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Childhood is this: bloody noses and vomit the color of dead grass beneath the burning sun; his pudgy fingers sticky from digging the pits out of dates; a pulse other than his own pounding like an off-beat war drum in his ears.
His brother, too. Always Geta, with a hand Caracalla likes to hold in both of his own.
(There’s a dream Caracalla has: the two of them miles apart in some boundless, twinkling ether. He can just spot the familiar-unfamiliar shape of his brother in the distance. It is cold and unbearable without the warmth of his body pressed all alongside him. Caracalla calls out to him with a voice he does not yet possess: Brother, slow down, wait for me! But by the time he reaches the spot where Geta had stood, his brother is gone.)
Childhood is this: knowing something is wrong long before he learns the word.
/
Before their tutors, before the stable masters, before the slave boys whose sharp bodies Caracalla comes to know his own pleasure through, Caracalla's first teacher is his brother.
Many of the things Geta teaches him are deliberate. How to toddle. How to swim. How to split open pomegranates with his hands. How to pluck a rose from the bush without pricking himself on the thorns.
(How to lie. How to protect himself. How to be certain he'll get what he wants. Geta teaches those, too, without trying.)
/
He does not speak for the first time until he is nearly four years-old. His first word is Geta. Caracalla cannot quite cut the name into two neat little syllables yet; it comes out mushy and wrong, an almost unintelligible babble.
Geta hears him, though. Hears and understands.
The name comes easier the second time, and better still the third. Geta whoops with glee, claps his hands, spins him around until they’re both lying back in the grass, dizzy and giggling. Calls out for one of the maidservants, then runs to her when she doesn't move quickly enough, dragging her by the hand, saying, see, see, just listen, I told you all he could do it, told you!
Caracalla says his name over and over again, practicing — while they eat, during Geta’s lessons, as they are washed and dressed for bed — until they have to shush him. That's very good, my prince. Perhaps tomorrow we will try some new words. It only makes Caracalla say his name again, louder. Defiant. Over their shoulders, he can hear his brother laughing. A kind of delight Caracalla wants to keep in a glass jar like a beautiful rare beetle.
He says his name again to himself, whisper-soft, after the nighttime hush has fallen over the palace. Over the entirety of the world, maybe. Nobody else is awake but him. He presses the word into the palm of his own hand, feels his lips move around his brother's name.
(You were so quiet, Geta will tell him later, something so fond, so tender on his face that Caracalla has to look away, they worried you’d never speak. Once you began, you never shut up.)
/
It disturbs Caracalla, to think that at some point between each of their first breaths, there was some amount of time where they were not together. Some amount of time where Geta was already in the world while Caracalla remained trapped within their mother. Trapped and suffocating alone there in the dark.
"You nearly died," Geta tells him, "or so they say."
Caracalla bristles. "Of course I did," he snaps. "You left me behind."
They are side-by-side in the gardens, the ground solid beneath their backs. The sky is the kind of blue that hurts to look at; Geta does understand what he means by this, but he allows Caracalla to lay with his face half-tucked into his shoulder regardless. Bugs tickle their skin wherever it is bared. They rub their own legs together like a pair of little grasshoppers.
"I didn't," Geta says, shaking his head quickly as if he means to banish the thought from both of their skulls. "I would not. You confuse your nightmares for memories."
"Liar." Caracalla sticks his tongue out at him. "Lie, lie, lie." They are twins. They are meant to be equals. In their mother's womb, Geta had gotten the upper hand, stolen his strength. Somehow. Had clutched the umbilical in his tiny fingers, had made sure to leave Caracalla lame and sickly. Perhaps not even to gather favor with their father, because he doesn't seem to care much for that. Perhaps he had only done it so that his brother would stay forever needing him.
Geta huffs out a breath so violent it ruffles Caracalla's hair. "Believe what you wish, brother," he says, shoving up from the ground and dusting himself off. "It is no lie."
Caracalla sits alone with the irises and the ivy, the butterflies and the beetles. He watches Geta go. Above him, the blue sky seems to shudder.
/
But Caracalla does need him.
It is only the two of them in the whole of the world. No mother, no father, nobody at all, no she-wolf to nose them off the forest floor; though sometimes he has dreams of Geta as one, proud and dangerous, on all fours with his mouth dripping gore —
/
Food makes him sick and water makes him sicker. Caracalla refuses both and winds up bedridden. He can hear his brother outside the door, arguing with somebody. Your brother is resting, my prince; please, now, might we suggest you return to your studi—
Caracalla sits bolt upright in bed. The movement makes him dizzy. The sheets are sticky and cling to him in places even as he rises.
"Let him come," he croaks. The voices outside the door quiet at once. There is a rustling noise in the hall. Caracalla repeats, louder this time, "Please, let him come? It’s lonely here. I miss him. I'll feel better if he's here, I swear I will."
His body still burns and trembles with fever, but he feels something inside of him settle when he curls into his brother's side, like some great beast finally closing its eyes to rest. "I am glad they allowed it," he murmurs. He touches Geta's palm where it's marked with tiny crescents from his nails, as if he has spent the better part of the morning or perhaps even the week clenching his fists. Now his fingers hang open like an invitation for Caracalla to hold. Caracalla does, and continues, "I did not think they would."
Geta peers down at him. His face is very, very serious when he says, "It would not have mattered if they had denied me. I'd have cut through all of them to get to you."
Caracalla shivers, delighted, and finally sleeps.
/
"Father hates us," Caracalla says. Geta's hair is soft and a little slippery between his fingers. "I thought you should know."
"He is our father,” Geta says, eyes still trained on the tablet laid out before them. It is as if this revelation does not wound him in the slightest. Maybe he too has spent many a night rolling this truth around in the back of his mind. Caracalla supposes it would be difficult not to. “It is a mother’s duty to love her children.”
They are studying together, ostensibly, though Caracalla has instead busied himself with attempting to braid the hairs at the base of his brother’s neck.
“What of our mother, then? Do you think she loved us?”
“How would I know?” Geta snaps, jerking away so that he slips from Caracalla’s grasp. “And stop that. You must pay attention.” He takes Caracalla’s cheeks in his hands and redirects his gaze towards the tablet.
Caracalla blinks sleepily at the stone. Squints at the alphabet rearranged. He does not wish to pay attention, has no interest in studies, but for his brother he tries, resting there in the warmth of his hands.
Language is stranger. Sometimes when Caracalla says brother what he really means is mother, or perhaps it is the other way around. His tongue is heavy in his mouth; words never come out the way he'd like them to. Geta's hands are gentle where they cradle him — his cheeks, his chin, the hinges of his elbows and wrists.
He is gentle, is the thing. Geta would be loathe to admit it, he knows, so Caracalla does not ever say it aloud, but his brother is kind. Can be when he wants to be.
Soft like a mother.
/
He does not grasp the sheer depth of his father's mislike, however, until he is nine. It has never been a particular concern, only a truth he has accepted since he was very small. His father looks at him as if he has somehow snuck a glance at his insides and is dissatisfied with what he found there.
Caracalla had not considered it would be such a terrible thing to be noticed. To be seen, and known.
He knows that his father is angry. Angry that the gods saw fit to take his wife and leave him with the two of them. Better to be left with sons than only daughters, at least, but he looks at them as if they are no better, as if they are of no more worth to him than the half-men who serve them.
Caracalla is hated, he knows, because he is wrong, because he is restless and fussy and sickly. Because there is something wrong inside of him that cannot be fixed, only tempered. But Geta —
Geta is good. Geta is good, and he is strong and smart and capable, and Geta loves him —
Perhaps that is why, Caracalla thinks. Perhaps it is his brother’s devotion to him that has doomed them both.
The world is loud. His mind is louder still. Geta is the one who makes it all go quiet.
The hand around his throat now does not squeeze. When Caracalla swallows, his brother adjusts his hand so he many do so without difficulty, spindly fingers shaking ever so slightly against his skin. Such a wonderful brother, he is, looking after him like this even when he's about to shake out of his own skin with fright. But he had known that it was the right thing to do, hadn't he? Had stepped into where Caracalla had left his mind wide open for the taking and realized just what he needed before Caracalla had even figured it out for himself.
Being known by Geta is not such an awful thing.
The welt beneath his eye stops stinging eventually. His tears, which have cut clean streaks through the powder on his cheeks, have dried. Salt clings to his lip.
Geta never squeezed, but Caracalla feels the ghost of his fingers for hours afterwards like a brand around his throat.
/
Twelve years-old. Hiding.
Always hiding, in his way, but today he is hiding from Geta. It's a game, or at least he thinks it is. The longer Caracalla considers it, the more the thought clouds his head like dirty water. With Geta these days, Caracalla is never certain.
No. It is a game, he reminds himself. One of his favorite games, because it’s the one he’s better at than Geta, even if the maidservants have gently suggested to him that he is getting too old for these sorts of games. Caracalla dreams of sending Dondus to poke out their eyeballs.
It is not Geta’s favorite game — he prefers games of strategy, the boring kinds that involve sitting around across from one another for hours on end. But Caracalla loathes those, grows frustrated and restless and all too oft flees before the game is done; he strips Geta of the chance to gloat, and they both wind up upset.
But Caracalla is good at hiding. Good at making himself small, shoving himself into dark corners. Not so good at waiting, but can do it for the delighted swoop he gets in his belly when Geta spots him, when he catches his eye through a crack in a door or the gap in hanging linens. Pounces on him, laughing: Found you found you found you.
He is knelt beneath the butcher's table. Arms wrapped around himself, chin pressed into his knees, bruising. If he tries hard enough, he can force himself almost as still and quiet as the pig's body on the table above him.
(He had stumbled into the room, looking for a place to hide. Had seen the pig's open throat and thought, inexplicably, of his brother.)
The smell hits him like a fist to the belly when the butcher returns. Caracalla commits it to memory; the sound of tearing flesh, too. Entrails spill over the table's edge, and Caracalla watches them. Watches the butcher’s strong legs. Watches how the blood pools around him on the ground near his feet. He tries very hard to keep his hands to himself, struck by a sudden hunger so intense he’s worried he’ll be sick and give himself away.
He isn’t sure what happens then, exactly, only that it feels as if he is trying to breathe from deep underwater, like the time Geta had dared him to hold his breath under the surface in the baths for as long as he could. He’d accidentally inhaled a mouthful of it instead. Had panicked and flailed and choked, and Geta had hauled him out and patted sharply between his shoulder blades until he was able to catch his breath.
But now there is no water and there is no Geta. He tastes blood: the pig’s blood or his own, he does not know. An ugly mix of the two, perhaps.
How much time passes before Geta discovers him, Caracalla does not know, hours or days or years. But by the time he joins him under the table, face lined with worry as he pets him like an animal — are you all right I’m sorry I looked for you why didn’t you come out gods Father is going to kill us you know — Caracalla is trembling and flushed with fever, calves welted where he’s dug his fingernails in hard enough to bleed.
/
Blood on his skin, blood in the cracks between tiles; he never does quite remember whose blood it is.
What does it matter? Red is red.
/
He is fourteen, and it is the first time he has had a boy in his bed. Caracalla does not know what to do with his lips, let alone his tongue, though he knows he must use them both, knows it from watching his brother with the women he shares his own bed with these days. Has watched them from a distance, heat curling in his belly and between his thighs at the sight of his brother’s tongue licking into her gasping mouth; Geta had put his cock inside of her and she'd bleated like a lamb that knew it was headed to slaughter.
At the memory, his cheeks flush darker than the rouge still smeared across them. He is so tired of feeling so — insufficient. Small. This boy is a slave. The last thing Caracalla should feel around him is small.
(It's easy to get an animal to like you, see: something raw and dripping blood for anything with sharp teeth; sweets work well for bugs, or for the birds with their ticklish little beaks. The cattle like to fight over dry chunks of bread. Caracalla is allowed to feed them all, so long as the guards are minding him; a prince is a prince. Geta does not share his fascination, merely lets him prattle on about the tigers and alligators and colorful, exotic birds he's seen that day. Offers an occasional nod and smile. Asks, Is that so? Voice kind and lilting, if a little coddling. Once even said, when they were a bit younger, You're very brave, getting so close to them like that, and it had so delighted Caracalla that he'd practically floated through the rest of the day.)
He juts out his chin and clenches his jaw. “Show me how,” Caracalla instructs the boy, who is blonde and short and sturdy, and prays it does not sound like a plea.
/
More often than not, the boys leave his room bruised, bleeding.
It is an accident until it isn't.
/
Meanness suits him, at fifteen, but does not satisfy him. It does nothing to sate the gaping maw of hunger that's started gnawing in earnest at the periphery of his mind.
Tonight, he snorts two lines of ivory powder from the tablet the servants laid out and makes the boy in his bed snort one, too. The boy is young and afraid, like all the others, but the offer makes him grin, a lazy crooked thing. One of his front teeth is chipped. Caracalla wants to put his tongue to it. He wishes the boy had a cock to fuck him with, but he's not certain that's a hunger he can put words to.
The drug settles heavy over him. Desire is scratching at his insides with sharp little claws. “You'll call me brother,” he instructs the boy. “Like you mean it.”
The boy only looks puzzled for a moment before he nods, his own movements jerky and uncoordinated now, too. They titter like two virgins. Caracalla has not been in a long time, but the boy might very well be. He is trembling a little when Caracalla reaches for him.
“Yes, my princ- brother,” the boy chokes out. Rights himself, then tries again. "Brother." It does not sound right rolling off of his tongue, but the powder tamps down Caracalla’s irritation. His disappointment.
“Brother,” Caracalla echoes. He has said it a thousand-thousand times before, but his own voice sounds strange and water-logged to his own ears. As if he may cry. He tucks his face into the boy’s neck. He is panting like a hound now, inhaling the unfamiliar animal scent of him. “I promise I’ll be gentle.”
/
He is close — so tantalizingly, frustratingly close — when he stumbles to Geta's rooms. He is shaking all over with want. He wants so badly there is no room to feel humiliated. The aphrodisiac has worn off, but this need comes from somewhere deeper. Somewhere darker, meaner. His cock is drooling against his belly.
Brother, he whines, and Geta does not seem so surprised to see him. He does not seem surprised at all. Opens his arms, and Caracalla goes to him, easy as anything.
He thinks, unbidden, of the stray cats that roam the palace halls that he entices with bowls of cream. How he must get very low, belly against the cool tiles, to watch their tiny pink tongues lap at it.
When Caracalla spills into his brother's hand, he kisses him. Tries to remember what he's been taught but comes up short. He offers his mouth and his tongue and teeth to him anyway, lets him do whatever he'd like. Geta's mouth is like summer fruit sweet with rot.
/
Geta does seem surprised that their father knows. Or that he seems to know. Knows something. Caracalla does not understand this. Wants to say, Of course he knows. He sees everything, you know that. It is unusual for his brother to let his guard down the way he had when he had welcomed Caracalla into his bed — though he has always had a startling lack of self-preservation where Caracalla is concerned.
So, no: Caracalla is not surprised when his father's hand comes down hard. He is surprised, however, when he is not the one who ends up struck.
Geta, brash and bright-eyed and braver than any gladiator in their father’s stable, throws himself in the way.
They are sixteen, and there is blood. There is so much blood, and Caracalla knows it is his brother's but he screams as if it is his own, because it might as well be. He cradles his brother's head in his lap, strokes his face while the physicians stitch him back up, pulling all that open flesh together with thread. They inhale opium smoke together — you need it more than I do, Geta insists, wry even as his face twists in agony, and Caracalla laughs, delirious. Apologizes when his own tears drip onto his brother's cracked lips and into his open mouth.
/
In their seventeenth year, they are both named heirs. Geta is skeptical, then tentatively delighted, squeezing Caracalla’s fingers between his own. It’s what we wanted, isn’t it? Rome will be ours. Together.
Caracalla does not trust it. Knows this is a test, because nearly everything is. Knows it is their father’s way of daring Geta to rise to the challenge and earn back his honor, to finish Caracalla off and take what is rightfully his.
There is a scar on his brother’s arm and another above his temple, hidden just beneath his hair. They are scars that were meant for Caracalla, and Geta had taken them without complaint, had let all of that red inside of him puddle onto the floor beneath their feet. Caracalla reminds himself of this when the flies start buzzing around the edges of his mind. Squeezes his brother’s fingers in return and offers him a wan smile.
Ours, he agrees. Together.
/
It hardly matters, in the end. Their father takes a dagger to the heart. When the undertaker allows them to view the corpse in its box, Geta flinches instinctively, as though his father's stiff fingers may yet twitch, twist, strike. He trembles like a child. Geta keeps him upright with a warm hand on his shoulder, and when Caracalla's vision clears his brother looks strong and proud and dangerous as an animal.
The body is burned. Not quite boy kings but not quite men, they stand side-by-side and watch as it all goes up in smoke. There are games, too, to be held in his honor. Caracalla loves the gladiator matches, but today he watches the hot spurts of blood splash across the sand and can only think of his brother's own blood and how it had run across the floor tiles, soaked into everything it encountered. He sinks low into his seat while Dondus chirps in his ear in what he can only assume is some bid at comfort; he scratches his pet’s tiny, fuzzy head in return.
Their father's presence lingers like a cloak, like opium-laced dreams, but it falls away entirely when Caracalla chances a glance at his brother and finds Geta already looking back — some mixture of curiosity and hunger in the mid-afternoon heat.
/
There's a lot of talking around it, in the way Geta tends to do when he gets nervous, which is so rare on its own that Caracalla has to work very hard not to laugh. He hears and understands the request through all of his gibberish regardless. I want to fuck you.
It's more fun to play coy. His brother will always get what he wants, anyhow. It's taken him long enough to ask; he's so withholding sometimes, as if there is any honor at all to be found in denying oneself. Might as well become a fucking eunuch, Caracalla has thought but never said, because even he knows it is simply not the sort of thing to be voiced aloud. It's the kind of thing you only say when you want a fistful of rings to the face, brother or no.
They wind up in a bed. Of course they do. (Whose bed it is, Caracalla cannot say. Does not care enough to remember.) It is still light outside; the sky is that same dangerous, burning shade of blue. There are duties they must attend to. They still have not taken their evening meal.
All very easy to ignore here in this bed. The breeze blows the shades all around them; they flap noisily enough that they drown out the city sounds far below.
Geta's body, though Caracalla has known it in glances and touches and candle-lit fumblings, is still largely unexplored territory. They are twins, yes, but not so alike. Caracalla is soft where Geta is sharp, freckled and scarred where he is smooth, sluggish where he is strong. Still, he spends that afternoon learning the soft parts of his brother, putting his mouth to them all. Making mental notes of the places that make him shudder and sigh; places where he is tense before he unravels under Caracalla's hands.
When Geta opens him up, slowly, carefully, as deliberate and methodical as a physician tending to a wound, Caracalla feels as if he is burning up from the inside out.
(I am worried, his brother admitted with his lip chewed raw, that I will hurt you.
Mm, Caracalla had hummed but waved a hand dismissively. Not on purpose, though. It's different then, isn't it? When it isn't on purpose.)
He sinks down, finally finally finally, onto Geta's cock like he was made for it. Falls onto him like a sword. For a great while he is too overwhelmed to move, settled in the cradle of his brother’s hips.
Caracalla hasn't the faintest idea of what to do with any of it: not with his brother's face, open and slightly frightened and half in love, nor with the heat between their bodies, excruciating but so unlike the fevers of his youth. He leans in to kiss him and Geta sighs, makes a quiet, hungry noise deep in his chest.
What a wonder it is, to be noticed. To be seen, and known.
His brother, all laid out for him like an offering. Caracalla takes and takes and takes.
/
"Caracalla," his brother chokes. "Calla, brother, is it — it is good, does it — do you like it?" He is breathing like he is drowning, and he is holding onto Caracalla so very tightly.
I like it, he babbles when he finally begins to move like Geta tells him to. He is full up, fuller than he ever could have imagined. I like it, I like it, oh, brother, I do — Geta, thank you —
/
Geta's fingertips tickle when they brush the bare curve of his back. Caracalla squirms, pleasantly sore and delighted. Muffles a laugh into the pillow and hears his brother do the same.
Are you still here? Are you still here with me? his brother's touch questions.
"I'm here," Caracalla says. He rolls over and stretches himself out as if to prove that he's of sound mind, that he hasn't disappeared off somewhere down a path his brother cannot follow. Reaches up to run his fingers through his own hair and studies his brother through the gap between his forearm and bicept. "Must I thank you, like one of your whores? Is that what you're waiting for?"
Geta scowls at him. "No." A sore spot; the very idea offends him, clearly.
"Well," Caracalla says, another laugh building in his chest, "I'll thank you anyway, brother, for the privilege of mounting your magnificent coc—"
"Stop that." Geta barks out a laugh and flicks his ear to shut him up, shoves at him as if they're children again, wrestling in the gardens.
(Geta was mostly terrible at it, wrestling — though Caracalla oft carried the sneaking suspicion that his brother was pulling his punches. He would prod at and goad him, frustrated, until finally Geta had gotten a little more rough, a little more mean. All animals can be provoked, Caracalla has learned, if you poke them sharply enough. Even the ones that love you.
It had been fun until they'd tumbled into a rosebush and kept going, pricked by thorns, flowers and blood both smearing red across the ground beneath them. Their father had scolded them both for their carelessness, and it was a lesson Caracalla has yet to forget, though he supposes it no longer matters now. They live. Their father does not. The gardens are theirs to pollute — that's the word he'd used — as they please.)
"I meant what I said, you know," Caracalla continues, sobering up, "about forgiving you."
Geta's expression is open as a wound, but Caracalla cannot read it. It is not a look he has ever seen on his brother's face. Then it twists, despairing. More easily read, though Caracalla still does not quite understand. Hadn't he said he was forgiven? So dissatisfied even now, even after getting exactly what he wanted.
"Have I ruined you?" Geta asks.
Ah. Caracalla almost rolls his eyes. Huffs. "Is that what this is all about? You flatter yourself. I was ruined long before you ever touched me." When Geta does not respond and only continues looking at him with wide, sad eyes, as if it's something actually worth discussing, he relents, "Perhaps. If you have, then consider yourself forgiven for that as well."
Geta appears stricken for a moment, then recovers. ”Perhaps we have ruined each other,” he suggests. The barest flash of teeth. Smile or snarl, welcome or warning; Caracalla cannot tell from this angle. He will take either. Anything over his brother’s misery. He is thoroughly ravished and very pleased, so Geta should be pleased, too.
“Perhaps,” he agrees. Gives him teeth right back. Smile or snarl. Teeth are teeth.
/
It hurts. Rather, hurt becomes a state of being.
In the colosseum, Caracalla has seen many a man torn apart by beasts, flayed alive; sharp teeth that expose muscle and bubbling fat and the gristle of windpipes to the summer heat.
This is not that kind of hurt. Not quite. Something slower; as if a very large creature is eating him alive at its leisure. Unspooling his memories and winding them back up wrong. It is as if his body is one large, perpetual bruise. It has always been like this, but has been growing ever worse in the years since becoming Emperor.
Everything is spilling out of him all the time. Caracalla tries to make himself as open as he can. Tries to make himself a vessel for Geta to pour it all back into. Geta promises he will, promises he'll try, fingers at his pulse point to settle the ache in his brother's body. I'll always bring you back, he swears, so long as you let me.
It hurt to be born — he remembers, he swears, even when Geta insists he cannot. It will hurt to die, too, Caracalla thinks. Somewhere in the in-between, relief: in the powders, in extra cups of wine, in the familiar press of his brother’s hands.
/
Often, these days, when he dreams of the black, it is Geta calling out to him instead of the other way around. Slow down! Wait up, won't you?
And Caracalla sees his brother's shape there in the distance and shouts back, I am waiting; I've been waiting, brother, hurry up! Plants himself in the sand and waits. He waits and he waits and he waits, and his brother does not come.
/
He does not understand exactly what happens, the first time. Or, rather — he understands it is the logical end point of the act of his brother’s hands around his throat, but this has never happened before. In many ways, it surprises him that it has taken this long.
Geta is still calling his name as Caracalla blinks the black spots in his vision away. Jerks once, twice against where his brother still has him pinned at the hips against the bed, and comes.
Frightened, he realizes as he sucks more air into his lungs and his seed smears between them. His brother looks — frightened. Eyes wide and glistening, as if he’s done something he wishes he could take back.
It is good. It is so good. Caracalla lunges up to kiss him on his quivering lips and pours giddy laughter into his mouth.
Again, he begs, half-coherent, boring into his brother's wild gaze with his own. Geta, please, say you'll do it again.
/
It does not unsettle him that they are known. Not necessarily. They are rulers now, anyhow, and their father is dead. Many still believe it was by their hands, they’ve come to learn, and they have not disavowed it, at least not in so many words. What point is there in insisting — fruitlessly! — upon one’s innocence when dropping a traitor in with a few of Caracalla’s pretty beasts yields a far greater result?
Who else would dare seek to punish them for their perversions?
But Caracalla sinks into the familiar comfort of his brother’s hand so often with eyes on them, and it feels important that they — some amorphous they, the Senate or perhaps all of Rome — know he isn’t the only one who needs it all the time. That Geta needs him, too, just as badly, in his own way — that Geta’s fingers twitch around the shape of his throat even from across a crowded room.
(That when they were small, Geta had only allowed himself some flicker of reprieve in an act of moronic self-flagellation — touched the bones of his brother’s wrists, flicked the back of his ear, bumped their knees together under the table.
It makes Caracalla laugh now to think his brother ever believed it could be enough, forever, to simply exist like that next to him: fingers almost brushing but not quite.)
/
He has started forgetting what he likes. He cannot remember some days whether he likes being fucked roughly and kissed softly or fucked softly and kissed rough; sometimes he wonders if he enjoys being kissed at all, then remembers he spent the greater part of his first year with the slave boys learning how to use his tongue, so he must enjoy it messy, the way it leaves both their mouths swollen, chins wet; and did it always feel so depraved, to be shoved belly-down on the carpet because the bed is too far away? He must have liked that, once, but now he's no longer sure. Was it always like this, after a week of games, burning so fervently with desire he longs to rip himself free of his clothing right there in the coach? Had he always liked it when Geta murmured you're so warm inside, had called him softling, rabbit, sweet boy?
Some days the hands around his throat settle him, no matter how hard his brother presses; other days he snarls, Just be fucking rough with me for once, or I'll find somebody else who will.
/
He watches the barbarian. Then he watches his brother watch the barbarian. He has seen Geta's expression go lust-heavy at bloodshed as often as it does with the women in his bed. it is nothing new; it is a pleasure they share. Usually.
This is different. It is not quite the same face he makes when he regards Caracalla, but it is close enough. Too close for comfort.
Envy is an ugly thing. It carves out a home there at the very center of him.
The barbarian moves and grunts like an animal. Caracalla imagines what the barbarian's cock might look like, how it might fatten up under his hand. He imagines riding him with some distant sense passion while Geta watches, then imagines putting him down like a sick dog.
/
There is a scar on his brother's throat, and Caracalla put it there. There are bruises on Caracalla's own throat, and his brother put them there.
It should be enough. Caracalla feels gluttonous. He tells himself over and over again that it must be enough —
/
"Just the once. Please."
Geta glares at him. "No."
"I let you do it to me."
"Because you asked," Geta insists, jaw clenched. "Because you enjoy it."
"You'd enjoy it, too, if you just let me try."
"I said no."
It makes Caracalla want to stamp his foot. "You'd have let me do it when we were younger." When I was smaller, less prone to volatility; when you trusted me more, knew I couldn't hurt you if I tried.
Geta snorts. "I would not."
"Would too."
"I assure you that I wouldn't. Besides, you were unpracticed then; you'd have made me bleed."
"I'd make you bleed now," Caracalla blurts, "if you wanted."
It is not what he meant to say. Geta says nothing more, but Caracalla sees it, swears he sees it in his eyes, faint but familiar — the hint of a challenge. Or perhaps it is only dread.
/
There is another dream. It slots itself next to the one where he tries to catch Geta in the black, endless nothing, a childhood nightmare that has never ceased.
It is terrible. It is beautiful. Beautiful in the way his brother is beautiful. Beautiful like dying embers, shiny-backed beetles, a cut throat.
Easy to fall into as a spider’s web.
/
In the dream, the physicians don't hesitate when he asks for more opium. In the dream, his brother does not flinch when he holds it out, when he says, please, with me, just a little, it's nice. Other times, the physicians gift him the little tablets he likes to slip into his wine before bed; he slips them into his brother's cup instead and waits for his eyes to grow heavy. How unusual it is, for Geta to be the one drooping into him, for Geta to be the one muttering, Brother, I don't quite feel like myself. How unusual it is, for it to be Caracalla's turn to hold Geta between his hands, to say, I've got you, I've got you, don't worry.
In the dream, it is not so much like touching a corpse. His brother is warm and alive, after all, limbs still pliable where Caracalla has him spread out on the bed. His cock is soft. He is tight, near impossible to breach when Caracalla attempts to do so with a dry finger; it is far easier when he wets them with oil, but still something nags at him as he strokes inside of him tentatively.
In the dream, it is still not what he wants. When he's imagined it before, it's the fight that thrills him the most: the feeling of his brother bucking, angry, cursing him. Teeth gnashing; coiled and tense and alert. The violence that comes before the surrender. Geta has spent his entire life minding Caracalla; Caracalla only wishes to return the favor.
It's no fun taking something that is given so freely. He thought perhaps it would be, but it only leaves him cold.
In the dream, he explores his brother's mouth with his fingers the way Geta likes to do to him. Runs them over the ridges of his teeth, presses down against the back of his tongue, half-expecting to be bitten. The slaves are checked for worms in much the same way. Geta is hotter and wetter here, already ready for him. Briefly, he considers feeding his cock into his brother's mouth. Considers skull-fucking him until he feels Geta's throat bob under his fingers and around his cock, until his eyes flutter and widen and pool with tears.
In the dream, he smacks him. Lets his open palm crack against Geta's cheek the same way Geta's had cracked against his own in the throne room one night during a particularly bad episode. Geta's rings, much like their father's, versus Caracalla's teeth, and Caracalla had spat the broken one out onto the ground at his brother's feet and together they had stared at it, jagged and so loud, somehow, as it rested there, and Geta had looked so terribly ashamed and so sorry, sorrier than he ever has in his life —
But when Caracalla smacks him, there is no resistance. His head lolls. The only evidence he's been touched at all is the red mark blooming across his cheek.
In the dream, Caracalla loses his nerve. The fever cools on his cheeks and he reels back, nearly falls off the bed in his realization. It's at that point that it stops feeling like a dream at all. Cool wind on his cheeks. Caracalla swallows thickly past the lump in his throat. Covers his brother with a blanket. His hands shake so violently he downs another cup of wine to calm himself, then two. Pours a third and splashes it in his brother's face; Geta remains still and passive in sleep, so Caracalla licks him clean, calls for clean linens, and watches the shallow rise and fall of his chest. It's awful when he's this quiet. Caracalla needs him awake, needs to see his lovely face. Needs him to put a hand around his throat and warm him back up. It is so cold.
In the dream, Geta finally stirs with his head in Caracalla's lap. Caracalla is petting his hair, muttering nonsense. I remember, he babbles, watching his brother's fingers twitch and his eyes move beneath his lids, watches his throat bob and mouth move around no discernible speech, I remember. I held you just like this that night. I thought Father was going to kill me, then I thought he'd killed you; oh, brother, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You bled for me that night. Forgive me. I don't know what I was thinking. Open your eyes, please, and say you'll forgive me.
In the dream — and it must be a dream, must be — Geta's eyes crack open. Narrowed into little slits, still quivering in their sockets and threatening to roll back into his skull. Caracalla searches them for forgiveness and finds only terror.
/
They are in bed. They're always in bed, or so it seems. The time Caracalla spends out of bed is ever-hazier, lost to clouds of opium smoke and lines of ivory powder that keep his agony on a leash. Soon his mind will swallow it all in one fell swoop, but in the meantime, he tries his hardest to remember.
So — the bed. Two bodies. Geta is asleep. He has not been sleeping well these last weeks, and there are dark circles under his eyes that make him look older.
Caracalla studies his sleeping face, lets his eyes drift to the small white scar he'd left when he leapt onto his brother and threatened to bleed him like a pig.
When he drags his nail lightly over it now, Geta flinches awake. Studies his face. Caracalla keeps his hand where it is and studies him right back. Can see it — the unease lingering just beneath the surface. Beautiful when coupled with the throb of his pulse under Caracalla's fingers.
"I did not mean to wake you," Caracalla says. It is not the whole truth, nor entirely a lie; like everything else, it hangs somewhere in the in-between. He leans up to drag his tongue across the scar for good measure, smiles against his skin when Geta sighs a short, shuddering sigh.
"Do you fear me?" he asks, pulling back so that he may look him in the eye. "Be truthful, brother. Are you frightened?”
Geta shakes his head. "No," he answers, easy like it's the truth. "I have never feared you, brother. I love you."
"Then sleep," Caracalla says. Geta stares at him for a long moment, throat bobbing, before he lets his lids fall shut again. He is not as proficient at lying these days, or perhaps it is only that Caracalla has gotten better at reading him.
Geta may see him. May know him better than he knows himself, sometimes. But Caracalla knows him, too. He presses his mouth to the scar once more.
How rare, how glorious it is, Caracalla thinks — to make a mark that lasts.