1. The Madness of Love - A Mercutio/Romeo Fic (Some Mercutio/Tybalt)

    By Meltha.

    Mercutio first met Romeo in hell. At least, that was where he had thought he was. Hell, after all, is a place that has no hope left in it. Mercutio had seen his father, his mother, his two older brothers and his little sister fall ill with plague, slowly slipping away each day. His God-fearing neighbors had turned their backs on them, fear stripping them of any semblance of humanity. Eventually, in their panic, the people of Verona nailed shut the doors of every effected house to prevent the spread of contagion or the escape of the doomed inhabitants. He had been surrounded by the continual stink of death, and hope had ceased to exist for him except as a dim memory.

    For three weeks Mercutio had lived in that hell, watching helplessly as his family died one by one, but inexplicably the disease did not touch him. However, there was no food left in the house, and he had soon sunk to the level of eating rats, the only creatures to break the edict of quarantine. He began to grow delirious and weaker day by day, his mind becoming unhinged with famine, grief, and terror.

    But hell was not to be his final resting place. At long last the door was pried open, and Friar Lawrence had stood silhouetted against daylight so blindingly bright that Mercutio had thought he might be God. The holy man had been horrified at what had been done during his absence to visit one of his superiors in Mantua, and the friar had come to put the dead to rest; he had not expected any survivors. In his shadow had stood a small boy, barely daring to peek around the voluminous folds of the friar’s brown robes. Friar Lawrence had looked down, only just now realizing the child was there.

    “Great saints! Romeo, thou must not enterest this place. What dost thou here? No, answer not, I have not time for thy idle prattle. Be a good child and run back to thy parents’ house,” he had said.

    “Will he die?” he asked, frowning seriously.

    “Fear not,” he said kindly, bending to speak to him face to face with a consoling expression. “There are worse things than death, and those who have treated these poor souls with such contempt have far more to fear than this one does if he be called to his eternal home. But hie thee hence! There’s a good lad.”

    With a long backward glance, the little boy ran along the cobbled streets. His eyes had briefly connected with Mercutio’s bleary ones, and somehow in that moment a bond had been forged. Meanwhile, uttering Paternosters and Aves with an urgency that seemed to propel him with superhuman force, Friar Lawrence had carried the weak and ill Mercutio back to the church where he nursed him to health over several months.

    Mercutio had been ten years old.

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  2. Good Night, Sweet Prince (A Hamlet/Horatio Fic)

    By Meltha.

    Hamlet’s eyes had been startlingly blue, as blue as fresh spring violets. As they stared up at him, sightless, from the face of the dead prince lying on the floor of Elsinore’s main hall, Horatio wished he could tear his sight away from those perfect eyes that had, moments before, urged him to live and tell the tale of what had transpired to bring Denmark under the heel of young Fortinbras, the almost unbelievable twists and turns of brother against brother, ghosts appearing with commands of vengeance, madness and self-slaughter and poisoned foils, the ending of a dynasty and the death of so many that the dead outnumbered the living.

    That was the tale Hamlet wished him to tell, and he would, as far and as wide as it might be told. If it took him all his life and that life was as long as Methuselah’s, he would tell and retell the story until the whole of Denmark, of Europe, of the world knew of the tragedy that had befallen the royal house. But it was not the tale that Horatio remembered with greatest clarity. That tale was one that would live quietly within his memory, always closest to the foreground of his mind, yet it would never pass the portals of speech, save perhaps in the murmurings of sleep. It was Hamlet who had told him he sometimes spoke as he slumbered, after all.

    Horatio remembered a day in Copenhagen under a brilliantly blue sky in the pleasant warmth of June. There had been a festival, one that had involved dancing with charmingly pretty country girls to riotous music and the drinking of a good deal of ale. The day had worn on in a dreamy, perfect light that is possible only when one is eighteen and full of assurance that life will become better and better with each passing year, utterly forgetting any troubles or misgivings. When night had fallen at last, the two friends had found themselves in a drinking house of moderate repute, savoring something that was at least pretending to be ale but seemed to be less strong than the rather questionable-looking pitcher of water on the table.

    “I tell you, Horatio,” Hamlet had said, leaning so far back in his chair he was in danger of toppling to the floor, “tis a lovely thing to be the likes of us, is’t not?”

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  3. Waste Our Lights In Vain - A Mercutio/Romeo Fic (Some Mercutio/Tybalt)

    By Nifra Idril on Yuletide Treasure.

    Submitted by morethanprinceofcats.

    i. 

    There is a door inside Mercutio, in the shape of Romeo. It blows with the wind; open and shut, open and shut.

    Romeo sleeps as the sun climbs the sky. Mercutio waits for him, his back against the hot bricks until noon and past—slipping bits of onion into his mouth and watching dogs bark at one another. 

    There is an orchard outside the walls of Verona, where trees heavy with pears bend toward the ground like washer women toward the river. Mercutio squints into the light, white and blinding, and his mouth remembers the crunch and tang of the fruit. He remembers the sound of Romeo’s feet pounding against the rich ground as Mercutio chased him. Mercutio remembers the scratch of bark against his own hands as he climbed to sit beside Romeo. He remembers the shifting light through the leaves, shade and sun dappling Romeo’s face as Mercutio plucked a pear and held it out, in wordless offer. And Romeo’s lips, his teeth, as he bit into it, his eyes like slate. 

    In Romeo’s rooms, the curtains are clapped together over windows, and darkness climbs the walls like vines. Romeo lies on his bed, one arm flung over his face. His open shirt shows his pink skin, the sweat over his throat, arched and miserable. He mutters in his sleep, different names as days pass, but always a woman long-necked and pale-faced. Romeo makes love to their names with his lips, his tongue, curving his mouth around their names as his hands will never curve around their bodies. 

    They are always untouchable, impossible.

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  4. But Not A Man At All - A Portia/Nerissa Fic

    By an anonymous poster on this Shakespeare Kink thread.

    Submitted by intheconcertroom.

    “Nerissa, I pray you, tell: do I not look the very picture of a well-schooled gentleman?”

    For the first time since they had put on their men’s garb, Nerissa chanced a look at her mistress. Portia was smiling despite the grave seriousness of the situation, cheeks flushed and eyes twinkling with excitement at the thought of their ruse.

    She did not look like a gentleman, not fully, nor – beyond the robes – a man at all. What she was there was Portia, beaming, beautiful Portia, alive with the same childlike joy and witty intellect that Nerissa knew so well from her puzzle games at Belmont. She had to fight to tear her eyes away.

    She tapped one finger to her chin and chewed her lip in feigned consideration. “Ay, were he coming to call at Belmont. But far too flippant for a man of the law, especially when before a court.” She leaned over and tugged at the cap, setting it straighter on “Balthazar’s” head. Her fingers brushed Portia’s as she pulled away and for a moment she froze – fingers still on her cheek, mouth inexplicably dry, face far too close to Portia’s own, and the feeling that somewhere, somehow they had crossed the line from banterinto flirting pounding relentlessly through her head. She removed her hand perhaps just a shade too quickly to be entirely casual, and at Portia’s questioning look said only, “There. Much better.”

    Really, looking from a distance, the disguise wasn’t that bad. Even Nerissa, who knew their wearer well, could be half-fooled into thinking that the clothes held the form of a young man (and an attractive one at that, if she would allow herself the liberty to think it).

    Portia must have noticed her discomfort, for she asked, “Nerissa, are you all right? What pales you so? In sooth, I fear that my habit is not living up to even the faintest of the praise you give it.”

    “Nay, fret not, mistress,” Nerissa replied. The last thing she wanted at any time – and even less so at this particular time – was to worry Portia over her gentlewoman’s thoughts and feelings. “I do but fear my own disguise is quite weak when stood next to your own.”

    “Then fear no more. To my own prying eyes you are the very picture of a young page-boy.” She smiled, breaking the tension that had been building, and leaned over to tousle Nerissa’s wig playfully. She smiled back at Portia, glad for the questioning to end.

    “Well then, good doctor of the law, should we head on our way?” She extended her arm and Portia took it, and for a while she thought no more on the incident at all.

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  5. Nothing But - A Mercutio/Tybalt AU

    By gunsandpocky. A companion to Some Consequence.

    …like fire and powder
    Which, as they kiss, consume

    He’s standing at the door, balanced neatly as a tangodancer there in his pretty drugstore cowboy boots and his Sunday suit. Looking like he can’t make up his mind which is going to win, the hate he’s already feeling or the bigger, better hate he thinks he’s going to feel. 

    Christ, don’t you ever clean this place? 

    What do you care? We’re not going to fuck on the floor. This time.

    The sheets are supposed to be black, right? I mean, you bought them like that? 

    ‘Course not. They are stained and shadowed and smirched with sin. Blame yourself, baby – the dark rubs off.

    Are you washed in the blood,
    In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?
    Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
    Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

    I don’t think I get the tune exactly right, but I don’t claim to be a musician.

    His mouth comes a little open, but what’s he going to say to that? He stays quiet, but his green eyes get a red shine, like something your headlights might pick up in the middle of an empty road somewhere.

    I feel like I need a little time, so I pull the throwing-knife out from under my dirty pillow, toss it up, watch the clean circle it makes in the air, a shining blur with no end or beginning, and catch it by whatever’s closest when it comes back to hand. The blade, this time.

    Nimis exaltatus / Rex sedet in vertice / Caveat ruinam, kittycat, I say. That little shadow crosses his blank-paper forehead – he doesn’t like when I confuse him, which is what I do, so fuck him anyway. All the Latin he knows is Ego te absolvo, and that’s a lie he can’t quite make himself believe or he wouldn’t be here.

    You’re a fucking nightmare. Seriously. And you’re holding that knife wrong. I can see his fingers open and close, wanting to get his hands on me, fix me for good. He just needs me to tell him he can.

    Then why don’t you quit wasting my time and come over here and show me how to do it right, Your Majesty? Even to piss him off, even to get him hard – harder - I’m not going to call him master. I know who’s driving, and who’s the wheel.

    And he says what he always says, before he takes off his clothes and lies down with me. 

    What the hell do you want, anyway? 

    Like maybe I’ll have a different answer this time. My black cat, my beautiful bad luck charm, sorry, no.

    Nothing, baby. Nothing but one of your nine lives. And as you shall use me hereafter, til we’ve got nothing left.

  6. Some Consequence - A Romeo/Mercutio AU

    By gunsandpocky.

    It’s quiet at Capitan’s at four in the afternoon; the bartender puts Lou Reed on the jukebox and the whores come in with their baskets from the launderette next door to drink beer and fold their towels and wait for the rain to stop. I’m up at the bar with my cousin and he’s telling me I have to quit thinking with my dick and I’m telling him it’s different this time, she’s not like that and he says, You say that every time, dumb-ass.

    The universe hates me, is all the answer I’ve got.

    You say THAT every time, too. Hey, Johnny – Rico Suave here needs a refill.

    Then you come in, fall in through the door marked Exit; rain-wet, torn shirt, split lip, black lines smudged like city-dirt under your eyes. I don’t know how you do it, but you make falling down look like the opening act; like the next thing you’ll do is shoot the heart out of an ace of spades or eat fire.

    I look at you again, and it’s not wide or deep, but it still hurts, somewhere. And I watch you stand up and spit, and a laugh comes out of your bloody mouth as you catch me watching.

    Go ahead and look, beautiful. That’s what you got eyes for.

    The fuck? I say, but your narrow ass is already on the barstool next to mine, and you’re finishing what’s left of my drink and rattling the ice cubes like glass dice.

    Buy me another. You owe me.

    I don’t know what, but I nod at Johnny.

    My cousin says Aw, Jesus. This is a new one, and I want to say, Maybe not.

    It’s like flies and meat. I’m out of here - if you mother asks me, I haven’t seen you.The whores watch him go, the old one with a gold tooth smiling.

    They watch when we leave, too. A sale…

    And I’m sitting in your room full of cards and masks and voodoo shit, pieces of junk and clothes on the floor. Sitting on your bed drinking Puerto Rican rum and watching you throw knives, hearing their thin song in the air and way you’re breathing. The last one’s shivering, point buried in the wallboard and you yawn and say You ever been fucked by a guy?

    No.

    In your dreams, you say, but not the way most people say it.

    You’re crazy, I swear. No.

    You pull off what’s left of your shirt and I see the scar, the scratch, the sacred heart with a crown of fire inked half over it.

    Six Hail Marys for swearing, beautiful. Don’t worry. I can make it do. 

    And you taste like smoke and fate and river water, jesus-blood and candy. The way you knew I knew you would.

    Took you long enough, you say, against my mouth, back deep somewhere in my head.

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