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In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas were still large, florid, and untrammeled, as became the half of him which was barbaric.
Tony eyes the crowd, counting the outstretched fists with their thumbs predictably cast down. Beside him, his father—the emperor—stands and then approaches the limestone pillar rail. Tony doesn’t have it in him to roll his eyes as the man pauses for effect. Not today. But the silence stretches on, and when the crowd is left on the edge of their seats too long for an appropriate air of pure dramatism, Tony’s veiled attention jumps from the fallen gladiator’s pleadingly raised finger to his father. Horatius is smiling at him expectantly, his arm reaching out to beckon Tony forth. Tony stands up obediently, swallowing any sour taste not born from his wine chalice.
The blurred white and red colors of the senate officials’ robes catch the corner of Tony’s eyes as a stern hand grips his shoulder. Horatius’ gaze flickers pointedly to the senate box, as if to confirm his silent question.
“Today dawns on you,” the emperor speaks, low, and the gentle shake of his arm around Tony could be read as something fatherly if you didn’t know better. “You ought to be the one to please the crowd.”
Tony knows better on all accounts, and that it’s the senate that needs charming, not the crowd.
“Antonious!” His father bellows, the bowl of the Colosseum carrying his voice.
The faceless crowd cheers for him. For his verdict. Tony’s lips tighten into a smile as his father takes a half step away, aptly embodying a looming shadow. The citizens raise their fists again, thumbs pointed at the stone beneath their feet. And when he trains his faux smile at the field, it’s not the damned and bleeding gladiator lifting his finger for mercy Tony stares at, nor the one with his lance poised and steady, nor the crowd or the senate. He stares at the dark-stained dust of the field as he holds out his fist, thumb aimed at the ground.
His eyes dare not leave the dust even as that lance drives through the defeated gladiator. The choked cry echoes under thousands of cheers, everything blending into a collective piercing scream.
ↂ
The games go on for hours into the day.
The sun begins to depart with eerie orange-cast shadows over the limestone walls and Tony’s chalice nears on empty. The emperor stands once more but mercifully does not motion for Tony to rise, some unspoken knowledge between them about Tony’s capacity not to sway.
“Twenty-seven years ago on this day, Juno blessed me with a son!” Horatius announces. “We rejoice!” Tony does roll his eyes now as the crowd chants his name. “And may Fortuna choose his gift, survivor of this day’s last spectacle,” Tony perks up at that, not from interest but sheer surprise.
His father’s brows raise pointedly and Tony grins with a veneer of gratitude. If not for the wine in his belly, he fears the blood under his skin would dance with something close to sickening dread. It’s one matter to know of the games and have no interest in them, and another to be the catalyst for bloodshed.
But he must roll his jacks right on this day and smile for his father and for Rome.
The sinews in Tony’s face freeze in place as the first gate lifts. A tiger strolls out from the wooden cage-like gate without any coercion from the lanista. Tony admires its pelt in the setting sun, envisioning the brilliant orange colors splayed across the large desk in his study. He entertains ideas of swaying the game in the beast’s favor, like demanding that the lanista arm the tiger’s contestant with nothing more than a dulled dagger and a loincloth so that Tony may surely receive its hide. Mere ideas, born out of complacency to this shade of entertainment, most likely. The thought doesn’t entertain him for more than a moment before he finds his chalice now void of anything that would wash down the dismal taste left by said boorish ideas.
Before he can discreetly beckon the servant behind his shoulder for another vase of wine, there’s a commotion in the field. An odd number of lanistas and beast handlers disperse from the hypogeum in an agitated panic, flames engulfing their exit. Tony’s wide eyes scan the scene as slaves pour readied buckets down the sides of stone walls, and water trickles over the charring wooden gates.
“You fool! You knocked over the goblet!”
Tony hears a man yell below him.
“I—I did not!”
Followed by the slamming of a heavy wooden door.
“Incompetence,” Horatius laments under his breath.
The show draws a collective chuckle of all things from the crowd, and perhaps there sits a dry seed of disappointment in Tony’s chest as the flames on the wood bars, along with any hopes that they might engulf the Colosseum and all its occupants, die to a simmer. The field grounds remain alight with withering pools of oil, however, if only at the exit of the now-open west gate.
Where Tony once yawned at the boisterous attempts for a grand entrance from the gladiators throughout the day, he finds his interest held captive to the dark-haired figure that struts out of the searing gate, with no encouragement, and steps through the strip of flames like it were rays of barley licking at his bare shins and sandals, and not the immolating touch of fire.
The warrior walks as if he carries the imprimatur of Sol, sparks and ash of the sun’s embers in his wake. An intricately-jointed black metal armor plate coats his left arm, sure to make an effective shield against the beast’s incisors. He is guarded by nothing more than a studded leather pteruges around his waist and a shoulder plate strapped to his right arm, his defined and glistening chest on display for the thousands. Unruly shoulder-length hair dances over his features in the death-soaked breeze when he stops in the center of the arena and lifts his chin to the imperial box.
And then Tony sees them—sapphire jewels. More brilliant than any cat’s pelt, more ablaze than the slow-dying fire plaguing the ground or any glory beget of the sun. The gladiator’s crushingly blue eyes glow amidst a flurry of oranges, grays, and spattered maroons cast throughout the field of dirt.
The mild-mannered servant Tony had motioned for a secret booze run mere moments ago leans over and murmurs to him, “He is a ward of the war, captured from the tribal provinces of Dacia.”
It’s only when those eyes that hold the sky lock with the tiger’s does it dawn on Tony that he is standing now at the limestone railing… pausing for dramatic effect. He dares a glance back at his father; the man sports a pleased sort of grin that twists some defiant part of Tony, but it’s for once drowned by the lure of the field. He briefly ponders if his father’s satisfaction extends from far-fetched falsities, like Tony’s newfound “appreciation” for the games or something equally atrocious, but just as suddenly remembers that he cares not.
Tony gathers his breath and announces with his whole chest, “Dominatum ad bestia!” Only after several confounding seconds of the crowd igniting with laughs and jeers does Tony understand that he called for the gladiator’s domination of the beast rather than damnation to it, but he smiles through the tumultuous roars of the citizens nonetheless.
All was ready. The signal was given.
If the accused opened the one dreaded door, there came out of it a hungry tiger, the fiercest and most cruel that could be procured, which immediately sprang upon him and tore him to pieces as a punishment for his guilt.
The battle lasts only moments, but to Tony, the sun simply sets in place, time unmoving.
The claws are too swift for the man to avoid every swat of its paw, and first blood hits the dirt. Tony’s fingers clench the edge of the stone rail until they whiten. When the beast latches its fangs onto the plates of the warrior’s arm guard, there is the long dagger already seated patiently in his right hand, the piercing blow beneath the animal’s ribcage coming fast like a damning judgment. The arena falls silent, the only sound a low groan from the beast as it collapses beside its vanquisher.
But, if he opened the other, there came forth from it a lady, the most suitable to his years and station that his majesty could select among his fair subjects…
The crowd erupts into an uproarious applause.
ↂ
Tony arranges for his newest acquisition the proper dwellings of a victor.
If Tony waits two days before visiting it, he does not dwell on the reasons. It may be due to that long and arduous conference, where his presence was merely decorative. Or perhaps he was feeling hospitable, allowing the champion ample time to settle in. Another possibility, thoughts of the blue-eyed man planted a seed of unease in Tony’s gut, a disquiet that even wine could not chase away.
After two days have passed, Tony reaches the end of the cobbled foot trail to the gladiator’s quarters when he gives pause to a hurried servant girl. She pauses too, her face ashen and lips tight with nerves. Her eyes ask to speak, whitened fingers clutching the basket in her arms like a shield. Tony dips his head to her, a habitual gesture of dispensation.
“O’ Lord, the fighter…” she murmurs conspiratorially, “he is unstable, reactive. Please, be cautious,” she warns and leaves before being dismissed, the twilight and mild evening winds catching the hem of her sun-blanched tunic. Tony narrows his eyes at her as she makes her escape, and maybe it’s owed to the poor bathing pits of a slave, but he thinks he can catch the sour scent of her fear in the breeze.
It’s then with no small heap of careless abandon does he turn on his heel and make his way to the dwelling, the girl’s warning lingering in the back of his mind like a faint echo. It does nothing if intrigue him—a slave more afraid of a gladiator’s whim than to mind her manners to the prince.
He does not knock, pressing open the door to the gladiator’s chambers, well-insulated and fixed with windows (generous details at Tony’s behest). The door creaks shut behind him and he blinks, adjusting in the dark; the sight stirs him with incensed distaste. The windows—novelty additions to a slave’s dorm—are boarded tightly with hides, and yet the air is somehow chiller within than outside. The silk clothes and other adornments Tony had sent as gifts lay untouched—no, gracelessly shoved into a far corner and stained by the ground. Irritation twists Tony’s face, but it quickly dispels when he gets a now-focused eyeful of the gladiator. Topless.
The champion—every bit the menacing creature from the arena, even under the room’s illusion of domesticity—sits on a wooden bench and methodically sharpens a long blade, the rhythmic sound of metal against stone filling the room. Tony’s eyes linger, momentarily helpless to admire the way the pitiful torchlight plays off the man’s skin. His attention settles on the heavy metal armor plates that adorn the gladiator’s left arm.
“Why do you still wear that?” Tony’s impetuous mutter cuts through the ambient crackling of the dying torch in the corner and the sharp drag of whetstone against metal.
The man does not look up, his focus steady on the stone scraping over the blade. Tony’s acclimated eyes follow his movements and spot the dots of water flicking off his wrist with each perfunctory swipe, reflecting the dim firelight like tiny embers. It drips from his blade, over his leather-clad lap, and streams down his bear shins to his plain sandals. If Tony stalls at the revelation, he doesn’t let it show.
“It serves its purpose,” the fighter replies finally, deep and gravelly, devoid of emotion. His accent is gruff and heavy to Tony’s ears; R’s roll on his tongue and he drops every other vowel with alluring and exotic flair. He doesn’t elaborate, rotely reaching back for the bucket to re-wet the stone and resume his work.
Tony, never one to exalt “etiquette” like his father or the priggish foul of the senate, finds this man’s blatant lack of regard and gratitude irksome. He also finds the need to choose his tone with care, which inexplicably annoys him further.
“I see you care not for the robes,” says Tony, voice cut and terse. “Unfortunate,” he prompts and awaits the warrior’s reply. It doesn’t come. Tony squints, battling impatience. “You are not of Rome,” he begins, “and I am not quick to anger,” which is only partly a fib. He languidly paces farther into the room as he continues. “So, unaccustomed as you are to our nation’s—” he clicks his tongue and gesticulates, “statutes,” he pointedly stamps his heels together, stopping a few paces from the bench, “I can overlook your… misguided foible.” There’s something about the way the man’s head briefly aims at the wadded pile of clothes in the corner that prompts Tony to add, “There’s no helping your taste in coverings,” he mutters quieter, eyeing the sharp spikes of the arm plates, “but you are to stand and address your master respectfully—should you not wish to face the consequences of insolence,” he turns his nose up.
For a prince who often sees his needs are met by way of an easy smile or quick command, the words and motions feel alien to him—beyond that, he’s heard these phrases per centum over and again aimed at slaves and scribes, often bolstered with the threat of lashings. Tony is usually the first to twist his lips in disgust at such overt displays of status. But now his lips are flat, donning a practiced mask of authority and resolve; and maybe it’s a curious thrill that trickles underneath his irritation, born from the novelty of exerting his title to bend another to his will where it came all too easy before.
The gladiator pauses, then sets aside his whetstone and slowly rises to his feet, glaring blade still in hand. He is a towering figure, and as he approaches he looms over Tony, filling the prince’s chest with an unforthcoming pang of uncertainty. Tony cranes his head up to gaze at the man and bears his composure, refusing to be intimidated.
The gladiator’s expression remains impassive, his eyes fixed somewhere by Tony’s sandals.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” he says dryly and with an impertinent air of finality as if it’s his place to shorten a conversation with Tony.
It is a perfunctory response, one that does little to appease Tony’s welling vex. “What is your name?”
“Jämes,” the gladiator replies, his gaze still downcast.
“And where are you from?” Tony presses, though he knows the answer.
“A fallen tribe of Dacia,” Jämes answers, his voice still a husk.
Tony scrunches his nose and feels a wave of exasperation wash over him. He is getting nowhere with this man who thinks it right to withhold himself from his procurer, from the prince that cared to endow him with fine silks and shelter munificent of a slave—a mere entertainer. He ponders bothering with this man, this shell of a warrior who shows no spark, no fire? What had he seen but the fierce determination in this Jämes’ gaze during the battle in the arena, those fiery blue eyes that had captivated him so? Yet here, in this space of Tony’s choosing, Jämes seems a mere shadow of that warrior.
It is then that Tony realizes Jämes has yet to properly meet his face. The gladiator’s chin stays pointed to the blade in his hand or the floor beneath his feet. Tony’s brows knit and his disappointment gives way to an itching desire to witness the fire that so enthralled him.
“Look at me,” Tony commands, his voice softer but no less insistent. “I wish to see your eyes.”
Jämes hesitates for a moment before finally lifting his head. When their eyes at last meet, Tony feels a jolt of remembrance under the connection, spellbound. The same fierce intensity, that wolfish spirit, is there, boiling at the impossibly blue surface. It’s enough to remind Tony why he had been so taken with this man. And maybe it is a spell, some shade of a sorcerer’s trickery, that Tony realizes too late the rage and contempt and resolve that stirs in this connection… and he grows acutely aware of the blade still seated in the warrior’s clenched hand.
Something raw flares in Tony’s chest and he flinches, like would a fox to a snarling wolf—a mistake that never fails to provoke a beast and prove fatal.
Tony is yanked by his robes before he can turn away, swiftly and emphatically pinned to the wall. His first instinct is to yell and spew commands, but the dull and echoless walls don’t return his bellowing, very well-insulated indeed.
A sharp grip bites at the back of his neck, delivering a pain so blinding it steals his breath. The paled face of the servant girl flashes under Tony’s pinched eyelids. Surely no lone wolf could be brazen enough to strike down a fox most prized by its den—it’s a recipe for a torturous end. He scrambles to comprehend how his pedestal could be so easily knocked over by a brutish slave, almost literally feeling it collapse beneath him as the tides of favor shift away from him like they never once belonged in his bay.
“Enough,” Jämes all but growls.
Tony’s preservationist spirit obeys, his breath coming out in shallow gasps as he stiffens against the gladiator’s iron-bolstered grip. The wall presses into his cheek, rough stucco scraping his skin. The room is silent save for the sounds of their breathing and the snapping of that slowly withering torch casting haunting shadows that dance across the wall, agitating Tony’s vision.
“Are you so foolish as to lay a hand on the prince of Rome?” Tony asks carefully, breath strained with poorly bridled nerves and indignation.
The plates on Jämes’ arms creak and rattle as he leans in close, his breath hot and torrid on Tony’s ear.
“‘Foolish?’” He rumbles low, his florid accent soured with bitterness. “You think me foolish? I can tell you about foolishness, Prince.”
Tony battles the quiver in his spine as Jämes languidly grazes the blade’s tip up his leg from his sandal strap to his thigh, hiking up his robes.
“I am the last of my legion, O’ Lord,” Jämes informs, sparing no ounce of spite. “We were taken alive, some of us only just, then strung up, made to perform for our lives—for your amusement,” Tony swears he can hear sturdy rows of teeth splintering from the pressure of furious gnashing over his shoulder. “I would have sooner burned in the arena than dance for Rome’s jovialities, but…” the fingers on Tony’s neck slacken, but impossibly strong nails dig under his skin in their place, “oil can only burn for so long on blood-dried stone.”
Tony’s chest seizes and it dawns on him. “You… you knocked down the goblet,” he whispers, hardly audible.
Jämes doesn’t respond immediately, his silence a heavy ox’s mount weighing on Tony.
“You could call that a ‘foolish’ attempt,” he admits before continuing. “My tribe, my brethren, were massacred,” Jämes’ words tremble with searing hate… and shadowed loss, its echo so familiar now to the prince that he can’t mistake it.
An ambivalent entity takes residence in Tony’s gut—guilt, or perhaps a twisted sense of empathy. He will forever question why flashes of his mother’s smile take root in his mind at that moment.
“If it bares you any solace,” whispers Tony, monophasic and weary, “I reap no joy from the games…”
Jämes is silent for a long time, his grip on Tony’s neck wavering as the moments pass. Tony allows himself a sliver of hope—another grave misstep that must have made itself known to the beastly Dacian tribesman through methods unbeknownst to Tony (though, a tad deliriously, he theorizes upon the man’s capacity to smell fear). The warrior bristles with renewed contempt.
“You speak of solace,” Jämes snarls. “There is no such solace for me. Heathen-fevered Rome stripped me of my life, my tribe, my honor. And now, ever the foolish prince you are, to strut into my cage armed with nothing if not your pride,” the hiss at Tony’s ear dulls to a heavy whisper, underlining those exotic undertones he hadn’t realized he’d been straining to hear, “I will strip you of yours.”
Tony’s lungs and heart take on an unbearable race against one another as the blade glares dangerously in his peripheral. He jerks his head at the ceiling, bracing for the inevitable slice of mind-splitting pain, not daring to watch.
Instead of the sharp sting of the blade, he feels only a sudden release of pressure. With uncharacteristic caution, he opens his eyes to discover his clothing hanging in tatters about his shoulders and pooling at his feet; his flesh is miraculously—masterfully—unscathed.
Jämes spins Tony’s shock-pliant frame so the wall presses at his back, his features as hypnotic as Tony remembers from moments earlier, when he wasn’t dreading his life.
“Remember this, Dear Prince,” he spits low and scorching. “You may hold power with ease now, but it can be taken from you—” Tony’s defense efforts amount to uselessly stiffening against the wall, and the warrior seizes the distance between their scarcely-dressed chests, “—just as easily.”
The blade clatters to the cobble floor.
Jämes smashes his lips to Tony’s, and Tony—he prides himself a disciple of philosophers from dawns of past and present, but nay did their teachings prepare him for the feral taste of a gladiator’s tongue and spit, rich with emotions so raw, Tony thinks he can pick them out amidst the sudden and ferocious waves of the kiss. And Jupiter save him, he tries to.
He drowns instead.
Tony melts under Jämes’ mouth and his barrage of touch. His mind goes slack, overwhelmed by the burn of strong callous hands roaming over his exposed skin. These hands, weapons of deadly demand, ignite an impatient fire at the base of Tony’s spine—something reason and reputation had long suppressed. Those thoughts of reason surge to the forefront of his mind, but the rolls of the warrior’s tongue are relentless, pushing such thoughts deep into hiding.
Tony might be entranced. When Jämes shoves him back and buckles him to the stone floor with a sweeping blow to his knees, Tony can’t muster any protests, neither outwardly nor from within. He reorients himself with gravity as the foreign taste of terrified helplessness overshadows the lingering flavors of Jämes’ tongue, which offer a strange assurance. This paradox soaks through to his bones, and it costs him no small effort to look up.
Jämes towers over him, a looming shadow of suffering firelight, effortlessly more oppressive than those Tony is accustomed to. The silence stretches, and Jämes makes no move, each second dragging out Tony’s terror. He knows not how long the warrior bores into him with icy unspoken command, still and poised as if waiting to pounce, for Tony to flinch. It confounds Tony, worn beyond nervous ticks, a cornered huffing mess on this warrior’s floor with nowhere to flee. Yet Jämes waits.
Just as ignorant-born panic bubbles in him, Tony spots an impatient twitch of Jämes’ fingers on the band of his pteruges… because he is waiting for Tony.
And this…
It’s nauseating, to grasp the true meaning behind Jämes’ claim to strip him of honor. He intends to force Tony—not upon him, not physically—but force him nonetheless to battle beasts of his own, arguably more terrifying than the one before him, whose flesh still bears the claw marks of a slain tiger. Jämes is pitting Tony’s aspirations for the nation’s and his father’s appeasement against… long-neglected subcutaneous desires.
With his last shred of dignity, Tony resists a whimper. This is somehow more grueling, the inclination that tells him he could leave, could slowly rise to his feet and make his exit. He doesn’t. By tonight, it isn’t a physical act but a psychological battle that does Tony in.
Jämes will rob Tony of his “honor” by playing on the prince’s turf and letting his own actions be his undoing.
Tony knew love from the grace of his mother. Horatius took her hand by way of courtly arrangement, of course, but… she had loved him, not by title or duty, but as a partner. And she loved Tony. After she passed, his hardened father had deemed it a weakness, more so than the cancer that did her in.
This “weakness,” her desire for connection that transcends title, Tony inherits. Though, he’d never allow himself to be so quixotic to wish for things like love…
What within Tony had been so obvious to the warrior, he wonders? How had this man—a stranger—a slave—uncovered that which was so deeply buried, even Tony believed it to be long suffocated?
Jämes stares unblinking as if those blazing eyes hold the answers behind their curtain of grief, of vengeance. It’s under his knowing gaze that Tony knows he’s already lost to him.
Moments pass and Tony hesitates, feigning denial as his internal struggle intensifies. His pride fights valiantly, but the warrior’s glare and the raw, unspoken challenge it holds begin to erode his defenses. Tony does not stand and leave. Eventually, inevitably, his resistance crumbles, and he surrenders with an unsure flicker of his eyes over the man’s body.
Finally, Jämes wordlessly guides him by the nape with a firm yet gentle touch, stepping forth and pressing Tony back to settle on his heels. Tony unties the pteruges and doesn’t flinch as Jämes lifts his blade and makes quick work of the tattered remains of Tony’s robes over his shoulders. The studded leather pteruges clatters to the ground, the loincloth follows, and Tony works his mouth against the growing hardness of the champion. He revels in the musk—grimy bathing pits be dammed—and sucks along the length.
Shameless sounds escape him when the hands clenching his jaw and hair sporadically tighten and relax. And when he earns a sigh from above for leaning close and wetly taking the warrior’s balls into his mouth, animalistic pride wells in him. Tony nearly freezes on the spot with his lips agape (which would have undoubtedly led to questionable results) when he sits back to admire the outcome of his efforts… the very large outcome.
He isn’t yet done calculating his strategy before the touch on his nape grows less gentle, more insistent. Tony is nothing if not a crafty improviser, so rather than taking Jämes into his mouth like the warrior undoubtedly expects, Tony angles his head and slides his tongue over the vein protruding the underside of Jämes’ cock. It does well to appease Jämes, a tapered groan ringing out in the increasingly warming room. Tony stretches his jaw, exploring every inch of Jämes’ manhood—somehow thicker than his accent—and Jämes allows Tony’s hands to roam over stone-strong thighs and abs, marveling at the blatant power and solidity beneath his fingertips.
Tony’s joints flex and relax, settling into his spot on the stiff cobble with careful curiosity.
The prince’s proclivity for men, typically of the noble class—his father’s friends’ sons—fills him with no shortage of vindication, but its rumor echoes in the whispers of the palace walls and under the steam of the bathhouses.
Bedding with other men is not so uncommon an engagement, surely, because rather than flesh, it’s class that dictates with whom and how he is to engage, namely with respects to his position. A Roman prince lowers to his knees for no one, nor does he lay on his back. So he doesn’t—hasn’t—for if such a whisper were to hold audience before the senate, it would prove unbecoming at best, and unforgivable at worst—depending on their likeness for Tony that calendar.
Regarding class and his selection of partners, however, the servants are a well-received exception (so long as Tony remains upright). But he never takes to them—unless he bears witness to public performances. And so, it seems for all the Earth that the status of his partner paints their desirability in Tony’s eyes, which suits his father fine (despite his distaste for Tony’s “excessive” indulgence of the same flesh). But status doesn’t come near his desires in the slightest, and only Veritas knows his truth: one can never trust the deep-seated conditioning that lies beneath a slave’s “choice” to participate. Tony surely doesn’t. And such sentiments would have him laughed out of the conference rooms should they ever be voiced.
Never has he envisioned how a slave might engage him, however, and now he becomes a mere observer to that trickle of thrill within that grows into a raging river—because Jämes allows him this, biting his full lips patiently as Tony works his lips around the tip. He’s seen and received enough, he thinks, growing more assured in his movements. The hackles of his skin begin to rise with ecstasy, exploring the warrior’s formidable stature as much as his hands can reach.
He is certainly unequipped, however, to withstand the gag that wracks his chest before he can sink Jämes’ cock even halfway down his throat. It’s an involuntary jolt that demands him to pull back, but Jämes doesn’t let him. Tony’s groan stunts around Jämes and his eyes prick with tears. He stares desperately up at the gladiator, who gazes back mercilessly. He holds Tony’s neck in place, seemingly uncaring of the nails that dig pleadingly at his thighs.
Tony sucks in air through his nose on instinct; his lungs fill and the budding panic subsides when his body understands he can still breathe. It grows more bearable. Gradually, the unrelenting hand on his neck presses him forth with a pace Tony can adjust to, but it’s a fight.
He’s a third of the way down when Jämes suddenly pushes him back and pulls him in just as swiftly… and repeats the motion. Tony’s lungs protest each time, at first. Tears soak his face now, but the piercing jolts in his chest become less and less. Tony’s shock beholds him the first time Jämes’ coarse hairs tickle his nose. He starts to move on his own accord, and when he manages to press out his tongue and open his throat wide enough to nuzzle his face into Jämes’ stomach, his neck contracts and he swallows—he’s unsure yet if it was deliberate on his behalf…
Jämes chases Tony’s lips with a different sort of eagerness now, hungry and demanding, no less powerful. His grip on Tony stays vigorous, a touch no one has ever dared to exert—and that is what Tony loses to, loses himself to as his throat is pounded and abused with a pace that grows capricious. He likes it best—is rapt to it—when those hands clench his neck and hair too harshly and pull him over the impressive girth to hold him there for a beat too long whilst Tony battles to swallow around his reflex and utterly fails to breathe when his lungs constrict.
Tony stays the pliant and obedient tangle of limbs, fabrics, and fluids at the warrior’s feet, never a drop of despair or even helplessness poisoning his blood—though, he is very much helpless, and this notion anomalously gifts him a rush of power that no obsequious court of hundreds could grant.
When Jämes’ eyes find focus on Tony’s tear-riddled ones, he is blissfully trapped by that powerful, blue, stormy amalgamation of pain and desire. Tony uselessly tries to peruse what he finds; this might be a desperate grasp for revenge or a twisted pursuit for comfort. Or both. Tony can’t decide, revealing in that barely-masked anguish under the surface of lust. But it matters not now.
The pace quickens. Jämes’ wild hair whips around his shoulders, throwing his head back and gritting teeth that Tony decides are inhumanly sharp.
It is by sets of reflexes that Tony swallows now, but it’s welcome. His eyes roll shut and he sucks with all the force his jaw will allow as Jämes pulls back just enough to free his airway.
The grip on Tony’s face relaxes after blissfully arduous moments with no breath, but it doesn’t leave. Jämes’ softening cock slides thickly off his tongue and remains connected with a rope of creamy sin—and they look on at one another, thoughtless and breathless. Time drags. Tony can only imagine the image he exudes—face and fine complexion indubitably ruined and blotchy, eyes glassy and sopping, his chest heaving exhaustedly, lips swollen and glistening… he stares up, unfocused and defenseless.
The warrior’s fingers on Tony’s jaw twitch, and he lets go.
Tony feels a trickle of warmth slide down his chin. He makes no move to wipe it away, transfixed by Jämes’ next move, words, or request… but he steps away from Tony with maleficent theatrical timing.
The torch dies. The ground below quickly ices him.
In the place of that strange sense of liberation, a release from the chains of his pride and the expectations that have bound him for so long, he kindles weighty dread.
Like a child too petrified to move or call out in the dark, Tony curls in on his bare self atop the ribboned remnants of his royal robes, dragging his moistened lips across his forearm. He allows the soft and purposeful shuffling across the room to ground him, although their purpose could spell his grueling demise for all Tony knows. Or cares.
He’s numb to all. Nothing akin to relief or even anxiety finds itself in Tony’s temperance even as flint is struck and a new torch ignites, infinitely more bright and inviting than the dwindled one before it. His eyes stay fixed on the orange glow dancing across his knees after the torch is mounted to the wall and the dull thuds of the other man’s sandals stop before him.
“Are you satisfied?” Tony croaks, unable to sweep the scorn from his torn and scratchy voice.
Jämes kneels and reaches for him—
Tony does flinch now, in this aftermath, an intrinsic bodily compulsion that will forever serve to embarrass and perplex him—like this night.
His desecrated pride can’t stop his wet and weary eyes from finding Jämes, whose expression softens. That fierce spite in his eyes gives way to something more profound, almost tender, like the wells of grief and contempt have drained, if only for the moment. He reaches out once more, fingers brushing across Tony’s cheek and wiping away the stale tears. The gesture, however unexpected, is a bright contrast to the raw primal encounter from just a minute prior… and it eases Tony greatly.
He finds a human recognition in Jämes’ stare that doesn’t adhere to menial titles like prince and servant. It’s enough to make Tony retract all his barriers, willingly, and close his eyes to lean his head on the hand. He notices now that it’s strikingly cold compared to every other part of the man’s body that Tony explored, which were plenty. He lets delirious thoughts of happily drowning in this wintery touch float in his head. He will likely never again tilt his nose up at the first man who so fearlessly gazed back at him with mutual resolve… and drove his cock into Tony’s mouth with enticing vigor.
“No,” Jämes tells him at last. “I’m not satisfied.”
Tony briskly straightens and Jämes drops his hand, his words declaring a war between Tony’s fear and exhilaration. He feels exposed, vulnerable, and quite fathomably naked in a manner he never has.
“What is it you wish?” And pitifully, once he asks, Tony only now understands the extent of his desires to please this man, most certainly planted there the second he laid eyes on him. He bites his inner lip, recounting how obvious he had been since the beginning.
Which is why Jämes’ next words pierce Tony where it matters most and he fails to hide a new wave of tears under the previous ones.
“I wish for my brothers; my sister and mother,” Jämes says evenly, but with the weight of every brick in that bleeding Colosseum.
Tony blinks. “I can’t give you that.”
“I know.”
Tony grits his teeth and hides back into his knees, feeling every bit the abased and honorless body Jämes had intended to make of him, told him he would make of him, yet Tony agreed regardless, eager to drink him down in the light of those enraged blue eyes. He must now consider gathering the dusty robes he doled to the slave and slither back to his chambers without being spotted to drown himself further—in wine. The dark of night would aid him. Before he can take a steadying breath—
A sharp grip takes his chin, void of the understanding from seconds prior. That beastly spurn is there, cold and snowy, but it’s settled beneath a sleuthing glower that ices Tony’s blood all the same.
“I look into you,” he yanks Tony’s chin forward and looms closer so that they might share breath, “and I see nothing of substance that I can snuff out.”
More terror, more hurt, more painful anticipation—Tony is ripe with it.
“You are quick and droll and barbaric, but no more barbaric than a fox.”
Tony sucks a breath in from his nose at his previous mental comparison coming to life on Jämes’ tongue.
“No more than you need to be, to survive. There’s no blood I can spill from you that would make worthwhile the dulling of my blade…”
And Tony doesn’t feel like he’s being spoken to, but rather through.
“Do you wish for blood?” Tony whispers with no forethought. There’s something akin to disgust painted on Jämes’ features, and while this stare is aimed at him in physical form, Tony feels confident it’s not for him. “I wish to end the games,” Tony blurts, for the first time, to any soul or aloud.
Air fraught with frost, cold in every manner but actual and so very thick an effective freeze, surrounds them both. Jämes’ inspection of Tony poises, a spear sharper and far more apt to cut him open than he could have known. He grapples with that which he yearns most—a connection that defies the boundaries of honor and duty and place, but that he might instead have a bond forged in the crucible of desire and pain, wishful as it is that he could have it with this man that is stranger, slave, and victim of his nation. A selfish and childish endeavor, indeed.
But could he have it still?
By the grace of the gods, he is unallotted to voice those wants. Jämes claims his mouth again. A cloak of darkness broken only by the fitful glow of the torch lining the austere stone walls; in this somber setting, Jämes’ tongue feverishly wages war over Tony’s with a fire that burns hotter than a million cerulean suns. That somber flow dies at the hand of the warrior when he harshly grips the neglected half-solid cock between Tony’s legs. A pitchy groan escapes Tony as though it has been stolen.
“Are you satisfied?” Jämes throws Tony’s scorned words back at him, remaking them for his purposes. He steals his reply, resuming the attack on his mouth before hefting him off the ground so that Tony’s limbs might tangle around him. Jämes holds him effortlessly in a standing embrace; Tony clings for all his life, his crossed arms and knees about Jämes’ neck and waist, enduring a soul-robbing kiss and scrape of unkempt stubble against his neatly shaved beard before being cargoed across the floor and pressed against a hardly-ruffled cot draped in fur. Absent are their words of bottomless grief and forlorn admissions—they merely respond to one other’s urgency—an act stripped raw with need untempered by sentiment.
They separate for breath; Jämes tears his gaze from Tony to drag out and prod at a basket under the cot, fumbling for oil vials (also details insistent of Tony, born from ill-cogitated notions of gentlemanly accommodation, jest, or fantasies that were just as readily dismissed). Tony eyes them innocently, feigning ignorance—but the gladiator looks back at him all too knowingly.
“Interesting collection,” states Tony breathless behind veiled amusement and faint apprehension.
A smirk dances briefly across Jämes’ features under a hint of—was it rancor? Fair. “Reserved for special cases…” he replies confident and cryptic, adding huskily, “…Prince.”
Tony does laugh at that. He might not ever bother trying to mask his thoughts to this man again; he is glaringly gifted in the art of telepathy.
Tony compliantly leans back on his elbows as Jämes opens a vial and douses his fingers in the oils. When he leans in closer than necessary, Tony is confused, until he’s kissed with a slow carefulness he didn’t think the man remotely capable of. It’s unhurried, sweet, and when slicked fingers find purchase between his ass, the prince finds himself corruptible for the first time. An antithesis to his kiss, the warrior’s fingers are vigorous from the start, working Tony open with a deliberate, almost cruel precision, each movement calculated to draw out his most unbesought responses.
Tony shakes from it, forcing back whimpers. He’s experimented behind the locked doors of his chambers and bathhouse (and that one time in his study) with oils and fingers and oblong objects of his own… but the touch of another, one that doesn’t seem to slow or show any semblance of caution…
His body forces out his breath and his head falls back when those fingers press at that perfect angle, conjuring a sensation Tony has only met a handful of times during his lonesome explorations. It travels up his stomach and to the aching tip of his cock, swift and ravenous at first, before dwindling into ripples that linger in his chest and drip down his shaft. Jämes takes advantage, his mouth finding Tony’s neck and tracing a path with his tongue to his ear where he nibbles and sucks. Tony melts further into it, an unseemly mess.
“How servile a prince you are…” Jämes murmurs over quivering skin, words wrapped in a low, archly growl. “I feel how you twitch with need. Are you not ashamed?”
Tony’s eyelids shudder and close, his breath hitching as Jämes’ fingers never let up to that spot within him that makes his entire body arch and his voice betray him with a helpless moan. He plays Tony like a lyre, tightening his spine like the strings and plucking at all his notes; he knows not how long it goes on for, only that he doesn’t need it to end.
He convulses in under Jämes when a large thumb presses to his taint and a fourth finger buries into him.
“Gods… please,” his whisper slips from his lips without prior consultation.
Jämes chuckles cruelly, nuzzling under Tony’s earlobe. “Begging already? I thought you of more pride than this.”
Tony wills a response, prepared to launch back with something undoubtedly witty and sardonic and aptly argumentative—but all that sounds is a choked gasp, not born of pleasure. A sharp entity rips shallowly into the sensate skin of his thigh, a spike-like edge cutting deep enough to draw blood. The pain is sharp and immediate, forcing a full corporal jolt; he grips the wound automatically, hissing and gritting his teeth.
Jämes’ hand leaves him—a travesty—and he pauses, while Tony spots the culprit: a spike on his champion’s armor plate is painted with a crimson blotch that drips thickly onto the furs. Jämes is a statue, his eyes wide as bowls. The shock of pain fading from his mind, Tony curiously watches those cobalt irises narrow as they take in the sight of his blood, faintly reflecting the colors.
Then…
It’s not that Tony requests it, or expects the solution, but he watches raptly as Jämes’ throat bobs and his right arm moves with a glorious purpose. In a slow, near imperceptibly hesitant motion, the warrior begins unknotting the leather bindings of his only remaining covering. He removes the black spiked armor plates, meticulous and practiced. Tony observes each flex and swivel of each digit and wrist. By and by, the prince’s mouth grows lax as a myriad of vicious scars and burns on Jämes’ arms reveal themselves, each a telling mark of the warrior’s battles.
Unsure of his own expression, Tony drags his eyes up to Jämes’ face.
Jämes’ jaw ticks. “My tribe’s…” he shakes his head. “The arm we favor carries the blade; and the other, the shield—or becomes it, if need be,” he explains, and there is a thread of prideful finality under an otherwise insoluble inflection. Perhaps it’s this modicum of pride that eases Tony’s… yes, concern.
Ceremoniously, he reaches out and tentatively explores this moorish arm with gentle, shaky fingertips, perspective anew. Jämes lets him, if just a bit pensive. A blade, an arrow, a spearhead, the splash of fiery oil, the skin-bursting blow of a shield stud—each a payment for another chance at breath.
“Spectactus…” Tony murmurs blithely at his discoveries, admiring each blemish, lash, ray, and mar-mottled patch of skin with a dazed conflation of approval and fascination.
Jämes regards him incomprehensibly for a blink before his lips twitch and curl with something predatory.
“You hold beauty in pain, Prince?” The plates clatter to the cobbled floor as Jämes swipes them aside. “How becoming. Barbaric, indeed.”
Without another word, Jämes swipes Tony’s hand and guides a fervent tongue down Tony’s chest and stomach, pressing him flat to the furs. His frightening weight smothers Tony’s limbs and any means of escape. But when Tony’s right thigh is lifted and pinned up, and Jämes takes his tongue to the bright stripe of blood running thinly down Tony’s glute, he decides then that this champion can pin him at any angle and for any reason he see fit. His blood discolors Jämes’ tongue before it disappears behind closed lips. It’s a converse blend of aggression and care; and for all its ferocity, carries an undercurrent of intent that unnerves Tony further. Gone suddenly is that oscillating between resistance and submission, for there’s a clear winner.
With a gentleness that belies any prior spurn, Jämes braces his palms on either side of Tony and licks up his neck as he drives his cock into him.
Tony clings to Jämes’ wrists, digging into the flesh as he bears the overwhelming pain and breathlessness of the intrusion. He does not dare breathe, tensing so hard he could snap. He whimpers, then curses sharply but voicelessly, a desperate sound from the top of his strained lungs.
As if taking some cue from Tony, Jämes lifts his arms and scrapes his steely nails over Tony’s ribs, a piercing distraction from the pain at his core. Jämes’ mouth is suddenly ravenous on Tony’s neck, sucking a mark there that will surely draw gazes from his father… and the senate.
Tony moans against it, loud and unabashed. It steals the pressure in his chest and he lets out a breath, takes another, and exhales once more. As he manually focuses on breathing in drawn-out raps, he thinks he can make out Jämes’ words of praise behind the pulsing in his ears.
“…Relax …That’s it …Prince,” is the extent of Tony’s understanding.
He hadn’t realized he’d been squeezing his eyes shut to fight tears (a fruitless endeavor) until Jämes is lapping them up from Tony’s cheek. He blinks, panting evenly with effort, and tilts his head up… hoping…
He gets what he needs. Each way Jämes kisses him unveils new layers, new surprises and flavors, and leaves Tony yearning for an eternity to seek out each one.
His mind surrenders thought when Jämes begins to move.
At the beginning, he is rote and deliberate, every minute roll of hips a calculated effort to acclimate Tony’s body to his girth. Tony fails to find purchase under the haze of new sensations, and through it all the exploration of Jämes’ tongue on his flesh. It’s not how Tony imagined it; he’d never thought it so… stupifying, let alone painful. But there’s a current under that pain, one that promises to wash it away and then some, and it grows stronger with Jämes’ waves.
Tony can’t intuit how the intrusion at his core, (impressive as it is), could reach against each inch of his body from the inside out and rob him of his higher cognitive functions in moments. And there’s a breathy moaning in the room that can’t possibly be his own. But it certainly isn’t coming from Jämes.
As the gladiator finds rhythm, becoming more assured, each motion is exponential, the promise of a force to come.
Tony is rendered listless now, yielding under the man’s touch and crescive thrusts of his cock. The breaths between them are raw and detached, stemming less from affection and more from the primal act of joining their bodies. And as the pace quickens to something substantial, vicious, and volatile, Jämes fucking into Tony with beastly abandon, the tears stream without pause.
And perhaps does too, the begging… but it’s imperceptible even to Tony’s ears, so maybe…?
“Very becoming of you, indeed, Prince,” Jämes grunts filthily, hardly winded.
Tony whines in defeat, forgoing painful attempts to withhold himself. It… helps. He babbles and groans (he does not pleat. Probably), and gradually, the pain ebbs almost entirely. He discovers he can even kiss back, when faced with the opportunity.
The torch-lit room fills with the sounds of their colliding, the slap of skin, Tony’s uncontained gasps, and the guttural growls of the warrior. Tony rasps, suddenly aware of his body arching to meet each thrust, his mind lost somewhere in dark blue lakes of arousal.
“Is this what you wanted, Prince?” Jämes’ voice is a filthy string of sibilants in Tony’s ear, the word “prince” dripping with new sprouts of possession punctuated by the thrust of hips. Tony can only choke in response, shaking under the onslaught.
Jämes grips Tony’s hips to draw closer, his thrusts driving deep, his eyes infected with lust. Tony feels the burn of Jämes’ nails on his skin, the heat of his breath, the relentless weight of his wants. There is no room for thought, no space for doubt…
“You fancy this, don’t you? To be taken apart?”
Tony dares not respond, untrusting of his wits and words, and instead insouciantly resigns himself to bowing in Jämes’ grasp.
“Does it shame you?” Jämes asks in a taunting whisper. “To be taken like this? To be claimed by someone so beneath your station?” He drives in sharper, digging for a response but unknowingly burying it deeper. Tony replies a strangled moan, sparing all efforts to keep his breath with the brutal pace; fingers clawing at Jämes’ biceps, nails leaving crescent-shaped marks on the skin. “Look at you,” Jämes murmurs, ripe with mockery. “So eager, so willing. Would you think your emperor to approve? His precious son, reduced to a whimpering heap under an arena’s ward? A meager entertainer?”
Tony’s eyes flutter closed, his breaths hitched and fitful.
“I don’t care,” he manages quaveringly.
Jämes’ laughter is dark and cruel.
“Liar,” he accuses, his hips snapping brutally. “You care. You care so much it burns.”
Tony can only keen, spine quivering with the force of Jämes’ hips. He can feel the heat building inside him, the pressure mounting.
“Prince,” Jämes rumbles with that harsh R that has Tony drooling, “shall I stop?”
Tony shakes his head, his eyes squeezing shut now.
“No,” he gasps. “Don’t stop.”
Tony can hear a feral grin in Jämes’ voice, pace somehow quickening. “Then, say it.”
Tony opens his mouth to say—well, something—but Jämes shifts his hips down, his cock angling up and he drives into that spot.
A sound just barely short of a scream tumbles from Tony’s open mouth and he can make out Jämes’ teasing, rich chuckle. His lungs heave and his head spins, the world narrowing to Jämes pounding inside him and his breath—gods, his breath—and how good it feels to pant. He hadn’t known pleasure could pool in his lungs until he knew the rhythm of Jämes’ thrusts, the heat of his skin, cool contrast of his fingertips… Tony’s eyes find stars somewhere in the back of his head.
“You want it,” Jämes growls, his voice dripping with demand and something devastatingly primal. “Say it.”
Tony peels his eyes open and finds Jämes’ knit, panther-like expression. That pride, that denial—that fear from long minutes ago with his knees pressed shamefully to cold stone—is back now and it is vengeful. It screams with refusal and threatens to bury him. It—
Tony seethes with a broken cry, fruitlessly bearing down against one decidedly harsh thrust—and the bastard doesn’t move, spearing Tony at the deepest point and thieving the air from his chest. Jämes holds his legs captive by the pliant skin under his knees, pressing them to either side of his torso and bending Tony open for the taking.
Tony squirms, eyes wide and wet.
“Say it,” Jämes decrees once more.
“I want it,” Tony croaks in a pitchy husk.
Jämes’ eyes darken with satisfaction.
“That’s it,” he lowers to Tony’s ear as he says it, resuming motion, now more erratic. “And of this, you can be sure, you will never forget it…” He bites on Tony’s earlobe and thrusts deeper still, somehow. His motions divulge quickly, fast but less deliberate, and he works a swift callous hand over Tony’s weeping cock.
“Wait…” Tony’s nails might surely draw blood on those unshakable arms. “Jämes—wait…!” But his voiceless airy pleas sound in vain, too meek to be heard under the obscene slap of skin—and even if Jämes heard him, Tony somehow knows, he wouldn’t spare those pleas a thought.
“Prince…” Jämes utters, the word dripping with undertones filthy and rich with something far-landed and foreign. The sound, a promise of Jämes’ appeasement, sends Tony over the edge and off to the Elysian Fields. His chest arches and tenses, the pleasure building to an unbearable peak. With a final, shuddering gasp, he comes, his body convulsing around Jämes. His climax hits him like a cloud of a thousand arrows, inescapable. The cry of release is caught by the hides that curtain the stone walls. It’s cathartic and wet and sinful and… just… too much.
The oversensitivity that follows makes Tony’s voice break in his throat and his back arch impossibly off the furs. Where before they were bidden and so desired—the drive of Jämes’ cock and strokes from his hand—sends shockwaves of scorching overwhelming bolts through his body. But Jämes doesn’t relent, making use of Tony’s pliancy and stringing him along in pursuit of his own release. Tony wines, writhes, and claws until his strength is lost, helpless, and alight with pleasures now so painful his eyes flood. When his arms finally fall unto the furs and grip them tenuously, Jämes follows him moments after, his release tearing through Tony, forcing a sob and filling him with unfamiliar warmth. He collapses on top of Tony, their humid breaths mixing, skin sticky with sweat and other bodily saturations.
The flickering torch casts long, wavering shadows that dance mockingly on the walls. Tony feels the thrum of Jämes’ heart, a steady beat that bleeds into his own chest. Every breath from Tony is a laborious effort, his eyes betray him, muscles quivering with the strain of existence.
He holds onto the idea that the darkness shrouding the room is because of the dying torch and not from his mind. But as sleep inevitably claims him, Tony’s last thought is of Jämes, and those eyes from the arena that scorned and perused him.
ↂ
Tony sits through the heated reprimand; his father doesn’t require a response from Tony, merely that he endure the verbal wrath and hollow threats.
Today, the great leader of the Roman Empire lectures Tony for the placement of the mark rather than its existence, which—by Tony’s standards—is progress. Or perhaps his father is losing hope. When Horatius furiously demands to know just who left such a blemish on his neck, Tony has to bite back laughter. He imagines answering, if only to watch his father’s face fall like boulders off a cliff. That truth would surely come back on the warrior, however, so Tony merely shrugs and leans blithely on his desk, angling his head on his fist to better display the mark in question. It’s a worthwhile effort; he watches his father turn record-breaking shades of red, and when he at last storms off with all the dignity of his highness, Tony allows himself a small smile. He has Jämes to thank for freeing his docket of painstaking conferences for the next week.
The claiming mark on Tony’s neck is sure to last for days.
His smile falls.
Jämes, who was not present when Tony woke up in their mess, a fleece draped over his bare body, and plain stain-free robes set out for him. Jämes Brigantëş, the name quilled on the lines of the freedman documents in Tony’s hands—documents that had been swiftly stuffed into an unsorted stack of binders when his father stormed into his study (which cost him a teeth-gnashing amount of time to sort out and recover after the fact). This Jämes that held Tony so violently in his gaze and brilliantly in his embrace.
And it’s this Jämes’ door he stands before hours later.
He does knock now. And as that door creaks open, unsurety scathes him. Should Jämes take these papers, make his home in the palace of Rome, strive for change, and take a place beside Tony? Or does he leave this foreboding nation that runs with the blood of his tribe and never gaze in the direction of that dreaded arena for the rest of his days, and just as well Tony?
The question of that decision is one not to be lightly considered, and it is not for me to presume to set myself up as the one person able to answer it. And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door—the lady, or the tiger?