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There is nothing he knows in the Roman tongue that could encompass it. Nothing so noble, so sweet-sounding, that could categorize everything Marcus is to him.
But does Brigantes offer any better? It’s unbearably frustrating, sometimes. When Marcus is close to him, looking at him, every meager word in every tongue he knows fails him.
Marcus is close to him, and looks at him. Esca is breathless with it.
They have yet to touch like lovers do. Marcus looks at him, eyes dark and inscrutable and yet so clear. Now they are working on the hay, turning them in the heat of summer before they bale them properly.Marcus has shed his tunic in the heat, and he gleams gold and bronze next to Esca, large capable body singing out to him, it seems, in the midday sun.
“Do you think we may rest until noon’s passed?” Marcus’s hair is plastered to his neck, his forehead. A bead of sweet trickles by his ear and Esca wants to wipe his brow. His eyes are bright still, even though he favors his left side more fully, and he speaks to Esca with respect, with kindness.
He takes Marcus by the elbow and helps him back to the shade, careful with his body and where they touch.
“Will we be able to finish the hay by sun-down, do you think?” Marcus murmurs as they lie next to each under under the wide branches of the old chestnut tree. The sunlight dapples and shines out from behind a cool canopy of green, bathing Marcus in light and shadow. Esca’s tunic feels itchy and sticks to his back; he tugs on it as he replies, “If we don’t dally, then perhaps.” He feels doubtful, looking at how high the sun is now, at the piles of hay that still need turning. One of their cows makes a low, perturbed noise in the middle-distance, and when Esca gets up on his elbows to get a better look at the cause of her distress he feels Marcus’s eyes on him where his tunic’s tugged up around his thighs. He feels the heat rise on the back of his neck, his cheeks.
Esca wants to say, I wish I owned you still. I wish you owned me. I wish we owned each other. It’s shameful to think it - shameful to want to speak of holding another’s honor or surrendering his own, especially one he respects and loves as Marcus. But Esca feels weak when Marcus regards him now, feeling thin-skinned and too-bare.
He just wants - selfishly, selfishly - to be able to keep Marcus for himself. For Marcus to want to keep him. What are they to each other, anyway? Esca knows what keeps him here, but what keeps Marcus? Oh, friendship and loyalty and esteem are not enough. Selfish, selfish. To want to bind Marcus to himself forever, to want Marcus to shun marriage and Roman life, and spend all his days with Esca on this little plot of stubborn land in the north. To want to lay claim not just to Marcus’s honor and friendship, but to his desire, to his table and bed, to the sounds he makes at night when he thinks Esca is sleeping, to his bronze, callused skin and the sweetness of his soul. Every moment, every feeling, for Esca alone.
Esca is ravenous. Esca is hungry for Marcus and it is selfish, oh, it is selfish.
Marcus’s gaze lingers on him. He turns towards him, ready to reveal himself, ready to say it all - or deflect, or break this heavy, laden silence, but when he catches Marcus’s eye his heart stutters in his chest and whatever words he was going to speak, whatever clumsy deflection or desperate confession, dies on his lips.
He turns, and Marcus turns his eyes on him, and begins to speak, himself.
“I,” Marcus says, and then colors as well when his voice cracks. It makes Esca feel slightly better. He is not alone in being unsure in this new territory. He is not the only one without a map.
But then Marcus looks very determined, indeed, and locks eyes with Esca before Esca can escape it, and starts, "I would dally with you.“ Marcus’s eyes are dark, so dark, and for a moment Esca is sure -
But then Marcus cuts his eyes away. "I mean, I would, if you - If you wish it - or, after the goats are fed, perhaps - ”
Ah, Marcus. He feels suddenly protective, in the face of his beautiful fumbling Roman looking so vulnerable, so open and trusting, flushing prettily in the sunlight. Certainty flows through him, and gives him courage to set his hand upon Marcus’s, silencing the one whose pulse beats within him..
The words won’t come, not in Latin or Brigantes, but he needs no words for this. He grips Marcus’s large hand in his carefully, feeling Marcus shudder, and uses his lips for a far better purpose than speaking.
He is softhearted for his Marcus. Esca wants to know how to be tender, wants to give Marcus something he’s not sure he knows himself. He quietens that selfish, selfish blood-cry that beats in time with his heart. Instead, he takes Marcus’s hand, callused and big and square, takes the palm that burns under his fingers, and brings it to his lips gently, gently. Oh, but he is weak, and he ventures a brief taste of Marcus’s skin on that delicate part of his wrist, where his blood beats strong under thin skin. Oh, and the noises Marcus makes at even this lightest of touches, even this most innocent of kisses gives Esca pause.
“Esca,” Marcus says. He is blinking at Esca and at his hand as though he has never seen either of them before. "Esca,“ he says again, urgently, and how can Esca not answer to the call of his beloved? So he relents and touches their mouths together in the Roman way.
Marcus is sweet under his touch, open and yielding and hot - making soft noises and clutching Esca to himself tighter. When they finally part, panting a bit, Esca cant help but huff a relieved chuckle into Marcus’s neck. He grips the back of Marcus’s head, squeezing it, grounding both of them when his beloved makes a small, lost sound. "The taste of you pleases me so well,” he murmurs, in what tongue he knows not. "So well, I should like to drink of you whenever I thirst.“
"Esca,” Marcus says. He fists his fingers in the front of Esca’s tunic. Esca thinks, yes, yes, but Marcus is trembling now, shivering in the heat of summer. “Esca.” His eyes are shut tight, his broad forehead creased, his bare chest heaving.
Ah, Marcus. “Hush, sweetling,” he whispers into Marcus’s neck. He tries to soothe a hand down Marcus’s shoulder, as he would calm a skittish mare, but as soon as his fingers touch the Roman’s skin Marcus jerks and blinks back up at him, flushed high and eyes burning.
“Oh, Esca, I couldn’t - I love you too well to- to dishonor you this way.” Esca feels his mouth tighten. Marcus looks tortured, blushing and averting his gaze in shame. Oh, of all the times for Marcus’s silly Roman insanity to reassert itself!
“Is my love dishonorable to you?” Esca asks carefully, keeping his voice stern. He does not feel anger, not precisely, but it frustrates him that Marcus could still be so enslaved to a mistress who has treated him so harshly. That Marcus could not instead allow the one who would bear his shield and offer him everything those same devotions.
Marcus splutters on a denial, eyes going wide as he looks at the Briton before him.
“And is it shameful to you that you find me pleasing?” Esca presses, keeping his eyes hard. “Is it shameful to you that I find you pleasing?"
"Oh, Light of Mithras, Esca, no!” And Marcus is still blushing - like a maiden - as though he weren’t a soldier but some sweet new thing. It is wholly adorable.
Esca takes pity on his Roman, but he feels sly. “Is it displeasing to you that I wish to touch my mouth to every part of you, that I wish to have you and to give myself to you?"
Marcus’s ears go even redder, but his brow is still creased and worrisome. Esca gently chances another touch to Marcus’s shoulder. This time, Marcus lets him take the strong muscles in his grip and gently, gently lower them both down again. Esca can’t take his eyes off Marcus, who looks at him black-eyed. His Roman looks lost, almost. He braces himself over Marcus, feeling the sun scorching on his back and Marcus cool in his shadow. Shielded by Esca.
"Is it so intolerable for me to want you, Marcus?” He can’t even pretend to keep his tone hard. Instead, the space between them feels sacred, and he can’t bring his voice to break a whisper.
Marcus looks pained but brings up a shaky hand to clasp around the back of Esca’s neck. Esca can see every detail of his face like this, each eyelash and each hair. He can feel Marcus’s big hand, cool around his neck where the sun and blood and lust make it red.
Marcus says, very quietly, “I would not have you be a wife to me. Or a - whore, or a slave."
Esca swallows back an incredulous sneer; Marcus makes him kind.
He touches Marcus’s jaw with his fingertips, gentle and careful and sweet in a way that only Marcus can turn them. "Would you be a wife to me? If I requested it?"
He must ask, though he knows it hurts him; Marcus makes him cruel. He must hear Marcus, his Marcus say it. But still Marcus seems locked in struggle; eyes growing stormy and then, oddly, almost defeated.
"You must know, Esca,” he mumbles, pouting his lush looking lips.
But Esca smiles, because he has won. “Yes, but I wish to hear you say it, my love.”
The endearment proves fatal to Marcus’s resistance. He sighs. “I am yours, Esca. It makes me stupid, and you know it. You know I would be to you whatever you would allow me to be. Whore, wife. Slave.".
Esca feels warmth bloom all throughout him, even though he sweats in the heat, but he hides his triumph and relents.
"Hmm,” he says, feigning thoughtfulness. “No.” He strokes Marcus’s cheek, maps his nose and his lips and his chin. “I’d much rather you simply be Marcus, and be to me whatever you wished, and love me for it.”
He can feel Marcus beaming below him, and Esca is glad.
“I don’t know how to tell you what you are to me,” Marcus whispers finally after a few moments of abashed silence.
Esca melts totally, helpless after all. “Then love me well, and we’ll make do."
And then, in the sun and the midday heat still all around them, Marcus smiles again. It is brilliant and wide and Esca feels fire swell in him and seals their mouths together joyously.
And Marcus gives himself to Esca, charmingly shamefaced then searingly eager, and Esca feels his joy bank old fires and set new ones.
And, later, when Esca gives himself to Marcus, he holds his jaw with his shaking hands and thinks, everything, everything.