fortis cadere, cedere non potest

[al_shairan]

Several years ago, when Flavius Sulpicius Allectus is a young man returning from serving as tribunus laticlavius in Parthia. Having been away from Excolo for three years, tonight he visits the house of his patron and friend, Potitus Icilius Tetricus Crassipes...

I stand in the atrium of Tetricus' house. It feels strange, almost stranger than my return to my own home. I spent so many evenings here that it was more a home to me in my late boyhood and early manhood than my own house, but it has been years since I have been here. It looks the same, and different, and I find I am nervous.

It is not a very manly thing, to feel this way, especially not for a returning soldier. I am in uniform - I have not been decommissioned yet, officially, and I also had the idea that Tetricus might like to see it before I put it away and seek out my next position as a quaestor. I think I am done with the army, but Tetricus got me there, and it might please him to see the cuirass and striped tunic I wore as tribune. And I have the sense that I look well in it, which should not really matter to me but somehow seems to. I am quite certain Tetricus and I have put our former relationship behind us. No man of his standing would want to continue - being with a man of my age in that way, and now I am no longer so very young I should not want it. The first few months in Parthia I found I did miss being in bed with him, but that faded as it should, as my own tastes changed and grew into manhood. I am not delighted now by the idea of lying back on a couch with a man on top of me. I had - other experiences in Parthia that showed me that. Those experiences were not altogether what one expects of an Excolan man, but I think I am in all other regards manly enough for people to turn a blind eye to it. What I found was that I missed him. Our friendship has grown in our absence from one another, which is strange. Perhaps it was easier to talk when he was not distracted by my beauty and I was not so shy of his status. It is easier, often, to be honest on the page. Or so I have found. We are friends now truly, I think, more than we were before. I hope that translates into everyday life. That alone must explain my nerves, surely.

Adjusting my helmet under my arm, I wait for the slave to return with Tetricus.

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[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

"Wait." I am frustrated when he pulls away. I sit up and straighten myself a little, hands shaking. When he returns there is a moment of silent, and then he is undressing himself. My pulse is trembling in my throat as he pulls his tunic off, his body lean and muscled and - beautiful. Yes. Beautiful.

And desirable. I would reach for him, but he says: "Take off your clothes."

It is a command, not a request. I think of balking at it, but he assured me he wants me as a man, and I have asked him to lead me in this. I stand up slowly and remove my own clothes. I should not feel so self-conscious in front of him, when he has seen me naked so often, but I am aware of the comparative softness of my own body, the heaviness of greater age. I do not see that he can find me lovely to look upon.

I let him see me, though, my stance open, and I cross to him. I put my finger on a scar on his chest, lightly: "Which wound was this?" I am so very hard.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

Tetricus takes off his clothes. It makes me tremble a little. I am not afraid, but I am nervous and I want him so much, so fiercely, that I almost feel sick with it. The strength of my own feeling overwhelms me.

He looks a little self-conscious as he undresses. Tetricus has always been aware of the weaknesses of his body, but in truth I feel nothing but a fond sort of familiarity when I look at him, coupled with a sharper desire.

He crosses the room, and he touches my chest.

"Which wound was this?"

"A training scar," I say thickly. "Practising swordplay. This was in a skirmish," I say, moving his hand to a wound in my shoulder. It was more serious than I let him know in my letter once I had recovered. It has left a small puckered scar, paler than the rest of my skin. "You have no new marks that I can see," I say, skimming a hand down his stomach. "You are as I remember." My hand rests at the base of his belly, then slips lower, circles his prick.

"I remember this," I say. "Between my thighs, and how I would strain against you, feverish for my own completion, and I would come with your hand pressed between us." My fingers tighten around him briefly. "It was very sweet. I want more than that, now. I want more of you." I lower my head to kiss his throat firmly, mouth hard, and I graze my teeth against it.

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

The thick texture of scar tissue under my fingers makes me shiver again. Oh, gods, it is not anything I ever thought to find arousing, used as I am to the fine smoothness of boys and women. His chest is smooth, but the hair at his crotch is thicker and darker than once it was.

"You are as I remember." He strokes me slightly, then takes hold of me. I breathe out through my teeth. "I remember this. Between my thighs, and how I would strain against you, feverish for my own completion, and I would come with your hand pressed between us. It was very sweet."

It was, and I am unsure of how we have come from there to here, but he does not give me time to think. "I want more than that, now. I want more of you."

His lips go to my throat, his teeth. I put my hand on the back of his head without thinking, to press him there. "You have me." My voice is rough, and something in me twists through fear into fierceness. I think my control is fraying, and my hand fists in his hair. "I tried to be gentle with you, then." I do not need to be, now.

If this is to happen, let it happen fully. I use his hair to pull his mouth from my throat, and give him a small push to move him back against the couch. "Show me, then," I challenge. "Show me what you want."

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

"I tried to be gentle with you, then."

"You did," I say, kissing his shoulder. His fingers twist in my hair, and I shudder. "I am glad you were. You were kind, and I needed that as a boy." I look up at him. "I do not need that now." I think my gaze must be quite dark.

I kiss his throat again, and he pulls my hair. He pushes me back against the couch, and I growl very softly, but not with anger.

"Show me what you want."

"Oh, I'll show you," I say, and my smile twists up into something sharp. I pull him down onto the couch with me. I think if he lies beneath me facing forward it will remind him too much of our encounters, and he will feel the boy. And so after a moment of fierce kissing I roll him onto his front and straddle him, and I set my teeth into the back of his neck, my fingers digging into his shoulderblades. "I want to make you shout for me," I say in a hoarse whisper against his ear. I feel I can be freer now he cannot see my face. "I want us to strain together, muscle and sweat, neither playing the boy, both wanting all of this..." My hips flex against him involuntarily, and I bite the inside of my cheek.

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

His strength inflames me more than I would have expected. Somehow I find myself beneath him, pressed into the couch, and he digs his teeth into my neck like a mating lion. I cannot help but feel a little lessened to be beneath him, and -

"I want to make you shout for me. I want us to strain together, muscle and swear, neither playing the boy, both wanting all of this..."

It eases my concerns, replaces them with fierce desire. I growl a bit and press back against his torso, and feel his hips drive down against me. Does he wish to - The thought is shocking, and yet I feel that I can hardly breathe. Yet I cannot think he means that.

"I want you," I grind out through teeth clenched more with desire than shame. "I want you. I had not realised how much," I add, and it is an admission to us both, and a relief. All those times his letters arrived and my heart leaped in me - it was beyond common friendship, I think.

I want to ask him when he learned he wanted this, how he learned - if it was something he saw in me - but that would require clear thought and speech beyond any ability I have now. My prick is pressed up against the couch under me, and I move under him to feel the friction of the cloth. It is not enough.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

He pushes back against me. Oh, gods, yes. This is what I want, no passive yielding. I want the strain of him, I want to push down on him, and later force into - The thought of it makes me shudder. I know many men think it is a perversion, and perhaps it is, but oh, it is sweet, and with him, Tetricus who has grown to take up so much of my heart, who has in the space of an hour made me harder than I think I have ever been before -

I have to hold myself still for a moment, and breathe.

"I want you. I had not realised how much," he says, and I sigh then, strange sense of relief in the midst of this, and I let myself kiss his shoulder quite tenderly.

"Yes," I say. "I have wanted you for so long, and I did not know it until you took me in your arms at your door."

That is enough tenderness, I think.

I slide down him, kissing the length of his spine, tongue and lips, and I bite the curve of his buttock. The skin there is firm, and it makes my stomach twist with anticipation. I put a finger in my mouth, making it wet, and I part his buttocks quite gently and touch the tip of my finger to his anus.

"Have you been touched here?" I ask, and rub lightly.

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

"I have wanted you for so long, and I did not know it until you took me in your arms at your door." His lips on my shoulder are tender, and it makes my throat feel tight for a moment, but then he is kissing down my back, tongue moist and teeth sharp and scraping. They sink into my buttock and I jump.

And then go very still as something moist touches my anus. "Have you been touched here?" His finger rubs me, and despite myself I groan.

"Once," I say thickly. A sweet-faced, wicked boy in a brothel, who pressed his finger there while I fucked his mouth. I came astonishingly hard, and overpaid him so that he would not speak of it. "Never," I add, and I must force the words out, "inside."

My breath is coming fast and shallow. For all his talk of us as men, I cannot see this as anything other than shame, as unmanning. To be - penetrable...it is unthinkable.

But not unthinkable at all, it seems, because I am so very hard. I stifle a sound in my throat as he rubs me. Either I trust him to do this or I do not, and as I realise that some of the pained tension goes out of my muscles, makes space for desire. Yet I cannot imagine him putting his prick there.