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Chapter Text

Act 1

Scene 1

Rogue Routes Express

Toris’s hand whisked over the plastic of the wheel as he continued to drive down the freeway. Behind him, Eduard was checking his bullets and Raivis was drinking his usual glass bottle of ale, his pinkie shivering on the corner of the open top car window. 

“Does the boss need us home yet?” Eduard shouted over the sound of the roads.

Toris only shook his head. 

“We should get back soon, still,” Raivis said, his voice never losing his usual waver. “The sun’s setting…”

“What, you’re scared of the Kirklands?”

“N-No!”

“Cut it out, Eduard,” Toris called over his shoulder, his mousy brown hair brushing over his short sleeve as he did so. “The Kirklands usually don’t come this way, anyway. We’ll be back in District 1 soon enough.”

Eduard tilted up his glasses before leaning back across the leather seat. “You’re too soft on Raivis,” he said, “one day, we’ll get into a fight and he can’t handle himself…”

The sun left gold streaks on the back of Toris’s car as it pulled away deeper into the city - coloured blue, to match the rest of the Jones gang - as they continued down the road, bickering. Miami’s Verona Beach was their turf, and what a beautiful place to defend it was. 

“Toris,” Eduard barked, after around twenty minutes, “we need to get more gas.”

“There’s a gas station a few minutes from the fort,” Raivis said, plaintively - the fort being the code name for the Rogue Routes headquarters. “Let’s go there instead.”

“Raivis, I said the Kirklands aren’t usually here. Stop being such a wuss, you know how to wield a gun. It’s fine.”

Toris looked upwards at the fading sky, then the gun he had holstered inside his jacket as the car pulled to a stop at a red light. “It’s fine, Raivis,” he said, trying to sound reassuring as he leaned back to face his subordinate. “Even if something happens, Eduard’s here to back you up.”

“You don’t know that…”

“He knows I’ll be there to report him,” Toris said, giving his other subordinate a pointed stare. Really, within the Jones gang, there weren't clear cut hierarchies, but still, Eduard and Raivis answered to him, and that was good enough. “Look, I’ll go stop by the convenience store to grab some supplies. You refill.”

The wind almost swallowed up Raivis’s nervous yelp as Toris pulled over, unlatching the door to the blue car. His boot nudged against the Rogue Routes Express livery emblazoned on the side as he adjusted his gun and got out. Eduard exhaled before he did so too, leaving Raivis to pick at his ale, his violet eyes watching his every move. 

Eduard pressed the plastic buttons, stained yellow from age, to fill up half the gas. The air was thick with petrol and he kept his head down, one locked into his side in case something happened. After all, no one could tell when a brawl would light up in Verona. He’d signed up for this life, as a lackey of the Jones gang - more officially, the Rogue Routes Express - and ever since the Kirkland gang had moved forward with an aggressive acquisition of the gambling den in what used to be District 8, everyone was-

“Credit card,” Eduard half said to himself, half said to Raivis. Thinking about it wouldn’t solve things for now: the Jones and Kirkland families had been at odds for almost as old as Verona was. Raivis’s swiping hand was wicked fast, almost as fast as when he did quick draw. Toris still wasn’t out of the convenience store.

A low snarl of tires crunching into pavement sent Eduard’s blond hair on end, and he tightly latched the side of the car. His hand was on his gun already, and by the terrified whimper that came from Raivis’s pale lips, he was ready too.

Bright red crawled into Eduard’s field of view like spiders, causing his throat to dry even as he turned on the ignition. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered under his breath. Toris wasn’t back yet. He didn’t even need to see the livery to know who it was.

“Here come the Kirklands.”

“I told you we should have gone home,” Raivis whimpered. “Toris…”

“If you start shooting, I’ll cover you,” Eduard hissed.

“What?” Raivis said just as Seamus Kirkland came out of the car, “you’re joking-”

“Is this what the great Jones gang fields at us? A shrinking violet and an eejit wearing glasses?” 

“What the hell…” Eduard began to mutter, feeling mortification set in on his cheeks, before Raivis cut in.

“You’re provoking a fight with your insults,” Raivis snapped, making Eduard’s gaze shoot sharply from his gun to his fellow subordinate - surely, the ale was finally kicking in and he was drunk. Raivis pushed his thumb against his teeth as he went to draw his gun: Verona’s universal signal for a fight.

The littlest Kirkland, Rhys - Eduard recognised him from his fair blond hair, compared to his brothers’ reddish shades - jumped up and pushed his thumb against his gums to match, standing with his brother. 

“Do you really bite your thumb at us, shrinking violet?” Seamus hissed.

Eduard had half a mind to pull down Raivis into the back seat, forget Toris and hightail out of there, but the awful prickling feeling of embarrassment had curdled into annoyance. After all, he had said he’d back Raivis up in a fight, though he didn’t expect it to happen so soon…

“If you won’t take that back-” Raivis was half slurring his words now, yet the hand that brandished his gun at the Kirklands was steady, “I will!”

“He does,” Eduard threw over his shoulder, not turning around on purpose. There was no point in expecting the Kirklands to take back an insult, anyway. “And I bite my thumb at you, volatile Kirkland bastard.”

Toris came out of the convenience store to gunshots. 

“Oh, you have to be fucking kidding me,” he hissed, ducking past a mother and her two terrified sons, stopping only to tell them to get out. 

“Come here, you foul Jones lapdog!”

With a shot into the soft grass that barely licked the gas station, Toris caught the attention of the four brawling boys.

“Enough!” he shouted, waiting until the loud hiss of the gunshot had faded into the thick summer air of Verona. “Put up your guns! If you don’t want the Anführer’s wrath on us again after last month, then forget this brawl and go home!”

Seamus frowned before he yelled back. “Shouldn’t you repent for your subordinates? They were the ones who bit at us like dogs first!”

“Whatever the strife is, it shouldn’t be answered with guns,” Toris said, just as the bathroom stall swung open, revealing Alistair Kirkland and his cigar and pistol.

As Alistair strode out, his red hair orange in the setting sun, Toris felt his stomach sink, and he was sure his subordinates felt the same. Why couldn’t they just fill up the gas and go? He couldn't help but think to himself, keeping one hand on the car. I’ll have to answer to Mr Jones later, if not worse, his eldest son…

“Peace?” Alistair snarled, his voice colder and mocking than his younger brothers. “Did I hear someone utter peace, while we’re in the company of the Joneses?”

Toris cautiously lowered his gun. If nothing, seeing that gesture would make Alistair halt. 

“I only try to keep the peace.”

“Peace?” Alistair said, his laughter mocking as he stepped under the roof of the gas station, every inch of pale skin lit up by the neon yellow lights. He pulled the cigarette from his lips almost reluctantly, stamping it out with his heel into the grass. “Peace. You’re fortunate you’re not that Rogue Routes son, with the blue eyes. Toris, of all people, should understand how I hate the word,” he bared his gun, causing Eduard and Raivis to jump to attention in the car, “almost as much as I hate Hell, all sinners, and the mere sound of the name Jones-”

Eduard lost patience and shot at the pole behind Alistair before he could finish talking. Toris bit the inside of his cheek and, rather wearily as the bullets began to fly, accepted war.

“Damn it, the stupid Änfuhrer caught us again,” Eduard grumbled, now sporting a bruised cheek from the scuffle. Now that night threatened to truly fall on Verona, the yellow streaks from the sun earlier now stretching into orange, the three of them were sitting in the police station waiting to be released.

“Three times this year!” The leader of the Verona Police and District 49 - the young Anführer, Ludwig Beilschmidt - had barked at the three of them and the Kirkland brothers as they sat, awkwardly squashed, in front of his desk. The huge cross made out of simple balsamic wood behind his desk stuffed the room with tension. “Three times I’m personally called in to apprehend those who dare disrupt the peace.”

“He started it,” Seamus grumbled, glaring at Raivis, who by now had had the alcohol come free of his system, meaning he was trembling out of fear on the chair. A bandage was wrapped around his shoulder.

“Enough!” Ludwig barked, his blue eyes cold and steely. “Jones subordinates, Kirklands. I do not care for what reason or ordeal either of your families have been through. Whatever reason is not enough to disturb the peace of the lives of those in Verona.”

“Anführer Beilschmidt, if I can-”

A loud slam on the desk disrupted Eduard’s sentence, the sound echoing against the aged walls. “For the final time, good gentlemen. If you and your families ever disturb the peace of our streets, your lives will be the only forfeit we will accept.”

By the time a familiar honk of a car made Toris’s head lift, the Kirkland brothers had already been picked up by one of their mothers, the blonde mistress. Embarrassingly enough, Ludwig had demanded the heads of the Jones and Kirkland crime families pick their children - or in Toris, Eduard and Raivis’s case, their subordinates - up from the station. 

“Good lord, Toris,” Mrs Jones exhaled as she opened the door, gesturing for the three boys to get into the car. Toris saw the red eye and eyepatch of Gilbert Beilschmidt getting out and fought back a swear: how embarrassing to have a police escort, even though the elder Beilschmidt brother was a friend to the Rogue Routes Express. “Another brawl?”

“It was-” Toris glared at Eduard as he opened his mouth, causing him to shut it again, “it was a slip of judgement for them. I was away for a moment, then the Kirklands showed up…”

“I appreciate you defending our honour, but truly, being reprimanded by Beilschmidt Junior like that is not good for our prospects,” she sighed, tightening her shawl around her shoulders as she turned the ignition on. “The Kirklands are already courting their favour again.”

“Where’s Alfred?” Mr Jones, sitting on the passenger seat, turned to the three boys in the back. The smell of artificial hibiscus and water lilies flooded the car as the air conditioning turned on. “Have you seen him tonight?”

Gilbert jumped back into the car as he spoke, shaking the Mustang hard. “Damn good thing he wasn’t here today.”

Eduard bit back a lengthy exhale, looking out the window. To spare Raivis from being pinned under Mr Jones’s steely gaze, Toris took a breath then spoke.

“I think I saw him around - well, I don’t know. But he did tell me this morning he was going out to the beach.”

“To clear his mind, as always,” Gilbert added. “That’s all he’s been doing lately.”

“Not again…” Mr Jones sighed, but it was a sombre breath. “Ever since the spring, he’s been there morning after morning. If not at the beach, always in his room, surrounded in darkness. It’s almost like he's become the darkness itself, with how gloomy he's been. My - our foolish son.”

“I’ll get him,” Toris offered. “Bring him to the house before night. I’ll atone for this afternoon.”

“Forget it, he won’t listen to you,” Gilbert huffed. “It’s fine, Toris. Make sure those two actually stay put in the fort tonight. I’ll get him.”

The dip of Mrs Jones’s brown hair was the only indication she had heard him. After a few more minutes of driving down the coast, she pulled the car to a halt, and Gilbert got out, surveying Verona Beach during sunset.

Alfred was never good at penning poetry.

Given Verona’s passions seemed to exclusively lie in card game based gambling and poetry -  especially if you lived in the Anführer’s District 49, Gilbert made Alfred more than familiar with that - Alfred’s lack of ability to write poetry was a little embarrassing. 

Even Matthew, despite him running Maplewood Manor Hotels & Resorts full time in the neutral north of Verona, found time to contribute a few poems and stanzas to the annual Jones literary magazine, published in July for the twins’s birthday. A stupid tradition, Alfred thought, for a crime family, but whatever. 

Yet whatever Alfred wrote seemed clumsy and awkward at best, and a running joke for the family at Christmastime at worst (“how can the heir to District 1, the Rogue Routes Express, the Jones family, all of it, write this”), and so he’d given it up. When he was sure he’d fallen in love, he’d tried his hand at it again. Something had changed in his life, and for the first time, he was in love…yet it was not that simple.

Alfred picked up his loose papers and tried again. Anything to fight the boredom.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs

Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes

 Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears

A madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet

Alfred jammed his pen into his jeans, narrowly missing his leather holster. It sounded like fucking nothing to his ears. Hell, it didn’t even sound like it came from him. Everything else seemed to come easily to him - math, quick-draw, surfing, among other things - except poetry. What good was that in Verona, where poetry was the way of courting, not plays? Writing good poetry, if nothing else, was his last resort to try to win Alice Kirkland. Good poetry, a miracle, would be enough to woo her away from the Kirklands, despite her bearing the name. He had heard she was a mere cousin of sorts, an affiliate, not one of the five Kirkland children, four of them bastards including the dead one, all directly fathered by Lord Kirkland.

As Alfred exhaled, he heard the roaring of a voice break the soundscape of Verona Beach, the low tides giving and taking, the shrill caw of seagulls. The familiar shout of “hey, Al, jackass!” made Alfred bite back a laugh. 

“Thought you were at the brawl today,” his mentor and best friend yelled at him, words carrying halfway across the pier, playful, joking. If Alfred hadn’t heard what Gilbert had said, he would have actually laughed.

“Huh? Brawl?” Alfred whipped around, almost dislodging his papers he’d written his words on. “Shit, what-”

“Your three stooges, Toris and his guys,” Gilbert snickered. “They were refilling at some gas station when the Kirkland bastards came up. Got picked up by West, like always.”

Alfred couldn’t help but groan at that, lying back on the wood of the pier. The waters had receded so far up the beach that there was nothing but sand below his feet.

“All three of them? Even Raivis?”

“He’s only three years younger than your twenty, you know,” Gilbert said as he approached him. “Quite the little fighter when he’s drunk. Of course, you’re better, given that I trained you. Anyway, good thing you were off moping here today. It got pretty messy, given Alistair Kirkland came along for the ride. We just picked them up from jail.”

“We? You mean my parents came along too?”

“More than that,” Gilbert snorted. He paused to lift Queen Mab from his pocket, tracing the beautifully lettered barrel bearing her name before placing his gun next to Alfred’s. He pushed himself up onto the pier, the miniature Jesus on his cross necklace catching the light. “They were asking after you.”

“Oh God, don’t tell me you told them about Alice.”

“Not a word.”

Alfred rubbed in between his eyes, as if he could rub the relief out of his gaze. “Thanks for getting them out of there. Just ally with us already. Seriously, what do the Kirklands give you and Ludwig that we can’t?”

“They pay West and I’s rents, for one,” Gilbert said. He lifted Queen Mab back into his hands, emptied the chamber, and gently tossed his gun from hand to hand. “But you know how I value being able to go across all of Verona. Something you can’t do. You’re still moping after that Kirkland cousin, aren’t you?”

Alfred hissed before he spoke. “C’mon, that’s a low blow. Even if I wasn’t the heir to the family, she wouldn’t be interested, because I’m a Jones. But I’m-”

“Ah, well, tough luck,” Gilbert said. “I’m sure your position isn’t helped by the fact that you’re the capo to the fortune of the Rogue Routes. What sort of betrayal would she even make for herself for you? Surely, there are others to catch your eye, Al.”

“No, there aren’t,” Alfred groaned, pausing to look at his script. “I’ll share this. ‘Each hour feels so long when it’s tainted with the agony of not having who I love.’”

“Nice line. What makes you feel like that, hm?”

“It’s the same way each day is doubled when you’re not cradling Mab in your hands.”

“Now now, hands off my girl,” Gilbert retorted sharply, running a snow pale finger against his gun. “You can’t even compare your infatuation to the decade-long bond I’ve had with her.”

“You’re not helping,” Alfred continued to groan, folding his manuscript onto his lap. “With all the gunfighting that’s been going on this year, I’ve just heard every single tale from-”

“Inflexible jackass - oh, what’s this?”

“Gil, give those back!”

“Why then, o brawling love, o loving hate?” Gilbert recited, flipping to the first page of Alfred’s prose, his red eye lighting in manic glee. “O anything, of nothing first create? O heavy lightness, serious vanity, misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms-”

Alfred scrambled for the papers, barely managing to stop them from falling into a sandy grave down in the pier. With a huff, he stacked them together, turning pointedly away from his best friend.

“Look, Al, great prose. Though if you’re writing them to court Alice, you should just get over her instead. For the writing,” Gilbert nimbly dodged a half hearted shove from Alfred, “for the writing, if you could throw in some rhyming, some alliteration, it could land a spot in your pops’s collection next year.”

“Y’know, I’d prefer it if you went back to shit-talking about my sharpshooting,” Alfred muttered, acutely aware of the hot flush crawling up his back as Gilbert cackled like a hyena. “Just - whatever. There’s no point in trying to get me to stop thinking about her. It would be like telling me to stop thinking.”

“Well, give that a try!” Gilbert exclaimed. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll try to find you some nice charmers to sweeten your eye. Do you even like girls, Al? Is this something you’re trying to do to fight off the boredom?”

“...I dunno,” Alfred had to mumble, after a moment. “I just…s’nice, her smile…Raivis and me, we were crossing the boulevard one day, and then I saw her across the street…”

“Seriously? I mean, are you sure she wasn’t some cute guy in disguise?”

“I’m telling you! I love-” Alfred huffed, feeling two red spots bloom on his cheeks, “a woman!”

“Uh, sure,” Gilbert said, not sounding entirely convinced. Before Alfred could protest, he moved on. “Point is, just forget Miss Kirkland. Give freedom back to your blue eyes so you can bear to see others. I’ll make you think your swan were a crow!”

“Nice line,” Alfred said. He rearranged his holster around his hips and started to move off the disused pier, trying to not grimace at how natural those lines came from his best friend’s lips. “Are you submitting that for the annual District 49 poetry collection?”

Gilbert shrugged, as soon as he had safely repocketed Queen Mab. “If my ring finger can still hold a pen by the end of the year, given all the brawls you Joneses and Kirklands are getting into, I don’t see why not.”

The ink of the night sky began to make its mark by the time the two of them began to walk across the sand, the low caws of seagulls covering their movements. Verona Beach, after all, was the namesake of their city, and it had been neutral territory for as long as the Jones and Kirkland crime families had ruled Verona. There would be no gun fights here, no blood spilled.

“I’m sick of the fighting, really,” Alfred said, after a small silence had settled between the two of them. “I know I’m District 1’s heir, but I’m tired. Dad goes on and on about buying the Kirklands out of Verona, but I just don’t care about that anymore - the big split happened almost a hundred years ago. Sometimes I think Matt made the right decision, fucking off to Maplewood. Everyone in Verona just…everyone just plays the card games and writes poetry, or practises sharpshooting. It’s just - who cares?”

“Careful, Alfred,” Gilbert said, abruptly solemn. “Not everyone would want you alive if they heard that from you.”

Chapter Text

Act 1

Scene 2

The Velvet Thorn Brotherhood

By the time Rhys knocked on his older half brother’s door, Lady Kirkland was losing her mind. 

“Rhys Kirkland, get back here,” the matriarch and sole legitimate Lady of House Kirkland dragged the sixteen year old by his sleeve across the heavily carpeted landing. “After the stunt you pulled with your half brothers, you’re still remaining grounded for the rest of the week.”

“But Lord Kirkland said, about the party, we'd be free to attend-”

“I do not care about what your foppish father said,” Lady Kirkland retorted. “Sixteen and you’re off running ragged with your older half brothers. Sixteen! Being apprehended by the Anführer like that when you’re still not of age is an embarrassment! Enid will have my head when she returns in January. Couldn't you have held it in until she left last night?”

“Mummy wouldn’t do that,” Rhys said, batting his big green eyes at his stepmother - given that he was still technically the baby of the family, any opportunity to use the fact that his mother and Lady Kirkland were the two remaining women in the much maligned Kirkland household would be harnessed. “Just let me talk to Art-”

“Arthur is - wait. Arthur? Arthur!”

Arthur Kirkland felt the water wave above his eyelids. Slow and soft. Somewhere in the bathroom lingered his stubbed out cigarette in the glass ashtray that always sat on his windowsill, but if he opened his eyes he’d ruin the illusion of being underwater for himself. The uncorded stereo he’d placed on the toilet seat was churning out the second half of the CD he’d set out for his afternoon soak-

“Arthur?” A muffled sound came from above the bathtub. “Arthur!”

Arthur opened his eyes for just one moment, closing them just before he felt a tiny bubble escape from the corner of his lips. It made him feel as if he were in an aquarium, an exhibit, a vice.

“Arthur!!”

Arthur snarled a slow slurry of bubbles as he pushed himself up from the bathtub, the liquid sloughing itself from his body. He bit back another swear.

“Arthur, where are you?!”

“I’m here!” Arthur shouted, right after dousing his face full of white, dry Viyella towel. “What is-” he paused to put the towel on the hook, hurriedly yanking on a bathrobe with a golden K adorned where the fabric would sit on his right pectoral, “what do you will this time?”

Rhys was hanging about in the doorway, smiling his usual catlike smile as Lady Kirkland stood in the doorway with her arms folded, watching her only child and the sole heir to the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood stamp outside into his bedroom. 

“Take leave, Rhys, we must talk in secret,” Lady Kirkland said sharply, though there was no real disdain for Rhys in her voice, not in the same way her voice would hold it for Alistair and Seamus and Fionn, when he was still alive. Of course, after the vicious infighting between the Kirkland mistresses, Arthur’s mother had made peace with Lord Kirkland’s final mistress, Rhys’s mother Enid. Perhaps it helped that she was fair of hair like her, her temperament more placating, her disposition better suiting Lady Kirkland’s. Perhaps it was the fact that the gap between affairs was a decade longer than the last one Lord Kirkland had. More than certain though, it was the fact that Arthur had been born strong and healthy to her at last, and whatever stake the roughshod Alistair Kirkland had begun to stab into the throne of the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood had been snuffed away in Arthur’s first breath that broke for a cry. 

She nudged with her chin at Arthur’s dressing room, her arms still folded. Arthur took a moment to glance near the doorway - and sure enough, his youngest half brother was still there, teasing in his eyes.

Lady Kirkland closed the door behind Arthur, opening her mouth and drawing a breath, before abruptly pulling the barely used dressing room door open again.

“Rhys!” she shouted. “Come back again! I need your help in explaining this to Arthur.”

“What on Earth will he need to help explain to me?” Arthur said. “He’s just a baby-”

“Yes, stepmother,” Rhys said, sidling back to the door, standing right in front of the sculpture of the Virgin Mary that was a customary gift for every Kirkland son’s bedroom once they reached sixteen. Arthur did his best to scowl at him as he entered the dressing room but found his lips would not cooperate. After all, Rhys was the only half brother Arthur had that was certain would hesitate, at least a little, to slit his throat. The only one after Fionn’s death. Much easier to get along with a half sibling that wasn’t at your throat all the time for being born to the right woman. 

Lady Kirkland adjusted her silken jade robe. It matched the evergreen shade of her gaze that Arthur shared, though her blonde hair that she had also passed down was now bronzed by age, curling around the frown lines around her eyes. “By now, Arthur, you must know that you have delayed your debut into the marriage market for three years.”

“Two,” Arthur said hastily. “I turned twenty two this April, mother.”

“You heard it from yourself. You’re twenty two now, Arthur.”

“Do you - must you say it like a poison?”

“The point is,” Lady Kirkland did not directly retort, but the harshness in her tone said all that she needed to say, “with the bleeding heart Rogue Routes Express or whatever faff they call themselves, breathing against our necks, it is high time we made an alliance.”

“With who? Those ruffians?”

“...Rhys, this is what I mean, he’s being wilfully obtuse! Introduce Mr Bonnefoy to him for me.”

Rhys blinked before he answered his stepmother. Arthur had started to notice that Rhys had become his mother’s confidante of sorts now that Rhys’s mother was on a sabbatical out of Verona. If looked at from a faraway lens, given Rhys had been born with most of the Kirkland traits save for a softer, peachier shade of blond, they looked more similar than Lady Kirkland would care to admit.  “I don’t think that’s what he means,” he said lightly. “He just is uninterested in what Verona’s singles can offer.”

“We’re the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood,” Arthur hoped to appeal to his mother’s more proud sensibilities with those words, “and none of our current wards can even offer anything of note. Of course, the young Anführer, despite being close in age, cannot marry a Kirkland or a Jones, as it would violate the treaty of District 49. And you mentioned District 1, so it was natural to…come to such a conclusion.”

Either way, by the second sentence, Arthur could tell his mother was disinterested, by the way she was glaring at the barely used vanity in his bedroom and touching at the corner of her scarlet lip. “Oh, either way. No way would we ever make willing contact with the Jones family. Selling out the heir to the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood would be a disgrace!” 

“I’ve heard that the eldest Jones son is a brute,” Rhys chipped in, helpfully or not, to Lady Kirkland’s cause, Arthur wasn’t sure - he had never met him, and knew essentially nothing about him at all.

“Yet this young man is not,” Lady Kirkland said, abruptly all smiles. It was more frightening than the dour expression she always aimed at Lord Kirkland. “Mr Francis Bonnefoy, of the House of Bourbon, seeks you for his match.”

Arthur could only stare uncomprehendingly at his mother. 

“He’s quite nice,” Rhys added, now definitely buoying Lady Kirkland, Arthur thought. What would a sixteen year old know about matrimony? 

“Dresses nicely, per Rhys’s opinion,” Lady Kirkland said, still wearing that sickly sweet expression. What would a sixteen year old know about matrimony, let alone fashion?! Rhys only copied what Arthur, Alistair and Seamus wore! 

“What of his address?” Arthur had to start somewhere; an outright expression of disgust would send his mother into a tirade. 

“His location - oh, the House of Bourbon was formerly District 33, absorbed into our district,” she said. “Quite affluent. They occupy a sizable estate even now.”

“If so, why must they retain the title of ‘House of Bourbon?’” Arthur probed. “Why not just the Bonnefoy family? Or has that surname fallen into disrepute after our family and the Joneses came to rule both halves of Verona?”

Lady Kirkland rubbed at her green eyes with her right palm. “Rhys, be a dear and get me a glass of sherry. Your half brother needs some convincing.”

Rhys obeyed, sticking out his tongue at Arthur behind her back as he flitted off into the hallway.

“Are you opposed to matrimony?”

Arthur folded his arms, resisting the ungentlemanly urge to pick at a loose thread with his bathrobe. “It’s impossible to ask me to oppose something I do not know of yet,” he said blithely. “However, I do warn you that if you force the match between this Bonnefoy person and me, our affection will only be as warm as the matchstick you provide us with.”

Lady Kirkland scoffed, though it seemed more rooted in amusement than annoyance. “You and your turn of phrase,” she said as the door opened, revealing Rhys with a small flute of sherry. “Rhys is right, you know. He spends more time with you than I do, and so his judgement was helpful in my optimism, speaking with you today.”

Rhys nodded, giving Arthur one of his catlike smiles as he settled down next to his stepmother, watching her down the glass.

“May I stress the point that a sixteen year old cannot possibly hope to,” Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose; his bratty little half brother, “blast it all. How can a sixteen year old know more about marriage than a twenty two year old? Alistair and Seamus aren’t even married and Lord knows how long they’ve been bachelors for.”

“Because they are illegitimate children, boy,” Lady Kirkland retorted - now the familiar distaste in her thick voice had filtered back in. “They make themselves useful by defending the family and can hope for nothing more. A reminder of the disgraceful conduct of your father that has cost this great crime family their prestige in how he allowed himself and his mistresses to nearly tear it apart. Comparing yourself to them is an insult.”

“Not as much of an insult as wrongly assuming only a powerful crime family like the one situated in District 1 is worthy of a match of the strongest House in Verona?” Arthur hissed, the back of his knee brushing against the garish gold of his chair.  “Father may have weakened us in your own words, but have we fallen so far? A family so weak as to specifically request you use their ancestral house to introduce their chosen son to us?”

“My dearest son,” Lady Kirkland said, sternly. “As you said, it is impossible to oppose something you do not know of yet. Which is why I now pose my second question. Can you like of Francis Bonnefoy’s affections, when he is to attend our ball this week?”

“I’ve not met him, so I wouldn’t, well-” Arthur said, the words clipped and short before he paused. Given he could tell his mother was getting into one of her moods, evidenced by the speed of which she downed the rest of her sherry, it was best to not antagonise her further. “I’ll look to like. But no further will transpire - that is, I will not be washed away with any ungentlemanly feelings of passion.”

Lady Kirkland exhaled, her battle having been won. Muttering something about having to prepare further for the party, she took her glass with her, almost certainly to drink another flask’s worth. Rhys lingered in Arthur’s dressing room, waiting until his stepmother had descended the stairs, leaving the designated floor for the Kirkland sons.

“How is this Bonnefoy, really?” Arthur demanded. He wanted a cigarette.

“Oh,” Rhys said, grinning at him with an aura of smugness that Arthur would have slapped away if it were tangible, “I’m sure he’ll be enchanted by you, brother. Don’t you want something more exciting in your life whilst me and the others get into gunfights?”

Arthur scoffed before he spoke, getting up from his chair and placing a firm hand on his little half brother’s shoulder, escorting him away from his room.

“Getting arrested and in trouble is most certainly not any sort of excitement I’d like. You're still a baby, Rhys.”

“But, Art-”

“Go,” Arthur said, brushing off his little half brother's hug. “Mother’s left the room now, there’s no need to try to flatter her now. Stop your simpering and go back to pretending to study the scripture Father puts in your room.”

By the time Alfred had stepped out of the shower that morning, he saw white floodlights fill his bedroom, barely touching the morning sun, and couldn’t help but grin to himself. Only the cars manned by those that worked in or associated with District 49 had access to those kinds of unmarked cars with white floodlights, and there was no way Ludwig would visit the Rogues Routes complex so early in the morning.

After Alfred had towelled himself off and slipped on some shoes, Gilbert was already chatting with Toris and Eduard, his police cap stashed underneath his arm. He perked up as soon as he saw Alfred shimmy down the stairs.

“Took you long enough,” he said in way of a greeting. “Look, I'm gonna have to make it real brief, I gotta go in a bit-”

“But you just got here! Come in for a beer at least, I know you like that-”

Gilbert held up his cap, slightly over his red eye and eyepatch. “I’m standing in for West for business after this, so, can’t, Al. Anyway, listen up. You free tomorrow night?”

“If it’s Mom and Dad you want, they’re visiting Matt at Maplewood for the weekend-”

“Ya deaf or something?” Gilbert teased, as he somehow magically produced a handful of envelopes, passing them out to the three gentlemen in the room. “You.”

Alfred couldn’t help but tear into his immediately, barely hearing when Toris muttered something about Raivis having to legally obey curfew. 

From the House of Kirkland

To be held: the ancient tradition of the Great Congregation on the Summer Solstice Eve.

If you be not of the House of Jones,

Come and crush a cup of wine!

“You’ve been moping too much about that Alice Kirkland lately,” Gilbert tapped the first line of the letter, backed by light green stationery, “and so I thought, well, either the best chance of you forgetting her would occur at this party. Or, you could go see her outright, no?”

Alfred couldn’t help the corners of his lips lifting. “Nice try, Gil,” he said, “I’ll go to see her, that’s all. After all, I’m sure her beauty can’t be beat.”

“Heh. Anyway, make sure to dress up nicely; it’s a costume party,” Gilbert threw the words behind him, already gesturing to the butler to open the door for him. “A masked ball, as a bonus. Only real reason I thought it was safe to invite you Jones boys. Guns’ll be checked in at reception, like every year.”

“I’ll bring them anyway…”

“Al,” Gilbert said, making fingers at Alfred’s face. “Big mask tomorrow and a fresh pair of contacts, you understand me? Take the costume seriously, don’t fool around or some shit. I don’t care how beautiful Alice Kirkland or whoever is, I don’t want to have to try to break you outta there. Not too much I can do if the Kirklands all have guns trained on your ass.”

“I wear contacts all the time anyway. You coached me better than that, Gil, I’ll find something!”

“Ya fuckin better!”

Once Gilbert had left the Rogue Routes complex, Toris, Eduard and Alfred disbanded, leaving the grand foyer empty, passing by the two Virgin Marys flanking the large door with mirroring translucent veils. There had been the getup he’d worn for Halloween last year, Alfred thought as he pressed the button on the lift to go back to his room, now feeling lazy, but there had been photos of him all over the press. About the rowdy heir to District 1. If that sort of thing wasn’t popular in Verona like his lovesickness, he’d be compared to Matthew and be laughed at. 

Alfred held back the urge to shake his head as he re-entered his bedroom, flopping immediately back onto the bed, bringing up one forearm to cover his eyes. He’d think of a costume and win Alice Kirkland’s heart, and then everything would be fixed. Surely that was going to happen.

Gilbert’s boots echoing against the marble floor of the Jones complex. A silverborne cross Alfred wore along with his dog tags. Playing cards with Matthew in the morning. The sensation of the roughshod leather in Alfred’s Mustang. His own pounding heartbeat against his ribcage. Fireworks over Verona Beach.

The scent of burnt roses.

Alfred closed his eyes, fell asleep, and dreamed.

Chapter Text

Act 1 

Scene 3

Rogue Routes Express

By the time Alfred had woken up from his nap in the black open topped Chevy - driven by Gilbert - Alfred’s papier mache knight mask was slipping from his face. 

Fireworks exploded above his head as he came to. On his left was Eduard, clad in zombie themed finery, toying with the sticker residue of a beer bottle. In front of him, Toris - wearing a Viking outfit, was having a conversation with Gilbert, dressed up as a ghostly pirate to match his scars and eyepatch.

“...and I thought that, if I arranged it like this,” Toris was half shouting given the speed and the wind, “just so, that we could prepare a winning deck-”

“Look alive,” Gilbert said, noticing Alfred had roused, quickly stashing Queen Mab back into her holster. “Our little princeling’s awake.”

“Just because we’re going to some fancy masked party doesn’t mean you can call me princeling, jackass,” Alfred shot back, pinching at his eyelids, though careful to not do it too hard, given he was wearing contacts. He rubbed further away the sleep dust in his eyes, as if a fairy had deposited her handful into his eyelids. “Been a long night last night.”

“Still trying to write poetry for your girl, Alfred?”

“What - hey Gil, that wasn’t meant to be shared! Come here-”

“All right, enough of that,” Eduard threw in his words as he yanked Alfred back by his faux chainmail. “If we make too much of a scene, security’s going to look past Gilbert, see Alfred, and get us all thrown out.”

“What, are you scared of Alistair Kirkland? He’ll be off dancing with some man or woman instead of guarding security, won't he?”

Eduard threw up his free hand, letting it mingle with the whistling wind as Gilbert drove recklessly into the shrouds that the forests of East Verona formed; the natural protection that guarded the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood estate. “Look, I’m saying that despite Gilbert and Al’s skills, thirty against four ain’t gonna look pretty on the Chevy.”

“And I’ll have to answer to my little brother, even if I’m a corpse. No more fun trips out with you Jones boys.”

At that, the three of them seemed to quiet other than the loud blaring of rock music on Gilbert’s radio. Alfred remembered three summers ago, sitting shirtless as his best friend had wrenched the living hell out of that thing to uncap the volume. Now as they swerved into the forming line to the Kirkland estate, Alfred could hear the music pound along with the hissing of his heart.

“Thinking about her, Alfred?” Toris asked cheerfully, but Alfred could not open his lips to say that he was. He thought it would have been, but as he tilted his head back to see the quiet stars above his head, slightly obscured by his papier mache mask, he could not fill his head with her. 

Fireworks crawling up the dark skies, pulled up to his line of vision by the scattering of the foliage. Blue and green and white, warding off the sting of boredom. The faint strings of some classical music piece Alfred had never heard in the distance. Soft lights like fireflies serving as the gates to the underworld of the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood.

Alfred thought of the death of one of the Kirkland bastards a few years ago, in a completely ‘unexplained’ shootout in one of the gambling dens owned by the Rogue Routes. Weeks and weeks of investigations and lurid stories printed in the press, printed in the same font as the lettering on Alfred’s pistol. He guessed that because the Kirkland son was a bastard, the Kirklands had not asked for equal blood, but what if it had been the blood of the sole heir of the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood, a man Alfred knew next to nothing about? Surely something in the universe would pluck something equivalent from the Joneses. Abruptly, at the end of that possibility, something made his chest clench underneath his knight costume.

A nudge from his left. “Al,” that was Eduard, “you fine? Toris asked you something.”

“Y-Yeah, I’m fine,” Alfred said, shaking himself out of it. He leaned back against the end of the car, the longest strands of his honey blond hair grazing the upholstery. “I’m just heading into enemy territory, that’s all.”

“Just keep on your mask like we agreed and you’ll make it,” Gilbert muted the music before he slowed the car. “From all his affairs, I can tell that Lord Kirkland will be distracted tonight. Placid, like some fat cat. The others, too. Just get your fill of Alice Kirkland and go, if you’re that scared.”

Something’s in the air, Alfred thought, as he looked back at the stars, the fireworks that exploded vainly next to them, as if painfully aware they could not match their beauty. Telling me that I can’t just go into the Kirkland manor and get away with it. He watched the fireworks turn the water of the vast fountain green, fighting with the glaring lights of the Kirkland manor. He felt the firelight scatter across his Adam’s apple, the vein in his neck that pulsed with his heartbeat, his throat. 

I’ll be capable of paying the price, the words swam in Alfred’s mind as Gilbert pulled up to the gates, presenting the tickets for the evening. In the front of his vision, Alfred could see metal gates, a stall sign that read Cloakroom and another half its size reading Gun checkpoint. Nothing left except his faux armour and his mask as his shield.

After all, nothing can match the price of death.

“You should be the angel, Rhys,” Arthur said, after a pause, waiting for the first set of fireworks to elapse. “I look ridiculous.”

“What were you going as before?” his baby half brother said, the sound muffled over the silk divider.

“I suggested a necromancer, but Mother said it was unappealing.”

“Unappealing for whom?”

Arthur glared at him behind the door as best as he could. “You know. My supposed bloody suitor. Oi, listen - if you put it on, you can have Mr Bonnefoy waltz off with you, and if he continues to stay blind or deaf or dumb, you can marry and become legitimate in the Bonnefoy family. Wouldn’t you like that?”

“I don’t think that’ll work, Artie,” Rhys swanned in wearing his costume: a red dragon, because every sixteen year old wanted to be a dragon. “And as mummy says, I’m not legitimate, so I’ll be a hard sell, right?”

“Stop saying mummy, you’re grown up enough to get arrested by the Anführer. Multiple times. At least, don’t say it around me.”

Rhys pouted. “Fine. Can we go down now?”

“I don’t want to bother with Mr Bonnefoy, let alone our father,” Arthur picked at his stiffly constructed angel wings as he spoke. “Honestly. You’re lucky he’s in such a giving mood, or he’d have put the three of you into your bedrooms with no respite.”

“Not me,” Rhys said, and begrudgingly, Arthur could admit he was probably right. “Father’s always preferred me over Seamus and Alistair and-”

“Yes, yes, why don’t you complete the entire roll call of my half siblings who want me dead,” Arthur opened his bedroom door, inviting the rowdy music and conversation, and pushed Rhys out, carefully avoiding tripping on his plastic dragon tail. “No excessive drinking, do you hear me?”

Rhys only stuck his tongue out at him before prancing away to wait for the lift. Arthur stood there for another moment, taking in the incessant drum beat and the almost smashing of glasses, then retreated again. Stupid bleeding party. He’d rather be hunting pheasants, which is what he’d usually be doing this time of the week, or anything else really.

Arthur moved his way out onto the balcony, watching the cars from outside spill into the crown jewel of District 44. The air was much clearer than even the sneak peek he had been given of the forthcoming horrors of the evening. Dancing, eating, drinking, speaking. Everything Arthur was at best indifferent to. None of which would further his development, not only as a person but the heir to the greatest crime family in Verona Beach. In short, a waste of time.

By the time the cavorting of the guests and the echoing of the live band filtered into Arthur’s bedroom through the balcony, he had made up his mind to face the music. Nothing could be more humiliating than to have his mother stomp up the stairs to grab his wrist and shove him in front of Mr Bonnefoy and his disgraced family like a show pig. 

A sea of masks beamed grotesquely at him, the taste of artificial perfume a tang on Arthur’s tongue as his footsteps dappled against the staircase. A thick, nondescript scent lingered, strengthening as Arthur arrived at the ground floor. A choking ocean of smiling, masked faces clad in costumes, filtered through garish lighting of the Kirkland crime family colours, the underside of the landing the only reprieve from the lights. 

Gathering the fabric of his costume - Arthur didn’t even bother wearing his masquerade mask, given how hot it was - he ducked away. Thankfully, with masks on, Rhys would serve as a similar enough distraction before the guests realised the heir to the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood would have had no business wearing such a childish costume. Champagne, beer, wine - all of it mingled unpleasantly in Arthur’s nose as he hovered near the bar, hoping to nab a drink, but that was useless. Even without a drink, his hands had gotten sticky from the humidity. Honestly, anything to get away from the choking sound! 

Arthur hovered until he saw a faint pulsing of lights in the far left of his vision, blocked by an artsy looking peacock and her partner, the woman’s mask so ornate it almost covered her partner’s face. He made a beeline near the direction of the powder rooms, angel wings brushing against the wood frame of the door in his haste.  

From as early as Alfred could remember, his parents had always shunned huge parties like this.

Birthday parties, wedding parties, all of that was held within the family estate, honouring the traditions of District 1. Then Maplewood, when Matthew had acquired the trademark and all the buildings that had come with it, had shifted to be the new venue, but other than that, nothing went outside the family. No ornate parties. Just small, intimate family affairs, because the Joneses could freely scoff at the Kirklands for their ornate displays. 

Now Alfred was certain that he was his father and mother’s son, because good God did he find it overwhelming. Lots of loud singing, chanting, drinks everywhere, he’d even been pulled into many a dance circle, which made it hard for him to keep his mask fixed firmly on his face. No chance to search for Alice Kirkland and make his affections known, but between the sweltering atmosphere and the clumsiness of his two feet, Alfred’s brain simply didn’t give him any space to care. Not when blood was drumming in his ears like a capo in wartime.

Eventually, after everything, he found himself in the bathroom. Whatever. Alfred turned his head, turning on the taps as cold as he could so he could dunk his face in them, get the heady perfume of the party and booze out of his system. It was much easier now that there wasn’t his stupid silver mask over his face, he thought as he shut his eyes, submerging his face in. It stung like hell, but it felt like someone had lifted the rose coated veil from his eyes. Twice, thrice. Alfred exhaled, rocking against the metallic basin, taking in the eerie silence of the bathroom as his ears rang.

Great, there was some pirate pissing behind him, underneath the obligatory rosary-embossed cross that appeared in nearly every Verona bathroom. Alfred took another glance to confirm it wasn’t Gilbert. The partygoer gave him a glance, but left as soon as Alfred had managed to wipe off most of the water in his hair, a walking speed so calm that he was certain that he hadn’t been identified as a Jones. Still in the game. Still alive.

The lengths he'd go to ward off his boredom…

With another shake of his fake chainmail armour, taking a moment to fix the pieces of armour that sat at either ends of his broad shoulders, centering the loops of faux metal before he put back on the shoulder pads. Alfred raked his right hand through his hair, feeling the weight against his arms once more as he exhaled. He was about to brave going back to the party, when he looked in the mirror and saw blue.

Spirits lifted immediately, Alfred wandered to the source, which was, to the delight of any boy who was once a child, an aquarium. Blue angelfish bobbed silently in the waters, accompanied by sea-green fish mingling amongst them, a miniature school of striped fish brushing against the plastic tube that fed into the tank. Something interesting, for a change. As he felt himself smile, he saw the tiny whiskers of a mudfish whisk across the sand, the silt fanning out against the brightly coloured coral. 

A brush of feathers.

Alfred bent down, wanting to see the mudfish even closer as it passed by a faux sandcastle, when he saw a flash of green, the colour of the sea at Verona Beach during a storm. So swift that Alfred had to look again.

Yet this time, he saw pale skin, a parted, flushed lip. The ridges of a collarbone between blue and white ribbon-esque plants. Alfred’s body moved before his mind did, pressing him closer to the glass, the tip of his tanned nose harsh against the surface.

Startled, the other person - to whom this intoxicating tangle of features belonged to - sprung away, revealing himself to Alfred for the first time. A cautious press of fingers, given how faint they were through the glass. A pair of strong set wings bearing feathers, those feathers the only warning Alfred had gotten before his fall.

The water of the tank was distorted, deformed, but even that could not deny the beauty of the man on the other side. Green eyes, so green that they defied the discolouration of the aquarium, ones that watched Alfred’s body as it relaxed, presented itself, surrendered. Alfred’s smile bloomed, and he followed the man’s movements as they watched each other. 

Weak piano music - from the live band or otherwise, Alfred didn’t care at this point - filtered in, and at the instance the man’s eyes moved from his chest to his face, the music had warped to accommodate the death that the mere shift of eyes had brought him.

Arthur had never felt himself a fool. He had only felt what was steeped in reality - the brush of the smooth paper of playing cards, the rough stench of money and residual smoke, the slow thickness of seeping blood. Heir to House Kirkland.

And yet in that moment, when the blue eyes of the young man across him had flickered to his, putting even the carefully curated water of the aquarium to shame, Arthur had felt himself fall. There was the physicality of his own fingers slipping down the glass, the heaving of the other man’s chest across the thick barrier of the water, but more than that, the collapse of his own common sense, his will. Arthur lost all his power before he knew it.

The young man pressed forward again, much gentler this time. The shadows of the powder room played on his face, tinting most of it in darkness, yet the light drew a crescent against his handsome features. He said something, mouthed something, that Arthur could only guess at as he felt light flood against his face, the same light that the shadows of the handsome stranger had afforded him.

Let me go, the teasing smile dancing on his tanned skin seemed to say, please say you’ll let me go. I can’t say anything.

Arthur’s eyes flickered in between the coral, broken by his eyelashes.

Then don’t speak.

To his amusement, the young man’s eyes lowered bashfully, one of the fish swimming past his cheekbone as he grinned. Arthur couldn’t help his own smile as the man mimicked Arthur’s slight movement to the south, his fingers reaching to touch his against the glass-

The loud thrumming of footsteps - and Rhys’s familiar cry of ‘Artie’! - was the only warning Arthur got before his half brother grabbed his hand. 

“Mother’s calling for you,” Rhys said urgently, his dragon tail held in one hand as he dragged Arthur out of the powder room, leaving Arthur with only a split second to stare desperately at the knight in the room before being pulled off, not able to see the young man follow with equal hunger.

Arthur’s head disappeared behind the pillar, leaving only the unusually structured tips of his angel wings for Alfred to follow. Arthur shot him a look, turning his head back, the wildness in his green eyes catching the gleam from the chandelier, his rosy lips parted ever so slightly.

“Your drugs work quick,” Alfred breathed to himself as he pushed through the crowd. 

Chapter Text

Act 1 

Scene 4

Rogue Routes Express

Alfred was in love.

So, so desperately in love. He felt himself burn from his entire body, but most at his fingertips, as if the brief hint of touch he had received from the angel had been its fuel. 

Pushing himself through the bathroom door, he could see the angel now - one of his pale hands had been taken by his companion, but another was holding the end of his toga, leaving one of his delicate wrists visible as his green eyes reached Alfred's. He was sure that the hunger he could see matched his own.

The boredom that had filled his mind ever since he was a child had been swept away, gone in an instant. As Alfred moved closer, he could see a flash of red hair and abruptly felt the thick, sticky air of the party on his bare face, and he snapped his mask on, losing sight of the angel for just a moment. Red hair could only mean one of the two oldest Kirkland bastards or their mothers, given that they were the only redheads in Verona that he knew. Alfred could picture Gilbert now - drunk or not, Alfred wasn’t sure because Gilbert was the designated driver - chewing him out for not being careful. But who needed to be careful when there was such a man?

Arthur had lost the gorgeous knight from the bathroom, and before he could do anything about it, his mother had seized his wrist, giving Rhys an approving little nod before planting Arthur in front of another man. Wonderful. He could not think of a sequence of less appealing events.

“Here is Francis Bonnefoy, from the House of Bourbon,” Lady Kirkland said with a flourish of her hand, the golden bangle jingling as she did it, an action Arthur was sure she had practised a thousand times in the mirror. “And he seeks you for a dance.”

Francis Bonnefoy was dressed as an astronaut without his helmet, of all things. The silver around his neck did nothing for his pompous, neck-length blond hair, much unlike Arthur’s knight.  This morning, Arthur had been telling the truth when he had told his mother that he would have at least attempted to like the person she had picked out for his match; now nothing could be further from the truth.

“Would you like to, sir?” Francis said, in a slight yet nauseating accent. From the looks of things though, his face seemed as young as Arthur’s. Arthur gave him his best grimace-smile, but there was no way his mother would let him go without a visible attempt.

As if Lady Kirkland had saluted the band, the raucous party music now sidled into a soft, romantic tune filled with strings and flutes, but if nothing, it took Arthur only farther away from the obligation holding his hand and back into the face of his knight, the loose way his mouth had fallen before he had smiled, the devastating colour of his blue eyes. His mother flitted away with her sweet smelling sherry, and Arthur’s eyes wandered the crowd once more for that flash of silver, the shade of soft, wheat-blond hair…

The entire song elapsed, and still nothing. Thankfully, Francis released him as the band started up a new song, seemingly ready to go straight back to partying, now wearing a much more diplomatic smile compared to a real one. Arthur pressed himself up against one of the large pillars, feeling the ridges against his fingers as he searched the crowd. It was a relief to know that Francis Bonnefoy was as uninterested in the match as he was. If the knight had not-

A hand grasped his wrist, making Arthur jump back with a yelp, his slight back muscles tensing as his foot almost crashed into the marble. He pulled his gaze up and felt his body still as the knight looked back at him, maskless, underneath his fringe, giving Arthur a charming smile with that loose mouth of his.

“You grip too hard with your hand, sir,” Arthur breathed, yet he could not move his hand away, for the knight’s roughened palms would make a perfect set of chains. 

“Really?” the knight only grinned lopsidedly, moving closer to Arthur, his ungloved hand caressing the fabric of Arthur’s angel toga. “In that case, I’ll do what saints do, and soothe that pain by giving you a kiss. What you say to that, pretty angel?”

“Pretty angel-” Scoffing, Arthur had to turn his face to the side to avoid the knight’s lips - how mortifying if he gave into the other boy’s charms so soon - and felt himself shiver at the warm breath that fell against his cheeks, the sound of the fabric of his costume yielding to the knight’s hand. “Perfect saints don’t have rough hands like yours, given all they do is pray, and you, with your one hand on mine, are clearly not itching to pray, are you?”

The knight’s exhaled laughter made Arthur want him even more. The same way his mussed, wheat blond hair falling over his blue eyes did, how he radiated sunshine as the two of them moved around in the packed room.

“You’re an angel, aren’t you?” the knight continued to flirt as they passed a throng of biblical shepherds. “Just what my prayers need. Lessee…let’s just skip to the part where they pray with both hands,” he took both of Arthur’s hands in his own, “then put their lips to their hands, to really deepen their prayers, to make sure they’re holy…”

“What uncouth, unsaintly language,” Arthur teased, but had to breathe out as the knight kissed his neck as he dodged his lips once more. In contrast to his clumsy flirting, the knight’s touches were boyish, bold in the way he clasped his hands together against Arthur’s slight waist to bring him to his chest, fanning out the feathers of his wings to get closer to his skin. “How can you possibly hope to touch an angel when you are a sinner?”

The knight’s eyebrows raised in amusement, and he spilled Arthur further backwards, one of his palms pawing against the wall, barely missing a partygoer’s stuffed animal as he hit the elevator button behind them. 

As the elevator dinged open, the knight pulled Arthur into it, merely pressing it closed. 

“You’re right, angel,” the knight said. “In that case,” he gently pushed Arthur against one of the ornate mirrors that formed half of the elevator walls, “instead of putting my lips to my hands to remove my sin, I can remove it by kissing - kissing you?”

God, the boy was so cute, Arthur couldn’t help but think as he stumbled over the last words of his flirtation, but there was no denying his intentions. The knight’s nose brushed against his, turning the grip on Arthur’s waist firmer by shifting him from his hand to his arm, the hand that had been supporting himself wrapping around Arthur’s barely covered shoulders. The sweetest of sinners.

Arthur’s eyes lowered, his breath catching on his lip as he raised his arms to wrap around the knight’s broad shoulders, one finger catching on his chainmail.

“Then move not, while I take your prayers,” he whispered, looking at the knight underneath his thick eyelashes. 

The knight did not hesitate, and delved into Arthur’s lips, cupping his chin and keeping his mouth slightly ajar for perfect access. Arthur did not see the knight’s eyes open briefly, taking in the sight of their entwined bodies in the mirror, before fluttering shut as he tasted him for the first time. The gasps from their lips meeting, the wetness of their kisses, their hearts clashing softly as the two pressed their chests together - the sound of their exquisite prayer echoing within the elevator. 

As the knight pulled back for air, Arthur could see his blue eyes sparkling, so painfully full of life, of excitement. “You’ve cured me, pretty angel,” he exclaimed, quickly moving down to kiss Arthur again. “From your lips, you’ve taken away all my sin!”

“Again with that nickname?!” Arthur spluttered, though he could feel the corners of his own lips lift. “Then - wouldn’t that mean, from your lips, you’ve given all your sins to me?”

“Oh, that’s right,” the knight said, putting one finger on his slightly wet lips in pretend thought, then snapping his fingers, grinning at Arthur sweetly. “Then…give me my sin again.”

Before Arthur could continue teasing him, the knight kissed him again, even taking the opportunity to dip Arthur a little, his hand cupping his downy soft fair hair as he did so, pinning Arthur’s hands to his chest. There was only a quiet clank of his armour in the elevator as Arthur gripped his chest, pulling him tightly, one foot wedged against the knight’s instep as he darted his tongue out, intertwining it with his.

With a satisfied gasp, this time, Arthur was the one to pull away.

“Good prayers and poetry,” he scoffed in a low tone, unable to hide his smirk. “Why, noble knight, it seems that even you cannot resist kissing by the book.”

“I’m sure you can teach me better ways to kiss, then,” the knight kissed at Arthur’s ruddy cheeks; he could feel the heat on his own face. Arthur’s right hand trailed from where it was fixed on his neck, making sure the pace was slow and torturous as he tangled his fingers into the coil of metal keeping his costume on.

Just as Arthur was about to pull the knight’s face to his once more, though, the elevator dinged open, revealing a couple holding hands: Arthur recognised one of the women as Alice, his cousin, though the other woman, tall and busty and tanned, was a total stranger to him. Arthur’s knight blushed, and before Arthur could stop him, he ran back into the crowd, and naturally, Arthur had to follow.

Before Arthur could seek him out in the crowd - goodness, this knight truly did things by the book, including a classic chase scene - he caught sight of his parents finally making their second fashionably late entrance at the top of the stairs. Remembering himself, he had to stop to greet them.

If Alfred hadn’t already lost all of his senses to the pretty angel he had kissed so many times in the elevator, he’d be embarrassed about seeing Alice Kirkland - and what seemed to be her female lover - again. But who was she to him, now? How could he have ever thought he had loved her? It was nothing but a fleeting fancy, but all of that was gone now. 

Turning around, he was about to attempt to explain himself to his angel, when he noticed a swell in the music, the crowd around him turning to the banister. 

Lady Kirkland, with her fan in front of her sallow face, her Egyptian finery odd against her pale skin. Lord Kirkland, boorish and untoward, a cantankerous swine in Roman armour. And yet, his angel was bowing to them, an angel submitting to a false god as they passed, as fair of hair as Lady Kirkland, and then it hit Alfred.

The Velvet Thorn Brotherhood has a sole, legitimate heir…born as April fixes her roots into the earth, as the papers write every birthday of his…

By the name of ‘Arthur’...

As Arthur’s parents spoke briefly to him then continued onto the raucous party, Alfred did his best to force his way through the crowd, now putting on his mask with his left hand, his right feeling his way through everyone else. Arthur’s green gaze had fallen back onto the crowd, scraping through the throngs and throngs of people as he perched on the banister. 

“You’re…the heir to the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood,” Alfred could only whisper to himself as their gazes met. He could feel his papier-mache mask sagging on his face, the elastic loosening and falling down his neck, but he felt none of it, except the shock on his angel’s expression.

The younger Rhys Kirkland - that face Alfred did know, from all their gunfights - took once glance at his half-brother’s expression and pulled Arthur away, leaving Alfred to stand in the crowd, staring up at the now empty balcony. 

“Arthur? Arthur!” Rhys’s voice was hushed, harried as he took Arthur’s hands, pulling him behind one of the hastily wallpapered columns that had been decorated for the night’s party. “Did you see him? Should we tell Lord and Lady Kirkland?”

Why did - why did he look at me like that? The anguish in the gorgeous knight’s eyes made no sense: after all, Arthur was sure he knew that he would be rejoining the party to find him soon. It had just been a greeting to his parents.

A tug on his uncovered forearm. “Arthur!”

“What is it?” Arthur snapped, glaring down at Rhys - but a twinge of shock made his eyes widen at the panic in Rhys’s green gaze. “What is - who are you talking about?”

“The heir to the Rogue Routes Express, that’s what I’m talking about! If you - the one in the silver costume!” Rhys exclaimed, jabbing a finger outside to the ballroom. “The blond one with the tanned skin - Alfred F. Jones, the brute I told you about earlier!”

Arthur stared at him. “The knight?”

“Yes, the knight! I don’t know what he’s doing here, but we have to-”

Rhys’s voice faded away into the sound of Arthur’s heart pounding in his head. The knight. The most perfect, gorgeous knight that he had kissed passionately within minutes of knowing him, feeling his own heart press up against the bones of his outer ribs to get to his. The brute heir to the empire of District 1. Alfred. Alfred F. Jones. 

The son of his great enemy. 

“No,” Arthur said quickly, pushing a hand over Rhys’s babbling mouth. “No, Father won’t like it. There’s never been a brawl ever since he started hosting it. Has the knight - no, Alfred - caused any trouble tonight? Have there been any reports?”

He allowed Rhys to shake free of him quickly, and to his relief, his half-brother understood that he had voluntarily let him go. “No, he’s not, but still…”

“Then let him-”

A flash of red in the corner of his view, and Alistair, clad in his typical devil costume, black hairband contrasting in his reddish hair, strode up to the two of them up the stairs. 

“Have the two of you seen the brute from District 1?” he spat. “Cavorting at our party! Father must know immediately.”

Though Alistair was older and taller than Arthur, Arthur still held power as the sole legitimate heir of District 44, and yet Arthur had to clench his fists at his sides as he prepared to exercise his authority. “No. Not without Father’s orders.”

Alistair slammed the plastic end of his fake pitchfork into the marble floor. “Are you giving me orders?”

“I’m trying to not have your face slapped off by Father,” Arthur hissed. If he hadn’t been living with his eldest half-brother breathing down his neck for almost all his life, he would have been intimidated, fake pitchfork and all. “So unless you want to be humiliated in front of half of Verona, then go be my guest.”

“But he’s a brute! He’s freakishly strong, almost threw a car at one of our subordinates last month, he’s scary with a gun, people say he can use swords as well,” Rhys’s panicked speech would have been effective if not for the fact that all of that description about his gorgeous knight was making Arthur want Alfred even more, “he’s a danger to the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood-”

“Aye, he is,” Alistair snarled, “and even if Father ordered perfect peace,  I have to deal with that Jones boy here-”

“He wasn’t armed, and he wasn’t causing a scene,” Arthur kept his tone stern as he relieved his grip on Rhys, turning to glare at Alistair. “Look, you know how Father is. Miserable and shriveled with his sickness and the multiple warnings from the Anführer, threatening our gambling dens, our card games. This one night is his refuge, and given tradition, I’d not want us to be punished if nothing’s happened yet. The best thing is to leave the…the heir alone. If he starts anything, I’ll tell Father myself.”

Anger knitted in Alistair’s thick eyebrows and frustration in Rhys’s, and if he truly was a dragon, Arthur thought as he saw his little brother’s shoulders relax, his tail would have sagged.

“...okay,” Rhys said, thankfully, after a moment, though he still looked conflicted.

Alistair jabbed a finger in Arthur’s direction, which prompted the District 44 heir to glare back. “But if anything happens, it’ll be your fault.”

“Good. Now back to the party you go. Run along, Alistair. If you see anything, tell me.”

As soon as his two half-brothers had filtered back into the party, Arthur ran along the side of the balcony, trying to keep a low profile as he ran his hands through his blond hair. The flash of silver that had marked his love was gone now that the party was fully and truly breaking up, and he felt panic set into his heart. Where was Alfred? Had he seen their conversation, overheard it? It wasn’t possible, as everyone knew the Kirklands were only allowed up there unless by invitation, and it was off-limits even during parties. Where was he?

Another moment of staring at the crowd, and Arthur could stand it no longer. With a huff, he pushed off from the banister, striding through the corridors opposite where his parents were still drinking, slipping into the big balcony that oversaw the front of the Kirkland manor. Underneath him, laughter and drinking songs were rife with the crowd, garish lights in the shape of olive leaves to add to the Greek-Roman theme flickering into the night as cars piled out of the driveway. A swift glance from one end to the other revealed greens and reds and oranges, but not a single blue car, the District 1 colours. Arthur knew it would be hopeless, but he could not help but search in desperation. Would Alfred leave him here, without another word of their love? 

Then Arthur caught a flash of silver under moonlight, and he felt himself ducking to the next smaller balcony, the tip of his feathered wings catching on the brass door. His gorgeous knight lifted his head to the night sky as he pocketed his gun, but his painfully blue eyes were unfocused, the sight even more vulnerable as he had now removed his mask. Arthur saw the Anführer’s older brother next to him, dressed in some outrageous getup, but Alfred’s eyes still seemed unable to find him, even as Gilbert Beilschmidt pushed him towards their Chevy, laughing all the way. 

It was a small sliver of conversation amongst the rush of all the people trying to get away, but Arthur heard it: the smallest of disagreements. Alfred had pocketed his gun, but his body was still angled back to the manor, his eyes still roving over the building. He had barely been strapped in by one of his lackeys when his gaze finally managed to find Arthur, who had his hands pinned on the banisters, leaning out into the night.

The night cradled him against the sky as Arthur watched their car leave the front drive of the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood, the fountain barely obscuring Alfred’s desperate movement, his torso leaning over the back of the Chevy as he looked back at Arthur. No hatred, no fury - only fear. The fairy lights adorning the entrance to the house brushed into his face, as if they had become fingers, and tenderly caressed Alfred’s face, but none of that could move his gaze from where he was watching Arthur. How Arthur longed to be those lights, to stroke each inch of perfection, to worship his bone structure once more, to kiss the lips that he had enjoyed only so briefly.

His only love, borne from his only enemy. Both of them, heirs to the empires that reigned over Verona. As if it had been written in the stars by some cruel god.

Arthur stood on the balcony until he could no longer see Alfred, not noticing Alistair’s cold eyes as he watched the District 49 car pull out of the driveway from another parallel balcony, his gloved hand cradling the cool barrel of his gun. 

Chapter Text

Act 1 

Scene 5

Rogue Routes Express

As a thoroughly drunk Toris and Eduard cawed out the drinking song from the night at Alfred’s side, the heir to the Rogue Routes Express felt himself grow silent, watching the trees that they had driven by without a care earlier on that night fly past them. Each moment was another five minutes he needed to take to go back to the house, as soon as they broke free of the line leaving the grand Kirkland estate. 

His angel, his sole enemy, standing there on the balcony. The fireworks from the night made Arthur seem even smaller than he was, illuminating the tips of his strong feathers, and worst of all, his desperate expression. 

Alfred was sure he had never seen Arthur tonight, not truly. And he was in love. Painfully, desperately in love, stuck in a car that was taking him further and further from-

Without another thought, Alfred dug his hand into his seatbelt, freeing himself from his seat, catching the attention of Gilbert at the wheel.

“Al- wait, Al!?” The Chevy skidded to a stop, the miniature rosary he had on display jangling wildly in front of the car mirror. “What the hell-”

“Drop Toris and Eduard back at the fort,” Alfred threw the words over his shoulder, “then go home first, don’t wait up for my pops to ask you questions!”

“What the hell?” Gilbert shouted, throwing up the one hand that wasn’t on the steering wheel. “Are you seriously going back for Alice Kirkland? Didn’t you get over her already, or stared at her enough?”

As Alfred ignored him, sprinting further into the tree line, Gilbert took one more look at the drunk passengers behind him, then sneered. He bit at the inside of his cheek, looked at one of Queen Mab’s chambers he had thrown haphazardly onto the dash, and threw up the same hand again, slapping it against the paint of the car.

“Go put yourself at risk, then, lover boy! Court your early death,” Gilbert cackled after he yelled this time, pressing his foot against the pedal as the procession of cars had begun to free up, “but don’t you expect my or her ass to bail out that pleading heart of yours, ya hear me? Good night, little princeling!”

Alfred couldn’t help but snicker as he heard the familiar purr of the Chevy pulling away, the conversation fading into the night as he clambered in between the tree line. He made sure his gun was securely tucked into his holster, then took off running, the midnight wind racing through his hair as he removed his mask, stuffing it into his belt. There was no getting Gilbert to understand, given the only thing he’d ever loved romantically was Queen Mab and how good of a gun she was. How could he tell him that he’d actually seen Alice Kirkland, but had already moved to the heavens beyond her?                  

As the moon hung high in the sky, Alfred finally managed to make his way to the now much quieter estate, pushing back his fake chainmail so he could roll up his silver sleeves, the material bunching in his fists as he did so. He swung back his belt and holster, making sure that it wouldn’t accidentally fire, though he stopped short of emptying it of its magazines. Angel or no angel, he was still going into the heart of enemy territory. He held himself for three or four agonising minutes, but seeing no guards nor security cameras, he did a running leap onto the fence and easily found his grip, given that the fence was just a petite wooden thing that only groaned a little as Alfred scaled it. Maybe the Kirklands didn’t want to hide their beautiful pool and garden with some ugly wire fence? 

Alfred didn’t want to get himself or his gun wet, so he carefully scaled back down the fence into the Kirklands’ manor, wiping his hands free of bits of wood and sweat as he steadied himself. Other than the low chirping of cicadas Verona’s summer always brought and the low rippling of the pool’s water, the place was silent. Was everyone still at the party? Was his angel still there?

Composing his breath, Alfred pressed himself to the back of the ivy infested wall, imitating the leaves of the plant, watching his reflection shiver in the pool as he pressed himself against the wall, wedged in between a blindspot that looked upon a balcony. He only dared to tilt his head upwards slightly when he had caught his breath, watching the stars in between the fireworks the Kirklands were still releasing. 

Maybe it was a good thing Alfred had never seen Arthur before in battle with the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood, given that he would have lost control of his weapon immediately afterwards. Tonight was the best time to meet, and still, it had so many problems - Arthur dancing with that other man, the way he had disappeared so quickly, the longing in his eyes. Alfred had watched him in the mirror of the elevator and could hardly believe his fortune, but now his own misfortune stared back at him. Of all the people in Verona, the heir of his great enemy, laying him low.

It all made sense, and Alfred was a fool. There was clearly a reason why he’d seen the Kirkland brothers at gunfights and not his angel - it was because they were bastards and Arthur was not. The Velvet Thorn Brotherhood could stand to lose their bastards, and they already had. They could not say the same for their sole heir.

With a hiss, the headlight from the room upstairs flickered on, making Alfred’s heart jolt. His leg muscles tensed to run as he heard one of the doors open, accompanied by a short staccato of footsteps. A sigh that rose goosebumps all against his skin.

“Damned party,” Arthur’s elegant, breathy words made Alfred’s eyes roll to the back of his head. “Distracting me from the sun.”

The sun? Alfred looked up to make sure he wasn’t seeing anything wrong, and sure enough, the moon was still there. 

“He came clad in silver,” Arthur continued to speak to himself, and Alfred could see his slender forearms press themselves against the banister. “A knight of the sun, but he was wearing the livery of the moon. In disguise until his very last, and yet he shone brighter than both of his masters.”

Alfred felt his breathing burn in his throat as he pushed himself against the wall, taking in every one of Arthur’s movements, his face as he shifted to the right side of the balcony, not noticing Alfred underneath him. 

“And yet, his name is Alfred F Jones, of the Rogue Routes Express. The heir, even,” Arthur said, shaking his head in mocking laughter. “Alfred F Jones,” he continued to taste Alfred’s name, and it was as if he were feeding each bite of the food of love to him, how his accent lifted on the f, hitched on the last syllable of Jones. Alfred had heard his name many times, but never like the way Arthur Kirkland was pronouncing it. Like drawing out silk sheathed steel.

“And yet, just my fortune, a Jones,” Arthur snorted as he hit the banister with the palm of his hand. “To saddle him with that name.  If only he could deny it; refuse his earthly family and their empire for my sake. Or if only I could give up my own, if only he’d swear his loyalty to me.”

Alfred’s hand tightened on the ivy, steadying his grip as he dug his boot into the crackling brick of the wall, trying to crane his neck to see Arthur clearer. He couldn’t remember ever reading one of the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood’s poetry collections that they released yearly to compete with the Rogue Routes, but if nothing, he was sure Arthur would land top billing every year.

“Though I wonder,” Arthur continued. “If you weren’t the heir to District 1, if you weren’t called Jones…would we still be mortal enemies? That name, that…title,” he spat, “of heir, what is it but chains? If only you could cast them off,” Arthur extended one trembling hand from the balcony, reaching out into the night sky, “cast your name off, Alfred.”

A sharp sound cut through the night, and before Alfred could climb up the ivy at all, Arthur had pulled the stem of a rose, gazing at it the same way Alfred wanted to be gazed at.

“What’s in a name? That which we call-” he sighed, picking at a dark red petal but not plucking it, “that which we call a rose. By any other name, would it not smell as sweet? Then would you not, my Alfred, even if you were no longer called Alfred, no longer branded and leashed to the cage of Jones, still retain your dear perfection? If only I could know what part of your name you could destroy for me, then…then I would offer all of myself, in return.”

All of it, Alfred braced his throat to shout, carving every word Arthur had spoken into the beating threads of his heart. If I could destroy all of my name for you, then I’ll no longer be Alfred F Jones. I’ll become nothing else, if not yours.

It was better than any word of poetry Alfred had written before, every word from himself. He clambered up the ivy, his knuckles shaking as he grasped every inch of growth he could.

Alfred clambered onto the balcony, his breaths short and half fused. The balcony was…empty. Still, the doors to the bedroom were left ajar and unlocked, and so Alfred stuffed his gun back into his holster, shaking off his shoes so that he wouldn’t dirty the white carpet. Arthur’s gaze of dismay, not disgust, was what fueled his heart. That same flicker of fire, the heat of Arthur’s lips…

After Alfred took a deep breath, he began to survey the bedroom. As expected of District 44, all the furniture looked unnecessarily expensive, gold and white accentuating everything. One door opened to a dressing room on the left side, on the right Alfred saw a hint of a bathtub before he had to retreat, feeling himself flush. A large four poster, the curtains closed, and as Alfred turned around, a large, arching vanity to stare back at him.

Alfred couldn’t help but watch his reflection. Flushed, heated, his fake chainmail hanging off him like an unfitted sheet. His holster sat awkwardly underneath the chainmail, but none of that mattered at how his blue eyes pierced back at him, highlighting the unevenness in his face, the fire in his cheeks. Even the small movement of his chest, when he exhaled, made his heart beat faster.

He was in love. In love. More than he had ever thought he had ever been. Whatever fleeting fancy he had given to Alice Kirkland felt pathetic in comparison - to call that love would be an insult. Now he was standing here, presumably in Arthur’s bedroom, with the scent of roses filling the air, he could feel the hairs on the back of his head stand up with arousal.

It took an almost equally embarrassing amount of time to realise that someone was in the doorway of the room. Alfred heard a click of a gun and whirled around-

“What are you doing here?” Arthur sputtered, throwing down his weapon as he slammed the door behind him, his chest heaving and angel wings fluttering as he did so. “What are you-”

He crossed his bedroom in three quick strides before grabbing Alfred’s face, kissing him hard. It was only when Alfred’s foot hit against the hardwood of the base of a silk screen that they stopped, panting. 

“That was you,” Arthur was tripping over his words now, so different than the ethereal angel Alfred had heard out there, “the whole fiasco with the - I thought a hound was out there, the amount of racket, with the ivy and-”

“Did it put you off?” Alfred couldn’t help but tease. He couldn’t help but be confused. Shouldn’t Arthur be furious at him, curse him out for being a Jones? But then again, those sweet words he had said, surely they held some kind of truth? And the kiss…

“No, it…” Arthur trailed off as he spoke. “No. I didn’t hear any sound until the end, so I believed I was alone.”

“You weren’t,” Alfred said, and it surprised even himself that his voice could come out so gentle like that. It wasn’t the voice he used when he was with the boys, or even with his parents - it was an entirely new one.

Arthur looked at him, then moved away slightly back to the door, giving the handle a shake or two. Once he had locked it, he looked back to see Alfred still there, standing hopeful in front of the silk screen. Alfred’s breath caught at how tender Arthur’s eyes were, even in the half dark. 

On his way back to Alfred, Arthur picked up his gun and left it on his bedside table, turning on the covered lamp before settling into Alfred’s arms. The two of them swayed slowly together, to the fading bars of the party as it was wrapping up.

“Are you not Alfred, of the dastardly Rogue Routes Express?” Arthur’s voice was agonisingly soft. 

Alfred felt his heart leap against his ribcage, at the prospect of having Arthur’s heart near his own again. “If you don't want me to, then I won't be.”

“Such flirtatious words for a brute.”

“A brute?!” Alfred couldn't help but splutter, though Arthur’s teasing smirk was what stopped him from continuing. “Who said that about me?”

“My littlest half brother, who I’m sure you’ve shot at in combat. Listen,” Arthur said, his hand returning to the metal circle of Alfred’s armour he had played with in the elevator before, “did you hear everything I said, back there?”

At Alfred’s eager nod, Arthur’s green, doe-like eyes flickered to his. “Then, dastardly, brutish Alfred F Jones…” he trailed off, “are you not of the Rogue Routes Express? The heir to the empire of District 1?”

“No, pretty angel,” Alfred leaned forward to press his forehead against Arthur’s. “Or should I say, Arthur Kirkland of the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood, heir to the empire of District 44.” 

“Pretty angel,” Arthur scoffed as he said it. “If you continue with that nickname, I’ll - never mind. Don’t you know how much danger you are in? How on Earth did you even get in here - I thought you’d driven off with the Anführer’s older brother. With security, and everything tonight, I…”

“Love,” Alfred said, to Arthur’s loud snort, halfway caught up in laughter. “No, I’m serious! Because of my love for you, I could clamber over any wall, swim through any sea, conquer any mountain, if it meant I could get to you. You-” he reached out and took Arthur’s arm, pushing it against his armour, “because I love you, Arthur, you’ve made my armour real. If any Kirkland comes through that door and attacks me, I’ll be protected by your love.”

“You say it too rashly, the word love, not to mention-” Arthur’s voice turned abruptly fearful, and the tremor in his intoxicating District 44 accent made the veins in Alfred’s hand tighten as the other boy took it. “Alfred…if they see you, they’ll kill you.”

“Then let them,” Alfred shook his head, taking Arthur’s hand, kissing his pale knuckles, taking in the slight aroma of the rose he’d held. “Let them come in, guns blazing. If the night can’t hide me from them, as long as I’m here with you, as long as I can die in your arms, having your love…then it’s better to die quickly by their hand than live a hundred years yearning for you.”

Arthur abruptly pulled away, his breath coarse as he pushed his hands in his hair, the edges of his angel wings trembling as he took a deep inhale. His shoe dug into the expensive carpet of his bedroom, then he turned around, wetness coating his green eyes as he strode back towards Alfred, gripping his collar and then kissing him passionately, pushing him against his silk screen.

“You heard what I said tonight,” Arthur kept his phrases short as he kissed Alfred between each one, “every word. You swore it. Can you so easily swear your love to me?”

Alfred was already opening his mouth to say yes before he was silenced by another kiss.

“I know what you’ll say, that you’ll love me until the day we die, until - all of those things you said, how you declared your love to me over and over. But I won’t let you think that I’ll be so easily won. It’s easy to say all these things, isn’t it? To have the word ‘love’ in your mouth over and over again. But I need more than that from you. I need your vow, Alfred.”

“Then I’ll vow to you! What do you - ah, uh, the moon, tonight,” Alfred pointed hurriedly outside at the night sky, and if Arthur was not keenly aware of the fact that he was putting his soul on the line for his forbidden lover, he would have found it adorable, “the moon! I’ll swear by her!”

“The same moon that’ll be gone by sunrise?” Arthur was teasing him and Alfred knew it. “That changes her faces every week?”

“Then,” Alfred couldn’t help but follow after Arthur as the other boy led him from the banister, “c’mon, tell me what vow you want me to give you.”

Arthur’s left hand caressed Alfred’s cheek, the movement of his smooth thumb against his tanned skin sending shivers down his silvered costume. He was so close he could almost taste him.

“I want you to only swear by yourself,” Arthur said, his voice painfully tender. “Because your love for me must never be inconstant.”

Alfred could only nod, taking the hand that was on his cheek and bringing it to his lips, kissing the smooth, pale skin. 

“I won’t let it be,” he said. “I’ll come find you, every night, if you want. Right here. And if the moon makes you forget me, if the sun lowers your eyes, then I’ll woo you all over again.”

Arthur flipped his hand that Alfred was kissing, then used it to cup Alfred’s chin, dragging him closer. Alfred’s chainmail shook as he obeyed, his large, calloused palms stroking Arthur’s angel wings, looking down at him from their height difference.

“It’s been one night,” Arthur said, half to himself, half to Alfred. “We’ve only known each other for a night. This is ridiculous.”

“If you put it that way, yeah,” Alfred said. “But I’m in love with you, Arthur. And you said to me that if I could give up my name for you, my claim to my father’s empire, then you’d give yours up.”

Arthur’s green eyes twinkled under the night as Alfred’s right hand left his angel wing, caressing his cheek. “Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?” Alfred imitated his lover’s accent in mock anguish. “If I left the room, would you say all those sweet words again-”

Before the two boys could continue, a minor commotion in the hallway started up, leading Arthur to lead Alfred back out to the balcony, leaving his gun while Alfred reached for his own. He drew the curtains with a sharp flick, the residue of the light inside the room filtering on the sharpness of the planes of his face as he pressed his entire body against Alfred, one finger against his lips. 

“...and I told Arthur that I’d deal with the Jones ingrate, but he forced me to retreat-”

Alfred felt his muscles tense; he’d recognise Alistair Kirkland’s voice anywhere.

“Arthur was right, as always,” an older, more authoritative male voice bellowed. “It is a show of strength to allow the son of our enemy into our party and have him ignored, as if he were nothing more than a droplet in a draining lake.”

“But you must know I need to prove myself to you, Father, constantly,” Alistair hissed. “Constantly, while our little legitimate heir flits around in an angel costume and Stepmother wastes his talents by keeping him in the manor when he could be a fighter like us, and you refuse to let him come out into the field with us. I’ll show you his worth in a gunfight, Father-”

“Don’t you dare,” Lord Kirkland shouted. Without another word shared between him and Arthur, Alfred clambered over the banister, his broad shoulders strained. Arthur was helping him down, but Alfred’s mind was not on the shape of the ivy, the structure of the wall, how to clamber back out to safety, but rather the softness of Arthur’s hands, the slenderness of his forearms. “Would you have made a mutiny out of my guests, when they were still here?”

“No. Yet I won’t endure his trespass, Father, even if he is gone! By tomorrow, I’ll challenge him to a duel. To atone for his insolence by blood.”

“He has already been endured,” Lord Kirkland’s voice held a simmering fury. “I forbid you to challenge him, Alistair. I forbid it.”

“Why?” Alistair sneered, even as the voices faded down the corridor. “You know I am your true heir. The strongest Kirkland son. I’ll not be murdered so easily like Fionn was. You have my word, Father. The Jones boy is younger and more foolish than I am, and Arthur could never stand up to him, so it is only right he is my equal. I’ll bring you his head as a trophy.”

The sound of a hand hitting wood made Alfred flinch from where he was hanging onto the ivy. He gazed up at Arthur’s face, but found that his love’s expression was fixed, stony, looking towards his father and half-brother.

“If you seek out the Jones boy because of this night, I will give you to the Anführer without a moment of hesitation,” Lord Kirkland snarled. “The Anführer threatens our businesses for the peace, and I’ll be damned if we break the peace instead of the Joneses. You forget your place, boy. Am I the lord of House Kirkland, or are you?”

With that final word, the two men left the corridor, leaving only Alfred and Arthur in the stillness of the now near-midnight air. Alfred continued to clamber down the ivy, not wanting to wait for Alistair to put a bullet through his brain in front of his beloved, but as soon as his shoes touched the smooth plating that formed the side of the pool, he looked up and saw Arthur casting off his angel wings, making his way down the wall.

“Arthur!” Alfred hissed, making him look down at him…and lose his balance. Alfred saw lithe fingers gripping at useless ivy and stepped forward, cradling him against his chest as he caught him, their breaths mingling as they stared at each other.

What could he say? Alfred’s racing mind cycled through all the useless lines of poetry he’d penned up till now, with only a break to think about the fact that the sheerness of Arthur’s toga around his thighs didn’t hold a candle to how soft Arthur’s thighs was against his arm. He thought of the classics he’d been forced to read as he grew up. Thought of every phrase he could say that would make Arthur understand how much - despite them knowing each other for only a night - he would give him. 

And yet, the only thing that came from his lips was another kiss. Alfred moved forward, still cradling Arthur in his arms, pressing him gently against the ivy as they embraced again, Arthur moving his torso to envelop Alfred’s face with his hands.

“Forget him,” Arthur hissed, pressing his forehead against Alfred’s for a moment before returning to their embrace. “I will make you forget that none except me exist.”

“Oh, hm,” Alfred murmured against Arthur’s damp lips, the sound of their kisses only disturbed by the slow ripple of the pool water next to them. “Are you gonna leave me so unsatisfied?”

“Unsatisfied?” Arthur blinked at him, yet the way he made the last letter to linger made it so that his word turned out expectant rather than confused. The way his eyelashes caught the reflection of the water in the pool made Alfred’s heart throb.

Vows. Arthur had said vows. Surely he could mean only one thing, but…Alfred could only be risking his heart, here, if not his life. Alistair Kirkland wanted his head now, and as firm as Lord Kirkland’s words had been, they invited danger more than ever. Not tonight. After all, Arthur could still doubt his loyalty, and Alfred needed more time to prove to himself. What if he proposed marriage and Arthur immediately turned him down, retreating back into the Kirkland name, and sealed his balcony shut so Alfred could only pine for him?

Death would be better than living without Arthur Kirkland.

“Let me see you tomorrow night,” Alfred urged, his heart pounding as he fumbled with the words. He had to pretend to not understand what Arthur had meant previously by ‘vows’.  “If you are uncertain of my feelings…I will prove them to you, over and over, until you’ll let me become re- reborn, as yours.”

Arthur’s green eyes lowered underneath his long eyelashes, and as Alfred let him back down, the two of them embraced underneath the shadow of his balcony once more. With every breath, Alfred knew that he should pull away, and he could sense that Arthur knew also, but neither of them moved. 

Arthur’s fingers found his chainmail, tracing a teasing line into his shirt, but stilled as he touched the beads of Alfred’s dog tags, Jones, Alfred embossed on the dull metal. Another symbol of their strife. Alfred couldn’t bear to see any rejection in Arthur’s eyes, and so he lifted his chin to his, mimicking what Arthur had done to him before, and kissed him.

“Come to me tomorrow, at nine, after everyone has fallen asleep,” Arthur said breathlessly between kisses, and to Alfred’s relief, he tucked his dog tags back into his chainmail. “Until then…we must part.”

The coldness of his dog tags falling back onto his warm, heaving chest, made Alfred shiver. “You make it sound so sweet, even though I’m leaving you.”

Arthur let him go, though he boyishly clung onto Alfred’s arm with both of his hands, sending a jolt of foolish happiness through his system. The heir to the Velvet Thorn Brotherhood would not let go of him until he was about to scale the fence.

“Goodnight, pretty angel.” Alfred murmured, and abruptly he felt a laceration against his throat. His Adam’s apple fought to stem the tears he felt, the choking at the thought of leaving his love. 

With that, and checking behind them to make sure that no one in the Kirkland estate was awake except Arthur, he clambered over the fence, shaking himself out and securing his holster. He felt a slender finger brush against his, then clasp his hand to his own through the wood.

“Goodnight,” Arthur whispered. “Goodnight.”