Enchanted
By: fairveronas
Romeo and Juliet, Benvolio/Rosaline; He takes her in his arms and brushes away her tears, and whispers everything will be alright.
A/N Greatly inspired by After Juliet. I've always secretly adored these two together and finally wrote something geared towards them. Plus, I wanted to play with Rosaline's character a bit.
Death clings to her like a perfume, and she's thinking of a boy who's nothing more than a corpse in the ground now, and feeling a thousand different emotions drowning and pulling her down. Crows screech overhead, (making a fitting serenade in this cemetery) a breeze gently blows her black veil.
"Rosaline."
She whirls around to the sound of the voice faster then intended and nearly trips on the impossibly long gown she wears, making the person before her move forward caringly to help. Rosaline steadies her wobbly knees and gives a smug look.
"What do you want Benvolio?" Venom seeps into her words, and her dark almond shape eyes are brimming with hatred.
"I came to see…if you were…alright…considering…"
"Considering my old lover is dead in the ground, buried next to his wife, my cousin, for whom I knew nothing of their ardor? Considering that, I am doing as well as can be expected." The breeze picks up now, undoing Rosaline's high braided coif to come loose and tumble down her shoulders. She fumbles for a hairpin to hold back the unmanageable tresses, and involuntarily shivers feeling Benvolio's gaze upon her.
(Why, oh why, is he staring at her that way?)
"Romeo shouldn't have…led you to believe he felt something for you, whilst with Juliet. It wasn't right."
She scoffs: "Thank you for your opinion, Benvolio. You know how I cherish it." Her tone, her words, oh she can tell she's cutting deep into him; but she's tired of pretending to be the sweet meek girl that she most certainly isn't. (That was Juliet's job, to be the docile one)
"I know that you are bitter in regards to Romeo," he steps towards her, andshe can feel the warmth radiating from his body, "but I can sense something else Rosaline. Tell me. Let me in." Her resolve is waning, quite fast now. All those emotions and feelings and thoughts she had locked away are threatening to spill forth from her lips. He captures her hand in his, and Rosaline breathes in a shaky breath before sighing.
"I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, for what misfortunes will befall me if I do? But…her spirit haunts me, Benvolio! I see and hear more of her dead then I ever did when she was alive. Juliet received all she desired; everything her eyes laid on became hers in an instant. Do you see here, this scar along my neck? As children she wanted my favorite doll, and scratched me with her hairpin to get it." Rosaline stops, pulls down the collar of her frock to show the mark to him. Benvolio touches it lightly; tracing it with his finger and making her forget to breathe.
"Yet, the one thing I wanted above all she wanted equally: Romeo. She had to take what I longed for most in this world." A sob escapes her full lips, and Rosaline tries desperately to hold back on the burgeoning tears threatening to cascade down her face. She turns away from Benvolio, hating for him to witness this moment of weakness. Abruptly he turns her around, and then she's in his arms crying and sobbing and he's whispering how everything will be alright.
Rosaline doesn't know exactly how it happens, but all of a sudden Benvolio's lips crush against hers, and she's grasping at the ends of his tunic, and his hands are in her dark hair. The kiss is fervent and ardent, a release of emotions accumulated over time. Her mind is hazy and blank and filled with nonsensical things as her back collides with a nearby tree (and oh she can tell he wants nothing more than to completely ravish her then and there) but she pulls away and stares at him deeply, taking in the animalistic passion raging in his brown eyes.
"How long?"
"The first time I laid eyes on you. You enchanted me completely, Rosaline."
"Then come for me veiled by the moonlight this night?" She whispers, her voice low and etched with want. Benvolio can only nod, trying to restraint the longing he feels for her, and places a kiss upon her forehead.
"I will m'lady."
(A strange warmth takes root in her heart, and she swears she can hear Juliet laughing from beyond the grave, because love finds a way no matter what)