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Opiter Lucretius Tricipitinus smiled and sipped his wine and tried to take interest in the provincial arena. His grandfather had arranged the fights for him, after all, glad to have his successful son, known to be an up- and coming politician, back from Rome. Opiter had been raised by his grandfather and he dearly loved the old man.
He cast his eyes around the combatants, his interest taken by the trident wielder on the platform above the moat, holding off a pair of secutors. He always found the retiarii slightly unsettling, unhelmeted and half-naked, exposed to the audience. This one wore a long tunic, the sign of infamy, a gladiator obscene from the scurrilous part of the gladiator school. Opiter idly wondered if he had been forced into the role through disgrace, or had chosen to be available to men for reasons of his own. He was deeply tanned and heroically solid, his muscles strong and cushioned with fat. He would bleed spectacularly, and be protected a little by his padding of flesh; but the tunic-wearers rarely survived long, poor effeminate creatures.
The man turned, and Opiter was startled to see deep vertical lines by his strong mouth, deep furrows in his brow even from Opiter's seat. Perhaps there were grey hairs, too, in his dark curls and beard. The man had to be at least forty, well past the age to die or retire.
"Grandfather, who is that aged retiarius tunicatus?"
Marcus Lucretius turned in curiosity. "Oh, that is Manu. Curious creature. Does not speak much. A Persian, and an auctoro who hired himself to us. We didn't expect him to survive long at thirty-five years, but here he is, ten years later. I don't know what disgrace was so great he decided to expose himself to the jeers of the crowd instead, and he doesn't tell."
Opiter watched Manu more closely. He was graceful in his movements, keeping his assailants at bay with smooth long stabs of the trident and well-aimed stones, net held carefully. Pink-white scars on his arms rippled as he moved, blood from a gashing wound highlighted the flex of one of his beautifully curved calf muscles. There was something to be said for lack of armor, even with a tunic rather than a loincloth.
Opiter almost missed it when Manu's arm snaked out and the net fell on an unfortunate secutor. Manu dropped his trident and moved forward, his dagger flashing in the sun. Despite his bulk and wound Manu moved as gracefully as a serpent, arm raised to deliver the decisive blow.
The boy had to be only seventeen years of age. The sound of a terrified whimper and plea came from the boy. Lucretius curled his upper lip in disgust. "Surrender and face judgment or fall like a man."
The boy cried out, some words Opiter could not understand, and Manu paused a moment. Opiter felt oddly like time had come to a halt. Manu looked questioningly at the sky, as if seeking a message there. Even the second secutor stopped circling and waited, sword held nervously in his hand. A dove fluttered above the Persian gladiator.
Manu fell to his knees and signaled surrender to the referee.
The small audience muttered in confusion. Lucretius's disgust intensified. "Is that man mad? I'll have to have him executed for cowardice and defiance myself, now, and I have spent a good deal on feeding and training him over the years. Not to mention that cowardly secutor."
Opiter tried to read the expression on the retiarius's face. It was dark and stoic, showing no fear or embarrassment. Waiting. Optimer imagined the Dis Pater emerging in his hood, slamming a hammer on the back of that thick neck, shattering the vertebrae. The magnificent body dragged from the area like carrion.
The boy had shown one moment of blissful relief at the moment he had been spared, but now was shaking again, realizing the inevitable. The second secutor hovered, face blank. It was a tragic display, and a shameful one. Then Manu reached out, and touched the boy's shoulder through the net, encouragingly, and the boy straightened his shoulders, bending his head to expose the vital spot on his neck.
"Grant them both missio, grandfather, and give them to me." The words came out before Opiter realized he was going to speak.
Marcus Lucretius quirked an eyebrow, and Opiter said, "It seems he has protective instincts for men younger than himself. Well then, let him protect me. You can hardly allow him to continue to fight in the arena after this." He felt like he was inventing, trying to find reasons to convince himself, not just his grandfather. But that beautiful man, kneeling in the sand, with quiet dignity despite his status as the least of the gladiators, turned his stomach to liquid fire, made his fingers flex as if they could reach out and touch him.
"I think the gods spoke to him and wanted his opponent spared. It would be blasphemous to refuse the omen."
Marcus Lucretius's brows drew into a frown, but then he rose and declared missio.
"I am not a slave. I fight in the arena by my own choice."
Manu stood straight, despite the blood flowing over his leg. Opiter had the unsettling feeling that Manu was the one in the position of power here, himself the petitioner. Opiter drew his family and dignity around himself like a toga.
"You have no choice in the matter. After you and Flamma disgraced yourselves, you cannot return. I have purchased Flamma from my grandfather, and he will be a household slave. And you, foreigner, are to be my protector."
"Your protector?" Manu's face, despite the signs of age, was as impassive as if carved on a relief. Perhaps it was the effect of his long, curved nose and thick bow-like eyebrows, the masculinity of his curly beard and powerful frame contrasting with the long feminine tunic and elaborate curls. He was a riddle.
"My star is rising, and I will bring the patrician family of Lucretia back to glory. Those who bear the name Lucretia Tricipitinia have been too long eclipsed by our own plebian branches. That means I have enemies. You are to sleep outside my door, and taste my food, and you will be richly rewarded."
"Until I die by poison meant for you."
Opiter, taken aback by the bluntness, smiled despite himself. "I have faith that your constitution is stronger than mine. You are my elder, but I am a politician, not a warrior."
Manu took in Opiter's unremarkable frame with a sweeping feet-to-head and back again gaze that made Opiter's cheeks burn with the brashness of it. He felt ridiculously young and pampered and unworthy to be looked at by such a hardened warrior. "Why did you spare my life?"
Opiter did not say: because you are strange and beautiful. Because you were kind to that boy. Because I did not want to see you die. He did not say, even to himself, because you are a tunic-wearing retiarus, and perhaps that means you are a lover of men, and while I have touched neither man nor boy it makes the pulse hammer in my ears to think of it.
Instead, he asked his own question. "Why did you spare the boy, when you knew it would mean death for yourself?"
"Perhaps I decided it was the day the gods fated me to die."
"Well, then. It seems you misread their omen." Opiter gestured to his slaves. "Irrigate his wound, dress it with spices and fig leaves, feed him, and make him rest. I will not lose my new bodyguard to infection on the first day, or on the journey back to our home."
Manu paused on the threshold, turning back. "If the gods moved you to spare my life, then it belongs to you now. Do with it as you will." He left before Opiter could respond.
Opiter reclined on his couch afterward, trying to think of the work awaiting him back in Rome, but all he could think of was Manu's leg being bathed and dressed, and the incomprehensible desire to be the one to wash him, to cover his wounds and soothe his pain with wine.
Opiter had barely entered his villa urbana when a hurricane of arms and legs flung towards him, competing for the first kisses. He swept his smallest son up first, kissing his rosy cheeks and delicate eyelashes, receiving enthusiastic kisses on his mouth, and then bent to his twin son and daughter, clinging to his legs. He reveled in their explosion of joy.
He turned to his wife, waiting politely for cool kisses to be bestowed on her. "Have you and the children been well while I was in the provinces, Annia?"
"Very well," she said, her pretty mouth curving in a reasonably friendly smile. The slight warmth was new enough thing that it gave him some measure of happiness. He and Annia had never been close, and at early points in the marriage he suspected she hated him and dreamed of divorce, for all he tried to be kind. He couldn't blame her; for a renowned beauty such as Annia, marriage to a man as short and plain, as fumbling and cold in his passions as Opiter had proved to be, was insulting. Since she had provided him with a male heir and excused them both from the humiliation of the bedroom, they had reached friendship of a kind. He even hoped it would become sibling-like warmth, at some point.
And she had risked her life to bear their children, sunshine of his life. He carried the baby Titus inside, just two years old, the four-year-old twins tugging at his clothes, through to the courtyard, where Annia had ensured there would be drinks and snacks to have by the fountain.
"I have brought with me two gladiators," he said, wondering about her reaction.
"Are we to start training pairs? It would be good for your reputation, if expensive."
"They would be a poor beginning," he admitted. "Flamma is young and cowardly, and Manu is well past the age of usual retirement. But they have been trained well, and perhaps they could perform exhibition matches, and train Titus and Lucius when they are old enough."
"Are they beautiful?" she asked, her voice measured, her eyes reading his face.
He flushed. "Flamma is young and pretty. He will be a useful slave when we entertain. The Persian is older. I had thought to keep him as a taster and bodyguard." He didn't mention Manu's shoulders, the long oiled black curls, his dark eyes.
Annia sipped her wine. "A good thought," she said, and left it at that. As usual, he could not read her mind, and could not tell if she guessed at his tastes, theoretical though they were. She had stopped suggesting he bring concubines into the household, and if she took lovers at the baths herself, she was discreet enough not to cause a scandal or become pregnant. He hoped she was happy in her life, and didn't know how to ask.
Strange, to have been so intimate with someone, to have created new lives together, and to know nothing of what went on under those elaborate red curls and behind those intelligent brown eyes. Opiter kissed Titus's hair, flaxen like that of his mama, and watched Lucius and Lucretia play with their toys on the floor.
Manu slept outside Opiter's door that night. Opiter worried about his wound a little, which was ridiculous. He was a bodyguard and would have died soon enough in the area, if he was too foolish to retire of his own will. Would have been executed then and there if Opiter hadn't intervened. There was no need at all to feel guilt or concern for his well-being.
Still less need to find his mind set on those calves, that chest, the full lips set in that slightly contemptuous expression. Standing there like some kind of hero, not someone saved from inglorious execution by the generous whim of a patrician.
Ridiculous. Manu felt no affection for him, merely a kind of noble gratitude for being spared. He had shown no emotion at his rescue, beyond his strange declaration of loyalty. The gods, Opiter thought furiously, had not intended the deaths of the two gladiators that day, or some tragedy would have befallen them on the way back. Manu should have wept, have pressed kisses and tears on his feet. But Opiter could not form the thought of Manu groveling, despite the effeminate long tunic. If he bestowed kisses they would be hard kisses, claiming the man he kissed, the kiss of a warrior...
After all, if only the household gods could see, it was no shame for Opiter to give in, let himself imagine those kisses, a forceful tongue pushing into his mouth, those strong arms crushing him close. No shame in slicking his palm with spit and letting it close around where he was becoming heavy and heated, stroke himself to full hardness.
Was Manu listening, outside the door? The thought inflamed him. Surely no one would know if he came in, climbed the steps to the bed, finished Opiter with that beautiful mouth. He had been a retiarius tunicatus, surely he had been that most degraded of things, a cocksucker, surely those beautiful full lips had stretched themselves around other men's cocks as they came in his mouth...
Opiter's mind, confused and inflamed, flickered between images of Manu overwhelming him and pleasuring him, until he couldn't tell them apart and the image of Manu taking him in his mouth felt not like an act of conquest on his part but of being conquered by the older gladiator, and it was that, that confusion, that left him messy and gasping and shamed, wondering if Manu heard.
If so, there was no sign of it.
Having Manu by his side at all times became less strange, then a habit, and finally as natural to him as breathing. He practiced his speeches with him, used him to test his knowledge of law, spoke to him about the wheelings and dealings of politics, about the mistakes and mis-steps he made. At first he felt raw, exposing his youth and inexperience, but Manu listened patiently and without negative judgment, the teardrop curve of his dark eyes not narrowing at Opiter's naivety.
"You are clever, diligent and honorable," Manu said once, and to Opiter it felt like the highest praise he had ever been given. "You will bring success and glory to your family, and your children. You need not worry so much." For him it was a long speech.
Opiter looked at the hand cradling Manu's goblet, the strong, fat forearm above it. There was a long thick scar as if a sword had been gouged flesh in a crooked line. A miracle that infection and blood loss hadn't carried him off. "You are clearly an educated man yourself. What brought you to the arena in such an infamous role?" It was the first time he had spoken of it.
Manu pressed his lips together, and Opiter had worried that he had offended. "My family had much success as merchants in Aquileia, despite being foreigners. The city was good to us, and my father was proud. He talked of me being adopted into some prestigious family, of a great future for any grandchildren. Then I was caught in the arms of another man, in a role felt to be submissive." His face was still impassive, as if he was admitting nothing of note, relating a long-ago scandal that happened to someone else. He took a long sip of wine, and then said, "Sometimes there is value in owning disgrace, in saying, I will disgrace myself so far that none of your contempt can hurt me. The role of a retiarius tunicatus appealed to me for that reason."
"Did you expect to survive long?"
Manu smiled, a touch of humor in the creases around his dark eyes. "No. It turns out I have an aptitude for the net and trident. And I did not expect to find myself a favored servant in the household of a patrician in Rome. It seems the gods had plans for me beyond my understanding."
"And your lover?" Opiter tried not to be breathless asking. It was long ago, he told himself, it didn't matter. Any lovers, any wives this man had were not part of his life now.
"He had attractive light brown eyes, but he didn't love me," Manu said, and left it at that.
So did Opiter. He certainly didn't spend any time that day staring into a polished mirror, trying to discern if his eyes were light or merely medium in brown.
Opiter was feeling joyful and confident. He had transacted favourable business at the baths, his brain spurred on by trying not to think about Manu having oil scraped from his body, the wonderful map of scars on his back and chest, moving through the water, naked and glorious. Then Manu had consented to play board games with him, and as he had contemplated moves Opiter had been free to drink in the sight of his face, learning once more the curve of his lips through his beard, the slant of his cheekbones, the lines of wisdom in his eyes and brows. Bewitching and strange, his servant and companion. Opiter ached to uncover the secrets of his heart as much as he ached to be embraced by him.
He didn't pretend to himself any longer that he was anything but head over heels in love with the old gladiator. Opiter missed Manu when they were apart for a moment, marked his own breaths by the rise and fall of his chest. He just didn't know how to act on his feelings. He didn't fool himself about his own attractions. Only his youth stood between Opiter and his future as a round-bellied, balding senator. For Manu to consent to his embraces because of his dependence on him, on their circumstances, was a thought that haunted him at night. His heart would break, he would be incapable of performing, like on his wedding night as a youth where, intimidated by Annia's loveliness and the magnitude of the task set before him, his body had failed him.
Worse, by far, if Manu would be incapable of showing passion when faced with him. Opiter lay awake at night sometimes, cheeks burning, imagining the humiliation of Manu soft but acquiescent.
He was lost in his own head, and his contemplation of Manu's sharp silhouette, so deeply that startled him when Manu suddenly halted. "Where is Tiro?"
Opiter paused, realizing the slave that had accompanied them to the baths to attend their toilet was no longer with them. Which one was Tiro? A handsome Greek boy, a new acquisition. Quite new. And they had turned down an alley, and suddenly seemed far from any guard or protection.
Manu pulled a dagger from his boot just as two figures fell from the roofs above them, one with an arm pressed around Opiter's neck.
He gasped and struggled, but the arm choked the breath from his throat, unrelenting. His lungs burned and ached as he threw his wait desperately, clawed at the arm, tried to kick back and made no contact. Treacherous dreaminess began to float over him with the lack of air. As dark spots began to float in front of his eyes, Manu looked like something out of a vision, twisting and lunging with the practiced grace of a gladiator, his long curls flying. There was something beautiful about the spray of blood from the second assailant's neck as Manu's dagger found its way home, and to Opiter's confused mind it seemed the blood was calling forth the pain in his own neck. I don't mind dying by your hands, my beautiful Pluto he thought, letting himself go slack.
Manu didn't seem to appreciate his surrender. He roared in anger, the dagger slashing out again, and the pressure around Opiter's neck released. Agony came in its wake, and he doubled over, hacking and coughing, as a body slammed into the wall behind him.
Then strong arms were around him, incredibly tender despite their muscle. "Breathe gently, pull the air back. Curse myself a thousand times for letting you get hurt." Lips pressed against his forehead, his eyes, bringing strength with them, the tickle of beard soothing. "You'll be all right, take it slowly, don't fight. You're safe now." Opiter relaxed into the grip, a deep sense of peace flooding into him despite the burning in his lungs. Manu had him. "That's it, slow your breathing, my treasure."
My treasure. He wasn't entirely sure he hadn't hallucinated it. Manu had stepped away now and was watching him worriedly. "Opiter, we should go. There might be more assassins, and..." He gestured with his bloodied dagger, illegal in city bounds.
"A fuss, yes." He allowed Manu to guide him from the city, leaning on his arm and coughing still. My master was taken ill.
Annia greeted them on their return, and Manu said bluntly, "From where did the slave Tiro come?"
She blinked at his rudeness, but answered. "He was a gift from Publius Lucretius Trio. Opiter, what is wrong?"
"Did you deliberately bring an assassin from your lover into the house?"
Annia's lips whitened. "He is not my lover," she said, her voice as tight as Opiter's throat. "He is merely a distant cousin from another branch of the family.
"He asked you to divorce Opiter and marry him. My job is to protect the master, I heard."
"Then you heard me refuse. I would not leave my children."
"So you decided to free yourself by murder?"
"I am happy enough in my marriage."
"Don't lie to me!" Manu's rage built up. "There is no passion between you, as any fool could tell."
"Manu, don't talk to her like that. She is my wife, the mother of my children and your mistress." Opiter tried to right himself, and Manu's arm came around him, protectively.
Annia looked at them, from the arm to Opiter clinging, and laughed. It took a moment for Opiter to realise there was no mockery in her laughter, just a kind of gladness. "Opiter, my heart, trust me. You have been a good husband in your way, and I bear you no ill will, and will replace you with no other husband." Her gaze flicked between them again, and her fine cheeks coloured. "I am no lover of men, to be jealous, of your affections," she said, with gentle significance, and Opiter thought suddenly of the children's nurse, Agrippina, full-cheeked and kind and usually by Annia's side. "Now, my fierce and loyal Manu, be my friend as you are my husband's, and help me attend to him. And tell me all about it."
He was soon settled on his bed, cool cloths soaked with wine draped around his neck, Lucretia snuggled into his side, Lucius and Titus on cushions by his feet, his wife and his guard, his friend, talking in low voices. Planning and plotting. They would protect him, he thought. Manu and Annia would sort out this mess and nullify it, and he was safe and oh, so very tired.
He wrapped his arms around Lucretia's small warm body, and slept.
When he awoke his wife and children were gone, but Manu waited, silent and patient. Did he imagine the shining in the brown eyes when he saw him awake? Happiness or tears or something more? My treasure.
Manu dropped suddenly to his knees. "I failed you. I let myself be distracted, and I put you at risk, and you were harmed. If you forgive me, I will spend a lifetime repairing the injury."
His distress hurt Opiter to the core. It was unbearable that he had distressed Manu through his own incompetence in fighting. "Your courage and fighting skills saved my life," Opiter said. "My life belongs to you, now. Do with it what you will."
Manu raised his head, confused at the echoing of his words. "But my life is yours."
"Then, this is a dilemma. If we belong to each other, what do we do?" Opiter's lips quirked. He felt mad with happiness, drunk on it. Or maybe it was the alcohol fumes from the bandages.
Manu lunged forward, grasped his arms. "Don't mock me like that. I am yours. Do you understand? My heart, my soul, my body. The gods chose me to serve you."
Opiter leaned forward and gave him the kiss of equals, on his mouth, on his eyes, tasting the salt of tears. Back to his mouth, brushing it tenderly again and again, until Manu's lips parted and he kissed Opiter back fiercely, rising up on his knees, pressing him back in the cushions. So much larger than Opiter, so heavy and strong, and it was glorious, to open his mouth to questing lips and tongue, feel the weight pressing on him, hands parting the drying bandages around his neck and parting his tunic to touch his chest, telling hardness against his thigh. Ragged words breathed against his skin as his sore neck was kissed again and again, my treasure, my sweet, my dearest.
"You're my hero," he said, "you saved my life, my strong graceful gladiator, my love. No more tears."
Manu was kissing his way down him, as if he was precious and desirable, if as the nubs of his nipples, the birthmark on the curve of his belly, the insides of his hips were places of remarkable value. As if he was as beautiful as this warrior, not a soft spoiled politician.
"I'll never let anyone hurt you again," Manu said against the hollow of the inside of Opiter's thigh, voice rough as his beard. "If anyone raises their hand against you I will kill them, I will send them out of this world for daring to threaten you, I will tear them to pieces as if a crowd was chanting your name, urging me on." Opiter thought of the bodies in the alley and he felt he should feel guilt or horror but it sent fire to his belly, and he was hard without the usual shameful coaxing and effort, so strainingly hard he could feel himself leaking against his own belly, his balls drawn up high and sensitive. When a hot wet tongue ran along the base of his cock his hips jerked despite himself, an animal sound he didn't think he was capable of making torn from his throat.
The tongue circled the head of his cock, pressed and tasted the proof of his desire, then a hot mouth with firm lips fastened around him, moved deep er and deeper with long swallows, unbearably hot and wet, the tongue pulsing against the base, and by everything on heaven and earth there was beard brushing against his balls. He was being consumed, being sucked hard and deep, and how could anyone think a man who could do this was submitting himself? It was Manu, Manu was owning and possessing him, drawing his mouth back and forth now. Opiter was completely in his power, he had no control, could only arch his back and submit himself to this pleasure. When he spilled in long desperate spurts he felt as Manu was taking all of his heart and his soul into him, accepting him, close to protect.
Manu drew back and looked frightened as he had not shown fear when facing death, lips reddened with the stretch. Waiting for--what? To be shamed, pushed away now Opiter had been pleasured, scorned.
Opiter said the first thing that came into his head, which was, "I love you."
Manu's face lit up, fierce as bright as Summanos, as the sheets of lightning through the dark. He pressed Opiter close, surrounding him with arms and muscular thighs, pressing Opiter's head against his shoulder, where there was a scar like a sunburst to kiss, to worship.
Opiter slid his hand between them, and Manu startled as Opoter's hand closed around the base. "There is no need. I am here to serve."
"I would not leave you wanting, my beloved," Opiter said, pulling his fingers up, slicking them with leaking fluid, squeezing tight as he stroked. Manu was silk and iron and heat and was trembling and spilling before Opiter came even close to learning his feel enough to satisfy himself.
Well. There would be other times.
Manu pulling away to clean them both felt like a terrible loss, but he was pulled close again, kisses pressed on the soft patrician fingers that had curled around his gladiator. "My treasure," Manu muttered, I will protect you. I love you, loved you from the moment I looked up from the arena and I saw your kindness, your mercy. The gods willed me to be yours, they kept me alive long enough to meet you, they sent the dove to tell me how to catch your interest."
"You already had it, my magnificent warrior. But your mercy to Flamma won my love."
The exhaustion of the day was falling over Opiter again, rendered sweeter by the bliss of the end of lovemaking. He closed his eyes, and felt tender kisses on his eyelids.
He roused himself enough to ask, "What distracted you?"
"Trying not to stare with lustful intent at your lovely plump arms," Manu growled, and Opiter fell into sleep with laughter on his lips.