Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/230930.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      The_Eagle_(2011)
  Relationship:
      Marcus_Flavius_Aquila/Esca
  Character:
      Marcus_Flavius_Aquila, Esca_Mac_Cunoval
  Additional Tags:
      Underage_Sex, Unrequited_Love, Sexual_Fantasy, Unresolved_Sexual_Tension,
      Sexual_Tension, Sexual_Identity, Romance, Historical, Ancient_Rome, First
      Time, Identity_Issues, PTSD
  Stats:
      Published: 2011-07-29 Words: 2977
****** As the Sun Rises ******
by rispacooper
Summary
     Marcus has some problems working things out after they came back from
     getting the Eagle. Post-movie, obviously. YES. That title sounds like
     a soap opera.
Notes
     Warnings: Okay, the Romans were weird and dirty all around. But
     there’s references to underage things they would have had no problem
     with, but we do, so, warnings. Underage stuff in flashback, with the
     dubious consent this implies.
Marcus has fever dreams after they return from the beyond the Wall with the
Eagle. That is what he calls them, fever dreams, though he isn’t ill in any way
he can name. He calls them that because he does not know what they are and
neither does any learned healer or priest his uncle calls to the house.
Fever dreams are the same stiff jumble of nightmares and damp, heated visions
and Marcus wakes from them not certain he is awake until he falls asleep again
only to be roused by the bright sunlight of midday and Esca’s frown.
He knows what other soldiers might call his dreams, when the brave men of Rome
dare to speak of secret, dark fears to other brave men of Rome who have lived
with blood and loss. But he also knows that his dreams are different from
remembered terrors and the ghosts of dead friends, though how they differ is
something he tells no one.
Silence is his only friend aside from the bond he shares with Esca, although
the dreams continue with his tongue behind his teeth and each day he wishes a
little more to tell all to Esca, if only to ease the alarm in Esca’s face that
Esca is not hiding.
There is impatience in Esca’s gaze too, as though he is growing tired of
Marcus’s weakness, but Esca has not left him, not yet, and Marcus thinks he
ought to feel grateful that Esca had remained at his side even once free, that
Esca’s slender body now sleeps in his chamber in a pallet by his bed to wake
him from his dreams if he cannot on his own.
Esca’s hand on his shoulder burns, and Marcus wonders often if dying men in the
throes of delirium could ever feel as hot as he does then when he wakes to
Esca’s face and hand.
He thinks of dying too in the panting, paralyzed moments after his eyes open
and cannot remember who he is and thinks he must be dead already. For that is
what Marcus dreams of, when he doesn’t think himself cursed by the gods of the
Northern Britons as he must be, because he knew himself before he took Esca
back to them and now that he has brought Esca back with him, Marcus knows
nothing.
As he does nothing. There is nothing in his days but riding and a pension, and
nothing in his nights but memories he does not want, and in them both, Esca,
who is Freedman and yet chooses to sleep on a pallet in Marcus’s room as though
still a slave and listen to Marcus’s shame as the dreams take him.
He supposes Esca is also a man of nothing, no legion, no tribe, no family, no
wife, but it is not Esca who is haunted for all that his mouth grows tighter
with every passing day.
Marcus lays in bed long into the morning and watches Esca as he rises, as he
shaves and dresses, one after the other, simple motions of things that need to
be done, actions with purpose, however simple. He has to swallow his longing.
Esca will disappear to bring him food but he will leave it on the table some
distance away, so that Marcus will rise too if he wishes to eat. He will not
look at Marcus again until Marcus has also shaved.
It’s a temptation to stay in bed however many days it will take to make Esca’s
eyes turn to him again, but Marcus is a man, so he forces himself always to his
feet. When he returns from the baths, it is always to Esca’s careful smile.
But at night they return, his hot visions. He dreams of school and battles and
his men. Sometimes a Druid surprises him as he sleeps and he wakes as the blade
swings down to sever his head from his neck. Sometimes he wakes first and
rouses his men and it is the Druid who is caught under a hurtling chariot.
Like the dead Druid, Marcus was once a leader of men. He had once thought it
was all he could ever wish to be.
If he wakes tense, reaching for a knife Esca has moved out of his reach without
his permission, Esca will sit up as he does and watch him as he catches his
breath. He doesn’t ask what the dream was, as though he can guess. These times
Marcus fears his every thought is known to Esca and flushes to have him know.
But Esca only ever brings him a piece of wood and returns his blade to him now
that he is awake and then he falls back asleep halfway across Marcus’s bed
while Marcus carves creatures until he is calm again.
Esca's limbs seem long when they are splayed across Marcus’s bed, marks and
freckles dot his skin without marring it. His muscles are firm, his tattoos
fierce.
He has made Esca quite a menagerie, dozens of animals held in Esca’s hands,
stroked by his slender fingers, before finally placed in a window to be admired
later.
Marcus no longer carves eagles. They are the one thing that have ceased to
torment him when he closes his eyes. His father is at rest it seems but Marcus
cannot help but wonder what he thinks of his lame son, who has restored his
honor after nearly losing his own. A slave has no honor.
The slave dreams Marcus cannot wake from. He claws at the edges of them,
looking for a way out no matter how cowardly it is to run, but there is never
escape until he opens his eyes and Esca tells him it is time to go. There is
nothing in that to frighten a centurion. He has known pain and fear and dirt
before.
But he rages because he cannot scream. He will not scream, he is Roman and his
father’s son and he will never let them hear him scream, but he wants to, he
wants to shout across his dreams at Esca for leaving him and for saving him
when he should have let them kill him. He lives with dishonor for both and Esca
had given him life, as a slave did not even have the choice of death. He hates
Esca then, hates him until his eyes are open, because he has no voice, no
tongue, and when he wakes, Esca’s fingers gentle in his hair, he cannot speak.
He was not a man. He was Esca’s, as Esca had once been his.
Esca will speak then, strange sentences in his barbarian tongue that make
Marcus hide shudders until he realizes that Esca points to things as he speaks
and repeats words in Latin, over and over again, teaching him his tongue so
that Marcus might know it, until it can no longer hurt him in his sleep.
Marcus studies Esca’s mouth as if he could see each breath as it touches his
lips until Esca grows silent. There is a moment between words, a long moment,
when Marcus again thinks Esca reads his thoughts, or that he has spoken them in
his sleep, and then he remembers that he cannot speak in his dreams, and
praises the gods for giving him that.
Esca will move on then, continue the lessons that Marcus does his best to
retain so he will not think of Esca shivering from nightmares in their time
before the wall, of Esca hating himself and those who held him, hating Marcus,
but the thought remains, like a worm in an apple, making him turn away.
Esca thought of death too and it’s that which finally spurs Marcus to look for
peace in cup after cup of wine.
The dreams grow worse under its influence, his rest more fitful. He is no
longer Centurion or slave but both, on his knees with Esca’s hands, Esca’s
nimble fingers tangling in his hair, yanking his head back.
There is no knife to press to the throbbing vein in his neck, but his life is
in Esca’s hands. They pull back, tight, nails dragging over Marcus’s scalp as
though he nothing more than a pet, and his head goes back, his bared throat
there at Esca’s will, and he does not fight, he does not fight.
He wakes with his voice hoarse and his mouth open and dry and Esca gone from
his room. Esca does not linger when Marcus has been drinking. It is his disdain
that makes Marcus finally stop, though he is aware with each drunken night that
he has fallen further in the eyes of his people and it is their opinion of him
that should matter.
A Roman, a proper Roman, would not lose himself in such a manner.
A proper Roman would never have been a slave, would be a farmer if he could not
be a soldier.
He suggests it one evening when he is eying the wine that he will not let
himself have and Esca is not speaking to him. Esca seems taken aback by the
idea, perhaps merely at the idea of Marcus the farmer, or perhaps to see
himself as one as though he has also forgotten that he is free to do as he
pleases and Marcus will of course share the reward for the Eagle with him.
But his surprise at Marcus’s offer to buy land somewhere and live together as
farmers is only for a few minutes and then he nods, and grins, and when he does
talk, he speaks of the crops of his people. Marcus listens longs into the night
as Esca lets him hear his plans and smiles vaguely at Esca’s pleasure and the
idea of one day being able to truly rest in an orchard of peaches, with
blossoms or fruit around him and Esca’s voice nearby until he falls asleep in
his chair.
It is then, when sober and considering his future, Esca’s future, that the
dreams of his past come. In these, Marcus is young again, not yet needing to
shave regularly, and Lucius Tarpeias Sabinus, his father’s friend and brother-
in-arms teaches him the ways of men and mentors him and it is Marcus’s honor to
have his favor.
His cock had seemed large in him, his hand big at his hip as he’d grunted and
Marcus had closed his eyes at the surprising wave of pleasure, of being fucked,
though it had only been a few times before Lucius had taken him out to fuck a
whore.
In the fire of his dreams Marcus is there, bent to the bed, stretched and
groaning, and he wakes hard and crying out as he never has for pain. There’s no
childish stickiness between his legs, only a slight dampness and heat to think
of Esca’s eyes and what they will say, how dark they will grow when Marcus
turns to meet them.
He does not know Esca’s people’s ways and he cannot ask without deepening his
shame. And he does not know what Esca has seen of Romans, if he has also
glimpsed men who have no shame fuck each other as though they were equals with
one on his back, scratching and pleading for more with his legs bent and his
mouth wet and bitten. If he had heard of men who used their slaves in this way
or perhaps used other Romans in such a way, as if dishonor did not matter to a
stiff cock.
Marcus is not a boy. He does what a man does and finds a woman to penetrate. He
pays her well and takes her mouth as that is the skill she is known for. But
the sight of her on her knees with her mouth full makes him shiver and he
returns home later unsatisfied, aware for the first time that though they may
fade, nothing will never banish these dreams. They have seeped into his waking
moments too.
He is broken, truly, and feels it inside him when Esca does not sleep in his
room that night, or the next. Marcus takes to drink again and wakes to
splintered pain he can bear and the absence of Esca’s touch, which he can’t.
He returns the wine to the keeping of Stephanos and fills his empty mouth with
water and prays to any god that will listen for a relief that does not come and
dreams, he always dreams.
He is on his knees, his head back at Esca’s command, but with Esca before him,
and he wakes fully aroused. His hands are bound and he is again stretched out
on Lucius’s bed though the entire villa can hear his lustful cries and when his
eyes open, he feels hollow. He is on his back and there is pain, so much pain,
and then there is Esca pushing down from above him, pushing into him, and his
mouth is open and his legs are bent.
Even that is mild compared to the one that will not leave his mind, the one
that lingers behind his eyelids even during the day. He dreams of his uncle’s
house, and of this room without a pallet in it, and Esca. Esca splayed upon his
bed with his face to the pillows and foreign words that Marcus can understand
leaving his mouth as Marcus enters him.
That is the most shameful and Marcus rides until his leg is stiff and he cannot
move, but he cannot escape it.
He does not know who he is, but he is no true Roman, not when Esca appears to
help him from his horse and to the room that haunts him and he turns his head
from the sight of Esca’s mouth and knows every place where Esca’s hands have
touched him. Esca is a man, and free, and will not be dishonored by him and
turned into some sort of Greekling who recognizes neither age nor station in
his choice of who to fuck. Of whom he will let fuck him.
But when he closes his eyes, Marcus is on his back and Esca stares down at him,
his body a hot weight Marcus could push off, but doesn’t. Esca’s hands slide to
his hair and pull his head back tight, arching Marcus's neck until Marcus
cannot breathe, forcing his lips to part, and Marcus knows what he wishes Esca
would do and wakes with a startled, hungry cry.
The world around him is too still. His cock is full and his throat aches with
things he is not sure have been said. He is a boy again who cannot control
himself and flushes hotter than the small fire could make him.
Esca is there though Marcus cannot see him without opening his eyes and he does
not want to do that. But he is no coward, even if he is not sure of anything
else, so he looks and finds Esca leaning over him, watching him with eyes that
seem too dark, as if the black in the center has swallowed up everything.
He wonders if that feels like hunger and wets his mouth. Esca’s lips are open.
Marcus wants to ask him about his people though he is aroused and Esca must
know it. He wants Esca to talk to him in his own tongue and tell him of his
ways, and the ways of their boys, and of their men, and farming and of what
dreams Esca the slave might have had. Or Esca the boy. Or Esca the warrior.
It is another weakness that he does not know these things, but Esca has seen
him weak before and has never remarked on it. Esca has seen him as all things
and has never doubted who he was, though how Esca calls him has changed, no
longer Roman, or Master.
In the almost dark of the middle of the night, with the fire low, perhaps
dreaming except for the stinging shame in his cheeks to have Esca see his need,
Marcus looks over Esca’s face, and Esca leans into him, putting one knee on the
bed as though to check him for fever.
“Marcus,” he says quietly, putting a hand to his face, and Marcus burns though
Esca’s fingers do not venture near his hair. “Marcus,” he murmurs again, as
though checking, and Marcus exhales and reaches up to grasp his arm.
Esca stops though his mouth remains open and Marcus cannot tell if it’s dream
or reality when he sees his fingertips move along Esca’s lips, not daring to
push inside.
If Esca thinks it shameful or worries for the Rome in Marcus, there is no sign
as he allows Marcus to penetrate him, ensures it by lowering his head until he
has Marcus’s knuckles at his tongue.
Esca is not of Rome. Esca is no longer of anywhere. Like Marcus, he is freed
and may do as he pleases.
“Marcus,” Marcus repeats his own name, not missing the light finally shining
from Esca’s eyes, as though he finds Marcus mad but does not mind.
Marcus’s smile is sudden. He does not care if he sleeps as long as this does
not end, but he thinks he must be awake to find himself hard when Esca laughs
at him.
“Esca,” he says a moment later, making sure and breathing fast when Esca takes
his fingers deeper and slides his body over him. He is heavy and strong and
hard as well. “Esca,” he murmurs again as Esca releases his fingers to mouth
along his wrist and their cocks slide together with the blanket between them.
“Marcus,” Esca speaks as though Marcus is slow, but says it again to set him
afire and rocks into Marcus’s open legs as the sun rises.
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