by Sam Starbuck
But he wanted to lie close to someone, wanted to pant and sweat away his frustrations with another body, and Tiresias was so devoted, so young and innocent for all his experience with the world. Tiresias had no doubts or fears about his Dominus. It was insanity, but then so was his life, and perhaps this would anchor him enough to find his way back to some sort of peace.
When he reached the bedroom, he heard footsteps in the corridor. Tiresias came around the corner with undue haste just as Brutus stepped inside. He held the door for the boy to enter, then shut it and flicked the little bar across to prevent anyone else from opening it.
Tiresias exhaled, looked up at him with pure wonder, and then went to him, pressing their bodies together from shoulder to thigh, standing on his toes so they could kiss. Brutus braced a hand in the small of his back to steady him. His other hand slid down between them, automatically groping between his legs, finding only the solid rounded bump of the phallus bound up in his underclothes. Tiresias, however, ground down against his hand like he could feel it, pressing Brutus’s knuckles back against his own growing erection.
“On the bed,” Brutus ordered around a deep kiss, and Tiresias whined his reluctance. Brutus finally pulled the boy up against him tighter, got one hand under his slim thigh, and carried him there, dumping him into the blankets. Tiresias gazed up at him, adoring, and lifted his arms over his head to arch his back. It was blatant seduction, but still charming. Perhaps because it was so artless.
Brutus sat on the bed, and Tiresias rose to his knees, swinging a leg over his lap when Brutus reached for his hips. He rolled his body like a serpent, the phallus bumping against Brutus’s ready cock. Brutus jerked forward, grunting.
“How shall we do this?” he asked, hands tracing up and down Tiresias’s arms, enjoying the smooth skin as their mouths met again. Tiresias bent his head and Brutus kissed his eyebrows and nose as he fumbled the belt of his tunic off, then slid the tunic up his body and threw it aside.
“As you please,” Tiresias said, falling back into his arms, mouthing at his neck. Brutus found the seam where the bindings of Tiresias’s breasts were tucked, just in front of his left shoulder, but Tiresias caught his hand.
“No, Dominus,” he murmured. “These must stay on.”
Brutus drew back to look at him, the light blush on his cheeks, the curl of his fingers protectively over the fabric. Bound like this, his chest could be the sculpted pectorals of a warrior, not the soft breasts of a woman.
“Very well,” he murmured, but he bent to kiss the swell above the rags, and Tiresias panted out a moan. “And these?”
Tiresias squirmed against the fingers that danced along the line of his groin, exploring the strips of cloth there, too.
“If Dominus wishes,” he said softly, and eased them down over the swell of his ass. He took hold of one of Brutus’s hands, pulling it around behind him, guiding the fingers to the cleft between his buttocks. When Brutus traced a dry finger over his hole, the boy made a small cry and pushed his face into Brutus’s neck, biting at the thick muscle there.
“It would please me,” he said, or Brutus thought he said. His hands were under Brutus’s tunic, blindly exploring his thighs, tugging on his underclothes until Tiresias could slide fingers over his balls, and then his cock, swelling to hardness. Tiresias closed his fingers tightly and Brutus thrust up into his grasp, one hand still rubbing rhythmically over Tiresias’s ass.
“You must feel such a heaviness,” Tiresias said, fingers squeezing the head of Brutus’s cock. “When I think of coupling—man or woman—I feel a changing, an ache . . . it must be so much more for you. Do you like to be touched like this, Dominus?” he asked, still fondling just the damp, engorged head. His thumb brushed down the underside, and Brutus moaned. “You once threatened to whip me like a man would be whipped, do you remember?”
“Yes, Tiresias,” Brutus grunted, pulling him closer for better leverage.
“Would you have me like you would have a man?”
Brutus ducked his head to kiss him, drawing him up, pulling his hand away to rub against Tiresias’s smooth belly.
“Fetch the oil,” he murmured, tilting his head at the shelf near the door. Tiresias slid off him reluctantly and stood, letting his undergarment with its false phallus fall to the floor. Brutus, loath to lose sight of him, nevertheless used the moment to pull his tunic over his head and off, breathing a sigh of relief when the cool air hit his skin. He traced his fingers over his cock, lightly as Tiresias had, and accepted the small bottle Tiresias placed, with a slightly shaking hand, in his palm.
“Not that way,” Brutus corrected when Tiresias went to straddle him again. He turned the boy by one hip, pulling his smooth, pale shoulders back against his own scarred chest, and secured him there with an arm. It made pouring the oil awkward, but when he had enough to coat his fingers, he slid his other hand under Tiresias’s ass, and the boy lifted just enough to accommodate his palm cupping the skin, then shivered and whined when his slick fingertip slid inside him.
“More, more,” he begged, turning his head to nuzzle Brutus’s cheek.
“Impatient whelp,” Brutus whispered in his ear, but he twisted his hand and added just the tip of a second finger before withdrawing both for more oil, to a loud wordless noise of complaint from Tiresias.
The boy kept squirming and complaining, but he never seemed able to act out the protests falling from his lips, never did anything to force Brutus faster or slower as he stretched him out. He had one arm tucked over Brutus’s, the other hand between his own legs, moving against his woman’s parts in the same rhythm as Brutus’s fingers working in and out of his body.
“I knew you would be big,” Tiresias laughed against his cheek, rolling his body on Brutus’s fingers. “Enough, you won’t hurt me.”
“There now, little horse-boy,” Brutus murmured, pulling his fingers out and easing Tiresias onto his knees, hands sliding down to support him. Brutus drew his legs under him and knelt up, resting a slick palm in the small of Tiresias’s back, his other hand holding himself steady as he pushed in with slow deliberation. Tiresias tensed as he keened out, then relaxed as Brutus slid past the still-tight muscle into soft, slick heat.
He pushed as far as he could, hips jerking occasionally with the effort of control, while Tiresias breathed hard. Tiresias’s shoulder blades, half-hidden by the bindings, shifted and rolled with the effort of holding himself up, of bracing enough that Brutus could meet a little resistance as he thrust.
Brutus grasped him at the waist, shifted until he was barely inside him, and then pulled at the same time he thrust again, and Tiresias moaned deep, body arching. Brutus had known both men and women, and nothing compared to the sleek beauty of Tiresias’s narrow shoulders and smooth skin, his masculine smell and the muscles rippling in his back, his slim downy thighs and the tightness of his ass around Brutus’s cock.
“Dominus, please,” Tiresias begged, lifting a hand back between his legs, rocking his hips against his fingers. Brutus held him still and took his pleasure, an easy rhythm growing more frantic as Tiresias’s cries and moans became more insistent.
The boy’s body shuddered, voice going thin and then silent as he came; Brutus kept moving, his own pleasure drawing close, stomach tensing. Tiresias shuddered again a moment later and groaned out an obscene plea. Brutus lost himself for a little while, let go of his cares and fears in the white-out mindlessness of climax.
His hands slid away from Tiresias’s hips and he tipped backward. After a breath or two, he felt Tiresias crawling over him, kissing his way up his chest, thigh brushing against his oversensitive cock.
“This servant lives to please you, Dominus,” Tiresias murmured into his neck, palm flat on his stomach. “While breath is in me, my Dominus will never want for anything.”
Brutus managed to twist enough to kiss the short-cropped hair, and Tiresias leaned into it, sighing happily.
They stayed that way as long as Brutus dared, until he worried P
orcia might find them. She might not care about his affair with Cassius, but it was unwise to test her patience by bringing a boy to their marriage bed, particularly this boy. Eventually he shifted, easing Tiresias away from him, and Tiresias took the subtle gesture for what it was. He leaned back off the bed, reaching for his underclothes and tunic without complaint.
Brutus watched as he expertly strapped the phallus to his body, binding it up with strips of cloth.
“Should I . . . come to you again?” Tiresias asked, slipping his tunic over his head and knotting the belt. His lips were swollen, soft from kissing.
“Would you like to?” Brutus asked.
Tiresias gave him a dry look. “Do you still doubt my devotion?”
Brutus shook his head. “But it’s better if I come to you,” he answered quietly. Tiresias practically glowed. “It won’t be often.”
“It will be enough,” Tiresias replied, and leaned back in to kiss him one final time. “I’ll make sure I’m not seen as I leave.”
He went to the door, opened the catch, and peeked out carefully. With a final glance over his shoulder, he slipped into the corridor, and Brutus was left to the fading warmth of his bed and considerably better humor than before.
His peace, to his own surprise, lasted well into the evening. When Porcia returned, she patted his hand and kissed his cheek.
“You don’t look as angry as I expected. I heard what happened in the Forum,” she said, and he set his jaw against a frown, but the rage was gone. “Will it be soon, Marcus?”
“Soon,” he said, and she nodded and went to call for some wine.
They could wait no longer, and the men he’d spoken to knew it; the next time he met with Cassius and a few of the others, the date was settled and word sent out. A little less than a month: the fifteenth, the Ides of March.
“We shouldn’t be seen together too much,” Cassius said when Brutus met him in the baths with three weeks still to go before the day.
“Nor too little,” Brutus replied.
“Too little is better. Let him think we’ve had a falling out,” Cassius answered, sweating in the steam. Brutus frowned.
“When this is over—” Cassius began, and Brutus nodded.
“Of course,” he said, not quite believing it. “When this is over.”
It felt like a falsehood, like the lie one tells to a dying relative that they will live, but he put that aside. Perhaps it was only guilt. Cassius didn’t know about Tiresias, and Brutus told himself that was merely to protect a servant boy from the sort of mischief a senator with a grudge could cause.
In the month that followed the speech in the Forum, Brutus didn’t visit Tiresias often—he had to be cautious at the city house. The boy had a little cubiculum off the storeroom behind the kitchen, marginally more private than the bedroom of Dominus and Domina, though they had to be quiet. He visited late at night, after Porcia and the servants were asleep. Tiresias always greeted him as if there was nothing else in the world for him but Dominus Brutus.
He usually left as soon as he could, feeling ashamed, feeling obscurely as if he were betraying both his wife and his lover, neither of whom had (or could place) a claim to his sole loyalty. One time Tiresias pinned him down lightly, more want than force, tracing absent shapes on his skin with a finger.
Afterward, he found his thoughts straying to Caesar, but without guilt. He thought more of when he’d been a very young child and Caesar had come to his parents’ villa. Brutus had foolishly thought, with a child’s narcissism, that Caesar came to see him; he always brought him a treat or a trinket. In hindsight, it was blindingly clear that he’d come to visit Servilia, his mistress. Brutus’s mother.
He looked down at Tiresias, curled up against him, head on his chest.
“How old were you when your mother died?” he heard himself ask.
Tiresias hummed thoughtfully. “I was fifteen when she fell sick.”
“You learned Greek with your brothers?”
“And oratory, and history, and a little philosophy. How to hunt, how to fight. I was the fiercest fighter of the three of us.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Brutus yawned, eyes closing. “You must have grieved her deeply.”
“I did. I still do. She understood me. For the longest time, I wore the mourning clothes of a boy . . .” Tiresias shook his head, and his hair brushed Brutus’s shoulder. “Father took me aside and said I had to stop. His friends were beginning to talk.”
“He didn’t understand?”
“He wasn’t as brave as my mother.” Tiresias huffed against his chest. “But I have my protector now. You understand.”
“Not wholly, I think, but enough,” Brutus answered. “At the villa I thought you must have been sent as a charm of some kind. Someone touched by the gods.”
“Perhaps I am. The gods know I have luck enough to be here.”
Brutus made a thoughtful noise, but he was tired, and if Tiresias said anything else, he didn’t hear it. It wasn’t likely; he’d learned to sleep lightly in the army, and though he woke well-rested, he woke early, leaving Tiresias in bed and making his way back to Porcia before the cook rose to start the bread.
The night before the murder, he dared to stay with Tiresias again, sleeping more deeply, waking only when he heard the servants beginning to rise. He sat up in the tiny, rough bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Tiresias’s hand lay across his stomach, and when he moved it curled, as if Tiresias could hold him there. Brutus half wished that he could.
“If you go now, you’ll be seen,” said Tiresias, indistinct under the blanket. Brutus stretched, pulling the blanket back. Tiresias let out a soft yelp of surprise.
“If I stay any longer, will my escape go any better?”
Tiresias pushed himself up slowly. He’d slept in the bindings and he looked a little stiff, but he still refused to remove them, seemingly proud of his endurance. Brutus pulled Tiresias up against his side, taking comfort from the contact, even from the rasp of fabric against his ribs.
Tiresias leaned into him. “You’ve stayed too late, but a little longer and the hall will be clear.”
“I’d stay later if I could.”
The boy tensed, leaning back, and then frowned.
“Is it to be today?” he asked softly.
Brutus nodded. Tiresias crawled over him, kissed his forehead, his temple, his lips.
“Shall I come with?” he asked, breath puffing on Brutus’s cheek.
“No. As you love me, stay here.” Brutus pulled Tiresias’s slim body against his. “Stay here and safe. Protect Porcia. If it comes to the worst, get her out of the city.”
Tiresias smiled against his skin. “And if it comes to the best, your good-luck charm will be here to welcome his Dominus home.”
“Just so,” Brutus agreed.
Marcus Junius Brutus never thought of Caesar as his father.
Marcus Brutus the Elder was his father, the man who’d raised him. Marcus Brutus the Elder was the father Brutus had grieved when Pompey had executed him. But Rome was more important than fathers, and when Rome was endangered, Brutus had forgiven Pompey for the death of his father because his father would not have wanted to see Rome in the hands of grasping, ambitious men like Caesar, men who would march on the city in order to take it.
When Rome had fallen to Caesar, Brutus had swallowed his anger for the sake of stability. If Caesar was to lead the Senate, at least Brutus would ensure that Rome prospered; his father would have wanted that, too. Rome was always more important than fathers. Rome was the great mother of them all. And if Caesar was his father, if that was not simply a slander on his mother’s name, what father had Caesar been to him? Caesar was not the man who’d first put a wooden sword in the child Marcus’s hands, nor the man who’d sent him to learn under Aristus, nor the man who had taught him to serve Rome.
That day, the Idus of March, when Tillius Cimber approached Caesar on the Senate steps to plead his brother’s case, Brutus thought of his father, bu
t it was Marcus Brutus he thought of. He thought of what his father would have wanted for Rome. He crowded around Caesar with the other senators, watching numbly with one hand on the blade at his belt as Cimber grabbed Caesar’s tunic in both hands to hold him still.
Casca was the first to pull his dagger, and he swung for Caesar’s throat, but the struggle threw him off and he opened only a shallow wound on Caesar’s neck. Brutus felt his arm move of its own volition, a soldier’s instinct to see the job done well overwhelming him. He watched with the dispassionate peace of battle as his own knife pushed through the fabric of Caesar’s toga and tunic, pushed through his skin and muscle and grated against the bone of a rib as blood poured out around the wound.
There were other men attacking, other men with knives to cut and hands to hold Caesar still, but Brutus could only keep a tight grip on the dagger, buried in Caesar’s chest, and stare at the bright red blood—for all he knew, blood he shared—welling up.
When he finally dragged his gaze up to Caesar’s face, he saw blood in the other man’s eyes from some wound to his scalp—thick, but not yet enough to blind him. Behind him he saw Cassius pushing in, raising his dagger to strike, eyes fixed on Caesar’s wide bull neck.
“You too, my child?” Caesar asked when their eyes met. His voice was oddly gentle, or perhaps he wasn’t speaking at all, and the words were in Brutus’s mind. Blood dripped slowly from Caesar’s lips. Cassius struck, and the point pushed out through the front of Caesar’s throat.
Brutus stepped back, hand slipping from the hilt of his knife, and Caesar stumbled to the ground.
“Citizens of Rome!” he heard Cassius cry, or perhaps he imagined that too. “We are once again free!”
But there was no such thing as real freedom, Brutus thought, as he gazed down at the blood on his fingers. Not when a man served Rome. His hand shook as he looked at it, and he knew that this was treachery, whatever Cassius said. It was wrong to kill a man in cold blood on the steps of the Senate, even a would-be tyrant.