#shades of grey anyone

[the-bi-fangirl-biatch]

"aziraphale didn't want the kiss! it was non consensual!!!!"

then what, pray tell, does THIS mean?????

it's not that he didn't want it, he regretted that it had to be that way. the trembling, the hands pressing to his lips like he wants to feel it again, to savour it. it's supposed to be romantic but it's just heartbreaking.

[teddy-bear-d]

With the Guess the Build crew jokingly asking Skizz if he’s colour blind or if he’s ever taken a colour blind test, I really hope they do make him take one on camera.

Not because I think he’s colour blind (I legitimately think it’s just an object permanence kind of thing) but because I had a phase in 2018 of watching people take colour blind tests and I think it would be interesting.

[coldarena]

uniform studies + kit lists

[ineffableaddiction]

Trust Me

I absolutely love this on so many levels.

This scene shows absolute trust between our favorite immortal beings.

Even after Aziraphale learns that Crowley has never fired a weapon, he still goes on with the show. Without miracles. With the potential to be discorporated.

That is pure faith in their relationship.

Crowley looks like he’s going to throw up until he fires the shot.

But Crowley still goes through with it. Aziraphale mouthed “Trust me,” and Crowley chose to.

And it worked.

I believe that the true religion of these two are each other. They have complete faith in the other. It’s beautiful.

Trust me.

[wwerasliin-sideblog]

Are they really changing though, and is it enough? —

["I'm not an older brother...""I'm not a Wiseman...""....I'm the 'Tribal Chief'. And that means I take what's mine." —for 4 years taking what's *ours*— "We had it all. [...] everybody feared us....""...I don't like being out of control."]

—This right here pretty much sums it up. Roman doesn't understand, what it is to be anything or anyone other than who he's been, the last 4 years.

We get to see a little more into the inner workings of what drives Roman. What he's not, what he is, what he used to be and what he still wants to be. - He doesn't like that things have changed, that things are different now. He's not in control.

It's going to be hard to break from who he's molded himself into, who he's been for the past 4 years. The success he's had, being the way he is, running things the way he has.. Why would he want to change that? When like he said, it's brought him all the money, power, and respect.

The only question now is, if he doesn't understand what it's like to be different, or why he needs to be different... How's he going to choose better or different, and what's he going to choose? Is he going to change, and does he want to change, how's he going to change? How is he going to become who he wants to be? WHO does he want to be, and what kind of person is that going to be?

It's very simple, Roman might (seems to) be a moving away from his heelish persona now, but he's still got a long way to go. He's still very conflicted, and frankly I don't think he's ever going to fully let go of the core essence; of what built him, shaped him, and made him into being the transcendent and unassailable 'Tribal Chief' that he was is.

He's going to have to start somewhere though—Acknowledging his past, what he's done, done to the people around him, especially the ones closest to him, the ones he's meant to "love". A show of some kind of remorse, a genuine apology. The fact that it's Jimmy that seems to be nudging him down this path...

As I mentioned in my previous post, Jimmy - [compassionate to a point, rightness and integrity, even a bit of kindness, sneaking out; the voice of reason - acting as Roman's conscience. Making Roman a little less evil (at least for now) in this instance.]

I like how Jimmy ends up telling Roman the hard truths - about them NOT being the Ones anymore, that they need HELP (help we surmised was Jey, even before Jimmy showed up at RAW this week - which honestly deserves a whole post on its own), YET, he's in the same breath, explicitly stating that he came back for Roman, that Roman is and always will be his '*Tribal chief*', the only one who's still on his side, the only one in the family that still acknowledges him.

You can see Roman really thinking about the words Jimmy has just thrown at him, clearly contemplating them as he watches Jimmy walk away. The look he's giving Jimmy, it's hard to tell if it's because of the blatantly truthful and factual words of reality he was forced to hear or if it's the fact that Jimmy has just called him out in front of everyone, or, if it's Jimmy walking away from him. More likely, a combination.

We can still see and feel Roman's struggle, to be himself, the *tribal chief* who only takes and takes, the one in power, the one in control, the one who's only ever cares about himself, being on top. Or, to stop Jimmy from walking away, to go after him. — in the end his pride chooses for him - to let Jimmy go.

But, there's a slight ray of sunshine, when Roman eventually comes to backup Jimmy, it's a little late but I guess that's the struggle he has to deal with, the choice he had to make... And, in a way he's answering Jimmy, he's responding to him, reaching out; this time he's come for Jimmy, this time he's acknowledging Jimmy as part of his "tribe".

— On the other hand, I still see glimpses of them seeming to be the very same underneath it all.

Roman acknowledges Jimmy only to a point and Jimmy just takes what he gets. A couple of examples:

- inturrupting Jimmy (his first time back, addressing the crowd) just when he's about to focus the spotlight on himself and Solo, "Solo I plan on kicking your as—", — Roman makes his grand entrance right then, and now all eyes are focused on him. But, he masks it, he masks the inturruption by "sharing" some of the spotlight with Jimmy (acknowledging 'Big Jim') but then immediately turns it back all on himself again. And Jimmy just let's him, because he got some, little bit of acknowledgement from Roman. Forgetting why he was there in the first place - to talk about himself and his brother Solo.

- Roman is still unable to hand over the mic, he gives Jimmy just enough though, to keep him satisfied and by his side - a low-five instead. It's a gesture significant big enough for Jimmy to feel validated and small for Roman to still feel in control, keeping them both satisfied for now. Jimmy's content with the little he gets from Roman, this is enough for him, it's enough for now, just like it always has been. And Roman knows that..

[lilacerull0]

i feel like reading/watching mbf immediately means knowing who i am as a person and... i cannot allow this

[procrastiel]

Yeah, in fact I’m pretty sure Good Omens taught us that there is good, and bad, and absolutely nothing in between

[mashmouths]

skipping class but staying on campus to do work for. another class. bc i said i'd have it done before friday bc i'm scared of telling profs no so now i have to read all of robinson crusoe this weekend and watch the nbc pilot of the crusoe series on top of finishing the 2 late essays bc i deluded myself into believing i have a chance of finishing this annotated bibliography in 2 hours. without half the books i'm citing. tee hee <3

[cascadianights]

-Why do you need to differentiate between physical and mental disability? Why do you feel you NEED cripplepunk and madpunk to be totally separate spaces? What happens to the people who straddle both when they immediately run into gatekeeping? Especially when it's largely thinly veiled hate towards neurodivenges and those "obnoxious loud" autistics "taking up space?"

-What harm comes from there being people in your "space" with slightly different experiences of disability than you, knowing that will always be the case even if someone had your exact diagnoses? If that harm is "people who have it better off talking over me," why don't you have boundaries or moderators to make sure voices will be heard? Who decides "they" have it better off? Than who? If that harm is a loss of resources, what resources? The ones that are constantly at risk of being cut because they don't serve enough people to justify costs, or the ones the government offers through intensive severe violating means-testing you're echoing in your "safe spaces?"

-Where's the line? How mentally ill, how homeless, how hospitalized do you have to be before it can be admitted to affect the physical aspects of your life? How physically disabled do you need to be to qualify? What is the point of pushing the imposter syndrome we all suffer from, and are gaslighted with as doctors tell us we're fine or it's in our heads, into our COMMUNITIES?

-Who benefits here?? By creating more and more insular communities, by using the words of someone who created a movement as immovable proof that that movement cannot change or evolve or encompass more? By gatekeeping people whose quality of life has already been deeply impacted by disability? By re-enacting the worst parts of TERF queer gatekeeping and claiming it's so totally different this time (despite having all of the cons and literally no pro) bc DISABILITY?

If your disability pride, spaces, or understanding is dependent on the idea that there are physically disabled people who have it Worse Off totally separate from the mentally ill who have it Better, you're either a psyop or so far up your own ass you needed to continue forcing false delineations of who is Better and Worse, Good and Bad, just to exist in a space. And no one needs that kind of activism

[macroglossus]

it's funny how little i feel like myself when my hair isn't bright ass red

[lightgaswaterelectricityrent]

the harry potter fandom died before we could add tom blyth as coriolanus snow as lucius malfoy to the marauders dreamcast canon 😔

[sysig]

What makes a villain a villain for you? Idk very broad question no wrong answers to it

I tend to conflate "villain" and "antagonist" - or at least antagonistic, if they're a main character like Charm is haha - someone who impedes others, who seeks to do harm, who is in some way uncontrollable and therefore dangerous. I also tend to like villains that have someone or something to rage against, very Megamind haha - "If there's bad, good will rise up against it."

Villains can be as complex or simplistic as you like, which is very fun! Some villains like to be evil for funsies! Some are tortured! Some don't realize that what they're doing is harmful! Yves is great example of a BBEG who has only good intentions imo (and coincidentally, is also modeled after my own ADHD lol, I have something of a soft spot for dysregulated villains haha)

One of my favourite aspects of the True Villainy AU, and kind of Just Desserts S2 as a whole, is how different types of villains look and move in that world - Charm was seduced by thoughts of revenge that stemmed from loneliness and bitterness, where Kaiein is a manipulative asshole who gets his kicks from causing chaos from the sidelines. Their motivations are very different, but they both do harm, and are both stopped! Villains ✨

[mzannthropy]

Natalie Lue says: "People can be more than one thing."

Maybe something worth pondering over, what do you say?

[baluciarz]

gerita 365 days AU but it's actually good because it's not a cringe self insert and would be rewritten to make sense plot wise but I'd keep the huge ass portrait the mafia boss made that was funny

[mat-atitagainwiththe-shitposts]

Oh Goodreads, I know you didn’t actually include 50 shades of grey in a “best boyfriends” list… that would be silly

[lovebugism]

✶ ┄ HOUNDS OF LOVE !

part one | part two

summary: you and marcus live lightyears apart within the city walls when emperor geta takes a greater liking to you than expected. you start to find a strange sense of understanding within the crazed emperor, while general acacius plots your escape. (11k)

pairing: marcus acacius / f!reader, emperor geta / f!reader

contents: established relationships, angst, hurt/comfort, cw for mentions of war, mentions of sex work, brief mentions of emotional abuse (geta has anger issues he's working on), swearing, smut 18+ (dubcon, unprotected sex, exhibitionism & voyeurism) (this is another dark fic!! please heed the warnings!!)

“Meet me in the garden,” you pant against the General’s mouth as you kiss him with a desperate sort of fervor. It’s all wet and hungry and unforgiving, like biting into an apple. “At sunset, on the morrow. Say you’ll meet me there.”

Despite your delicate touch, you cradle Marcus in a most violent hold. You keep him impossibly close with one hand wrapped around his neck, tanned and taut with the strain of war. Your other twists in his hair, dancing through the greying curls of fine silk. You embrace the General within the candlelit crypt where, before now, only death seemed to roam.

Marcus stands as still as the statues of ghosts surrounding you. You lick into his mouth like you plan to breathe life back into his lungs, even while he withers into nothingness at your feet. A thin layer of your spit coats the scruff of his chin. He balls his calloused hands into fists at his sides and pretends a part of you isn’t glittering upon him. He holds onto plausible deniability like a shield.

“It is not safe,” Marcus murmurs in a gruff whisper when you pull back to take a breath. His lidded eyes dart over your kissed face — gaze heavied, lips swollen. Beautiful devil, fallen angel. “You know this.”

Not anymore, he wants to say. Not while you belong to Them.

“Why not?” you challenge, always so girlishly gentle in your stubbornness. “Everyone will be at the feast, Marcus— No one will see us, I’m sure of it.”

Your eyes flit between his kissed mouth and dark-eyed gaze. Universes shine in your irises despite the shadows of the labyrinthine tomb. Marcus feels a white-hot knife twisting in his chest as he resists the urge to hold you.

“It’s the world we live in now, petal. There is little use in questioning it.”

“But why?” you question, anyway. “Why must we live in this world, hm? The war is over— We could make our own, somewhere far away from the city. Somewhere no one could ever find us—”

You create heavens with your naivety.

Marcus burns them down with words.

“The Emperors would not stand for losing their general. For them, the war is never finished,” the General interjects in a sorrowful deadpan, aching when your face twists with grief. “And if they misplaced you? They… They would burn cities to the ground in their hunt… They would set the world aflame before they stopped searching for you.”

Marcus knows this because he knows himself — every star in the sky would burn out before he stopped looking for you. He knows this, too, because he knows the Emperors. Perhaps better than anyone else in the entire world. 

Geta and Caracalla were born with the belief that they possessed ownership over everything they touched. Anyone stealing from their Empire would meet a swift and tortuous demise. They were merciless gods who dangled life and death on their fingertips. Only those who kissed the ring would make it out of their rule alive.

And you knew it, too. 

That was the worst part of it all: you knew it.

Tomorrow comes and passes like rolling summer clouds, slow and heavy and suffocating. You watch from the royal garden as the sky turns from a glittering sapphire to milky shades of peach and lavender. Another day gone by that you’ve spent grieving on your own. 

Though time marches mercilessly on, threatening to untie unbreakable bonds, it changes little of how much you and Marcus have grown together. Like cherry trees kissed with the promise of spring, with your roots tangled gracelessly together. It’s a knot that cannot be undone, not even by the promise of death. 

And for that, you figure you must be grateful.

Because as you sit on the stone steps of an artificial lake, twirling your fingers in the warm water of the koi pond, you wonder how dreadful it must be for the multi-colored carp. To swim in circles your whole life, to think the world is only as big as the bricks holding you hostage. 

At least you know what it means to grow up in the rolling green of an infinite countryside. At least now you have gardens to roam in the greatest city in the world. At least now you get to live.

A breeze sweeps suddenly through the garden, rippling the crystalline water and rustling the bright green leaves over your head. It carries the soft sound of footsteps scraping the stone trail. Your ears perk, your heart stops, and your head whips over your shoulder. You hope to see Marcus standing at the steps below you.

Your chest tightens and deflates all at once at the sight of Emperor Geta.

He’s adorned in his white-gold cloak, with his laurels sat atop his strawberry-blonde curls, and carrying a jeweled ring on each finger. The sunlight paints the man in flaxen rays of light. The rainbow-colored flowers seem to bloom with every one of his steps. All you can think is how beautiful he is — much too pretty to be so cruel.

“I did not mean to frighten you,” the Emperor concedes, eyes wide and palms splayed in surrender. His sandals scuff the cobbles with each hesitant stride.

“No, of course not,” you blurt with a rapid shake of your head, a quickness sure to give away your choked-back terror. “I just… I only thought you’d be at the dining hall with the rest of the court.”

“I was. Until the handmaidens notified me of your absence.”

You meet his wide-eyed expression with a narrowed gaze, lips curling into an unsure smile. “How can I be absent from a place I do not belong, Your Majesty?” you quip, though your voice threatens to shake.

Geta’s brows furrow. His ringed fingers twitch at his sides. “Belong?” he echoes.

“The feast is for nobility, and I grew up in a brothel,” you answer, giggling quietly under your breath. “I am certainly the farthest thing from royalty.”

You flash him a gentle smile and playful gaze, but the Emperor only frowns. 

He can hardly stomach the thought of it — of his most precious thing living in the countryside, surrounded by filth, touched by unworthy hands. He’s glad you’re now, where only he can touch you. Where he can make you clean.

“There is a place for you there, nonetheless,” Geta tells you and takes another step closer. He stands at the bottom of the stone steps and tilts his chin to his chest. His chocolate eyes harden as he presses more firmly, “And I will see that you attend.”

His sudden glacial disposition makes your stomach wrench. You’ve grown so used to him now, learned all the ways to keep him satisfied, that you’ve forgotten how quickly angered he can be. You don’t want to remember his wrath. 

You nod at the invitation with a wavering smile, knowing you aren’t at liberty to turn him down, and rise from your spot by the pool.

You hold your gown in both hands as you descend the stairs, flinching slightly when Geta rushes to help you. Sometimes, you think he can sense your worry, or that he regrets snapping at you the way he does. Either way, his efforts to pivot the situation are apparent to you — like he never learned how to apologize, so he’s forced to improvise in the matter.

His warm, petaled hand engulfs you to ease you down the tricky cobbles. 

“I only mean that… it is strange. Being without there… Or anywhere, really,” he admits, talking slowly like each word is foreign to him. His gaze darts from yours to the vacant path ahead. “I find that I am looking for you in places I knew you could not be. It’s foolish, I know.”

His gentleness is perhaps more striking than his rage.

“It isn’t foolish, Your Majesty,” you insist as you reach the bottom of the staircase. You peer at him through your lashes and fake another smile. “I just didn’t know you were such a poet.”

Geta doesn’t understand your meaning. Where was the poetry in his words? How did such burdensome feelings of tenderness make him a poet? 

“Neither did I,” he muses, guiding you out of the garden with his hand in yours.

Though still riddled with feelings of uncertainty, Geta is strangely moved by how you’re looking at him now — with the sun sparkling in your softened gaze, more gentle than anyone deserves to be looked at. So he figures he can be a poet for you, if he must.

You bathe again in the rosehip oil Geta always insists you wear, and dress yourself in the fine silk gown you know he prefers. The pale blue fabric drapes off your shoulders and flows to your ankles, cinched at the waist with a jewel-encrusted belt of gold. Your skin and body are adorned, in this moment alone, with perhaps more money than you’ve ever seen in your life. 

The thought makes your head swim as you amble to the dining hall. 

The silent guards at your side make no effort to rush you for fear of the Emperors’ wrath. Still, though, the notion that they are commissioned to ensure your attendance is not lost on you. Any attempt to flee will surely be met with force — if not from the knights, then from Geta himself.

The feasting is long done by the time you arrive. Mingling bodies flit around the crowded manor in a blur. Live music swells distantly as rose petals fall from thin air to decorate the marble floor. You wring your hands nervously together as you weave through the bustling court, gravitating to the large open window at the back of the hall — where you know the Emperors rest on their plush, velvet chaises.

Caracalla notices you first.

The boy rises from his lounged position — laurels crooked on his blonde head and robe shifting up his pale thighs — and smiles at you with all his crooked teeth. His lone golden tooth glints in the sunlight. 

“You showed,” he announces to no one in particular, just before his wild head swivels to his brother on the other side of the couch. “See, brother? I told you there was naught to worry about. Did I not?”

Geta does not appear happy to see you. His features remain in an emotionless scowl while his smokey eyes rake over your form. “You did,” he responds distantly, if only to appease his younger brother.

Caracalla doesn’t seem to notice the tension caging him on both sides as he flashes you another toothy grin. “He threatened to send the Praetorians after you,” he lilts like it’s some kind of silly secret. 

The Emperors’ bodyguards line the wall behind them, as well as all the entrances and nearly every window. They were like your Marcus — military veterans, strong and sharp and ruthless — though you imagine the only soft side you’ll ever see of them is a fist. They are certainly not the kind of people you want sent after you.

“Well, you were right, Your Majesty,” you grin. “There was naught to worry about. I was simply making myself presentable for the court.”

Caracalla holds his ringed hand out for you as you near him. You bend at the waist to kiss the emerald on his ring finger. The motion is muscle memory to you now. “You look beautiful,” he slurs like a child. “Like a fairy, almost.” 

“You flatter me, Your Majesty,” you nod politely and rise to full height again. 

You feel his ocean eyes on your body as you pass him by, glassy and sparkling with a boyish sort of wonder. A stark contrast to the way his brother glares daggers at you. 

“You certainly took your time,” Geta monotones in place of a greeting.

You stand obediently at his side and twist your clammy hands into knots. “I was only getting dressed, Your Majesty. I wanted to look pretty for you—”

“Nonsense,” the Emperor spits and turns away. You’re always pretty, he’d say if he could get the words out. Instead, he softens his suddenly hardened edges and flashes you a gentler glance. “I thought you’d defied me,” he confesses, as though in lieu of an apology for his fleeting hysterics.

“I couldn’t,” you murmur with a quiet smile.

Not wouldn’t, he notices. Not shouldn’t.

But couldn’t. Like your body was fated to listen to his command.

A funny feeling sparkles like gold in his chest. It makes him fidget uncomfortably on the couch. “Sit down,” he instructs with a wave of his ringed hand before slouching back in his seat, pale arms splayed along the edge of it. His brows pinch when you descend onto the empty spot beside him. “Not there.”

You freeze in place. Your eyes widen and dart to his thighs, spread out and hidden beneath the skirt of his robe. You look to Geta once more and cower beneath his expectant look. You sink hesitantly onto his lap, feeling like your heart’s in your throat as you lean into his chest. 

Your unsure hands curl around his shoulders. His curls brush your cheek. He smells overwhelmingly of musk and wine and cinnamon. Something about it makes you dizzy.

You survey the room from your position in Geta’s lap. Most people aren’t looking, you find, too busy talking and flirting and dancing together. A few noblemen across the way leer incredulously at you, though, like they’re trying to gauge if they know you from somewhere. You presume you likely slept with one or more of their sons during the war, most of which are likely dead now.

A few women crowd behind the chaise — all dressed in muted shades of silk, all dripped in jewels and gold. They’re pretty, effortlessly so, as they talk into their goblets full of wine. Some looked relieved to have the Emperors’ attention off of them. Others sneer at you for it, having no idea you’d switch places with them in a heartbeat if you could.

Your eyes dart across the dining hall, almost instinctually so. They lock immediately with Marcus the moment he enters the room. 

The General wears his black-gold armor and a faraway look in his eye as he leads a group of foreign gladiators into the manor. A hush lulls over the crowd, which parts for him without thinking. Marcus navigates through it with an absentminded sternness, like every step is muscle memory. 

He softens only when his gaze meets yours. 

His puffed-out chest deflates with a wavering exhale at the sight of you, a lamb on the lap of a man who holds a knife to your throat. He blames himself for it most of all, knowing he’s the one that brought you to slaughter. 

“Finally!” Caracalla shouts into the silence, voice ringing through the hushed court. “Where have you all been— In the showers together?” 

A bout of laughter rolls over the crowd as the blonde boy leans over to you. You try not to grimace at the bitter smell of wine on his breath. “Who nearly missed the games, little dove,” he croons too close to your ear. 

The nickname makes you tense. You muster a smile, anyway, and remind yourself to breathe. “What a shame that would’ve been,” you lilt in response.

“The armor is tricky, Your Majesty,” Acacius confesses, voice deep like a cathedral organ. “Especially for those who have not donned it before. Such as yourself.”

There is a bite to his words despite their monotoned delivery. Caracalla pays it no mind as he lounges back on the couch, wine sloshing in the chalice he holds in a limp hand. “Get it out with it, then,” he slurs.

Each gladiator faces the other. One is tall and sturdy, like an oak tree. The other is shorter and lankier, much too young and far too pretty to fight in such gruesome battles. As Marcus’ voice booms throughout the quiet dining hall to introduce them — The Barbarian versus The Might Vincenzo — Geta presses his mouth to your ear. 

“Which one shall we bet on, little dove?” he whispers to you as his hand curls tighter around your waist. His other idles over your skirt, pale and jeweled and warm, though his long fingers threaten to dip between your thighs.

You blink hard to keep your head from swimming. “Hm?”

“Which one of these imbeciles do you think will win?” Geta repeats.

“Oh, um, I— I don’t know, Your Majesty,” you stammer in response. It’s hard to think about anything other than how close Marcus is to you now. How pretty and wartorn he looks. How desperately you wish to hold him.

“Just guess,” the Emperor presses, squeezing softly at your hip. “It’s only for entertainment, anyway.”

How could certain death possibly entertain you? your mind races as your mouth blurts, “The little one, then.”

“Really?” Geta hums in amusement. His dark eyes, smudged with brown liner, squint softly at your glossy profile. They flit across your features like he’s seeing you for the very first time, though you aren’t looking back at him to notice. “Hm. I would’ve picked the oaf.”

“Well, it is the most obvious choice, Your Majesty. Though, I find it’s often the smaller ones that surprise you—” 

You turn your head to look at him. Your breath catches audibly in your throat when you find the Emperor much closer than expected. He’s so close your eyes nearly cross to meet his gaze. So close, that the tip of his large nose threatens to brush the bridge of yours. So close, you get drunk on the alcohol tainting his breath.

Geta’s wine-stained mouth curls upwards in a cynical smile. “They do, indeed,” he croons quietly, raspberry breath fanning warm over your jaw. 

Chills pebble along your skin accordingly. It takes great strength from you to break his magnetic chocolate gaze. You turn away from the Emperor and focus instead on the gladiators circling one another. Vincenzo moves in seemingly practiced motions, unfazed by the brutality of such duels. The nameless Barbarian houses a great sadness in his young eyes — a hardened look of regret, perhaps, for what he knows he must do. 

“Let’s not entertain them for our amusement, brother,” the Barbarian mutters lowly to his opponent, blade hanging limp at his side.

The larger man charges like a rhino. A deep roar sounds in his throat as he thrusts his knife towards the younger boy’s neck. The Barbarian dodges the swing with ease, possessing all the swiftness of a snake as he ducks past his opponent and slices his muscular bicep with one fell swoop.

The crowd gasps in a mixture of horror and amusement as Vincenzo’s blood drips onto the floor like deep red wine. It stains the marble in fat droplets, blending with the rose petals littered at the gladiators’ feet.

You flinch at the sight. Your breath hitches as you turn away — eyes squeezed shut, brows tightly furrowed. Geta chuckles with merriment. You feel it rumbling in his chest as he murmurs, “Don’t be frightened, little dove. It’s only a game.”

Something in you aches when the Emperor reaches for the jeweled goblet at his side. Your fearful eyes remain fixed on his face while the hall erupts in a symphony of violence — of battle cries and laughter, of dropped blades and dull smacks. 

“Here,” Geta offers with the wine in hand. “Drink. It will calm your nerves.”

He presses the rim of the chalice to your mouth. His gaze never waves from your lips as they part to welcome the bittersweet raspberry. The wine pools like blood on your tongue. It tastes like guilt going down.

Dusk falls over the city like a wounded swan. The velvet darkness outside your window makes shadows of everything it touches, only partially diminished by blinking stars and waning silver moonlight. The crescent shape of the bright white orb would fit just perfectly beneath Marcus’ jaw, you think to yourself. 

The thought alone sends a warm, melancholic feeling down your spine — with such an intensity only the tenderness of twilight could elicit.

You slide from the crimson satin of your mattress with a tight chest. You migrate towards the entrance — bare feet padding faintly along the floor, thin cotton nightgown trailing behind you. You stand before your bedroom door and rap your knuckles rhythmically against the wood. 

Twice, once, three times. 

And then you wait.

“It’s me,” you hear Marcus murmur from the other side.

Your heart swells like sunshine in your throat. You smile wide despite yourself, with no one else around to see it. “It’s been Romulus for nearly a fortnight,” you tell him, panting slightly from where you’d held your breath in anticipation. “I was starting to think you’d been banished from your post here forever.”

“You know the Emperor likes to torture me,” he quips, though his usual monotone never wavers. 

It might’ve been easier on you both, if Geta had shipped him off to lead another meaningless campaign. At least then Marcus could miss you from leagues away. Instead, he has to guard your bedroom door and miss you from the other side of it. Torture is an understatement.

“Well, I quite like it when you’re here,” you confess quietly, tracing shapes onto the doorframe with an absentminded hand. “Makes me feel safe.”

You wait patiently for a response.

“Good,” is all the General can think to reply.

Your face pinches with concern. Your chest does, too. “Are you angry with me?”

“Why should I be angry with you?”

“I don’t know… Our conversations together have grown so short— I worry you do not wish to speak with me at all.”

Though you cannot see him, Marcus flinches at your words. He stands like a statue outside your door, in the middle of the dim corridor, and glares over his shoulder into nothingness. “It isn’t true,”  he insists, voice low but honeyed still. “I wish to speak with you always.”

“Then why do you not?”

“Because it isn’t safe,” he repeats, though you never seem to hear him.

“Will it ever be?”

Marcus goes silent as he ponders for a moment. Quiet engulfs the bedroom all over again, filled only by crackling candles. “No,” he answers after a few long moments. “Not for a long while.”

You feel like he’s stabbed you with a freshly sharpened blade, right between your ribcage and into your bleeding heart. It would hurt less, anyway.  “Why?” you wonder aloud in a pained whimper, knowing the answer will do nothing more than twist the knife.

The answer sits ready on Marcus’ tongue, as though the question of why has plagued him long before you asked it.

“Because I… I ruined you. By bringing you here.”

“You saved me,” you correct.

“I destroyed you,” he retorts, voice heavy with choked-back emotion.

“I would be dead if it weren’t for you,” you remind him of the blatant reality, which threatens to consume you every time you see his face. You wish you were holding it now, cradling Marcus’ bearded cheeks in your supple palms, so that he might understand the weight of your words. “I would’ve lost everything if you hadn’t taken me with you. I would’ve been tortured, probably killed. But now I get to—”

The word gets caught in your throat. You swallow hard and fake a smile at nothingness. The pretending comes naturally to you now.

“Now I get to live. Both of us do.”

There is a brief moment of knowing silence. This isn’t what living is supposed to feel like — fleeting touches in dark crypts and whispered conversations through bedroom doors. Both of you know it, but it’s a truth too brutal to admit out loud.

“Marcus?”

“Yes?”

“You know… We aren’t unspectacular things, Marcus,” you speak slowly and with a strangled intention. “We’ve already come so far. We’ve survived so much— We can survive a little more, can’t we? Until it’s safe again?”

“I don’t presume we have any other choice.”

“We don’t,” you sigh. “Because I love you.”

“I know,”  Marcus nods, with an air of surrender in his words. “Because I love you, too.”

You fall into the heavy wooden door as though it were your lover’s body. You did not need to see him to feel held by him. He hadn’t touched you, and he didn’t need to. His presence alone affects you in such a way that it feels like he has been caressing you for a long, long time.

Marcus’ heavy armor clunks faintly on the other side of the door as he stands up straighter. Emperor Geta enters his line of sight, a shadow slinking down the candlelight corridor. He clears his throat. “Your Majesty—” the General announces, for you and you alone.

He hears your feet pad against the floor as you scurry from the entrance.

“Dog,”the Emperor greets in a cynical deadpan. 

His sandals scuff the cobbles when he stands before the taller man. The torches hanging on the walls bathe Geta’s face in flickering amber hues, highlighting his tired features where the makeup had worn throughout the day. He seems weighed down by a certain kind of grief. The kind that makes Acacius feel ten feet tall.

“Have you been guarding my Empress like a good little hound?”

Marcus nods politely, though the term of endearment catches him momentarily off guard. To be the Emperor’s whore was one thing, but it was entirely another to be referred to in such high regard. The General tries to contemplate what that must mean as he answers, “Of course, Your Majesty.”

Geta grins despite his visible fatigue. “Good boy.”

You’re already back in bed by the time the door swings open. You lounge along the expensive satin sheets and pretend you’ve done nothing but wait obediently for the Emperor, while simultaneously swallowing down any remaining feelings of longing and heartache.

Geta enters the room like a rolling storm cloud. He wears all the chaos of the day in his mussed blonde curls, smudged makeup, and wrinkled garb — a palpable sort of disarray. You scramble on the mattress to greet him, like you often do, until he dismisses you with a wave of his hand.

“No. Don’t,” he commands. “Stay there. Don’t get up.”

You obey, freezing partially upright, with your elbows holding most of your weight. Your face swirls with concern at his look of annoyance. Your heart drops to your stomach in fear.

“Are you alright?” you ask him, though the Emperor pays you little mind as he migrates to the table by the window. 

He pours himself a chalice of wine. The glugging flagon fills the heavy silence. You swallow hard and stare timidly at the back of him. “Are you angry with me?” you repeat once more — a question that seems to accompany womanhood, especially when bound by the innate violence of man.

“I couldn’t be,” Geta answers like it’s obvious, sparing you a fleeting glance over his shoulder. He turns away to down the full goblet in three lengthy gulps, then wipes his stained mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s only my brother,” he confesses through labored breaths. 

Your worry lessens, but only slightly.

“Is he alright?”

“He’s acting like a child,” Geta spits, angered all over again, as he pours himself another cup. “More so than usual.”

“Has something happened?” 

“Nothing that should concern you.”

“Well, it’s certainly bothering you, Your Majesty,” you coo in slow and calculated measures as you rise from the many cushioned pillows. “So, forgive me, but it cannot help but concern me as well.”

Geta is unaccustomed to such tenderness. He tenses beneath it, glances hesitantly over his shoulder like he plans to find a ghost sitting in your place — as though he’d only heard the words in the wind and not from your mouth. A foreign feeling swirls again in his hollow chest, like a blizzard of snow or a flurry of rose petals.

“He’s jealous of me. Just as he always has been,” the Emperor tells you as he stalks toward the bed. He gestures mindlessly with his hands, and the wine sloshes over the rim of the gold chalice until it hits the stone floor. He raises it to his mouth, tips his head back, and down the bittersweet pomegranate.

His neck is long and milky white. His protruding adam’s apple bobs with each languid swallow. A drop of deep red trails from his mouth and down his chin once he’s finished. He rubs it away with a fist. You forget to stop staring.

“Lay down,” he commands, chest heaving. 

Your body obeys without a second thought. You lie back on the velvet cushions, docile and willing, in a way that comes naturally to you now. You’ve been Geta’s thing for so long that a part of you has grown used to it. Needy for it. 

The mattress dips beneath the Emperor’s wait as he kneels beside you. Your mind starts to reel. 

Your brain seemingly anticipates an inevitable pleasure, which comes to you like clockwork most nights. It makes your mouth water like a drooling hound that knows when it’s feeding time. A funny feeling stirs in the pit of your belly and pools like honey in your undergarments. Your thighs clench together when a subtle throbbing begins to pound between them.

You should be grateful when Geta crawls beneath the sheets only to rest his head on your chest.

You’re shocked, most of all, by such a foreign act of tenderness.

Your breath catches when his cheek presses to your breast. He nods gently to rub his burning skin over the smooth cotton. A deep exhale fans from his nose as he rests his body weight against you. 

You cradle him with hesitant hands and remind yourself to breathe. Your fingers scratch lightly over his clothed shoulder while your others comb through his strawberry-blonde locks. It’s a warmth so foreign to the two of you that it threatens to bring you both to tears.

“He says he wants someone like you— my brother,” Geta admits after a few moments of long silence.

“A whore?”

“A paramour,” the Emperor corrects, face twisted in irritation at your use of the term. He focuses on the muffled sound of your heartbeat when anger threatens to consume him. A heavy sigh deflates his chest. His anxious fingers twist in your nightgown. “I told him he could have his pick— Between us, we have plenty of women to go around, but… He insists his mind is stuck on you.”

Your bated breaths come to you in trembling inhale-exhales. You hope he doesn’t sense how frightful his words have made you. 

Geta is cruel, yes, but he is at most times predictable. Though Caracalla may be kind, he is most of all volatile. And there is nothing more dangerous than an erratic, easily excitable ruler.

“And what did you tell him?” you wonder with a feigned sense of curiosity.

“That you were mine, of course,” Geta blurts like it’s obvious. “He offered to share, to which I told him that he should be grateful that I’m sharing the throne alone with him… And now he’s off with his monkey, crying like a child…”

You feel strangely comforted by his words. You breathe a sigh of relief through your nose and rake your fingers through his blonde-brunette curls. “Your brother is a fragile thing, Your Majesty,” you advise in gentle murmurs. “You must be gentle with him.”

“I don’t know how to be gentle with anything,” Geta confesses, half-muffled into your chest. “Least of all, with someone like him.”

“Shall I speak with him? Perhaps I can calm him— make him understand?”

“It’s my burden alone.”

“It is mine as well, Your Majesty. So that mustn’t be true.”

Geta turns slowly to face you, with all the hesitance of someone unused to such kindness. His chin rests on your clothed sternum and bobs with each word. “You shouldn’t have to carry it,” he whispers into the honeyed silence of the candlelit bedroom.

You muster a small smile. “I know. But I will, anyway,” you shrug. “When you care for someone, your brain has little say in the matter.”

Geta falters at your admission. A foreign emotion swims in his chocolate button eyes. He’d rather blame it on the flickering flames strewn around the room. “Is that what this is?” he mutters, almost to himself, when he finds the breath to say the words.

Your fingers in his hair slow to a stop. “What do you mean, Your Majesty?”

“This… This tenderness,”  the Emperor answers, spitting the word like it’s the first time he’s ever tasted it. His face scrunches distantly, as if it were sour on his tongue. “Sometimes it overwhelms to the point of tears. It’s a… a blinding radiance, like… a knife— lodged somewhere deep in the body…”

You cup Geta’s freshly shaven face between two, gentle hands. He swears he sees the sun.

“Why do you speak of love like it hurts you, Your Majesty?”

He swallows hard. “Because it does,” he confesses before rising from your body. 

You mourn his warmth as he swings his legs over the side of the mattress. He sits with his back facing you. His dove white robe hangs off one pale shoulder when he bows his head.

“I never believed in it as a child— the permanence of it all, of… love. And yet, I… I find myself longing for it anyway. Like a fool.”

You rise on one elbow and resist the urge to touch him. “Wanting to be understood by someone doesn’t make you a fool, Your Majesty.”

“I know that I… That I haven’t been the most gentle with you at times. But I am… I am sorry for it,” Geta tells you in near inaudible murmurs, flashing you a sheepish glance over his freckled shoulder. “I understand it must be difficult for you.”

“What, Your Majesty?”

“To be caught between all that was. And all that must be.”

Your stomach wrenches at his words. Your chest tightens beneath the weight of them until you have to fight for every wavering breath. You take a trembling inhale and rise so you’re sitting at his side, taking careful calculation in the following words you speak.

“We cannot… We cannot choose who we love, Your Majesty. We can fight ceaselessly against it, perhaps, but it doesn’t change fate.” 

You reach out for him with one tremoring hand. You rake a rogue curl behind his ear and hope he doesn’t know Marcus’ face is the one stained permanently behind your eyelids. 

“We love who we love, Your Majesty. And the rest stay ghosts.”

Geta’s eyes glitter with an emotion you’ve not seen from him before. His dark eyes flit between both of yours, as though searching for something in your gaze — sincerity, perhaps, or maybe an equal sense of longing. 

You blink, and his mouth is on yours. Geta kisses you back onto the velvet-satin and settles over you once more. It’s wet. Hungry. Unforgiving.

You kiss him back with a similar intensity, clutching his robe in both hands, desperate to understand him.

Marcus remains on the other side of your door — an invisible ghost, an unwilling witness. He hears all of it, as clearly as he would if he were seeing it with his own eyes. A hollow feeling of yearning and hunger gnaws at the pit of his stomach as he tries to imagine your pleasured form. The painting behind his eyelids is blurred and distorted with time.

He wishes he could see you now, even with Emperor Geta fucking you into the mattress.  He could pretend that he was the one fucking you, at least, and let the image alone bring his withered form back to life. 

You’re together in his head, entwined still, with your mouths bruised in a relentless kiss.

Marcus hopes you’re still together in yours, too.

General Acacius spends most of his nights in the crypt, which he feels is rather fitting for a half-dead thing like him. When he is not surveilling your bedroom door, or being otherwise taunted by Emperor Geta, he finds a strange sanctuary in the dreary tombs. It is perhaps the only place where he is left alone. 

Caracalla is petrified by thoughts of ghosts, and Geta detests history, so neither is likely to show their face in such an ancient mausoleum. Which is ideal for someone plotting an insurrection.

You find him there in the wee small hours of the late, late night. He wears a deep red cloak over his white robe, perhaps to conceal himself, as he shuffles around the room to snuff out flickering candles. You wonder who he lit them for because you know he does not need them. He’s grown too used to navigating in the shadows.

Your sandals scuff suddenly against the damp cobbles. Marcus does not seem startled by the intrusion. He knew you were there by the sweet scent of your perfumed body alone. There is nothing about you he would not immediately notice.

“What are you doing here?” he wonders with his back facing you, voice low with a timbre that bounces off the tomb walls.

“I wanted to see you,” you answer sheepishly.

Marcus says nothing in response.

You wring your hands into knots and shift your weight on your feet. He extinguishes the torch on the far wall, and shadows engulf the windowless crypt — save for one lone candle flickering atop Emperor Commodus’ cracking tomb. Your eyes flit from the flame to Marcus’ silhouette, gaze swimming with uncertainty.

“May I ask you a question?”

“I don’t see why not,” he monotones and flits across the room like a ghost.

“What do you do down here?” you ask. When your voice inevitably trembles with distant alarm, you quip, “I only mean it mustn’t be healthy— Spending so much time in the dark.”

“It’s none of your concern,” Marcus insists with a venom that makes you flinch. He hooks his pointer finger around the hook of the candle holder, and the dancing flame paints his statuesque features in shades of amber. He softens immediately at the sight of you.

“I just do not wish to incriminate you,” the wartorn man confesses.

Your chest aches with an immediate concern. “What does that mean? Please do not tell me that you’re doing something perilous—”

“No,” Marcus interjects firmly, then amends. “Not yet, at least.”

“Explain it to me, then. Help me understand.”

“It’s best you do not know, petal. It’s safer that way.”

The word alone makes you cross. You wish he’d stop using it.

“But I will tell you when the time is right, I swear,” he assures you, though his voice threatens to tremble with wavering strength. His dark eyes flit between both of yours, heavy with an emotion you cannot place. “I will keep you safe no matter what, you know that—”

“It’s not me I’m worried about, Acacius,” you murmur with a stern glint in your eye, clutching the downy fabric of his robe in your fists.

“There is naught to worry about, petal. I assure you.”

Marcus takes a step closer to you despite the voice of reason in his head telling him otherwise. He lifts his free hand and swipes a callused palm over your cheek, soft and warm with sleep. You lean into his touch like a cat. A funny feeling blossoms in his chest.

“I’ve been thinking… About what you said some days ago… Making a new world for ourselves…” He talks slowly and deeply and nearly to himself. You nod against his palm to egg him onward. “You were right. We deserve better than this— Why should we have to live like dogs?”

Marcus swipes his thumb over your jaw and takes another daring step closer. You feel the heat from the candle he holds in his free hand, though your eyes remain on his face. You couldn’t look away from him if you tried. A part of you is hesitant to blink even, for fear that you might miss him for a millisecond too long.

He angles your gently head upward with his weathered palm. You can smell the musk on his tanned skin from here, as well as the ale and mint leaves on his breath. It’s dizzying. The ground seems to sway under your feet at the dwindling proximity between you.

“We love each other, don’t we?” he murmurs in a honeyed voice.

You nod without a second thought. Your mouth waters with the hopes of tasting him.

He nods with you. “So fuck the war.”

Marcus ducks down to press his mouth to yours. His lips swallow your own in a kiss, lingering and languid and deep enough to drown in. 

You melt into his touch with a heavy sigh exhaled through your nose. The warm breath fans across his unshaven cupid’s bow while your hands migrate to his hair. You twist the greying tendrils in your fingers, keeping him impossibly close against you. 

When Marcus goes to grip the fabric of your nightgown in both his hands, the candle holder tumbles to the ground. The gold clatters audibly across the cobbles. The wax light falls on his side, and the flame begins to dwindle on the murky stone floor. 

You wonder, briefly, if it will take fire — if the smoke will give you away, or if the tomb and all its history will burst into flames, or if the inferno will take you and Marcus with it.

Though it snuffs quickly out, bathing the two of you in a navy blue darkness, you figure you wouldn’t care if it did burn you to ash. Not as long as Marcus was there to kiss you into embers.

Marcus’ face consumes your dreams. 

The details are blurred with the haze of sleep, but he was there — touching your face, asking to try again. You merged into one another like ghosts. Like drops of melted honey. Like lovers of Pompeii turned to ash. Every day, you tell yourself that it is unsafe to love him more than you do now. And yet he haunts your dreams, and yet you find more love in you for him.

And yet…

A violent hand pulls you from your gentle slumber. It jerks mercilessly at your arm, snatching you from your peaceful dreams and waking you into a nightmare.

“Wake up!” a strident and familiar voice bellows into the quiet bedroom, lit only by the faint blue of an early morning. The words are punctuated by another rough tug at your wrist. You awake to the sharp aching in your fingers.

“Wha—” you slur, trying to blink away the bleary mist as you lift your heavy head from the pillows. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”

“Up!”

You’re urged from the mattress by the unforgiving fingers digging bruises on your arm. You squint through the sleep and ebbing darkness to find Geta looming over you — blonde curls mussed on his head, swollen eyes wide and wild, velvet robe askew on his shoulder to reveal his pale chest. His skin there is flushed red with anger. You don’t know what you did to deserve his wrath.

“Geta?” you gasp through a faint whimper in your throat, trying to pull your wrist from his grip. He only holds you tighter. “What are you doing— You’re hurting me.”

“Liar!” is all he shouts in response, like he doesn’t even hear you.

The crazed Emperor drags you out of bed just to drop you to the cobbles. The thin sleeves of your nightgown slip off your shoulder; the skirt of it bunches at your thighs. You make yourself as small as possible as you shrink away from the man towering above you. 

“I don’t understand,” you squeak through the heart in your throat.

“Liar!” he shouts again.

His voice rings through the shadowed bedroom. You cower in response. He sobers at the fear twisting your features, but only slightly. His heart pounds hard against his ribcage, beating red-hot rage through his veins. He can hardly hear you through the rushing in his ears.

“What have I done?” you whisper, voice trembling.

“You have made…” Geta trails off, swallowing the emotion threatening to strangle him. He blinks away burning tears and spits, “A mockery of me.”

Fear ebbs into confusion. “I have not—”

“You lie!”

“I do not!” The volume of your voice startles even you. You blink up at him with wide, pleading eyes, searching for any ounce of mercy within him. 

You find none. 

Just a man made of towering orange flames, threatening to set you ablaze. 

“I have given up everything to be here,” you whimper. “To be at your side. To understand you—” 

“Make no mistake… Your lies no longer have an effect on me, little dove,” Geta interjects through a bout of cynical laughter. He shakes his head and grins despite the tears glittering in his eyes. “You think you are so clever. That you were brought here, to my Empire, to be cherished...”

The Emperor takes slow, daunting steps towards you. You shrink away from him and choke back a sob bubbling in your throat. Tears fall from your lashes in fat droplets down your burning cheeks. 

Geta grins like it pleases him.

“Let me be clear, so there is no longer any misunderstanding…” he tells you, speaking in slow, deep murmurs as he crouches before you. You can see the flecks of gold glimmering in his deep brown eyes from here. You can see the fire swimming within them, too, as he assures you, “You were created merely for me to destroy you.”

The throne room is absent of its usual bright red roses and ornate gold decoration. The chandelier overhead has not yet been lit. Instead, the spacious room is illuminated by an ever-rising sun — which basks everything it touches in shades of melancholy blue. 

The servants light torches along the wall while you and Marcus stand together before the scowling Emperor. Something about it strikes a feeling of nostalgia in your chest, though these circumstances are much different than the ones you were brought here under. Geta no longer looks at you with lust in his dark eyes. He looks at you, instead, with betrayal.

“Thanks to the civic virtue of some good men…” the eldest Emperor quavers into the silent room. “…Your insurrection has been revealed.” 

Your stomach twists at his words. Your mouth falls softly agape with shock. Of any explanation you could’ve been given upon your sudden imprisonment, you couldn’t have expected this one. You thought, perhaps, that he had somehow found out about your meetings in the crypt with Marcus. You would’ve been able to stomach that, at least. Your love for Acacius is something you’d be willing to die by.

But not this.

Not something you were completely unconscious of.

Geta continues tearily. “The honor… The dignitas that Rome has bestowed upon you— All this, you have forfeited by your treachery.”

“Emperor Geta, please,” Marcus sighs. His deep voice echoes through the empty throne room like a heavenly, sorrowful instrument. He bows his head and swallows hard, knowing now that he must beg for mercy. Not for himself. But for you. 

“Torture me, if you wish, but let her go. She had no part in this—”

“Forgive me,” Geta spits emotionlessly. “But I have no cause to believe you, General.”

Marcus turns to you then, tired eyes wide and pleading. “Tell him. Go on, it’s alright,” he urges gently, though your silence makes his chest ache. “Petal, tell him— Tell him you were unaware.”

You say nothing.

“Tell him!”he repeats in a shout that rings through the quiet throne room. His trained apathy splinters for the first time in front of Geta. He is perhaps more fearful now than he has ever been before. No war was nearly as frightening as the thought of losing you.

“What does it matter?” you mutter in response, voice fragile like glass. “He made up his mind the moment he found out.”

“Then take me if that’s what you want,” Marcus says, pleads to the merciless Emperor. His sandals scuff the stone floor as he takes a step closer in surrender.  “Put me in the Colosseum— Crucify me on the royal steps, if you must— But please, do not make her suffer for something I brought upon her. Do not punish her for my sins.”

“You are the Great General Acacius…” Geta croons bitterly. “What could one more splash of blood possibly mean to you?”

“Everything,” Marcus answers without a second thought, voice heavy with a predestined grief. “It would mean everything.”

Something in Geta shifts. You see it flickering in his dark, teary eyes. A surge of power, almost, like a stroke of bright white lightning. The corner of his pink mouth twitches as he tilts his chin upward. “Step back ten paces,” he commands suddenly.

Marcus’ brows pinch first in confusion, then relax a moment later when he inevitably obeys. His feet sound along the cobbles as he takes ten slow steps backward. He mourns the distance it puts between the two of you.

“Turn around,” Geta’s voice echoes through the vacant throne room.

You hear Marcus take a wavering breath in. He spins on the heel of his leather sandal until his back is facing you. His heavy eyes flutter shut as his chin falls to his chest. He searches for an ounce of hope within himself, knowing he’d lost all of it some time ago now.

The Emperor smirks. “Good dog.”

Acacius seethes.

Geta’s dark eyes, rimmed red with emotion, flit back to you. Something heavy settles in the pit of your stomach — dread, perhaps, or maybe acceptance for what’s surely to come. 

“Was it a lie?” 

“What?” you ask with bated breath.

Geta shrugs, then readjusts his robe when it falls from his shoulder. “Any of it.”

“No.”

“Tell the truth.”

“I am.”

Geta snarls at your subdued emotion. “I am the Emperor of Rome. I could have my pick of whores— You being here is a privilege. Do you understand?”

You nod once. “Yes.”

“You came from filth— to the greatest city in the world,” Geta spits the words like so many drops of venom. He waves his hands up and down your form, pale fingers now void of their usual gold rings. “You were just… some whore without a face before I made you better. I did this!” 

He gestures wildly around the darkened manor, voice breaking at the volume of his shouting. His robe falls askew to reveal more of his bare chest as spit coats his bitten lips. You remain in place while the Emperor inches closer. The fear has left you, as well as any instinct to cry — your grief is too violent for that now.

“I brought you here,” Geta convinces himself. His saliva splatters on your cheek in faint droplets. Tears glitter on his cheeks like stained glass windows. A fire flickers in the deep brown of his eyes. 

“I willed this— I cared for you with every bit of conscience as I was born with.” He takes a deep breath and steps back, shaking his head in disgust. “And yet…”

He turns away. 

You’re able to take in a deep breath for the first time in several minutes when he parts from you. The leadened weight on your chest remains.

“If you do not wish to be here, I certainly will not make you,” Geta rambles in teary blubbers. “One whore is as good as any other— Perhaps I can find one who is capable of pretending she cares.”

You step towards his retreating form. “Geta—”

“Go!” he shouts, looking back at you with a crazed look in his sleep-worn eyes. He wipes spit from his chin and quietens, strangled by an unavoidable emotion. “Now. Walk through those doors, and I promise no harm will come to you. Just do not stand before me and patronize me in this way, I will not stand for it.”

His promise makes your chest swell with hope. You remain frozen even still, stuck at an unnavigable crossroads. Such assurances of safety mean little to you when Marcus

has a sword to his throat. 

You look at the man over your shoulder. He has not moved from his spot some feet behind you. His back still faces you, though you notice his hands are balled into trembling fists.

Even if it were true — even if Geta really planned to let you go without a knight slitting your throat — it would mean little without Marcus. You would not know where to go without him. You would not be able to live with yourself if you left him here, not knowing what Geta planned for him. You would be away from the city, yes, but it would not be freedom.

Your instinctual will for survival is replaced by the primal need to keep Marcus alive.

To do that, you must reach for the bloodied hand of death.

You turn away from your lover — away from the opened cage door and the promise of freedom — and rush to the heartbroken Emperor. You clutch his cotton robe in your fists and tug at the gold trim to pull him closer. You meet him in the middle, entwining your mouth with his.

You kiss him. Hard. With enough ardor to snatch the breath from his lungs. His pink lips part for yours, almost instinctually so, and you swipe your tongue over the rough pad of his own. He tastes of sleep and honey and very distantly of wine. He gets heavy against you as he falls into your kiss. His hands cling to the skirt of your nightgown until his fists start to shake.

You pull away only when he’s melted for you all over again, when the red-hot anger has ebbed from his milky white body. A thin string of saliva keeps you connected until it splits against your chins.

“I know… I know you are hurt, Your Majesty,” you speak in slow murmurs, and through uneven breaths. Your fearful eyes dart over his face and find him utterly kissbitten — mouth swollen, eyes heavy, cheeks flushed. “And I know that it is difficult to forget pain. But I’ve found it’s harder to remember happiness. Glory.”

Each word from your mouth is stamped with intention. 

You speak of glory only with the hopes that he might remember his many useless wars, all of which Marcus has won for him without complaint. There would be no Empire to rule without the Great General Acacius, who dares not to sneak a glance at the two of you over his shoulder. He, instead, keeps his heavied gaze on the torch hanging by the door. The flame sears his vision until he can see you dancing within it.

“We have no scar to show from sweetness, do we?” you quaver with a forced smile, cupping Geta’s burning cheeks between both your hands. You swipe your thumb over a fat tear clinging to his cheekbone. “How can we allow ourselves to be blinded by anger when there is still so much love?” 

Geta snivels and rests his forehead against yours. His long lashes flutter against his glowing cheeks.

“I wept for you,” the Emperor confesses quietly, words weighed down by tears. “I had come to believe that… If I wanted something badly enough, the sheer strength of my desire would make it mine. I see now that it was foolish—”

“Perhaps it is true,” you whisper to him, breaths entwining and kissing both your cheeks. If he notices your voice shaking, you hope he confuses it with desire and not with fear. “Perhaps that is why I’m standing here now. Because I am yours…”

A moment of silence lulls over the blue hour. The quiet feels deafening in the large throne room, quelled only by the sound of heavy breathing. Yours hitches in your throat when Geta parts wordlessly from you. He sniffles once, then exhales hard through his mouth. 

Your gaze remains fixed on his face in an unwavering stare as you try to gauge his reaction. His features are emotionless, but his heavy-lidded eyes flit back and forth between yours — as though he, too, were trying to measure your sincerity. 

Your fate, in that split second, teeters on a knife’s edge. You hold your breath and wait for him to raise his hand. Not to hit you, maybe, but to sic his guards upon you like dogs — either to drag you into a cell or to be kind enough to kill you on the spot.

Geta lifts his palms only to cradle your jaw between them. His long fingers wrap around your neck like he intends to choke you there. He drags your mouth back to his instead. Your noses smush together with the intensity of his touch. It’s all teeth and tongue and spit. Desire and anger and grief. A billion things he licks into your mouth.

The weight of his hunger smothers you. Consumes you. He could kill you this way, if he wanted. There is little difference, you’ve found, between a bite and a kiss. It only matters how deep he buries his teeth into you.

Your chin shines with his spit when he parts from you. Geta’s chest heaves with labored breaths, flushed and swelling with proud. He hasn’t yet let go of your neck. You wonder if he can feel your thrumming pulse against his fingers.

“Show me, then,” he pants. “That you’re mine… Prove it to me.”

The Emperor goes to step back from you. Your hands dart for his wrists, holding him there when he threatens to pull them away. Geta’s eyes widen in shock.

“Don’t make him watch,” you plead in a delicate whisper.

His wide, chocolate eyes flit over your shoulder. He seems to forget about Marcus’ presence until that very moment. He looks back to you, at the plea swimming in your eyes, and nods once in response. 

“Take him,” he calls to the knights lurking in the darkness.

Their heavy armor clinks together as they comply without complaint. They lead Marcus to the door with their hands on the hilts of their swords. You watch him leave from over your shoulder, in the very corner of your eye. You hope he understands, but you wouldn’t blame him if you didn’t. You find it hard to forgive yourself even now.

Marcus always said that people find out who they truly are during times of war. Maybe this is who you are. Maybe you cannot kiss the devil without taking some of his sin.

The door closes with a heavy thud across the room. 

The weight of being alone with the Emperor washes heavily over you. Like drops of ice-cold rain. Like warm, melted honey.

Geta peers at you with a similar uncertainty. Head bowed slightly, wide eyes glittering from beneath his lashes. You do what you have always done — take care of this man the way he’s asked you to, placate his anger with your body. Giving yourself away is as natural as breathing most days.

“Sit down, Your Majesty,” you urge in a gentle whisper.

The Emperor listens as obediently as his knights. 

The sound of his sandals padding along the cobbles fills the suffocating quiet. He descends upon his throne like he was made for it, spreading his legs before him and propping his arms along the golden rests. He looks like a painting upon his seat of power, bathed in the deep blue of an early morning. An angel dragged to hell.

Geta watches you with an unwavering stare as you take slow steps toward him. His brown-eyed gaze goes glassy at the sight of you, an angelic thing all dressed in white. His thighs part to welcome you between them. He tenses under your palms when they smooth over his milky white chest, past the sparse chestnut hair littered there and down to the tie of his robe.

His stomach rises and falls in heavy, uneven pants under your touch. You unknot the string with bated breath, then brush the golden trimming to his sides. He’s bare underneath it, likely from where he’d been brutally roused from his slumber. His cock is on immediate display — resting on his fuzzy thighs, half-hard and glowing red at the tip.

You descend to your knees to take care of him on instinct. His hands dart to your shoulders to stop you. “Ride me,” he commands, though it sounds more like a plea as it spills his swollen mouth.

Wordlessly, you straddle his thighs. The cotton fabric of your nightgown bunches at your hips. You spit into your palm and reach between your bodies for his cock in a single practiced motion. He feels like velvet in your fist. 

Geta’s nostrils flare with a heavy exhale when your hand drags up the length of his cock. His head tips back onto his throne when your fist falls back down again. Your lips find the expanse of his long, white neck like a deep-seated compulsion. You kiss his pulse as though it were his mouth. He cradles the crown of your head and brings his lips to your ear.

“You love me,” he sighs within a moan when your thumb brushes the head of his drooling cock.

You can’t tell if it’s a command to repeat the words back to him, or an affirmation he repeats only for himself. Either way, you nod in response and line his stiff cock at your entrance. Geta’s mouth parts in a silent moan at the feeling of your silky cunt. 

“I do,” you whisper just before you mount him. 

There is a dull ache in your belly when he pierces you, though you’ve grown accustomed to his length with time. Your satin folds split to welcome every inch of him accordingly. Your hips rock back and forth over his supple thighs and your velvety walls pulse around him, swallowing him further inside.

Your breathy moans entwine and fill the air. You keep a white-knuckled grip on the back of the golden throne as you ride him, without break and without mercy — in spite of the burning sensation in your thighs. You tell yourself it’s to finish him quickly, though a primal part of you chases after your own pleasure.

Geta’s breaths leave his parted mouth in huffed exhales as you bounce on top of him. He mourns the sight of him disappearing in and out of your glistening pussy but fights to keep his eyes open to watch the rest of you. Your fucked-out face swirls in a mixture of concentration and pleasure as Geta lifts his hand for the collar of your gown.

He unties the dainty knot at your sternum and tugs the fabric down your chest, baring your breasts for him. His mouth waters at sight of your plush skin, moving in time with your rhythmic grinds over his lap. 

A strangled moan sounds in your throat when he takes your left nipple in his mouth. You caress the back of his head, twisting your fingers in his honey hair in an effort to keep him close. He runs the rough pad of his tongue over your sensitive tit and smiles when he hears you whimpering. 

“You love this,” he mutters against your chest. “You love when I fuck you. ”

You nod until the words catch up with you. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“God—” he grunts through gritted teeth, tipping his head back when one particular grind makes him twitch inside you. His hands grip your thighs over your skirt. His fingers threaten to sear bruises onto your skin. “Your pussy was made for my cock, wasn’t it?”

You nod again.

His right hand parts from you only to come down a moment later. The dull smack of his palm against your clothed hip echoes through the throne room. “I don’t think I heard you.”

“Yes,” you squeak with your face scrunched, trembling when your clit drags across the thatch of pubic hair at the base of Geta’s cock.

“Who’s cunt is this?”

“Yours—”

His hand lifts again. You hear the impact of his palm against your ass before you feel it, a subtle stinging you find a strange comfort in. Geta laughs in maniacal, breathy chuckles when you keen for him. 

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yours!” you exclaim in a feeble gasp, clutching the Emperor to your chest. You shudder on top of him when an orgasm rakes suddenly through your body. It flows quickly and without mercy, but never quite ebbs. You’re left a whimpering, weeping mess while the aftershocks of your pleasure consume you. 

“It’s yours,” you squeak in nearly inaudible blubbers, pressing your kissed mouth to the shell of Geta’s ear, repeating the phrase like it’s the only one you remember. “’S your pussy… It’s yours…”

The words alone are enough to make Geta burst inside of you. 

He tenses all over. His dull nails press crescent shapes into the skin of your thighs. His rosy mouth parts to exhale a guttural moan. You feel his cock jerk with your drooling confines right before he spits several loads of cum inside you. Your cunt pulses around him, instinctually milking him for every drop of liquid pleasure, and a whimper sounds in Geta’s throat.

You feel it bloom in the pit of your belly like a flower — something soft and warm and seeping. As the two of you relax against one another with wavering exhales, you feel his cum leaking out of you like drops of summer rain. It pools on his lap and drips down to the throne underneath him, tainting the gold with a mixture of your sin.

It proves a point. Marks a territory.

Geta swells with pride.

Your back slouches as you melt into his body. You hide your burning face in his neck as his feverish grip on you loosens. Geta twitches beneath you when your cunt pulsates around his softening cock. “Mm…” you hear him hum, mixed with a laugh you feel rumbling in his chest. His head tilts back as a lopsided smile tugs deliriously at his mouth.

He runs a gentle hand up and down your spine, a reminder of his being there despite your feeble efforts to dissociate your brain from your body. You can’t ignore the warmth of his touch on your tingling skin, or the way your hearts press together and beat to the same rhythm.

A distant feeling of acceptance pools in the pit of your belly along with the Emperor’s cum. Your grief is a much more discreet thing, however, and you miss Marcus like an unstitched wound that won’t stop bleeding. Like a knife lodged somewhere deep in the body.

“I think… I think I’ve found an adequate punishment for the General,” Geta pants, the crooked grin audible in his words. “Perhaps he will learn his lesson when I’ve fucked a child into you—”

You tense when the Emperor’s palm splays over your stomach.

“—Perhaps then he’ll understand that you’re mine.”