Witch Hunter Robin, Amon/Robin, liturgical Latin
They were halfway through Poland, that first time.
It wasn't home, but for all that the mass was in a foreign tongue, she recognized it just the same. Amon didn't like it; he would never agree to attending service unless the congregation was quite large, and even then, they'd never been to the same church twice. When she knelt for the Eucharist, Amon stayed behind, brooding and quiet in their pew. Robin told herself that he just looked prayerful: head bowed, with the mottled color of the picture windows cast across his shoulders. She did not let herself think that he looked hunted.
She returned to her seat, what little space there was for her, pressing herself beside him, hip to hip. Amon shifted his weight to avoid the tiny old woman returning to sit at his other side; he slid closer still to Robin. It was hard to focus on the liturgy for the remainder of the service, but it wasn't only niggling guilt that made her sorry it ended so soon.
"I'd like to stay a little longer." She'd tried to learn Polish, really she had, but it didn't come naturally to her tongue. Her voice elicited a familiar glare; it was an old argument by now. But at least she was speaking Italian, and not Japanese.
Amon's sigh was noiseless; he spoke to his hands. "You know why we should not risk it."
"I know. But, Amon--just for a little while?"
He stood anyway, but before they'd gone three steps down the nave, they were jostled together in the departing crowd. She stumbled closer to him; she was always stumbling, always clumsy. The nearer they got, it seemed, the more awkward she became. But this time Amon was no steadier, fumbling for footing in the brisk stream of the faithful breaking around them. Before Robin could catch her breath they were holding on to one another, her arms around his middle beneath his long coat, her face pressed to his neck.
She tried to say, "Sorry," but she tripped through three languages to find the one that they were supposed to be speaking. It was Latin, not Italian, that she found first. Perhaps it was the shadows of the church around her.
When Amon said, "Forget it," his voice was--not his usual voice. Guarded and deep at the best of times, now he seemed to struggle with his silence. Robin was young but she wasn't foolish; she might have been surprised, but she still recognized the way his breath changed, the sound of his uncertainty. The way her touch kept him from finishing his sentence--her lips at the hollow of his throat making his heartbeat stutter.
People moved past them, beyond them; still they stood together with no excuse for their proximity. Her own pulse was clamorous in her ears; this was power like her fire, to capture and to hold him, to make him look at her so.
He spoke and she answered, all without words. This holiest of sacrifices, this gift and this trust, receiving and celebrating all at once. She was unerringly glad that she stood on sacred ground.
Robin said, "Amon"--or was it "Amen"?--and he tilted his head down, and kissed her.
Two dozen devotional candles leapt to life in their alcoves, each tiny flame lapping eagerly against the darkness.