“Ay,” he says, where normally he would make some sort of joke, or a lewd implication, but this feels…strange. He feels like he’s on a precipice he can’t quite see the edge of. There had been no time to consider the aftermath of everything in the moment, and he had somehow never expected Benvolio to be the one to show up here before Romeo. If Romeo knew about it all, somehow it might be easier, he thinks. He married a Capulet, after all.

But Benvolio…Benvolio has been dear to him in ways similar to Tybalt and yet entirely different. Benvolio knows him, some of the deepest darkest parts that only his closest friends know. Mercutio loves him. He’s said it before, time and again, back in Verona. Then, it was easily brushed off as tomfoolery or drunkenness. Here and now, he is entirely sober and truly wishing at this moment that he was not. Perhaps that would make this easier. Especially if Benvolio ends up hating him. (He does not think he could bear that.)

Therefore, it is with some hesitancy that he says: “I enjoyed his company as well, after I told him to stop bleeding all over my carpets.”