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Cassius watches Brutus and tries to swallow back the sudden swell of possessiveness that threatens to snap through his bones at the sight of his oldest friend wearing his clothes.
‘Green looks good on you,’ Cassius says, a little strangled. ‘It brings out your eyes. You should wear it more often.’
Brutus turns to him, smiling bright and blinding, and says, ‘You think so?’
He rests his hands on Brutus’ shoulders and looks him in the eye. ‘If I could dress you in green from now until death, I would,’ he says very seriously. ‘There is no other color that compliments you like this does.’
He says it partially in jest, an attempt at exaggeration juxtaposed against overly solemn tone, but Brutus fixes him a curious expression that makes Cassius’ mouth go dry.
‘Perhaps it’s you that compliments me,’ Brutus says. ‘Maybe I should take to wearing your clothes more often. We’re roughly the same size.’
And Cassius replies:
‘What’s mine is yours,’ because the alternative is something that’s been threatening to claw it’s way out of his mouth since the day he first saw Brutus, alight with a barely repressed fury as Pompey walked triumphant around the Forum and thought I want to be warmed inside of his rib cage.
‘We could be like Patroclus and Achilles,’ says Brutus suddenly, and Cassius looks over at him in surprise. This entire campaign, Brutus has either been stoic and distant, or violently single minded in focus on the task at hand, but mostly silent.
‘Like Patroclus and Achilles?’ repeats Cassius, propping himself up on his elbows to get a better look at Brutus from where he was laying on the ground. The comparison makes his heart begin to pound. ‘Which one of us is which?’
‘I would be Patroclus, I think,’ Brutus muses. ‘It’d be like the times I stole your clothes and people mistook us for each other at a distance. I could wear your armor here and no one would know the difference.’
Something cold, something like dread cools the skin on the back of Cassius’ neck.
‘Don’t,’ he says, stops at his voice cracking over the word, then starts again. ‘Don’t cast yourself as Patroclus.’
Brutus looks at him with that same curious expression that he wore on his face years before they ever ended up in Dyrrhachium, stuck in the middle of another civil war.
‘I don’t think I could be Achilles,’ continues Cassius in a rush. ‘I can’t imagine living a day in Rome without you. It’s too impossible.’
‘Not even to avenge me?’ says Brutus gently, almost teasing.
‘What would be the point of retribution if you weren’t beside me to revel in it?’ Cassius shakes his head. ‘No, I don’t want to think about it, I’d rather wear your armor, or ask you to think of a happier pair for us.’
Cassius avoids looking at Brutus and instead focuses on the distance between them and the fire crackling in front of them, between them and the quiet but constant activity of the camp even in the middle of the night, between them and the distance of anything at all, anything but the imagined distance of a world where Brutus would die before him.
‘Do you think me to be so cold as to be fine outliving you?’ Brutus says after long moment of silence. ‘That I would be unaffected by your death?’
They aren’t talking about heroes and tragedies anymore: it’s something else, something underneath the Greek epics that had so often served as a medium between them. A safe place to explore words they couldn’t figure out how to say to each other.
‘I think,’ Cassius says, ‘that you could survive it. I can barely survive you now, don’t ask me to think of you dead.’
It’s not even remotely close to what he had meant to say, but Brutus makes a small sound, and Cassius finally looks back at him just as Brutus begins to lean down and kisses him.
‘Do you think green still suits me?’ asks Brutus idly. It’s been years since Dyrrhachium, since Pharsalus. Cassius watches from the doorway as he pulls the tunic over his head and belts it at the waist.
‘Green will always suit you,’ replies Cassius. Brutus rolls his eyes.
‘But it’s your green that suits me most,’ Brutus says, and Cassius shrugs.
‘If you weren’t so thin, I’d drag you back to my estate and dress you myself,’ he says. ‘But I think anything of mine would fall off your shoulders. Tertulla worries about you.’
Brutus frowns. ‘It’s not so bad,’ he says. ‘I’ve just been tired as of late.’
‘It is so bad,’ says Cassius, ‘and instead of worrying all of us, come to my place, bring Porcia, spend some time away from Caesar. Someone else can run his public relations campaign.’
Brutus shoves him good naturedly, and Cassius slings an arm over his shoulders.
You should be happier,’ says Cassius. ‘Urban praetor, beloved by Caesar, admired by the people, and I find you here instead.’
‘Aren’t you angry?’ counters Brutus. ‘This is–
‘Of course I’m pissed,’ replies Cassius. ‘I was stuck cleaning up Caesar’s fuck up in Parthia, and he had the audacity to spend months stringing us both along when we all knew that he was going to give the urban praetorship to you.’
Brutus says nothing. Cassius sits next to him in silence.
‘Do you hate me for it?’ Brutus asks in a rush. ‘I didn’t— I didn’t earn this the right way, I know why Caesar gave it to me, but I took it anyway because I wanted it. I can’t stop thinking about it, even Cicero–’
‘Don’t listen to fucking Cicero,’ says Cassius over the rapid thudding of his own heart. Do you hate me for it, gods, that’s the worst thing Brutus could ever ask him. Do you hate me? Never, he’s never been able to hate Brutus, even when he wanted to. ‘I don’t hate you, have you spent weeks thinking that? Is this why you’ve been avoiding me?’
‘No,’ answers Brutus, and then: ‘Yes. I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘I might have been angry, but not like that.’ When did they go so wrong that the idea of hate could worm its way between them? ‘If I was going to hate anyone, I’d hate Caesar. What were you going to do, turn down the offer? Again? He’s been angling to have you as his successor for years. That’s not your fault.’
Cassius looks down at his hands, at Brutus, and then up at the ceiling.
‘Did you really think I could hate you?’ he asks quietly.
‘I hoped not,’ replies Brutus, equally quiet. ‘It’s different now, though.’
‘Not everything,’ Cassius says. ‘Not us. We fight sometimes, sure, but we’ve always fought. It never…I’m never going to hate you, even when we’re furious with each other. You know that, right?’
For a horrible minute, Brutus says nothing, and then he threads his fingers through Cassius’ own.
‘Porcia has been trying to convince me to talk to you,’ Brutus finally admits.
‘She always was smarter than both of us.’
‘I keep having these dreams,’ continues Brutus, as though Cassius hadn’t said anything. ‘They’re horrible, you’re always in them and–’ he cuts off abruptly.
There’s an awful part of Cassius that craves everything about Brutus, and that part of him wants to ask, to pry, to hear every detail of these dreams, dreams that are apparently so awful that Brutus can’t force the words out of his mouth.
He doesn’t do that.
Instead he says: ‘Well, you know I don’t believe in things like omens. Instead of keeping your wife awake at night with your thoughts, seek me out instead. I’ll argue with you over the nature of these things until it’s forgotten.’
At that Brutus finally smiles. It’s small and barely qualifies, but Cassius will seize victory wherever he can grasp it.
‘Cassius,’ he says, ‘what would I ever do without you?’
‘I don’t want to think about it,’ answers Cassius honestly, and then:
‘Wait, is that my toga?’
Brutus stares at him, and tips his head back, laughing.
‘I stole this from you years ago,’ he says, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. ‘Did you really never notice?’
‘I can’t believe you had it all this time,’ says Cassius, curling his fingers into the fabric of the toga Brutus is wearing. ‘Gods, what the hell is wrong with us.’
‘Well,’ says Brutus. ‘You did say what’s mine is yours, and your green has always been my color.’