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your name is mercutio. you can’t remember your title most of the time. it doesn’t get you land or status or anything, but the prince is your cousin, so that stands for something. you live with escalus, in fact, though the both of you tend to forget that fact. most of your time is spent crashing wherever someone will have you. wherever you’re wanted. whenever that happens. you are in love with the mystery of it, the panic of finding your next bed and the wonder if you’ll be alone this time.
your name is mercutio. you have a brother. you don’t see him very often, though. you and valentine seem to always be on tetchy terms with each other. you never got along - valentine is more straight-laced than you are, dull and disdainful of your wit. it used to upset you - you had wanted to be someone for him to look up to, once upon a time. that ship has long since sailed. now he trails after escalus, the both of them wary of you. it digs at you in a way you can never fully shake, their camaraderie. you are in love with the bond they share, the way their conversations flow so freely. you wish you could know them as they know each other, could truly feel like they are family.
your name is mercutio. you live in the midst of a growing feud in verona, one in which you really have no stakes but find yourself ingrained into, regardless. the origin of the quarrel is unknown. you know it spans generations, and you know it’s a heady battle between noble houses capulet and montague. you’re a brawler at heart - you’d step into an honorable battle as soon as you would make a quip, always one for the grand gesture. this feud, though - this one has no real honor, no meaning. the only reason you involved yourself is for yourself, for the eye of the people you love and the spite of the people you hate. the people that surround you sweep themselves up in fiery outburst, and despite escalus warning you to stay out of it, you’ve managed to flagrantly acquaint yourself with the people doing the most damage. you are in love with the people that do more damage than others.
your name is mercutio. people who know you tend to tack the title of your favored house onto your name - mercutio escalus montague, one who didn’t need to be involved but has grown too close with the montague heir not to be. you have known sweet, saccharine romeo and his crafty cousin benvolio for longer than you can call to memory. they traipse around verona as though they are kings of the world, crashing parties they weren’t invited to, raiding vineyards and sneaking through montague house in the dead of night. for you this is a freedom - perhaps the only freedom you will ever have. being an escalus means your life is rooted in politic - and in politic, there is only rigidity. no wit, no discord, nothing that you have ever thrived in. you, mercutio, you have the spirit of a wild horse, an animal thing that must kick and spurn and run wild, hair whipping past you in the wind. it is not a soul you can tame, no matter how you may try. you are too bold, so top full with wit and with passion and need that you let your cup runneth over and you go too far. but here in montague house, they welcome your brashness and humor your heart. you never asked for it, but romeo and benvolio swept you in and now they are so deeply ingrained upon your soul that you couldn’t be disloyal if you tried. oh, romeo, the only one who can match you and even defeat you in a battle of wits, who looks at you and heeds you the way you wish valentine did. or anyone at all, really. romeo who waxes poetic to hear your opinion and spars with you until you both collapse into each other, heaving and laughing in a tangle on the ground. your covenant brother, your best friend. you love him fiercely, once wanted more but now you rather think yourself akin to family - or what you think family should feel like. oh, benvolio, who shoots you secret looks when nobody else is watching and handles you like a precious thing despite the feral soul you haul forth to him. perhaps he is the only thing that can tame this wild animal that runs rampant in your chest. perhaps he is your rock and you are his. your sometime lover, your caring conscience who, despite himself, laughs too loudly at the jokes you likely shouldn’t say, more to you than you know how to say. you love him like a moth loves a lantern, eager to crawl yourself into his light even if it burns you. you are in love with the family you have found, and you are in love, you are in love, you are in love.
your name is mercutio. your fealty to the montagues, as much as you relish in it, has gained you enemies even within your own house. paris, your cousin, scorns you for sullying his image. always making yourself a problem, he says, always making me the fool when you know how i feel about juliet, what i hope to do. paris pines for the capulet heir, and it is the honorable, noble, escalian thing to do, and sometimes you hate him for it. you do love your cousin, but he speaks of capulet and involuntary bile rises in your stomach. this is not his fault, though, and you know that deep down. perhaps it is because of your history. the adversary just behind young juliet, who brandishes his sword too cleanly and holds too steely a gaze even for those he claims to love. once you thought that gaze would soften for you. once tybalt capulet was the name emblazoned on your heart, the bloodthirsty wolf that nipped at your heels and spat at you when you reared away. once he made you feel more alive than you knew what to do with, alive and desperate and fucking ravenous for him. maybe a part of you is still ravenous - hungry to tear his throat out with your teeth, to claw what little heart he may have from its cavity and squeeze it until it crumbles. you hate him, and you love him, and you hate him. one day he will fall upon your sword, and you will look him in the eye and you will return him the cold stare he has provided you. you will watch him realize he is dying and you don’t care. you are in love with the vengeance of it. you are in love with murder.
your name is mercutio. there is a party tonight at the capulets’. benvolio bids you to go, to join him and romeo, and you can deny him nothing. so you overdo it, deck yourself in garments that you’ve maybe had for years or maybe stolen just today, and you fill a flask with sickly green absinthe meant to make your body light, and you leave your nomad bed to join your friends.
and you do not know it, mercutio, but this is only the start of your fate, the fate that lies mere hours away from you. mercutio escalus, sometime montague, sometime brawler, sometime lover, loyal and fiery steed, you do not know it yet, but you are in love with the beginning of your end, and when your best friend thrusts you into doom, you will love him still.
your name is mercutio. you love too hard, too strong, and this love will strike you down and beat you bloody. it will kill you, and you will let it.