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Shooting bolt upright, eyes wide with terror, Mercutio fumbled around for the switch to his lamp. As the room was illuminated yellow he pressed a hand to his side in search of a cut, blood, just a scratch, his mind unhelpfully supplied.
He found none.
It was a dream. It was just a dream. Mercutio fell back and tears started to fall of their own accord. His tears should have been of relief but they felt more like tears of grief, for what though? He ran a hand through his curls and exhaled shakily as he willed his breaths to slow. He didn’t expect to gasp in pain from the movement, the phantom dagger seemingly still being driven into his side by- By who?
He screwed his eyes shut and wracked his brain for traces of the… dream? It ought to be a dream, he supposed, although it seemed too tangible, more real than any other dream. But whatever it was, it was swiftly slipping from his mind and attempting to remember it was like trying to grip water in his bare hands. Hands!
His, well, nightmare murderer’s hands were clad in leather gloves. Mercutio remembered the way the gloves drove the dagger into his side, the way they pushed him into the dirt during their fights, he remembered their dark colour, how they felt as Mercutio held his hands the very last time. Mercutio shook his head, confused, as tears began to cascade down his face again.
What is this? Emotions felt in dreams shouldn’t affect people this much. But no amount of reasoning with himself would stop his crying.
Mercutio thought of calling for his uncle or Valentine but thought better of it, instead he stood and dug through the papers and miscellaneous objects on his desk, immediately diving under the blankets after he’d retrieved his phone. Switching off his lamp, he lay down, resisting the temptations of sleep, lest Queen Mab cursed him with more dreams.
As his tears started up again - unbeknownst to Mercutio - a city away, his apparent ‘nightmare murderer’ was too, crying in bed from a dream he didn’t quite remember and guilt he didn’t quite know the source of.
~~~
Tybalt adjusted his cravat and eyed the mass of dancers swirling around the room as Dido and Aeneas resounded from a phonograph.
He’d given up dancing shortly after the first song and had long since tired of staring at the collection of paintings residing on the far wall. They seemed to stare back. Not to mention, hearing the jovial voices of the crowd was preferable than staring into the tormented, vacant eyes of those depicted in the portraits. Tybalt supposed his own expression at the moment was not so different and he stalked away from the stony, prying eyes of the portraits, in pursuit of drinks.
But on his way to the table, a dancer - running from something or other - crashed into him and Tybalt, unprepared for such an attack, was sent sprawling to the floor.
“Hey!” Tybalt yelled at whoever had crashed into him, “Watch where you-”
When Tybalt looked up he fell speechless. The man who’d collided with him was undeniably attractive, from his smile and coiffed hair to the flower in his lapel and how the candlelight seemed to gravitate towards him and - although how, Tybalt wasn’t quite sure - he felt and looked familiar.
“Oh gosh,” The stranger said, snapping Tybalt out of his trance, “I’m so sorry.” He held out his hand and Tybalt tentatively took it, picking himself up off of the ground awkwardly.
“Um…” Tybalt looked into the stranger’s eyes again and immediately looked down, does he recognise me? “I… feel like I’ve seen you before.”
“Me too.”
As they stared at each other, the noise around them - sans the music - seemed to vanish, as if the room was holding its breath, only paying attention to them. Even the boisterous dancers’ laughs and loud chatter faded until the people were so silent they could’ve been trapped in the portraits on the wall.
Violin erupted from the phonograph, breaking the apparent silence. Both of them paused, the tune seemed familiar, like they’d known it all their lives and perhaps more but no name sprang to mind and each phrase took them by surprise. As a cymbal rolled, Tybalt made eye contact with the other boy and suddenly they were dancing in the centre of the room.
“You’re beautiful.” The boy said, smiling a dazzling smile as they moved with the swell of the music.
“You too.” They moved away from the centre and began waltzing around the room and Tybalt pretended his breath didn’t hitch when a candelabra behind Mercutio made it seem like there was a halo of light around him.
When they’d made it to the far wall, Tybalt felt the portraits’ eyes on him again and turned around, irrationally hoping to scare them off but each pair of eyes stayed fixed on him and each painting stayed mounted on the wall. He turned back to the beautiful boy he was dancing with but found that his partner had vanished.
The music also came to a stop and the candles’ flames grew dimmer and dimmer until it was just him, left in darkness.
Tybalt slipped into a dreamless sleep and when he awoke - not to darkness but light filtering in through his curtains - he felt a phantom hand holding his, heard phantom waltz music resounding in the room and saw an unforgettable phantom smile. His ‘phantom’ partner was too, feeling his phantom touch, hearing the phantom sounds and remembering the dancing partner from his dream.
~~~
The city was on fire. The flames seemed to have started from nowhere, they were relentless, consuming everything in their path and Mercutio couldn’t find Valentine.
“Valentine!” Mercutio ran through the streets, where was he, “Valentine!”
He ran to the plaza, to the fountain, cupping his hands around his mouth and screaming for his brother as the flames grew higher and the sky was coloured with ash. He ran down the main roads, scanning over the streets branching off and straining to see through the thick smoke. There was no sign of Valentine.
As he ran, Mercutio’s eyes started tearing up from the smoke or perhaps desperation, Where was he? Mercutio cut across the park, screaming as a cluster of trees went up in flames. He could have been running in circles unknowingly because the streets blended together from his tears and smog.
He was losing hope. He couldn’t see, couldn’t scream anymore and he was running out of time before the flames blocked off the exit where his uncle would be waiting. But he couldn’t leave Valentine, he couldn’t, Mercutio wouldn’t let his baby brother die so he kept running despite the burning in his lungs and in the air. But what would his uncle do when all the buildings were consumed and his nephews still hadn’t returned? He faltered, staring back at the gate, and that was when he heard it.
A voice.
He ran towards the faint sound.
“Help! Please!”
Mercutio ran down the road, yelling Valentine’s name, straining to hear his cries over the roar of the fire.
“Valentine!”
He desperately searched - as best as he could what with the smog clogging the air - for a sign of life. He heard a series of coughs and found himself in an alleyway, another boy collapsed against the wall.
“Valentine?”
He ran to the coughing boy and put his head in his lap. It wasn’t Valentine but it was… someone familiar. He helped him sit up and they both into coughing fits and the smoke closed in around them.
“Mercutio…”
He knew that voice and it didn’t belong to the boy in his arms.
“Mercutio.”
Valentine?
Mercutio looked down to find that the boy had vanished from his embrace, he turned his head to look around.
“Mercutio!”
He turned around, trying to find the boy but was met with the familiar - if dark - surroundings of his room.
“Mercutio!”
Mercutio’s head snapped up and he was met with the sight of his uncle standing over him.
“You were screaming in your sleep.”
Sleep? He noticed he was not burning on the floor but in his bed, in his room, in a city which did not contain the boy in his dream. He sighed, leaning into his uncle’s arms, he looked as exhausted as Mercutio felt. It was another dream. Another too real dream.
Mercutio was too preoccupied with his thoughts to notice Valentine sneaking into the room until his brother leant into his side, concerned about the screams that had awoken him.
“Well, since you two are awake already,” Their uncle started, wrapping an arm around Valentine, “We might as well start travelling to Verona now. Go get your things.”
The entire ride there, Mercutio couldn’t think of anything but the boy in his dreams and couldn’t help but wonder if he was thinking of the dreams too. His ideas were correct, for in the city he was about to enter, there was a boy silently shedding tears about another who he’d met at a ball and who’d saved him from the fire and - although Tybalt avoided thinking about it - who he’d killed.
~~~
“Hey, can I help you?” Tybalt started, seeing as the man had entered the flower shop and had been staring at him - seemingly confused - for a solid 30 seconds.
“...Oh. Um,” He shook his head, “Sorry. Um, are there like, flowers that mean ‘you’re gay bitch’?”
It was Tybalt’s turn to look at him in confusion, “Uh, yeah.” He moved out from behind the counter, beckoning the strange man to follow him. “Can I ask why?”
The man laughed as Tybalt lead them towards a rack. It was a lively, heady sound, dangerously bordering on hysteria, as if a single push would transfigure merriment into madness. Nevertheless, the sound and following smile made Tybalt’s breath hitch.
“It’s my brother’s birthday.” The silence was broken and the man stared at Tybalt like that answered anything, “He’s like, a nerd and likes flowers and was scared I wasn’t gonna support his gayness even though I literally went to pride and was obsessed with Lord Byron as a child.”
Tybalt continued to the green carnations, confused at the oversharing. Had it been anyone else, he would’ve told them to shut up but there was something strangely endearing and, well, familiar about this stranger.
“So green carnations were like a gay code in the Victorian era and-”
“Oh yeah, I read something about Oscar Wilde’s plays and those.”
Tybalt was taken aback but surprisingly not annoyed at the interruption, “Yeah, Lady Windermere's Fan, right?”
The man smiled his captivating smile and Tybalt swore that the flowers surrounding them - including the ones out of season - blossomed more and all the petals in the room became more vibrant.
“Yes! Sorry I’m so excited but I had a wilde phase.”
“Didn’t we all,” Tybalt laughed, ignoring the pun, “Or maybe just the gays.”
They collected gladioli, white hyacinths and yellow lilies, chatting about books, Oscar Wilde and other gay icons, Tybalt occasionally interrupting to prattle the meaning of flowers and Mercutio repeatedly laughing and bringing up the ‘fake ‘n’ gay’ flower.
“Yeah, when I was first reading it I thought that Henry’s, like, manipulation and seduction with his ideas of youth and beauty would’ve been way better if they weren’t 2 pages consisting of the same-” The man stopped talking abruptly and Tybalt looked up from assembling the bouquet.
“What?”
“I just realised we’ve been talking for 20 minutes and I didn’t ask for your name.” The man replied, almost bashfully, tucking his curls behind his ear. Tybalt pretended his eyes didn’t follow the movement.
“Oh. My name’s Tybalt.” The man’s eyebrows shot up, “I don’t like wearing a nametag because people are like ‘hey Tybalt’ and I’m like ‘oH my gosh how do you know my name, get out’.”
“Haha yeah.” The man was looking down, distracted or confused - maybe both - Tybalt couldn’t tell, “My name is Mer-”
The dream dissolved into consciousness and when Tybalt woke up he was smiling. When he realised that his happiness had been from a dream he began crying and when he remembered the smiles of the nameless boy in his dream, the tears flowed harder.
In the same city - though the two didn’t know - Mercutio woke smiling. Happy at how he had finally learnt the name of the boy who’d been blessing his dreams, for by that point, he knew Tybalt well enough to recognise him anywhere.
~~~
The first thing Mercutio noticed as he went outside was the colours, followed by the population, both of which he couldn’t appreciate when they first entered the city because of what time it was.
As he, Valentine and their uncle walked to their new school, they remarked about the buildings - which held considerably fewer statues than he was used to - and what the school and the people there were like. As Valentine fretted and their uncle eased his anxieties, Mercutio took to looking at the other people on the street. It was probably twice the amount of people Mercutio would normally see on the street, all of them walking with a stature that screamed they had somewhere to be and a certain purpose, and although he felt like an outsider, Mercutio strangely didn’t feel out of place.
“Mercutio, Valentine, before you go I need to warn you both about a feud,” Their uncle said as they arrived, “It’s been going on for generations between the Capulet and Montague families so promise me you won’t become involved.”
They both promised not to but as he left they shared a glance both thinking the same thing: what’s so serious about an old family feud anyway?
By lunch, Mercutio had already made two friends: Benvolio and Romeo, Montagues. They had an easy chemistry and bickered a lot and Mercutio was accepted into the group of other Montagues. Throughout the day, they told him about the school and gossiped about the students and teachers, they also talked of Romeo’s many escapades with love and of course, horror stories about Capulets because of their infamous feud.
“I don’t really get why we’re all still at each other’s necks since no one can even remember why it started,” Benvolio said to him as they were walking down a hallway, “If only those Capulets stopped attacking each Montague they see then maybe-”
He didn’t get to finish because at that moment someone grabbed him and slammed him into a wall, a group trailing behind him, daring Benvolio to repeat what he said.
Capulets.
As Romeo ran down the hallway to get the other Montagues, Mercutio stood there, having an internal war. His uncle had said not to get involved but his friend was about to get beat up so…
As the boy who’d slammed Benvolio into the wall raised his leather clad fists again Mercutio grabbed them, wrenching him away from Benvolio. He lifted his head to scream at him but the words died in his mouth. His hair still contained its signature white streak; his eyebrows scrunched together like he did when he was confused or trying not to cry; he still had the same slightly insecure, irritated posture; and his eyes, those eyes. They were the same ones Mercutio had fallen in love with.
It seemed that time had slowed down just for them and in that prolonged moment, he thought he saw recognition flash across those dark eyes, mirroring the time they met in the flower shop and Tybalt’s fists lowered slightly. His mouth began opening and Mercutio tried to speak again but their moment was over and so was the peace. Those beautiful, dark eyes hardened and Tybalt jerked his hands out of his grasp, his eyebrows scrunched together but he shook his head, dropping his arms to his sides and turning.
Mercutio made to reach out but time had seemingly still frozen him, all he did was watch as the boy of his dreams walked away.