#so this is what i was doing. in that blissful period where i hadnt yet learned jimmy died btw.

[canarydarity]

(Thought a little bit too hard about Romeo and Juliet ranchers...)

Keeping his head low and his tread light, Tango ducks from tree to tree under the cover of dark from the canopy, protecting him from the spotlight of the moon and therefore his discovery. Behind his back, leftover laughter from Skizz and Etho drifts further away; the volume of Skizz’s last protests, however, remains annoyingly the same as it continues to plague his mind, as does the memory of Etho’s agreement that Tango was—for lack of a better word—fucked. 

Louder than all of that, though, more insistent, more pressing, was the ghost of Jimmy’s lips against his. The sole force of it drove him on, his heart tripping in anticipation when around the trunk of a tree he’d glimpse the stone of the house of Solidarity, or through a break in the leaves he’d catch a glimpse of light from a brazier. 

Voices draw near just as the treeline breaks at last, and Tango ducks behind the nearest trunk as two servants meander by, following a worn path toward the back of the manor; his courage returns to him as they fade, and as if pulled by some rope falling taught or some string being coiled, Tango draws as close as he dares to the base of the stone without giving up the shade of the last tree. He kneels.

Now that he’s here, he must admit, his mind draws blank of any possible plan for continuing on. It’s not like he can wander the house of Solidarity unattended, making it clear in every way that he did not belong, and, on top of that, with one of Verona’s most recognizably unwanted faces. 

Idiot, Skizz had called him; blinded, his friend had laughed. Always the most cautious of them, Etho had recalled that even a masquerade hadn’t been enough to conceal his presence from Grian. 

And Tango hadn’t really until now heard a word. 

Movement in the far window, the unmistakable shifting of the curtains, drawn by an imaginary force—the manmade wind of someone passing through. After a moment, a more permanent form takes shape, and Tango finds himself wondering how he could have stayed still for so long, how the sun could possibly have risen while he had been unaware. 

But it of course is not the sun. He blinks and darkness is restored around him as his eyes adjust to the sight. 

Jimmy, framed in beiges and creams and white—the masonry, the curtains, his blouse—fair as any portrait, as any bolt of silk, as any fine jewel. The slightly damp flop of his hair, the color like spun gold; the curve of his shoulder, the tan glow of skin shimmering beneath the cotton—he’s breathtaking, breath-robbing, even at such distance away, and Tango wobbles enough in his stance that he places a hand on the ground for stability. 

How clear it is that this is a setting in which he doesn’t belong; how envious must be the moon for how dull it shines in comparison. Its colors—silver, the cool tones it usually accompanies—they were despicable in their wrongness. Tango thinks he’d be suited more enveloped by heat; in open fields of flowers, stranded in miles of wild wheat and tall grass, in places without trees, without shade, without reprieve. 

The masquerade, Tango thinks, was not to foster intrigue amongst the guests, but to shield them from such raw beauty, to protect them from its temptation. 

Jimmy’s chest bellows with what Tango imagines a sigh, and he continues on, momentarily disappearing from Tango’s view only to appear again in the following window, and then the one after. Tango follows, and they walk together along the length of the manor, albeit separated by its walls.

Bound, tethered, Tango’s heart tugs him along. 

A corner is turned, and instead of a further row of windows through which to watch, Tango finds a balcony jutting out of the stonework, grand and open to the air. He swallows as Jimmy steps out onto it; stares, enraptured, as Jimmy wanders over to the railing, balances his elbows on top of it, and then drops his head into his hands. 

Through the stillness of the moment comes an unmistakable and truly inspired groan, and Tango startles and glances around expecting to be caught by a rather resentful servant before realization alerts him to its source. 

Jimmy drops his hands and sighs again, and this time Tango can hear the puff of his breath as he exhales.

“Stupid,” he mutters, “so incredibly stupid. Why did I…” He shakes his head and decides better than finishing the thought, squeezing his eyes shut tightly as if he can will the arrival of more to a complete halt with just enough concentration.

Tango is familiar with this method, and, he’s gotta say, it is not as successful as he’d like it to be. 

Jimmy’s lips move again, but too little sound comes out for any of it to be heard, and Tango finds himself wandering closer before he can arrive at any of the reasons why he absolutely should not—too distracted by the thought of those lips touching his mere hours before. 

Just as he’s braving closer ground, Jimmy’s voice rises to exclaim “Tango!” and Tango’s foot finds false purchase over a well-placed root and he slips, catching himself on the cool dewy grass. His head raises slowly, ready to be forever expelled from the grounds—or more likely stuffed and made to decorate Grian’s quarters—but Jimmy’s gaze remains safely away, off into the distance beyond. “Why did it have to be Tango?”

Tango does not dare move. 

Jimmy grabs the balcony railing with both hands and leans back, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath through his nose. When he opens them, he draws himself back in and lets his arms go slack. His brow furrows in thought, his nose forming a little scrunch by the action, like his tutor’s just posed him a particularly troubling set. “But…it’s not Tango that’s the problem, is it? It’s just his name…Tek.” 

Should he be listening to this? Tango doesn’t bother thinking about it, he already knows the answer; not that that stops him, or compels him to turn around and proceed the way he came—for how could he when he’s hearing the echo of his own musings? An utterance of reciprocation for the feelings to which he’s fallen victim? Shared dismay at the grandeur of their circumstance?

“Maybe…maybe if he weren’t Tango.” 

Even before Jimmy drops his head in defeat, Tango knows that line of thinking is for naught. Maybe if he wasn’t Jimmy, maybe if his cousin wasn’t Grian, maybe if his name wasn’t Solidarity and his very existence meant to be an offense. Maybe if the sun didn’t shine, or the moon didn’t beam, or resentment didn’t flow through the streets like blood spilled. Maybe did not stand the test of time nor outlast the memory of a grudge. 

“Perhaps, should I not call him Tango, but assign him some other name…”

If only Skizz was there to witness Tango blurt out, “You can call me anything you’d like.” Idiotic and blind would not have been the only adjectives he was assigned if he had. A few immediately come to Tango’s mind himself—stupid, insane, absolutely and completely screwed. 

He has no memory of deciding to speak, but the words have undeniably come out of his mouth, and there’s no hope of them not having been heard based on the way Jimmy rises to attention. 

“Hello? Is someone there?” Alert and understandably perhaps a little frightened, Jimmy's eyes scan the treeline in which Tango dwells.

Intelligently, Tango replies, “uhh.”

“Who are you?”

Tango flounders, his voice raising a dozen octaves, becoming high and stringent as he at once wheezes out, “God, why has that question become so complicated all of a sudden?”

Jimmy shuffles to the corner of the balcony, his waist pressed against the perpendicular juncture of stone as he leans over the railing to squint into the orchard. “Wait—Tango?” 

Tango is left with no other option than to abandon his haven of trees and shade and step into the torch light of the Solidarity’s garden, lest he’d rather Jimmy lean so far over the balcony that he falls. He catches the moment that Jimmy sees him—the softening of his features, fear being overtaken by the more welcome feeling of surprise, the nervous tightening of his jaw, the biting of his lip. 

If he thought revealing his presence would mean less of Jimmy’s precarious balancing act, then he thought wrong; Jimmy doubles over more, if possible, and Tango throws his hands out in a gesture he hopes is universally interpreted as stay put while some sort of alarmed squeaking comes out of his mouth. But Jimmy just fervently whispers, “What are you doing here? Are you crazy?!”

“Are you?!” Tango whisper-shouts back. “You’re giving me a heart attack here, lean back wouldya?”

Jimmy thankfully returns his upper body to a standing position safely behind the balcony’s edge, but his voice gets no less intense, his words no less urgent. “They will kill you if they see you here, you know that right?” 

In return, Tango can only nod as if this realization has only just, for him, come to light. Of course, it hasn’t—Skizz and Etho had been trying to tell him since they left him outside the Solidarity’s walls, and by instinct alone he knew to hide if he suspected someone walking too close by, and yet. His frantic nodding does not cease as he says, “You know, I hadn’t really thought about it…to be quite honest.” 

“You hadn’t thought about it?!” Jimmy grabs at his hair, incredulous, and Tango is momentarily distracted for the amount of time it takes to imagine doing it himself and wonder at what it would feel like. “I can’t believe this.” 

Shaking his head, desperately trying to restore function, Tango delivers the only defense with which he’s come equipped. “I just—I had to see you!” 

Once more, Tango curses the moon for its inadequacy, for what must be its deliberate hindrance to the wonder of this scene. Because, though it’s too dark to really tell, firelight falling much to short, Tango swears that Jimmy begins to blush. 

Since he can’t completely be sure, he’ll have to make due with admiring this: the way Jimmy tucks his head down, closer to his shoulder, the shifting of his weight from one foot to another; how his eyes seemingly impossibly get a fraction of an inch bigger, wider. 

He doesn’t quite look back at Tango when he says, “You really mean that?”

Tango smiles, “I do, I swear it.”

Whatever modesty was held in his expression before disperses and Jimmys face holds room for little more than mirth when he turns back and demands, “On what?”

“On…” Tango draws his shoulders higher, his hands raising with them as if attached by puppeteers string. They suspend there momentarily, waiting to be released by the arrival of a coherent thought that unfortunately never comes. “I don’t know…” 

Tango bites the inside of his cheek. “What would you want me to swear on? Name it and it’s done.” He holds his hands up in pure complacency, a promise and an offer; take me, im yours.

Jimmy laughs at his near madness, and Tango swears that it moves like wind through the orchard, rippling across all the branches and leaves of all the trees; he sways on his feet to the music of it, doesn’t bother to curb the urge to smile harder at it—his face a perfect mosaic of every feeling he’s every felt. 

With a shake of his head, Jimmy admits, “I dont know either.” 

“Ah, an impasse.” 

Though his head doesn’t move, Jimmy’s eyes duck away again, seeking safer purchase as he instills the night sky with his reply. Tango doesn’t mind, for it’s easier then for him to continue to to watch. “Maybe just…say it again then. Instead.” 

“I came because I had to see you, Jimmy.”

Jimmy’s eyes dart back and then away again, needing to see Tango to truly be sure, but needing privacy to be able to comprehend. “Alright…” He glances back into the room behind him, whatever is beyond the curtains that are all Tango can see. “They’ll come looking for me soon, you really should go.” 

Playfully outraged, Tango sputters, “What! That’s it, I don’t get anything in return?” 

The dramatics earn Tango an eye roll, but Jimmy also begins bouncing a little in place—resevoired anxiety that lets Tango know he was serious about the chance that someone would soon seek him out. Whatever stolen time they had managed to accrue was fleeting and not a second more. 

Even so, Jimmy plays along. “And what am I supposed to give?”

“I don’t know, something!” 

“You’re very helpful, has anyone ever told you that?”

Tango laughs, “A fair hit.” He watches as Jimmy turns around again to assure their privacy once more, understands for both of their sakes the importance of not overstaying his welcome, and his hands tucked behind his back, comes up with, “alright, just tell me this: are you glad I came?” 

Jimmy turns back to him, and this time Tango is absolutely certain of the blush present on his cheeks by the way Jimmy raises a hand as if to feel his own temperature on instinct, or to hopelessly pat it away with the back of his hand. He’s smiling, but it’s clear he’s trying not to, and that’s all the answer Tango needs. 

Before Jimmy can, in his bashfulness, form a verbal reply, from inside a voice does indeed call “Jimmy?” 

Bliss turns to panic in an instant, and instead of earliers soft tone Jimmy near hisses when he says “Tango!” 

If he was smart, he would heed the warning and go, but Tango is still drunk on their proximity alone, on the events of the night—all of which were set in motion by the taking of a chance on an innocently shared kiss. He figures if this is where one chance has gotten him, then he can stand to risk another. 

“I mean, I’m perfectly content to wait, Jimmy.” Tango steps to the nearest tree and leans against it like he’s planning to stay for some time, tries not to laugh as Jimmy’s eyes practically bug out of his head. 

“You—” Jimmy’s head swivels back and forth, caught between the harmlessness in the tease and the actual realistic harm in its consequences if Tango legitimately followed through. Of course, he isn’t going to—the second Tango sees another silhouette in the window he’s out of there, blending back the way he’d come into the trees—but where was the fun in it if there wasn’t just a little bit of real life pressure? “You’re insane,” Jimmy berates, but before he turns and disappears behind his walls that are meant to keep out Tango and Tango specifically, he whispers, “Yes, I’m glad you came.” 

Jimmy’s already gone, but when Tango says, “That’s all I needed,” its more to himself than anything as he turns to go back the way he’d come. 

He did not imagine when the night began that he’d find himself betraying the one rule his family had ever demanded he follow, nor did he expect to feel little concern for himself in spite of this fact, but he did know he’d be helpless but to do it again had the situation started anew, because Tango doesn’t know what greater purpose he could have than to love this man. It wasn’t just the remembrance of a kiss that drove Tango to Jimmy’s window, but the sense that it was only the first, and where there was one would come more. Of this, Tango was certain: attending the masquerade, glimpsing Jimmy through the party-goers, risking following him through the crowd and delighting in that first, perfect kiss had set off more than the events of tonight, one singular night, but rather of whatever was in store for him—for them—all the rest of their lives.

(gonna put "can translate Shakespearean English into gamer speak" on my resume under special skills. [read on ao3 here])