#somequeerdistortion

If you're taking prompts how about the first time Rosaline meets Benvolio in wolf form he chases away her aunt. I can totally see wolf Benvolio owning up to his feelings before human Benvolio and being protective of her. -Ellabee15 via AO3

I am so terribly sorry for how long this took. There I was begging for prompts and the second I got them my brain shorted out. But I thoroughly enjoyed writing these & I hope you don’t mind that I tweaked them an eensy bit. 

The second she realizes Rosaline isn’t hiding Juliet in the pantry, Aunt Giuliana’s stiff smile shatters.

“Don’t play coy with me,” she snaps, fed up with Rosaline’s rebuffs. “You know where my daughter is, and you’re going to tell me.”

As if that’s what Juliet needs right now: her mother’s gentle insistence that Juliet shut up and do as she’s told.

“She’s not here.” And it’ll stay that way if Rosaline has anything to say about it. They’re officially moving Ladies Night off the premises. “If you want to know where she went, ask her yourself.”

“She won’t pick up her phone,” her aunt says carefully, as if to prove she’s the reasonable one, the person in control.

“Then she doesn’t want you to know where she is.”

Her aunt bristles. “Even you must see this has gone on too long. I know she’s upset, but that boy—” Her mouth curls around the words, grinding down the blip of motherly concern. “—wasn’t right for her. It’s time for her to think about her future.”

As if Juliet is some lovestruck teenager mourning a boy who left her of his own free will.

Rosaline stares at her aunt, wondering if she can really be that blind. “Maybe if you treated her like a daughter instead of a doll, she would trust you enough—”

The slap explodes on her cheek, leaving the stinging imprint of her aunt’s hand. Pain sparks and skips and dies like a firework spinning on asphalt, but the bang echoes in her ears as if she’s standing outside herself, watching it on repeat as her anger catches fire.

“How dare you.” Rosaline’s voice is low and dangerous.

Her aunt makes to retreat, then catches her pride. “How dare I?” she repeats, high and faint. Affront comes rushing in. She grips the edges of the island, arms wide and shoulders locked. Her voice hisses through the kitchen. “How dare you, Rosaline. How dare you keep my daughter from me. How dare you pretend to have any idea what danger she’s—”

A howl breaks the night. They both go silent, staring out the window at the clear night sky. The moon winks back, a slim crescent through the curtains. Nowhere close to powerful enough to force a transformation.

But it was Benvolio. Rosaline knows it with a bone-deep certainty that scares and exhilarates her like she’s a little kid buying into her mom’s monster stories again.

Aunt Giuliana reaches into her pocket, fist curling around her pepper spray.

“If you see Juliet,” she says stiffly, “tell her her Mom is worried.”

Rosaline watches her hurry out to the car, lock the doors, and punch a number into her phone, idling in the driveway while exhaust poisons the night.

Well, if she wants to drive herself batshit, that’s her business. Rosaline has a naked guy to deal with at dawn. She curls up by the back door with a book and a pillow, waiting for the scratch of claws that never comes.

There’s a weight on her stomach, driving a sharp corner of her book into her bellybutton. She groans, turning her face into the pillow. “Benvolio, stop, I’m trying to sleep.”

He ignores her, padding up her chest with paws that are far too heavy for his tiny puppy body, and nudges her chin with a cold, wet nose as if to say, “Wake up.”

She swipes at him and misses, even though he’s right there. He nudges her again, whining.

“Stop it,” she mutters, scrubbing at the cold spot. It lingers just to irritate her, she’s sure.

He curls up on her collarbone, muzzle pressed against her throat. A long, low whine echoes up her vocal chords, building in intensity until she can almost taste a word on her tongue.

Rosaline jerks awake. His cry feels stuck in her mouth. She opens it, and a low, keening sound escapes. It echoes back to her, muffled by distance and the sturdy walls of her house.

Scrambling to her feet, she throws open the door. A hundred warnings echo through her brain about what happens to idiots who confront supernatural forces, and if she wasn’t so frantic, she might have stopped to listen. But his cries are louder now, and she steps off the porch in bare feet, searching through shadows.

What I wouldn’t give for a little night vision right now.

And there he is, hunkered in the tree line. Benvolio. He’s so big that she almost mistakes him for a shrub, wild and overgrown, but the glint of gold in the gloom gives him away. The wolf pup in her dreams seems laughable now, with his tiny, tripping paws and bright blue eyes.

He lets out a low whine and she quickens her pace. Icy sludge squelches between her bare toes, clinging to the pads of her feet. That’s where the stains on his fur came from, she thinks. Hopes.

“What have you gotten into?” she mutters, throat tight.

His whine cuts off abruptly, overtaken by a warning growl that rumbles through the night and takes refuge behind her sternum. She’s so close now that she can see the flare of his nostrils, exhaling clouds of moisture that swirl across the distance to kiss her face. She should be afraid. Petrified. He looms over her, all glinting teeth and sharp eyes and bristling fur. A hulking figure straight from her childhood nightmares.

“Benvolio,” she says softly, firmly, “get your ass over here so I can help.”

She takes another step. His hackles rise, ears flattening against his skull. His tongue flicks out between his fangs and her breath sticks in the catch of her heart.

Swallowing hard, she extends her hand, palm up. “C’mere.”

For one mad second, she thinks he might bite her, cursing her to a life of ruined clothes and loneliness. Then he obliges with short, stilted steps. He’s limping, favoring his back leg, so she reaches out to close the distance. He snuffles at her palm, nosing into her hand, and then it's not a muzzle and fur, but a warm chin and rough stubble cupped in her hand.

Benvolio breathes her name like a prayer. She wants to shrink back from the sound, to smack him for giving her a heart attack, to bury her face in his neck, warming the cold patch she can still feel on her chin. She runs a shaking hand over his chest, down his arms, checking for injuries she can’t see.

“How . . .?” she demands, but there’s a gash across his nose and a smear on his ear, matted hair glinting red in the cresting dawn, and how doesn’t matter.

His mouth quirks in a rueful grimace. “Should’ve known you’d be the one to force the issue*.”

Her thumb skates across his cheek, just shy of his nose, and Benvolio shivers. His eyes flare gold again like a thousand tiny stars.

She fights a shiver of her own. “Let’s get you inside before you freeze to death. Don’t you know it’s the middle of winter?”

21, 15, 6, 1, 2, 3 !!!!!!

1.   What's the most depressing movie you've everwatched?

That would be “City of Joy.” I haven’t seenit since like 1994, but it has stayed with me. My then-housemate came back fromthe video store with it and a copy of “Tango Bar.” We watched “Tango Bar,” whichI do not recommend, and then started “City of Joy.” And oh my god. By the timeit was over, my housemate and I were kind of stunned (and not in a good way).She turned to me and said, “When I was in college, my roommates never let mepick the movies. It’s okay if you want us to have that rule.”

2.   What's the most disturbing movie you've everwatched?

Tie between “A Clockwork Orange”and “Pink Floyd: the Wall,” although the latter’s weirdness may have been exacerbatedby my being drunk at the time.

3.   Already answered

6. A film you wish you hadn’twatched?

“A Clockwork Orange” – don’t get mewrong, it’s excellent. But it messed me up and it was years before I couldlisten to Ode to Joy without picturing the scenes from the movie.

15. A film everyone loves but youhate?

“The English Patient” – 2 hours and42 minutes of my life I have never gotten back. Still bitter.

21. A film with an amazingsoundtrack?

IS THERE ACTUAL INTERACTION BETWEEN THEM 8-D

Thank you for playing!!

9. Did you ever own “designer jeans”? Not on purpose; since we lived in Hong Kong, where the jeans were often made, they sold the overruns and mistakes at the local market for pennies on the dollar. As a result, because - ironically - they were cheap, I ended up wearing Jordache and Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. 

15. Did you or your family own a Betamax? YES! This was also Hong Kong, when VCRs were first being sold for home use. My parents bought a Betamax VCR and we used that until we returned to the US in 1984, by which time VHS was the clear victor.

Aw, these are lovely questions!

Song/songs: Hmm… I don’t really have a go-to song for good moods? I tend to listen to movie soundtracks a lot, and then I tend towards kind of melancholy (for one reason or another) stuff. So… one of my absolute favorite pieces is Alexandre Desplat’s opening theme for HP and the DH Pt. 1, “Obliviate” (the bit beginning at 1:56 is, ugh, my favorite; like, I will just replay that part over and over and over, because it’s so wistful and aaaaaaa)