Chapter Text
Mercutio strolled into the party like he was born to be there. Everything about him was perfect: his clothes, his hair, his attitude. He moved with the kind of grace that is learned over time, trained into you at great cost and effort. Nobody knew how he had managed it – how he moved like a soldier, like a dancer.
Soldiers didn’t move that way anymore. Fighting was a different kind of game. Mercutio was well out of it. He had had his last taste of combat.
Confidence was something you grew into. To tell the truth, Mercutio had never struggled with it in the first place but the years had aged it like oak, hardened it to iron. It wasn’t brittle like it had been in the beginning: strong, but easily snapped if you knew where to hit it. It was unshakeable, unmalleable, untouchable. Mercutio was past fear.
“Matt!” Josh ran forward to greet him with a one-armed hug. “Good to see you, man!”
Mercutio hugged him back. “Evening. Congratulations, mate. I’m so happy for you.”
Josh was newly engaged, and glowing with it. What a familiar sight it was, and how effectively it penetrated Mercutio’s cynicism. There was something about love. Just when you thought you didn’t believe in it, that you had seen all its pain and failures and known the rotten whore heart of it, you looked into the eyes of someone mad with something true and you believed all over again.
“Thanks, man.” Josh shone like a star, which was entirely uncharacteristic for a man whose usual expression was one of polite bewilderment. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. It’s been ages – but you haven’t aged a day, you jammy bastard.”
“As if I’d miss this.”
He nearly had. When the invitation came, for Josh’s engagement party to a woman Mercutio vaguely remembered him starting to date last time they saw one another, he had almost torn it up. Letting connections go was part of it all, and he was pushing the boundaries of what he could be with Josh without a serious conversation.
Maybe he’s been sentimental. Or maybe, more likely, he had been lonely. New York wasn’t the same place it used to be, and friends were harder to hold down. He was losing the fun, and that was fatal. That meant it was time to think big and move big. But the world had become so small. It was hard to imagine anywhere to start over that wouldn’t feel more or less the same.
Perhaps Papua New Guinea was the place for him. He’d been meaning to go there since the fifties. Or maybe he would try Ghana – he hadn’t been down into Africa in so long and the name was calling to him on the map.
But before he went, he was going to say goodbye, even if nobody he said goodbye to would realise it. So here he was: London, again, and back with Josh and Steve and a bunch of others he used to hang around with last time he was in England.
“How’s it going in old New York?” Josh asked eagerly. “We hardly ever hear from you! Living the high life, are you? Forgetting your old friends?”
Mercutio laughed easily. It came so naturally, that good-humoured lie. “As if I would! It’s not too bad. Got a new place on the East Side.”
“Maybe we’ll come and visit you some time, eh? Listen – I can’t hang around much longer, it’s shocking how many of Lily’s friends I don’t seem to have met yet. I’ll pass you over to Steve – hey, Steve!”
“It’s alright –” Mercutio began, but he was cut off.
“Alright!” Steve appeared out of nowhere and pounded him hard on the back. “Matt! My man!”
Steve hadn’t changed much. He had a new potbelly and a slight premature recession to his hairline but he was otherwise the same man who had once been a wild youth when Mercutio got it into his head to go back to university, just to see if he had missed out on anything important education-wise.
“You don’t look a day older!” Steve looked him up and down admiringly. “Must be that American glamour, hey?”
“Steve.” Mercutio thumped him back as manfully as he felt he could. “It’s good to see you.”
“I’ll say! You never talk, mate. Never mind – not important. Come on, leave Josh to the harpies. Let’s you and me grab a drink.”
Mercutio was only too happy to add alcohol into the mix. He had known this would hurt when he came here, so why was he fussing over that now? But there was something about Steve, who had always seemed such a kid, looking like a grown man that hurt him.
It wasn’t so bad. People got old. But it made him think of other people who had got old, and that made him feel as though he were at a funeral.
“I hear you’re a professor now,” he managed.
“Yeah! Wouldn’t believe it, would you?” Steve grinned. “Students don’t change though – same as they were when we were young.”
“Same as they’ve been for thousands of years.”
“Ha! I’ll bet you.”
He didn’t need to. Mercutio remembered.
“Oh, Matt, hey! You’ve got to meet this guy! Friend of mine!”
Mercutio looked up from his drink, and felt the world drop away from him.
“He’s practically the new Machiavelli. Real academic glamour boy. Dr Carson, this is my old friend, Matt. We used to raise hell when we were students. Matt, meet Dr Toby Carson.”
There he was. Standing just across the table. Close enough to reach out and touch. He looked the same – blissfully, gloriously, the same. He was still big, still muscular, with that golden hair that had only seemed to pale as the years passed. Even the look in those eyes was the same.
“Oh my god.” It was out before Mercutio could remember to play it cool. “It’s you.”
Tybalt smiled very slightly. “Matt. It’s been a while.”
Steve glanced from one to the other, his jaw dropping. “You two know each other?”
*
It had made so much sense, back in the beginning. Once they had figured out what they were, the only thing for it was to cling together – no matter how they really felt about one another. And that little town, barely more than a village, barely more than anything, was cradle to them, was anchor, always.
It had seemed so simple, that day by the water. Tybalt had kissed him even as they stood there, waist deep and naked. He hadn’t been called Tybalt then – it was funny how the early memories slipped and blurred together. Once upon a time, he had thought his memory infinite. Now he knew the fading, the fuzz of age. His own name was gone – and Tybalt’s too.
The memory of those times were haze and mist. There was the impression of the town, of the water, of the colour of the sky. The nights had been different then. The nights were always different. People didn’t seem to realise how fast the stars raced across the sky. There had been other people once – friends, perhaps. Maybe even family. But they had no faces and no names. Only him. Only Tybalt.
That day seemed dreamlike to him. He knew they had kissed in the water – or maybe he had imagined it. He knew Tybalt had pushed him down, crushed his body into the dust and half-spiked grass of the bank – or maybe that was a memory he had built for himself, long ago, too long to remember why he had done so.
He could always ask, perhaps. He could always bring it up some time – but they did not bring up that era of their past. It belonged somewhere sleeping, as if to disturb it would be to have it crumble away. Mercutio knew that feeling. He had picked things up before – old things, things he had loved and known – and had them fall to dust in his fingers.
Sometimes you didn’t notice the time passing. Sometimes it stood and slapped you in the face.
But something must have happened between them, something sweet and knowing, even if they went their separate ways because, when they met again, Mercutio had known him. He had looked him in the eyes and he had known him.
*
He was with the man himself, his one-time love, when they ran into each other again. Centuries had passed since the old days together. He had given up wondering why. It didn’t really matter. Other people slipped away, faded fast, withered like fruit, but not him. And not Tybalt. They had always known that. He could not remember learning it but he must have done, once.
Alexander was Mercutio’s great friend. He had changed everything. Life got so boring if you let it, but Alexander never did. After Athens lost its savour, Mercutio fell in with him. They hit it off at once. How could they not?
That was when Mercutio discovered that he was, in some part of him, a fighter. That battle might not bring joy simply from the blood and bruise of it, but that the perfectly plotted strategy, the intricate technique, just might.
Another day, another victory. Another meeting with conquered enemies. Mercutio had strolled in at Alexander’s side, part of the pack of advisors and soldiers, and he had felt the change in the air almost before he saw him.
Across the room, standing right-hand of the defeated, was a tall man, all shoulders, gleaming. The sun had burned his hair to something close to gold. His eyes were still wicked, still dark. Mercutio’s memory of those times might be mere snapshots, glimpses snatched, but that instant shone as clear as yesterday.
Tybalt, across the room. After all of these years. When their eyes met, he felt the tug of an anchor he had scarcely known existed.
It was only after the conversation, prompted by a sly comment from the great man himself, that Mercutio had taken the trouble to approach Tybalt, to get him alone.
“It’s you,” he said, idiotically.
“I know.”
For a moment, they had simply looked at one another.
“How…how have you been?” Mercutio said, as though that was the appropriate reaction.
“It wasn’t going too badly till your army came down on our heads.” Tybalt’s tone was light, as if all of this was no big deal. “What are you calling yourself these days? Melanthios?”
“That’s me. Tychon?”
“That’s what I chose.”
They stood staring for a long time, not close, feet of distance between them. Mercutio wanted to grab hold of him and cling on. He felt saner than he had in years. Tybalt was proof, walking proof, that the world was what he thought it was.
“How did you end up with the great Alexander?” Tybalt asked, voice dripping with contempt. “Having fun, are you?”
“A lot of fun,” Mercutio said cheerfully. “And you? Did you enjoy being defeated by us?”
“It was a novel experience, certainly. Is your role military or are you the entertainment?”
Mercutio knew what he was implying. “Both.”
“How enterprising of you.”
It was too much, trading sardonic remarks and veiled comments. It was too much after too many years. Mercutio grabbed Tybalt by the arm and tugged him down the corridor. His one-time enemy, one-time friend followed unresisting. Mercutio pulled him into his personal quarters.
“Tybalt…” He hadn’t used that name then. He’d used his real name, or what he’d thought of as his real name. But in memory, he came back to Tybalt. “It’s good to see you.”
“I’ve been studying,” Tybalt said, apropos of nothing. “Working my way up. I had quite a good career going before you came along and crushed it.”
“You might have one again,” Mercutio pointed out. “Alexander can be very…relaxed about who takes over once he’s stuck his name on something. You’re clever. There’ll be a place for you in his empire.”
“I don’t doubt it. You’ve been in Athens.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know you.”
Mercutio grinned. “Yeah, I’ve been in Athens. Got really into politics for a while – then dropped it. Was an actor for a while – that was pretty fun. Chilled with some people. Crazy ideas about the universe, philosophers, but some of them are great at parties.”
Tybalt grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him. It was rough and angry, too controlling, claiming everything. Mercutio melted into him with a startled little noise, let his lips part and his head tip back, unresisting. Tybalt kissed him ruthlessly, consumed him from the inside out. When he pulled back, Mercutio could not see straight.
“Oh. I forgot how good you were at that.”
Tybalt grinned, reckless. “Then you need reminding.”
The memory of the act itself was a blur. There had been kissing, and Tybalt’s hands everywhere, and Mercutio’s embarrassing little cry when his nipple was tugged. There had been his mouth around Tybalt’s cock, and there had been that moment on his knees, the slick of olive oil, the steady strength of Tybalt’s fingers as he patiently undid every knot upon his self-control.
And there had been moans and pleading, and words he was grateful he could not remember. And the act had been over. And Tybalt had left. That had been that. Mercutio had heard of him later – heard that he was true to his word, a fine politician working for the empire. But they had not seen one another. Not for a long time.
*
Mercutio loved his queen. He loved her the way he loved very few people. There was something unstoppable about her. He had always had a weakness for people who refused to acknowledge the odds against them. All the same, he was wary of her latest ploy.
Cleopatra might be the strongest woman he knew, but she was not exactly experienced in the lists of love. Julius, on the other hand, very much was. She might outshine him in political spirit, in cunning, in sheer audacity, but she would be weak where her emotions were concerned. Maybe that was why Mercutio insisted on staying so close to her.
He rather liked Julius. If the context were any different, he might have swapped allegiances the first time he met him. Being with Cleopatra felt rather like spending your entire life at a grand farewell party. It was a time of decadence, but a frantic time, a grasping time. Mercutio had been through enough regime changes to know the score. Something would be coming to an end soon, for better or for worse.
Maybe that was why he stuck so close to Cleo. She deserved better than a dying world.
He wished she had been there centuries ago. She could have been a goddess. She certainly looked like one that day, gleaming in gold and blue. She was not precisely beautiful, not the way the poets would have it, but she had something far better. In her grace, her poise, her sheer, focused, unrivalled arrogance, she had style.
Style outranks beauty. One of Mercutio’s first rules of society.
It was strangely formal, this royal courtship. Julius approached with a contingent of bodyguards. Cleo brought hers. There were a few stilted, pointed remarks, and then suddenly everybody was drinking fine wines and separating off to give the lovers some space to themselves. Mercutio had never been involved in anything quite like it before.
Maybe he wasn’t paying attention. Maybe he should have focused more. As it was, Tybalt saw him before he saw Tybalt. He heard the intake of breath though, and looked up. Cleo and Julius were making their preliminaries but he didn’t hear a word.
Tybalt was born to be a Roman soldier. Those legs – powerful, muscled, with thighs that could crush a melon. That perfect physique – Mars at his finest, broad without being bulky. His armour gleamed like his hair. His eyes – still so dark, still so bright – were wide in surprise, staring at him like he had never seen him before.
Mercutio stared back. The blood roared in his ears. He couldn’t move. Tybalt’s surprise slowly heated over into a predatory gleam. Mercutio was fixed to the spot, deaf and dumb to anything else. He didn’t even notice when the cue came for the parties to separate, and the various soldiers and attendants to make their own entertainment. He had to be tugged from the room.
He stumbled away, head reeling. He needed to return to his quarters. He needed to gather his thoughts. He needed to be alone. This could not be Tybalt, not here, not after hundreds of years. There were thousands of people in the world – millions of the damn things. How had he run into Tybalt again? And with the Romans? It was so typical. They were exactly his style.
Mercutio shut himself into his quarters and lowered his head into his hands. His breathing was jagged. His lungs seemed sharp. He didn’t hear the door opening, but he felt the hand that came down on the top of his head, exquisitely gently, and twisted fingers into his hair.
“Hello, Mercutio.”
He let out a startled little sound and jerked away. The hand on his hair yanked at the roots as it held firm, keeping him in place. Tybalt sat down beside him and softened his grip, made a caress of it.
“Fancy seeing you in a place like this.”
“You’re one of his soldiers.”
“And your one of her…well, what are you? It doesn’t seem to require any armour.”
Oh gods, yes, there was that too. His ceremonial costume didn’t seem exposing in a normal context but under Tybalt’s gaze, he was suddenly half-dressed. Tybalt lay a palm flat against his bare chest. Mercutio’s heart nearly leapt from his ribcage.
“I rather like it,” he drawled. “Very pretty.”
“How have you been?” Mercutio asked. “How did you end up with Julius?”
“Not important.” Tybalt’s hand stroked very slowly, traced the line of Mercutio’s muscles. “What’s important is asking you…have you missed me?”
“I’d have found you sooner if I missed you.” Mercutio gritted his teeth as sensations tingled through him, sending his brain haywire and blood rushing downwards. “It’s been centuries.”
“Mmm. You’ve aged well.” Tybalt leaned in and kissed him once again.
It was different this time. It was slow and possessive, as if they had all the time in the world. Mercutio gave it up to fate. He reached up and wrapped his hands around Tybalt’s face, held him steady, kissed him back like it was a competition. He was rewarded with a tiny little mewling sound, before Tybalt pressed a fist into the small of his back and flipped him effortlessly down.
“Stay there.”
Mercutio didn’t even have a chance to disobey. Tybalt was straddling his thighs, palms spread flat across his chest, and all Mercutio wanted to do was stay there forever. He was already hard. His heart was hammering away like it planned on carving out a new hollow amongst his organs. And Tybalt was just sitting there. Just smiling.
“What?” Mercutio snapped. “What do you want?”
“What do you want?” Tybalt countered. “You know, I wasn’t joking about the outfit. I really do like it. What is this, pretty boy? A collar? Do I need to rescue you from slavery?”
“It’s ceremonial, arsehole. It’s jewellery.”
Tybalt slid two fingers up between the gold plate and the frantic fluttering of Mercutio’s pulse. His breath choked and died in his lungs. He didn’t dare move. Tybalt flexed his fingers, crushing his windpipe just a little more.
“I could do this till you turned purple,” he murmured. “I could do this till you died. You wouldn’t even stop me. You never do.”
He laughed suddenly and kissed Mercutio’s open airless mouth. He pulled back and hooked two fingers inside, tugging at his lower jaw, locked behind his teeth.
“You’re already starting to go blue. Your eyes are bulging like they’re going to burst. Does it feel like they will?”
Mercutio made a desperate strangled noise that was the best he could approximate for speech. He flapped his hands uselessly. His vision spotted. Tybalt laughed again and released him, sliding his fingers out from beneath the necklace. Mercutio gasped for breath, sucking it down like a dying man.
He had nearly been a dying man. Oh, he was in trouble. He should get out now.
“Lovely,” Tybalt purred.
“Fuck you,” Mercutio managed to spit out.
The movement happened so fast. That was the trouble with all of this – Mercutio might be a soldier, but Tybalt was better. Tybalt was always better. In one deft motion, he had Mercutio flat on his stomach, arms twisted beneath him, pinned and helpless. His weight returned to Mercutio’s thighs, holding him steady.
“I fully intend to fuck you. I’ll fuck you like my master is fucking your whore of a queen. Will you moan like she does? I’ve heard her.”
Mercutio squirmed. Some moral obligation prompted him to speak up in Cleo’s defence but his face was smashed into the mattress. No words came out.
“Has she been teaching you her tricks? I hear she sucks cock like a champion. Would you know? Has she gone near yours?”
Tybalt pulled away the wound strip of cloth that passed for Mercutio’s clothing. It had never felt such an inadequate protection. He tossed it aside impatiently and shifted his weight back. One hand pressed into the middle of Mercutio’s back, the other reached down between his thighs and shoved them roughly apart.
“Or will you be like Caesar? Hmm?” Tybalt idly traced his fingers over the back of Mercutio’s thighs, up the curve of his hip, dangerously close to the cleft of his arse. “He makes this noise when I fuck him – oh, it’s charming. You’ve never heard anything like him. Spreads his legs for me without a word. I have to say, you’re nothing on him.”
Mercutio managed to struggle round enough to free his face from the mattress. “Fuck you. Go mess with him if I’m not good enough.”
Tybalt laughed. “Oh, like you could stand that. I’m just saying…you’ve got a lot to live up to. The way he spreads his legs for me so willingly is such flattery. And he’ll get himself ready for me – fuck himself on his fingers to that he’s stretched out for my cock. You just don’t put the effort in.”
“I never even knew you were – oh!” Mercutio gasped as the warm drizzle of oil began to run between his legs.
“Never knew I was what?” Tybalt asked politely, stroking gentle circles around his arsehole. “Were you saying something important?”
“Fuck you,” Mercutio spat out. “Stop teasing.”
“Oh, you want me to get started?”
Tybalt shoved his finger deep into Mercutio’s hole, all the way up to the knuckle. He howled in pain and bit down hard on the mattress. It stung, too much too soon, too rough, too everything. Tybalt drew it out and shoved again. Mercutio screwed up his eyes against the tears and kept his jaw clenched.
“Like this?” Tybalt said, mildly. “Or do you need more?”
Another finger joined the first, hard and fast, stabbing like he was somehow going to kill Mercutio this way. At the last moment, he crooked his fingers and every muscle in Mercutio’s body tightened. Pleasure rocked through him like a wave, erasing the sting, forcing his jaw to release long enough to moan.
“Oh, you do need more?” Tybalt laughed. “Shall I stick my cock in you yet?”
“No,” Mercutio begged. “Please. Not yet. I – ugh!”
A third finger joined the other two, working fast, stretching and twisting, scraping too roughly over his prostate. Mercutio was hard as stone now, hard as temple columns. His dick was crushed against the mattress, pinned between him, unable to get any friction, any movement, any of what he needed.
Tybalt pulled back for a moment, dragged his fingers out. Mercutio groaned. The loss of the pain meant the loss of the pleasure. And Tybalt knew it, the bastard. Knew that he could make Mercutio beg.
“You know the crazy thing about you?” Tybalt said conversationally, even as Mercutio reached his hand down between his body and the mattress to grasp his aching cock. “You haven’t seen me in a few hundred years and you rolled over like it was nothing. Didn’t even hesitate. Do you even remember my name? I don’t remember yours. I remember screwing you – again and again. But I don’t know who you are.”
Before Mercutio could reply, hands gripped his hips hard enough to bruise and Tybalt thrust. Mercutio screamed. He couldn’t help himself. He had been stabbed and it hurt less than this. But Tybalt held him steady, even as he convulsed, even as he shuddered, until at last Mercutio was still and compliant, barely whimpering, and Tybalt was sheathed in him up to the hilt.
“You see?” he continued, as though nothing had happened. “I know I hate you. Do you remember that? Pretty sure you tried to kill me once. Or I tried to kill you. But what does that matter?”
He started to move his hips, shallowly at first. Mercutio moaned and pushed back against him.
“I don’t – I didn’t –”
“But this? You’re fine with this. In fact, you want it. You were desperate for it from the minute you saw me.”
Tybalt grabbed the golden necklace and yanked it back hard, dragging Mercutio’s head with it. He tried to yell but the sound was choked. Plate metal crushed his windpipe. His vision spotted.
“That’s a good whore,” Tybalt murmured, almost to himself. “Just you stay there.”
He thrust, hard and fast, a desperate rhythm. He seemed to be hitting a place so deep inside Mercutio that it reverberated around his soul. He could feel the tension building, even as his eyes went dark. Heat was coiling around his cock. He was going to come. He was going to come and Tybalt hadn’t even touched him there – he hadn’t even touched himself there.
“I could do anything to you.” As if you prove his point, Tybalt tugged harder on the necklace. “You’d let me. You’d love it. You’re going to come like this, aren’t you? You’re going to surrender, because that’s what you always do. You love this, don’t you? Being hurt by me?”
Mercutio came, white-hot and blinding. He might have blacked out. It was hard to say. The next thing he knew, his face was falling forward onto the thin pillow, necklace released, as Tybalt came into him with a low animal growl.
Mercutio didn’t move. Couldn’t move. He shook like a leaf in a gale. He stayed completely still, frozen, gasping wildly for breath, the ache in his throat so bad that he didn’t dare speak. Tybalt pulled out of him and gazed for a moment in satisfaction at the mess he had made.
“I’ll say one thing for you,” he remarked. “None of the others let me treat them like this. You’re the only one who’s whore enough to take it. So in that way, you’re a hundred times better than Caesar.”
Tybalt bent down over him and kissed the back of his neck, quick and cursory. Mercutio whimpered. Everything hurt. He could feel Tybalt’s cum starting to slide out of him, trickle down his legs.
“I’m sure I’ll see you again, pretty boy. Thanks for this. It was…cathartic. Oh, and get yourself away from your queen here. Things will turn bad soon. Read the warning signs.”
He left. Mercutio lay alone for a long time, as sweat and fluids slowly dried to a crust. He ached like he never had before, and behind it all was a desperate emptiness, something crying out, screaming. But he didn’t know what for.
*
Mercutio lay under cover, flat on his back, staring. He was hungrier than he had been in a very long time, and his lungs hurt. That was a new one on him. Things must have been bad. He didn’t normally get sick.
The cover, such as it was, kept out the sun. It would do nothing against the rains if they ever came – but they hadn’t come. The sky had been red for so long, and merciless. The sun was a glowering eye, low and sullen. Mercutio’s little tent, made from a few blankets propped on driftwood, was scarcely more than a rather rigid bed. And he was hungry. Jupiter, but he was hungry.
He couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he was back there. Herculaneum. It had been such a good place, for such a short time. He had been happy there – with Flavia, and her family. Poor Flavia. She was going to die. He could feel it in his bones. She was going to go the same way as the villa, the garden, the vineyard slopes stretching away up the mountainside.
Mercutio had seen a lot of terrible things but he had not seen the rage of Vulcan before. He could still smell the sulphur. Sometimes, when he stopped trying not to, he could still feel the ash raining down on him, the terrible heat, the feeling like snow was laying itself down inside his lungs.
And now what? He’d lost everything in the fires. He had bet his whole life on Herculaneum – a new start. A perfect start. And it had been, for a while. He had started to dream that maybe this was where he was supposed to be, an interlude of rest, a moment of total peace. Then the pillar in the sky, and everything had left him once again.
There were hoofs outside. The tramp and jingle of bridles. Mercutio rolled upright almost immediately, crawling from his little tent like a rodent from a burrow. Horses meant money. Money might mean anything. If nothing else, horses might mean something he could steal. A horse could be sold or, in a pinch, eaten.
He staggered between the tents and shacks, chasing the noise. There weren’t many people around. Or, rather, there were, but they scarcely counted as people. Everyone was hopeless. They sat still, or they cried, or they foraged or hunted or begged for work. There wasn’t movement, not much. There certainly wasn’t laughter.
Mercutio had been hopeless a hundred times before. He knew how it was done. He knew how to cling on in a bad situation, how to find the laughter, how to play the music. But this was, admittedly, pretty bad, even for him. And he had to find those horses. He had to get out of here. He had to eat.
He stepped around the large, surprisingly complicated tent of a mismatched family he could only presume had adopted extra bodies in the aftermath, and there they were. Not the kind of horses that a man could steal, then. These were cavalry chargers, bright and shining, with every hock and fetlock perfect. A small crowd trailed after them, mostly children, hands outstretched. The soldiers ignored them.
Mercutio stood uselessly. If they weren’t throwing alms to the babies, they wouldn’t to him. What were they there for, anyway? What was the empire planning on doing for the volcano refugees? Set them up with a new life? He didn’t think so.
The soldier at the head of the little group wheeled his horse around, and that was when Mercutio saw him. His knees were weak. The bronze helmet covered the hair, and the armour had changed since last time, but it was him. It had to be him. Their gaze locked and Mercutio’s legs gave out completely.
When he came to, he was lying on something soft. There was a steady sting in his eye and a curiously cold ache to his limbs, here and there, unfamiliar. But when he forced his vision to focus, he saw red cloth, high up and sun-stained.
“Don’t try to pretend you’re not awake.”
The voice reached right down into his bones. Mercutio turned his head so fast that it tugged at every stiff muscle. Tybalt sat on his haunches beside the bed roll, armour unbuckled and head bared.
“You,” Mercutio managed, but his voice cracked.
“Easy now.” Tybalt placed a waterskin to his lips. “Tea’s not boiled yet. Water will have to do.”
Mercutio drank. He could feel every drop of it running through him, disturbing the little drifts of ash that seemed to have gathered in the corridors of his organs. By the time he was sated, he seemed to be swimming.
“Better.” Tybalt reached round behind him and held out a fig. “Eat.”
“I…”
“Shut up and eat.”
Mercutio ate. It tasted better than anything had done in a very long time. It tasted like summer – and like Herculaneum. He couldn’t help himself; he burst into tears. He cried until all the water he had drank seemed to have left through his eyes. He cried till he was shaking and boneless. Tybalt sat through it all, patient and unmoving, without a word or a gesture until Mercutio was still again.
“Were you in Pompeii?” he asked, eventually.
Mercutio’s voice cracked when he tried to speak. “Herculaneum.”
Even Tybalt could not stay stoic at that. The line of his mouth tightened. His eyes widened, just slightly.
“You made it out?”
“Got a horse, as soon as the pumice started coming down.” It hurt to say, hurt in more ways than one. “Tried to ride out by the road. Me and Flavia and…”
“Flavia your wife?”
“Betrothed.” Mercutio took a deep breath. “Roads were blocked by the time we got there. Lost my Flavia’s brother when somebody tried to steal the horse. Ended up taking a boat.”
It had been so much worse than he had the words for. It had felt like the end of the world. When Gaius had fallen in the fight…Mercutio’s memory shied away from the image. He didn’t want to see. He didn’t want to know. He remembered his own voice screaming, screaming that Gaius was dead and that they had to run, run now, run for the shore. But he refused to remember Gaius’s breathing. He refused to remember those wild, roving eyes, searching for his, pleading.
“The ash was raining down. And the stones. And…” Mercutio broke off coughing. “I wanted to cross the bay. We didn’t make it. Boat was scuppered long before we even set sail.”
“You washed up to shore.”
“Swam.”
And hadn’t that been a nightmare in its own right. His back was nothing but scars now, each cut stinging and screaming with every moment of friction, every brush of fabric. The rocks and fire had rained down upon it. The surface of the sea had been thick, soup-like. Flavia had grown limp in his arms and he had swum, because what else was there? What else could he do? If he sank, would he even die?
On shore, there had been so little. He had taken Flavia to where the doctors gathered and demanded they help her, but she still hadn’t woken. She never would. He knew that, but he couldn’t let himself know it. Not yet. He wasn’t ready. He had stolen to make his tent. Stolen food. Fought a man for every drop of water he had consumed in the days since.
There was no food to be had, and no passage to anywhere else. No boats sailed. No carts passed. The hills stretching back were nothing but refugees, and every day more bodies washed up on the beaches.
Mercutio told Tybalt only what he could. Tybalt himself said nothing. He simply listened, and poured mint tea for them both.
Mercutio must have talked for hours, in cracked and shaky tones, in between mugs of mint tea and morsels of food, passed with a total lack of self-consciousness from Tybalt’s fingers to his mouth. He left the topic of the eruption fast. He talked about Flavia instead. He talked about the journey to Italy, how he had considered answering the call and going home but had chickened out at the last minute. He talked about everything that had happened to him since Julius and Cleo had breathed their last.
Tybalt barely spoke even once Mercutio’s well of conversation ran dry. He undressed him without preamble, only a few half-muttered instructions, moving Mercutio’s limbs like a wooden doll. With a brisk indifference, he tipped Mercutio onto his stomach and began the work, slow and careful, of rubbing salve into his many small wounds. Mercutio found himself lost for words, hissing occasionally at the sting, rendered numb.
Tybalt worked carefully from his neck down across his shoulders, following the smooth wings of his muscles, until he was massaging the backs of Mercutio’s thighs. It was no surprise when he moved higher again – and Mercutio was so far past protesting. In fact, he wanted it more than he could even speak. Despite the pain. Despite Flavia and all the promises he had made her. He just wanted to be touched. Just wanted to be known, for an instant, in this deeply unknowable world.
Tybalt soothed him with half-murmured sounds, barely words, as though he were a frightened animal. His fingers stroked over Mercutio’s hole, rubbed and circled with patient assurity. Mercutio whimpered and let his legs fall wider. His eyes fluttered closed. Tybalt did not rush him – not this time. He worked until Mercutio was trembling, so relaxed he could melt into the bedroll. Then he slipped the tip of his finger inside.
There was no pain, not this time. Not even as Tybalt pushed deeper. Only a pleasure that built slowly, like a gathering wave. Mercutio buried his face into the thin blanket and moaned. The sound barely escaped – more a breath than a noise. Tybalt worked a second finger in.
He found that place inside of him with ease – of course he did, he could have drawn a map to it. Mercutio’s body tightened momentarily, then shuddered back into looseness. Tybalt crooned wordlessly, stroked tight little circles, wound all of the tension left in Mercutio’s body into that one spot. His thighs quivered. His hands tightened spasmodically into fists.
When Mercutio came, it was slow and untidy, no great burst of heat but a steady sunrise. Tybalt massaged him through it, even as Mercutio stuttered and gasped into the blankets, even as ever muscle he had fluttered and trembled. He lay like a skinned beast, feeling half-dead and half-reborn.
Tybalt didn’t say a word, just kept up the stretching, the stroking, the circling. The burn as he slid his cock inside was barely felt. Mercutio scarcely shifted – just let himself fall limp and useless. Be used.
And even so, Tybalt’s motions were slow and steady, glacial in their speed and certainty. There was no tension left to build in Mercutio’s body, even as he hardened again, even as pleasure worked its way through him. Tybalt gasped and grunted, thrusting into him, pushing him firmly into the thin mattress.
When Mercutio came again, it almost hurt – but only almost. It seemed to wipe him clean. Tybalt collapsed on top of him, crushing him, skin to skin, every inch covered. Mercutio lay unprotestingly. He wanted to stay there forever. He wanted to be squashed, held, utterly pinned in place. The world had been spinning too quickly these past few weeks. He wanted to be held still.
He didn’t know when Tybalt left him. He was asleep long before then, and his exhaustion was so great that he didn’t wake for a long time. When he finally did, Tybalt was gone – completely gone. He left behind a purse of gold and a single name, scrawled in the dust. Mercutio was not too proud to take the money – nor too independent to follow a hint.
The name belonged to a ship’s captain. What understanding he had with Tybalt, Mercutio never did find out, but he agreed to take him far, far away from that terrible place.
*
Standing at the party, the world seemed to have faltered and switched directions in its spin. They were all flying back the other way, unwinding. Mercutio could barely speak through the dryness in his throat.
“Yes,” he managed. “We know each other.”