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Acacius spent the past thirty years of his life waging war for Rome. He’s seen things that haunt his nightmares, and he’s done things for which he prays the gods will forgive him. There is a perpetual lead weight on his conscience, and yet he thinks amongst the many reprehensible acts he has done, this entanglement might weigh the heaviest.
But by everything that is holy, he cannot stop.
Below him, Lucius makes a wounded, wanting noise he can only soothe with a shush. The slide between them hurts a little bit, all too-warm and too-tight. Acacius pats his hand on Lucius’ thigh, up his knee. He takes a bracing moment to let Lucius relax, and he considers him in the meanwhile.
He’s nothing like his Lucilla; His wife had been long-limbed and delicate — she’d felt fragile in his hands even if she’d been the strongest woman he’s met. Hollow bones like a bird; she’d been meant to fly. Lucius is wide and broad, and heavy like a horse. Heavy like a man. His body is battered from the fighting and scarred just like Acacius’. Lucilla would not have been able to throw him off her if the need had arisen, whereas Lucius’ whole body feels constantly coiled tight like a spring, feels like he has to consciously keep himself on his back and not bucking Acacius off.
His shame lies with his guilt at putting aside his wife’s memory and taking her son. But it’s not such alien a notion for Acacius to have a male body under him, to have a male body kneeling at his feet. Acacius is no stranger to relief provided by strangers, by men, in war. He’d held no love for them. He’d loved Lucilla. There had been men before her, and a few when they were wed, with her knowing consent. And now after her, there is Lucius.
It’s not quite as straightforward with Lucius. With fellow soldiers it had been devoid of all other emotion than pleasure; the sole reason for their pursuit had been lust, and it had been oh so easy. But with Lucius, the air is charged with emotion between them, crackling with tension like the ropes of a ship pulled taut.
Duty demands he love Lucius; demands he serve him. His heart demands he grieve Lucilla. In another world he would resent it, he thinks, having to be bound to his dead wife’s son. It hurts to have to replace her steadfast presence at his side with Lucius. He thought she would haunt him through her son, but perhaps it helps that Lucius looks nothing like her. He doesn’t see her in the way he stands or walk — where Lucilla stood regal all the time, chin raised and body poised, the image of a true Patrician lady, Lucius tends to slink about, tuck his chin to his chest and look down as if he were still a slave and not the future of the Empire. And Acacius does not see her much in the man’s face otherwise. In fact, Lucius with his dark head of hair and sun-beaten skin looks more like his father Maximus, of what Acacius still remembers of him.
With a grunt, Lucius loops an arm around his shoulder and holds strong to his tunic.
Lucius… Lucius will always hate him a little, he thinks. Always resent some part of Acacius that destroyed his life from before. The Acacius that had his wife killed and took him from Numidia. He sees it shine in Lucius’ eyes sometimes, a glint of anger, of disgust at himself for falling into Acacius’ bed with barely a protest. Sometimes Lucius wraps his hands around Acacius’ throat and squeezes, and there is a half-beat where he thinks maybe Lucius means to kill him. Sometimes after he’s fucked him, Acacius will offer some reassurance, some comfort, but Lucius will push him away.
Lucius is moody, most often. He gets quiet (quieter) and contemplative, and Acacius spent ten years of his life married to his mother, so he recognizes the same whirlpool of anger in him, slow to simmer but always there, always all-encompassing. Lucilla had been very good at hiding the storm behind the façade of demure disposition. Lucius, without the patina of strict and stoic Roman upbringing, doesn’t quite manage to cover it up in the same way.
Lucius peers at him, all sullen blue eyes that look suspiciously wet. Acacius leans to meet him where he lies, brushing their lips together. The younger man sighs against his mouth, never one for great poetry, especially like this. But he breathes there pressed against Acacius’ face, beard prickly against his skin as they rock together, gliding more easily.
For all that sometimes Lucius almost feels feral, he lies open beneath him in that moment, and Acacius finds him pliant. He lets Acacius do as he wants with him. He’s vulnerable like this, bare and exposed, weaponless with his tunic rucked up his belly. He’s vulnerable where Acacius takes him, still slow and careful. Lucius will be emperor of the entirety of Rome and its colonies some day. He will be the most powerful man in any room in which he will sit. And sheathed inside him, pressing him down to the cot, feeling the crease of Lucius’ brow against his cheek, the full body tremble of him, Acacius feels a raw kind of power unlike anything else. Here is his young emperor, panting, naked, falling apart.
It’s shameful, to think this way. And yet.
God. Lucilla’s son.
“Ah,” Lucius coughs at a particularly deep thrust, and the man pushes suddenly against his chest, until Acacius has to sit on his haunches, uncoupled. Lucius wriggles upright, thighs slick with oil and sweat, glinting in the suffused light, and then he pushes Acacius again. The strength of a young man is evident through his palm. The flint of determination is back in his gaze. This is still the same man Acacius had to choke unconscious that fateful night at the Colosseum, when Acacius came to free him at his wife’s behest. Four men had to restrain him once he woke.
It makes his cock pulse against the cool evening air, unsheathed and wet and sensitive, grazing the rough cloth of his tunic hem falling back into his thighs. But Lucius does not leave him wanting long. He turns aside to shrug his tunic over his head, uncaring where it lands, and then he shuffles closer to Acacius until their chest are nearly touching. Acacius mirrors him, shivering at the change of temperature.
“Kneel,” Lucius says, and Acacius goes to fold his heels under him, ready to grapple Lucius’ body onto his lap, sitting back onto his length. Lucius sighs when he’s breached again and he settles into a new rhythm, angle clearly more pleasing to him in this position. They go like this for a long moment, tent filled with soft groans and the sounds of skin against skin. He can feel how Lucius’ core engages every time he rises up and relaxes every time he lets himself fall onto Acacius.
His arms strain from holding Lucius’ weight, helping bounce him, and his thighs and knees ache something fierce. A reminder, perhaps, that Lucius is two decades his junior and that Acacius is getting old, as if the greying beard and hair were not enough of a tell.
It does flatter the ego, he has to admit, to have Lucius who is strong and young, stiff with arousal, rutting against him with enthusiasm. And Lucius does look thoroughly pleased; his eyes are closed, and he whines with his head thrown back.
“Acacius,” he rasps, and the raw sound does remind him of Lucilla. Of the way she would say it, low and intimate, not at all like the adoring crowds who had chanted his name in Rome. It strikes a chord deep inside – makes him feel like Acacius the man, and not Acacius the General. He reaches between them and grabs his length, makes Lucius hiss at the friction. He has rough hands, he knows, but Lucius offers no pushback.
“My prince,” he says on the upstroke because he can – because he knows that it will grate at Lucius, who still reneges the title even though he’s doomed to eventually shoulder it. Because sometimes the both of them will fall into this contemplative haze about things they’ve lost.
He knows the hand is coming before Lucius is even moving. Whether he wanted to hit him or grab him, Acacius will never know, but he smacks it away before it connects. Their precarious balance is off, and they both fall back onto the cot. Acacius lands on Lucius’ chest and both their air push out of their lungs. Lucius groans, the sudden press of Acacius into him probably a little painful.
“Ugh. Don’t call me that,” he grunts, then he latches his mouth on Acacius’ shoulder, and he bites. “Don’t use that word.”
Acacius chuckles, amused even though it does sting. Here’s another way Lucius reminds him of Lucilla. She too would leave her mark on him.
“But you are,” he hums. He pets the younger man’s flanks, palms flat against the brittle side of his ribs, like Lucius is an animal that needs soothing. The skin ripples under his touch, and Lucius hooks his legs around Acacius’ waist to urge him on. “Lucius,” Acacius whispers against his ear where Lucius has let his head fall against the blanket. “Lucius.”
There was once a time where they danced around the name; when Lucius was still more Numidian than Roman, back when he would respond to Hanno and little else. Now Acacius bites his jaw in return and drapes him in Latin praise, calls him by his Roman name, everything short of laying the laurels on his head. His hair is soft against Acacius’ face. His little domesticated barbarian.
Lucius digs his fingers in the flesh of Acacius’ back, dragging his nails into his skin. Tame. Right. As domesticated as a pet tiger.
Still, for the moment Lucius seems happy enough to be underneath him, enough that Acacius’ continues his petting, up and down his chest, his nipples, over the sensitive skin of Lucius’s throat, slipping under his back. His fingers catch the scar on his bicep, on the roman brand on his shoulder blade, an indelible mark for all to see that Lucius belongs to Rome; is meant to serve it. Sometimes Acacius mourns that Lucius has never been given the chance to do so freely. He’s been a slave, a gladiator, and now he’s been forcibly conscripted to Acacius’ side until he can be safely installed as emperor.
Acacius gently kisses the scar on his arm; Lucius bites his lip when he comes up and wriggles to press himself closer.
“Will you stop and fuck me, General?” Lucius rumbles. He’s annoyed, but just on the edge of coy. Just a little glimpse of the playful temperament Acacius likes to eke out of him.
“Am I not already?”
“At the moment, I’d say no, Acacius, and I am in a good enough position to tell.” To punctuate his statement, Lucius rocks himself down onto him and digs his heels into his motionless back like spurs.
“Mmh. And how would you like it, Lucius?”
Lucius’ eyes roll up in annoyance. His face is red from a day in the sun, and it seems to Acacius his cheeks are even more dappled at the question. And what a lovely sight it makes. His eyes are so very blue. “Any way at all,” he bites, “so long as you hurry along and get on with it.”
Acacius chuckles and obeys, setting a grueling slow pace. “So, you would enjoy it like this?” It’s maddening to keep it up, just tension and an overwhelming slide that has no resolve. “You did say any way. I could keep you like this until morning – not allow you to come.”
“At this pace, you would not come either. So, a very pyrrhic victory indeed.” Lucius reaches between them pointedly to take a hold of his cock, apparently decided to take the matter into his own hands. Acacius lets him take his pleasure, somewhat remorseful about flattening him into the cot earlier. He keeps his slow grind, smile spreading when Lucius arches his back, discomfort and want building and warring on his face.
“Ugh. Please, Acacius,” Lucius whines. “Please.”
“So not ‘any way at all’, then.”
“Stop. Teasing. Stop teasing and fuck me proper.” Lucius shoves at his shoulders, rocking with more aplomb. “You useless. Ah. Useless Roman shit.” He devolves into Punic, tone clearly carrying the derogatory meaning, and sprawls all over the cot in dejection.
“Alright, alright.” Acacius laughs in earnest. “Settle. Oh, to be young again. Always in such a hurry.”
“Acacius.”
“Lucius,” he rumbles. “You want it quick and hard, then? You want me to mount you like an animal? To tear into you until you come? Is that what you would like?”
“Yes, oh. Gods.”
“Alright then.”
At the end of the day this is where it always culminates. Lucius and Acacius, pushing and pulling on each of their end of the red string of fate tying them both together. Acacius always wins because Lucius always yields. He flips him over (Lucius lets himself be manhandled) and runs his hands over his waist, down the divots of his hips, and he hits at the pale protected skin of his arse, once and twice until his palm is seared into Lucius.
He pinches a nipple when he slides back in, and this time punctuates it with a hard snap of his hips. He fucks Lucius like a man. Like he would a man. Like he did back in the war; no sweet talk, nothing gentle. Just perfunctory and fast, something that digs into Lucius’s body and makes his core clench.
Lucius braces against him, making choked little sounds. Acacius slides his hand to Lucius’ front and feels out his cock, pulsing and leaking, tugging for half a beat before sliding lower and massaging his balls, and even lower to stroke at the stretched skin where Acacius is slipping inside him. It’s obscene and wet, Lucius collapsed on his chest with his arse up for the taking and Acacius taking him.
Acacius spent so long being a conqueror for Rome. Taking cities and free men and crushing it underfoot. It feels only natural to conquer Lucius like this.
Especially ever since they have been biding their time. Arranging the overthrowing of Rome’s emperors is a slow and tedious thing, and Acacius has been going stir crazy, despite years of experience of siege and waiting games. There’s something about the prospect of this battle being the last one that has him on edge with anticipation.
And Lucius seems much more settled in this relative peace. He managed a homestead with his wife, or so Acacius gathers, and is used to simple work, not one to shirk manual labour. He seems to enjoy the quiet anyways. He enjoys what Acacius gives him, too. It gives an outlet to Acacius’ restless energy, in the very least. Fucking has been therapeutic in that sense, if Acacius manages to forget about the insanity of fucking his dead wife’s son.
Plagued by Lucilla’s memory, he can’t help but be transported back to a much more comfortable bed, sinking into a much softer body. Memories of Lucilla’s breasts, her delicate neck, her clever, clever fingers. He doesn’t call out her name but it’s a near thing. It’s happened before, to his great shame. Lucius elbowed him in the jaw so hard his teeth cracked and his lip split, and he disappeared in the camp for days before slinking back like a feral cat.
To Lucius’ credit he never called Acacius by his wife’s name.
He’s broken out of his reverie by Lucius’s hand reaching back, twisting his body so he can get his face close to his. He’s asking for a kiss and who is Acacius to deny his emperor? It’s more teeth than tongue, and the awkward angle and the push of his thrusts make it a spit-slick desperate thing. The way his body is dovetailed into Acacius makes the pressure around his cock that much more intense. Lucius hums as they breathe each other’s air, and Acacius is reminded sharply that this is intimate. Intimate in the way nothing has been since Lucilla. Intimate in the way that makes his stomach knot on itself.
It’s a short affair afterwards. Acacius can’t go like he did in his youth. Still he’s nothing to scoff at, and he gives his all in the last stretch, burying himself deep on the last snap of the hips and spilling there, face mashed against Lucius’ shoulder. His hand goes to replace the younger man’s own on his cock and it doesn’t take long until Lucius bucks in his grasp, groaning low with a vice grip on his wrist. He spends his seed half on the woolen blanket and half on Acacius’ hand. The urge to try and stick his soiled fingers in Lucius’ mouth is strong, but the odds of being bitten are strong enough that he does not risk it; he wipes it alongside the wet spot. They shift so they avoid the dampness, and Acacius lets his weight fall onto him so they’re boneless and settled, Acacius soft but still buried inside.
Lucius seems mollified, but not enough to tolerate it for long. Eventually the sharp point of his elbow digs into Acacius’ side and he relents with a grunt, rolling away from him. Lucius smacks his shoulder when he climbs over him to scramble off the bed. He disappears from the cot and returns with a wet rag, and Acacius’s cock makes a valiant effort to stiffen again when he glimpses his spend pearling down the inside of his thighs.
Lucius spends a long and rather intimate time to clean them both off. Today is a good day for the afterglow – Lucius sends a genuine smile this way, one of those that make his eyes crinkle at the corner. His cheeks are still red, and Acacius cannot help running a knuckle over them, feeling the hot skin there. Lucius leans into the touch, and Acacius is reminded that despite the sometimes-prickly demeanor and the gnarly mood swings, the energy between them is that much better than it has been.
There were days upon days after news of Lucilla’s death reached their camp where they did not see hide nor hair of each other. Lucius because he was seething at being caught, at being shackled again, and he had to be kept tied like an unruly dog. Even though his new masters were a lot more benevolent. Acacius because he was a widower and a traitor and an exile, and every year serving the Empire under Geta and Caracalla crushed him into half the man he’d been.
He remembers very well the first time he sat across Lucius and had a good look at him: tent cleared of everything sharp and susceptible to kill him, one man on either side of the table. Acacius had been stricken by his eyes. Now they look almost black in the candlelight, travelling up and down Acacius’s face. He looks dazed. He looks very pretty.
It’s quiet and chilly. Lucius’ rings are resting in a large, patterned clamshell one of the neighbouring village children had handed Acacius. Lucius is laying on his side, one hand tucked under his cheek. He looks like a statue, fine and chiseled. Acacius runs his hand over his knee, over the rough skin of an old scar. Nothing like Lucilla.
It’s a moment of peace, like this. Just the wind against the sides of the tent, the quiet milling about of the night guard patrolling. Distant laughter and the crackling of fires. Tomorrow Lucius will probably return to his bowed head and his quiet conversations. Acacius will need to shoulder ‘the General’ back on. He will need to straighten his aching back and comb his hair – show himself to the faithful as the man who will defeat Geta and Caracalla and appoint Lucius Verus Aurelius emperor. He will need to shove the bereaved, guilty old man back under the cot until the next time Lucius comes to him wanting.
He misses Lucilla.
He wonders what Lucius thinks of it all. Clearly Acacius provides some measure of… release? Comfort? Something that keeps Lucius coming back and into his arms. But there will be a time where this will need to stop. Lucius will be expected to marry, and propriety will demand they stop their affair. But until then, Acacius will cling onto him; his last reminder of Lucilla. His last reminder of Maximus. He sighs, patting Lucius’ thigh.
“Sleep well, Lucius.”
“Sleep well.”
Acacius prays quietly before he falls back asleep, and his last thoughts before consciousness flees him are of his wife’s face.