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43 B.C. Rome
*
It happened three months into their newly-found alliance, after they have returned from Bononia. At first, he could barely tell the distinctive sickness from what he’d been feeling every morning after the previous night’s debauchery; then, one day, he fainted straight at breakfast.
That led to the current situation in Antonius’ atrium, where Antonius had just finished cursing in three different languages, Octavian stood opposite of him beside a side table, and Fulvia was watching them both, lying in the couch in contemplation.
“Juno be damned, it must’ve been that one time I got carried away and -”
“I can think of three other times right off,” mumbled Octavian behind the lime green glass cup in his hand, “just before when we decided on your uncle, for one.”
Antonius shot him a warning glance. “Put that cup down. It wasn’t meant for you.” Fulvia looked like she was on the verge of feeding another slave to Curio’s lampreys.
“Consider yourself very lucky, my noble ally,” she darted out a sneering stress of syllables at the young man who’d just inherited the divine name. “For if you haven’t just come back from a peace negotiation -”
“I’m surprised you were not previously aware of your husband’s...circumstances,” retorted Octavian without batting an eye.
“You say that one more time -”
“That’s enough. Fulvia, say what you were gonna say and get it over with.”
“I shall see to the medicine right away. It’ll be two miserable days, or three, but you’ll handle. Meanwhile you…” Fulvia sighed and turned to Octavian, “take care of the prying eyes and whatever’s happening with the proscription list.”
“The sooner we do away with this abomination, the better,” Fulvia stood up and strode away with a frustrated arbitrariness. Octavian wondered where did she get such experience.
“Guess our women do know their trick.” Antonius rose from his couch following suite. “Now that we are all on the same page…” he made a lackadaisical gesture towards the main entrance.
Octavian put the cup down onto the side table he was leaning on, more cautiously than one would normally with a piece of glassware. He spoke nonchalantly, as if commenting on the day’s dinner plan.
“More murder, then?”
Antonius tensed. “What did you say?”
“All the haggling and bartering with the lives of our own kins...one might indeed get used to it,” Octavian continued as he walked up to his ally in deliberate steps, gingerly placing a hand on his lower abdomen. He couldn’t feel anything yet except for the strained muscles.
“You’ve seen the blood on the street, right beside me, have you not?” He’d observed Antonius during their meetings. Every uneasy twitch. Every evasive exchange of pleasantries as they scribed down another name on the tablets.
“That of our own kins, of our acquaintances, the ones who dined and joked with us…”
Antonius stood there like a statue despite his body heat radiated through the fabrics. Octavian removed his hand and found himself missing the sensation instantly. Dionysus incarnated - and he thought it was just some drunkard’s nonsensical blabbering.
“Now your own unborn, too? There will be blood, I can only imagine.”
A moment of dead silence befell the atrium. Antonius gritted his teeth.
“Don’t push it.” You sick fuck -
“I’m not. It’s all up to you.” Octavian smiled at him softly - innocently - and tilted up his head to kiss him on the right cheek, “my dear friend,” before seeing himself out and disappearing into the crowded streets of Rome.
42 B.C. Philippi
*
After Brutus’ funeral, Octavian came to visit Antonius’ tent.
“You’re drunk,” again, he added mentally. “I doubt you should be.”
“We’re not fucking married,” Antonius blurted out as he poured more wine from the decanter, making a provocatively loud sound. He smelt like smoke and funeral pyre, still in his full armour. “Bit late for that, don’t you think? Already faked a marriage.”
“Just...leave me be for tonight,” Antonius put down the drinking cup and pinched at his nose bridge, as if trying to will away Octavian’s presence like a bad hangover. “Go get plastered, or find yourself a whore, for all I care.”
Octavian frowned at the implication. “Are you mourning for him now? What’s next, scratching on your own skin until you draw blood?”
“Where does that come from?” asked Antonius. “Do I have to have a reason for not wanting to see your face?”
The blasé coating to his voice -
“Were you carried away when you were with him too?”
“Keep going,” and Antonius was finally looking at him. He rose from his seat, paced up to Octavian so that he was seeing him properly in the eyes. “I beg of you.”
He smiled, and punched Octavian right across the face.
Dizziness was the first thing to bash down, before the thuddy pain and the blood streaming down. He distantly registered Antonius grabbing him by the collar, dragging him towards the centre of the tent. He tried to wrestle away, but Antonius was stronger - he was always stronger - and it didn’t take long before he had him tossed down onto the sand table, pressing against his throat with the back of his forearm.
“All the things you said about my father and I...you never seemed to have considered the possibility…where I talked,” he struggled a jeer between the gasping for air. Again, an unwise move -
Antonius held him there, five, eight, ten seconds. The smell of the ceremonial incense on him started to grow mesmerising.
Why do things always end up like this for them?
“I’m not just another among the band of young lovers you’ve taken -” there, that was something he should not have said, but the deprivation of oxygen had gotten the better of him.
Sometimes, he should admit that he does this on purpose.
“Is that so?” his ally stared down at him with a half-amused expression, eyes glistening in the waning candlelight, his other hand sliding up on Octavian’s thigh.
“Looks like you’ve got some pretty interesting ideas in your head. Come on, spit’em out.”
Octavian didn’t. He could have thought of a clever comeback. Something - anything -that would make a proper retortion. But he did not speak at all.
“You living and breathing perversion of a child, I should fuck you here and now and let the whole camp hear you whimper -”
What’s done is done. The war is over, and you should change into some comfortable clothes.
Antonius seemed content with his silence. “Drag my name through the mud all you want, and I promise your untimely death will be nothing short of a delightful circus.”
“Oh and by the way…” He released his weight on Octavian for a moment before once again resuming the torment with the same determination to crush the last living soul out of him. “If you think what happened in Bononia somehow gives you a miraculous grip of power over me,” Antonius’ voice struck low and soft, brushing against the shell of his ear; sickeningly sweet, even. It could just be his own hazy head doing the trick.
“...you’d be so, so wrong.”
37 B.C. Athens
*
“Ugh, she’s got his eyes.” Antonius made a face of unabashed dismay, watching the girl playing in the garden. “That entitled little whelp.”
“Just wait till she got his personality.” Octavia reclined beside him. They have reinstalled one of the couches in the back porch to make the most out of the Athenian spring days.
“And I thought you liked your brother.”
“I love him, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes he gets on your nerves in the most peculiar way. You should really see the letter I received from him this morning.”
“Besides, I’ve long retired from his dealings in Rome.” Octavia drawled, looking up from the pomegranate she’d been occupying herself in peeling. Her dark blonde hair fluttered in the blithe afternoon breezes. “He’s having way too much fun with it.”
“Wow, Athens have really loosened you up.”
“What, you know me so well now?” Octavia chuckled and nudged him on the shoulder. Antonius caught her hand in retreat, casually pulling it back into a light kiss on the knuckles.
“Have you made up your mind on the play for this evening? Please say it’s a comedy.”
“What’s wrong with Oresteia?” his wife arched an eyebrow.
Antonius gesticulated a playful complaint. “Nothing, just me being very tired of family drama -”
Octavia thought for a bit. “The Clouds, then? I heard they do it differently here. Far more entertaining.”
“Indeed, very different from home...” a glance at the garden and Antonius raised his voice, “leave that creature alone, Antonia Semele!”
Under the poplar shade, Semele was tugging at the house cat’s tail with a devilish grin on her face. Antonius walked over and lifted his daughter up from the ground, tactically saving the poor tabby from further harassment. The girl giggled in his arms.
“Al’right. Let's get you back to your tutor - time for today’s Greek reading. You don’t want to end up like him, do you?”
“End up like whom?” asked Semele, her cerulean eyes curious.
“Never mind, just talking to myself.”
30 B.C. Alexandria
*
Octavian watched as they tightened the noose around Antonia Semele’s neck. Another very muggy morning in Alexandria.
He’d pondered, when he was all alone, when not even Agrippa and Maecenas were present, how their story could meet an alternative closing. He was not, however, successful in his quest of an answer that sufficed.
It didn’t take too much work before the girl’s vain struggling came to an end, eyes bulging and bloody. It wasn’t pretty, neither. Every indignity in death ruminated the noble details of life - but it wasn’t like this, when he found Antonius in Cleopatra’s dwelling: the general was well-heeled in death’s consolatory cradle, well-prepared to tread the underworld as one of the Ptolemies.
How noble of him - serene, exhalted, empty, and Octavian almost cried out: Marcus Antonius, I forbid you -
(In what right? Gibed the eldest of the Moirai.)
Now, in the hot, brined air of the East, he took a crooked sense of comfort in knowing that the pantomime did not end here. This wouldn’t be the last of Antonius - of him, too - that was going away. Obliterated, wiped off of the scrolls. From here, together into oblivion.
He could settle for that.
Oh, then thought the young Caesar, looking down at the girl - not one bit grown, frail as a slice of dragonfly wing under the torrid daylight. She’s got my eyes.