Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Geta had not stood in the audience of the procession, but Caracalla had. His rashes had finally begun to fade, and with a small layer of paint the pink on his arms, hands and legs could be made to disappear, and his face - well, he had plenty of rash on his face to start with. No one could tell the difference between his affliction and the rest. And so as he did not look diseased anymore, his duty was to follow his father’s leaving: this grand departure for yet another war campaign, of which Caracalla could know no more than the lowliest of peasants. He was never told anything, and he’d ceased asking. Asking never resulted in anything pleasant for him, or for his twin for that matter, and answers were always lacking even when they came.

So the emperor went, and he remained. And Geta was not there, because Geta was not to leave his chambers. It was a voluntary retreat - he was not well - but also one which the emperor himself had silently sanctioned, and which would have been enforced one way or another should Geta have tried to break out. Caracalla knew that he wouldn’t have; that Geta was happier staying put. When Father was home, Geta barely moved at all. Even alone in his bedroom he spent most of his time sitting upright and still and only breathing, his eyes nailed to the windows, each inhale shallow and each exhale fast. That was a sickness, Caracalla thought to himself. Even more than his pox had been, what burdened his brother was worse.

He knew more about it than most, of course. In his presence Geta would still melt and come back to life, even now, even while their father’s presence chilled the halls and made every echoing sound akin to a stark-ringing bell, a shout heralding fire, fire. In Caracalla’s proximity, Geta would still at least breathe as a normal boy should have, and his wary, wide eyes relaxed for the time being. When Caracalla was there, it was… like they were in a different world, one which was, for the moment, separate from the one in which their waking nightmares lay in waiting. Caracalla felt much the same, even though his feet had never agreed with stillness, and his answer to the horrors at home had been to try and escape it as often as he could - until, at least, the pox had struck him. After that he’d tried to imitate his twin brother and become unseen again. Like a child seeking shelter from behind pillars, from among furniture, even underneath when the need was dire. But unlike Geta, he had long since learned that his chambers would not keep him safe, and therefore his hideouts were always elsewhere. If not outside the Palatine walls, then inside, but he would not ever be found where he was most expected to be, unless he had reasonable guarantee that being found exactly in those places would not result in pain or injury, or more fear than he could bear.

Somehow, though as of late they’d spent less time being as inseparable as they had once been, Geta was still always there when things got really bad. He seemed to sense it in the air, or hear it in the way that sound carried through marble hallways, or in the whispers of servants and slaves. He knew, and when Caracalla really needed him, he would always find his way there to protect him.

But now the halls were settling again. No terror rang through them, none outright anyway. Father never left them entirely alone, but year by year their minders paid them less attention. They were men now; sixteen, and nearly full citizens of the state. It wasn’t anybody’s duty now to herd them like empty-headed sheep. They were not children, yet they were imprisoned all the same. Other boys their age could leave - other boys had free range of the city, and their minders turned them a blind eye, encouraged them in their silence to get roughened up, to get into trouble. Caracalla had had to climb out under the cover of darkness, and even then he’d been beaten hard when he’d been found out. It wasn’t how other young men of the city lived or how he should have lived, but… that was behind him now. All of that. Even as he ascended the palace steps again and cast a look toward the city bathing in that wavering summer’s heatwave, he knew the will to be outside had been beaten out of him once and for all. Or maybe it had been the pox, but… much more likely, it had been their father’s fist; he could still feel his scalp aching, though it’d been months since that beating. In its wake, the very idea of trying to leave again filled him with dread. The reality of this also chilled him, so he tucked it away, this awareness of his own lessening. Was this what happened to horses when they were first broken for the saddle? Was he broken? He wondered also if Geta was. If Geta was more than he had ever been. He surely still took the lion’s share of their father’s violence, as well as the violence of others. Many of those punishments which coloured his skin a palette of purples, blues, yellows and browns had really been meant for Caracalla - for years and years - but Geta would never let anyone lay a hand on him if he could stop it. And he always did stop it, with his own body if all other means would fail him. It was the worst of those beatings which sealed him inside his bedroom, be it from pain or to wait away the evidence of his failures. All of their failures. Their father’s the most, Caracalla thought to himself bitterly. It still felt unsafe to think it, even though the man was gone now. Riding away to fight the Parthians.

Again.

Caracalla’s knuckles looked unnervingly pale and frail as he rapped them against his brother’s door. Without waiting for an answer, he pushed it open: the guardsmen on either side paid him no mind, had not since bowing their heads and hearing him his formal title as acknowledgement. He could come and go as he pleased, at least inside the Palatine - at least during daytime. Then again, though he’d been forbidden many times from doing so, no one had yet crossed their weapons to bar his entry to his brother’s chambers after nightfall either. That particular rule seemed to be all over more of a suggestion than an order given. And so he’d not yet been dragged out once, though he’d spent more than a few nights by Geta’s side even while the emperor was present. They were lucky to be twins, Caracalla thought to himself as he waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dim light in the chambers: twins had a special bond, a special permission for proximity, for needing one another. Any set of brothers to a lesser degree. He wasn’t sure if the servants of the emperor might have been quite so lenient, if it had not been for the nature of their relation. All thanks to Romulus and Remus, he thought to himself; or perhaps Castor and Pollux instead. One of these pairs did not end up in such a tragedy, but both were sacred to all Romans. None would have told Castor he had no business sharing the stars of Pollux after nightfall.

“Geta?” he called out into the dark.

All the curtains were drawn, but that was not unusual. Geta slept with his eyes open well into daytime when he was nursing this many injuries. He was scarcely visited even by servants, if not to allow them to refill his pitcher or take out his waste. If he did not open his own curtains, then nobody did. Not even Caracalla, most of the time. He liked this darkness, because it felt like shelter: if they could not see, then surely their father could not, either. But now was different. Severus was gone and Caracalla wanted the world to come back into this room, too. He wanted Geta to breathe fresh air from the city where their father was not, and he wanted to see his twin, and see what his own hands were touching. So he passed the drawn canopy and walked straight to the window, where he then tossed aside the heavy veils and tied them messily to the side. Light poured in: with it came heat, under which Caracalla dared to bathe now, because the dark stone rooms of the palaces were cold even against such an unforgiving blaze as now was beating down the city outside. Then, finally, he turned and saw Geta’s fingers parting the canopy and his dark eyes squinting through the gap.

“Is he gone?” Geta asked, his voice hoarse.

Caracalla nodded. He could feel his body settling: here was safety, as always. Here was theirs, alone. Father was gone: only they remained. As Caesars and youths, they were respected enough that they could tell any servant intruding upon them to go and not to return. Merely having secluded themselves into the privacy of these chambers already indicated that they did not wish to be disturbed. It was unlikely anybody would. Not today of all days.

He pushed aside the canopy and clambered on the bed, and let those curtains, partially translucent as they were, fall back down in his wake. Geta was making space for him, his spotted body radiating a feverish heat even through the robes that he wore. He crawled backwards as Caracalla crawled forwards: at the end he was on his back, and Caracalla atop him, and there Caracalla let his body fall down to the height of his elbows digging into the mattress, and Geta let out a soft breath, adjusting himself underneath. He was so warm, like the sunlight outdoors. He’d lost weight over the course of the past two months, and looked terrible; his eyes were surrounded by shadows and his lids were puffy, and his lips were dry and sore, but that was alright. He’d bounce back from here as he always did. The next year would treat him better, Caracalla knew this. The hand with which Geta brushed through his wildly curling hair had its nails chewed so short that the flesh underneath had turned as red as his lips.

“You’re alright now,” Caracalla told him.

He followed his words with a breathless chuckle and a brief nod as if to confirm them to himself, and then threw himself off of his twin’s shape. He settled next to Geta’s side instead, and Geta, though somewhat weakly still, mirrored him so that they were again face to face. Shadows danced about them as the canopy shifted in a breeze. Birds outside still sang, and the air was growing warmer.

The bed had the distinct scent of Geta’s skin mixing with rich oils and incense. And a whiff of blood, which made Caracalla stir again. His eyes laxed: the world was blurry for some time as he focused on that scent, the rich iron of it, until he felt his brother’s body curling up against his own and his attention shifted again. He let his hand enter Geta’s hair now, just as Geta had done to him, and stroked it gently from the side to the top of his head and back again. The corner of his mouth curved up as he watched Geta close his eyes.

“It’s going to be a better year,” he said, and his voice had dropped, turned into a low murmur. “Summer will be long and the autumn will be pretty. You’ll meet a girl and want her again. Did you ever get with the last one…?”

“No,” Geta muttered. “I didn’t… I had other things to do.”

“Other things like what.”

A one-shoulder shrug followed. Caracalla knew: Geta had been timid about following up with his instincts for a long time. Much longer than Caracalla, anyway.

“Did you get cold feet because of what Father did to me?” he asked then, the thought occurring for the first time. That maybe it wasn’t just Geta being shy - though he was - but something else like that getting in the way also.

Another one-shoulder shrug. Then, sighing, Geta opened his eyes again. He stared at the dark purple linen of Caracalla’s black-embroidered tunic and lifted his hand to rest it on his ribs. It felt warm, and heavy; his hands had grown since Caracalla had last paid their size attention. He’d grown in general. Geta just kept doing that. Caracalla felt like he’d barely started and then stopped it in an instant: he’d been promised more would come but it was keeping him waiting, and he’d started to sincerely doubt whether it ever would. Geta had a bad habit of this, of making distance between them, and with his height that distance had become literal. He always had to outdo his twin somehow. Always.

Slowly, Geta sat up, and shaking off his thoughts Caracalla followed suit. They were always doing this also: making themselves the same again, like reflections. Geta took his hand and pulled it to his lap, and there he turned it, traced the rash which still showed as raised skin even through the paint which had nearly made it invisible. It didn’t seem to please him, and with shaky legs he stood from the bed and vanished behind the canopy.

“What are you doing?” Caracalla asked, squinting through the curtains.

“Washing that off,” Geta answered him simply.

He was back soon enough, holding a cloth he’d wet in the basin set by the windows. With that he did exactly as he’d promised, and Caracalla held out his hands and arms to him. He didn’t touch the legs, nor the face; those seemed to be fine with him, but he was careful to clear off the light paste from the full length of Caracalla’s arms, and even from the backs of his hands. When all that was done, he spent some time cleaning between Caracalla’s fingers still: one by one he washed them, dragging the cloth over the backs of the knuckles, the nails, and down to the pit between each finger, and then down the palm. There was not and had never been anything painted in the spots, but it felt good, so Caracalla didn’t complain. And Geta seemed focused, anyway: if he needed this to feel better, then that was fine with Caracalla, too.

After a long while the cloth was laid down to hang from the frame of the bed, and neither of them moved. Like the cloth, Caracalla let his hands hang down, feeling the moving air gently dry his skin. The red spots were back now: in the wake of the wash they even seemed starker again, but blush was gathering everywhere on his rubbed skin so it didn’t worry him. Geta was staring at them, his expression unreadable.

“It wasn’t because of what Father did to you,” he said slowly then in a somewhat hollow voice. “I just… I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t… want to be naked with her.”

“You don’t have to be naked,” Caracalla said. It felt good to be the one of them who knew better this time, but there really was nothing to stop Geta from wearing his tunic throughout - Caracalla had done it, in a hurry. Nobody would think about it twice. “You just lift your clothes up enough to get your cock out.”

“That’s - that wouldn’t help.”
Geta shifted. His eyes turned away, and his head followed suit. Absently, nervously, he began to draw circles onto the bed with his fingertips.
“That’s not what I’m concerned about.”

“What then?”

“You know what.”

There was a hint of irritation in his voice now. Or… shame, maybe. Caracalla tilted his head, and Geta’s eyes were fiery, challenging, when he turned to look at him again.

“Are you really going to make me spell it out?” he asked, snappy and harsh for no reason that Caracalla could perceive.

It made Caracalla bristle, too. He’d said nothing to deserve the tone - it upset him, and he felt himself withdrawing. His body tensed and he grimaced.

“Maybe if you didn’t only ever speak in riddles, I would actually understand what you’re trying to say,” he hissed back. “It’s not my fault you don’t know how to speak.”

It didn’t feel like a fair comeback to him. Like maybe he shouldn’t have skirted so close to the things that Father would say to Geta - about how he spoke, how often he stumbled on his words or stammered, or did not speak clearly enough, or loud enough, or how he fidgeted too much while speaking, or forgot to look people in the eye and lost his words to mumbling. But it angered Caracalla that Geta treated him like he was stupid; everyone else already did. So why should he have been any more courteous? It wasn’t his fault if Geta had never learned to speak so that others would understand him. Even Father mocking it first didn’t make it less real.

Yet still it hurt, and it hurt worse to see the inevitable pain flash through Geta’s eyes also.

“Fine.”

There was a poison edge to Geta’s voice, but Caracalla had no chance to react to it before Geta’s fingers had turned to the loose red robes he wore. Like Caracalla’s tunic, they were embroidered: simplistic golden laurels adorned the sides which he now took a hold of and pulled apart, far enough that their folds came to rest against the exposed sides of his draped black undercloth. That was where the scent of blood had stemmed from, and though Geta was right that it did not surprise Caracalla, it still made his body grow cold with a flood of icy sweat breaking through the skin throughout. He felt himself shaking and wondered if he wanted to close his eyes - if he should have - but he did not close his eyes at the arena, either, and what he watched there was worse. Was it? It didn’t feel like it. This was different. Had been from the first time he’d seen it. The deep crimson carnage of what Geta made of his own skin; the cuts placed evenly in rows, and when there was no more space or the row grew too close to where the hem of a tunic would lie, another row was started. This time some of the gashes even crossed across others: he’d spent time on this, like an artist. And as Caracalla’s own trembling hand approached and brushed aside the robes, he found more of the cuts on the outer side of his twin’s thighs also.

His heart was racing. His vision felt as if it was closing in somehow, or darkening at the edges, like looking through a small hole into a much brighter, more distant room. He didn’t feel his own skin, or himself, at all. His hand came to rest on his brother’s leg, fingertips touching the warm, soft fabric which was tied about his hips. Geta’s hand brushed over it. The touch didn’t feel angry anymore. There was relief there somewhere, Caracalla thought; in his posture, in the way that he’d collapsed into himself, creating a rounded crease to the flesh of his abdomen. Caracalla felt dizzy, and more distant still - he looked at that crease and wanted to lay his head on it, feel the warmth of the skin and the luxurious softness of the fine hair which grew all over his brothers’ body. The kind which had not turned into a man’s hair, and would not; he knew what that fuzz felt like underneath his fingertips, because he’d pet Geta’s body, his bare skin, often enough to recount that feeling. Other people’s bodies did not feel like his, Caracalla thought, hearing that thought as if it was coming from a great distance and only its echoes reached his mind.

“I can’t fuck anybody looking like this. Even when they heal. I can’t ever,” Geta said.

The bitterness in his voice had stayed and festered. The anger, too. Caracalla shivered to it all.

“Then why don’t you just… stop?” he asked, though his fingers had strayed.

Geta’s hair stood on end as Caracalla trailed the tips of his index- and middle fingers along the smooth skin between the cuts. None of them looked older than a night at most; they might have been from the morning, when everyone else had left for the procession, but Geta had stayed behind. Was it like imprisonment? Caracalla swallowed thickly. He felt stiff between his legs and wanted to move, but no other pose felt any less uncomfortable, or any less visible. When he moved his gaze back up, he did so mostly out of the fear that Geta would notice his hardness, but Geta was looking back at him, directly into his eyes, and the brown of his own was unusually hard and void of warmth. Void of anything much, Caracalla thought. He looked like their father did when his rage overcame him. The look frightened Caracalla.

“It wouldn’t matter,” Geta said quietly. “The scars are - even if I never made another - I can’t ever make the scars go away. And - and what then? What do I do then? If it’s not this, do I drink myself to sleep? Do I - do I end it?”

“End what?”

“Don’t be stupid with me, Calla. I can’t take it. I’m not strong enough, not today.”

“I’m not stupid!”

Geta grimaced. Caracalla’s heart was racing so fast that it hurt him, and he really did think he might faint now. His ears were ringing and hissing like underwater, and his whole body was shaking. Then Geta’s arms were there, around him, pulling him in, and it was easy to submit to that - to let go and collapse onto him, though the whole embrace smelled heavily of wounds now. Stale blood and fresh scabs. Like a fever.

“I love you,” Geta told him quietly.

In response, Caracalla made a faint sound. Then he readjusted, pushing the heel of his palm into the mattress to steady himself. He leaned his weight into it, then let his other hand onto Geta’s shoulder, and rested his head to his collarbones.

“Would you do it with me?” he asked then, still faintly. “You don’t need to worry about anything if I’m there. No one will dare to say a word. You won’t have to endure their silence, or try to pretend that you’re not as they see you. I won’t give them a chance to make you feel anything but divine.”

“With… you? Together?”

“Not with-with me,” Caracalla said, this time with a little more force. “Idiot. With someone else, together.”

“That’s what I meant. I was asking - it’s - ugh. It doesn’t matter. No.”

“Why not?”

“Because -“

But Geta didn’t seem to know why not any more than Caracalla did. Slowly, Caracalla pulled himself up from him again.

“You can’t just avoid it forever,” he said, reasonably enough. “You’re a man. It wouldn’t be fair to you, for one. For another - people would talk. And I don’t want to be the brother to a virgin forever. You don’t know what I’m talking about when I tell you about what I’ve done. I don’t like that. I don’t like us being so different.”

That didn’t only refer to sex. He didn’t like the wounds, either. He really did wish that Geta would stop it - but the subject frightened him. The intensity of how Geta spoke of it, and what he implied when he did not let go of his riddles. It all frightened Caracalla. There was distance there which he couldn’t stand, a difference which could not be bridged. This darkness inside Geta was his alone, and he wouldn’t share it; that Caracalla could not accept.

“I’m not… completely inexperienced,” Geta said finally, shifting with discomfort.

He pulled the side of his robes back over the front of his body where he could, where Caracalla wasn’t taking up the space, skin to skin, or almost as close as. Caracalla didn’t like that, either, so he slid his hand back onto Geta’s thigh, feeling the rough shapes of the cuts under his fingers where they landed. Geta’s breath hitched though the touch was light and careful, or the best imitation of those things that Caracalla could give him without looking. He could hear his twin’s heart beating almost directly underneath his ear, and it felt good - it calmed him again, where his thoughts had somewhat agitated him before. Their proximity was always like this. Had been since they’d been children. Infants, even. He’d been told that he’d never taken food if Geta was not beside him, and Geta would not stop crying if Caracalla wasn’t there with him. Was it any wonder their father hated them so much? They’d killed their mother and left him alone with their wailing. Two things which did not seem to want to be alive at all.

“You touch yourself?” Caracalla asked, chuckling.
Geta nodded, prompting a sigh: “That doesn’t count. It’s not the same.”

“How is it not the same? Why would I need anybody else?”

Caracalla could feel his twin’s heart picking up, the thunder of its rhythm turning to stampeding hooves, a race at the Circus Maximus shaking the rocky hill of Palatine underneath their feet.

“You’re just scared,” he said, and there was no question there. “You can’t be scared, Geta. Not of this.”

This time, Geta did shift, fully, properly; he detached Caracalla from his shape and pushed him to sit on his own, and gathered his robes, and crossed the sides from the front so that his body looked perfect again. He was meticulous about only cutting where no one else would see, but Caracalla knew, because Geta could hide nothing from him. Geta had never showed him - but he could smell the blood, just like he’d done today, and he saw Geta in ways that others never did. Not even his slaves, because Geta would only bathe alone now, or with Caracalla. It was like his whole body was sore, a healing scab, and not just the cuts on his thighs. He didn’t want to be seen, or treated, or be found near others. Caracalla wasn’t the same. Caracalla wanted the touch, the press of bodies to his own, the silk of a woman’s insides, and the velvet of men’s. He loved fucking, and he loved any other bodily pleasure the same: being cleaned by the hands of his slaves, having his muscles massaged until his body was as soft as a child’s again.

“What if I can’t be brave anymore?” Geta asked him.

His voice was empty, so that only a hint of curiosity, as dull as a dying man’s, shone through. Caracalla blinked at him.

“Of course you can be brave. Why couldn’t you?” he asked, but Geta’s eyes were suddenly wet, and he was shaking, and brought his arms to a cross over his chest, lowering his gaze.

“I can’t. I can’t do it anymore.”

Now it was Caracalla’s turn to come to him again. Didn’t matter that he’d just been shoved aside: he brought his arms to his twin’s body and embraced him, pulled him close. He pressed his lips to Geta’s ear and breathed him in before speaking.

“He’s gone, Geta,” he said softly. “He’s not here now. You can be brave. This isn’t a bad thing. You should have fun, like everybody else. We should have fun.”

“Look where it got you.”

A huff passed through Caracalla’s nose, and he let his body fall back, his arms turning to hands holding Geta by his shoulders.

“So it is about what Father did to me,” he said pointedly, with a cocky smile on his lips.

The corner of Geta’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t seem strong enough to say anything to this.

“It isn’t fair,” Caracalla continued then, lowering his hands down along Geta’s arms until his little fingers could curve about his elbows. “To be locked inside, all of the time. To have to live in fear when others our age get to do whatever they please and more. If you would just follow me - I’d take you out into the city after dark. A whore won’t ask you why you’ve been cut all over. They’ve seen worse. You should see the worse that’s out there. It’s…”
Caracalla’s mouth watered, and he had to shake his head to get out of it.
“… like nothing here, Geta,” he finished.

For a very long time, Geta said nothing to this. He turned to look away again, and his eyes wandered: still wet, and still dark, and still somehow… sunken, as if they weren’t reflecting light anymore. Not right, how they should have been. Caracalla loved his eyes, their deep and rich brown - so like their father’s, and so unlike at once. As if every drop of warmth that had resided in the latter had drained into Geta when he’d been conceived, because their father’s eyes were black and cold, but Geta’s more like amber, or like the bottom of a pond on a summer’s evening, when the sunset’s rays broke through and turned the water a shade so deep that it was nearly red. Or they were black, when light did not hit them; sometimes so black that his pupils were difficult to make out. Caracalla loved them then, too, because those were eyes which held secrets, eyes which would give him hidden looks after sunset, which he associated with a suppressed snicker and a grin in a dark temple, where no noise could pass but they both still shared… what they shared.

“I love you, too,” he said, and Geta seemed to jump to this.

Then he nodded, and stood again. He took the wet rag from the bed and left, and this time, Caracalla followed: he slipped down from the bed like a faithful dog or a demure slave, and he wasn’t sure if either of those options pleased him. When Geta turned, then, his eyes stayed briefly upon Caracalla’s loins, and only then did he remember that he’d grown hard and would certainly still be showing it now. A small grimace crossed his face, but Geta made no note of what he’d seen - if he’d seen it at all. There wasn’t much of anything left of it now, really. Maybe he’d not even noticed. Maybe it was a coincidence, Caracalla thought.

“Where would we go?” Geta asked then. “I can’t climb the wall from where you used to hop it. I can’t - not with these.”
His hand passed over his front and Caracalla shivered again.
“No, we can’t leave. But…”

His voice faded. Then his eyes turned toward the window and after a while he walked there, and once more Caracalla followed. He let his hand back on his twin’s shoulder when they were there, and Geta leaned his head towards him, and Caracalla huffed and took his hand in his free one, and held it tight.

“But what?” he asked.

“You said…”
Geta hesitated.
“You said together.”

The words weren’t what struck chills into Caracalla’s spine, but the pleading look that was cast his way. Geta only used that when he meant it - when he needed him to understand something that he didn’t have the words for. That he really couldn’t say out loud. But Caracalla didn’t parse this one. He knew what it sounded like, but - that couldn’t be it. It wasn’t. Or… maybe he had seen. Noticed. But that was a twisted offer, then, because he would know what had caused it - what… no. He wasn’t talking about that. He couldn’t be.

“Do you have someone in mind?” he asked sheepishly, because sheepish was the best that he could do. “There’s plenty of girls in the palaces. And - boys, if you’d like.”

But they were alone. Father was gone. No one would come into these chambers - not uninvited - not without being let in. They could choose not to let anybody in. They were men now, not boys; they had the right to refuse entry to anyone. They were Caesars. Not just men, and not boys, but rulers. Heirs to the empire. Men above any others. No one would bother them. No one would come. No one would know what they did inside.

It was wrong, and certainly twisted, but Caracalla was weak to it, cold and shaky as he’d been the first time he’d touched another’s body. Excited, yet terrified.

Geta shook his head.
“Any of them could talk,” he said, voice soft, eyes lowered and heavy-lidded, but clear as light reflected from them.

It was almost unbearable when he took a hold of the curtain and dragged it over the window again, leaving them in the dark. Unbearable when he raised his eyes and looked at Caracalla and the only thing he could see was the glint of a reflection against the black of them, but here, once the sun was banished, they looked alive again.

Feverish, just like his wounds and his heat.

“You won’t,” Geta finished. “I know I can trust you.”

A shaky exhale escaped Caracalla’s throat. He wasn’t ready for this. He wasn’t. Geta was. How quickly that had turned around, he thought. Was this what Geta actually wanted? Suddenly Caracalla flushed, but not with nerves.

“Me? I’m not going to be your last resort,” he spat, stepping back. “I’m your brother. I won’t let you fuck me just because you’re too scared to sleep with somebody else. I won’t let you fuck me for anything. I’m a man - no one can have that from me.”

Not because he hadn’t thought of it. He had. He’d wondered. But it wasn’t worth it; even now, no one was taking him seriously. And if he didn’t grow more, if - what then? He might have trusted Geta with anything, but this wasn’t anything. If the word somehow got out - if anybody would know that he’d let his own twin take him like a woman - he’d die of it. He’d surely die of the shame. And… no. Worse, he would be put to death by his own father’s hand, the man would ride right back home and make sure that it was done. It would not be a quick death. It would be far from painless. That frightened him. Then what would happen to Geta? He was breathing quickly, too quickly, and stumbled; his hand met with the cold stone, but Geta had shrunk before him somehow. Withered back into the shadows where before he had, for one moment, almost shone in the dark.

“Geta?” Caracalla called to him, cautious.

Geta shook his head.
“No. You’re right. I should - you should go, Calla. I’m sorry. You should leave.”

His voice was terrifying now. Caracalla had never heard it so hollow - so void of any strength or spirit. It sounded like death. Not like dying, it sounded like something that was already dead, through and through. What do I do then? Do I drink myself to sleep? Do I - do I end it? Suddenly, those words made sense, and Caracalla froze. It was a terrible thought, much worse than the prior; the idea of dying at the hands of their father was now distant, because Geta was still there. He was already bleeding himself, but what if that wasn’t enough for him? When Caracalla had first seen him with those cuts he’d said that it was punishment - but what for? Would this demand punishment, too? He’d asked something unthinkable, Caracalla realised. He had barely even thought of it. Too caught up with the threat to his own dignity, he’d foregone entirely the weight of Geta’s proposal in anybody else’s eyes. Perhaps Geta’s, too. It - would have taken a lot of courage. And…

Through the frost making his limbs stiff, Caracalla broke back into movement. He reached his hand out to Geta who was retreating, and took the steps necessary to catch up to him again. His fingers fisted into the silk of his twin’s robes, and though Geta could have easily walked out of them, the gesture stopped him at least. He turned his head just enough to have an ear toward Caracalla.

“What?” he asked, dully. “Why aren’t you gone already?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Caracalla snarled at him, but the snarl was a very quiet one, almost pleading.

He never pleaded. He ordered, commanded, demanded. He didn’t plead. But he was pleading now. And since Geta had stopped, Caracalla caught up to him fast with only two more steps, and wrapped his arms around him, and held him tight.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he said, or gasped; he’d lost control of his voice somewhere between those last steps he’d taken, and was now shuddering his words out into the back of Geta’s silks. “It frightens me. How you get when you do these things to yourself. When you’re bleeding. You become strange to me, like I hardly even know you.”

“There’s - nothing worth knowing, Calla. So leave. I’ve said enough. I’ve - it’d be best for everyone if I really didn’t know how to speak at all. All I ever say makes things worse.”

“I love you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“But I do. Don’t be stupid! Don’t be stupid. You’re being so stupid, Geta. What do you want? What do you really want?”

A moment of hesitation. Then Geta lowered his head again, and when he spoke, his voice was barely audible.

“I just want the pain to stop,” he said.

The words were terribly soft, and fragile like the bodies of baby birds. On top of it he shuddered, and brought his arms around himself; Caracalla felt his fingers digging between them, in the warm space that he’d made with his embrace.

Why was he so difficult? Caracalla was meant to be the difficult one. Surely, Geta had always fussed - and worried - he’d always been tense, and prone to dark thoughts, but this wasn’t it. This wasn’t normal. This was a sickness, just as Caracalla had thought before, much worse than the one which had ravaged him throughout the past year. He’d beaten that sickness, but what Geta was fighting went much deeper, like it was in his very veins. Maybe that was why he kept cutting them open? To bleed away the infection which no one else could see or feel but the two of them.

“How can it stop? Geta. I just - I just want my brother back. Father’s gone, do you understand? He won’t be back for a year, for two years, never if we’re lucky, Geta.”

Geta shook his head.
“It’s not just him. Even if - if he never came back home. It doesn’t matter. I’m just not strong enough. I can’t - I can’t do things right. Do you understand? I’m not right. I’ve never been; maybe that’s why he beats me. Maybe he’s right, Calla, and the problem really is me.”

“But it’s not and you know that. You’ve always known it! It’s not our fault - it’s not our fault what he does to us. Hasn’t ever been. You’ve said it so many times - I don’t do anything to deserve the beatings. Neither do you! You just protect me, Geta. You just… try to keep me safe.”

When Geta turned, half-way as it was, he had an apprehensive look on his face. Then he took a glance at Caracalla, and it was clear he’d intended to only throw it and retreat again, but his eyes stuck there, looking into Caracalla’s. Because they were both in tears? Caracalla shook, and held him tighter until Geta’s hands came to undo his hold. But he didn’t push him away, or leave. Instead, he took Caracalla’s hands in his own and held them in turn, with a hint of a smile on his lips though it did not look happy at all. He was good at those expressions and contradictions. It wasn’t always easy for Caracalla to know what he really meant behind them, either.

“Why are you not going?” he asked again, but the smile stayed, turning more defined and yet more crooked at the same time. “You should be disgusted by me.”

“Why?” Caracalla asked in turn. “Because of what you asked of me?”

Slowly, Geta nodded.

“I don’t care,” Caracalla told him, frankly enough. “I meant what I said but it’s not because - maybe it should be? Maybe it should feel like something that… but I only said it because I don’t want - Geta, nobody ever takes me seriously. I’m not going to give them even more reason to think that I’m worthless.”

A shadow passed his brother’s visage, and finally, Geta’s eyes dropped back toward the floor. Their hands still stayed connected, with Geta’s thumb trailing Caracalla’s knuckles.

“You should hate me for it,” Geta said then.
His voice was heavy.

“Well, I don’t. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe. But I don’t understand why. I haven’t thought that far.”

“Will you?”

Geta’s smile had turned more genuine as he said that, and Caracalla chuckled quietly in response. He shrugged.

“If you give me a while,” he said.

“But maybe it’s best that I don’t. If we never think of it again, it didn’t happen. I was out of my mind. Don’t think of it, Calla. We’re brothers. That’s what matters.”

“Well, yes, but…”

Caracalla was thinking of it anyway. He knew it showed from his face, and when his right hand fell out of Geta’s hold, neither of them rejoined it. Finally - with a sigh - Caracalla moved from him, walked back to the window and parted the curtain again, if only to see the light outside. Sun was pouring down upon the palaces, and the hill led down to the city and all was so bright, even now that the afternoon was beginning to bow toward evening. It had been a long day. His mind felt heavy and full with the length of it, and the burden of all that had happened. The early morning - the procession - the feelings of relief and joy at their father’s leaving mixing with all of this, Geta’s insistence of staying in the dark, his sickness, and Caracalla’s, too, though it had become less of a concern to him as the months had passed. He hadn’t suffered a fever in weeks now. Months. The last bad spell had come in the winter, and summer was well in progress now. Half a year, he thought. He hadn’t felt sick since Saturnalia had ended. But Geta - Geta was worse. Would he get better? With the coming months, the sunlight, the absence of fear in their own home.

If they could call the palaces that. Sometimes, Caracalla still wished they’d never left real home behind. They’d become different people here, and he missed the boys that they’d been. Did everybody feel that way, or just him? He had everything - he wanted more - but in his heart, he’d never ceased being homesick.

When he turned again, he let the curtain fall back into place, and darkness swallowed the room once more. He’d made up his mind, though the actual thinking that he’d done had not really related to what he’d thought he would have been thinking of. Those things had sat beneath the other thoughts, and settled, like dirt at the bottom of a pond did after being disturbed. When he was there - by his brother’s side again, while Geta was busy picking at his already raw fingertips - Caracalla took a hold of his face and, without thinking much about that either, pressed his lips onto his twin’s.

They’d kissed before. Of course, there had been the childish, familial kisses too, but that wasn’t what he was recalling. They’d kissed like this, too. They’d shared their bed until they’d left behind their fascinii and shaved their chins and cheeks for the first time, the little whiskers that grew on the tops of their lips and had still not really turned into anything more by now. After their tenth year, sometimes curiosity had pushed them to play at the things which were only dawning to them then. In the dark they’d held each other much like this by the face, or had their hands to each other’s waists, and they’d kissed like adults did in the throes of passion, on the mouth, with lips moving without parting and sometimes even with a touch of tongue, though neither had enjoyed it much. Caracalla had understood nothing about passion then, but now he did: what else was there when two people kissed like this, when their hips pressed close with their clothes thrown about, or without clothes altogether. He knew the sound of flesh into flesh, and he knew the feel of it, too. But Geta didn’t. Geta was too afraid to cross that boundary. With anybody else, he’d almost said it out loud. But maybe they could do what they’d always done? Try it together first, so that he would know how to do it with others. They’d learned everything with each other first, even pleasure, though they’d not known what it was then. Fleeting touches and exploration - standing side by side hidden from view, comparing their bodies, how similar or different they were.

It had been years since they’d last kissed, but time had made them both much better at it. The thought made Caracalla break from it with a laugh, and he wiped his mouth with his eyes clear and bright. He could feel his own enthusiasm radiating from his expression and couldn’t hold it back. Geta was still more hesitant, but still something had loosened in him. He, too, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and cast a doubtful look at his twin.

“You know that doing this is sick,” he said, his words reluctant and slow.

“To them, maybe,” Caracalla said with a shrug. “But they don’t have a twin. It’s different for you and I.”

“I don’t think that’s…”
But Geta’s words failed him, and after a moment, he shrugged.
“All we’ve ever done was together first,” he said then instead, his voice still half-way from convinced.

“And they won’t ever know anything, anyway. Nobody else will. So does it bother you? You’re the one who wanted this.”

Geta tilted his head slightly, his eyes still wandering the room, anywhere that wasn’t near Caracalla’s eyes. Then he shrugged again.

“If I say I don’t care - does that make sense to you?” he asked and it didn’t, so Caracalla said nothing, hoping it would encourage him to continue. It worked, after a while. “I feel like there’s something broken in me. Like I have poison in me, and it just gets worse every day. You’re the only one who can make it feel better. You’re the only one I don’t need to fear.”

“Which is a little funny. Given the precedent, I mean.”
Romulus and Remus again, Caracalla thought, and the breath that escaped him was a whisper away from laughter.

“Maybe.”
Geta shivered as reached out again to take Caracalla’s hand, and when he held it his fingers had grown cold. Finally, he managed to lift his gaze back to meet his brother’s.
“Can I say one more thing that might - maybe that will make you hate me, if none of the before did.”

“Say it.”

He’d need to now: Caracalla’s curiosity wasn’t so easily shed once it had been captured. But Geta knew that, and always had. With a grimace, his gaze trailed away again, and as it did so, Caracalla stepped forwards. Closer. So that they could feel each other’s heat again. Geta seemed to need it, since he had little of his own left from all that was leaking out through his injuries. His body was so frail - much paler than Caracalla’s had been, even against the dark wood of the door earlier. He didn’t look good, he looked… malnourished and wasted. And bruised. All over. At least the robes were covering most of it.

It felt like a funny tug in Caracalla’s chest to realise that his brother had grown hard against those robes. They’d done nothing, and he couldn’t really understand why, but - there it was. His own hardness had gone down, but he knew he’d have no trouble bringing it back, if the circumstances would demand it. Geta’s arousal made it feel more real. Like he… really wanted this. That it wasn’t just messing around anymore, playing with the concept until it naturally fell apart and they moved onto something else again. That thought already gave Caracalla a renewed rush of arousal: his body knew what to anticipate from this, but it was more than that. His skin tingled with it, the thought that… that they’d do this together, him and Geta. That he could… and that was where his thoughts came to a halt. He’d imagined it different, he realised. Geta would never invite him in any more than he had invited Geta to do it to him. That was… not going to happen.

Was it?

“Say it,” he pushed, because Geta still hadn’t.

The way his eyes flickered to Caracalla again was the same as a guilty dog after being told off for misbehaving, but he seemed to have grown mute. Caracalla wondered if he could take the leap instead - speak what he’d realised he was anticipating his brother to say, even if it would turn out that he’d been wrong. The disappointment would hardly change from that, would it? He tilted his head and felt a small, hopeful smile tug at his lips.

“You want - you want it the other way around, don’t you. Me in you and not - not the way I thought you meant it.”

The rush of excitement nearly knocked the air out of him when Geta did not deny it. He’d been right to think it - if he’d thought it at all, or only expected it as if it belonged to him before realising it probably wouldn’t be so - but it was - because all Geta did in response was cock his head from side to side, mouth tense and eyes turned away, unable to confirm what he already did when he did not object outright. Caracalla’s hand flitted to his face and brushed over his cheek, fingers to his ear and thumb rushing over skin. That got Geta’s attention, but his gaze was only ever flickering toward Caracalla, like he was still expecting some kind of punishment for pleasing him. He had pleased Caracalla. Greatly. And it was this which felt wrong somewhere inside Caracalla but he ignored it: it wasn’t wrong if they both wanted it. If there was one thing he’d learned it was that sex felt good and it was only ever better if it was with someone who wanted it just as much - who enjoyed it also. He’d had men tell him that it wasn’t necessary, but he’d never managed to stay aroused if he didn’t feel wholly desired. It felt… empty, somehow. It made him uneasy and uncomfortable. He couldn’t relax then, and he needed to relax to fully feel the pleasure which he chased. He wanted to show that to Geta, too. Which meant, then, that he wanted Geta - didn’t it? And Geta wanted him. He’d asked, after all.

The thought felt natural now. Of course they’d do this together. They’d always done everything together, even things that most people would never share. They’d slept next to each other for the main part of their lives - even after being separated, it was still most nights, and no one complained about that though they knew it displeased the emperor. They’d fed each other, helped each other clean, they’d… done other things that Caracalla wasn’t so proud of, and didn’t like to think back to. Maybe most people didn’t do those things at all, or they only did them by themselves - with their own bodies - because they had no one who was like they were to each other. As if the same thing, like a soul split into two bodies. Sometimes Caracalla hated Geta for it, but he wouldn’t have known how to be without him. And he really loved his twin, too. That made this feel different, he suddenly realised. More sacred and profound than anything he’d ever done with the others, with whom sex had been only something done for pleasure, for fun. And that was a little frightening, but it was Geta - Geta had been with him forever, and would be. Nothing was going to break them apart. So why not share this with him also? Maybe it would return some of his warmth to him, so that he’d stop feeling so dead to the world. And after, they would be equal again.

“It’s fine with me,” Caracalla said, surprised by how soft his own voice had gotten. He wasn’t often one for gentleness, not even between the two of them. Though when Geta was hurt… then it was different.

“You won’t tell anybody?” Geta asked, his nerves obvious from his tone, but he must have already known the answer. He’d trusted it without question before.

Caracalla let out a quiet, rough snort.
“Isn’t that why you asked me to start with?” he said, and Geta grimaced.

“I was only hoping.”

“I’m your brother. I wouldn’t ever hurt you. Not like that.”

Slowly, Geta nodded. It seemed final, conclusive. Like a seal. Caracalla’s heart was racing again. This felt forbidden more than anything he’d ever done - and yet more right than any wrongs he’d ever committed. Leaping the palace walls had never felt right to him, even when he’d wanted it more than anything else. This? This felt like the world was wrong for telling him that it wasn’t right, and he simply happened to know better. He huffed - chuckled - and tugged at Geta’s hand. They needed to be in bed for this. That felt right. More private than here, in the middle of everything, even if the room was darkened and empty and no other soul would bother them there. He pushed aside the canopy curtains, or at least tried to until Geta joined in to lend him the hand he was missing, and together they crawled back in.

It was so dark there. So strangely pleasant, too, now that Caracalla wanted to be hiding. The world went quiet around them: so few sounds carried from the outside with all doors and windows covered that it was really like they were alone in it now. That was unnerving, not for the isolation but for the meaning, the implication of it. Of course they’d looked for places to make the world disappear around them before, but never for such a pressing reason. Caracalla could feel his heart beating in his fingertips and toes, in every crook of his body, every bend, and he was sweating again, though it wasn’t from fear this time. He remembered the smell of blood that he’d felt so distinctly here before, and even though he couldn’t smell it now, the memory of it stirred his arousal again. That embarrassed him too, but it was fine now, wasn’t it? It was fine if he desired Geta, because that was the whole point.

“So - what do we do now?” Geta asked him.

“I’m sure you’ve got an idea,” Caracalla said, though his cocky voice fell too far into nervous breathlessness for his liking.

He was supposed to know what he was doing. At least Geta should have thought so. Pressing his finger between his teeth, Caracalla looked about them. There was a small lamp on the table just outside the canopy: it would do, he thought, and leaned over to pull the curtain around the table, to bring it into their space. He’d need that later. Then he settled back on his knees and his skin prickled with nervousness. Normally, he would have been undressed by now, and wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But it was suddenly difficult here. He was afraid of exposing his cock to Geta because it was erect again, and that felt shameful and forbidden. So - he had to make it less so - had to forget that it hadn’t been appropriate before, and needed to learn that it was now, that it was not only appropriate but desired. Did Geta desire it? He hadn’t meant that; he’d meant that he needed to expose it in order to have sex, but - what if Geta didn’t want it? Him. What if he just wanted to…

He was leaning over, and Geta wasn’t backing away but he wasn’t doing anything else, either. With Caracalla’s hands on his shoulders, he shifted again with unease.

“Kiss me,” Caracalla told him, though his voice was strangled. “You can’t just sit there and wait for me to do all the work.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Kiss me, stupid. I just told you.”

Geta’s mouth twitched, but Caracalla barely had time to note it. He’d really turned into a good kisser while Caracalla hadn’t been paying attention, with the girls he’d played around with. Caracalla knew he’d at least had something of a courtship with that noble’s daughter. It had been cut short because they weren’t bethrothed and wouldn’t have been, she wasn’t proper for Geta, wasn’t high enough in status and had nothing to offer them. But Geta had really loved her, or so it had seemed at the time, though he’d gotten over her quickly enough. Maybe wanted her had been more what it had been. He had definitely courted her. And Caracalla had seen them kissing, so he knew that Geta had practiced. That was a bit awkward; he hadn’t so much. He’d done it, of course, but he wasn’t usually so focused on courtship as he was with the end goals of courtship. He preferred to skip that and get right onto the part where he fucked them. Them being - whoever he happened to desire. It was easy to have that, he was the heir to realm after all, and he wasn’t exactly discriminating: a slave would do, a whore also. He really steered clear of anyone who took more effort to claim. Was that why he was with Geta also? That Geta was easy? It felt wrong; he didn’t think that way of his brother. Yes, this was easy: getting to him had been easy, Caracalla hadn’t even tried, he’d simply been offered. But it was different.

He shivered when Geta’s hands landed on his hips, still afraid but of their own accord and clearly wanting. His cock jumped to that, too. He was ready, eager, by body alone but his mind was still dragging. He was thinking too much. He was too nervous. He shifted his body onto Geta, legs splaying, and lowered himself carefully onto his brother’s broken thighs. He could feel Geta tensing, the way that his body went firm and still underneath him, but he couldn’t tell if it was from pain or nerves. Geta smelled of nerves. His fright made Caracalla more eager, which was also new to him. With others, it would have deterred him - made him feel unwanted. With Geta he didn’t doubt that the same way. He did worry that Geta might not have wanted him in the way of desiring him, but he was sure that if he had not been invited, he wouldn’t have ever gotten this far. So why was he there, really? Because he was easy?

“Geta,” he breathed against his brother’s lips, “Why do you - why me? Just because I’m here, and I won’t talk?”
He didn’t want to be a last resort. But just the same, Geta shook his head.

“No,” he said shortly, then tried to resume kissing and made a sound when he was denied as Caracalla drew his head back and turned his mouth away with the approach. His eyes were so dark in the shade that they looked blacker than the depth of night. “Because it’s you. Just because.”

Caracalla smiled. It was a very thrilled, pleased smile - curious. His heart felt lighter.
“What’s that mean?” he asked, because he wanted to be praised.

Geta tilted his head, his fingers turning to grip, almost sharp though the tips were round and softly padded and Caracalla knew that very well.

“Because,” Geta breathed tensely, “I love you. Because - it’s like you said - anything we’ve ever done, we’ve done it together. You’re the one who wanted me to get it over with. And maybe you’re right, maybe - if I have it with you first, then - no one else can make me feel…”

“Less than divine,” Caracalla filled in for him, and Geta nodded.

“If I know that you want me,” he said, this time with more confidence, “then what do their opinions matter? If they find the way my body looks disturbing or offputting. What does it matter? You are the only one who really counts. You’ll be my co-emperor one day. We’ll rule the world together. Whose opinion really compares?”

It felt intoxicating. Like vows spoken. They would be as one; rulers of the world together. Indeed, who else did compare? Whose opinion mattered? They didn’t need to court anybody, or please anybody else. All else was dust at their feet. The two of them were everything. They’d been born together, they would rule together one day. The world would be theirs, alone, and everyone else beneath them. Maybe that was why it felt so right to be as they were now, Caracalla thought. Absently, he ran his fingers over the shape of his cock pressing into his tunic, and they both shivered. Geta had noticed, he realised. Of course he had: Caracalla was sitting on his lap. It made his smile turn into a grin and he pushed himself forwards a little more, onto the shapes of the cuts which he could feel through Geta’s silks. There was another sharp breath drawn, but no complaints made. Not even as Caracalla parted his brother’s robes again, this time not to look at his injuries but to touch the black cloth which covered his cock from view.

He’d never seen Geta this hard. He’d never touched his underwear since - since they’d been much smaller. He certainly never remembered playing with it, tugging at the fabric about his twin’s cock, just a breath’s width away from touching it directly. He’d never touched his brother while he’d been hard, either. Not hard for real, though - well - they’d touched before, and they’d both been hard to each other’s touch. But they hadn’t been men then. It wasn’t the same.

“I want you,” he breathed out, as a thought which merely escaped him before he could rein it back in.

He’d asked that question from himself. If he wanted Geta. The answer was yes, and now he was thinking that maybe he always had, from very early on. Geta had been the first one who had ever made him feel pleasure to a touch. They’d rubbed together at night, quietly so that no one would hear their heavy breaths or the sounds of their movement. They’d held each other in their hands. They’d looked, even kissed, before. They’d done a lot of things, and for some they’d been caught and beaten, but they’d not understood then. But wasn’t that desire, too? Infantile and unconscious, but still desire. Caracalla could recognise it now, that thrilling buzz inside his body which clouded judgement and told him to do things that he wouldn’t have otherwise ever thought of doing. Lips on lips, hands to each other’s parts. It was different now. Very, very different - but it felt the same, and he was trembling.

Geta lifted his hand to Caracalla’s face and held it, gently and reassuringly, like he often did when Caracalla was afraid. That, too; he’d always been this way. Even when he felt the worst, even in the midst of all of his own pain and fear, he would always look to comfort his twin first. That was a privilege, Caracalla thought. Geta could have disregarded him like everybody else did. Geta could have chosen not to love him. But he didn’t. They belonged together - like Castor and Pollux - in life and death alike, before birth and after in all that they were. That was right, and that was good, and that was a blessing.

“I want you too,” Geta told him.

His voice was too serious, in a way that made Caracalla laugh again, this time with nerves. He brushed his hips forwards again and he knew that the sound that Geta made this time was from pain, and that aroused him so much that he had to halt his own breathing and turn completely still so that he would not spill on the spot. They’d barely started - he couldn’t just lose it like this. He needed a break. Already. Still chuckling, or hiccuping or sobbing, he pulled back.

“Sorry,” he said clumsily.

Geta shook his head.
“It’s alright.”

They sat apart again then, but not still now. Geta was shedding his robes like skin: the silk pooled about him stark deep red like blood in the dark, like he was sitting in his own guts. Caracalla felt his mouth water at the sight, and he almost didn’t notice when he pulled off his own tunic. It landed somewhere with a slithering sound, like a snake, and Caracalla leaned forwards - he was mad, he could tell, but it didn’t matter. His mouth was so wet and he pressed his hands to Geta’s knees and just above, between them, and his face to his groin, to the soft fabric of his undercloth, and opened his mouth to it. Now it was not pain which stirred in Geta, but his voice was unexpectedly loud, and the way that he gripped Caracalla’s hair was nothing short of violent.

“Slow,” he gasped, “Slow, brother - please - too much.”

Caracalla growled, but let Geta pull him back.

“Too much,” Geta repeated, but his voice was ecstatic. He looked awed, and shaken, but in a good way for once.

Alive, Caracalla thought to himself: he looked alive again. Slowly he nodded, wiped his mouth again because it was wetting his face, and sat there shaking. Then, without anything better to do with himself, he began to unwrap the cloth from his own hips. Deattaching the string of beads - stone and metal - which tied the sides down first, and then unrolling the folds under his hands. His cloth was the same sheer black as Geta’s; maybe the same fabric. It had black embroidery all over it which he could feel now with his fingertips, but which was impossible to see. All he seemed to hold was a stark shadow, a shadow which gave way to white skin and a cock so thickened and heavy that it lay flush to the top of his thigh, unable to hold its own weight up. He wasn’t too large, but his cock had always been firm and plump, thicker from the middle than elsewhere, with a flared glistening tip which he now revealed fully from underneath the foreskin. Geta watched him like a hawk, unmoving, and Caracalla found that surprisingly to his liking. He had his brother’s full attention - and a hunger which he’d never seen in him before. It prompted him to play with himself some more, though he’d only intended to relieve the worst of the pressure, but his audience was captivated and he… liked that, also. So he ran his fist up and down a few times, barely feeling the pleasure of it because of how much he was focused on Geta’s focus. He acknowledged the fluid which gathered to the crown of his cock and then smeared down with his skin, which made his hand sticky, before he loosened his grip and let his cock loll back to the side it preferred again. Then, on a whim, he stuck out his hand.

“Do you want a taste?” he asked, and his whole body felt like embers crackling in response. All of his hair stood on end and his cock gave another bead of fluid, a small pulse which trickled - dripped - onto his thigh.

To his surprise, though he’d only meant his words half-jokingly, as a dare he’d not expected to be met, Geta took a hold of his wrist and put his mouth to the side of his palm, right between the thumb and the index finger where the fluid had gathered the most. He licked and sucked off the salt from his skin like a horse looking for a treat, and then withdrew, grinning, though unable to meet Caracalla’s eye. Even in the dark Caracalla could see how flushed his cheeks were. He’d gone bright red from doing this: he’d probably not expected it either, and now worried that maybe he’d done something very wrong, and very embarrassing.

Perhaps he had. Didn’t matter. Caracalla wanted to kiss him again, so he did. He barely tasted his own salt, though with curiosity, he tried to find it from his brother’s mouth. This kiss was different, much clumsier than the prior, with too much teeth and not enough patience. When it broke, they were both panting.

“Do you like it?” Geta asked, his voice cracking with something stuck to his throat, and he wiped his mouth again, his breath flowing through liked he’d been running. “You got hard - before, when I showed you. I saw. I was thinking… if it pleased you.”

“If what -“

“My body. This.”

Meekly, he gestured about his lap again. Caracalla didn’t intend to look for more than it took him to process the gesture, but his eyes caught onto fresh blood which had smeared over skin there, and he couldn’t move, nor could he breath. He bristled again, but even as he did, his cock gave a twitch to the feeling. It made him sick but it made him feel so hot at the same time: it dimmed any reason in his mind and he had to shake himself out of it.

“It scares me. I don’t want to think about it,” he said, and it was the truth. He was afraid of it, afraid of the meaning, afraid of his own reactions, afraid of the whole situation. He wished Geta wouldn’t - but at once he… wanted to put his mouth on those wounds and lick the blood out of them.

He’d seen death in plenty by now, but he’d never touched real gore. He’d never been close enough to feel anybody’s blood spill out of them. He’d never… not if it wasn’t Geta. But he’d been there many times for Geta, then. He’d been the one wiping away the blood from his lips, the one who put bandages on his swelling wrists, over cuts that he’d suffered from falls and thrown objects, from the blunt but nevertheless deadly canes their father would sometimes wield against him. Even then Geta had never bled in abundance: the only time Caracalla had seen him really bleed was when he cut himself, though he’d never actually seen him do it, just the aftermath, which was sometimes still wet and running when he came to witness it. He smelled it now and wasn’t sure if it came from the real blood that he’d spotted, or if it was in his memory alone. Geta was all over those memories. Memories of violence at home, but also the memories of watching others die by the blade, or by beast, in front of them. Geta was always there. Did he like it? Did he like his brother tied into those moments, the thrill of watching a life snuffed out at the edge of a blade - the undoing of a whole being, a human or else, the dread at their last moments, the dread in Geta’s eyes when their father came to them? Did he like it? Slowly, he shook his head.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

It seemed to be the wrong thing to say. He hadn’t realised that in Geta’s ears he was still answering a different question, but when he thought back to it - watching him withdraw like beaten again made sense, and Caracalla felt nauseous watching it, like he would really be sick. Again he reached after his twin and touched him, and Geta stilled, head bowed, shaking. That had really hurt him, Caracalla thought. He’d not even meant to hurt him and - still. But this pain of his didn’t make Caracalla feel good in any sense; if anything, he could feel his arousal plummet from seeing it.

“Geta,” he breathed out, latching onto him with both arms, “Sorry. Not that. I don’t - I was thinking - I didn’t mean…”

What had he meant? Not that he didn’t like his brother’s body. Not that he wanted him to cover the cuts. Hadn’t this been exactly what he’d dreaded? That if he took off his clothes, nobody would ever be able to want him the way that he was. Caracalla pressed his cheek to Geta’s and breathed with him, trying to calm himself before he said anything even more stupid than he’d already managed. Then, slowly, he withdrew again, only so far that he could try to find Geta’s gaze from where he’d dropped it. He couldn’t, but at least he could look him in those eyes which were avoiding him.

“I wanted to say - I don’t like you in pain. I don’t like… what’s happening to you. It scares me. I told you already, I just want my brother back. But - what you actually asked… that’s not it, is it.”

Geta shook his head. He was covering his thighs now with his hands but there was too much skin and too many wounds there to hide, so the attempt was more pitiful than anything. Caracalla took them away: fingers wrapping around fingers and gently pulling until he was almost naked again, and uncovered. Then he drew his own fingertips about and between the wounds, and tried very hard not to let his breath audibly shake as he did so.

“You asked me if I like your body. And of course I like your body, I just don’t like - I don’t like what he’s doing to you, or what he’s already done. But… I mean - you weren’t imagining it. I just… it isn’t right. Not when it’s you. I shouldn’t like it to see you hurt.”

“But… you do. You still do.”

Caracalla shifted, and now it was his turn to lower his gaze. He dropped his head and let the shiver loose.

“I like it,” he whispered. “I really like it.”

Geta shuddered again, but at least he was lifting his gaze. It was suspicious and calculative, and it felt like he was measuring Caracalla’s very soul with how intently he was watching him, but then he seemed to soften again. He laid his hand over Caracalla’s on his leg and trailed his fingers with his own, and then from there he touched the cuts, and stopped for a while to scratch off the now-coagulated blood which had spread onto his skin.

“Did I do that?” Caracalla asked him in a low tone, watching what he was doing. “When I came onto you?”

Geta nodded slowly.
“I think so,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “I never felt it.”

“Do they ache?”

“Mmh. The pain is worse after.”
He tilted his head a little and sniffled, though he tried hard to cover it up.
“Making the cut is nothing. It’s - just a blink of an eye. The bleeding is nothing. It’s what comes after. The more they heal the worse they hurt. Until they don’t anymore. And then…”

“Then?”

Now he let out a small hiss, like he’d touched something hot.
“Shame,” he said. Quietly. Regretfully. “After that, all I feel is the shame of it. The - fear that someone will see them. That I’ll… if Father ever did - he’d… There’s nothing I would be able to tell him, nothing I could do to make up for it. It’s shame to him. I’m - all I’ve ever been - I can never live up to his expectations, brother. I can never do one thing right. Not even… the things I do to survive - the things… even if I died for you - he’d never be proud of me.”

Caracalla was now holding Geta’s head between his palms again, and kissing his forehead. It was a strange combination, to feel so much pain for him, while their cocks were both hard, and they were too naked and too aroused to be so close to one another. But he loved his brother, and sometimes it felt like maybe nobody else did. Or him, for that matter. Had anybody else ever loved them? It made him want to hurt Geta, but he wasn’t sure how. By digging his fingers into him so deep that he’d bruise again? It wouldn’t achieve anything, so instead, he kissed him, tasting the tears from his lips.

“I love you,” he told him, and he meant it wrong this time. Too much. Not like a brother at all.

Geta nodded, sniffled again, then let out a laugh and wiped his nose to his hand. He shook his head and Caracalla could tell how hard he was trying to pull himself back together.

“I never meant I don’t like your body,” Caracalla told him again, this time very firmly, with confidence. “I just don’t want to like him. Or his marks on you.”

“These are mine,” Geta told him quietly. “All mine. These are not his, Calla. He has no control over these. It might be the only thing I can keep from him, but - he didn’t mark me this way. I did. And I like that. Does it - do you understand? I like that I can do this, and he doesn’t know, and he can’t control it or what I do to myself. I could take my own life and he’d never - he doesn’t control that.”

Cold again from head to toe, Caracalla shook his head. The way that he pressed his hands into Geta’s wrists resembled too much the way that their father sometimes would, but he was desperate. Suddenly, overwhelmingly desperate.

“You’re not allowed to do that,” he hissed, so forcefully that he could tell his spit was landing on Geta’s face. He didn’t care. “I forbid it. You are not allowed to leave me.”

Calmly, Geta wiped the wetness off his face, barely showing any sign that he’d been hit with it at all. He seemed oddly even now, suddenly. Composed, and empty somehow.

“I won’t,” he said then, and his tone was as even as he seemed. “I wouldn’t do that to you. But it is mine, Calla. My choice. It isn’t his.”

He didn’t voice it, but Caracalla could still hear the unspoken part: it wasn’t Caracalla’s choice either. It didn’t feel like something that he wanted to agree to, but his body was suddenly exhausted, and he lowered himself back to his knees and nodded.

“He’s gone,” he said again for what felt like the hundreth time. “He’ll be gone for a year at least. We won’t see him again for a long time.”

He wasn’t sure whom he was telling this to, but Geta nodded anyway. Then he pressed his hand to Caracalla’s face and lifted him to look up, so that their eyes finally met again - and though they were both wet once more, it didn’t feel so bad this time. They’d shared something here that felt profound and important, and Caracalla’s fear began to fade in the aftermath. This felt good: like some kind of a resolution to a conflict he’d not been aware of beforehand. His cock still ached, despite all of it. That made him grin, then snort.

“What?” Geta asked, and Caracalla threw his head to the side, made a sound, and bucked up his hips.

“I still want you,” he laughed, and the laugh was more tired than it was amused. “I don’t want to talk anymore, Geta, I want to fuck you.”

His laughter caught on, and Geta snorted just as ugly as he had before. Then he nodded again.
“I won’t know what to do, brother,” he said, “But you’ll know, won’t you?”

“Yes. I’ll know. I’ve done this before.”
Caracalla grinned.
“A few times.”

“Then do it to me and show me that it’s not so bad.”

“Losing your dignity? Of course it’s bad.” Caracalla’s grin wasn’t going anywhere, and this time, he could even take joy in the way that Geta hesitated. “I’ll make sure it’s worth it, though. I’ve heard it feels better than anything else for a man, to have another inside of you. If it’s done right. I think I can do it right.”

“You have done it… right?”

“I’ve done it. Calm yourself.”

The pleasant shivers were back, making way from the cold and sickening ones from earlier. Caracalla allowed them to warm his body again, even as he leaned into his twin once more to kiss him. He’d taken to liking that, more than he’d ever liked it with others before, and definitely more than he’d liked it with Geta. At first there were no teeth to this one, nor rushing, but it grew and kept changing, they kept changing, until Geta had fallen on his back on the bed just as when Caracalla had first approached him what now felt like a lifetime ago. This time he allowed his legs to part about Caracalla’s weight, and Caracalla pressed between them as carefully as he could manage with the growing need inside of him which told him to be rough, to be quick, like a predator descending upon its prey. But that wasn’t it. He wanted for this to last. He wanted to really feel it. He didn’t feel like just taking what he needed - he wanted to be there for the whole of it, from the beginning to the end, and make the journey take its time. They could afford it, couldn’t they: once more he had to remind himself that no one left in Rome had the right to simply walk into their chambers without notice. This was safe; they were safe together. Alone in the world, or at least the world that they’d built here, inside these walls. In the dark and quiet and warm of it all, side by side. Skin to skin.

They’d never been this close before. Never this skin to skin, not even in a bath, though they’d been close, and of course they’d wrestled and fought too. It had never been this intimate: he had never felt the brush of his nipples to Geta’s ribs, or the buck of Geta’s hips to the bottom of his belly when his lips and teeth were raking his brother’s throat. He’d never tasted Geta before. He’d never felt his arousal like this - so freely - if not for those times in their childhood when they’d not understood, and which he feared to think back to. Still this was different to that, and he knew that nothing would ever be like it again; not like what had been before, and not like what was now. No matter what would happen from here, these moments would stay with him, and he wanted this one to feel good, to be a good memory, even if it was a secret only for the two of them just like many of those other things that they’d done before. They were used to keeping each other’s secrets; who would they have told? Who else in the world did either of them trust, or care about half as much as they cared for one another?

Once more it was maddening to be so close to Geta’s pleasure. Though he’d lost much of his heat to the conversation they’d had, Caracalla now had to worry again if he wouldn’t just spill if they kept grinding against each other like this, before he ever even undid Geta’s underclothes. Almost blind in the dark again, he pulled down his brother’s body until he felt the cloth’s edge, and began tugging at it. He could have bitten him - he did bite him, on the hip, and Geta let out a sharp, high-pitched mewl of a kind, a suppressed shout which turned lewd on the way and ran down Caracalla’s spine like molten lead. His whole body was pins and needles when he undid the final fold and let the cloth come loose, and then, for a moment, he didn’t dare to look from the fear that he’d lose himself to it also. His face was so close to the wounds that he could feel the radiating sickly heat from the injured skin, but also so close to his twin’s cock that he’d never… not once in his life - he’d never seen it like this before. And when he finally looked, he didn’t know how he felt about it. He grappled for thought - any thought - but all he felt was the pulse in his body and this feeling in his teeth that told him to bite again, but he couldn’t. Geta’s exhale was the most audible thing in the room then: a slow emptying, nervous, expectant.

“Can I put it in my mouth?” Caracalla asked, his voice distant and stripped of emotion.

“No,” Geta told him firmly, choking on himself. “If you do I’ll come. I’ll come, Calla, I can’t take it.”

“I don’t care, Geta. I’ll get you hard again. I’ll get you to come again. I want it. I really want it. Please.”

With the pleading again. Where was his dignity? But he did want it, so badly. He could have given anything. Geta was laughing - it sounded like a laugh - and his hand traversed through Caracalla’s hair in an uncoordinated way before he made a sound of agreement.

“You’re insane,” he breathed out nervously. “Do it, then.”

The hand stuck there, fingers bending, curving, stretching out again, gathering hair and swirling it gently. Caracalla was glad for that, somewhere in the back of his mind which was still capable of taking note of such a thing. His conscious mind was losing that ability: it barely acknowledged the other part of him at all which still had it. His mouth watered again and he wondered if that was… if it should have - he didn’t know. He’d not done this to anyone before, though he’d wanted to. It had felt as shameful as what Geta had promised him. He wasn’t supposed to do this, and he would have never done it to any whore who’d been used by others, but Geta was - different - Geta hadn’t been touched by anyone yet. That was exciting. Caracalla had never really thought of it as exciting before, at most it had been an inconvenience, something he wished that Geta would change and get over with so that they could share that new world together. Without him it had been lonely; Caracalla had shared about his own adventures of course, but Geta just didn’t understand it, not the way that Caracalla needed him to. Now Caracalla was suddenly seeing it differently, as he wrapped his cold, shaky hand around the base of his twin brother’s cock. He’d be Geta’s first. He would be. This was the first time anyone had ever touched Geta like this.

Not for a lack of trying. Geta had avoided it so obviously that Caracalla knew he’d been far from the only one who’d taken notice. Slaves had offered themselves to him, touched him in ways that Caracalla knew implied and invited, but Geta had moved away from them, slapped aside their hands, and kept to himself. He barely invited any kind of touch upon himself now, but maybe this would change that? How much he worried that he would be seen as he was and rejected, even by his own brother in the end. It stung Caracalla to think of that, to think of his own words, but he pushed them aside again. He’d simply said them wrong. He hadn’t meant them. He’d told Geta as much and Geta had understood. They were here now, weren’t they? He would taste his brother between his blood-scented legs and fuck him until he’d come inside, enveloped in the perfume of arousal and injury. Was that what he wanted? Gods, the very thought of it blinded him with lust. He wanted to. Yes. He did.

He pressed a kiss to the protruding bone of his brother’s hip first. He knew that to be an intimate, but not so overly sensitive spot - but the same could not be said for the stretch of skin and soft flesh between the creases of Geta’s thigh and belly that lay just one small movement away, where Caracalla pressed his lips next. That spot made Geta’s spine curve, like he was trying to bury his hips into the mattress to escape the touch, while his body was offered upwards as something a ritual knife should have cut open to spill the guts from for a reading. In a way, Caracalla felt like that was exactly what was happening here. He let his tongue take a taste of him while Geta trembled underneath him, Caracalla’s hands seeking the bony bumps he’d already tried so that he would have some control over his twin’s erratic movements - because he was moving, so much, like he was still trying to escape from this altar. His sounds were pained and intense and urgent: confused panting breaths and whimpers and moan-gasps all at once. He sounded like he was dying, and Caracalla liked that. He closed his eyes and let his nose take in the scent again, the blood first and then the deep musk of clean but fragrant skin between the legs. Geta smelled distinctly different to any other whom Caracalla had lain with, though if he was honest with himself, he’d never put his face there with anybody else before. He didn’t need that to know that above all things, Geta smelled like… himself, and them. It was funny, how much his scent was like Caracalla’s own; he caught tones from it which were so familiar that his mind mixed them up, but those were only hints, underlying a different scent which he both recognised and had never smelled of his brother like this before. There was still much to Geta that he had never explored, wasn’t there? And… today was the day that he would. At least some of them.

He’d never really even thought of it. Not consciously, anyway. Of doing this to his brother, of being with his brother like this. Geta was other, not the same as the prey that Caracalla chased around palace grounds and into the city streets. Geta was sacred, like a statue of a goddess, but not. Geta was ugly, too; flesh in ways that nobody else was to Caracalla. He’d seen his brother sick, he’d seen him as a child, he’d seen him pissing and he’d seen him regurgitating his food after nearly choking on it. He’d seen snot running down Geta’s face, he’d seen blood mixing into that. He’d seen him crying so that his face was twisted almost unrecognisably to a likeness of a monster. He’d seen him throw up from the exertion, thick strings of saliva stretching between his lips. It hadn’t been that long since then, either. But still he… wanted him. All of that. Despite it, and because of it, he wanted Geta. It made him harder still to think of it. Them - their history - who they were, and what they meant to each other.

That he was Geta’s first, even if Geta hadn’t been his the same way. Or maybe he really had been? In some way - didn’t all of their exploration count for that? Maybe Geta hadn’t been the first wet cunt that Caracalla had thrust into, or the first boy whom he’d ruined, but Geta had been the first one with whom he had ever been hard, to whose hips he had thrust his own even if it had been through clothes, and… in a way, doing this would only bring them back to how it should have always been. Where Caracalla had maybe taken a short sprint ahead for a while, but had now stopped to wait for his twin to catch up. He would make this good for him, Caracalla thought; he would give to Geta what he deserved. He was far from a perfect brother but he was loyal and loving, and… he bore the bruises for it. Caracalla’s fingers trailed them, caressed them, while his other hand ran up the length of Geta’s sex. It was somewhat bigger than Caracalla had expected: this was the first time he saw it fully hard, and it intrigued him, and it intimidated him at once. With his fingertips he could push at the silky, thin foreskin, which was now so very tight-fitting around the flushed sex, and from there follow and map out the shape of a vein which ran nearly its full length like a wild river threatening to flood its banks. When he put his finger to it it was both hot and soft, yielding under the slightest pressure, but he could feel Geta’s heart beating in it. Or maybe that was his own heart? He was choking on it. He was so nervous that he was sure he was staying there just to play for time now. Why was he nervous? He closed his eyes again and continued kissing Geta’s hips on both sides, until his mouth closed around the very base of his cock. The sound that his brother made to that raised his hair again and made him instinctively lean over to slap a hand over his mouth.

“Shh,” he hushed, urgently, eyes wild.

Geta’s mouth was wet. Caracalla’s cock was poking at his between their legs and he wanted him so bad - this would never work out if he didn’t do it already. He’d spill and Geta would certainly spill and that would be it. They’d lie there side by side, panting until sleep overcame them, and - and what then? They’d wake up to night falling, still covered in sticky sweat or else shivering with cold, naked, and regretting. He wanted to bite his brother’s throat and break his neck so that that wouldn’t happen: he wanted to ravage his body after he was dead so that he wouldn’t make a sound and this could really last forever, so that he’d never need to rush it, so that he could come back to it over and over for as long as he pleased. He could have killed Geta with his cock inside him. That would have made him quiet. It would have made him so beautiful. Caracalla pressed his head to Geta’s collarbones and panted alongside him as their bodies settled.

“I can’t do it,” he confessed finally. “I’ll come, too. I can’t do it.”

“I need it,” Geta told him. “Please. You promised. Please. You can touch - you can touch my legs if you want. I don’t mind. I just - I need it. Brother. Please.”

“Do you not hear me?” Caracalla groaned, lifting his head and desperately nipping at Geta’s lower lip, though he wanted to bite it much harder, to ruin it, to ruin all of him. “I can’t fuck you if I’ve spilled.”

“Then don’t. I want to come. Please.”

“You’re impossible. That’s not attractive. You begging is not attractive.”
But it was.
“Be quiet, or the guards will hear you.”

Geta let out a muffled chuckle as his arm settled over his mouth. It wasn’t ideal; Caracalla wanted to see him still. But if it kept him quiet, it had to be good enough.

“I’m losing my mind,” Geta muttered from under his own flesh before filling up his mouth with it again.

Caracalla didn’t answer him. He was right, and it was delicious, but he was tingling inside his own skin in a manner that wasn’t entirely pleasant anymore. He felt like a wild starved thing. He wanted to fuck and ruin what he was fucking, to destroy, claw and bite, and tear apart his victim. Instead, he lowered himself along Geta’s body and tried to remember himself again: that he was a brother, and that Geta was more than a body beneath him, and that this meant that he couldn’t let himself go like that. He’d never felt like this for anybody else. He’d never been so blind with his want before, or had it so intertwined with violence. It scared him, distantly, this prospect of losing control, the sheer magnitude of the things that he was picturing in his mind. Only distantly, because he’d forgotten how to fear in the forefront of his mind, where everything left was instinct and drive.

The fear, however, was still there when he caught his twin’s cock again and held himself above it just enough that his lips did not touch it yet. Would he know how to breathe? He didn’t need to. He didn’t have to eat the damn thing. He could touch it with his mouth - put his lips around it from the side - circle it with his tongue. Only it took so much courage to start, and his mind was now swimming not only with the thoughts of bloodied conquest but with memory, phantom scents from years before, even visions of the home they’d been born into. His heart ached as it beat, and he was shaking. What was that? When his lips pressed to hot flesh, his body felt as if on fire, and Geta’s spastic movement - his suffocated moan - all echoed in his own muscles, which were clamping down on themselves so hard that he worried they’d roll over or tear. It didn’t make sense. He thought about that as his tongue lapped the side of his twin’s sex: how he felt made no sense.

Geta’s hand returned to his hair. At least that was as it should have been: the same touch, the same fisted grip, the same balled fingers breaking apart into combing motions. Little tugs and pulls here and there, even as Geta’s back arched again, even as he panted painfully, and his legs trembled under Caracalla’s touch of him. He wouldn’t last, Caracalla thought. He really was going to just - but that was fine, he decided, putting his lips finally to the tip of Geta’s cock. He let it sink into his mouth and for a moment, his mind was empty again. He knew what would happen - he felt it happening - he bore down on it, eyes closing, throat closed the same, tongue pressed to the underside of his twin’s crown and to the back to his own throat in a wave-like motion. He wanted to taste Geta as he came, but he didn’t know what it would feel like, if it would be too much, or if it would make him choke.

It didn’t, and he hated the taste. He hated the way it felt. He was intoxicated with having tasted it and felt it all the same. Stuck between swallowing it and gagging, he pulled back with his hand to his mouth, lips parted, tongue lax and motionless so that neither a swallow nor a gag would happen. He was frozen: Geta before him had dragged his hand to his cock, fingers split on each side of it as if it hurt, and his breathing was even more spastic than before and his torn-up thighs had clutched shut, knee touching knee, while he shook. His hand was over his eyes now, not on his mouth, and his mouth was open, gasping for air or stuck in an inaudible howl through which he breathed: the difference was negligible.

Caracalla swallowed without realising it, his body only obeying the laws of its nature. The act made him gag also; he’d lost on both counts.

The sound of his conflict made Geta peer at him, eyes heavy-lidded but concerned. His hand parted from his cock and his fingers mingled with Caracalla’s until Caracalla let his hand be drawn in.

“Are you…?” Geta asked, unable to finish his question.

Caracalla nodded. His eyes fell to the sight of Geta’s cock softening: how unassuming it was when it wasn’t so hard that it throbbed. Beautiful, almost. His twin had the look of the heroes of legend and Caracalla envied him for it. Even cut up and bruised as he was, he was still every bit as beautiful as the gods. Maybe more so because of it. The heroes were always beaten up and cut. They died beautifully, too. Caracalla’s chest ached at the thought, and despite the way he was clenching his mouth shut, it watered again.

He brought himself over Geta in the manner of a preying lion, bowed low and moving slowly. Geta welcomed him: hands to his sides, fingers flitting along with his body as he crawled further. Caracalla wanted to kiss him just to force his own taste upon him, and he did so - he could tell from Geta’s hesitation that he didn’t want it, but played along anyway. Caracalla was still so desperately hard he could have sworn he could see stars in his eyes, but Geta was loose now, slow and languid, and his breathing was different and his body had in an instant turned into avoidance once more. He was moving away somehow, turning more distant; Caracalla knew what he was going to say before he ever said it. To counter it, or at least to slow its coming, he fell on his side beside Geta and took his own cock in his hand, giving it a clumsy stroke which communicated to him at least how insecure he suddenly felt. He didn’t want Geta to know that. He needed to keep his composure: to still seem as if this was going according to plan, more so now than before, because Geta was fading from him.

“Do you want to touch me?” he asked breathlessly, then sniffled. “You can if you want.”

Geta shifted - a twitch toward changing his pose to be on his side, to once more mirror Caracalla as he was, but he seemed to think better of it. Slowly, he moved his hand to Caracalla’s chest instead, and pressed it over his heart. His eyes were still the same black, but their hardness, that strange pull, was gone from them now. They’d softened, and Caracalla hated him for it. He’d pin him to the bed and fuck him by force if it came to that. He’d put a cloth around his brother’s neck and strangle him while he was still inside him, so that he’d never have to look Geta in the eye again after what he’d do to him. But he needed to fuck him, one way or another. It was slipping from his grasp but he would die without reaching climax here. At least that’s what it felt like.

“Brother,” Geta started, hesitantly. He was going to say it now - Caracalla didn’t need him to mouth the words, or put a voice to them. Just the way he’d spoken the very first thing was enough to spell the rest. And yet he carried on: “This is a really bad idea. Calla, we shouldn’t be doing this. This is wrong.”

Betrayal flooded Caracalla’s body like icy water, which was somehow poured directly inside his veins. He shuddered once again but this time it was with physical pain, that terrible agony that came with disappointment and hurt which was not from an impact but from words, from being let down in some way that was impossible to describe by words. His eyes watered in an instant and he hated it, because now if ever he needed to be firm and not cry about it. Crying would have been pathetic. He needed his rage, but it wasn’t there at all. All he felt was… like a man whose stomach was clawed open by one of the beasts on the arena. He could feel the paw’s impact, and the way the sharp, merciless hooks dragged down his skin, like stripping off clothes that were stuck to flesh.

He sniffled again, and shook.

“You promised me,” he said weakly, his hand still playing with his cock but not for the pleasure of it now. It just happened to be there, with nothing better to do. He didn’t want to touch Geta, and he had nowhere else to put it. And he was hard, and Geta wasn’t going to touch him.

Geta didn’t want to touch him. Not anymore, because he’d already gotten what he’d needed.

Slowly, Geta rose from where he was lying. He reached his hand out but Caracalla slapped it back and away from himself faster than he could think about what he was doing, and the impact was audible and had Geta retreating without delay.

“You promised,” Caracalla repeated, and he hated how his voice was straining from his tears.

“Calla -“

“You promised me!”

“I know. I - I know - shh.”

Then he was there, despite Caracalla’s protests, and he was warm and his embrace felt good, just as good as it always did. Desperately, Caracalla clung to him: with both hands, with nails embedded into the skin of his back, his own wet mouth as it curved with his tears into a toothy grimace pressing into his brother’s warm chest. He was so soft without his clothes on. So warm, and he smelled of sex now. He’d never smelled of that before. Caracalla wanted him so bad, but he was going to go away - this was over now. And then what? This was worse than the picture of them waking up together into their regrets. At least in that vision, Caracalla had still had him somehow. Now he’d just been used. It wasn’t dignified to do what he’d done. A real man would never put his mouth to another’s cock like that, to give him pleasure. That was lowly, slavelike, depraved; he’d done it, and Geta had promised him more which was why he’d dared to, and now Geta was going to give him nothing, and he was the one who had debased himself.

It was always going to end up like that. He’d been stupid and naïve to think anything else. This was why people said the things that they said about him: that he was stupid, weak, not right in the head, less than Geta. He could always be led on like this; Geta would promise him things and then take them away when he’d gotten what he’d wanted. It was his right because he thought differently. Because he was clever while Caracalla wasn’t.

“Why do you always do this to me?” he sobbed, because there wasn’t any pretense otherwise now. He could barely breathe, and it was him now who was snotty and teary and had the face of a monster. At least it was well-hidden. “Why do you always - you promised me. And I gave you that and you give me nothing now. Why do you hate me? Why does everybody hate me? Why am I never good enough - why can’t I be treated the way you are? Nobody laughs at you but everybody always laughs at me. They say I’m stupid, that I don’t understand. Why does it have to be like that? Why can’t I be like you?”

Geta’s hand in his hair was insistent and familiar and torturous.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and Caracalla wanted to bite him, but the moment was over. They were just brothers again. He’d sucked Geta’s cock and now he was nothing but his brother again. Just less than before. Someone tricked and used. “Shh. Calla. Shh. I didn’t mean to - I didn’t… I’m sorry.”

“Stop being sorry!” Caracalla hissed - it would have been a shout if he hadn’t been so ashamed. The whining noise that came out of him after, however, was not silent. “You promised. You promised.”

“I know.”
Geta’s hand ran through his hair again, then again, and then it pressed to the back, fisted, and pulled at him gently to tug his head back.
“I know I did. Shh. I know. Brother.”

“What!?”
That word, at least, had the right amount of spite, spit, and voice to it. Defiantly, Caracalla wiped his eyes and forced himself to stare at his twin, even though it hurt.
“What do you still want?”

A small smile poked at Geta’s lips, and this time, Caracalla really made a biting motion at him. He retreated swiftly and easily enough and then laughed, but Caracalla could tell he was shaken by the gesture. It pleased him. He didn’t feel so bad afterwards, though his chest still ached.

“I know,” Geta said again, and - despite the threat of being bitten - pressed their foreheads together. “I did promise. I did.”

“… and?”

Once more, Caracalla’s voice had gone small. He didn’t dare to move. He barely dared to breathe. Geta was breathing, though: slowly, quietly, deeply. Still his body trembled a little.

“I should keep it,” he said then, slowly, calculatingly. “It - it isn’t a good idea. But I did promise. I promised you and you already kept your end, so - I should keep mine. It isn’t fair to you if I don’t. You did… you did well, you… it felt good, Calla. Your… your mouth. Felt really good on me. I’m sorry I… I couldn’t even warn you, or - or anything, I just - I was so close and it happened so fast.”

Now there was thunder in Caracalla’s ears again. His body was tense like readying for a sprint and he didn’t dare to move.

“You mean it?” he asked, barely hearing the apology or any of Geta’s rambling at all. His ears had caught onto the first bit and his whole attention had stayed there for the rest of it.

Geta nodded.
“I don’t know what good I’ll be for you,” he said, with anxiety slipping back into his voice, and hesitation.

“You’ll be good,” Caracalla said before catching his tongue from it. “Good enough. You’ll be good enough. And - and that’s all I want. That you keep your end, too. So it isn’t just me, Geta. It can’t be just me.”

“I know. I don’t want that. I’m sorry. It just… it feels so wrong now.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I know it isn’t. You’re right. I promised you.”

Caracalla nodded. He seemed certain enough now. Maybe crying had helped, though he felt stupid for the things he’d said, just as much as he’d felt stupid for thinking that he’d been stupid. It didn’t matter. He tried to remember how aroused he’d been a moment ago, but he was a little lost now, a little to the side of it, and even as his fingers returned to touch his cock he wasn’t sure if it felt nice, or how he should have been touching it. Then - unexpectedly - Geta’s hand followed him there, fingers wrapping around his, then separating them from his length. He took distance to Caracalla so that he could see his eyes and, with that child-like, wide-eyed look on him, licked his lips.

“Teach me how to touch you,” he said. “How you like to be touched.”

“How do you do it to yourself?” Caracalla asked: he still felt exposed, and wasn’t sure if he wanted to tell Geta anything more about himself.

Geta tilted his head with a hint of a grimace.
“Just… the usual way.”

“Tell me while you touch me. Not for long. I still want to take you. But - in a bit.”

Geta nodded. His hand took the place of Caracalla’s, and Caracalla was the one now to close his grip around his cock. It felt so… wrong was the right word for it: to have it be Geta’s hand, Geta’s, and not somebody else’s. To be so close to Geta while he touched him - while he was having pleasure from that touch - that was wrong. He felt confused, too. None of it had felt wrong before, but now suddenly everything about it was. He’d never been so self-conscious either, about everything he did in response to the touch, how his muscles twitched to it, the expressions on his face. He tried to be stoic, to show nothing, but… that didn’t feel right either.

“I like it when I do this,” Geta told him, his voice quiet and subtle as his hand moved right to the tip of Caracalla’s cock, pulled the skin over it, and his palm cupped the tip and his fingers took a grip of it.

He massaged it then, fingers running along the ridge of the head through the skin, pressing to the underside, and - he seemed to have difficulty positioning his hand, with everything being backwards, but he was trying hard enough. His smile was apologetic and he lowered his head when he chuckled.

“How do you do it?” he asked then, letting his hand down, pulling at the skin again with a wet sound as it crawled down the slick tip.

Caracalla huffed. He let himself down on his back and pulled Geta forwards by his shoulder so that they were better aligned: then he took Geta’s hand in his and made it firmer around his length, and pulled it all the way down and then up again, stilling for a moment over the head to tighten his grip of it a little more before then relaxing and pulling their hands down together.

“Your touch is too light,” he complained, and Geta nodded, as if this was a lesson.

“Isn’t it too sensitive for more?” he asked, and Caracalla shook his head.

“No. I like it harder. It’s not enough otherwise. I don’t like it when it just - tickles a little. I don’t know how to explain.”

Geta nodded.
“It feels almost too much like pain to me,” he said then, “if I grip too tight. I like it when it’s… when it’s like your mouth on me.”

He seemed to flush, dropping his gaze again before blowing off some strands of hair from his forehead. Then he lifted his gaze again, smiling almost regretfully, as if he’d done something wrong. Caracalla smiled back at him: the pain from his chest was fading, though his skin still felt sore. He had goosebumps, he realised. This felt good. It felt healing, the closeness between them now, and Geta’s submission - how he was coming to Caracalla, and not retreating anymore.

“Do you like it fast, too?” Geta asked him. “Or slow?”

“I don’t know. Both? Slow first, but fast at the end.”

Geta nodded, but said nothing to this. Caracalla’s ears perked to the sounds his cock was making in his twin’s grip, and the absurdity of the situation made itself present in his mind again. He didn’t like that. He’d liked it better when he’d been completely lost in the moment, and that was that.

“Does it feel good?” he asked then, without thinking: “When you cut yourself?”

Geta’s hand stilled, then resumed again. It made slow, deliberate strokes along Caracalla’s shaft, forgetting and then remembering again to hold him tighter than he would have his own.

“It feels good,” he admitted then. “I never thought about it like that. But it - feels like drinking strong wine, but faster. It makes me feel almost tired. Relaxed. Like nothing matters.”

“But it’s not like this.”

Geta shook his head.
“No. Not like this.”

Caracalla thought of that for a moment. He almost wanted to know what it was like, but pain scared him; he was fine with watching others in pain, he liked it, liked seeing their faces distort with it, and loved the fear of more, the fear of death most of all. But when it came to himself, he winced from the smallest injuries, and would go to great lengths to avoid bruising or cuts of any measure. Even a splinter was enough to make him shudder. Was Geta braver than him for being able to do these things to himself? But it didn’t make sense that he would, if it didn’t give him pleasure. Was being drunk pleasure enough? It sounded strange, that he would compare the two. Pain made Caracalla afraid, and he hated fear, he hated how powerless it made him feel.

“Do you like it that I like them? In the way that I said I did. I still don’t like that you do it but I… really like how they look on your body.”

That was the truth, Caracalla thought. Admitting to it made him feel bad about himself, however. Like he just wasn’t allowed to think that, because it was Geta that he was thinking of. But Geta’s mouth curved into a small smile again, and though he dropped his gaze once more, it seemed that he was doing so because he felt flattered.

“I like that. I’ve always been afraid that you judge me, like everybody else would if they knew. That you think it’s a sign of weakness. I suppose that it is,” he said with a small shrug then, which felt nice on Caracalla’s cock also, “but I don’t know how to quit. I’d do something worse if it wasn’t for that. I’d do something stupid. It calms me. It makes me feel not afraid anymore.”

“I’ve never judged you,” Caracalla said, undoing Geta’s fingers from his length and picking himself up from the bed again. “I just don’t understand.”

“I don’t need you to. I just need you to… still love me, despite.”

“Mmh.”

The canopy curtain had settled onto the lamp, and Caracalla had to toss it aside first before he could grab the latter. It was shaped like a little spring bird, with fire when it was lit flowing out from underneath its folded wings and from its blackened beak, but it wasn’t light that Caracalla wanted, it was the oil from inside it. Geta watched him anxiously as he tilted the bird and the oil flowed onto his hand, colourless in the room but still smelling the same stale pungent aroma of olive oil as it always did. It was decently full, too; if they’d need more, they wouldn’t be lacking.

“I’m sorry I let you down before,” Geta said to him, his tone as nervous as his body language was when Caracalla turned for him, rubbing his fingers together.

The bird nested perfectly between pillows at the bed’s head, a distance away from where they were now - sideways on the bed, as they had landed on it. Geta’s eyes were on his hand, and his returning worry aroused Caracalla again.

“Get on your back,” Caracalla told him, and Geta nodded.

He obeyed without a word, but didn’t seem to know how to get comfortable there. When Caracalla got between his legs again he laid his palm across his brother’s chest just to feel his rabbit’s heart racing, and Geta laughed inaudibly, his body shaking the contents of the mattress underneath with it. He had tears in his eyes, and Caracalla watched him for a while just for the sheer pleasure of that - to take in how he looked in that moment, because he’d never seen his brother like that before. Laughing, afraid, in tears, cold with his heart beating so very hard, so very alive. Thighs striped like a tiger. Lashed open like a victim.

“What do you cut yourself with?” Caracalla asked him, lowering his slick hand between them: “This’ll feel a bit weird if you’ve never had anything in before.”

“I have,” Geta said, then seemed to regret the confidence with which the words had been spoken.

He sucked on his lip and turned his head away, but Caracalla had lifted his brow with some curiosity. His fingertip pressed against Geta’s flesh, but he wasn’t really sure where he was supposed to put it - and for just a fleeting moment, the thought of touching Geta’s hole made him quiver not with arousal, but with discomfort and aversion. The moment passed fast enough then; if he’d ever been with someone cleaner than Geta, it must have been a miracle. Geta did nothing but bathe, he plucked his own hair out, he painted himself like the vision of vanity, a wannabe-Venus on a rock gazing at sea spray, drawing perfection upon his features for hours on end. Even like this: even in his self-imposed isolation, Caracalla had never smelled a bad smell on him, never witnessed him leave a sweat on his body for too long, never once seen him with his hair uncombed. He did all that his slaves did even if he did not let a single one in all day - and he probably did it better than most of them anyway. Caracalla knew this, because Geta had always liked to play with him like a living doll, fussing with his wild curly hair and painting his face like he painted his own, trying new things on him because it was easier to see his face than his own.

Another thing that made him like the gods, and Caracalla this clumsy, fleshy thing which could only imitate. That angered him, and made him feel bitterly jealous.

Geta parted his lips then, and laid his hand over his own chest, fingers treading the few hairs that had grown there within the past year. He was still avoiding Caracalla’s gaze.

“I use a shard of glass,” he said slowly, seemingly unconsciously drooping his legs further apart, as if in display. He winced when Caracalla’s fingers pressed to the heat of his entryway, muscles clenching against the touch.

“Tell me about what you’ve had inside first,” Caracalla urged him, because he knew that information wasn’t going to stick around for long.

Geta glanced at him, smiled with some amusement, and then looked away again - firmly, decisively, as if that would make the truth less embarrassing.

“I wouldn’t have asked you if I hadn’t tried it first,” he said with the smile staying, “I like it better than my hand.”

“You like what better than your hand?”

Caracalla’s finger made its way inside; he didn’t know how he felt about it. He’d touched others before, stuck his finger inside many arses, but this felt different in so many ways that he wasn’t sure what to make of it. He almost wanted to call it quits and do something else, or - but no. His hands were the issue, not his cock; his cock still wanted to be inside.

“I’m scared I won’t even like it with a woman,” Geta continued, barely strained though his face had gone through a series of undecipherable expressions while Caracalla had been preoccupied with his own conflicting emotions. “It’s - I think it’s part of why I haven’t tried. What if I don’t? And they’ll somehow know about what I do like.”

“Not what I asked,” Caracalla said, as if the information offered wasn’t titillating and curious.

It was. He wanted to hear more.

Geta glanced at him again, lifting his left leg a little. Begging, Caracalla thought, and shoved his finger deeper. He liked the way it made Geta’s body curve again, the way his head bent back and his eyes fluttered closed: he really did like it. He really did.

But Geta wasn’t the only one who was anxious - Caracalla was, too. He’d had no issue getting into the moment before but that was past and even though what he was looking at gripped him, and made his cock throb where it lay heavy to the left side again, the insanity that had come over him was gone and he missed it desperately. Even with the violence, it had been preferable to this insecurity. Did he want this? Did he want it with Geta at all? He couldn’t quite remember what about it had driven him so close to the edge before - now when he thought about it being Geta he only felt a strange lurch at the pit of his belly, and it had none of the former appeal to it anymore. He leaned closer to insert another finger in, and even that felt like exercise more than it felt like something he’d been so desperate to do before. He closed his eyes and tried not to feel sick. Would he even be good enough for Geta? He already sounded experienced. Like he knew what he wanted and expected it, but Caracalla wasn’t sure if he was… good. He’d only ever been with servants and slaves and whores. Who would have told him if he wasn’t?

“I’ve had this,” Geta said then, breaking through his growing tension. “My own fingers, when I’ve been here alone.”

“Alone… now?”

Caracalla cracked open his eyes, and Geta was looking at him, still not brave enough to turn his head to face him.

He nodded slowly.
“I’ve had… a lot of time alone,” he said, and the smile which had vanished for a while now prodded back onto his lips as a fleeting grin. “I’ve - touched myself a lot. It’s different… than your touch, you were right.”

Caracalla shifted his weight around, reorganised his knees on the mattress, stretched his already aching wrist whichever way he could bend it without ceasing his work. Geta’s eyes had darkened - his cock had begun to rise again. It caught Caracalla’s attention. That felt good to him. It was like the flick of a whip to the core of his groin somehow, like something nudged him there, when he watched his twin’s sex thicken and stand. The sight encouraged his fingers too, made him work harder, try to reach for something which would make his brother lift up his back again, to arch and plead with his body, to kick up his leg. And then he realised what had been missing, and why he hadn’t felt at all the same as before: Geta hadn’t been aroused. Hadn’t wanted him like he needed him to want him. It had felt wrong because there was only half of the passion left, his own, and Geta had been… participating - offering himself up to Caracalla’s use, but that wasn’t what he’d wanted.

This tasted good in his mouth. This brought back the scent of blood, too, and his eyes flickered to the cuts, but he found them uninteresting now in comparison to the sight of Geta’s sex jumping in response to the way his fingers had just curved within his body.

Caracalla shivered.

“You fuck yourself?” he repeated then, trying to shake himself back into reality. “A lot? That’s what you do here?”

Geta flushed again: he seemed to be prone to it when compromised this way. Not that he was ever immune, it was never truly difficult to embarrass him or make him flustered, to get him to stumble over his words. That was why Father was always shouting over him when he tried to speak - why he stuttered and forgot his words so easily.

It was Caracalla’s turn to smile, even as Geta nodded stiffly, quickly, in an almost unnoticeable way. That was the brother he wanted, he thought; the one that was so easy to love, and to desire. The one that he would… he swallowed thickly. Ruin, wasn’t that it? Only he would know about that, but he would know, then, and it would happen - and now he knew that Geta did it to himself, too. All of the time, when he was alone. Fucked himself while no one watched. No wonder he didn’t feel the need for others.

Caracalla leaned over him, put his free hand to the mattress and pressed his lips to his brother’s hand, the one which lay upon his chest and over his heart still.

“You’ll like it well enough with girls, too,” he said then. “I promise. It’s different than a fist. It’s so good, brother. You’ll love it. I’ll teach you.”

Geta slid his hand once more back into Caracalla’s hair, but this time, he didn’t move it. He kept it there so that Caracalla wouldn’t slip away from him, but this pose was fine for them both - for now - it took away from Caracalla the view of Geta’s hips and thighs, but he could live without them for this one moment. He loved the feel of his twin’s renewed heat against his body, and his wrist rested better like this anyway.

“We’ll do it together,” Geta said, hesitant, but Caracalla nodded eagerly.

“I’ll take you to the best. You’ll have your own favourites. You can buy more. You can buy anyone. We’ll fuck them together, boys and girls both, at the same time if we please.”

A shivering laugh escaped Geta again, and his hand passed through Caracalla’s hair a few times before settling back. Then he nodded, but said nothing again.

“Now tell me about the shard,” Caracalla prompted him.

His fingers went in deeper, but he was growing tired and the oil had seeped into his brother’s body - he needed more, and he was just about bored with serving Geta anyway. This was for him too, he thought; for him to have his way with Geta, and not just for Geta to get what he wanted, always. Still he enjoyed the halted breath which his twin let out as he pulled back, and the way that Geta’s eyes followed his hand’s every move once he picked up the bird from its nest.

“I broke a glass,” Geta told him quietly. The way he said it was as if he was simply informing Caracalla about something that had happened.

“On purpose?”

He nodded.
“I took the biggest shard and I hid it in my clothes. I’ve been using it for months.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember why I started. It just felt… right. I wanted to feel something else. That was - it felt like it broke me out of the fear.”

Oil trickled in abundance over Caracalla’s hand. There was too much of it, but it was hard to pour exact amounts in the dark, from a lamp - the mess wasn’t important anyway, but he hated the feel of it dripping everywhere, down his arm and onto his thighs. It irritated him, made him feel jittery, offended somehow. On his cock it felt much better, and heated instantly to a pleasing temperature: he liked rubbing himself with it, because it felt more like the inside of somebody else’s body then, only his own hand knew his shapes better and what he liked. He thought about Geta’s hand on him, and then about the shard of glass that he’d hidden: the way it would slice skin like a blade, which he’d seen many times before.

“You said I could touch… the cuts?” he said breathlessly, and Geta nodded.

“Careful,” he reminded Caracalla, but Caracalla dismissed him.

His heart was beating in his ears when he ran his free hand, which was also stained with the oil of the once more nesting bird, to his brother’s thigh. Geta’s hips bucked. Caracalla hadn’t expected that: he hadn’t expected, somehow, that Geta would like this. He’d been so ashamed but now he wasn’t; his voice was aroused again, strained with want, and his cock was full and his hips were bucking. His hole was… Caracalla had fingered him open, and he could still tell it was loose before Geta’s leg moved and covered the view. With a small snarl, Caracalla shoved his wet hand between his buttocks again and thrust his fingers in, the other hand which had approached the cuts stilling upon soft and unmarred skin on Geta’s mid-thigh.

Geta slammed his arm over his mouth again just in time to stop the mewl that had tried to escape him, and Caracalla let out a pleased sound at that. He continued fucking him with his hand for a while again just for the joy of watching his breath grow faster and his cock twitching, but then he retreated - he’d been in the middle of something, and Geta had interrupted him. Somehow. He couldn’t remember anymore what had happened, but it had been annoying. The oil on his thighs and on the bed was annoying. His body felt raw.

“Tell me about it,” Caracalla breathed, “while I take you.”

“Calla.”

“Tell me. How you cut yourself. How it feels like. I’m going to fuck you, Geta. I’ll ruin you; but you have to tell me how you do it all to yourself, too.”

A soft touch landed on his arm, snatching his attention away again. Geta’s eyes were wide.

“I’m scared,” he said, and Caracalla felt like purring.

He let his hand down the thigh he’d been holding, merely crossing over the cuts without really touching them at all, only feeling them pass underneath his hand - and then he put that hand onto Geta’s cheek, leaning over him once again.

“Shh,” he said, but he couldn’t hold back his grin. He felt triumphant. “Why are you scared?”

Geta shook his head.
“It’s just - I can’t go back from this.”

“That’s the point,” Caracalla told him. “That’s what makes it so good. You can’t take this back, Geta. I’ll take you and that’ll be forever.”

He nuzzled his head to his twin’s and Geta’s hand took to his neck, then his shoulder, then from under his arm to his back. Caracalla was holding his cock and it was prodding against Geta’s body - slipping ever so slightly already between his legs, though he wasn’t aiming it anywhere in particular.

“You’ll fuck me,” Geta stated the obvious, and Caracalla nodded to him.

“I’ll fuck you,” he breathed out softly, “I’ll ruin you. Father will never know that you’ve been taken but it’s true. I’ll fuck you and you’ll love it just like you love your own fingers inside you, how you dream about a cock in your body. It’s bad, Geta. It’s shameful. You won’t be a real man anymore. You’ll never even get to be one. You’ve never fucked anyone but you’ll let your own brother…”

The sound that Geta made was somewhere between pain and pleasure, and not one bit muffled; his fingertips had taken to Caracalla’s back but there was nothing but pressure to them, and the roughness of where he’d eaten away his nails all the way to the raw flesh beneath. He was lovely, Caracalla thought. Already so vulnerable. Already so ruined in so many ways: colourful with his bruises, cut to bleed, punished and put down. Caesar of the great Roman Empire, his twin brother - so close to death that he spoke about ending his own life. That was beautiful. That was desirable. His teeth throbbed again, and gently, he sought flesh with them: flesh of the throat, where he realised upon changing his position that he’d already left a mark behind. That was fine, he thought. He’d leave more in places where people wouldn’t see them. He’d fuck Geta so hard that he’d feel it the next day and he’d mark him with bruises of his own and all of the cuts on Geta’s thighs would press into his hips while he moved inside him.

“I love you,” Geta told him, his other hand joining its pair upon Caracalla’s back. “Tell me you love me, too.”

“I do,” Caracalla said, and it was very easy, and came without weight attached. “I’m going to put it in now.”

Another pathetic mewl left his brother’s throat, but he barely heard it. He closed his eyes and felt his skin all over his body turn to pinpricks as hair stood on end, and a shudder rushed through him like his spine had been split by a spear - and as he thrust his cock between Geta’s buttocks, the slick tip of it sliding against his hole and only pressing into it by so much before slipping out, he mouthed another reminder into Geta’s ear: I love you.

I love you, as he corrected his aim and moved inside. It took one forceful push to get through, and another to make sure he stayed inside. Geta had hissed, then growled; his fingers were dragging down and down along Caracalla’s back like he was trying to break skin with the dull tips, but Caracalla could tell he was barely leaving a mark. Better that way, he thought distantly, like all of a sudden he was drunk. If they both had marks then maybe someone would think something they really should not be thinking about them. If only one… well, boys got into trouble, didn’t they? Young men fucked. It was high time that Geta joined that group, too.

Not like this, though. Caracalla pushed closer to him, closer until he was buried to the hilt. They’d not meant it like this.

He heard his own hushing like through water, felt the way his lips brushed over Geta’s ear, the way that his fingers sorted through the golden waves of his hair. Tasted the salt of the tear over his twin’s cheek, the corner of his eye, when he pulled back and thrust in again.

Is it good? Does it hurt?

He wanted it to hurt. He wanted it so bad that when Geta shook his head, though it was clearly a lie, it still disappointed him. So he fucked him harder next time and asked again, and he could tell again from the way that Geta had opened his legs - trying to make room, trying to make himself clench less - but this time he eased on him, because though he was intoxicated and far from himself, he didn’t want it to hurt too much. Not with Geta. Because he loved his brother. Despite everything. Despite him being so perfect; despite everyone favouring him. Despite what the Senate said about them. That he was stupid and Geta had potential. Because when their father was home, Geta would cover him with his body; get in the way of a blow and tell him to run. He bled for Caracalla, always. Had always bled for him. His blood smelled sweet and was more slippery in Caracalla’s fingers than the oil. His insides were smooth like silk, slick with oil, slick with whatever it was that made people slippery on the inside. Not blood. Mucus, thick water. His muscles were relaxing; he’d stopped clenching. Like something that died under Caracalla’s touches. Died because he was fucking him too hard. Eyes closed; ears full of water. He thought of the glass again. Thought about how it would feel like to slice it across Geta’s body while they made love together. Over the arteries of the neck, to spill all that there was to spill - feeling his body go slack around Caracalla’s cock, listening to the gurgling of his drowning breaths. See death in his eyes, in his gaze as it came to him. Final, beautiful; full of fear and domination. Caracalla’s victory, that time. Over him. Over Father. Over everything. Full conquest, and a lax, dead body; no strength left to any of its muscles.

Torn thighs echoing every thrust of his hips.

This was bliss, Caracalla thought to himself, dragging his whole body up with his thrusts, along Geta’s slippery, sweaty skin, feeling the manner the hair on their bellies caught together, the way that his brother’s cock was pinched between them, hard and warm. He thought it still when Geta’s hands gripped him harder, while their breaths beat into his mind like drums, and while through them he listened to the sounds of pleasure stuck in their throats, and the slap of flesh to flesh, surrounded by the smell of sex and oil.

This was love.