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...his beauty is mine, even if there be a beard and hairs.
The tonsor was a Greek, enslaved, with steady hands, and possessed of the beaten-dog obedience Geta preferred in his household: watchful, wiry, alert. He didn’t need to be asked twice. Geta hardly had to ask him once; a flick of the wrist and Simos would shimmer to his side, shaving kit in hand. With great care he’d rub the stubble off of Geta’s jaw, pumice stone dragging against white flesh, sacrosanct, until any imperfection was wiped clean. He was trusted to use a novacila, too, scraping from collarbone to navel for a clean and total shave.
It was a vulnerable position. Simos could have gutted Geta like a fish, if he’d wanted. But he would not dare. He was Greek, and the Greeks craved nothing more keenly than the weight of a Roman boot on the backs of their skulls. And there was no boot quite like the emperor’s.
Or, sandal, as it were. No need for boots when Geta was perfectly content to let others win his wars.
“Too rough,” Caracalla whined. Seated in the chair, he squirmed like a child. “I don’t care for that at all.”
The pumice stone did not slip from Simos’s hand. His gaze flicked to where Geta was standing, caught the acknowledgment there, and then slid serenely back to Caracalla’s face. Wordlessly, he continued his rubbing.
Ignored, Caracalla’s patience—a gossamer thing at the best of times—grew even thinner. “You’re not scrubbing moss off a statue’s arse,” he snapped. “That’s my face, and you—”
Whatever it was, Geta didn’t catch it, for at that moment Caracalla twisted. Like Achelous pinned by Hercules and writhing, he snarled under captivity, and in his thrashing worsened the hold. He jerked, Simos’s hand slipping, so that the stone knocked against Caracalla’s mouth, bottom lip catching along a rough edge. A bloom of red blighted Caracalla’s otherwise pale face. It clashed rather horribly with his hair.
Simos was shoved off with a shriek. Caracalla’s eyes were wild. His shoulders were taut, his body poised with movement; but he caught Geta’s gaze, and the bristling, prickling heat of him pivoted into something closer to a pout. When he dabbed his lower lip, his fingertip came away slick with blood. “Look what he’s done,” Caracalla croaked. He held his finger aloft for his brother’s inspection. “Geta, look.”
With a wave of his hand Geta shooed Simos to the side, stepping forward so that he towered over Caracalla in the chair. Twinned though they were, they were not two halves of the same cracked egg, evenly split. Geta was the taller; such a view was therefore natural, no matter how much Caracalla resisted.
His hand settled across Caracalla’s jaw. The skin there was scraped as smooth as a boy’s bottom; Geta thumbed it appreciatively. “My poor brother,” he said, lowly, his eyes fixed on his twin’s face, “has suffered enough. Leave us, Simos.”
“I’d like him throttled, please,” said Caracalla. He leaned into the petting, eyelids fluttering closed. “Or dangled out the window.”
“That’s not very creative.”
“I’m wounded,” Caracalla replied. He did not open his eyes. “Pity me, brother.”
Simos was long gone, and with him, the rest of their attendants, well-versed in the emperors’ moods and adept at divining when their presence was not wanted. Alone together, Geta’s touch grew more languid. “We could slicken him up with honey,” said Geta, almost idly, as his thumb rubbed in tight little circles across his brother’s cheek, “and other sweet things, and chain him to a post in the arena. Set a bear loose, and watch it feed.” A pause, and then, “Or the better-endowed gladiators, perhaps.”
That did it. Cracking his eyes open, Caracalla peered up at him through the slits. “Isn’t he Greek? I’d suspect he’d enjoy that.”
Geta laughed. Grinning, Caracalla exhaled through his teeth, a contented noise, almost simian. When Geta popped his thumb past Caracalla’s lips, he suckled automatically. “Yes, well, we’d enjoy it, wouldn’t we? And that’s all that matters.”
Caracalla hummed, a noise that seemed to lick its way up Geta’s arm from where the two of them were attached. He shivered. Staring up at him, Caracalla’s smirk was lopsided around the intrusion of his brother’s thumb, the wet heat of his mouth jungle-damp.
Tugging at the fringe of Geta’s robe, Caracalla drew him closer. He spit out Geta’s thumb, and smiled with all his teeth. “Sit on my lap,” he said, very sweetly. “I want to fuck those plump white thighs of yours.”
“I’m not in the mood,” Geta lied. He was—he always was—but he’d had the soft hairs on his inner thighs scraped clean not an hour age. The oil would sting; Caracalla wouldn’t notice the wincing, and it would kick off a row.
Caracalla scrunched his nose. “Come off it. I see your little stem poking up at me—let me have a squeeze at the bulbs, Geta, love.” Again he tugged at the robe, where Geta’s obvious stiffness tented the fabric. “Please.”
“I’ll sit,” Geta said, unable, as ever, to refuse his brother anything, yet unwilling to concede that he didn’t know better, “but don’t try slipping your prick between my thighs. I’ve a better idea.”
Pitching forward, he settled himself in Caracalla’s lap, Caracalla spreading his thighs to accommodate the weight. His eyes were grotto-blue, and unnerving in their clarity. “I do wonder why we bother with two thrones, when you’re so at ease sharing mine.”
He was shut up swiftly enough with a kiss. Freshly shaved, Caracalla’s cheeks were soft against Geta’s own, a stark contrast to the prickliness of the thighs upon which Geta was perched. His jaw slackened at once under Geta’s attention, obediently, lazily, presumptuously; but it was no matter, for Geta did not mind the act of guiding his brother’s lips and tongue and hands, and other parts, too, where they had brushed together in the womb, and where their bodies still, decades later, thrummed with the phantom instinct to join.
“Touch my chest,” Geta murmured, in the shadow of space between his lips and Caracalla’s. They were in robes, the both of them, and nothing more—the better for their epilation, and the best for the view. There was no readier target for Caracalla’s mouth than his brother’s chest.
“Venus Erycina,” crooned Caracalla, all wet heat. “My temple whore.” His hands settled high on Geta’s legs, rubbing into the soft white meat of him, and laughing at Geta’s huff. His cock was poking Geta in the thigh, drooling already; but he didn’t make to take himself in hand. He bent the neck as he’d been asked, lips featherlight on Geta’s chest, until his mouth came to rest above a small pink nub. He suckled hard, a holy seal of tongue and teeth.
Groaning, Geta arched forward, his prick twitching between his legs and Caracalla’s hands making mincemeat of his thighs, that one-two undulation compulsive, like a kitten nursing, trying to get the milk to flow. Teeth scraped along his nipple. Geta swore, and pressed closer, and with a steady grip took himself and his brother in both hands, so that their cocks were crushed together, fat and pink and slickened twice over with their conjoined need to breed. And there was nothing, nothing, nothing but the two of them, their heat and their pleasure, and the empty room, and the singular throne, buckling and groaning with double-born weight.