Antony is a hairy man — fresh from the warm water, the pelt clings to his damp body and carves out swells and hollows like a fresh coat of paint on an old statue. Octavian grips him just at the crease below his buttocks — knees up, like an old whore. He smells of olive oil and steam-room sweat, of whatever thin herbal tincture he's been rinsed in, and he tastes of nothing at all, the presumptuous old bastard. Even an old soldier can still be caught off guard.

"It seems you've found a better use for that lying tongue of yours," Antony declares with the bravado of a frightened man — but Octavian can feel him trembling under his mouth, the little muscle-pangs as his arsehole flinches open and shut. He is flushed with blood, flooded and responsive, and it would be easy to bring him off like this as the lowest cunnilinctor stoops to pleasing his girlfriends.

When you go to the baths with someone you can see what he's truly made of; whether he favors the bracing cold or would rather broil his friends in the steam rooms, whether he critiques the paintings on the walls or prefers discussing politics and business at length while watching other men's cocks go by. They are in a smaller room now, with broad bronze benches gone green with age and only a single entrance, narrow enough for two men to flank. The stone shelves lining the walls suggest it served some obscure purpose before one renovation or another took place and rendered it redundant — now it is most conveniently isolated, a fine place for two men to speak unobserved.

They are both men now; those months in Campania have hardened him and made him sturdy. If Antony scorns him and calls him a smooth youth it is only with an air of faint desperation, the terror of a man no longer young and unlikely to reach venerable old age. Such prodigious drinkers seldom do — and Antony is a prodigy, the monster of a dying era.

Octavian leaves off; he mouths at his sweating balls, plump and heavy in their salted purse, and feels their owner groan. When he raises his head, Antony's cock is hard as iron and arching back against his belly, trailing spunk; the head of it is wonderfully ruddy and dark like wine. The sight of it makes one think malicious things.

"I expect you'll be wanting to suck my cock next. That your mother would never do. What do I look like, she'd say, the town tramp—"

"That's enough about my mother." Octavian slaps his erect penis smartingly hard with an open hand and feels Antony jerk against him — the groan swiftly turns to a laugh, but his legs still stiffen and his toes still curl at the impact.

"Do that again, won't you? Oh, you savage."

He does.

Antony is breathless, all awash in the red glow of arousal, and making a valiant show of carelessness. Octavian squeezes his prick just below the head, doing away with the smear of seed left on his hand by the blows he has struck. The profligate bastard even has an arm crooked behind his head, like a shepherd asleep on a hillside, or one of those statues of insouciant boys that line the bathhouses to excite old men's lust. If he weren't a libidinal, middle-aged slab of a man it wouldn't be nearly so comely.

It is impossible to look at him, with his red stubbly neck and his hard horseman's thighs bent back like an ancient rent boy's, and not feel a thrill of disgust at the memory of being manhandled — no man had ever struck Octavian before that, not since he must have been a small boy indeed, lashed to a cart in darkest Gaul.

"When did you become such a little degenerate? I can't fathom when you would have had the time. Is it true you prostituted yourself to a man in Gaul for 300,000 sesterces?"

"Is that what you think it costs, to receive such treatment from Caesar's son? I'll have to remember to bill you later."

"Your blessed father knew a thing or two himself about striking a bargain with his body. He let old King Nicomedes bugger him senseless in every hole."

Antony is working himself up to some new ribaldry, but Octavian cuts him off by sinking his teeth into Antony's thigh, leaving a hard bite.

Antony jumps, crying out and casting up the artful composure of his limbs to jostle Octavian in the ribs. Octavian rolls over, rises up on his elbows like one of those marble-faced Egyptian beasts, and fixes Antony with his gaze.

"You and I must represent Caesar's legacy in the coming days. I won't hear you speaking of him like this either, do you understand?"

"You little beast."

Octavian spreads his hands. "I do this to show my esteem for you."

He does this to bring him to heel in the only way Antony understands — they have been seen in conversation together, they have bathed together, and now they enjoy one another's private confidences. It would be terribly easy, all things considered, to provoke such a man as this to violence. Antony would strike him again, and cause a scandal — he'd drag him out to the cold baths by the hair and toss him in. But they aren't quarreling now.

"Oh, is this esteem?"

"I'm not going to fuck you," Octavian says, "that would be impolite. Consider this a favor between friends."

He is a man now, and capable of his own manhandling, of pressing Antony into place for servicing. Octavian works into him with two oiled fingers, feeling the slick flesh yield — the flushed heat of it clenches against him and he braces a hand against the base of Antony's cock. The way is warm and terribly vulnerable; it would be a shame to thrust into him too roughly, and turn the flushed eagerness of him into a raw and well-used cavity, like a punitive gesture and not a cordial appreciation.

If he were to fuck this man properly, out of anger and not amiability, he'd use him by mouth and spoil that part of the body for its customary insolence forever. He finds his way by feel, observing what makes the blood pulse and the close portals of Antony's body quake and slacken.

As Octavian works, he permits his mind to wander. If he were going to do just that — to fuck Antony in the mouth, and to make him regret his blows and curses — there would necessarily be witnesses, none of this business with guards and drawn curtains. Antony would attempt bravado, of course, but even he couldn't carry it off while on his knees, with another man's hands making fists in his hair. Or perhaps only one fist; it would be a pleasure to stick fingers in his mouth and to feel the spit running down past Antony's flushed and raw bottom lip, to feel teeth alongside his own prick and to know that this man he has subjugated knows better than to bite. The man deserves no better; certainly he'd be happy to use him in the same manner before a jeering crowd, his own mistress' only son—

Octavian is only distracted from this reverie as Antony ejaculates all over his own belly in an astonishing, borderline-acrobatic jet.

Afterward Antony lies stunned as a priestly ox, breathing heavily; Octavian finishes himself off with a few succinct strokes and wipes his hands clean on a damp linen cloth. If he were feeling courteous, he'd wipe that heaving belly clean but the broad flat plain of Antony's body will have to see to itself.

"Will you come to dinner with us?"

"What, tonight?"

"Venus' day, next week. I'll send a slave with more precise details."

Antony touches the splash of come with two fingertips, as if he's forgotten what it is. "I'll have to consult my calendar. Will your mother be there?"

He reaches out to swipe at him with his seed-slick fingers; Octavian spits at him, and rolls over.