Denouement
Title: Dénouement
Author: radiogaga33
Characters/Pairing: Marcus/Esca (The Eagle)
Type: Post-movie
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 6100
Warnings, etc: None
Disclaimers: No claims to any copyrights, trademarks, or any other intellectual property. I do not own these characters. They belong to their creators. This is purely a work of fiction. It never happened.
Author’s Notes: I’ve used “dénouement” here in the literal meaning of the word (i.e. untying, unraveling). Also, I still haven’t read the novel yet, so forgive me if the details of my version of most-movie events don’t match up with the book. This all started with the prompt, of course, and then a rewatching of the movie. I’ve always been particularly taken with the end, the funeral pyre and how different they seemed in the ending scene right after. Not just the smiles, but how they seemed to walk differently even, light and happy, like this massive weight had been lifted off both their shoulders. I took all that and ran with it.
Summary: Response to this PROMPT (wherein, Esca helps Marcus with his, er, inhibitions).
Dénouement
This is how it begins, huddled together with Marcus on the sodden earth, tree branches overhead the only protection from the slow rain that has begun to fall. It is fitting that it should rain now, Esca thinks, sparing a quick glance at the other men seated around the funeral pyre, Aquila’s old legionaries watching the flames leap and whirl, flashes of orange and blue in the overwhelming gray all around. Rain to restore and renew. Rain to wash away memories of loss and shame, of pain and desperation, and to leave in its wake an indefinable lightness that warms Esca despite the biting cold. His father’s dagger burns on that pyre. Cunoval’s blade and Aquila’s wooden eagle. Two fathers laid to rest so that their sons may finally live.
Esca steals a sidelong glance at Marcus, at the man who has been more things to him than he can name: a master, an enemy, a slave, a friend, and something else he has always steered his thoughts away from in the months before this journey north of the Wall, something he only dares to name now, as the rain washes away all that used to be and leaves him with the first glimpses of possibility.
Marcus watches the pyre and Esca watches him, gaze tracing over the terrible paleness of his skin and the tightness around his eyes. There had been moments in the last two days-no, not moments; every second, every breath had been weighted with fear, that he would not return in time, that the Seal warriors would find Marcus first. But he had kept his promise, and now Marcus is here, a solid familiar weight beside him. And yet, it isn’t enough, to see him, to be seated beside him in the rain. Because visions are changeable things, fast and false when desire makes them so.
Esca lowers his gaze to Marcus’s hands resting in his lap. Palms and fingers, skin moving soft and sure against skin, these things never lie. So Esca reaches out, heart pounding in his chest as he covers Marcus’s hand with his own and entwines their fingers together. He waits for Marcus to object, is half-certain he will, forever steadfast in his notions of honor and shame and the rigid lines between what a man does and what he must not do. Esca waits, barely breathing, only to gasp softly when Marcus twists his fingers free to turn his hand over and take Esca’s in his, palm to palm, skin to skin.
They remain like that as the rain continues to fall, Marcus watching the pyre and Esca watching him, hands entwined, warmer now with each other’s heat. It is only the barest fraction of what Esca is finally willing to admit that he desires, but it is a fine beginning.
* ~ * ~ *
They laugh all the way back to Uncle Aquila’s villa, riding side by side, comparing their memories of the men they have just left behind, sallow-faced politicians frozen with shock at the return of the lost eagle of the Ninth. They laugh because they can and because they have defied probability. Together, always together, through a rich meal and richer wine at Uncle Aquila’s table, where Esca looks at Marcus and thinks he would make that journey again, chase rumors and legends to the ends of the earth if it means he will be promised this warmth seated low in his stomach, this easiness, this happiness he had almost forgotten he could feel.
They are still laughing, drunken but quiet now in deference to the lateness of the hour, when they stumble into Marcus’s room. Marcus crosses the darkened space and begins to undress, back turned to Esca, modest to the last despite all they have seen together. Esca lights a lamp and looks at him, watching how the muscles in his back bunch and ripple beneath his skin as he moves. They haven’t spoken of that day in the North and if Esca leaves Marcus to his own devices, they never will. But Esca no longer has use for unspoken things because he has survived, they have survived, and he cannot unsee the possibility revealed to him that day in the rain.
Marcus startles when Esca touches him, a soft caress, fingertips trailing slowly down the length of Marcus’s arm, testing the hard muscle and yielding skin, intent unmistakable.
“Esca, we shouldn’t.”
Roman to the last, even when his breath quickens and his eyes burn bright with the desire Esca had guessed at before their journey and is now certain of.
Esca’s fingers still at Marcus’s wrist. “And I say we should.”
“Esca-”
“You said I could decide what we do next. I have decided. A kiss.”
“I can’t.”
“Will you break your word to me?”
Esca meets his gaze boldly and Marcus looks back, as if he is helpless to turn away. Memories flash rapidly between them: a sword and shield thrown to the ground in an arena, the sharp edge of a surgeon’s blade, a boar hunt in the spring, weeks spent roaming Northern hillsides, mud-painted skin, biting cold and damp earth, Roman and Briton hands tightly clasped together. Esca waits silently, holding Marcus’s gaze, daring him to deny this and fearing that he will.
“Never,” Marcus whispers. “Never.”
Tentatively, Esca trails his fingers upward, travelling past Marcus’s forearm up to his shoulders and then to the curve of his neck, such a contradiction, hard muscle juxtaposed with soft, delicate skin. He cups the back of Marcus’s neck and pulls him down, slowly, giving him every chance to end this. But Marcus doesn’t, even when Esca presses their lips together, unskilled but determined. Instead he groans, soft and needy before gripping Esca’s waist and leaning into the kiss, parting his lips against Esca’s and teasing at the seam of his lips, drawing him out, sucking on Esca’s tongue.
It ends before Esca is ready. He loses the sweetness of Marcus’s mouth and the warmth of his large hands before he cares to. But that is alright, he tells himself later as he lies with his back turned to Marcus in the bed they now share. This is only the beginning.
* ~ * ~ *
It continues weeks later, after a hunt on an unusually warm afternoon.
Marcus’s tunic is damp with sweat as he pulls his spear free of the boar’s fallen body before flashing a wide smile in Esca’s direction. Esca leaps down from his horse and rests his bow against a tree trunk before closing the distance between them.
“The kill is yours,” he says with a smile of his own.
They field dress the animal together, Marcus working alongside Esca quietly. Afterward, they remove their tunics and sandals and wade into the cool water of the nearby stream in their braccea, washing the blood off their knives and hands. They settle on the bank of the stream afterward, Esca lying on his back while Marcus sits beside him, looking out at the rushing water.
“It will rain tomorrow,” Esca declares idly.
Marcus turns to look down at him with a frown on his face. It is a false frown, shaded with too much levity to be taken seriously. “Why must you say that? Allow me my illusions of endless sunshine.”
Esca laughs, and for the first time since their return from the North, he doesn’t marvel at how easily it comes now with Marcus. “Go ahead then. Far be it for me to deny you anything.”
He does not intend a double meaning, but Marcus seems to find one in his words. Suddenly the air around them grows heavy with tension as Marcus’s gaze strays to Esca’s mouth before skittering away. He wants, and yet he will deny it to the last, Roman that he is.
But Esca is not Roman. If he were, he would not do what he does next, rising from the soft grass and reaching for Marcus before he can move away. If he were Roman, he would not tease at the seam of Marcus’s lips like Marcus had done to him weeks ago, or lick into his mouth and slide his tongue along Marcus’s. Esca is Brigantes, and so he kisses Marcus until he feels him give in, until Marcus moans and pulls Esca closer to him, deepening the kiss, right there in broad daylight, where anyone can see.
* ~ * ~ *
It happens again and again after that, mind-shattering kisses that last longer with each iteration, another second more, another minute more, until they wind up kissing for a quarter of an hour, in daylight and in shadows. Behind the stables in the rain, wandering through the woods after a hunt, in the villa’s bath after a sparring exercise, and late at night in Marcus’s room, lips still sweet with the taste of that evening’s wine. They kiss until they’re breathless and their skin is flushed, until Esca’s blood runs hot and it takes everything in him to relax his death grip on Marcus’s clothes. Painful though it is, he releases Marcus each time, runs his hand roughly through his hair and doesn’t push when Marcus won’t meet his eyes. He lets go because he will not have this with regret.
But Esca’s patience isn’t endless. He finds his limit a month after the hunt, late at night, seated in Marcus’s bed, kissing once again. Esca runs his hands all over Marcus’s upper body, testing the swells and hollows, committing them all to memory. But as sweet at this is, it isn’t enough. He wants more, to feel Marcus’s skin on his, warm and yielding, and to feel the weight of his body, to hold him close, to give him pleasure.
He starts to move backward and thrills when Marcus follows blindly, chasing his lips, clearly unwilling to break that perfect point of contact. It happens in slow degrees, one breathless second following the other until Esca is on his back in the bed and Marcus lies between his spread thighs, kissing him still. Groaning, Esca thrusts up, clutching at Marcus’s waist and grinding their hard lengths together.
Instantly, Marcus freezes, breaking the kiss with a startled look. When he moves to pull away, Esca is prepared for it, wrapping his legs around Marcus’s hips to restrain him.
“Forgive me,” Marcus says, voice raspy and lips wet and swollen from the kiss. “I meant no disrespect.”
“What?”
Marcus pushes up further in Esca’s hold and looks down between their bodies. “A man should not ask another to do this, to yield like this.”
“And what if he does not have to ask? What if it’s freely given?”
Marcus tries to push up again but Esca tightens his hold, keeping him close, cock still hot and hard and pressed brazenly to Marcus’s.
“Esca.”
The word is a warning and a plea. Esca ignores both.
“You are not my master,” he says.
Marcus frowns. “I know that.”
“Then you must also know that I am free to do what I want and to lie with whom I will-how I will.”
“Esca.”
There is no warning in it this time, only supplication. Marcus’s voice is rough and strained, uncertain, as if even he doesn’t know what he is asking for: to be released, to be pulled closer. So Esca decides for him, for both of them, pulling Marcus into another kiss, using all the little tricks Marcus has unwittingly taught him over the last month, a sensual play of lips and teeth and tongues until Marcus gives in, until he moans low in his throat and surrenders to Esca’s hold, rutting against him until they both spend, fully clothed, like boys still in the bloom of youth.
* ~ * ~ *
A purse arrives from Rome on the first day of summer, enough gold that they no longer need rely on Uncle Aquila’s generosity. Letters accompany the award, Roman citizenship for Esca, for his service to the republic. It is little more than a curiosity to him, a convenience in Roman-occupied lands. That night, after Marcus has fallen asleep, Esca examines the seal, dark red like blood in the low light from the lamp in front of him, and he can’t help but think of the armilla Marcus would turn over in his hands again and again before their journey, eyes staring blindly into the distance, shoulders so weighted down with sadness that Esca had pitied him, enemy though he was. Pia. Fidelis. Esca grunts softly and douses the lamp. He will never think well of gifts from Rome.
Even so he is a practical man, which is why, in the morning when Marcus repeats the proposal he had made to Esca in the shadow of the Wall, Esca wholeheartedly agrees. Rome’s gold buys them a fair-sized plot of land to the west of Calleva, a stable of horses and a small barnfull of livestock to begin their new venture of farming and animal husbandry. They build their new house together, working bare-chested in the hot afternoons, growing lean and tan in the sunshine.
Esca first takes to his knees for Marcus on one of those afternoons, on a day well into the summer when their house is nearly completed. It is closer to evening than to morning when they grow distracted, abandoning their work and kissing against a wall, bodies rutting against each other. Esca’s mouth is open on Marcus’s neck and his hand wrapped tight around his cock, stroking, squeezing, delighting in each groan he wrings from Marcus’s throat. At some point, he looks down, watches with heavy-lidded eyes as Marcus thrusts into his grip, cock fucking Esca’s fist, swollen head pushing through the circle of Esca’s thumb and forefinger before disappearing once again, a tight, jerky rhythm repeated over and over. Suddenly it isn’t enough to take Marcus in hand. Suddenly Esca wants what he has imagined several times over.
He is on his knees before he allows himself time to worry for Marcus’s sensibilities, hands deftly undoing the ties of his braccae fully to draw him out. Esca is already shifting forward, lips parted, when Marcus stops him with an unforgiving grip on his shoulders.
“I would not ask this of you,” he says, looking down with a troubled expression. “I would never dishonor you like this.”
“There is no dishonor in it.” Esca pushes against Marcus’s hold, gaining enough ground to mouth at the head of his cock, tongue darting out to lick across the hot, swollen flesh.
Marcus hisses and pushes Esca backward. “You don’t owe me anything.”
Esca looks up at him in surprise. He had thought only of Roman morals, not of genuine misapprehension. Clearly, Marcus is afflicted with both if he thinks Esca does this out of obligation.
“I am not beholden to you. Any debts we owed to each other have been repaid in full. I owe you nothing.”
Marcus’s gaze clouds over with confusion. “Then why…?” He relaxes his hold, perhaps unconsciously, and Esca takes full advantage, pushing against Marcus’s hold and moving close enough to wrap his hand around the base of his cock.
“Because I want to. Because I’ve dreamed of this, taking you in my mouth, learning the feel of you with my tongue same as I’ve done with my hands.” Marcus gasps, hips twitching forward convulsively. “I want the weight of you on my tongue, your scent, your taste. I want to discover the sounds you’ll make when you break apart and spend in my mouth, calling my name, desperate for me.” Esca strokes Marcus’s cock, drawing his foreskin up so it half-covers the wide head before licking over and underneath it. “Does that sound like obligation to you?”
“No,” Marcus gasps out, jerking forward. A bead of moisture rolls off the head of his cock, dripping down the shaft until it meets the tight circle of Esca’s fingers. “Please, Esca. Please.”
Esca teases him for a while, taking a slightly cruel pleasure in making Marcus wait for it just like Esca himself has waited for it. But desire wins out over half-hearted retaliation in under a minute and Esca draws Marcus into his mouth, inch by inch, tongue working the thick flesh. He pushes forward until over half of Marcus’s cock is in his mouth before he marks his limit, stroking what he can’t take in his mouth at the same time that he bobs back and forth, sucking Marcus down, senses overwhelmed by the dizzying taste and heat of him, the feel of him, silk on iron, a perfect contrast.
Above him, Marcus gasps and moans and whimpers, thrusting forward, fingers entangled in Esca’s hair. Esca sucks him harder in response, thrilling to the sounds he makes, loving the way Marcus curses and begs, groaning Esca’s name as his hips move, desperate and uncontrolled, fucking into Esca’s mouth. Marcus comes on a sharp intake of breath, cock swelling a moment before it pulses, come spilling down Esca’s throat. He swallows around Marcus, grips his thighs to contain his wild movements before pulling back a little so that he catches the last of Marcus’s release on his tongue.
Marcus falls to the floor beside him afterward, pushing Esca to the bare ground and nearly ripping the ties to his braccae in his mad rush to undo the garment. Esca lasts six strokes, maybe seven, before he comes in Marcus’s hand, hips bucking and lips parting on a cry. When the gray haze around him lifts, Esca finds Marcus watching him, hair disheveled and darkened gaze fixed on Esca’s mouth, still wet from sucking his cock.
Someday, Esca decides, he will feign ignorance until Marcus asks for what he wants. He will pay no mind to the desire in Marcus’s gaze until he says the words, until he asks for Esca’s hand on him or Esca’s mouth on his cock or for a kiss afterward, but today is not that day.
“Kiss me,” Esca says and Marcus moves to obey, taking Esca’s lips gratefully and kissing his own taste from Esca’s mouth.
* ~ * ~ *
Marcus Aquila is many things: loyal, strong, earnest and just. He is a good man. This is why Esca loves him. This is why he would build a life with him, bed him, follow him to the outer limits of the known world without question. This is also why he is not surprised when Marcus takes him in hand for the first time only days after Esca first does the same for him and presses his lips to Esca’s ear, whispering “tell me what you like. I want to make this good for you.”
Marcus is a good man, but he is also a Roman. This is why Esca cannot be blamed for his confusion and stunned silence when Marcus falls to his knees and offers what Esca has been given to understand no Roman man ever would.
Autumn is well upon them by then, brightening the land with wide swatches of yellow and orange and brown. Their house is completed, a modest affair composed of three rooms: a kitchen, a parlor and a sleeping chamber, each one humbly furnished with what they could buy with the last of Rome’s gold and what Uncle Aquila had been willing to part with. The old man visits once a week and they return the gesture just as often, spending long hours at his table before riding home in the dead of night.
It happens on one of those evenings. Esca is inside the house, undressing in their bedchamber while Marcus sees to the horses. He has just removed his tunic, folded the woven fabric neatly and set it onto a chair when he hears the sound of sandals scraping along stone and turns to find Marcus watching him with a fond expression.
“One afternoon in the beginning, a few weeks after the surgery when I’d started to walk again, I was sitting in my room by the open doors, thinking of the old days when I saw you. I don’t know where you were coming from, but you were flushed and perspiring, and you took off your tunic to wipe your brow. I knew that I ought to look away, but I didn’t. I watched you from afar because I couldn’t do anything else, because you were the most perfect thing I had ever seen.”
Esca swallows hard, momentarily robbed of speech by Marcus’s unbidden confession. “Careful, Marcus,” he says when he can trust himself to form coherent words once again. “Perhaps you should not trust me with your secrets.”
Marcus laughs, more a breathless rush of air than a sound of true mirth, and suddenly Esca sees how much his confession taxed him. “You will discover them all on your own anyway. I might as well save us both the trouble and tell you myself.” Marcus grows painfully serious, staring at some spot over Esca’s left shoulder. “Besides, what are secrets when I trust you with my life?”
Esca loses his words again, but it is no matter, because Marcus comes to him and takes his hand. “Let me help you,” he says, pulling Esca to the side of the bed.
Marcus goes to his knees in front of Esca and directs him to brace himself against Marcus’s shoulders while he unlaces Esca’s sandals and pulls then off his feet. Then he undoes his braccae and slides the garment off his body. Esca watches him through all of it, indulging Marcus’s oddness, amusement and curiosity warring for supremacy in his mind only to disintegrate in an instant when Marcus reaches for his cock.
Esca gasps and settles back on the edge of the bed, looking down in stunned silence. Marcus stays on his knees, hand at Esca’s left hip, splayed fingers only a fraction of an inch from Esca’s hardening cock. Marcus’s hand is shaking and he refuses to meet Esca’s eyes.
“You don’t have to do this,” Esca says. “I can wait,” he adds even as his cock swells further between them, traitorous in its anticipation of the wet heat of Marcus’s mouth.
“You do the same for me,” Marcus murmurs, still looking down. “I want to give you pleasure as well.” He looks up then, defiance in his gaze. For a moment Esca wonders whom Marcus is rebelling against: himself or Rome? “It is only fair,” Marcus insists before looking away again.
Marcus is a good man, but perhaps Esca is not, because he ignores the way Marcus’s voice shakes and his hand trembles and spreads his thighs wider to make room for Marcus between them. Perhaps Esca is not because he cannot tear his gaze away from Marcus as he grips Esca’s cock and eases back the foreskin until the reddened head is fully revealed, swollen and leaking already. It may be that Esca is not a good man, but tomorrow, he will pray for virtue. For now, there is only this: the way lust slams through him when Marcus licks at the head of his cock, the way his hips jerk forward when Marcus draws it into his perfect mouth, lush lips stretched thin around the width of it, and the way Marcus colors brightly, eyelids fluttering shut as he begins to suck.
Marcus works hard between Esca’s spread thighs, inexpert but increasingly enthusiastic. Esca watches him unabashedly, gasps and groans for him, loving everything about this. He loves the way Marcus tries to take too much at first, choking on his cock, throat muscles fluttering wildly around the head before Marcus eases back, having learned his limit. He loves the obscene wet noises Marcus makes as he sucks, the way he squeezes his eyes shut and pulls hard, cheeks hollowing. He even loves the occasional scrape of Marcus’s teeth and the painfully tight grip of Marcus’s hands on his hips.
“No, don’t swallow,” Esca says when Marcus pulls back to do just that. “Get me wet, just like I do to you.”
Marcus looks up at him briefly, gaze almost feral in its intensity before he moves to obey, getting Esca wet with saliva, sucking him harder, loud and frantic and desperate, like this is giving him even more pleasure than it is Esca. When Marcus begins to bob back and forth, Esca cries out, lips spilling random words of praise, of lust, filth and endearments indistinguishable from one another. He gapes at Marcus, watching the way his cock emerges from Marcus’s suckling mouth, gleaming wet on each upstroke before it disappears into that devastating heat all over again.
He tries to push Marcus away when he feels his pleasure cresting. “Marcus, stop. You have to…I’m going to….”
But Marcus doesn’t heed the warning. Instead he sucks harder, frenzied and intent until Esca comes, cock spilling helplessly into Marcus’s mouth. It is only then that Marcus stops, making a shocked, choked sound before pulling back abruptly. But Esca is still coming, gasping and moaning, and the last of his release streaks Marcus’s cheek and chin, pearlescent moisture stark against olive skin. He expects Marcus to balk, to rise to his feet immediately and wipe his face clean, but he doesn’t. Instead he mouths at the head of Esca’s cock, sucking him again until Esca hisses at the excess. Only then does Marcus wipe at his face and rest back on his heels, not quite meeting Esca’s gaze.
“Let me,” Esca offers, already moving to take Marcus’s cock in hand. But when he goes down on his knees, he finds a tell-tale wetness staining the front of Marcus’s braccae.
“I already…when you….”
Esca looks up sharply, startled, because Marcus’s hands had been on his hips the entire time. Tomorrow, Esca will be sporting the bruises to prove it. Which means that Marcus spent just from taking him, from sucking Esca to completion. Oh. Now he understands. How frantic Marcus had seemed, how he had moaned and whimpered. His Roman is unraveling, mores fraying with each kiss, each touch and each night spent together. Their eyes meet where they kneel on the floor, Esca’s bold and Marcus’s bashful, the same knowledge reflected on their faces. Eventually, it will end, this slow erosion of Roman lines drawn deep in the sand, and then there will be no more spaces left between them.
* ~ * ~ *
It ends in the spring, when the hillsides are lush with greenery and the earth is soft and fertile. During the day, they work alongside two hired farmhands in the field and stables, planting and irrigating crops, grazing the sheep, and caring for the mare in foal. After sunset, they take their evening meal together in the parlor, grateful when the pot is the handiwork of the Greek woman they pay a few coins to cook and clean for them once a week, and suffering through when it isn’t. On those nights when fresh bread is the only saving grace from their supper, their wine is cut with far less water and midnight finds them telling tall tales for each other’s amusement. It is on one such night, locked in a rambling conversation leading to nowhere, that Esca sights the surest sign of the end. They are talking of the horses and arguing amicably about when they can expect the foal when Marcus, loose-lipped from the wine, proposes a wager, naming a day and demanding that Esca name his.
“And what shall you give me if I win?” Esca asks after he has also named a day.
“Ask for whatever forfeit you like. It does not matter because I will win.”
Esca looks at Marcus for a long moment, taking in his lazy smile. It had been an easy winter, bringing more rain than snow, and yet they had spent every night wrapped up in each other just the same. Esca looks at Marcus and thinks of the things they have done, they ways they have drawn pleasure from each other’s body. It is only a matter of time now, a month, perhaps two until the end, but why wait a day longer than he must?
“Alright,” Esca says. “Whichever one of us loses will bed the winner.”
Marcus colors slightly, but he doesn’t shy away. “That is hardly a prize, Esca. We have that already.”
“Ah, but I have not said how it would be done.” Esca knows the exact moment when Marcus understands, because his easiness vanishes and he sits up straighter in his chair. “If I lose, you can have me.”
Marcus looks away. “And if you win?”
“Then I will have you. It’s perfectly fair. Of course, if you would rather name a different forfeit….” Esca trails off deliberately, giving Marcus a clear opportunity to refuse the proposed terms of their wager.
“No,” Marcus says after a moment’s pause. He takes a long swallow from the wineskin in his hand and passes it to Esca, meeting his gaze for a split-second before looking away. “As you said, it’s perfectly fair.”
Esca wins the wager.
The mare goes into labor six days from the day Marcus names and only one day from Esca’s, but there is no time to think of wagers and forfeits in the rush of activity that follows. It isn’t until the second day after the mare drops her foal that Esca thinks of the wager at length. They haven’t spoken a word of it since the day it was made, and all afternoon long, Esca debates with himself. He can say nothing, pretend the wager was a quickly-forgotten bit of silliness stemming from too much wine and simply bide his time. Or he can demand his prize, push them both to the inevitable conclusion of what began that day in the rain.
As it turns out, Esca need not have troubled himself, because when he retires to their room that evening, Marcus walks in a minute later, clutching something to his chest. Before Esca can inquire after the caginess in Marcus’s eyes, he walks to the bed and sets down what he is holding on the low table beside it. A glass bottle filled with oil.
“Marcus-”
“You will need this, no?” Marcus asks with his gaze fixed on the ground, as if the stone beneath his feet is suddenly the most fascinating thing in the world.
Esca can only trust himself to nod.
“How do you want me?” Marcus asks, looking up, but still not meeting Esca’s gaze.
His question sends a jolt of sensation racing down Esca’s spine. This is going to happen. It is happening. “In the bed,” Esca says, lust turning his voice to gravel. “On your hands and knees.”
Marcus moves to obey, stripping off his clothes rapidly before climbing onto the bed. It is only then that Esca loses the last of his worry, because Marcus is half-hard already, cock jutting forward between his thighs. The sight pushes Esca to action. Quickly, he removes his own clothing, leaving a haphazard pile behind him as he picks up the bottle and gets on the bed behind Marcus. Reaching over him, Esca grabs both pillows on the bed and eases them below Marcus’s body before directing him to settle over them, still on his knees, but supported now.
“For your leg,” Esca explains, touching the back of Marcus’s scarred leg when he looks back over his shoulder at Esca.
Esca wonders at the look that passes over Marcus’s face at his words. It is as though, in the haze of apprehension, Marcus had forgotten that this is still Esca and has only just remembered. The tension seems to seep out of him then, and he visibly relaxes, resting lower on his forearms, waiting.
Esca prepares him slowly, carefully, teasing at Marcus’s body, wetting him with oil until his skin glistens with it from his buttocks down to his inner thighs. He thrusts in and out of Marcus, fingers pushing, twisting, stretching him for more, until Marcus is gasping and moaning with each pass, until he calls Esca’s name and clutches the bed coverings in his fists. That is when Esca presses into him, watching with something akin to awe as Marcus’s opening stretches to take him. Esca strokes Marcus’s hip as he buries his cock deeper and whispers to him, low words of praise, telling Marcus how well he is doing, how perfect he looks like this, on his knees, taking Esca’s cock.
When Esca is buried halfway in Marcus’s body, he stills as a memory pushes through the haze of pleasure: Marcus’s gaze dark with want and fixed on Esca’s lips after the first time he had taken Marcus in his mouth. Today, he will make Marcus ask for what he wants, make him say the words.
“Esca,” Marcus groans after seconds pass with no further movement from Esca. He tries to push back for more, to take Esca’s cock deeper in him only to be stopped by Esca’s firm grip on his waist.
“Tell me what you want,” Esca says. “Ask for it.”
“Please,” Marcus says, pressing his forehead to the bed and gripping the bed coverings tighter in his hands. Marcus’s muscles bunch beneath his skin, rippling with tension, and for a brief while, Esca fears that he will break before Marcus does. And then he hears it. “Fuck me.” Barely a whisper, but it is enough.
Esca presses in fully on a single thrust, gasping with the sharp pleasure of it. Beneath him, Marcus whimpers, and the sound has Esca leaning down to press a kiss to his shoulder. Marcus moans at the touch and reaches back blindly until his hand finds Esca’s face.
“Talk to me,” he says, high-pitched and strained. “I need you.”
“What would you have me say?” Esca whispers against Marcus’s ear. “What would you like to hear?”
He rears up and grips Marcus’s waist tight before pulling back, all the way back until only the head of his cock is left in Marcus’s body. Then he presses in once more, hard and relentless. He does it again and again, delighting in the way Marcus arches and gasps with each thrust. “Would you like to hear how perfect you look here,” he says, moving one hand to where they are joined and rimming the tightly stretched skin with his thumb. “Do you want me to tell you how incredible you feel around me, how hot and slick and tight?” Esca’s hand returns to Marcus’s waist as he fucks him harder, faster, growing mindless with the overwhelming pleasure of it all. “So beautiful, Marcus. You were made for this, for love, for pleasure.”
Esca is incapable of words after that, incapable of doing anything but thrusting into Marcus, fucking him harder with each stroke. Marcus works for every thrust, rocking back, reaching for more. Dimly, Esca wonders if Marcus knows that he is begging, an endless litany of please and harder and faster and deeper and more-always more. He only breaks the litany once, and only then to ask to touch Esca, to see him. When Esca pulls out of him, Marcus scrambles onto his back and spreads his legs wide without being asked, sweating and panting, utterly shameless in his pleasure.
Esca brings them both to completion like that, hands firm at the backs of Marcus’s knees, keeping his thighs spread wide as he thrusts in at the angle that makes Marcus gasp and shake. Beneath him, Marcus writhes on the bed, stroking his cock in time to Esca’s hammering thrusts until he seizes, pulsing out his release in thick, wet streaks down his fingers and across his abdomen. Esca follows him within seconds, unable to hold out against the way Marcus clenches down tight, milking his cock, pulling Esca’s orgasm from him.
* ~ * ~ *
This is how it ends, Esca wiping Marcus’s body clean while Marcus watches him, seemingly spellbound, as if nothing on this earth could ever make him look away again. It is fitting that it should end in the spring, Esca thinks long afterward when he is lying in bed with his head resting on Marcus’s chest. It is right that it should end now, when life is renewed and memories of winter are set aside and forgotten.
We are alive. We are living.
It ends in a modest house west of Calleva, but something new springs from it, something perfect and lasting. And that is as it should be, because each new beginning is born of another beginning’s end.
THE END
Author: radiogaga33
Characters/Pairing: Marcus/Esca (The Eagle)
Type: Post-movie
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 6100
Warnings, etc: None
Disclaimers: No claims to any copyrights, trademarks, or any other intellectual property. I do not own these characters. They belong to their creators. This is purely a work of fiction. It never happened.
Author’s Notes: I’ve used “dénouement” here in the literal meaning of the word (i.e. untying, unraveling). Also, I still haven’t read the novel yet, so forgive me if the details of my version of most-movie events don’t match up with the book. This all started with the prompt, of course, and then a rewatching of the movie. I’ve always been particularly taken with the end, the funeral pyre and how different they seemed in the ending scene right after. Not just the smiles, but how they seemed to walk differently even, light and happy, like this massive weight had been lifted off both their shoulders. I took all that and ran with it.
Summary: Response to this PROMPT (wherein, Esca helps Marcus with his, er, inhibitions).
Dénouement
This is how it begins, huddled together with Marcus on the sodden earth, tree branches overhead the only protection from the slow rain that has begun to fall. It is fitting that it should rain now, Esca thinks, sparing a quick glance at the other men seated around the funeral pyre, Aquila’s old legionaries watching the flames leap and whirl, flashes of orange and blue in the overwhelming gray all around. Rain to restore and renew. Rain to wash away memories of loss and shame, of pain and desperation, and to leave in its wake an indefinable lightness that warms Esca despite the biting cold. His father’s dagger burns on that pyre. Cunoval’s blade and Aquila’s wooden eagle. Two fathers laid to rest so that their sons may finally live.
Esca steals a sidelong glance at Marcus, at the man who has been more things to him than he can name: a master, an enemy, a slave, a friend, and something else he has always steered his thoughts away from in the months before this journey north of the Wall, something he only dares to name now, as the rain washes away all that used to be and leaves him with the first glimpses of possibility.
Marcus watches the pyre and Esca watches him, gaze tracing over the terrible paleness of his skin and the tightness around his eyes. There had been moments in the last two days-no, not moments; every second, every breath had been weighted with fear, that he would not return in time, that the Seal warriors would find Marcus first. But he had kept his promise, and now Marcus is here, a solid familiar weight beside him. And yet, it isn’t enough, to see him, to be seated beside him in the rain. Because visions are changeable things, fast and false when desire makes them so.
Esca lowers his gaze to Marcus’s hands resting in his lap. Palms and fingers, skin moving soft and sure against skin, these things never lie. So Esca reaches out, heart pounding in his chest as he covers Marcus’s hand with his own and entwines their fingers together. He waits for Marcus to object, is half-certain he will, forever steadfast in his notions of honor and shame and the rigid lines between what a man does and what he must not do. Esca waits, barely breathing, only to gasp softly when Marcus twists his fingers free to turn his hand over and take Esca’s in his, palm to palm, skin to skin.
They remain like that as the rain continues to fall, Marcus watching the pyre and Esca watching him, hands entwined, warmer now with each other’s heat. It is only the barest fraction of what Esca is finally willing to admit that he desires, but it is a fine beginning.
* ~ * ~ *
They laugh all the way back to Uncle Aquila’s villa, riding side by side, comparing their memories of the men they have just left behind, sallow-faced politicians frozen with shock at the return of the lost eagle of the Ninth. They laugh because they can and because they have defied probability. Together, always together, through a rich meal and richer wine at Uncle Aquila’s table, where Esca looks at Marcus and thinks he would make that journey again, chase rumors and legends to the ends of the earth if it means he will be promised this warmth seated low in his stomach, this easiness, this happiness he had almost forgotten he could feel.
They are still laughing, drunken but quiet now in deference to the lateness of the hour, when they stumble into Marcus’s room. Marcus crosses the darkened space and begins to undress, back turned to Esca, modest to the last despite all they have seen together. Esca lights a lamp and looks at him, watching how the muscles in his back bunch and ripple beneath his skin as he moves. They haven’t spoken of that day in the North and if Esca leaves Marcus to his own devices, they never will. But Esca no longer has use for unspoken things because he has survived, they have survived, and he cannot unsee the possibility revealed to him that day in the rain.
Marcus startles when Esca touches him, a soft caress, fingertips trailing slowly down the length of Marcus’s arm, testing the hard muscle and yielding skin, intent unmistakable.
“Esca, we shouldn’t.”
Roman to the last, even when his breath quickens and his eyes burn bright with the desire Esca had guessed at before their journey and is now certain of.
Esca’s fingers still at Marcus’s wrist. “And I say we should.”
“Esca-”
“You said I could decide what we do next. I have decided. A kiss.”
“I can’t.”
“Will you break your word to me?”
Esca meets his gaze boldly and Marcus looks back, as if he is helpless to turn away. Memories flash rapidly between them: a sword and shield thrown to the ground in an arena, the sharp edge of a surgeon’s blade, a boar hunt in the spring, weeks spent roaming Northern hillsides, mud-painted skin, biting cold and damp earth, Roman and Briton hands tightly clasped together. Esca waits silently, holding Marcus’s gaze, daring him to deny this and fearing that he will.
“Never,” Marcus whispers. “Never.”
Tentatively, Esca trails his fingers upward, travelling past Marcus’s forearm up to his shoulders and then to the curve of his neck, such a contradiction, hard muscle juxtaposed with soft, delicate skin. He cups the back of Marcus’s neck and pulls him down, slowly, giving him every chance to end this. But Marcus doesn’t, even when Esca presses their lips together, unskilled but determined. Instead he groans, soft and needy before gripping Esca’s waist and leaning into the kiss, parting his lips against Esca’s and teasing at the seam of his lips, drawing him out, sucking on Esca’s tongue.
It ends before Esca is ready. He loses the sweetness of Marcus’s mouth and the warmth of his large hands before he cares to. But that is alright, he tells himself later as he lies with his back turned to Marcus in the bed they now share. This is only the beginning.
* ~ * ~ *
It continues weeks later, after a hunt on an unusually warm afternoon.
Marcus’s tunic is damp with sweat as he pulls his spear free of the boar’s fallen body before flashing a wide smile in Esca’s direction. Esca leaps down from his horse and rests his bow against a tree trunk before closing the distance between them.
“The kill is yours,” he says with a smile of his own.
They field dress the animal together, Marcus working alongside Esca quietly. Afterward, they remove their tunics and sandals and wade into the cool water of the nearby stream in their braccea, washing the blood off their knives and hands. They settle on the bank of the stream afterward, Esca lying on his back while Marcus sits beside him, looking out at the rushing water.
“It will rain tomorrow,” Esca declares idly.
Marcus turns to look down at him with a frown on his face. It is a false frown, shaded with too much levity to be taken seriously. “Why must you say that? Allow me my illusions of endless sunshine.”
Esca laughs, and for the first time since their return from the North, he doesn’t marvel at how easily it comes now with Marcus. “Go ahead then. Far be it for me to deny you anything.”
He does not intend a double meaning, but Marcus seems to find one in his words. Suddenly the air around them grows heavy with tension as Marcus’s gaze strays to Esca’s mouth before skittering away. He wants, and yet he will deny it to the last, Roman that he is.
But Esca is not Roman. If he were, he would not do what he does next, rising from the soft grass and reaching for Marcus before he can move away. If he were Roman, he would not tease at the seam of Marcus’s lips like Marcus had done to him weeks ago, or lick into his mouth and slide his tongue along Marcus’s. Esca is Brigantes, and so he kisses Marcus until he feels him give in, until Marcus moans and pulls Esca closer to him, deepening the kiss, right there in broad daylight, where anyone can see.
* ~ * ~ *
It happens again and again after that, mind-shattering kisses that last longer with each iteration, another second more, another minute more, until they wind up kissing for a quarter of an hour, in daylight and in shadows. Behind the stables in the rain, wandering through the woods after a hunt, in the villa’s bath after a sparring exercise, and late at night in Marcus’s room, lips still sweet with the taste of that evening’s wine. They kiss until they’re breathless and their skin is flushed, until Esca’s blood runs hot and it takes everything in him to relax his death grip on Marcus’s clothes. Painful though it is, he releases Marcus each time, runs his hand roughly through his hair and doesn’t push when Marcus won’t meet his eyes. He lets go because he will not have this with regret.
But Esca’s patience isn’t endless. He finds his limit a month after the hunt, late at night, seated in Marcus’s bed, kissing once again. Esca runs his hands all over Marcus’s upper body, testing the swells and hollows, committing them all to memory. But as sweet at this is, it isn’t enough. He wants more, to feel Marcus’s skin on his, warm and yielding, and to feel the weight of his body, to hold him close, to give him pleasure.
He starts to move backward and thrills when Marcus follows blindly, chasing his lips, clearly unwilling to break that perfect point of contact. It happens in slow degrees, one breathless second following the other until Esca is on his back in the bed and Marcus lies between his spread thighs, kissing him still. Groaning, Esca thrusts up, clutching at Marcus’s waist and grinding their hard lengths together.
Instantly, Marcus freezes, breaking the kiss with a startled look. When he moves to pull away, Esca is prepared for it, wrapping his legs around Marcus’s hips to restrain him.
“Forgive me,” Marcus says, voice raspy and lips wet and swollen from the kiss. “I meant no disrespect.”
“What?”
Marcus pushes up further in Esca’s hold and looks down between their bodies. “A man should not ask another to do this, to yield like this.”
“And what if he does not have to ask? What if it’s freely given?”
Marcus tries to push up again but Esca tightens his hold, keeping him close, cock still hot and hard and pressed brazenly to Marcus’s.
“Esca.”
The word is a warning and a plea. Esca ignores both.
“You are not my master,” he says.
Marcus frowns. “I know that.”
“Then you must also know that I am free to do what I want and to lie with whom I will-how I will.”
“Esca.”
There is no warning in it this time, only supplication. Marcus’s voice is rough and strained, uncertain, as if even he doesn’t know what he is asking for: to be released, to be pulled closer. So Esca decides for him, for both of them, pulling Marcus into another kiss, using all the little tricks Marcus has unwittingly taught him over the last month, a sensual play of lips and teeth and tongues until Marcus gives in, until he moans low in his throat and surrenders to Esca’s hold, rutting against him until they both spend, fully clothed, like boys still in the bloom of youth.
* ~ * ~ *
A purse arrives from Rome on the first day of summer, enough gold that they no longer need rely on Uncle Aquila’s generosity. Letters accompany the award, Roman citizenship for Esca, for his service to the republic. It is little more than a curiosity to him, a convenience in Roman-occupied lands. That night, after Marcus has fallen asleep, Esca examines the seal, dark red like blood in the low light from the lamp in front of him, and he can’t help but think of the armilla Marcus would turn over in his hands again and again before their journey, eyes staring blindly into the distance, shoulders so weighted down with sadness that Esca had pitied him, enemy though he was. Pia. Fidelis. Esca grunts softly and douses the lamp. He will never think well of gifts from Rome.
Even so he is a practical man, which is why, in the morning when Marcus repeats the proposal he had made to Esca in the shadow of the Wall, Esca wholeheartedly agrees. Rome’s gold buys them a fair-sized plot of land to the west of Calleva, a stable of horses and a small barnfull of livestock to begin their new venture of farming and animal husbandry. They build their new house together, working bare-chested in the hot afternoons, growing lean and tan in the sunshine.
Esca first takes to his knees for Marcus on one of those afternoons, on a day well into the summer when their house is nearly completed. It is closer to evening than to morning when they grow distracted, abandoning their work and kissing against a wall, bodies rutting against each other. Esca’s mouth is open on Marcus’s neck and his hand wrapped tight around his cock, stroking, squeezing, delighting in each groan he wrings from Marcus’s throat. At some point, he looks down, watches with heavy-lidded eyes as Marcus thrusts into his grip, cock fucking Esca’s fist, swollen head pushing through the circle of Esca’s thumb and forefinger before disappearing once again, a tight, jerky rhythm repeated over and over. Suddenly it isn’t enough to take Marcus in hand. Suddenly Esca wants what he has imagined several times over.
He is on his knees before he allows himself time to worry for Marcus’s sensibilities, hands deftly undoing the ties of his braccae fully to draw him out. Esca is already shifting forward, lips parted, when Marcus stops him with an unforgiving grip on his shoulders.
“I would not ask this of you,” he says, looking down with a troubled expression. “I would never dishonor you like this.”
“There is no dishonor in it.” Esca pushes against Marcus’s hold, gaining enough ground to mouth at the head of his cock, tongue darting out to lick across the hot, swollen flesh.
Marcus hisses and pushes Esca backward. “You don’t owe me anything.”
Esca looks up at him in surprise. He had thought only of Roman morals, not of genuine misapprehension. Clearly, Marcus is afflicted with both if he thinks Esca does this out of obligation.
“I am not beholden to you. Any debts we owed to each other have been repaid in full. I owe you nothing.”
Marcus’s gaze clouds over with confusion. “Then why…?” He relaxes his hold, perhaps unconsciously, and Esca takes full advantage, pushing against Marcus’s hold and moving close enough to wrap his hand around the base of his cock.
“Because I want to. Because I’ve dreamed of this, taking you in my mouth, learning the feel of you with my tongue same as I’ve done with my hands.” Marcus gasps, hips twitching forward convulsively. “I want the weight of you on my tongue, your scent, your taste. I want to discover the sounds you’ll make when you break apart and spend in my mouth, calling my name, desperate for me.” Esca strokes Marcus’s cock, drawing his foreskin up so it half-covers the wide head before licking over and underneath it. “Does that sound like obligation to you?”
“No,” Marcus gasps out, jerking forward. A bead of moisture rolls off the head of his cock, dripping down the shaft until it meets the tight circle of Esca’s fingers. “Please, Esca. Please.”
Esca teases him for a while, taking a slightly cruel pleasure in making Marcus wait for it just like Esca himself has waited for it. But desire wins out over half-hearted retaliation in under a minute and Esca draws Marcus into his mouth, inch by inch, tongue working the thick flesh. He pushes forward until over half of Marcus’s cock is in his mouth before he marks his limit, stroking what he can’t take in his mouth at the same time that he bobs back and forth, sucking Marcus down, senses overwhelmed by the dizzying taste and heat of him, the feel of him, silk on iron, a perfect contrast.
Above him, Marcus gasps and moans and whimpers, thrusting forward, fingers entangled in Esca’s hair. Esca sucks him harder in response, thrilling to the sounds he makes, loving the way Marcus curses and begs, groaning Esca’s name as his hips move, desperate and uncontrolled, fucking into Esca’s mouth. Marcus comes on a sharp intake of breath, cock swelling a moment before it pulses, come spilling down Esca’s throat. He swallows around Marcus, grips his thighs to contain his wild movements before pulling back a little so that he catches the last of Marcus’s release on his tongue.
Marcus falls to the floor beside him afterward, pushing Esca to the bare ground and nearly ripping the ties to his braccae in his mad rush to undo the garment. Esca lasts six strokes, maybe seven, before he comes in Marcus’s hand, hips bucking and lips parting on a cry. When the gray haze around him lifts, Esca finds Marcus watching him, hair disheveled and darkened gaze fixed on Esca’s mouth, still wet from sucking his cock.
Someday, Esca decides, he will feign ignorance until Marcus asks for what he wants. He will pay no mind to the desire in Marcus’s gaze until he says the words, until he asks for Esca’s hand on him or Esca’s mouth on his cock or for a kiss afterward, but today is not that day.
“Kiss me,” Esca says and Marcus moves to obey, taking Esca’s lips gratefully and kissing his own taste from Esca’s mouth.
* ~ * ~ *
Marcus Aquila is many things: loyal, strong, earnest and just. He is a good man. This is why Esca loves him. This is why he would build a life with him, bed him, follow him to the outer limits of the known world without question. This is also why he is not surprised when Marcus takes him in hand for the first time only days after Esca first does the same for him and presses his lips to Esca’s ear, whispering “tell me what you like. I want to make this good for you.”
Marcus is a good man, but he is also a Roman. This is why Esca cannot be blamed for his confusion and stunned silence when Marcus falls to his knees and offers what Esca has been given to understand no Roman man ever would.
Autumn is well upon them by then, brightening the land with wide swatches of yellow and orange and brown. Their house is completed, a modest affair composed of three rooms: a kitchen, a parlor and a sleeping chamber, each one humbly furnished with what they could buy with the last of Rome’s gold and what Uncle Aquila had been willing to part with. The old man visits once a week and they return the gesture just as often, spending long hours at his table before riding home in the dead of night.
It happens on one of those evenings. Esca is inside the house, undressing in their bedchamber while Marcus sees to the horses. He has just removed his tunic, folded the woven fabric neatly and set it onto a chair when he hears the sound of sandals scraping along stone and turns to find Marcus watching him with a fond expression.
“One afternoon in the beginning, a few weeks after the surgery when I’d started to walk again, I was sitting in my room by the open doors, thinking of the old days when I saw you. I don’t know where you were coming from, but you were flushed and perspiring, and you took off your tunic to wipe your brow. I knew that I ought to look away, but I didn’t. I watched you from afar because I couldn’t do anything else, because you were the most perfect thing I had ever seen.”
Esca swallows hard, momentarily robbed of speech by Marcus’s unbidden confession. “Careful, Marcus,” he says when he can trust himself to form coherent words once again. “Perhaps you should not trust me with your secrets.”
Marcus laughs, more a breathless rush of air than a sound of true mirth, and suddenly Esca sees how much his confession taxed him. “You will discover them all on your own anyway. I might as well save us both the trouble and tell you myself.” Marcus grows painfully serious, staring at some spot over Esca’s left shoulder. “Besides, what are secrets when I trust you with my life?”
Esca loses his words again, but it is no matter, because Marcus comes to him and takes his hand. “Let me help you,” he says, pulling Esca to the side of the bed.
Marcus goes to his knees in front of Esca and directs him to brace himself against Marcus’s shoulders while he unlaces Esca’s sandals and pulls then off his feet. Then he undoes his braccae and slides the garment off his body. Esca watches him through all of it, indulging Marcus’s oddness, amusement and curiosity warring for supremacy in his mind only to disintegrate in an instant when Marcus reaches for his cock.
Esca gasps and settles back on the edge of the bed, looking down in stunned silence. Marcus stays on his knees, hand at Esca’s left hip, splayed fingers only a fraction of an inch from Esca’s hardening cock. Marcus’s hand is shaking and he refuses to meet Esca’s eyes.
“You don’t have to do this,” Esca says. “I can wait,” he adds even as his cock swells further between them, traitorous in its anticipation of the wet heat of Marcus’s mouth.
“You do the same for me,” Marcus murmurs, still looking down. “I want to give you pleasure as well.” He looks up then, defiance in his gaze. For a moment Esca wonders whom Marcus is rebelling against: himself or Rome? “It is only fair,” Marcus insists before looking away again.
Marcus is a good man, but perhaps Esca is not, because he ignores the way Marcus’s voice shakes and his hand trembles and spreads his thighs wider to make room for Marcus between them. Perhaps Esca is not because he cannot tear his gaze away from Marcus as he grips Esca’s cock and eases back the foreskin until the reddened head is fully revealed, swollen and leaking already. It may be that Esca is not a good man, but tomorrow, he will pray for virtue. For now, there is only this: the way lust slams through him when Marcus licks at the head of his cock, the way his hips jerk forward when Marcus draws it into his perfect mouth, lush lips stretched thin around the width of it, and the way Marcus colors brightly, eyelids fluttering shut as he begins to suck.
Marcus works hard between Esca’s spread thighs, inexpert but increasingly enthusiastic. Esca watches him unabashedly, gasps and groans for him, loving everything about this. He loves the way Marcus tries to take too much at first, choking on his cock, throat muscles fluttering wildly around the head before Marcus eases back, having learned his limit. He loves the obscene wet noises Marcus makes as he sucks, the way he squeezes his eyes shut and pulls hard, cheeks hollowing. He even loves the occasional scrape of Marcus’s teeth and the painfully tight grip of Marcus’s hands on his hips.
“No, don’t swallow,” Esca says when Marcus pulls back to do just that. “Get me wet, just like I do to you.”
Marcus looks up at him briefly, gaze almost feral in its intensity before he moves to obey, getting Esca wet with saliva, sucking him harder, loud and frantic and desperate, like this is giving him even more pleasure than it is Esca. When Marcus begins to bob back and forth, Esca cries out, lips spilling random words of praise, of lust, filth and endearments indistinguishable from one another. He gapes at Marcus, watching the way his cock emerges from Marcus’s suckling mouth, gleaming wet on each upstroke before it disappears into that devastating heat all over again.
He tries to push Marcus away when he feels his pleasure cresting. “Marcus, stop. You have to…I’m going to….”
But Marcus doesn’t heed the warning. Instead he sucks harder, frenzied and intent until Esca comes, cock spilling helplessly into Marcus’s mouth. It is only then that Marcus stops, making a shocked, choked sound before pulling back abruptly. But Esca is still coming, gasping and moaning, and the last of his release streaks Marcus’s cheek and chin, pearlescent moisture stark against olive skin. He expects Marcus to balk, to rise to his feet immediately and wipe his face clean, but he doesn’t. Instead he mouths at the head of Esca’s cock, sucking him again until Esca hisses at the excess. Only then does Marcus wipe at his face and rest back on his heels, not quite meeting Esca’s gaze.
“Let me,” Esca offers, already moving to take Marcus’s cock in hand. But when he goes down on his knees, he finds a tell-tale wetness staining the front of Marcus’s braccae.
“I already…when you….”
Esca looks up sharply, startled, because Marcus’s hands had been on his hips the entire time. Tomorrow, Esca will be sporting the bruises to prove it. Which means that Marcus spent just from taking him, from sucking Esca to completion. Oh. Now he understands. How frantic Marcus had seemed, how he had moaned and whimpered. His Roman is unraveling, mores fraying with each kiss, each touch and each night spent together. Their eyes meet where they kneel on the floor, Esca’s bold and Marcus’s bashful, the same knowledge reflected on their faces. Eventually, it will end, this slow erosion of Roman lines drawn deep in the sand, and then there will be no more spaces left between them.
* ~ * ~ *
It ends in the spring, when the hillsides are lush with greenery and the earth is soft and fertile. During the day, they work alongside two hired farmhands in the field and stables, planting and irrigating crops, grazing the sheep, and caring for the mare in foal. After sunset, they take their evening meal together in the parlor, grateful when the pot is the handiwork of the Greek woman they pay a few coins to cook and clean for them once a week, and suffering through when it isn’t. On those nights when fresh bread is the only saving grace from their supper, their wine is cut with far less water and midnight finds them telling tall tales for each other’s amusement. It is on one such night, locked in a rambling conversation leading to nowhere, that Esca sights the surest sign of the end. They are talking of the horses and arguing amicably about when they can expect the foal when Marcus, loose-lipped from the wine, proposes a wager, naming a day and demanding that Esca name his.
“And what shall you give me if I win?” Esca asks after he has also named a day.
“Ask for whatever forfeit you like. It does not matter because I will win.”
Esca looks at Marcus for a long moment, taking in his lazy smile. It had been an easy winter, bringing more rain than snow, and yet they had spent every night wrapped up in each other just the same. Esca looks at Marcus and thinks of the things they have done, they ways they have drawn pleasure from each other’s body. It is only a matter of time now, a month, perhaps two until the end, but why wait a day longer than he must?
“Alright,” Esca says. “Whichever one of us loses will bed the winner.”
Marcus colors slightly, but he doesn’t shy away. “That is hardly a prize, Esca. We have that already.”
“Ah, but I have not said how it would be done.” Esca knows the exact moment when Marcus understands, because his easiness vanishes and he sits up straighter in his chair. “If I lose, you can have me.”
Marcus looks away. “And if you win?”
“Then I will have you. It’s perfectly fair. Of course, if you would rather name a different forfeit….” Esca trails off deliberately, giving Marcus a clear opportunity to refuse the proposed terms of their wager.
“No,” Marcus says after a moment’s pause. He takes a long swallow from the wineskin in his hand and passes it to Esca, meeting his gaze for a split-second before looking away. “As you said, it’s perfectly fair.”
Esca wins the wager.
The mare goes into labor six days from the day Marcus names and only one day from Esca’s, but there is no time to think of wagers and forfeits in the rush of activity that follows. It isn’t until the second day after the mare drops her foal that Esca thinks of the wager at length. They haven’t spoken a word of it since the day it was made, and all afternoon long, Esca debates with himself. He can say nothing, pretend the wager was a quickly-forgotten bit of silliness stemming from too much wine and simply bide his time. Or he can demand his prize, push them both to the inevitable conclusion of what began that day in the rain.
As it turns out, Esca need not have troubled himself, because when he retires to their room that evening, Marcus walks in a minute later, clutching something to his chest. Before Esca can inquire after the caginess in Marcus’s eyes, he walks to the bed and sets down what he is holding on the low table beside it. A glass bottle filled with oil.
“Marcus-”
“You will need this, no?” Marcus asks with his gaze fixed on the ground, as if the stone beneath his feet is suddenly the most fascinating thing in the world.
Esca can only trust himself to nod.
“How do you want me?” Marcus asks, looking up, but still not meeting Esca’s gaze.
His question sends a jolt of sensation racing down Esca’s spine. This is going to happen. It is happening. “In the bed,” Esca says, lust turning his voice to gravel. “On your hands and knees.”
Marcus moves to obey, stripping off his clothes rapidly before climbing onto the bed. It is only then that Esca loses the last of his worry, because Marcus is half-hard already, cock jutting forward between his thighs. The sight pushes Esca to action. Quickly, he removes his own clothing, leaving a haphazard pile behind him as he picks up the bottle and gets on the bed behind Marcus. Reaching over him, Esca grabs both pillows on the bed and eases them below Marcus’s body before directing him to settle over them, still on his knees, but supported now.
“For your leg,” Esca explains, touching the back of Marcus’s scarred leg when he looks back over his shoulder at Esca.
Esca wonders at the look that passes over Marcus’s face at his words. It is as though, in the haze of apprehension, Marcus had forgotten that this is still Esca and has only just remembered. The tension seems to seep out of him then, and he visibly relaxes, resting lower on his forearms, waiting.
Esca prepares him slowly, carefully, teasing at Marcus’s body, wetting him with oil until his skin glistens with it from his buttocks down to his inner thighs. He thrusts in and out of Marcus, fingers pushing, twisting, stretching him for more, until Marcus is gasping and moaning with each pass, until he calls Esca’s name and clutches the bed coverings in his fists. That is when Esca presses into him, watching with something akin to awe as Marcus’s opening stretches to take him. Esca strokes Marcus’s hip as he buries his cock deeper and whispers to him, low words of praise, telling Marcus how well he is doing, how perfect he looks like this, on his knees, taking Esca’s cock.
When Esca is buried halfway in Marcus’s body, he stills as a memory pushes through the haze of pleasure: Marcus’s gaze dark with want and fixed on Esca’s lips after the first time he had taken Marcus in his mouth. Today, he will make Marcus ask for what he wants, make him say the words.
“Esca,” Marcus groans after seconds pass with no further movement from Esca. He tries to push back for more, to take Esca’s cock deeper in him only to be stopped by Esca’s firm grip on his waist.
“Tell me what you want,” Esca says. “Ask for it.”
“Please,” Marcus says, pressing his forehead to the bed and gripping the bed coverings tighter in his hands. Marcus’s muscles bunch beneath his skin, rippling with tension, and for a brief while, Esca fears that he will break before Marcus does. And then he hears it. “Fuck me.” Barely a whisper, but it is enough.
Esca presses in fully on a single thrust, gasping with the sharp pleasure of it. Beneath him, Marcus whimpers, and the sound has Esca leaning down to press a kiss to his shoulder. Marcus moans at the touch and reaches back blindly until his hand finds Esca’s face.
“Talk to me,” he says, high-pitched and strained. “I need you.”
“What would you have me say?” Esca whispers against Marcus’s ear. “What would you like to hear?”
He rears up and grips Marcus’s waist tight before pulling back, all the way back until only the head of his cock is left in Marcus’s body. Then he presses in once more, hard and relentless. He does it again and again, delighting in the way Marcus arches and gasps with each thrust. “Would you like to hear how perfect you look here,” he says, moving one hand to where they are joined and rimming the tightly stretched skin with his thumb. “Do you want me to tell you how incredible you feel around me, how hot and slick and tight?” Esca’s hand returns to Marcus’s waist as he fucks him harder, faster, growing mindless with the overwhelming pleasure of it all. “So beautiful, Marcus. You were made for this, for love, for pleasure.”
Esca is incapable of words after that, incapable of doing anything but thrusting into Marcus, fucking him harder with each stroke. Marcus works for every thrust, rocking back, reaching for more. Dimly, Esca wonders if Marcus knows that he is begging, an endless litany of please and harder and faster and deeper and more-always more. He only breaks the litany once, and only then to ask to touch Esca, to see him. When Esca pulls out of him, Marcus scrambles onto his back and spreads his legs wide without being asked, sweating and panting, utterly shameless in his pleasure.
Esca brings them both to completion like that, hands firm at the backs of Marcus’s knees, keeping his thighs spread wide as he thrusts in at the angle that makes Marcus gasp and shake. Beneath him, Marcus writhes on the bed, stroking his cock in time to Esca’s hammering thrusts until he seizes, pulsing out his release in thick, wet streaks down his fingers and across his abdomen. Esca follows him within seconds, unable to hold out against the way Marcus clenches down tight, milking his cock, pulling Esca’s orgasm from him.
* ~ * ~ *
This is how it ends, Esca wiping Marcus’s body clean while Marcus watches him, seemingly spellbound, as if nothing on this earth could ever make him look away again. It is fitting that it should end in the spring, Esca thinks long afterward when he is lying in bed with his head resting on Marcus’s chest. It is right that it should end now, when life is renewed and memories of winter are set aside and forgotten.
We are alive. We are living.
It ends in a modest house west of Calleva, but something new springs from it, something perfect and lasting. And that is as it should be, because each new beginning is born of another beginning’s end.
THE END