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When he serves Coriolanus' plate, he doesn't thank him and gives him a strange look instead, but doesn't say anything until Sejanus takes a seat on his side of the table.
Coriolanus stirs the stew with his spoon, hesitant and gives him a fleeting smile before ruining everything:
"Why are you cooking? We have servants."
Sejanus laughs and is about to answer when a very bitter feeling in his mouth prevents him from saying anything. There is something in Coriolanus' words that seems wrong but he cannot decipher what it is.
With much effort he only manages to say to him:
"Excuse me?" As if he had not understood the question.
Coriolanus rolls his eyes. It's a rude but comforting gesture because Sejanus doesn't remember Strabo ever making that expression. And when he realizes where his thoughts are going he forces himself to bring his full attention to the present.
"Why are you wasting your time cooking, Sejanus? That you make sweets once in a while is not bad but we have servants to do those things."
Sejanus' first instinct is to defend himself but his breathing is becoming heavy. The complaint inspires familiarity and as he thinks about his motives, he hears his Ma's voice repeating the same words.
Making excuses to her husband.
Coriolanus realizes that Sejanus' mind is elsewhere, so he reaches out his hand and touches his wrist to get his attention.
The gesture burns on Sejanus' skin, who becomes a child again, and he sees out of his body Strabo grab his wife's wrist across the table in an attempt to show her affection, and again he sees himself in the mirror holding a doll wrapped in blankets, next to his mom, who tenderly tells him that she used to carry him that way.
"Don't do that."
Sejanus breaks his silence at last. And Coriolanus looks so confused.
"What's wrong with you, Vesta?"
"Don't say that!"
"Sejanus. You're overreacting."
And that breaks it because Sejanus knows what those words sound like in his own father's voice. He's heard them for as long as he can remember, and the instants become blurred.
Strabo scolding little Sejanus for crying in front of his business partners. Coriolanus scolding him for crying in front of his fellow academy members. Two voices he knows well, joining the unison in the same paraphernalia that has tortured him since he left his home in Two.
Sejanus the ungrateful son. The capricious child. The one who was handed everything on a silver platter and squandered it. Panic grips his heart and there is only one thought in his head: Coriolanus, he can't be like his pa.
He had to be different, otherwise he would have repeated the same mistakes and that could not be true, but Coriolanus is so bad at comforting him, his gestures are stiff, so much like Strabo's, that he would silently watch his wife cry without doing anything but buying her some new dress the next day.
When it looks like Coriolanus is going to call a servent, Sejanus let it go because maybe if he warned his Coryo he would change his gestures. He would be better:
"Stop acting like my father." Frustration seeps into his voice. Sejanus feels so guilty but he has to make him to understand.
"Because I am not my mother."
And there it dies in Sejanus mouth for the one and only time, the affectionate name Ma.