The City War

by Sam Starbuck

  Like now.

  “Of all my students you were the best,” Aristus said, and Brutus choked and came over his hand, onto himself and into the dust under him. He panted through the orgasm, then wiped his hand in the dirt and rolled away, the familiar mix of shame and triumph burning his cheeks. He heard Aristus breathing heavily, and wondered if he was touching himself too. Perhaps he was engaging in some form of torment for Brutus alone.

  “Why now?” Brutus asked, after his own breathing had calmed. “Why here, Aristus?”

  “You’re forgetting your lessons, Marcus,” Aristus said softly. “We stand in a gateway. In Rome you belong to Porcia. God knows who you belong to at the villa, though I can take a guess. There aren’t simply worlds and other worlds. Each has a passage between, where things are less clear. This one is mine. And this was the only way I could have you, here.”

  “It’s only custom. If you wanted, you could—”

  “You could, perhaps,” Aristus corrected, but it was gentle. “I could not, Marcus. Let it be what it is.”

  Brutus closed his eyes, unwilling to stare anymore at the stars. “Yes, Aristus.”

  Brutus had expected to reach the villa rustica before anyone else, but Cassius must have set out early. He’d already been in the country at his own villa when he’d sent Brutus the note to meet him, so it wasn’t a complete surprise. At any rate, the next afternoon they trotted past the guardian phalluses on the gate of the Villa Rustica Bruti and into the outer yard to find two occupants already in place: Tiresias, who was running from the stable to see to the horses, and Cassius, standing in the entryway of the house, senatorial tunic gleaming white and crimson.

  “Brutus!” Cassius called, laughing, as Brutus dismounted and tossed his reins to Tiresias with a narrow, warning look. “Good to see you.”

  “Is he supposed to be here?” Aristus asked in an undertone. Brutus, who hadn’t mentioned Cassius would be in attendance, gave him a guilty look, and Aristus shook his head disapprovingly. Cassius was coming down the steps from the vestibulum, his hands spread in greeting.

  “Senator,” Brutus said, embracing Cassius with an honest smile. “I see you’ve made yourself at home.”

  “Only so that I could make you at home, Senator,” Cassius replied low in his ear, leaning back from the embrace and flexing his fingers on Brutus’s shoulders. He gave Brutus a look he couldn’t interpret—wary, almost devious—before turning to his companion. “Aristus—pleasant to see you again.”

  “Senator,” Aristus said blandly.

  “Come, you must be tired,” Cassius said. “There’s a meal laid on. I thought you might get here today.”

  Brutus sent the servants off to help with the meal in the kitchen, and the guards to rest. Cassius led them through the vestibulum like he was the dominus of the villa, guiding them out into the airy open atrium. As soon as they entered, the air was cooler: moist but not humid, and much more pleasant.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Aristus said, pausing by the fountain in the atrium, turning his face to the spray. “Feels like I haven’t been cool since I came to Rome.”

  The architect of the villa rustica had told Brutus the house would be well-situated, near the river and with plenty of fountains and pools throughout. Water, he’d explained, remembered being cold and wanted to be cold again, which was why it struggled and bubbled when you boiled it. Brutus didn’t concern himself overmuch with natural philosophy, but he had to admit that the sun didn’t seem quite so unfriendly in the atrium as it had on the ride.

  “Gentlemen!” Cassius called, and Brutus grasped Aristus’s shoulder, pulling him along.

  Inside the triclinium, the eating couches had been aired and dusted and food laid out, a simple meal after the journey: fruit, some smoked meats, and watered honey flavored with pepper and wine, an old traveler’s drink. They sat upright on the formal couches like boys, and the servants left them alone.

  “We’ll have a feast tonight,” Cassius said, biting into a fig. His eyes had barely left Brutus since they’d arrived, but Brutus wasn’t wrong: there was something hooded in them, shadowed, and it made him curious. “I’ve brought my cook and she’s brought plenty of food, and I’ve been inspecting your wine casks; quality drink you have there, Brutus.”

  “You’re a bit free with my wine,” Brutus said, laughing.

  “Might as well drink while we can,” Cassius replied, licking a finger, watching Brutus’s reaction. Aristus gave him a sharp look, but Brutus ignored it. “How’s Porcia?”

  “Happy to stay in Rome,” Brutus said.

  “She generally is.”

  “And my sister? You’re treating her well, I hope.”

  “You know Junia,” Cassius said with a dry smile. “Shrewd and sharp-witted as ever. I’ve a letter from her to give to you.”

  “I’ll see to it later this afternoon,” Brutus replied. He flicked a crumb of bread onto the floor, watching it tumble between the slats.

  “Have you met Brutus’s new horse-boy?” Aristus asked, with a slight glimmer of malice on his face.

  “The one who showed up yesterday? I noticed him running around, but I didn’t think much of it. Is that new charger yours?” Cassius asked.

  “Belongs to the boy. He’s an orphan, says the horse was his father’s.”

  Cassius and Aristus were not friends, precisely, but the look they exchanged made Brutus a little impatient.

  “Has he seen to your mounts?” Brutus asked Cassius.

  “Well enough,” Cassius said indifferently.

  “Then the two of you can stop pitying me for falling prey to a sad story. I don’t normally, you know.”

  “Is that what you fell prey to,” Cassius asked under his breath. Brutus shot him an amused look and levered himself up off the couch.

  “I have a few letters to send, and I’ll rest before the evening meal. You stay out of trouble,” he told Cassius. “And you, the servants will show you the river if you’d like to swim,” he added to Aristus.

  “Have a mind, I’ve seen snakes near the river,” Brutus overheard Cassius say to Aristus as he left the triclinium.

  “Snakes everywhere these days, it seems,” Aristus replied, and Cassius laughed mirthlessly as they faded out of earshot.

  To my dear brother, Marcus Brutus,

  I send you all the best greetings and salutations and hope you are well. This letter travels with my husband to the Villa Rustica Bruti, and with it my apologies I could not join him. The house is in a state right now with renovations to the north wing requiring the presence of Domina, so I am bound to stay.

  My lord Cassius has news for you and many matters of state to discuss, I know and somewhat fear. I also know that you have fought bravely together in the past and were stronger for the close bonds you formed then. This is not war, but I fear it may be soon. Listen to him, I urge you, no matter what you may think when he first speaks.

  I would not interfere, my brother, with the bond you keep with my husband. In all sisterly duty and love, I know now is the time to share him with you, and hope Rome will be the better for it. Look after him at the villa, and for the love of sacred things, look after yourself.

  I know how you enjoy his company.

  I remain your affectionate sister,

  Junia Tertia

  Brutus, if he subscribed to any philosophy, was a Platonist, not a Stoic by any means, though more stoic than Cassius by a good deal. Cassius was a strong soldier and an honorable politician, but he loved a rich life more than Brutus, and it showed in his idea of an evening meal among friends. He must have been at the villa rustica at least two days for his cook to prepare a meal so large, and for his servants to round up so much entertainment. It wasn’t unusual, but there seemed to be a sort of fever behind it, and combined with Junia’s cryptic letter, it made Brutus wary.

  In the country, there were no comedians or great wits to invite, few musicians and no street entertainers to hire. But Cassius had found (or, more likely, sent se
rvants to find) local girls and boys to dance for them, some with obvious hopes of winning the patronage, however temporary, of a senator come to the country to enjoy himself.

  The servants brought in trays of apricots in sweet sauce and lentils imported from Egypt, roasted thrushes, goose livers in garum and oysters in cumin sauce. The men ate while the entertainers danced or sang. There was one young boy with an especially sweet voice, and two of the girls had hips that drew even Brutus’s attention. The guards watched covertly through the doorways.

  Cassius occasionally licked sweet apricot sauce off his thumb, glancing at Brutus with lowered eyelids to see if he noticed. Brutus saw that Aristus did, and the older man drank more wine than usual. Brutus just busied himself counteracting the heat of the cumin with bites of honey-soaked melon, and ignored them both as children. He was getting tired of Cassius’s air of mystery.

  By the time the servants brought in the pig—small but well-cooked, and stuffed with tender laurices and fragrant spices—Brutus saw the horse-boy watching the dancers as well, crouched in a shadow behind a tall window that let the breeze pass from the outer yard into the triclinium. He caught the boy’s dark eyes on the hips and breasts of the girls, and left him alone.

  Brutus never overindulged, or at least not to the point some men did. Cassius sometimes did, but he was careful tonight, easy with his wine and delicate with his food. Aristus, by the time the end-of-feast offering to the house gods was complete, looked like he’d rather wander off somewhere to sleep. One of the girls had laid her head in Aristus’s lap, and Brutus knew a few others were licking their chops to try the same with him.

  “A nice change from the jaded whores in Rome, eh?” Cassius asked in Greek as a girl settled shyly on the edge of his couch.

  “Not much less jaded,” Brutus remarked. There was a laugh from the doorway, and he turned, startled, but the horse-boy had already pulled back into the shadows and could not be seen. The boy’s father must have been wealthy to educate him in Greek.

  He turned back to the room to find Aristus with one proprietary hand on the thigh of the girl with her head in his lap, though his eyelids were drooping. Cassius glanced casually at Brutus, who nodded.

  “All right, Aristus, off with you,” Cassius said, gesturing for one of the guards to come in. Aristus looked like he was about to object, glancing from Cassius to Brutus, but he was already being walked toward the door. “Take him away, put him to bed. Let the girl go too if he wants her.”

  “Sleep well, Aristus,” Brutus called, examining the desserts on the platter the servant had set out. “Partaking?” he asked Cassius.

  Cassius tilted his head as a girl with some visible daring sat close to Brutus on his couch.

  “Are you?” he asked, and Brutus looked up at the girl, shaking his head. She pouted but slid away.

  “No, I’m tired too,” he said. “Your steward’s around here somewhere, isn’t he?”

  “Sure.”

  “Tell him to pay everyone and have the musicians back here the day after tomorrow. We’ll do a feast for the local gentry.”

  “Very well,” Cassius replied, hoisting himself off the couch. Brutus slipped away to his bedroom while Cassius spoke with the steward. He really should be the one, as host, but if Cassius wanted to play at domina here in Brutus’s villa, he wasn’t going to stop him.

  There was a fresco on the wall of his bedroom, a painting of Venus Verticordia, the changer of hearts, the punisher of the disobedient and unfaithful—Porcia’s idea of a joke, most likely. At any rate, from the bed, only the curves of her hips and the smooth lines of her arms could be seen. He undressed and lay down, turning away from the fresco, studying the geometric patterns on the other wall.

  The door to the cubiculum opened silently, a moving shadow in the shadows. Brutus watched as Cassius stepped inside, leaning one shoulder on the edge of the doorway.

  “All quiet?” Brutus asked.

  “This making me play at host is a little tiresome,” Cassius replied.

  “I thought you were enjoying it.”

  “It’s not far from making me play at wife,” Cassius complained, and Brutus sat up and slid to the edge of the bed, grinning.

  “And you don’t enjoy that?” he asked as Cassius shut the door and came forward, twining his arms around Brutus’s shoulders. “Serving me? Just a little?”

  “Not in public,” he said in his ear, easing his thighs down around Brutus’s, settling their hips together. It rucked up his tunic and Brutus pushed it up further, hands exploring at leisure, pulling away the cloth he wore underneath, tracing skin and muscle they already knew well. There was the scar on Cassius’s belly where he’d nearly died during an early campaign, and there was the long straight line down his thigh where one of Caesar’s men had nicked him during the civil war. On his shoulder, as Brutus pulled the fabric to one side, were two more scars from foreign archers, and on his back, just to the left of his spine, a knot where a horse had kicked him.

  Brutus kissed the join of Cassius’s throat and shoulder. Cassius let his head fall back, body supported by the hand Brutus held between his shoulder blades. Brutus eased his arm around a little, pulling at the long tunic, and Cassius ducked out of it, curling in close again. He rolled his hips, a low hmm rumbling in his throat, and Brutus twisted to ease him onto the bed. Cassius slitted his eyes and smiled, seductive, affectionate.

  “Aristus doesn’t approve of me, does he?” he asked, as Brutus kissed the scars on his shoulders, moving downward through the sparse hair on his chest to lick at his nipple.

  “It doesn’t matter what Aristus thinks,” he said, smoothing his hand over Cassius’s lean stomach, the sword calluses on his palm catching on the smooth skin.

  “I doubt that’s true.”

  “Aristus would disapprove of any man in your position.”

  “But I like this position.”

  “Of course you do, hedonist,” Brutus said, laughing into his ribs. He felt his way by touch and taste over the hard bone and muscle, taking his time even though Cassius was panting and twisting, trying to hurry him up. Cassius had never managed the broad, solid boxer’s strength that was so prized in the army; he was thin and quick, sinewy where Brutus was thickly muscled. Almost still boyish, particularly when he moaned softly and whined for his prize like a child.

  “Brutus, please.” He drew up his knees and twisted them against Brutus’s waist like a wrestler, trying to pull him farther down.

  “Please what, my own?” Brutus pinned down his thighs. His pretty, curving cock was already swollen and hard, warm when Brutus circled his fingers lightly around the base.

  “Please, please,” Cassius growled. “Suck me.”

  “Aren’t you a poet.” Brutus nuzzled his cock, not quite giving him the satisfaction of his mouth.

  Growing up, he’d been taught this was something only whores did; Aristus certainly wouldn’t have allowed it. The first time Cassius had done it to him, the two of them fumbling in a dark tent on the night before a battle, he’d been shocked and so aroused he’d had to muffle his mouth to keep from shouting.

  Try it, Cassius had urged. You might like it.

  It’s not proper.

  Since when have I ever been proper? Cassius had asked, licking his lips, amused. I want your mouth, Marcus, I want to see you look up at me while you’re sucking my cock. I want to run my hands through your pretty gold hair while your wet warm tongue . . .

  Brutus had groaned in capitulation, embarrassed at first, but it was hard to be ashamed with Cassius. His pleasure was too genuine, his amusement with proper Marcus Brutus too great to allow much room for propriety or manners.

  And he did like it, then and now. He liked the salty warmth of his skin, the thickness of Cassius’s cock in his mouth, and the way he cried out high and soft, one hand curling around the back of Brutus’s neck. His fingernails dug in slightly and Brutus jerked, swallowing convulsively, the motion making Cassius twitch in an aborted thrust. Brutus s
queezed his thigh, a warning not to be too rough. He tilted his head for a different angle, and Cassius groaned.

  “You’re so good,” he mumbled, head tilting back, the clean line of his jaw sharp in the darkness. “I miss you so much when we’re apart. I think of you when I’m with Junia, I think of you when I’m alone—fuck, Marcus . . .”

  Brutus lifted his head, letting Cassius’s slick cock fall from his mouth, letting it lie hard and dark against his belly.

  “Do you want it?”

  Cassius arched his back, groaning. “Please.”

  “It’s filthy,” Brutus said, kissing the sharp line where hip ran into thigh. “It’s improper. Swallowing you like a common street girl. If I do this, will you be good for me, Gaius?”

  Cassius twisted again at the use of his given name. “Yes, I promise, I will.”

  Brutus licked sharply up his cock, a long wet line from root to tip, and swallowed him again. Cassius grunted, trying to push, and Brutus let him just a little. He worked his tongue around the cock in his mouth, dipped his head to take more of it, then pinned Cassius’s hips tightly as the other man cried out and bucked, coming, forcing Brutus to swallow, the swallows themselves setting off little tremors that made Cassius moan, lying bonelessly in the blankets.

  Brutus sat back, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and kissed the inside of Cassius’s thigh. Cassius was blissful and limp, laid out just for him, eyes closed and lips parted.

  “Gaius,” he said quietly. Cassius twitched, but that was all. Brutus crawled back up his body, kissing him, and Cassius kissed back lazily. Clumsy fingers fumbled their way to the small of his back, clutching the swell of his ass.

  “Roll over.” Brutus propped himself up. Cassius stretched and turned unhurriedly, hip brushing against Brutus’s erection, wringing a groan out of him. He’d been hard when Cassius had first settled into his lap, almost unbearably so since then. When Cassius turned onto his stomach and crossed his ankles together, Brutus ran a finger down the line of his ass, dipped it in between his legs, and fought another dizzy rush of arousal. Sweat-damp and relaxed, the channel of his thighs was perfect, warm, and just slick enough to give when he pushed into it. Cassius pushed back a little, tightening his thighs, and Brutus exhaled sharply.