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The first time Tybalt sees Mercutio after returning from service, it’s so hot the air is sweating. The pavement wavers at the edges. Tybalt can feel the ends of his hair getting singed. He can’t imagine how Mercutio’s bare feet aren’t on fire.
He’s always been tanned, but Tybalt thinks that it’s harsher now, more indicative of a lifestyle than a fashion statement. Mercutio’s denim shorts are rolled up as short as they’ll go and there’s no tan line in sight. His top is made for women, Tybalt is certain, one of those stringy things that covers the tits and ties behind the neck and around the waist, and it’s sun-faded too. He’s got about a dozen bracelets on each wrist. Strings of shells, glass beads, stones, braided cord, cheap bangles that shake as he gesticulates. Tybalt can practically smell the charisma from across the street; Mercutio is a storyteller if nothing else, and in front of the Montagues he’s even worse. There’s four of them, all rapt with big, enchanted eyes on Mercutio’s smiling face. One has a bag—Balthazar, Tybalt thinks vaguely, keeping pace with them on the opposite sidewalk. Balthazar is barefoot too. God, do none of them own shoes?
They turn away from the busy downtown streets and Tybalt has nothing better to do than follow. It’s the heat, soaking into his head and making him think he has any reason whatsoever to pay attention to the fucking hippies doing whatever they do. They’re of no consequence to him. He didn’t get nearly blown to bits in the Vietnam jungle just to spend the rest of his miserable life pretending to hold a grudge against the anti-institution.
Mercutio flips off a passing cop cruiser and the Montagues boo and jeer. Tybalt just rolls his eyes.
They lead him through the farmer’s market on the edge of town with only a few delays. Fruit and veg go into Balthazar’s bag. They pick a few pockets and immediately barter away their winnings. Mercutio leans over the counter to smolder at a harsh and imposing woman for homemade taffy, and he kisses her on the hand when she gives in. It used to make Tybalt angry, when Mercutio got everything he wanted laid at his feet with only his natural charm, and before that it just awed him. Now, it’s almost tiring. He worries that Mercutio will have nothing when he gets old and hunched and can’t fuck around for resources anymore. Who will take care of him?
By the time they start making their way home, Tybalt is cringing at the sun on the back of his neck and grateful as can be for his aviators. Still, he follows, unsure quite why and then deciding it doesn’t matter. Some of the guys he got sent home with were entirely different people from when they arrived. He’s allowed some idiosyncrasy.
The paved road gives way to gravel and the Montagues step unflinching onto it. Tybalt has to hang back a bit more, with less foot traffic to provide anonymity, and he can’t hear them cheer when Mercutio finds something on the ground. He watches them praise him, watches one girl plant a wet kiss right on his mouth while he holds her waist. Tybalt grits his teeth and deliberately clears his head. He doesn’t care. The days where he cared about Mercutio’s flings were buried under their crashed car in Death Valley.
Finally, the crew approach their ghost town of a habitat, a few haphazard buildings huddled together like nervous deer at the base of a pale, tired mountain. Tybalt knows this place—it was number one on the list of forbidden adventures when he and Juliet were small. The Capulets used to have free rein here, when they were still buddy-buddy with Father Lawrence, but since he grew his greying hair out and started smoking spliff, Tybalt’s family refused to have anything to do with him. No fucking wonder the assorted freaks liked it here.
Balthazar goes into the biggest building with the bag. The two girls each kiss Mercutio on the cheek and head to another. The last boy exchanges a few quiet words with him, a touch on the arm, and leaves for a fenced stretch of scraggly plants with a few horses lazily swishing their tails in the heat. Mercutio heads toward a house-adjacent structure at the edge of the cluster. Silent as a lamb, Tybalt follows.
(He can feel eyes on him. Of course they’re curious, he reasons, since no one in their right mind would visit this fucking cesspit. Let them look. It’s not like he’s got anything to hide, much less any dignity to preserve. Their whispers don’t matter.)
He’s expecting a chore; perhaps a water pump, a clothesline, a woodpile. The far side of the building is bare when he peeks at it, just more tan dirt and rough shrubs on an incline up the mountain.
“Tybalt Capulet,” Mercutio announces, “washed-up, fucked-up, belly-up pride of the country. And now my personal shadow. Why the fuck were you following us?”
Immediately, Tybalt feels a headache just under his occipital bone. “Good to see you, too.”
Mercutio grins at him, white and sharp, and walks toward him. “Oh, pussycat, you don’t have to pretend anymore. Everyone around here knows you’re obsessed with me.” He’s too close. It feels more like a threat than an invitation. “Show me how much you missed me, yeah?”
Proximity is dangerous. Tybalt had fucking forgotten that, the most important lesson of his childhood. Mercutio looks about two seconds from eating him alive. They’re only behind one of the outbuildings on the ranch, hardly isolated, hardly safe, but Mercutio has never once had a fuck to give about self-preservation. Tybalt used to. He wonders where it went—probably embedded in the mud, under a layer of agent orange. Too far away to reach now. He reaches for Mercutio instead.
It hurts. Tybalt doesn’t realize they’re not fighting at first, when Mercutio’s teeth draw blood from his lip on first contact. His hands grasp and scrabble against Mercutio’s sorry excuse for a shirt, fingers tangling in the loops of the bow at the small of his back. Tybalt can feel sweat against his knuckles and Mercutio hums into his mouth.
“Didn’t think I’d see you again,” Tybalt mumbles, hindered by Mercutio’s insistent tongue and half wondering why the fuck he’s speaking. “When I left, I mean. I kinda thought I’d die there and I’d never have to deal with anyone here again.”
Mercutio nips the meat of his cheek. “And here you are, only mostly dead, dealing with me.”
“Mostly?”
“There’s a little bit of life left in there. I can bring it out, if you’ll let me. Wanna feel alive again, pussycat?”
Tybalt pushes Mercutio against the splintering wall with an urgent noise and kisses him hard. Mercutio nearly purrs, petting in long, indulgent strokes under his vest, turning him foamy and dripping like ice cream under their ever-beating sun. Tybalt is nearly in tears of desperation by the time Mercutio gets around to unbuttoning his jeans.
“Shh, there you go,” he says, just on the edge of condescending. Tybalt would be more upset about it if he wasn’t focusing on not letting out the whine behind his teeth. Mercutio’s clever fingers cup his cock through his briefs and it’s as suffocating as it is magical. Tybalt rolls his hips helplessly into the touch. Mercutio laughs.
“Shut up,” Tybalt says. It’s weak and pitiful in his ears, and Mercutio sticks out his bottom lip accordingly.
“Someone hasn’t gotten any action in quite a while, huh?”
“Got some action with your mom last night.”
“Necrophilia is discouraged around here, pretty sure.”
“You’re fucking disgusting.”
There’s a gleam in his eye that Tybalt doesn’t like. “Oh, pussycat, I’m filthy. If you get off on it, that’s not really my fault, is it?”
“Kinda is.”
Mercutio shoves at his shoulders and Tybalt lets him spin them around. Back firmly planted against the wall, he has nowhere to run when Mercutio leans in to nip him again. He tastes meat and metal and Mercutio’s grin is streaked red when he pulls back. He spits off to his left and then promptly drops onto his knees in the dust.
In a gambit for control, Tybalt grabs a tight fistful of his hair. Mercutio just carries on stripping him. Tybalt keeps clinging, telling himself it’s malevolence and not something next to panic. He only gets a moment to brace himself (and doesn’t use it) before Mercutio bites him like a bullet, all the way down his hot, wet, perfect throat in one go. Tybalt moans loud before he can even hope to get a hold of himself. They probably don’t care around here, anyway. Mercutio probably gives head behind outbuildings twice a day. He digs his teeth into the ragged puncture in his lip and pretends that the thought of being just another quickie doesn’t make him want to cry.
Somewhere in the distance, a record scratches to life. A few people cheer. Tybalt hits his head on the wall, lets his eyes fall closed and the helpless noises bubble out of his chest, and inhales the heat of the day. He feels a little like he’s dying. Mercutio’s mouth stays tight and devastating around him, slowly chipping away at his sanity, and he lets it. He lets everything happen as it will.
“God.” It’s a broken groan that he can’t be bothered to cringe at. “That’s good. Fuck. God. You’re so fucking good.”
Mercutio pulls off of him with a wet pop that will haunt his dreams until the end of time. “I know. Been thinking about charging for it. You’d pay for me, wouldn’t you? You’d pay if I offered to give you this again?”
“Whatever you want,” Tybalt lets out, and Mercutio makes a pleased noise and swallows him down again. He bucks his hips a few times and pants in rhythm. He groans when Mercutio lifts his head again.
“Actually, I might not want to charge. I like sex too much to make a business out of it. Sex is pure. It shouldn’t be tainted by the fucking… economy or whatever. You know?”
“Sure, yeah,” Tybalt says, one degree of separation from frustrated tears. “Do whatever you wanna do.” Then it sinks in, what Mercutio actually said, and Tybalt snorts. “You’re such a fucking hippie.”
Mercutio rolls his eyes. “Flower power, baby. For someone who’s so unbearably republican, you sure seem more into making love than making war.”
“Fuck you.”
“You want me to suck your cock or not? Shut the fuck up, pussycat. Don’t make me lump you in with your fucking pig family.”
Tybalt moans when Mercutio gets back to work, but can’t quite help himself from asking, “What, do you not think I’m a pig, too?”
Mercutio looks annoyed. “Course not. You got drafted and shipped off to Nam and you came back with a Purple Heart. You’re too fucking depressed to beat me up anymore. You’re a victim of society as much as any of us. Less likely to get shot by the cops, yeah, but you don’t exactly look like you’re prospering. You should dump your inheritance and come live with me here.”
That’s a thought—dropping all the abstract rewards he’s been white-knuckling to kick off his shoes and grow out his hair and let some Montague teenager paint a flower on his cheek, wake up for the noon sun and stay up for the fireflies, fuck on a stolen mattress every night and then snack on day-old scones from the bakery on main street. It’s tempting. It burns. Tybalt grabs Mercutio’s hair tighter and thrusts hard into his throat. Mercutio moans and Tybalt moans back. When he feels tears threaten at the corners of his eyes, he throws his head back and relishes the sharp pain of hitting the old wood. He can’t tone down his sounds now, producing a steady series of grunts, groans, and curses. Mercutio answers every word with an appreciative hum. Tybalt looks down again and watches his hand creep up under that girly little shirt to rub and pinch at a nipple. He looks beautiful. Tybalt closes his eyes.
The song in the distance changes. It’s something vaguely familiar, but he can’t place it. He’s distracted. There’s an orgasm seeping into his frayed edges, impending, threatening, and he kneads with both hands in Mercutio’s wild hair to keep himself at least somewhat centered. For his part, Mercutio looks utterly lost in sensation, bobbing his head slow and sensual with barely-contained thrill. Half the town has fucked him—it’s no secret that he loves this. He’s enchanted and enchanting. He’s soft like a rose petal and hot as the sun. He swallows around Tybalt’s cock on every dip of his head. He looks like he’s getting railed, really, and Tybalt wonders just how depraved someone has to be to enjoy sucking dick this much. Though, to be fair, he’s eagerly participating in their mutual depravity, so he can’t say shit. He puts the thought out of his mind and focuses on the hot-wet-soft of it all.
It’s not long before he’s desperately close. Mercutio has taken to palming his own cock through his shorts; Tybalt can’t help but pity the discomfort he must be in. But it doesn’t matter. Mercutio can do what he likes. Tybalt chokes out half a warning and the fucking bastard has the wherewithal to look him straight in the eye with an utter deadpan. Tybalt takes it as permission. He grinds forward, holds Mercutio’s head still, and shudders through the most devastating orgasm he’s had in a long time.
The first coherent thought he has afterward is that he’s so sweaty he could drown. The day has only gotten hotter while they’ve been compromised. Mercutio pulls off his dick and waits for eye contact before he pointedly licks his lips and swallows. Tybalt mirrors him without thinking about it.
Mercutio rises on slightly unsteady knees and Tybalt yanks him into a kiss. Mercutio tastes like sex. Tybalt sighs into his mouth and reaches down to cup his ass with both hands, but he steps away, and Tybalt lets him with only a slight hesitation.
“Welcome home,” Mercutio says, sardonic with a silver lining of warmth. “Congrats on not dying out there.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m serious about you joining us here. Get away from your shit family, all those rules, the war glory you hate.”
“I can’t, Cutio. You know I can’t.”
He frowns. “Well, think about it. Wanna stay for lunch?”
Tybalt glances at the sky. It’s past noon, he knows, and a look at his watch tells him that he’s almost late to meet his aunt for a suit fitting she’s been needling him about all week. “I have somewhere to be.” He chews on the apology at the tip of his tongue, then adds, “I’ll see you around?”
Mercutio smiles, but it’s wry and scheming again, the warmth leaving in a heavy exhale as he fixes his hair. “I’m everywhere, pussycat. You’ll see me.”
“I can pay you back for… you know.” It’s so far from a plea that it’s laughable, but it feels like one in the clench of his heart anyway.
“No offense, baby, but I don’t think you could make me come if you tried.”
“I’ll try anyway.”
He laughs. “Whore. Go do your networking. I have men and women to slow dance with.”
Tybalt tries for a chuckle and lands at some kind of sad, strangled sound. He catches Mercutio by the wrist as he passes and the words get caught in his throat for a moment. Then: “I missed you. While I was away.”
Mercutio doesn’t look at him. “I’m sure you did.”
He walks away like the sun-baked dirt doesn’t hurt his feet and his knees aren’t rubbed pink. Tybalt steps out of the shadow of the wall and squints in the light. A scrapped car glints at him. The Montague haunt is a fucking dump, yes, but there’s still a lilac smell over the whole place, pastel and sweet in a way that rose-tints the very air.
Tybalt inhales, picks out flowers, sex, and blood, and starts the lonely walk home.