Fic: Vorenus Amat Dis
Paring: Vorenus/Pullo
Rating: R, pre-slash
Spoilers: Vague and general, up to 2x02
Author's Notes: Still watching season one, so this season two-ish fic is based on secondhand description. I'm loving the "All Roads Lead to Rome" feature on the DVD's, though the edutainment is, naturally, leading to slashy fic ideas! This fic is scraped together from some season one graffiti (Atia Sleeps With Everybody!), and wedged into canon somewhere between the end of season one and the Lover's Quarrel of season two. Enjoy!
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Pullo passes it every day. Just outside of the Collegium, he stops to run his fingers over it, as if trying to understand its purpose there. It might be mockery, but there’s no vulgar sketch to make it clear. More likely it’s a warning to all who enter, a hasty black scrawl…Vorenus Amat Dis.
Vorenus sees it. It’s not the worst that is said about him in the streets, not by far. It doesn’t make sense then that Pullo seems to worry it so. More than once he’s seen the man stop to touch it, curl his fingers over it like his fist could blot it out, make it not true. Vorenus could ask him, of course, why he cares. But even if Pullo cares, Vorenus does not. He has no patience for such things, nonsense scribbled on walls, nonsense in the demands of the Avantine, nonsense to be here at all.
Inside that dark and brawling space, Pullo’s eyes adjust quickly to find his friend. Friend, huh, that’s a laugh. This devil of a man who barely glances at him, who seems to think him little more than part of the décor, these days. It doesn’t matter what seems, though, not to Pullo. He doesn’t pay mind to seems, what he knows is this- he’s no mere furniture for Vorenus, he’s the floor, the walls, the laden table Vorenus comes home to, the cot he lays his head on at night. He knows, too, that the graffiti is wrong, Vorenus isn’t among the dead just yet. He knows more than some vandal about the matter, it makes him laugh to think of it, that if they thought he was bad now, they should have seen him before.
When Vorenus cares to, he feels a swift flash of rage, at the words, at the thought that Dis is taunting him. Telling him not yet, not yet, when even the vandals of Rome know that yes, Lucius Vorenus is dead already.
Pullo is glad, really, that Vorenus can care for himself again. That he can feed himself, dress himself. That he is a man again, and not a rare shadow. Pullo watches, still, to make sure. To see that Vorenus eats enough, that his clothes are on the right side of clean. It’s easy to watch him, since Vorenus rarely ever looks straight at him. Easy to take inventory of a body that, for a space, had been Pullo’s life’s work.
Here in the collegium it is as close and dim as the mines of Dis. This place is all action and greed and it would be hard, here, to tend Vorenus like the lamb he once was. Back home it hadn’t been so hard. In that empty place where the children had been, Pullo had kept his friend alive without purpose. He had learned how to shepherd with the plain force of his hands, learned to press his thumb into the soft bend of an elbow just so, how to fit his palm around the base of a skull until it touched pillow, how to arrange limbs by shifting the landscape of an ankle until he could see Vorenus’s spine lie in a damp, sweaty fallow. He had learned how much careful work a body could be. Worth it, though, when Vorenus lay still, facing the putrid head of that cuntfacedpig, and had calmed. Worth it.
Pullo doesn’t know, now, what could put that look of calm back on Vorenus’s face. These days he’s all cold anger and silence, exhausted fury. It’s exhausting, too, to watch.
More so not to. Pullo hasn’t seen Vorenus all day, though he’s seen people come and go from his office he’s not been summoned there. Most likely Vorenus just forgot him, forgot to stick his head out the door this morning, or this afternoon, to bark “Pullo!” like he usually did. It’s been no break, to sit downstairs and wait, not having much of anything else to do, no pressing business of his own. So he sits, half drunk on wine and boredom, counting the number of times Gaia swings through that door without glancing at him, with no news or message from his boss. Friend.
He sits at a table until long after dark. Until Eirene stops urging him to come to bed and goes herself. He sits waiting for the dim light from Vorenus’s room to extinguish. It doesn’t, and finally, he goes. Quietly up the stairs, as though Vorenus won’t mind the intrusion if only he’s not loud. Knocks on the door but opens without answer, sure he will get none.
Vorenus sits behind his table, staring at a tablet of figures. He doesn’t glance up, but he does mutter “Pullo,” his voice a low warning that falls on deaf ears. Pullo cranes his neck to see his bosses work, trying to sound interested when he asks “Everything all right, then?”
Vorenus sighs at that, rubs his neck harshly and looks up, his eyes focusing somewhere over Pullo’s left shoulder momentarily. It seems a burden for him to correct his sight, to look his friend in the eye, but he manages it after a pause. Smirks wryly, in that dark mood that passes for humor on him these days, when he turns the tablet upside down and answers, “Pimping is not, in fact, easy.”
It’s a thin joke grown thinner over the weeks, Vorenus’s disdain for their new life, and Pullo does not smile. He pushes past it, this sardonic robe that Vorenus wears, “Sure, but that’s Gaia’s problem, isn’t it? Seems she does an okay job at sorting it all out…why does she bother you with it?” Pullo knows, of course, why she comes to Vorenus so often, he understands it’s a slim station for her, here. Best for her to be under the wing of someone sturdier. She’d do better to find someone else, though, if the writing on the wall was to be believed. It strikes him again, with Vorenus’s cold eyes staring through him, that slim shiver of fear he’d felt the first time he saw it.
Vorenus Amat Dis
Vorenus sees his friend recoil, just slightly, but enough to notice. It’s like this, when they are alone together here. It hadn’t been like this, when they were alone together, before. Vorenus tries not to think of that time after…the deaths. Tries to put it out of his mind, but no matter what his mind forgets, his body remembers. The strength of his friend’s hands, cupped around his face, crowding out the dark edges. It’s shameful to remember, being so helpless, so pained. More shameful still to look at the face of the man who saw it and…want him near, still.
Pullo is watching him warily, his posture hinting at flight as he mutters “I’ll leave you to it, then. You’ll be wanting sleep.”
Vorenus laughs, an unexpected bark that brings Pullo a step closer. He mouth works, a breath as he opens only to snap shut again, his tongue warring bitterly with his mind. Pullo walks closer still, until he is next to Vorenus, leaning against the table as casually as he can. His presence is unnerving, the bulk of him filling Vorenus’s vision, crowding out those dark edges until he must speak.
“I do sleep with Dis.”
Pullo doesn’t blink, doesn’t question or exclaim. Just sighs a bit and reaches over to pour a glass of wine. It’s Vorenus’s voice, hollow and scarce, that pushes Pullo into old habits. Fix him, his hands seem to say, hear him.
“It’s worse, since we came here. Dis mocks me. Takes me with him to the underworld at night...shows me…”
Vorenus’s eyes are focused hard on Pullo’s throat, but he does not see him drink his wine, nor hear the quiet shhh as Pullo leans in to clasp his hand.
“What I see there…you have to understand…they’re still beautiful. Their flesh is rotting, it will be gone soon, but they’re still…”
“Shh…gods…shhh.”
Pullo is trembling, though Vorenus is still and calm. He wraps one large hand around Vorenus’s neck, more to steady himself than anything, and Vorenus looks up at him, sees how troubled his friend’s face has become. He goes to push his arm away, but his hand betrays him, gripping Pullo’s forearm fiercely. Clasped to his friend in this manner, held down and rooted, he is aghast at how much he has said. These dreams are private, and sacred. They belong to him, they are his punishment and more...
He gasps, “He won’t keep me! He won’t keep me there, though I beg him! He tosses me back here...where everyone I love is dead.”
He can’t miss the pained twist of Pullo’s mouth at that. For just a moment, there is a rush of twisted pleasure in it, in the knowledge that he has brought misery once again. But it passes, and with it the desire to leave his words unmended.
“Everyone save you.”
Vorenus is surprised by the smile he still has for Pullo, when he states the truth. It’s like a lance to his heart. Pullo isn’t surprised by the admission, but his relief is obvious. His fingers dance along Vorenus’s spine as he coaxes the tension out of Vorenus’s neck, and still his other hand holds tightly to Vorenus’s own. The gestures have stretched into a caress, but neither man breaks his grip.
“Vorenus, brother…”
Pullo stops, and his sharp breath hangs in the air. The word, brother, is too small a vessel for the bristling need in Pullo’s voice. Vorenus can’t answer in kind, he doesn’t know a word that wouldn’t feel a lie, doesn’t know the right sounds to ask that he be allowed to sleep in the arms of his friend instead of those of Dis. His grip on Pullo’s arm is all he has, his thumb pressing into the soft bend of elbow, pushing him…
“Let’s go away. Leave the Collegium for a day or two. Go to the country, sleep under the stars.”
Vorenus laughs, in relief now, and leans back, his hand trailing Pullo’s arm, but without urgency now. Yes, the countryside, the stars. Yes, the campfire and the quiet. Yes.
-fini
Author’s Endnote: Well, the marketplace is full of such fine specimens, you can insert your own favorite campfire fic here!