open: the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow boy's butt shaft

[bymyheelies]

For those that care to spend time with Mercutio; they may note that today he is conspicuously hard to find. He is still reeling from the recent news of Romeo's fate at the end of their story, and not entirely sure how to proceed with it. Ideally, at home, he would find some way to take his mind off of pressing matters: spend time with his friends (friend, now, singular) or find someone entertaining to harass about the town and make merry. If he was in a particularly snappish mood he would invariably end up picking a fight with Capulets, one in particular.

That is not the case today. Someone attuned to the general sounds of the mansion might hear a steady sort of thunking noise coming from an out-of-the-way bar. It is there that Mercutio can be found, various bottles of alcohol open at his side. He has clearly been there some time by the looks of it, and is currently engrossed in throwing a small selection of daggers at the wall. Despite his intoxication, he is doing a reasonably good job at it; but judging from the stormy look on his face, he does not entirely wish to be bothered.

Comments

[wickedwit]

Ah. He's putting together a few more of the pieces. Laws won't stop feuding in the streets, because justice is never so viscerally satisfying as personal retribution for a personal harm -- Claudius knows because so much of his politicking lay in working around or with people's worse natures. Keeping a young man who continued a feud without punishing him around would be politically disastrous, but any public punishment would still seem to be choosing sides, giving the families more to argue and murder each other over. Even moreso, when the most recent violence involved the prince's own kin. In the prince's place, Claudius is sure he'd quietly send that young man somewhere else, until the incident was forgotten. A mercy, unless that young man had a desperate reason to stay.

"I see," he says, simply and swiftly summing up his thoughts. He pauses before the door to his workshop, opening it up to the familiar smells of hanging herbs and bubbling distillations, of old books and scrap metal. "No wonder you're in the mood for the duel. There's no one you can settle this particular debt with -- and even if you did, it wouldn't bring Romeo back. Or Tybalt. Is that why you miss him?"

[bymyheelies]

It does smell oddly comforting; a bit like Friar Laurence’s cell. He shrugs again, short and sharp, and somewhat pointedly looks away. “The only thing I miss is how easy he was to beat.”

[wickedwit]

"You miss how easy the young man who fatally wounded you was to beat?" Claudius leans against one of the workshop's many long tables, looking Mercutio over. From the sound of it -- and from Mercutio's earlier, idle brag that he had Tybalt well in hand before Romeo came between them -- that fatal wounding may've been a miscalculation on both sides, with tragic consequences unfolding from it. But Tybalt's relative skill isn't the precise contention, so Claudius waves the question away without answer. "That must have been the exception rather than the rule, I suppose. And a certain righteous impulse to establish who should've won could explain why you so want to see him again ... but you don't seem to take much comfort in knowing you were avenged. You didn't squabble so often because you truly wanted each other dead, did you? He was easy to needle. You could get his attention. And there's an almost erotic tension to attentions expressed through crossed swords."

[bymyheelies]

"Everything about it was foolish," Mercutio replies, hopping unsteadily up on the nearest table to lounge on it, kicking his heels. "I am glad I was avenged, of course, but little good it does me here; and ay, Romeo got justice, for whatever comfort it gave him." He shifts a bit, suddenly feeling like a bug pinned down for inspection.

"...Ay. You've the right of it," he says after a moment, carefully looking anywhere but at Claudius. It's useless to lie about it here, he knows well enough that Claudius will uncover it sooner or later. And why should it even matter? Tybalt may never arrive, or Romeo, for that matter. There is no one to disapprove here.

[wickedwit]

A rather mature response, in Claudius's opinion. Older men that Mercutio (named Shen Yuan) would sputter and deny their affections for much longer. It makes him rather proud, an inexplicable but fond feeling. "I'm often right. Now," he says briskly, "what canst thou tell me about chemical reactions?"

[bymyheelies]

He has known for some time now that he prefers --anyone, really, but Tybalt was always the most fun to tease, aside from Benvolio. It was terribly easy to get under his skin and attract some notice. "Oh --" he says, kicking his heels as he thinks. "They signify that one thing has changed to another, is 't so?"

[wickedwit]

"E'en so," Claudius says, in an approving tone. It's the tone of recognizing an apt pupil, or praising an attentive lover. "The basis of transmutation, with which alchemy is concerned. Thou see'st it in the twelve processes, in the four stages of a Magnum Opus, through which substances are changed from one form to another. But none of the change's energy can be created nor destroyed. It's often released in steam, in heat, in light. These are chemical reactions. I'm going to show you a chemical reaction, and then I'd like you to reproduce it."

[bymyheelies]

Mercutio looks intrigued, and nods. Whether or not he is sober enough for this is entirely beside the point, explosions are always fun. “Ay, I shall certainly try.”