking his head, but his face is not unkind as he looks unblinkingly back at Ben.

“No, I didn’t. I should’ve loved you better.”

“Nah,” Ben shakes his head, wincing as the world spins wildly with the movement. “You loved me well enough. As much as we were able – fucking hell, we were so young, Merc. When did we get this old?”

“I don’t know.”

“I feel old. I feel it in . . . in my bones, you know? Inside. I just though’ . . . I didn’t feel that way when she was there. I would’ve . . . I coulda loved her, you know? I really thought I could.”

“I know, Ben.” Mercutio rubs his back, turning back towards the surf. In the night, it was black and reflecting the moon back at them. “I know.”

“I was here with her,” Ben repeats, echoing his words from earlier. This was the bench they had sat on, he was sure – or maybe he was just drunk, and it was dark. He swayed, and the world was quickly racing towards him. Putting his head on Merc’s shoulder, Ben willed himself not to dream when he passed out, because it hurt to see her face, even in his memory.

He woke to sunlight hitting his face the next morning, and promptly threw up in a wastebasket by his bed.

To Ben’s honest surprise, Romeo is sprawled out asleep on the floor by his bed, and Mercutio is asleep in his desk chair, long hair falling over his face but being pushed up as he lightly snored. They both awoke at the sound of him upchucking, and by the time Ben rolls back into bed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, it’s to two sets of eyes on him. Although it hurt, he peels his eyes open to look up at them.

“Hey,” he says, and it’s a pathetic sound he hates as soon as it leaves his lips. Ben groans, rubbing his eyes to avoid having to see their concern. He says quickly, “I’m fine.”

They all know it’s not true, but Ben is just hungover enough and just low enough to pull himself out of bed irritably and slam the bathroom door. His own bleary red eyes and the fact he looks like utter shit meets him when he looks in the mirror hanging over the sink. A splash of water does little to help. A part of him wants to go back in there and shout and be angry, just to see if it lifts any of the pressure swelling in his chest, but instead, Ben sighs until he deflates, looking at his reflection.

When he goes back to his room, it is resignation on his face. “Okay, so I’m not fine, but both of you can stop it with the puppy dog eyes. I don’t need to whine about my fucking feelings, I have a therapist for that. So thank you for last night, but you can go now. I’m good by myself.”

“Uh,” Romeo holds up a hand. “No, you’re not. You’re irritable and feel shitty when you’re left alone and you know it.”

“I just needed to blow off steam, it’s all done now. I’m not gonna get drunk again.”

“That doesn’t mean you should be on your own.”

“Does mean I need you, either.”

“Bullshit,” Mercutio jumps in. Benvolio is reminded violently of when they were younger, and his two cousins would team up on him, clever words and big sad eyes to boot. It was hard to win when they worked together. “It’s okay that you’re hurting, Ben. She broke your heart. It happens.”

“She didn’t,” Ben clenches his jaw, “break my heart. We were never really a thing.”

“But you liked her.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he shakes his head, turns a shoulder as he scoops up his backpack from the desk. “It’s over now. She doesn’t want me, and there’s nothing more to say.” Ben searches through the bag until he finds his phone, fishing it out to find a new chip at the corner of the screen; another expense to factor in. It only takes a second to delete her number, all of their conversations erased in a press of a button, like they were nothing, like it meant nothing. “Not all of us are like the feckless wonder here, meeting and getting married within two weeks. Life isn’t that easy for the rest of us.”

“Hey!” Romeo pouts, sitting straight up. “I am not feckless! I have plenty of feck!”

Mercutio rolls his eyes, turning back to Ben. “Nice try, but it won’t work. You cared about her, Ben, don’t deny it. It matters because she mattered to you.”

“It’s over,” Ben repeats, more firmly this time. “Ros made up her mind, and she won’t change it. I won’t push her to either. Her choices are hers to make-”

“But you love her,” Romeo says, like it’s simple. It is to him, Ben supposes – he is lucky in love, and Jules is so obviously in love with him, too, that it makes him ache to think about. It has never been easy for him to trust the emotions of others. To believe somebody loved him? It was hard to imagine. But Romeo and doubt were strangers, and so his cousin had love’s light in his eyes, and could never understand why Ben shakes his head at the comment.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“How can you say that?”

Ben doesn’t have an answer, so he mumbles something about coffee and leaves. Romeo and Mercutio join him at the breakfast table five minutes later; obviously having been talking about him, from the looks they shoot each other over the table. Luckily, they do not bring it up again. He eats toast a shade too burnt and coffee that has been standing for hours, and feels nothing.

The next week passes in a similar blur. Like a tethered balloon, Ben bounces around as the wind shifts as the numbness never quite leaves him, even long after the alcohol has burned out of his system. Ros doesn’t text. Romeo and Mercutio try to drag him out, but he stays inside instead. Even Jules texts him to ask if he is doing okay, using about ten emoji’s per text with all of her good intentions, and he can barely respond with listless one word replies.

The truth is: she haunts him. Every moment in Verona, all Ben can think of is what Ros would be doing if she were there, or hearing her voice in his head, clear as the day. It makes it hard to breathe.

Something has to give – it may as well be him.

“Are you sure about this, kid?”

Stella owns the backstreet garage that Ben knew down to the oil spilled into the cracks of the concrete floor. When Ben had first brought in his car, rust creeping through the joints and the engine rattling like an old smoker’s cough, she had laughed and told him that if he could get that ‘rustbucket piece of shit’ going, then he could have a job. Ben had been working weekends ever since. It wasn’t a big shop, and he wasn’t paid much – Stella had bought it with money she earned as a stripper, he knew – but it’s enough to fill his tank and his time, and he soon began to think of Stella’s Garage more fondly than he did the Montague house.

The sign swings above the garage door now, and Stella gives him a questioning look. Ben’s car is parked behind them; the keys in his hand weigh heavily, a dead-weight as he hesitates, fingers curling around the metal. His hand makes a fist, tight enough to leave impressions faintly on his pale skin, before he hands them over.

“I’m sure,” Ben says smoothly. As he pushes a closed-lipped smile onto his face, his stomach plummets. “Just take good care of her, yeah?”

“You know it. Where will you go?”

“Away. I hadn’t thought much further than that.”

It’s an evasive answer, as Ben shuffles and tugs at the zip of his hoodie, feeling his friend’s eyes on him. Stella waits for a long moment, and Ben bristles, waiting for the rebuke, half-flinching when she moves, even after all this time – but the woman simply extends a hand.

“Send me a postcard wherever you land?”

Ben shakes the hand offered and hums in agreement, before he takes the fistful of cash for his car. It’s lighter than the keys had been in his palm, but every step away from the garage is like walking through mud, his feet sinking right into the pavement as he struggles to pull himself back towards the city. Neither the weight of the keys nor the guilt at selling his car is as heavy as the book in his backpack. Juliet had given it to Romeo who had given it to him: the old copy of Mrs. Dalloway. Ben knew that he could easily sell it and get his money back to run away with, but the thought makes him feel sick, so he carries it around with him instead.

The book is the past month. It is his name on a tree in the middle of the Island, and sitting in a closet and not feeling like the walls were caving in, and the smell of fresh grass and old books; it’s a white summer dress, and the sound of her laughter mixing with his own, and the creak of the backseat of a cab; it is every moment that mattered between them. The book is the smile on Rosaline’s face when she first saw it.

Even now, when she hates him and he still doesn’t know how he managed to fuck up something so good, Ben cannot part with it. It would feel like losing her all over again to do so. He’s not sure he could take a second blow so soon after the first. So he carries the book around in his backpack and pretends that it’s not burning a hole in his back where it rests. It feels like his penance, to have her haunt him in this way.

By the time he makes it back into the middle of town, the sun is low and pregnant in the sky and he has half a dozen missed calls on his phone. Ben buys a bus ticket and lifts his head towards the sky. Now he has half of a plan, he is able to take a breath.

And on Monday he will leave Verona.

*

“Ros?”

The voice is hesitant at her door, barely a whisper in the night. The dull sound of Livia leaning against the door reaches Ros where she sits on the other side of it, back pressed against the wood and legs drawn up to her chest. It feels so similar to the first time she talked to Ben, really talked to him, cramped in her closet and half-drunk, that she takes a breath sharp enough for her sister to hear.

“I can hear you, sis. Please. Let me in.”

Livia is pleading, a soft cry that falls on ears fit for bleeding with all of the voices ringing in Ros’ head. It’s been three days since she called off the engagement, and in that time her sister and Juliet had spoken through the door more times than she could count; she had received seven voice messages from Romeo Montague, and a single one from Mercutio. The only person whose voice she hadn’t heard was the one she could hear louder than all of the rest, as clearly in her mind as her own. Ben had fallen silent. She doesn’t know if she if this is a relief or a sacrifice.

“I’m fine,” Ros says back. Although she doesn’t try to whisper as her sister does, her voice is cracked and raw from crying, so it rattles out of her throat all the same. “Leave me alone, Liv. I just need some time.”

“Ros . . .” Liv’s voice is small, and if it wasn’t already so, would have broken Ros’ heart. “I just . . . I’m here. If you need me – I’m here.”

Footsteps thump faintly as Livia pads down the hallway to her room, and Ros doesn’t release the breath she’s holding until she hears her sister’s door close with a click. Then, the floodgates open. All of her breath is released in a long sigh, until Ros feels empty and hollowed out, having pushed everything out in that breath. Her eyes close, and a single tear traces its way down her cheek.

Against the doorframe, she crumbles into herself. Ros hugs her knees close to her chest, pushing her head into them and trying to keep her tears silent, to keep her breathing steady. Even now, a part of her knows not to break down too noticeably or weep too loudly. It would only cause a scene: cause trouble. So she holds herself in the screaming silence, eyes squeezed shut, imagining the world was different, and tells herself that this is for the best.

The truth is that she is so, so tired.

It’s been three days in which she lay watching the moon rise and fall in the window, and then could barely find the energy to move while the sun was out. Ros waited until everyone was out to grab food and a bottle of water a day from the fridge, but aside from that, did not leave her room; she spent a lot of time in bed, too drained to do anything else. What else was there to do? Usually, she would be hauling her cousin’s ass out of trouble, rolling her eyes as Ben over their friend’s shoulders – but she couldn’t see him. Not now.

It hurt not to see him, but the thought of him being there in front of her, close enough to touch but with that hurt look in his eyes, it killed her. If she saw him, she knew her resolve would crack and crumble – but no, she couldn’t trust him. He was a Montague and he had lied and nobody does anything for free.

It was never real.

If she repeats it often enough to herself, Ros can almost believe it.

Then the way he laughs - eyes creased at the edges and rocking on his heels - flashes across her mind, and she isn’t so sure. She can still feel the way his hands trembled as he passed her a vodka bottle in the dark of her closet, and the way he brushed her hair out of her eyes so softly it had been like a grace of lips against her skin. She still knows his favourite song to play as he drives and how he was searching for a place to call home. When she is close to believing that she was right to push him away and protect herself, the way his voice shook as he admitted that he didn’t like enclosed spaces echoed through her mind. She remembers the way he adamantly claims to be a realist but looks at his family like they hung the stars. She remembers the way his eyes changed to look at her the same way, too. And Ros cannot get the flecks of blue pain mixed in with the faint spattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose out of her mind, or the way it scrunched up when he laughed.

Livia tells her that Ben has sold his car and is leaving the city and if her heart was bleeding until then, it stopped at the news.

“It’s not too late,” Liv tells her, as Ros grabs a jacket and starts running for the door, fumbling with her phone. As she pauses in the doorway, Liv is there, squeezing her shoulder and leaning in to quickly pull Ros into a hug. It’s one returned with gratitude. When Ros leans away, she notices something shining in her sister’s eyes both hopeful and sad. “You’ll get to him in time. And whatever happens – you’ve got me, sis. You’ve always got me.”

Ros looks at her sister. Everything – it was all for her. She keeps a hold of Liv’s hand for a moment longer, holding it tightly as she says, “I know. I love you. I- I’m sorry.”

Livia was sunlight in human form: too radiant and bright to be held in silk scarves and dresses, and Ros wants the entire world for her sister. She has always been the moon eclipsed in comparison, and gladly in shadow if it meant Liv could shine – when Livia reaches out, softly wiping tears that Ros hadn’t felt falling from her cheeks, hands gently and warm, she crumbles into her sister’s touch. She could love, had loved; but the first place her heart had a home would always be with her sister.

So Ros felt the warmth on her face double at the touch, until Liv cradles her face in her hands, and all Ros can think is this is supposed to be the other way around, I’m supposed to be looking after you –

“Ros-” Liv says, cutting through the chaos. She’s right there in front of Ros, hands still on her face, tenderly pushing Ros’ hair out of her eyes. “All my life, you’ve been there, looking out for me. It’s okay. It’s okay to want something for yourself – you don’t have to look after me anymore.”

Ros sniffles, sleeve pressed against her lip to try and stop it shaking, “I’m always gonna look after you.”

“But you have to look after yourself, too. You have to forgive yourself.” Liv brushes Ros’ face, smiling with eyes bright with tears, looking like she is saying goodbye. “Go. I’ll cover for you here, just get to the bus station.”

“But I don’t want to leave you-”

“You’re not leaving me,” Liv says firmly, walking her to the door. “You’re finding him. I’ll be right here when you get back – that’s never going to change – but we both know that if you don’t go and find Ben now, you’ll regret it for a long, long time. So go find him.”

Ros pauses, hesitating on the front steps. She looks back at her sister, framed in light, and knows that it was all worth it – good and bad – as long as she was there.

“I love you so much, Liv.”

“I love you too,” Livia nods, eyes darting behind her before ushering Ros to leave, “Now go – good luck!”

With one last look, lingering just long enough to force a smile at her sister through the steady stream of tears now making their way down her face – Ros is off, starting at a run down the Capulet lawn and towards Verona. She has no car, no ride, and no idea where Ben is and how he is leaving. All she knows is that he plans to leave the city sometime this morning, and that she has to stop him.

She loves him.

Ros loves him and it terrifies her, more than she even imagined it could because now she was losing him before he even knew, but it makes her heart beat louder, too. It feels like strength and weakness and truth and the weight of bottling it inside for all these weeks, and Ros’ strides are long as she pulls out her phone, trying to call him, to text him, to get in contact with anyone – because if he doesn’t love her back, she can take that. If he hates her for what she did, she can survive. She has her sister and her cousin. But if he is just gone, scattered on the wind like the smoke of the cheap cigarettes he fiddled with when he was nervous, long fingers cradling them as they made a hazy halo around his head, that – that was unthinkable. None of it mattered, as long as he remained in her life.

As long as he was there.

Mercutio gives her a number, a tiny spark of hope in the dawn as her breath begins to come out ragged, freezing as it hit the air but she keeps running, and Ros is texting him as she goes, heading for the bus station. Verona is flying by for miles and miles and miles. The city is waking, sleepily pulling itself awake around her, but Ros will not see the streetlights go out or the morning paper’s delivered. She does not notice that she almost runs straight into a woman coming out of a garage, or that a man’s voice she used to love calls her name. Ros just lets her feet lead her to him. Her mind goes blank and her body takes over –

Until he replies.

Admid her rambling and the worry in text form, something must get through: because there’s the sound of a bell tolling and a notification showing up on her phone, a single message from an unknown number. It’s him. Ros feels her chest tighten as she misses a step and almost goes tumbling onto the sidewalk, catching herself on a lamppost as she fumbles out a reply, trying to explain. It sounds inadequate, putting it all in a message – but she is still far, half-running towards the bus station as she texts, and it’s in sight but she isn’t going to make it. She isn’t going to make it.

She needs to see him, to explain why she broke both of their hearts out a fear and to tell him that she loves him, even if he doesn’t feel the same. It wouldn’t matter if he didn’t; not one bit. But she had to say the words. Just once, she had to be fearless and say the words, just so he knew; just so it was out there.

When Ben forgives her easily, saying that he doesn’t hate her, asking her to come away with him, Ros runs faster.

The bus station is crowded when she arrives; breathless and spilling through the door like sunlight through a crack in the clouds. Despite the early hour, Verona Bus Station is packed wall-to-wall with commuters and travellers in the early morning rush hour, a hive of bodies and wheels squeaking on over-packed suitcases. There are too many faces to pick out one. Although Ros spins in a circle, trying to do just that – she recalls walking into a coffee shop and her eyes finding his with ease, like walking into a house and discovering that it was home – but there is no such miracle this time.

There are just too many people, too many faces and eyes, but none of them are the one she so dearly hopes to see.

Ros spins, eyes searching, mouth carving out the shape of his name without it ever leaving her lips as she texts him quickly, hoping against hope that she isn’t too late, that the bus hasn’t left – that he was still in reach. She searches for him, facing the board of bus times on the wall and scanning the names of destinations, wondering which one he had picked, and if he had stood where she was now not too long ago. In the glowing red numbers, she looks for him.

A text comes through on her phone. Ros reads it, and feels her lips pull into a smile, one that reaches all the way to her heart. The message is simple, but there are more than words within it, and it feels like hope. It feels like a future.

Turn around.