Chapter Text
“Where did you get that hairpin again?” asked Antonius.
“Desma left it at my place the other day.”
“Should I know her - in any way?”
“Don’t think you’d remember, considering, but yes.”
Antonius hummed in acknowledgement, eyeing the other’s twiddling with the silver hairpin between his fingers. Antonius cast it a half suspicious look.
“I’m not asking where you got the idea of giving me an ear piercing - more anecdotes of Egypt, perhaps?”
The orange-silver afternoon sun of Aprilis gleamed through the room window, and it was making him drowsy. Here goes another crime against their esteemed society he probably shouldn’t be ticking off of the list, Antonius reckoned idly as he tilted back his head into Curio’s arms, eyes closing; but he liked the new gladiolus perfume he was wearing - the attention, too. So he let him.
The process was quick with Curio’s steady hands - a pinch, followed by a belated sense of tingling - then the trigonal gold stud was clipped on.
“Perfect.” A tender kiss on his temple. “You did well.”
“What?” Antonius laughed. “You’re buying me jewelries now?”
Neither of them bothered to take care of it afterwards. The trinket was lost at a certain soiree where things had gotten a bit out of hand, and the puncturing soon closed up. Even the weal it produced healed fast - in two weeks’ time, all he’s left with was a minute cicatrix on the earlobe if someone really looked.
It was but another among their preposterous doings - another casual reminder; another testimony of their youth. A pinch, after all, was only paltry to the wounds Antonius had inflicted on himself.
But it did not go away.