Work Text:
The blood tastes familiar on his teeth, looks like gemstone on the ground scraping up the soles of their feet. Perhaps Tybalt has traded too many words and blows with wretched Mercutio—the sickspore of poetry is starting to take marbled root in his own lungs.
And yet, here he is again, insistent on his affliction and getting his teeth punched out by Mercutio ever-again, feeling his vision rotate and wither until Tybalt can spit his own ichor out and shove back. Mercutio is laughing, unhinged as he is, a low crinkling-crackling sound of faerie taunts and half-lucid threats about what I'll do with your pretty guts as soon as I rip them out piece by piece, and Tybalt—
"You're a fuckin' joke," is all he chokes out, stammered by bloodflow blocking his windpipe, as he grabs Mercutio by the jaw and shoves the other man against the alley bricking.
The noise Mercutio makes is, as anything, harsh and spiteful and gurgling. He lets out another singing peal of horrid laughter and is that all kitten? don't you wanna try a little harder my prince? and all Tybalt has known all his whole damn life is to be rageful and lustful and lustful and rageful and he growls to himself and just—
Fucking loses it.
He throws his fist into that strong jaw, already feels the skin of his knuckles tearing open to reveal rotting tendons and tendered roots. Infectious spores, too, maybe, the buds of anger that infest his bloodstream. Gashes in his fists flinging open to release whatever rage rests in his tainted blood, prince of cats, prince of cats, inbred and bruised like a calico kit—
"Won't you just shut your mouth?" Tybalt hisses, and Mercutio's eyes flashfire with glee, even as copper red drips down his flayed-open nostrils. The two of them, they're both so gored and graying in the alleyway rain it's a wonder the buzzflies haven't caught their scent and swarmed.
"Oh, Tybalt, I'm startin' to think you like me using my mouth."
"You—" Tybalt curls his fists against the asphalt and feels gravel and rocksalt dig into his wounds, gritted and painful and yet Tybalt's always been tolerant to pain hasn't he? That's why his Mrs. Capulet, why their family matriarch was so infatuated with him. He could hold his own pain and he would squirm and writhe from it too, his synapses firing in the wrong directions and pleasure raking up his spine. That's why she traced her knuckles across his bruised cheeks, his scraped knees, years and years and years ago—
The thought of that makes Tybalt growl to himself even louder, 'til Mercutio laughs high in his throat and takes his own opportunity—he grabs Tybalt by the throat and uses his own height to leverage over Tybalt, bring him smashing down to the asphalt 'til Tybalt's head spins and his own saltcopper blood fills his mouth, teeth feeling slick with his own tongueflesh. That fucker is still gleeful and delighted, some kind of faerie fire life ridden in his whole body that asserts his own stance as living, as a man who seeks life's pleasures and uses them to his advantage and my oh my is adrenaline a pleasure.
And Tybalt hisses through his teeth but no air comes through, and Mercutio straddles him, knees knifepoints in his ribs, the lanky fucker squeezes 'round his throat harder and Tybalt—
His hips jerk. Goddamn him, god damn him, and his head spins and manicure scars ghost across his neck and flesh and Mercutio laughs louder and louder.
"Oh, kitten. You a masochist now?"
"Fuck you," Tybalt withers through his teeth, because—fuck him. Fuck Mercutio for getting into all of his frayed nerves and flaying them open wider, the sensation scratching up the base of his spine and shattering every borderline inhibition. Tybalt tries to repeat it, FUCK YOU, but the air isn't getting through and Mercutio loosens his grip.
"Kitten, you wanna tell me something?" His thumb presses into the fall of Tybalt's lip. He hates it he hates that he's wobbling—his chest pounding riots and his throat heaving and these are the costs of his fistfights as his aunt has told him for years now whenever she yanked his jaw up and down and inspected his sunken bruises as her sharp red nails tapped holes into him.
Tybalt spits at Mercutio, bile and acid spilling over his own jaw and the fist wrapped around his throat but he's got a trajectory for those furious gold eyes.
Mercutio is taken aback a slight—Tybalt's always one for being so honorable fighting like a Capulet does, cross on his neck and grit in his gums, and—
"Stop talkin' like you're flirtin' with me, d'Escalus," Tybalt snarls, and the thread of tension in the air snaps so fragile, and, like most things, it is Tybalt's fault all over again.
"I think you're into it, Capulet." Mercutio's voice isn't so lilting when it's rasped with chokeholds and chasms. "I think you're tired of shitty brothels, of whores being bored with you. Isn't that right, kitten?"
Tybalt is able to get a decent winding punch against the center of Mercutio's sternum, enough to make Mercutio stammer over his words and gasp in pain but he still fucking talks doesn't he? He's always talking, always, and Tybalt snarls and grinds up against him because damn this man damn him there's only so much Tybalt can do.
Mercutio grits his teeth when Tybalt grabs each of his arms in his own fists, digging his nails in harsh and dirty, and, fuck, Mercutio grinds back against him.
And it's horrid, isn't it? Flies buzzing overtop their heads in the pitch paranoia of alleyway traffic, their chests heaving against each other as Mercutio grabs Tybalt's hair by the root and yanks, enough to make Tybalt whine and that's all he needs to press their mouths together, harsh and slanted and slaughtering.
Mercutio groans against his lips, and their teeth clack, and the haunted hallways of Tybalt's braincase creak and crack and this is probably the worst fucking kiss Tybalt's had in his entire fucking life.
And yet he's desperate, and yet he needs it, raking his nails down Mercutio's arms, marking riled red scratches into his skin when he manages to get his hands underneath that annoyingly unpressed dress shirt.
Mercutio rolls his hips to a pace Tybalt can't stand, too fucking slow and yet he can't get a grip on his own bearings enough to find his ground, he just tries to bury his sounds in his chest until Mercutio snarls and bites his throat, printing teethmarks around fingerprints.
Fucking his worst rival in an alleyway isn't the proudest moment of Tybalt's life. It's more along the lines of the most humiliating moments, because he feels his cheeks cold and damp when he comes in his pants, sticky and overheated and still as Mercutio ruts into him until he's spent as well, and—
Fuck. Fuck.
"I fuckin' hate you," Tybalt says, voice wobbling. He tries to pull himself out from underneath Mercutio, fingertips slipping and scraping against the concrete, his chest heaving. Mercutio lets him away, his own eyes a little wider and his hair disheveled, his neck bleeding from wherever Tybalt got his nails to.
"Of course, kitten," Mercutio says, his own voice on some wavelength of fragile. Fuck. Fuck, what a mistake.
Tybalt's fingers twitch. He scrubs at his cheeks. Mercutio doesn't take the dig that's so easily available to him, that his oh-so-furious kitten is crying. The asphalt bleeds and the buzzflies creak, and Tybalt lurches out of the alleyway after putting himself almost-together. Mercutio doesn't take another look at him, and he doesn't look back, because it doesn't matter.
The rain washes the asphalt clean no matter what. They won't face this again. They won't have to.