#princeps vale au | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

astronicht · 1 month ago

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So this is an AU pwp snippet that I originally wrote for the motorsports zine exchange, and truly it's an AU of the princeps vale AU, but instead of making valentino a grown-up and slightly maladjusted previous boy emperor of Rome, everyone is a Roman charioteer. practically motorcycles. anyway--I think it stands alone, and I wanted to also have it on here!

Marc makes his way to the circus following the smell of horse piss; it wafts on the wind. It is one of those glorious hot afternoons in early September, and Marc is racing for the Ludi Romani tomorrow. The holiday itself is arriving three days later than it's supposed to, because the annual schedule has been thrown off since the end of Februarius. This was one of the years where they had to insert the extra month into late winter to make the calendars work, which would normally be fine: since then the holidays have fallen in place with some difficulty on someone else's part, but it was doable. Then a victorious general and his army came back from Anatolia and Marc had to sail to Rome to race at the victory procession in the middle of Iunius, and now even the edited schedule is off. Marc knows he's racing tomorrow because his brother was gearing up in the morning, and because walking around Tarraco he can smell the horses already grouped in the circus, sweating, waiting.

Marc walks in a wide circle around the outside of the circus, which is surrounded by the detritus of all the market stalls and the annoyed prostitutes who have been unceremoniously removed to make room for the horses, and the race tomorrow. Marc's team is in there somewhere.

The next morning it is either day three or day one of Ludi Romani, depending on your calendar, and Marc wakes early, in the dark. It's too hot to sleep well; everyone forgets that September never gave back summer's teeth.

A holiday is holy first, so Marc goes to the river and then the usual two temples. People yell insults or support when they see him pass by on the street, even though the sky is barely more than gray, and he is nothing but a reddish-gray figure in the gloom. It’s hot enough that people are sleeping outside their houses on mats, on their roofs, perhaps not sleeping at all.

Marc is recognizable: he has to wear red togas and belts when he goes out in order to match the team colors. The yellows and greens are more popular in most places, but not in Tarraco.

In the baths, after the temples, they scrape him down. His face is shaved, and Marc tilts his head for the razor. The Pleiades rose last night, harbingers of the harvest, and unlike so many young men Marc does not have to go home for the reaping. He does not pick olives in winter. He does not wheeze for breath in the copper mines of Flavium Muniguense, in the south of his province.

In fact, Marc had bought out his contract years ago, back before his brother had won anything yet and before Valentino had retired: bought it out himself with his winnings, and then nearly died a free man and mostly a citizen of Rome with his team’s reins around his ribs and crushing his lungs.

To be pulled apart by horses is a terrible execution. To have the horses that do, in fact, love you, dance away from your body that has been thrown from the chariot, trying not to crush you, is another thing. They are well-trained but they are horses so they are foaming and terrified, and the reins are around your ribs— well, it wasn't a successful execution, but not for lack of hapless trying, between Marc and the horses both.

That’s all healed up now, and what isn’t healed up is fine. That his eyes still bother him is the bigger problem, maybe. The arm is a non-issue; no one good at this job would hold the reins in their hands. It’s about the strength of your legs, your ass, your trunk. You move side to side with your body. A charioteer's arms are for the whip, for bracing, and for grabbing the little curved knife that they all keep in their belts, to cut themselves clear of the reins if they're thrown. Marc had gotten to his eventually.

He leaves the baths as the sun is rising. He passes the Temple of Augustus, and then the Temple of Saturn. No one is around, so Marc stops to piss against the building next to the Temple of Saturn.

There, as the first truly bright sunlight of the morning streaks across the dust at his feet and Marc idly takes his hand off his dick and drops the skirt of his toga back down, a voice cuts through the hot morning, and the quiet susurration of the priests chanting inside the closed temple, singing to their god.

“I’m not holding your horse forever, Marco,” the man across the street says, an easy lilt, relaxed. Not an accent from the City, but much closer than Marc’s is.

Marc straightens the drape of his toga, heart pounding. He can smell where he just pissed in the dust. He can smell incense and the baking mud down by the river. Gulls call, but none are floating in the hot air. His belt feels suddenly tight, the rings on his fingers too.

That is Valentino. The shape of that man across the street, slender but slouched and just slightly bow-legged, godlike anyway, is Valentino. Valentino is in town.

Valentino is in Tarraco, not far from the dusty little village where Marc was born.

It was always possible, on a race day in a capital, that Vale might show up, even in the Provinces. But most of each year he is busy training boys up for a debut in Rome at the Circus Maximus.

Marc doesn’t move. Valentino is standing facing Marc and the temple, ostensibly watching the little line of worshipers coming by to leave their offerings at the steps for Ludi Romani. He looks bright, curious, when he is watching the worshipers. Blank and heavy-lidded when he looks back at Marc. Valentino is holding the reins of a lovely gelding, Marc realizes. Marc’s heartbeat is thudding in his throat, in the bad arm, in his ribs.

Another voice. Marc hadn’t even noticed the young man, curly-haired and young, standing with Valentino and the gelding. The young man with Valentino is angry about something: a slight against Valentino, it seems like. He is talking low and fast, and Marc can’t quite make it out.

“Well, he called me a cunnilingator,” Vale says, louder. His voice is amused.

Their eyes meet. Just across the street, Vale looks away and smiles slightly at his companion, or maybe at the horse. His face is wry, creased. He's not old yet, Marc tells himself. The young man he’s with is sunburnt, curly-haired. His neck goes red when Vale speaks. “Now I cannot greet him with a kiss on the cheek, you see,” Vale continues. He is looking at Marc, not the young man, who has not noticed this.

The young man says something, shoulders tense, like he will reach for a weapon.

“No, no,” says Vale. “It is funny, Bezz.”

Marc’s heart is pounding in his gut, his throat. He is not afraid, of course. Perhaps angry? Not even that. It's just that it should be more of a shock than it is, he tells himself. Valentino should be in Rome. Marc saw him from a distance, earlier this year when he raced for the victory parade in the City. That was when Marc was thrown from the chariot and dragged by his good horses, who didn’t mean to do it, but certainly did. It hadn’t been Marc’s first big injury, but the scars on his arm are still a little swollen. He is wearing his curved charioteer’s knife in his belt the opposite direction than normal, so the left hand can grab it.

Vale is sending off the boy — who is in the uniform of the greens, Marc realizes. He must also be racing today, against Marc. Vale is drawing a hand down the flank of the gelding and sending it off too, ambling along after the angry young man, whose hand is nevertheless surprisingly soft on the lead rope. Marc stands there, dressed in red, sweating. Vale is starting to look angry, like he does for Marc now: a cold kind of thing, nothing like the way he laughed off an insult from some unknown man just a moment ago.

Marc is racing today, but not for hours. He is feeling something happening in him, full-body, that is very familiar. His palms are tingling. He feels like he slept outside like all the men and women of Terraco seem to have done, and that he has woken in the heat of the morning to find Valentino here. What year is it? Of whose reign?

They are in Tarraco, Marc reminds himself. They are in Tarraco, and everyone speaks like Marc does. Vale's eyes are hot.

Vale has him in the amphora storage room of the inn where Vale is staying. It is maybe twenty steps from where they saw each other and inside it is already stuffy and hot. It barely matters; Marc always sweats so much when he fucks Valentino that the heat is almost a good excuse. Valentino seems to think it is normal, or else he just likes it. His hands slip on Marc’s hips. Marc is clutching a shelf and hissing through his clenched jaw. Light from high open windows slants across his body, his arms, the back of his neck. It flashes across Vale, too, his sinewy arms with a fine fuzz of hair. It ties them together.

“‘Cunnilingator,’” Vale murmurs again, and lets out a sharp sour laugh. Vale's face is wet with his own saliva. He has been licking at Marc’s ass until Marc had to hold the shelf, until Marc had to come, and then past that. He doesn’t seem to want to stop. This is dirtier, probably, than if Marc had a pussy. Valentino doesn’t seem to want to stop.

The boy from the street had looked the smallest bit like Valentino, but Marc had written this off. He has fucked people who look like Valentino before, and it’s never worth it. The resemblance, he realizes, was truly there this time, but only in the angry mouth and the strong and careful hands.

The angry mouth is wet and red now. Ah, well, Marc’s face is wet too.

Valentino, behind him, says something filthy, and then says, “Let me, let me.” Marc will let him. He doesn’t seem to know this, or isn’t willing to do it without the begging. “Marc,” Valentino says. He spits on Marc’s ass. Marc shakes.

“You know what I want,” Marc says.

Valentino hisses and squeezes Marc’s hips. “Oh, do I?” he says.

"Like always," Marc says, some part of him giving in a little.

"Yes, yes," says Valentino, eyes dark and intent. "I will take care of it."

Marc cranes his head to see Valentino raise the skirt of his own toga and stroke his cock once. He is shaking with wanting Marc, or maybe the strain of the awkward small space.

Marc lets his mouth fall open. Valentino blinks at him and then falls on him, and Marc’s pushed upright and naked against the wall. Valentino’s wet mouth is on his neck. Valentino’s hand is between Marc’s face and the wall. One finger from that hand is easy to suck into Marc’s mouth.

Valentino grunts but waits for some signal known only to him, just says, “Marc—Marc,” in the shining gleam of a single band on sunlight making its way through the wooden slats of the wall and across his face. Marc has to wriggle backwards against him once, twice, before Valentino stops pinning him back into stillness and grips his own cock and rubs it in the spit, then eases in the tip. Marc bites down on Valentino’s finger. The sound he makes is— he doesn’t know. It might be bad if there were anywhere deeper to go, but there isn’t. Valentino doesn’t try to stop him. He maybe tries to shove his finger deeper instead.

Valentino is in him. Valentino’s gentle hand on his ribs becomes for a moment a claw. His grip gentles again but Marc wants the grip back. He doesn’t gentle his jaw on Valentino’s finger. Valentino will wear Marc's teeth like a ring all day. The base of his finger might bruise and swell. He tips his head back, neck limp. Saliva is on his chin now, too.

Vale's face is tacky when he pulls it away from Marc's neck for a moment to look down. He sticks for a moment. Ah, cunnilingator.

"Ah, look at you," he says, looking down at Marc's nude body. The red toga is in a heap on a shelf. Its belt is tangled around Valentino's ankles. Vale is nearly dressed.

Fingertips of the hand that Marc is not biting touch his spine, and then move right to touch the spine of the long scar on his arm instead. Marc stills, and the touch moves on.

How long is the voyage from Rome to Tarraco? His arm is nearly healed, but Vale did not look surprised at the scar when Marc undressed among the amphorae of wine. Just touched it like he did just now, soft as the streaks of sun had touched it. Which was too soft; the nerves are damaged, and it feels like nothing or like a burning itch to be touched softly.

But he had moved on, stripped Marc of his belt in one fast move that made Marc nearly laugh because it did, in fact, remind him of reins around his chest. And then Vale had touched his temples, just lightly, as Marc shed the rest of his clothes.

But now he is panting and fucking into Marc incrementally, rough and shallow, thrust by thrust. Marc's jaw keeps nearly loosening around the finger held in his mouth, and then he regains control and bites down again. Bruises like a ring of purple. Vale never tries to take it back, even when Marc is open-mouthed and panting for breath, still not able, quite, to tip over.

Finally Valentino's left hand pinches Marc, savagely, on the thin layer of fat over the ribs. Marco is so slick with sweat this must be difficult, but Valentino manages it on the second try. And so Marc's body tightens under him, comes for him again, and this time it feels terribly real. There is just enough of Valentino inside him for Marc to avoid being destroyed by it. Maybe.

Valentino pants savagely in Marc’s ear, like the roar in a seashell when no one is there. There is something desperate in it. Ah--Valentino is going to come too.

It takes another minute, and Vale pulls out to stroke himself, but then-- there. When it hits Marc's ass his whole spine relaxes, his whole body relaxes. He sags against Valentino, whose nice toga is now stained with Marc's sweat.

Vale pulls his hand out of Marc's mouth and shows it to Marc. "Ah, look at you," he says. He is still out of breath, though Marc is catching his. Marc blinks blearily at Vale's hand. He drew a tiny bit of blood. Vale turns his hand up and down, showmanlike. The bitten finger is already starting to swell; Vale smiles at this. And yes, at the base of it is a ring of purple set with the pale indents of Marc's front teeth.

#i was editing and expanding slightly but i am so tired now it's just going up!!#marc/vale #mgp #my fic #marc #vale

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