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Chapter Text

Octavian had always hated his name.

He stared at the fan on his ceiling as he thought about this. “Octavian Gaius Augustus Thurinus” was a mouthful and one could never find it on one of those cheap corner-store name key chains. It was too Roman, too grand, it demanded a sense of respect that it had not yet earned. Of course, he did not tell anyone he hated the name- it always made him stand out amongst classes of “John”’s and “Nick”’s and was phonetic so no one ever mispronounced it.

However, the name of the man who had just burst into his room had always been mispronounced. After all, “Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa” was a bit of a tongue twister. Marcus, unlike his friend who could not get his ass out of bed, had never really thought about the oddness of his middle name. Although, he had the benefit of possessing a name one could easily find on a key chain.

“It’s 8am. Get up.”

Marcus was not one for taking people’s shit. Octavian was one for giving people shit.

“It’s 8am on a Sunday, I’m not getting up.”

“So you’re going to do what? Spend your day watching the fan? It’s just gonna keep spinning.”

Octavian did not tear his attention from the fan, why would he? It was Sunday. It was the day God rested or whatever (despite 13 years of Catholic schooling, he remained uncertain about the importance of Sundays except for the fact they proceeded Mondays). Marcus sighed. Heavily. So heavily it made his broad shoulders drop dramatically as if he were attempting to shed the weight of the world.

“I will pick you up,” he threatened with the knowledge his friend hated being picked up.

Marcus stood at about 6”4 whereas Octavian barely stood at 5”10. This meant that lifting the latter was an easy task for Marcus, who essentially lived in the gym and, if he wasn’t at the gym, was either running, working out in the living room, or doing whatever else sports-nuts do in their free time. Octavian, whose height was a sore topic, absolutely loathed this fact almost as much as he despised actually being picked up.

“Don’t you dare, Agrippa,” he groaned, turning to his side to hide from his friend (what you can’t see, can’t see you- right?), breaking his fan-induced daze.

The thought of being picked up was only made worse by the fact that Marcus, who everyone called “Agrippa” because they all thought it was a much cooler name, radiated the same vitality of someone who had just been for a very good work out. For readers less clue-y: this “vitality” is commonly also called “sweat”. Sticky, wet, vile sweat which caused permanent stains in clothes, and created such a stench which made one question if they put deodorant on that morning. As the image of being coated in this "vitality" began to terrorise Octavian, he was saved by the bell.

Well, not a bell...

...Though he was about as loud as a bell.

Gaius Maecenas sauntered into the room just as Agrippa was inching forward to drag Octavian from his sheets. This was surprising as Maecenas was rarely awake prior to 2pm on Sundays; if he was it was because he had yet to actually sleep. Despite having a rare name, Maecenas did not have any opinions on the fact he could never find his name on one of those news-agency key chains because, prior to last week, he had never actually stepped foot inside one. 

"Why are you trying to wrench our dear friend from bed?" he questioned casually as he entered, not really caring about the answer, being more intent on watching the other two squabble like an old, married couple than anything else.

"It's 8:30," Agrippa ground in response, becoming increasingly frustrated as he realised he was running in circles.

"Exactly! It's 8:30- get out!"

A pillow was launched from the bed but its intended target was unknown by all in the room (hand-eye coordination was not Octavian's specialty) and a steady silence descended. The fan continued spinning. It was only now that something occurred to Agrippa.

"What the fuck are you wearing?"

Maecenas prided himself on his sense of fashion which was, in all honesty, more fashionable than what Agrippa was wearing at any point in time. As of current, however, he found himself in bright pink tracksuit pants. This was, quite obviously, what had drawn the attention of Agrippa. Fashion was a topic about which Maecenas would not joke; it was, after all, a serious matter.

"What the fuck are you wearing?" He responded with a venomous sarcasm.

Octavian would have tried to throw another pillow at them but then he would be left with no more ammunition and he did not want to risk being stuck to listening to their bickering and without a something to put his head on. He sometimes wished he lived alone. He wouldn't be bothered at 8:30 on a Sunday morning if he lived alone. He could spend his time watching his ceiling fan if he lived alone. 

Alas, he cohabitated with two idiots. 

"This is why you can't keep anyone interested in you, Agrippa!" Maecenas retorted as Octavian tuned back into their conversation. Maecenas always opted for posher language than need be, an issue which vexed Agrippa ceaselessly.

"I'm not the one wearing pink tracksuit pants!"

"Please, please, please do this elsewhere," Octavian muttered, knowing his plea would make no difference.

This was how he was spending his Sunday, Octavian mused. Watching a fan, listening to his friends bicker, thinking about how much he hated his name. Surely there was something better for him to do. (There was, there most definitely was- he just didn't want to do it.)

"If you both leave," he said, actually speaking to the other two instead of muttering quiet prayers, "I will get up. If you both stay, I will get my uncle to evict you."

For a moment the other two turned to stare at Octavian, who had begun to celebrate his victory internally as if the other two didn't know him well enough. The bickering soon continued. Eviction was not a concern when your landlord was related to your best friend for, like, how long? Over a decade. It wasn’t even that they’d lived in a house together for that long. Sure, they’d shared quarters at school but boarding school was much different to a flat. The variable of the flat was only introduced approximately two weeks ago (it was all paid for, of course, by Octavian’s uncle who was quite famous and exponentially rich. He had essentially elected Octavian as the heir to the empire of a corporation he had established, although Octavian himself only really thought his entire education and life was being funded by this uncle out of the kindness of his heart).

“So neither of you are gonna listen to me?” Octavian cut in once again.

“Your uncle loves me,” Agrippa teased.

He was right. Agrippa’s education had also been provided by the pocket of Octavian’s uncle.

“I could get my own place,” Maecenas reminded the room, more to annoy the other two than out of need (he made this point on an almost hourly basis), “and it would be much nicer, too.”

Octavian opened his mouth to speak when suddenly-

Knock-knock knock knock-knock knock.

The three looked at each other. Who had invited someone over? The knock at the front door continued in a similar, albeit more assertive, melodious manner. Realising neither of his companions would answer the door, Octavian, in his long, plaid, flannel pyjama pants, stood and went to investigate. He hadn’t bothered to put a shirt on- it was probably just a package that had been left on the doorstep, why would he need a shirt?

In hindsight, a shirt would have been best.

_

Livia Drusilla Claudius had always taken extremely hot showers. She found an odd sense of comfort in the sting of steaming rain, how her skin reddened slightly, the bliss of cutting heat (it was probably not the best to shower at such temperatures so often but she had forsaken caring about such matters). It was as if she was being baptised, purified. However, she did not know if she was trying to wash away her sins or burn them or ascend to somewhere else in a completely different manner. This morning, though, her shower was broken. She didn’t normally shower in the morning but she had moved in the day before and had not been bothered to shower then, only to find that her shower did not produce warm water. Thus, as all people who want to burn their skin off in the shower who lack the ability to do so, she had made the pilgrimage across the hall to her neighbour’s door.

The door opened. She looked up from her phone (where she had been checking if the caretaker had checked her texts- they had not) to be met with the sight of a shirtless Octavian in the ugliest pair of pyjama pants she had ever seen.

“Hi?” She said as she met his dark eyes (what else could she say?).

Octavian blinked. His eyes then flicked up and down the girl in front of him. She wore a grey pair of tracksuit pants with a white t-shirt. Simple. Comfortable. They seemed to be of nice fabric- in all likelihood very expensive. Her dark hair, a shade of brown so dark it was essentially black, was tied up in a plait and draped itself on her shoulder. Although he would never admit it, she was the most beautiful person Octavian had ever seen with honey-coloured eyes, freckles, a sharp jaw. All of this almost distracted him from possibly the oddest thing about her: the collection of toiletries in her hand, the navy blue towel slung across her shoulder, the clothes flung over her arm.

“Can I... help you?” He asked, genuinely confused.

Livia now realised that the man (who was about her age and therefore basically a boy) in front of her was plausibly the least observant person she had ever met. This was, to some extent, true.

“Could I use your shower? I have no hot water.”

“You should talk to the caretaker about that-“

For those of you who have yet to realise: he had never been good at socialising.

Thankfully, however, Agrippa had.

“Of course- come in,” he offered, opening the door wider than the crack his friend was peering through, “I was just going to use it but you can go first if you'd like.”

Livia walked in. Octavian remained frozen in place from pure mortification. Agrippa made casual small talk. Maecenas tried not to laugh from where he stood in the kitchen. 

The corridor was pretty short and opened up to an open-plan living area with a floor to ceiling window that almost made it seem like the room opened out onto the world below. A series of couches gathered around a large television lay on the right side- the screen nestled in a frame of bookcases filled with what could easily have been hundreds of books. The kitchen was beautiful with marble counter tops and an island which would make even the least capable home chef jealous. Octavian and Agrippa’s rooms were on the left and Maecenas’ door sat at the mouth of the hallway. The door to the bathroom was on the other side of the television- hidden by the bookcases from where Livia currently stood.

“Are you happy to wait if I quickly shower first?” Agrippa asked, ever the gentleman in such situations, hoping the newcomer would allow him to go purge himself of sweat.

“Sure,” Livia muttered, distracted by the view which was much more impressive than hers, despite the fact she had believed hers was the best in the building. 

Octavian tried to slip behind their guest in order to put on a shirt but, as per usual, Maecenas could not help but make his life even more hellish for his own amusement and decided to blockade the path through the kitchen with his body. With a smirk, he asked the still distracted Livia,

"I'm making coffee, would you like some?"

"Do you have tea?"

Octavian jumped back slightly as Maecenas turned from the kettle, essentially completely blocking his path back to his room. Maecenas, pleased with himself, continued talking.

"What kind? Our flat is essentially a tea shop."

Livia nodded and sat down on one of the bar stools tucked under the other side of the island. She decided it best not to question why Maecenas (well, she referred to him as the "tall one with curly black hair") was so determined to stop Octavian (or, "the short, shirtless one") from passing, even going so far as to move around to block the way. She also decided it best not to laugh at their idiocy and so maintained eye contact and conversation as if this was a normal experience. 

"I like your pants," Livia commented, motioning to the hot pink attire that clothed Maecenas.

She received a sharp laugh in response.

"Finally! Someone with taste!"

Octavian groaned and finally pushed past his friend. When he returned he found the pair chattering over mugs of steaming drinks. He had slipped into what he thought was a plain-white shirt but was, in fact, one his mother had given him for his birthday which simply read, well,

"And here comes our resident 'mama's boy'," Maecenas beamed.

Livia chuckled.

Octavian went pink.

What was worse was the shirt also featured a photo of him at five years old dressed as a tele-tubby (why he had been in such attire, he did not know, nor had he ever received a straight answer).

Maecenas, who did quite enjoy the sound of his own voice (albeit not as much as he enjoyed tormenting his friends), then continued, "Octavian, this is Livia. She has just moved in next door. Livia, this is Octavian, who is much smarter than he looks, or acts for that matter. I made you a cup of tea, too."

Octavian, wordlessly, sat down next to Livia, behind the third steaming mug.

In the conversation that followed, which Octavian was too stunned to contribute very much to, a few things were learned: firstly, Livia attended the same university as they all did, secondly, she studied law, thirdly, her parents were rich enough that even Maecenas' net worth was tiny in comparison. As Maecenas was explaining what he and his flatmates were studying (Agrippa was studying engineering, Octavian, a dual degree and sciences and arts, a result of his own indecision, and himself, arts and marketing), something clicked in Livia's mind, and she whipped around to look at Octavian, who was blankly staring at the wall.

"You aren't Octavian as in, you know, related-to-Julius-Caesar-the-multi-billionaire Octavian, are you?"

"Um... Yes?" He responded, not entirely sure if that was the right answer.

He was related to Julius Caesar, that was true, but he was unsure whether "Yes" would mean "Yes, I am he" or "Yes, I am not he" (it was a similar issue to when one asks "Do you mind if I sit here?" and cannot discern whether the response "Yes" means they can or the other person minds deeply). How the law-studying stranger next to him recognised his name, however, he did not know.

"You came to my sixth birthday party, remember?"

"Oh, yeah," he muttered.

He lied.

Octavian did not, in fact, remember.

Before this deceit had time to be uncovered, he was, for the second time that morning, saved by one of his flatmates entering the room. Whether the fact that Agrippa, who had little care for the etiquettes of exiting the shower when guests were over, walked through the living room with nothing but his towel around his waist made the situation worse or better, Octavian did not know. He merely stared at his friend as he passed through, at the way his muscles shifted as he did so (it was a familiar sight to say the least), Agrippa grinned as he did so,

"Shower's all yours."

Dusting the look of shock off of her face, Livia smiled, stood, gathered her stuff and walked to the bathroom, blushing slightly as she passed Agrippa. Maecenas was beginning to feel like he was fourth wheeling in the most awkward porno ever but he shook the feeling off quickly. Agrippa raised his dark eyebrows as the bathroom door closed.

"What?"

He received no response.

"I'm wearing a towel this time!"

Let's just say that last time they had a guest as Agrippa exited the shower (who happened to have been Octavian's uncle, their landlord), there had been no towel to speak of. His friends still stared at him disapprovingly and, with a huff, he walked to his room to put something on that was not a towel.

Meanwhile, Livia spent about 15 minutes standing in the bathroom door, admiring the bathroom with its twin sinks, massive shower, and beautiful view (the flat was high enough above the street that there would be no one to see inside). A bath sat in front of the window and, for a moment, she considered taking her time and having a proper bath. However, baths never made one feel truly clean and overstaying her welcome was not something she deigned to do. Instead, she decided to peruse the contents of the draws underneath the sink and the cabinet behind the floor-to-ceiling mirror that sat beside the door. Both had three clearly defined sections (one presumably belonging to each member of the household). She assumed, quite correctly, that the array of colognes and skincare products belonged to Maecenas, and the disorganised jumble of necessities belonged to the towel-wearing Agrippa (the way he sauntered into the room was still vivid in Livia's mind). That meant the surprisingly organised series of labelled caddies belonged to Octavian (this hypothesis was supported by the fact that half of them were labelled "Belongs to Octavian Thurinus: Do Not Touch"). She snorted at this (why this was amusing, she would have to ask herself later) before closing the door, sighing, and turning on the shower. Stepping into the warm steam of the stream she let her shoulders relax as she exhaled deeply. Had this not been someone else's shower (specifically the shower of three, rather odd strangers), she would have considered never leaving. But, alas, she was not so fortunate.

What none of the men in the kitchen had taken into account when they had so charitably allowed Livia to use their bathroom was how long it took to wash long, wavy hair. After about 40 minutes, Agrippa started to worry.

"Should we go check on her?"

"No!" his flatmates responded in unison (although in very different tones).

"She's been in there forever!"

"She's probably washing her hair," Maecenas remarked.

"I need to brush my teeth," Octavian realised aloud, his voice distant.

"You need to get dressed," Agrippa responded sharply.

"Why?"

"You're wearing a shirt that says 'mama's boy'."

This was what all three of them considered a decent argument so Octavian got up, went to his room, and got dressed into clothes that had not been bought by his mother. When he returned, even Maecenas was starting to glance at the bathroom door nervously. They heard the shower turn off and the still air of the living room seemed to stir as Agrippa and Maecenas sighed with relief. Of course, this relief did not last long since wavy hair routines exist (in Livia's defence- hers was neither long nor extremely complex, the owners of the shower had merely never considered the possibility that one would have to do more things with their hair after exiting the shower) and the door remained closed for what seemed to be a short eternity.

"Do you think she's stealing from us?" Maecenas whispered after a moment.

"Don't be stupid," Agrippa dismissed quickly, perhaps too quickly for he paused, "...she wouldn't- would she?"

Octavian sighed, apparently the most reasonable of his friends at that moment in time, "You two are idiots."

He then went to prove that he, too, was an idiot as he went to check on Livia, opening the door and, in some sick reversal of their initial meeting, seeing her with her shirt off.

Agrippa and Maecenas cackled as they watched their friend yelp and jump away from the door as he apologised profusely, turning a shade of vibrant red.

A few minutes later, Livia entered the living room, fully clothed, possessions in her arms, hair wet, to find Octavian staring at the island counter and the other two trying to withhold their laughter. She coughed to signify she had left the shower.

"Um, thank you."

"Anytime," Agrippa smiled in response, only realising that the comment might come off weirder than intended as the word left his mouth.

"Sorry, again," Octavian muttered.

Unsure of what to do next, Livia just turned toward the front door and let herself out. Then made a mental note to try to befriend the three of them (why? She had no idea, but some instinct told her it was a good idea and Livia prided herself on having good instincts). She felt her phone buzz and, as she walked to her door, she slipped it out of her pocket. The caretaker had responded that they could have her shower fixed by next week at the earliest. With a dramatic sigh she went to open her door. Wait-

-Fuck.

Her keys-

They were still in the bathroom, weren't they?

Or were they in her flat?

Where the fuck were her keys?

Her string of muttered profanities was cut off by a quiet cough. She turned on her heel, horrified at the thought of being caught (she was certain she looked insane with her wet hair, bundle of things, desperately patting her pockets and swearing in the middle of the corridor), to find Octavian staring at her. Her eyes widened as she saw the glint of a very familiar looking set of keys in his hand.

"You left your keys."

What Livia was tempted to say was "Thank you, you are a life saver, you have saved my ass, I thought today was going to get even worse, thank you, thank you, thank you. Also could I also use your shower for at least the next week?" in the same manner that one exhales when they have just been for an 800m sprint. Now, of course, she did not say that. She prided herself on appearing too nonchalant to say such a thing. So, instead, she very uncaringly, very cooly, responded,

"Thanks."

"Did the caretaker get back to you?"

Livia nodded, afraid of what she would say if she spoke.

"And?"

"Next Sunday at the earliest."

He sighed and nodded. Not in an annoyed kind of way (at least, that's what Livia told herself although she didn't believe that). Then he withdrew something from his pocket (he was actually wearing a nice pair of black jeans now- much better than the plaid pants she had first seen him in).

"It's the key to our place, use the shower whenever," he paused as if he trying to calculate how to best phrase the next clause of his sentence, "but maybe put a sticky note on the door so no one comes in."

He deemed the latter part key because, usually, he was the only person in his flat who ever closed the door when they showered and, well, Agrippa had no issue in coming into the bathroom when he was in there.

"I'll organise a space for you to put your stuff," he continued, at this point just talking because he didn't know how to end the conversation, "so you don't have to carry," he just motioned to the heap of stuff in her arms.

Livia nodded, "Thank you."

Octavian turned and went to re-enter his flat.

"You don't remember my fifth birthday party, do you?"

It had been irking Livia the entire morning- even she didn't remember her fifth birthday party.

"No."

Then the door closed. Livia turned back to her own, slipped her key into her lock, and went to unpack boxes.
_

Sitting on the floor, surrounded by boxes, Livia yearned for a shower. Some of the boxes were empty, some half so, some had not even had the tape on the top pierced. She had surrendered to the city of boxes, allowed herself to become one of its conquest. A shower sounded really appealing. It was 11pm. It wasn’t late. It was a perfectly reasonable time to shower. But it probably wasn’t a perfectly reasonable hour to break into your neighbour’s flat to ascertain said shower.

Was it the shower she wanted, though?

Did she just want to see if there was anyone awake? To talk to someone?

Nonsense.

She had people to talk to- too many to talk to. Even more people who wanted to trap her in mindless chatter was not what she wanted.

That shower, however, sounded amazing.

She fiddled with her keys, stared at her keychain, fiddled with the keys once more as she leant against her living room wall. Her eyes ran across the little tag at the end of the chain- it was one of those ones you buy when you’re young to put on your school bag because they’re cheap and everyone else had one (you could buy them from a news agent, after all). “Olive tree ; a symbol of peace, peacemaker” was printed in faded black ink under a bold, pink title that once read “Olivia” but had had the “O” scribbled out with a Sharpie so it looked like her name. She dragged her index finger down the blade of the key Octavian had given her that morning which, somehow, convinced her to go have a shower.

Meanwhile, Octavian, Agrippa and Maecenas leaned against the back of one of the couches and stared out of their living room window. Each one of them nursed a cup of coffee, each with a different amount of milk, as they stared out at the lights of the city. It had become a nightly ritual amongst the three of them. Once upon a time, they would sit on the section of roof outside their dormitory window, and gaze at the stars as they boasted of all the things they would do someday. Now, the stars had sunk from the sky to dot the buildings of the city below them, or, maybe the stars had been drowned out by the much brighter, blinding light of the city. It was not up to any of them to decide what had drawn their eyes from the sky to the earth below, what made them speak of the present instead of the future.

“What do we think of the new neighbor?” Maecenas asked, his head leaning on Agrippa’s shoulder.

“She seems nice,” Agrippa muttered.

Despite what many would first assume, Agrippa always said that everyone “seems nice” after first meeting them. It was the second meeting that determined whether or not one would discover why people feared him. Agrippa still had faith in humanity, he was ever the optimist, a stark contrast to the cynical realism of his companions.

Octavian went to make a comment but all three of their heads snapped backward upon hearing a key slide into the lock. 

“What the-“

Livia stared at the three of them on the ground as she entered into the main room. Fucking hell they were odd.

“What are you guys doing?” She asked.

“Sitting,” Agrippa responded.

“On the floor,” Maecenas continued.

“Talking,” Octavian finished, “what are you doing?”

“I wanted to shower.”

“At 11:30 at night?” Agrippa asked, ever concerned for the sleep schedules of those around him.

“I set up a caddy for you-“ Octavian muttered but he was quickly cut off by Maecenas,

“Sit with us!”

Livia paused, uncertain but Maecenas had started to violently motion for her to join and so she scampered over and sat tensely beside Octavian who shuffled stiffly to give her more room. The four of them sat in silence for a moment. It was a surprisingly comfortable silence, the kind one wouldn’t mind wrapping themselves in and drifting off to sleep, the kind that could make forever seem like a few, pleasant seconds. Livia stared down at one of the lit windows in the building across the street from them, the warm light cast shadows of the two people within the room, she squinted to see what they were doing-

“Are they-“ she started.

“Fucking?” Octavian started, “Yes. They do that every night.”

Livia snorted, prompting Maecenas to begin recounting the time that they saw the figures doing something creatively exotic with fencing foils, and incensing Agrippa to cut in with corrections to his friend’s narrative. 

“It’s called authorial license, you imbecile, of course I don’t know what either of them are like!”

“Well, you could at least get the facts straight- do we really need to know his name’s John and he works as a secretary for the local police station?”

Octavian snorted as he listened to his friends, watching Livia’s reaction in his periphery. Oddly enough, he was content sitting on the floor, in the dark, watching silhouettes in windows have weird sex, listening to the same two voices bicker, with a name that one could never find on cheap keychains. His uncle’s voice drifted across his mind, the crackle of fire in the background.

“A city of marble they said,” he repeated his uncle’s words in whisper, still not entirely sure why they came to mind except for some gut feeling that they applied to this very moment, “a city of marble.”

Chapter Text

“Are you almost done?”

Livia stood by the bathroom door. Her shower remained freezing cold, Maecenas watched her from the kitchen as she pleaded to whoever was in the shower to get out, grinning like a lunatic, awaiting her reaction. She considered throwing something at his smug face.

“I need to piss! Get out!”

The shower switched off, the final drops hit the floor. Livia waited a few seconds, a period she deemed long enough for someone to wrap a towel around themselves, then burst into the bathroom, assuming she would just be yelled at by Octavian, who, she told herself, couldn’t complain anyway- he’d done the same to her a week ago. So she burst in with a yelled apology which then drifted into a startled silence. She was wrong.

Well, not “wrong” per se.

Octavian was there.

He had had time to get a towel wrapped around him. 

But he wasn’t alone-

“I’m just going to-“ Livia swallowed as she looked at the scene before her before motioning to the door, turning and walking out.

Agrippa opened his mouth to say she could stay but Livia had already vacated the scene so he shrugged and grinned at Octavian, his hair still wet from the shower. His companion was frozen in place, the events of the past thirty seconds turning any logical thought he had into churning pandemonium. Maecenas’ cackling from the next room ripped him from shock and delved him into an ever more suffocating state: mortification. 

“She was gonna find out eventually,” Agrippa joked, a sloppy grin smeared across his face.

True.

What did it matter, anyway? Why did Octavian care if she cared? Besides, it’s not like this- thing- with Agrippa was serious (they both understood that “fuck-buddy” did not extend beyond fucking one’s buddy). In all honesty, Octavian only cared because he had a stick driven too far up inside him (ironically, where Agrippa had just been) and the thought of being walked in on in such a, well, compromising position, even if he wasn’t doing anything, sent a weird sort of shiver down his spine. Agrippa was already half way out of the door by the time Octavian returned to his senses.

“Are you just going to stand there?” His friend teased, a cocksure smile making his face glow.

Agrippa had the kind of smile that could make anyone fall in love with him instantly. It was lopsided in a way which made it seem perfectly symmetrical, and it graced every part of his face and demeanor so that it felt as if whatever joy or humour or contentment he felt radiated from every part him like a kind of internal light, a radioactivity that would not destroy but renew. Had Octavian been a poet, he was sure he would have written thousands of lines about that smile. But, alas, poetry was Maecenas’ trade. 

That smile was someone else’s to write about.

“I’ll be with you in a second,” Octavian dismissed his friend.

“Be quick, Livia might piss herself.”

He nodded, vaguely annoyed by the fact that Agrippa hadn’t shut the door properly on his way out. He rolled his shoulders, straightened, sighed, summoning any pride he had in order to make the journey across the living room to his wardrobe.

Luckily for Octavian, Livia was equally as embarrassed. She had known the pair for a week- and now? Maecenas found the whole situation endlessly amusing and so had provided a very vague explanation as to what she had seen. It wasn’t like she needed him to spell out what they were doing (she would never admit it to herself but Livia was, in some senses, quite sheltered) but some context would have been much appreciated. 

Maecenas could see that his lack of explanation irked her. But he  wanted to know why it did so what else could he do but torture her into revealing the answer? To be fair, this had not been his original intention when he hid his answers behind hysterical snorts, that was more an accident than anything, but now his curiosity had been piqued. Thus, the only answer he gave her was: “Oh, yeah, they do that sometimes”. He was not surprised to discover that it was not the thought of two men having sex which irritated her. However, that was the only hint he received. It was almost like she herself was unsure why it irked her. This was likely that was the truth. Maecenas’ laughter was the only sound in the living room until Octavian appeared.

“I’m sorry, again-“ Livia muttered, avoiding his gaze.

Oddly enough, it was only now Livia realised that Octavian’s eyes were not brown, as she’d first thought, but a very dark blue, so dark they were almost grey. They were clear, a quiet ocean on a cloudy day, and, when the sun caught them at the right angle, one could almost peer into the depths in which many a soul had been lost. They were blue like a night sky illuminated by city lights; the hue was different but the way they shine was practically the same- illuminated darkness, alive and spirited but quiet all the same. Currently, however, his eyes were tactically avoiding hers in a desperate attempt to avoid the contempt he believed he would face if he looked into her eyes. Contempt, I believe is suitable to clarify, that she did not feel.

“The shower’s yours, if you want it,” Octavian muttered.

Livia wanted to say more, to lighten the mood, as if more words would be able to soothe the awkwardness that plagued the room. Then, logically (for Livia prided herself on her pragmatism), she decided against it and walked to the bathroom.

“This is why we need a lock on the bathroom door,” Maecenas tutted as the door closed.

“It’s not like you close the door,” Octavian grumbled.

“It’s not like I’m fucking people in our shower.”

A smart retort formed at the tip of Octavian’s tongue but he was unable to quite grasp the intricacies of it, being left with nothing to respond with except a glare which struggled to communicate even a fraction of his vexation. Maecenas was quick with words. He may have been unable to tell you what the square root of four was but, in a world where calculators exist, being able to weave with threads of vowels and consonants seemed a much more practical skill. Besides, “the pen is mightier than the sword” or whatever the saying was…

Agrippa padded out of his room and into the kitchen. He didn’t say anything. What was there to be said? It’s not like he could act like he cared at Livia’s intrusion because he didn’t. It’s not like he was going to make light conversation because he didn’t feel that was necessary. It’s not like he would mention how Octavian’s response to the whole Livia-walking-in-on-us-post-fucking situation made his heart drop because it didn’t. (No, really, it didn’t). No, Agrippa was the guy one went to when they needed to do calculus, not for writing love poems or whatever English nerds were useful for. Calculating an object’s velocity in extremely specific circumstances was his specialty. 

Octavian exhaled through his nose. Loudly. Like he wanted to say what everyone was thinking except for the fact that none of them were thinking the same thing and voicing three different thoughts simultaneously was an extremely difficult task. Agrippa froze for a second, the kettle hovered above the mug he had just got out to make a coffee (black, no sugar, one spoon of coffee- he didn’t like it too strong), as if hoping for his friend to say something specific. No words came. Water poured from the kettle as if nothing had happened (because it hadn’t).

The trio gathered around the island as they waited for Livia to stop showering. Would she stay? Probably not, right? It would be awkward if she stayed. (Now the three of them were thinking the same thing). Livia, who meanwhile stared at herself in the mirror, deciding whether or not she should stay, rolled her shoulders and exhaled deeply. If she stayed, she would likely get a good cup of coffee and no one would even mention the- well, that. Yeah, she would stay. It had never truly been a question in her mind. She would stay because she wanted coffee and conversation and to exist in a world which was not confined by stacks of boxes and things she needed to do.

With her mind made, Livia entered the living room and, as she sat down beside Octavian, the entire world seemed to relax as if natural order had been restored. As if nothing would have been right ever again if she had not chosen to stay. Livia was, to the same degree every skeptic is (for it is always the most cynical who have the best understanding of the desires of the Fates), a great believer in the idea that some things were just meant to be. She clung to this belief as Agrippa asked is she would like a coffee because she wanted to belong somewhere. She wanted there to be her somewhere.

“How are you all always here? Like, I swear none of you ever leave your flat,” She asked, to start a conversation which didn’t relate to shower sex.

“Because those two are slackers,” Octavian muttered, “and avoid doing work.”

“Says the world’s most efficient procrastinator,” Maecenas teased.

“All I do is work!”

“Sure, if you call making extremely detailed spreadsheets that relate to nothing ‘work’.”

Octavian grunted in annoyance, Agrippa turned nimbly to hand a grateful Livia her coffee.

“You know,” Maecenas looked at Livia as he spoke, “he has about 100 spreadsheets that he’s constantly working on? He’s practically a wizard at excel if you ever need to record meaningless information.”

“You do him a disservice, Maecenas,” Agrippa interrupted, “it is integral we know the frequency at which we run out of milk- we are going through a litre in three quarters of the time we were last month!”

Agrippa and Maecenas found this incredibly funny and so Livia snorted at how ridiculous they sounded as they mocked their friend through wheezes of laughter. Octavian found none of this amusing but, for all of his bitterness, found an odd type of consolation in being so close to laughter. 

It’s funny, isn’t it? How mere proximity to laughter can make one’s lips begin to turn upward at the sides…
_

Livia later found herself walking down the street, amongst tall buildings and beautiful stone doorways. She chewed her piece of gum- lime and raspberry flavoured- as the cold breeze pushed her hair back from her face. The tote bag over her shoulder kept trying to slip off it; a source of great annoyance. She just had the basics: milk, bread, fruit, vodka. The bottles clinked together as she hoisted the strap up once more. Her phone buzzed. She was meant to have friends over that evening, meant to host a housewarming party (their idea, not hers), and yet she had so much to do. There were boxes to unpack, food platters to make up, drinks to mix! Just thinking about it dangled her over the edge of insanity. Her phone buzzed again, reminding her of its existence.

Sorry, Liv, we ca-

As she ran her eyes over the text her phone buzzed again.

Hi, I just realised I have to work tonight, sorry-

And yet another buzz:

Liv- Sorry- busy 2night

It felt as if she had just tripped and fallen face-first into the pavement. Hard, brash, cold. Everything seemed to freeze. Except, of course, for her body which kept on walking without anything directing it. Thus, soon, it no longer felt “as if” she had plummeted face first into the cool, probably piss-stained, pavement because she had. As she tripped, she yelped slightly and maneuvered herself instinctively to protect the bottles of alcohol from smashing (not that she really needed them anymore). It’s a funny thing, hitting the floor, one considers never getting up again. Even if it is the pavement covered in squashed cigarette butts and questionable stains, it was easy to find comfort on the floor. Livia was currently doing deciding whether she should stand back up- maybe the street outside her flat wasn’t so bad? (Was that a used condom by her head?). She considered this for a while. Pondered it as one would suppose Plato pondered what would happen if someone left that cave.

“Are you alright?”

Livia turned to look up to this seemingly kind stranger, squinting into the light of the sun behind them which silhouetted the figure so they almost seemed biblical. A guardian angel. A god descending to offer her some form of boon for lifting her from the pavement.

Obviously this was not the case. No, this kind figure was outside the building because he was just paying his nephew a visit. Julius Caesar was his name. He had a gruff voice that still seemed smooth whenever he spoke, and his clothes always fit correctly. He was the kind of man that teenagers convince themselves they are mature enough to handle, the kind of man that makes these adolescents believe themselves to be superior to their peers for being attracted to him. In fact, anyone he had ever dated practically had a note stuck to their back that said “DADDY ISSUES” in bright, red ink. He always wore a three piece suit but never buttoned his shirt up to the top which made some of his more prudish associates label him a “slut”. To be fair, he was a slut. An incredibly, mind-bogglingly, mouth-wateringly rich slut. So rich, in fact, that he didn’t even appear on one of those “Top 5 richest people in the universe” lists because he had paid to stay off of them. Julius Caesar was, to put it simply, evidence that money could buy you happiness and it could do so very, very easily.

“Can I help you up?” He asked the stunned Livia.

Mouth slightly opened in a gawky stare, Livia nodded and took the hand of Julius without another word. She recognized him almost as soon as he moved in the way of the sun, luckily, however, it seemed like he could not recall who she was. 

“Thank you,” she muttered.

He flashed her a smile with his two rows of shiny, white teeth which begged one to “Guess how much we cost”.

“Is this your building?”

Livia nodded not sure how else to respond.

“I’m going inside too,” he turned with her to walk inside, “I’m sorry but you look familiar.”

“Oh, my name’s Li-“

“Livia Drusilla Claudius!” He exclaimed, cutting her off as they approached the lift, “How could I not remember!”

He chuckled, rich and throaty, his laughter sounded like dark roasted coffee.

“You must know my nephew,” he continued as the lift doors opened to allow them in, “he came to your fifth birthday party! Octavian? He’s about yay high,” he motioned to a space just below his eye-level, about Octavian’s height, “What floor?”

Livia muttered the floor her flat was on as Caesar babbled excitedly about the fact she lived on the same floor as his nephew. She nodded along quietly as she felt her phone buzz again in her back pocket. Another person informing her they couldn’t come. Had she even invited that many people?

“So what are you doing here?”

“Huh?”

“Are you studying or-“

“Oh, I’m studying. Law.” Livia smiled.

“If you ever need a job, my legal department always needs-“

The doors opened with a quick “ding!” to inform them that they had arrived at their destination. Livia grimaced as she sensed what was about to happen.

“I’ll see you around,” Caesar smiled before stepping out of the lift.

Livia followed him, remaining a few paces behind. Would he notice she was right behind him? Would he want to keep talking? Caesar has quite the aptitude for talking someone’s ear off and she was not in the mood to have loose an ear to a yapping billionaire. She tried to sneak past him as he turned to knock on the door of his destination and, somehow, just managed to evade his attention. With a sigh, Livia reached her door, unlocked it, entered, and then tried to figure out what to do with the three bottles of vodka she’d bought.
_

“Did you know,” Caesar began as he burst into his nephew’s flat, practically pushing said nephew over with the gusto with which he entered, “that Livia Drusilla lives just down the hall?”

Upon seeing Julius, Agrippa grinned sloppily. The pair understood eachother in a way which made Octavian feel almost alien, it was like they spoke another language, like the twinkle in their eyes came from the same sun, a sun which Octavian would never know the warmth of. Agrippa reminded Julius of himself, which was sure to make anyone, nevermind someone as prideful as he was, adore a person. Alternatively, the older man barely knew Maecenas’ name and, whilst he admired his ability with words, had never truly set aside time to collate any knowledge of him. So Maecenas and Octavian were mere side characters in the great love story of Agrippa and Julius.

“Marcus, my boy!” Julius bellowed, quickly forgetting his previous train of thought and holding up his arms as if he were worshipping whatever god crafted such an individual.

Julius had never called Octavian “my boy”.

“Uncle Julius,” Agrippa responded with equal enthusiasm.

The front door clicked shut as Octavian came to join the party in the kitchen.

After the usual chatter about school, grades, social lives, Caesar turned to less important matters:

“And how are you boys, you know, feeling?”

“Fine,” all three of them muttered (although Maecenas knew the question was not at all directed at him and only answered out of habit).

An awkward silence filled the room, expanding like a pufferfish that had been startled. Octavian coughed in an attempt to scare it away. This only made the silence more awkward so that it shifted its weight from one foot to another.

“Well,” Caesar started suddenly, a smile breaking across his face again, the same smile politicians wear as they make empty promises, “I should get going.”

“I’ll show you out,” Octavian replied with a sigh and half-assed smile to ensure he had been a polite host so that he would not be reprimanded later.

He trailed his uncle to the front door and, as Julius turned to farewell him before stepping over the threshold, something flitted into his mind-

“Oh, um, Livia’s shower is broken and the caretaker has yet to fix it. You wouldn’t mind…”

Caesar was all to happy to help, muttered something about how he should fire “that damn caretaker”, and winked at Octavian in a way that suggested he knew the true reason why Octavian was asking such a favour as if his motive was more than to reclaim his bathroom, before turning and leaving. Something odd churned in Octavian’s stomach. A sort of dread or confusion or feeling that the Fates had had some fun in weaving the next part of his tale.

Julius, meanwhile, thought that his nephew was finally following in his footsteps and flirting with someone who wasn’t Agrippa. Maybe the boy had some of him in him, after all.
_

Livia had succumbed to something she had sworn she would never succumb to. Sitting with her legs hanging over her balcony, resting her arms on the lowest rung of the rail, she sighed loudly as if the world had been unable to tell she was upset before she had done so. She hadn’t even wanted to host a party! They were the ones who’d wanted to come to her house and drink excessive amounts of alcohol and dance to the beat of music which did nothing but assault her ears. Now the party consisted of her and a bottle of vodka; just your stereotypical university party.

“Livia?”

For the third time that day, Livia yelped.

“Fucking hell!”

Octavian approached her, “Should I be concerned?”

“How did you get into my house?”

“The door was open.”

Of course it was. 

He dropped down beside her. Pointing to the bottle, he asked for a sip, the responding nod permitted this and so he took a quick swig of the burning liquor. He winced as it trickled down his throat.

“What’s with all of the alcohol?”

“I thought it was water.”

The bitterness in her voice masked the humourous intentions of her statement, causing Octavian to shoot her a questioning glance. Livia sighed.

“I was meant to have people over.”

“Well you do have people over.”

Despite how he first appeared, Octavian was quite perceptive, he could quickly piece together the fact that these “people” were not coming. 

“I have a person over. A person who broke into my house.”

“The door was open!”

Livia wasn’t thinking as she watched the sun descend behind the tall buildings. All logical thought had vanished from her mind as she looked up at the moon and allowed her head rest on the shoulder beside her, causing Octavian to freeze with the weight of his new duty. It was a duty he would not neglect, he would not fail in his quest to provide respite for her head, to bear the wight of its crown for a few moments. His heart, like the idiot it was, panicked slightly at the lack of distance between them.

“My uncle’s gonna get your shower fixed,” he muttered.

“Thanks.” She paused, “When did it start between you and Agrippa?”

“I wouldn’t call it an ‘it’,” Octavian frowned, “but, y’know, thirteen years of boarding school can lead to some interesting relationships…”

Livia nodded her head slightly. She smelled vaguely of coconut, Octavian mused. 

“You have a lot of vodka,” he joked.

“The moon’s beautiful, don’t ya think?”

The moon was, indeed, beautiful as it glowed against the magenta background of the evening sky. A silver ball (although it was a waxing gibbous) surveying the world below. It’s watery light glimmered in the eyes of the pair, making their dark pupils sparkle with a quiet wonder. Who else was watching the moon that evening? It felt, for a moment, that the world consisted of them and silvery light. 

“I have so many boxes to empty,” Livia groaned after some time. 

Octavian shifted, pulled out his phone, typed something, then set it down beside him.

“What was that?”

“I’ve called the cavalry. They require food and alcohol as payment. You can thank me later,” he responded.

Soon enough, a knock rang out at the door and Agrippa and Maecenas waited outside as Livia opened it.

There were no longer any more boxes to open by the time the sun rose the next morning. Instead, Livia entered her living room to find her neighbours asleep on the floor in a pile. 

Yes, maybe this was where she belonged after all…

Chapter Text

The areas of the human body where the skin always seemed soft, unscathed, unnoticed had always been Octavian’s favourite. The skin under one’s arm, of the inner thigh, the lower back, in the crook of one’s neck which made even the light dance of air seem leaden with the weight of the world in comparison. It was in these areas, Octavian decided, that the divine, if such a thing existed, poked through the veil of mortality. Maybe the skin itself was the divine and something of such perfection could only exist in small amounts. His head rested on Agrippa’s bent elbow as his companion slept, his eyes surveyed the strip of soft, godly skin on the inside of his friend’s arm. Tender, warm, alive in its own right. Then, untangling himself from the limbs that rested across his body, Octavian brushed his lips against this patch of skin, reverently, as if he were worshipping an icon, and then left the room. The day outside was calling his attention.

Maecenas, meanwhile, ignored his friend’s mini walk of shame as he stared into his mug. A small, tea-tinted version of himself stared back at him. His whole body slumped over the white mug as if he were some scholar searching an old tome for the answers even the oldest, thickest, dustiest of books could not provide. Or, maybe it was his sanity he was searching for. His reflection blinked up at him and then licked its lips with a certain uncertainty. Tendrils of peppermint permeated the warm air that formed a halo around his hands and mug. What did they want to tell him? He watched intently as the tea rippled in sync with the fluctuation of his breath. Inhale. Exhale. Small waves marred the soulless visage that looked out at him, the tides almost gave the impression of life to the portrait. Was that how he looked to others?

“Did you see where Octavian went?”

“Hm?”

Agrippa looked at his friend who had lost track of time and reality whilst trapped in the world of peppermint tea (which was now, rather unfortunately, cold).

“Octavian? Where is he?”

“His room, I’d suppose,” Maecenas mused, not quite teasingly.

Agrippa stared at him with exasperation, “I’ve already checked his room. Did you see where he went?”

“No.”

That was helpful, Agrippa thought as he turned toward the bathroom. It was not uncommon for Octavian to merely disappear in such a manner but there was usually some indication of where he had scampered off to. He probably had an early class. Yes, that was it: a morning class he didn’t want to be late to. Agrippa engaged in some form of staring contest with his reflection as he brushed his teeth, a task completed only by the unconscious movement of his hand. Backward and forward in slight circles which gave the illusion that something was changing when, in actuality, the brush was merely returning to where it had started. Upon finishing his task, he spat, washed his brush, then turned and walked to the living room, hoping his friend had reappeared.

He had not.

Instead, Livia was also there searching for Octavian.

“Do you know where he is?” She asked, whipping around to look at him, then hesitating as she had to take a moment to admire him in a pair of grey tracksuit pants and no shirt. 

Agrippa shrugged, trying to act as if he could care less about the whereabouts of his friend, as if he had not been searching for him almost as frantically about two minutes ago. The irony of this made Maecenas snort quietly, now leaning over a newly made cup of tea.

“He wanted to meet me,” Livia continued, trying to fill the space to cover up the fact that she still had the ability to barge into her neighbour’s flat despite no longer needing to use their bathroom, “apparently he had found someone to move in with me. I don’t know why he took it upon himself to find me a flatmate I don’t even need but he did. Is that normal for him?-“ realising she had strewn off into a tangent, as she often did as she had the habit of talking about ten different things at the same time at the speed her brain moved (which was, by the way, very fast), she returned to her main argument, “Anyway he said he’d meet me so I could meet them but now he’s gone M.I.A and-“

Agrippa blinked at her, shocked by the volley of words that had been thrown at him. He opened his mouth in some attempt to say something, though he did not know what he was going to say yet, to calm her down (for it seemed as if what Livia really needed was to be calmed down) but, thanks be to whatever looked upon him admirably that morning, Octavian appeared. 

“You look like you’re about to have a heart attack-“ he mused as he entered the room.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Livia exclaimed upon seeing him.

“I was gone for, like, 15 minutes!”

“No you weren’t,” Agrippa muttered. He knew this because he’d been searching the house for longer than 45 minutes and Octavian was horrible at keeping track of time when he didn’t want to.

Someone stepped out from behind Octavian. She was tallish, with blonde hair that was cut off just at her shoulders, with two, beautiful hazel eyes and a smattering of freckles that looked like stars on a backdrop of tan skin.

“Hi?” She said to make herself known to the room but not having any clue how to except for this.

Livia looked her up and down, ignoring the small voice in her head that was screaming about how beautiful this stranger was.

“Livia, this is Scribonia. She needs a place to live,” Octavian sighed, “Scribonia, this is Livia. She has an extra room and working shower.”

The two girls nodded a greeting to each other. 

“So, what do you say?” He prompted, quite proud of his matchmaking skills.

Livia paused in consideration. Scribonia wore gold jewelry, as suggested by the gold bracelets around her wrists and the chain around her neck. Good- she would never have her own stolen. She seemed polite enough. She seemed to be clean enough, judging by her clothes (and the fact that she smelled really, really good- a fact she tried to ignore). So Livia was quite happy with her response, despite the fact that it would have been the same whether or not all of those things had been true for her heart had told her to respond as such before she’d even thought about it.

“Sure,” Livia replied, trying to act as if she could not care less. 

Scribonia’s smile grew wider (Livia hadn’t even thought that was possible) before turning and hugging a very shocked Octavian. She had lived most of her life trying to be like Elle Woods in ‘Legally Blonde’. She had been characterized as such since she was four. Life, as a result, had come easily to her: rich parents, a pretty face, and the ability to maintain a facade of friendliness can get one almost wherever they wanted. Her favourite colour was pink, favourite hobby was baking cookies (sugar free, of course), and she watched trashy 20-season soap operas as if she were attending Sunday Church. But, having mastered the art of being ‘Elle Woods: non-fiction edition’, she was very obviously capable of what made ‘Legally Blonde’ such a great movie: working her ass off. The sheer force of her determination could make the world implode upon itself and, if gravity decided to allow her to drift off to he ground, she would do everything (literally everything) possible to not move a millimeter off it and, when the possible failed her, she would resort to the impossible to do so. So, yes, when she asked Octavian, who was a family friend, if he knew of anyone looking for a flatmate, he decided it best to introduce him to Livia, who was possibly stubborn enough to challenge even Scribonia’s ability to get everything she wanted.
_

By the next week Scribonia had moved in across the hall, Livia had decided she missed living alone, and Maecenas had started to miss spending his mornings without having to listen to Livia complain about all of the blonde hair she kept finding in her brush. This issue specifically did not seem that big of a deal to Maecenas, who had been using Agrippa’s hair brush for years without his friend ever saying anything about it, and he tried, and failed, to drown out whatever Livia was going on about. Similarly, Octavian had spent the past week being plagued by Scribonia’s voice telling him his friend “needs to buy a new personality” because Livia, apparently, stole the batteries from the television remote. When consulted on this issue, Livia plead innocent, arguing that it was her right to spend her evenings without having to hear the ‘Love Island’ intro being blared through the wall (there are really only so many times you can hear one person on the television call another a “bitch,” “slut,” “whore,” etc before they start wanting to call the person watching the show one or more of these things). Agrippa had decided to make himself scarce, spending as much time at the gym, or the pool or wherever people who spent their time exercising participated in such activities, and so only had to suffer through hearing his two flatmates complain about it. Thus, whilst Agrippa bore the least of the struggle, he was already tired of the constant bickering so he did what any sane person would do and called a group meeting.

“Why are we here?” Livia groaned as she sat on the couch beside Scribonia, “We don’t live here.”

“I don’t even have a key,” Scribonia muttered.

It was at this point that Agrippa thought achieving peace across the hall would be a simple feat.

“We’re here about you two.”

There was no point in side-stepping the issue. 

“Is this about the batteries? Because it was my right to-“

Agrippa then realised that peace negotiations would not be that easy.

“Well you have no right to dictate my use of our, shared television!” Scribonia quipped back.

“Well you have no right to use my hairbrush but that’s not stopping you.”

“Then you shouldn’t leave it out!”

“Plus,” Maecenas decided he should cut in because Maecenas was of the strong belief he had a place in every conversation occurring in his proximity, “it’s just hairbrush, what’s so bad about sharing it? I use Agrippa’s brush all the time!”

Agrippa turned to face his friend in shock, his mouth dropped open to say something but he didn’t quite know how to react to this new information. 

“But, I mean, I think hiding the batteries is a justifiable reaction,” Octavian muttered but no one was paying attention to him.

“You. Use. My. Hairbrush?” Agrippa had finally returned to his senses.

“It’s not like I’m using it for anything bad!”

“Exactly!” Scribonia threw her hands out for emphasis. Although, more emphasis was not necessary as the conversation slowly got louder and louder and louder, arguably becoming blown out of proportion. Agrippa looked like he was going to strangle Maecenas whilst the latter seemed ready to do something stupid with a hairbrush. Livia and Scribonia, meanwhile, were discussing the intricacies of the morality behind stealing batteries if the theft was for the “Greater Good”. Something about utilitarianism came up but there were too many voices layered on top of each other for anyone to delineate between them. Octavian let his head flop against the back of the couch before sighing loudly.

“Please, shut up,” he muttered.

Everyone was too absorbed by the draw of arguing that this plea sunk and drowned as if it had been tied to a brick and thrown into the North Sea. Octavian took a bigger breath before, well, before yelling at the top of his lungs:

“PLEASE SHUT UP.”

That did it. Four pairs of eyes turned to look at Octavian, who in the few seconds between each of his warnings, had somehow stood up on the couch despite not remembering doing so. After a second of silence, he realised everyone was waiting for him to continue.

“Maecenas, you will get Agrippa a new brush and keep the old one. Neither of you will kill eachother,” he turned his attention to the girls, “I don’t know how you two will put an end to all of-“ he drew a deft circle around the pair of them, “this- but please don’t do here. I beg you to please get out.”

He stepped off the couch and walked to his room. As he shut his door, he heard Agrippa start yelling again and was reminded as to why he tended to avoid getting involved in such matters.

As Agrippa and Maecenas continued to bicker, Livia and Scribonia looked between the two men and each other and then, in some silent agreement, both stood and went back to their own apartment. 

The lock clicked, Livia turned on her heel to see Scribonia just staring at her in the living room. The sun had started to set, throwing a rosy, golden hue over the room. The girls just looked at eachother for one moment. Then two. Then, for good measure, three. 

“Those three are odd, aren’t they?” Livia joked to pierce the silence as she walked to the kitchen.

Scribonia barked a laugh at Livia’s euphemistic terminology.

“That’s one way to put it.”

The pair laughed, seemingly having signed a truce.

“Do you want something to drink?” Livia asked as she turned to check out the contents of the fridge.

“Livia?”

“Hm?”

She shut the fridge door to find Scribonia standing on the other side. Her heart quickened as if it knew what was about to happen. Scribonia lent forward and, if you hadn’t already guessed: kissed her on the lips. Her mouth was soft as it first brushed against the other woman’s before it began to press against it with increasing force. Livia, not wanting it to end but too obsessive not to continue without knowing, pulled back for a moment.

“Does this mean you’ll stop using my brush?”

“Only if you tell me where the batteries are.”

“Deal.”

Livia returned her mouth to what she deemed its rightful place.

Maybe Octavian was a better matchmaker than he originally thought. 

Chapter Text

Wake me up before you go-go

'Cause I'm not planning on going solo

Wake me up before you go-go

Take me dancing tonight

_

"What is that sound?" Scribonia groaned as she woke up, bleary eyed and plagued by the remnants of a dream that she could not quite remember anything about except that it had been a good one.

"Maecenas," Liva explained.

Livia had been up for hours, just laying next to her flatmate (there had been no discussion about being anything else), not being able to sleep because of all of the light filtering in through the windows and yet also not being able to leave.

"Who?"

"The guy next door who's sunglasses you want to steal."

Scribonia did want to steal those glasses. They were bright pink with heart-shaped frames and, unlike the majority of the population, she could think of a multitude of outfits they would pair well with. Still, she was more concerned as to why she had been awoken by a song which had reached its prime in the 1980's.

"Why?"

"Party. Tonight."

"It's 7am."

Scribonia rolled over to meet Livia's dark eyes, they were flecked with black and gold, flecks one would only really notice if they had stared as intently into them as she had been doing recently.

"The message Agrippa gave me was he likes to start early."

"Do they actually do anything but nonsense in that household?"

"No," Livia laughed, "but the music is probably a sign it's time for me to go and help."

Scribonia frowned, causing her brow to furrow slightly, her eyes pleading for one moment longer. Livia, however, knew "one moment" would turn into two, then three, and then a day worth of single moments so she shook her head and breezed out of the room, with a flick of a hand and a "See you later".

_

Mamma mia, here I go again

My, my, how can I resist you?

Mamma mia, does it show again?

My, my, just how much I've missed you?

_

Octavian rested his head against the cool marble of their island countertop. He grimaced as he heard his flatmates argue against the strains of “Mamma Mia” which, paired directly after “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” at this time on a Saturday morning was immensely jarring. A cup of black coffee nursed itself in his hands. Maecenas had decided that morning (so about five minutes ago) that he was going to put a disco ball up in their living room. The good news? For some reason, he had a disco ball just lying around. The bad news? Now he and Agrippa were debating where to hang it. Octavian, who was always one to avoid getting between the pair of them, was thus forced to listen to them bicker on and on and on. It was almost Sisyphean living with two people so hellbent on spending every minute of every hour of every day bickering (“What does that mean, again?” He could hear Agrippa ask in his mind, “It’s a reference to the myth of Sisyphus,” he heard this hypothetical version of himself reply as imaginary Agrippa nodded to show he understood, “And who’s Sisyphus again?”).

He felt a shoulder press against his own, inviting him to look up from where he had been glaring at the marble of the counter. He smiled upon seeing Livia had slid beside him, providing some relief from the racket his flatmates were creating. Octavian raised an eyebrow in greeting before his blue eyes swivelled to look at Maecenas and Agrippa.

“Why the fuck would I put it in the corner?” Maecenas yelled whilst standing on a stool in the middle of the room, holding the disco ball up above his head.

“Because then we won’t have to put lights in the centre of the room so it can reflect it y’know, like disco balls do!”

Agrippa waved a large pole around. Octavian had no idea where it had originated from nor when it had entered the conversation. He looked back up at Livia whose face said exactly what he was thinking “What the fuck is going on?”. Then Livia asked the same question that Octavian had asked a few minutes ago and regretted immediately. He tried to prevent her from making the same mistakes he had but ABBA spoke true when they sang “The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself” and what was done was done:

“How are you guys going to attach it to the ceiling?”

“Blu-tack,” Maecenas responded flatly.

“It won’t hold if you use blu-tack,” Agrippa argued.

“Tape then.”

“Tape won’t hold either.”

“Then what should I use, engineering genius?”

Octavian cringed as Livia realised her mistake and the pair watched the argument over again. It was like watching a rerun of a show one has already seen with a friend who only had the vaguest idea of all of the intricacies; one is tempted to explain every microscopic detail, and thus spoil what comes next, but choose not to because they do not want to spoil it. Of course, in this case Octavian’s aversion to “spoiling” it was more so that Livia could learn when not to intervene. Soon enough, both of their heads were resting on the island counter, none of the issues had been resolved, and Maecenas had also found a stick to wave around like a mad man (in later discussion about these events, neither Octavian or Livia knew where the stick had come from and neither of them had noticed when it had appeared).

Eventually, Octavian made the executive decision to not listen to the bickering anymore and rebel in the only way he knew how: running away.

“I’m going to get the booze,” he muttered.

“I’ll join you,” Livia added, not even trying to hide how desperately she wanted to escape the arguing.

“Don’t forget the list,” Maecenas called out after them, not watching as the pair scurried off for he was too focused on fending off Agrippa with his stick and really regretting not joining the fencing club when they had still been at school.

_

Take a swim in the water

Dear Arkansas daughter

You with the dark curls, you with the watercolour eyes

You who bares all your teeth in every smile

_

Saturday mornings at grocery stores were rarely enjoyable. If one happened to be at a grocery store in this time frame, chances were you were shopping with your family of five, your children ranging from two to eight years old, as that was the only time you could muster to do so, or you were hungover and attempting to gather the ingredients necessary for some remedy to the headache that made the world seem like someone had just turned the lights up in a dark room, or you were buying booze for your friend’s party. Nevertheless it was busy and Livia was happy to finally meet someone who actually walked at a decent pace (everyone else she had ever known always walked so slowly) as she strolled the aisles with Octavian.

“Why do we need this much booze?” She asked as they stopped to inspect the shelves covered in multi-coloured bottles.

“Because Maecenas and his friends drink like sponges. Plus, he has at least 70 people coming I’d say.”

“How often does he do this, anyway? Throw massive parties, I mean?”

Octavian squatted to get a better look at the lower shelves, trying to find a very specific bottle of scotch.

“You know how there’s a full moon every month? Yeah, about the same frequency as that. Special occasions call for exceptions,” he leant forward to grab the bottle he was searching for, “wait until it’s his birthday- there’s a party every day for a month. Agrippa and I are gonna have to move out.”

Livia chuckled.

“You and Agrippa, eh?” She teased, swallowing the slight bitterness that stung at her throat away.

“You and Scribonia, eh?” He responded, standing up after checking the label of the bottle.

Livia paused, “How-“

Octavian glanced at her sideways, “Scribonia rarely keeps her secrets secret. The fact she told me tells me she likes you.”

“It’s nothing-“

“Nothing official? Yeah, yeah,” he brushed her off as he reached up to get some bottles of vodka, “we’ve all heard that before.”

“Then what are you and your,” she paused to waggle her eyebrows, “lover?”

“As I just said: we’ve all been ‘nothing official’ before. Agrippa and I, if you can even call it that, are just a product of inevitability.”

What Octavian did not continue to say was that they would never be anything “official”. There wasn’t terminology for what they were, really, and he had decided that it would never be anything more than what it was; he would not allow it to become anything more.

“Have you considered how we’ll get this home?”

An advertisement came on over the grocery store’s radio system, interrupting the flow of music which had created an almost liminal atmosphere within the aisles of the store.

“There are boxes out the front we can use,” Octavian muttered as he decided on whether to buy another bottle of gin or tequila. Maecenas had not specified amounts for any of the items he had requested, leaving Octavian to eyeball it.

“Get the tequila,” Livia advised, “it’s not like anyone’s coming to drink a G&T.”

_

Simmer down, simmer down

They say we're too young now to amount to anything else

But look around

We worked too damn hard for this just to give it up now

If you don't swim, you'll drown

But don't move, honey

_

“So are we gonna get drunk tonight or what?” Agrippa grinned as he strolled into Octavian’s room half-dressed.

“Agrippa!” Octavian jumped as he heard his friend enter.

“Don’t look too terrified, it’s not like I’ve never seen you-“

“Livia is in the closet!”

“What?”

“She. Is. In. The. Closet.”

Octavian pointed to his wardrobe to try and explain to his friend that he was not telling him that their other friend was, in fact, literally in his closet. Agrippa just looked at him with confused outrage.

“Jesus, you didn’t have to out her like that-”

“Agrippa, she is getting changed inside my wardrobe!”

Livia slid the door back to reveal her hiding space, poking her head out, “You do understand I can hear you, right?”

“Sorry, Livia,” Agrippa muttered, wondering why she wasn’t getting dressed at her own house or in the bathroom.

Livia was currently hiding in Octavian’s wardrobe because Maecenas had commandeered use of the bathroom and Scribonia had invited her friends over in order to pregame and Livia had decided she did not want to be in the same flat as whatever that consisted of. As much as she liked Scribonia, there was only so much she could take of random people trying to tell her how she should dress, that she would look great in yellow or that she should get a fringe or that some random person she’d never met would be so compatible with her. Livia had been typecast as the “quiet, shy, gloomy one” for the majority of her life and having to listen to twenty different people talk about twenty different things that consisted of the same three topic reminded her why she spent most of her life embracing the stereotype.

“What is it, Agrippa?”

He hesitated.

If Octavian had only one talent it was his ability to do eyeliner. One didn’t have to tell Agrippa that the other man’s hand was steady but when it came to doing eye makeup, he was practically a magician. Agrippa himself, on the other hand, was horrendous at it despite the fact it did make him twice as likely to pick up. So he normally got Octavian (who was the only person who looked better with his eyes lined than Agrippa- that is, if you listened to Agrippa) to do it for him.

Agrippa looked at Octavian expectantly.

“Fine,” he sighed, “have you got it?”

Agrippa nodded excitedly.

“Then sit down.”

The other man obliged him, pulling out the desk chair and flipping into it as Octavian got into position, leaning forward, so that he could angle himself correctly. However, they had done this so many times before that they had formed a routine. Octavian would begin leaning over, poking his tongue out at an awkward angle, before eventually straddling Agrippa and sitting on his lap because, somehow, that was the optimal position to achieve the desired results (it also happened to be the most comfortable).

“You two better not be doing some weird sex thing,” Livia called loudly enough for her voice to only be slightly muffled by the wardrobe door before she slid it open to walk into the scene, “What the fuck is happening?” She asked after taking a moment to regain equilibrium.

“Agrippa can’t do makeup.”

“Surely there are better ways to do that.”

“You’d be surprised,” Octavian mused, too focused on his work to look at Livia. As he finished the waterline of the second eye, he turned over to her.

In all honesty, what she was wearing was not that different to what she usually wore. She wore the same pair of black jeans she had worn that morning, straight cut, and high waisted, with the same black eyelet belt. Her top was a cropped, white, ribbed singlet with thick straps which were hidden under a leather jacket, also black and, considering the way it was cut and sized, was likely a men’s jacket and, even more likely, vintage. The platformed Doc Martens that adorned her feet were threaded with purple laces and, Agrippa decided, there was another person in the world who looked hotter than him in eyeliner. Octavian swallowed with surprise.

“It took you twenty minutes to get changed into that?” He teased after a moment of silence.

“You try getting dressed in a wardrobe.”

Maecenas took now as the time to stroll in, dressed in a floor-length faux-fur coat and a pair of red tinted glasses.

“What the fuck are you all wearing?” He exclaimed as he inspected what the other three were wearing. All of it was much less esoteric than his own attire which didn’t bother Maecenas as much as he pretended it did. However, it did sadden him that none of them quite understood what would make them look just a smidgen better and, if one of them even gave him the slightest sense that they wanted his help to renovate their wardrobes, he would already have preordered everything they’d need (he had created wishlists on various shopping sites for the day all three of them finally begged for his aid).

"Clothes," Agrippa responded dryly, still having not quite forgiven Maecenas for hitting him on the head with a stick that morning.

"Not very good ones," Maecenas mocked out of the kindness of his heart, "surely you don't need Octavian to do that for you anymore, Agrippa."

Octavian flicked his eyes between the two, having heard his name mentioned, still straddling Agrippa on the chair, "How can we help, Maecenas?"

He hesitated before pulling something out from behind his back. A gold gel liner.

"Well..."

With a sigh, Octavian slipped off of Agrippa's lap, motioning for his patron to stand. Agrippa looked between him and Octavian, wondering as to why he was always moved on so quickly whenever it came to getting ready. Maecenas slipped into the spot, got his phone out, and showed Octavian a reference image on Pintrest. Livia just stood outside the wardrobe, vaguely concerned with the scene in front of her.

"Can none of you do anything alone?"

"No," Octavian muttered distractedly.

"If one of us was planning to build an empire," Maecenas expanded, "it would be a group effor-"

Octavian shushed him and repositioned his head. Maecenas' flare for the poetic nature of camaraderie proved highly distracting. With one, final flourish, he finished the second eye and leapt off of his friend, observably much quicker than he had done on Agrippa. Upon seeing Octavian's work, Livia nodded in approval, genuinely impressed at the standard of his work in such a short amount of time.

_

So I put my hands up

They're playin' my song, the butterflies fly away

I'm noddin' my head like, yeah

Movin' my hips like, yeah

I got my hands up, they're playin' my song

They know I'm gonna be okay

_

"What is this song?" Livia frowned, standing by the kitchen island, a red solo cup in her hand.

Scribonia's head had just been resting on her shoulder but now, as she looked over to watch the other woman's reaction, Livia realised it was no longer there.

"C'mon, Livia, let's dance!"

Scribonia's hand seized her free wrist and dragged her into the area which had been cleared for those intent on dancing properly. Livia was usually not one of these people but sometimes, and only sometimes, it was very easy to get caught up and drift away in another person's lust for life and Scribonia was very convincing when it came to dancing. How one danced in such high heels, Livia would forever wonder as she awkwardly bobbed in time with the music.

"Can someone please stop Livia dancing," Maecenas whispered to his flatmates who were standing in a corner, "it's a sad sight."

Maecenas tended to travel in a large pack at parties. Well, this "pack" was more his "entourage", and consisted of a handful of extremely loyal followers. Where he had attracted such a following neither Agrippa or Octavian knew but the group of them tended to see themselves as a kind of Twenty-First Century Bloomsbury Group, which simply meant they spent their time writing and getting into increasingly complex relationships with each other. The main four, who Octavian was about 70% sure were all in the same course as Maecenas, were Virgil (a self-proclaimed master of the likes of Dante Alighieri, Keats and Homer), Livy (who thought about the Roman Empire on a daily basis and made it everyone's problem), Horace (another poet who was always competing with Virgil for air time), and Ovid (who saw himself as subversive compared to his companions).

"Why are you wearing sunglasses? We are inside and it's dark outside anyway!" Octavian responded, having dismissed his friend's initial woes and taken offence at seeing his work covered in such a manner.

"Do you hate fashion?" Virgil drawled, wearing something almost as extravagant as Maecenas, quite clearly high on something. Agrippa decided he didn't want to know what for legal reasons (plausible deniability or whatever- he wasn't a law student).

Octavian simply did not respond and watched the party from afar. Although, he could not stop his eyes from drifting toward the dance floor.

_

Why would you ever kiss me?

I'm not even half as pretty

You gave her your sweater, it's just polyester

But you like her better

Wish I were Heather

_

Octavian leaned out over the balcony. Only his room had access to the small outdoor area, which was the main reason the room was his (considering he was the one related to their landlord and all). His cup hung from his hand, filled with a poorly made Moscow Mule, the only concoction that he could withstand in such excessive amounts. The music within the house seemed to make the world thrum with life, making Octavian wonder how his ears withstood being inside. No matter the answer, he drunk up the cool silence of the night (or morning, depending on how one looked at it, considering it was currently 1am), which was so clearly juxtaposed with the hot pandemonium of the party which had practically tripled in size since it started. He knew that the only reason no noise complaint had been issued was because everyone knew who lived in their flat and everyone feared his uncle.

"There you are," a voice beside him said, "where's the other one of you?"

"Agrippa's either passed out on a couch or in someone's bed."

He turned his head to look at Livia. She motioned to his cup to ask for a drink, he passed it to her as she settled beside him. There was some strange sensation in the air, which whispered something about fate or whatever other machinations worked beyond the understanding of even the most learned academics. "It's always us, isn't it?" was what it said, softly, so even if one strained they would struggle to believe it had been there at all. Thus, both of them ignored this thought, assigning it to a combination of exhaustion, intoxication, and the sublimity of the night.

"I've spent the past few minutes holding Scribonia's hair back."

"Please tell me you used one of the buckets I put out," Octavian replied- he did not want to spend the morning trying to purge the bathroom of the scent of the contents of people's stomachs.

"With the tissues in the bottom? If so, don't worry, I did."

"The tissues stop splash-back. You should thank me."

"I'm eternally in your debt."

The music inside had slowed, although most of the partygoers were not necessarily bothered by this, either too drunk, high, or exhausted to pay much mind to the change of tone, their ears almost grateful for a break from the strains of songs better suited for dancing. Livia rested her head on Octavian's shoulder out of some silent compulsion, a quiet voice inside her saying that she could, that she should.

"You have really long eye lashes," she mused, looking up at him.

"I inherited them from my mother."

"I never knew my mother."

"You can have mine if you want."

Octavian never knew how to react when someone revealed something of such weight about themselves.

"Your eyelashes or your mother? I'll take either."

He laughed lightly and looked down at her. Livia's eyes twinkled in the darkness, the lights of the city around them like stars in her pupils. She smiled. Fate whispered again as a soft breeze brushed a strand of hair from her face. The song was almost finished; Octavian's heartbeat quickened as if on its own accord; the night was calling for something. It yearned for a sacrifice, or amusement, or some sign that it had provided such perfect conditions for some greater reason. The night called for this- yes this is what it wanted. He took Livia's chin in his hand. The light in his eyes, sunlight grasping at the swirling depths of the Ocean as the bottom dropped off, told her all she needed to know. They did not know who leant forward first. They were barely certain it happened for it lasted for half a second.

One, single kiss.

Livia shuffled forward in order to restabilise herself, Octavian wrapped an arm around her to aid in this endeavour. Then, all of a sudden.

"Who the fuck put such a depressing song on?!" Maecenas yelled inside, his voice muffled by the window between them.

In something adjacent to horror, the pair backed away from each other, having been wrenched back to reality. Livia swallowed.

"I should go inside-"

"I'll be right behind you," Octavian nodded hurriedly.

A silent contract had been signed between them; that one second had never happened.

It would have been completely erased from history had Agrippa not watched the exchange from the window adjoining the living room to the balcony. However, he, too, put it down to the machinations of having consumed too much alcohol. It was best to let such things die quietly because then, maybe, that gnawing in his stomach would die too.

Chapter Text

The clock on the wall read 8am. This annoyed the newly awakened Octavian not because of the time itself but because of the ear shattering, maddening noise a ticking clock makes when it is, well, ticking. Bodies were strewn across the living room, a Baroque composition of arms and bodies and people who smelt either of perfume, alcohol or vomit (the lucky ones smelt of all three at once). Agrippa was flopped on top of Octavian on one of the couches, his head on the smaller man’s chest. He was snoring. Loudly. Perfectly timed so that he inhaled and exhaled in the moment of silence between each tick of the clock.

Tick-tock.

Octavian’s legs were numb. Extremely numb. Dead to the world, never to recover. With a strained movement of his neck, he scanned around the room searching for someone else who had not been knocked out as if they had been cursed by an evil queen in a fairytale. Unfortunately, Octavian bore the burden of always being the last in a group to fall asleep and the first to wake up. It was the cross he shouldered, even as a child; spending those few minutes, sometimes hours, being the only one left even when he was surrounded by people. There was no other way to explain it- it was always him, by some miraculous happenstance, who had to be quiet for everyone else. So that they did not wake up. It was alienating, sure, but almost comfortable at the same time because that was merely how it had always been.

In one, fluid, well-practiced movement, he extricated himself from the grasp of Agrippa. The larger man groaned slightly before repositioning himself as if Octavian had never been there at all. Was he really that easy to replace? He picked his way through the terrain of unconscious people he had never met, trying to reach the bathroom which proved to be no less crowded. How many people had there been? It certainly had not seemed that busy the night before. Octavian closed his eyes and sighed before walking back out of the bathroom in search of the ringleader of this circus.

Maecenas, for his part, did not expect to be awoken with a sharp kick to his stomach. Part of his reason for not expecting this is because his door had been locked. His door had been locked for the obvious reasons one would lock their door. He opened his eyes drowsily to see Octavian towering over him (and Octavian never towered over anybody) as he stood on the bed next to him. His head rang like a phone which had not been put on silent in a movie theatre.

“Must you kick me when I’m down?” He groaned, shifting away from Octavian’s burrowing displeasure.

Octavian had that effect on people- when you liked him, nay, loved him enough, it was impossible to deal with the possibility that you had wronged him.

“Can you get all of these people out of here?”

Maecenas nodded half-heartedly.

“And put some clothes on.”

Octavian stepped off the bed, having to pass over both Ovid and Virgil on his way. Neither of them, like Maecenas, wore a single piece of clothing.

Next came the fun part. In the kitchen a cupboard door slammed shut and Octavian congratulated himself as the first partygoers began to rouse from their sleep. The kettle began to boil, more people began to shift. The floor seemed to be a live, moving organism as more and more hungover strangers began to rise and return to reality, looking around in confusion, attempting to seek shelter from the banging in their heads which they could never escape, looking for their phones or coats or displaced objects. One or two people turned their heads to look at Octavian hopefully; would he make a cup of something warm for them, too? However, he was apathetic to their plight, being preoccupied with his own symptoms. It was 8am, it was still early.

After what he deemed an acceptable amount of time, and a decent number of conscious individuals, Octavian completed what was, perhaps, his favourite part of Maecenas’ parties. With a metal mixing bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other, he stood on the kitchen island and started banging on the bowl. More people awoke. Then, in order to rouse the final stragglers, he allowed the bowl to drop to the ground, creating a cacophony that caused everyone, including him, to grimace. A range of eyes then stared up at him: drowsy, bloodshot, confused, wide. They were an army awaiting their orders.

“If you do not live here or are fucking someone that lives here,” he declared-

“Or Livia,” Livia muttered from the corner she found herself in with Scribonia leaning on her shoulder loudly enough for the room to hear.

“-Or are named 'Livia',” Octavian repeated, “get the fuck out.”

There was a moment of stillness, of pause, a delay period in which the room was processing how to respond. This period was quickly expedited by the increasing frustration in Octavian’s gaze, his finger now fixed pointing toward the door. A few feet began to shuffle, a few more followed. Incrementally, the room rose and left with muted “thank you”’s and one “Sorry if I threw up in your shoe”. Within the span of two minutes it would have been as if the party had never happened- were it not for the mess which made the scene akin to the aftermath of Ragnarok. Surveying his domain, Octavian took a moment to stand and sigh, it was now time to clean, to repair what was decimated by the hoard, to put the pieces of the night back together in his mind and to figure out what not to allow to slip out of his mouth. He knew something had happened, something had happened which he should not have let happen. In fact, he was almost certain what this occurrence was but he needed to be completely sure. Halfway through Octavian’s thoughts, Maecenas dragged himself into the room and recoiled upon seeing it practically emptied of all signs of life except Octavian on the counter, and Livia and Scribonia on the floor. Agrippa, as per usual, was still passed out.

“Is he still alive?” Maecenas drawled as he shut the door so that his bed mates would not be disturbed, pointing at the mound on the couch.

“I’d assume so,” Octavian replied.

“Must we clean up?” Scribonia asked, really missing her shower and her bed.

“You don’t have to,” Octavian sighed, already trying to figure out how to distribute the duties. He then pegged one of the cups on the counter next to him at Agrippa’s head, hitting him in the centre of his forehead.

A noise came from the general direction of the couch which sounded vaguely like a “what!” but it was too warped and garbled by the cushion it was grumbled into to be clear.

Livia really wanted a glass of water.

“We gotta tidy up,” Maecenas urged the now awakened pile of Agrippa on the couch.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Fuck off, Maecenas.”

“Octavian’s gonna kill us if we don’t.”

“I will, Agrippa.”

“Fine!”

Unlike Octavian, Agrippa clearly remembered what had happened that night- what he had seen through the living room window. No other segment of the evening’s events lingered in his head but he held no doubts about what he saw. He did not, however, know who he was angry at. Octavian, for doing it? He couldn’t be mad at him- he had no ownership over his friend or who he kissed, they had never discussed that, it’s not like it was something he wanted anyway. Livia, for kissing him back? Again, Octavian’s affections were not his to posses or hoard or stash away like a squirrel hides its rations for the Winter. Himself, then. But why himself? How could he be angry when what happened was merely a contraption and innovation of the world? Of a range of random variables that happened to intersect in one moment? Besides, they were drunk. It was not anything pivotal or important.

And then, to make matters worse: Julius Caesar opted to stroll in through the front door, which the outgoing stampede had left open.

“Why so glum?” Called the booming voice of a man who had never been told to be silent in his life.

The way everyone else in the room flinched at the sound of his voice told Caesar what he was not surprised to hear: they were glum because they were drunk- well, they had been drunk and weren't anymore. He chuckled, looking at the floor of the room and then up at Octavian.

“Get off the counter, boy!”

Octavian, silently, nodded and obeyed. Dealing with his uncle was not a trial he had wished to transcend today. Caesar’s eyes scanned the few figures in the room, assessing the situation, he called an excited greeting to Scribonia, who mustered the energy to at least pretend to be lively enough to reciprocate such enthusiasm, and decided he would help the poor youths before him.

“Octavian, make me a coffee and I’ll get my team in to clean up.”

Once again, he obliged Caesar’s demands but with a bit more enthusiasm this time, the thought of not having to eradicate the evidence of the previous night a source of well-needed energy. As he began to boil the kettle again, he listened to the droning of his uncle's voice as he reminisced about the splendours of youth, of the parties he once attended and the people whose beds he so often found himself in the next day. The latter image made everyone else in the room vaguely uncomfortable, if not queasy, for imagining one's uncle or one's friend's uncle doing what people do in bed with countless celebrities or mutual acquaintances was not a particularly pleasant activity to do so early in the morning. Alas, Caesar was not one for keeping his mouth closed when it came to such topics, ever one to brag. With ease, the businessman, dressed in the kind of clothes businessmen wear even outside of the office to let the whole world know that they are important because being important matters, caught the mug of coffee that was slid across the counter to him. If we are not important, after all, then what is the point of it all? In a world of important people, the only thing one can truly strive to be is more important than anyone else. "That is how you get them to remember you, son," Caesar had once told Octavian in his younger, more formative years when he was just a boy who would sit in his lap and listen to his stories with the kind of wonder of someone who knew not what it was to be important listens to the stories of one who was to become so, "by being better than them". Caesar was so close to being just that: important, memorable, the king of his industry and the world. He was so close and yet not quite there yet.

"You make a weak coffee, Octavian," he chastised after taking a small sip.

Octavian did not actually make his coffee weak but last time he had made one for his uncle he had been reprimanded for making it too strong. No one else in the room had really moved, for fear of drawing Caesar's notice. Despite all of his obnoxiousness and arrogance, Caesar was quite likeable but his inherent loudness was not something anyone wanted to attract at this time of the morning. Then the door to Maecenas' room creaked open. Out came Ovid, then Virgil, then Horace, and Livy, and whoever else Maecenas had stashed in the room. All of them were naked, on a pilgrimage to retrieve their clothes from wherever they had discarded them (although, one or two appeared to not have realised that they had lost their garments at all as they looked around the room drowsily, wondering why everyone was just staring at them). Caesar turned back to his nephew, raising his eyebrows high.

"T-That's not my room-" Octavian pleaded, knowing it was of no use.

Caesar winked at him, their little secret. It was about time his nephew started living, anyway. "I won't tell your mother" he replied with a knowing look. Although Octavian's look of horror should have told him enough: he had no idea what that look meant.

With one, enormous swig of his coffee, Caesar finished it and stood. "Now get dressed, all of you, and get out so I can get this cleaned up. On me, too."

Caesar winked again because that is what men of his stature did-  wink at people when they were in the know. It was a sign of solidarity, camaraderie.

_

Livia offered to house those who had been displaced by Caesar's team of cleaners in her flat for the moment being. This meant her kitchen became a grim scene of eye bags, wide yawns, and a general distaste for life. Octavian stared down at his coffee as if vaguely traumatised whilst Maecenas stared at a wall as if his hangover had allowed him free access to the secrets of the universe and he had become too overwhelmed by the sight of the first one to continue reading. Agrippa was half asleep, leaning his head on his hand, and Scribonia was actually asleep in her bed after having a pleasant shower. Livia stared at the sorry scene in front of her.

"Does anyone want breakfast?"

"Agrippa will," Octavian muttered.

"Huh?" Agrippa drooled.

"Breakfast," Livia repeated, "I have waffle mix in the cupboard."

This seemed to make all three pairs of ears perk up. Waffles it was.

No less than 20 minutes later, Agrippa was staring in amazement at his half-eaten waffle- the face of God in dough form- as he chewed it quietly, transfixed. Livia, Maecenas, and Octavian could not help but stare at him with varying levels of concern.

"These are better than your sisters'," he murmured before taking another bite.

"She would kill you for saying that," Octavian responded before returning to his own meal.

Despite having been told many a time he had "only child vibes", Octavian was not, in fact, an only child. His older sister, Octavia, was the reason for this. No one had ever dared to ask as to why they had such similar names, including them, thinking it best to just leave the issue alone so as not to upset their mother. Everyone loved Octavia. She was one of those people who collected friends like trinkets, remembering each one and never forgetting where she put them. It had always amazed her brother how she achieved this, considering he had never been the one to collect things en-masse, how she could have so many and have each thing, well, person, matter so dearly to her. Yet, unlike her brother, she did not remember each detail, where each scratch lay nor every part that glittered. No, Octavia loved indiscriminately. In return, everyone loved her back. Maybe it was a decent trade but that was not for her brother to decide.

Livia raised her eyebrow, impressed with her own cooking abilities, having never been worthy of even a fraction of a Michelin star (had she known more about cooking and food and all that she may have also known that Michelin stars worked on an integer-only basis). She then stabbed her last sliver of waffle with a fork and ate it, feeling oddly like a responsible adult.

"What should we do today?" she mused, thinking her question sounded too much like a proposition from "Phineas and Ferb".

_

Scribonia arose from bed just after noon, yawned, and padded to the living room which, as she soon discovered, was empty. She turned around down the hall, poking her head into Livia's room. Empty. She had the house to herself. Fantastic. Amazing. Fabulous.

What should she do?

Her sigh echoed through the corridor (which had better acoustics than she gave it credit for). The sound of her exhale reverberated throughout the empty crevices. She shivered, the silence tinting the air with a vague iciness. Did she need to pop to the shops? Yes, she did. Why? She shuffled to the kitchen. The fridge door opened with that soft sound refrigerator doors make when you first tug them open- sticky, stiff, but cooperative once enough force is applied. Cold air drifted out to meet her. They had milk, eggs, butter. The door returned to its original position with a soft, indescribable sound as the cupboard door opened. Turns out there was no need for pasta; they had enough to last an apocalypse of any variety. Bread? The draw was full. What else did people eat? Alcohol? The very thought of consuming more alcoholic substances at that moment made her slightly nauseous.

Scribonia sighed.

Where was everyone?

Maybe she should watch something. Nothing sparked her interest. Study? No. Call someone? No.

It was suffice to say that she had nothing to do (well, nothing she wanted to do).

_

Maecenas and Agrippa stood outside the shop entrance, on the street, watching the world go by. The former, thinking it quite a suave thing to do, had taken up smoking. It had become an almost obsessive habit which irked Agrippa more and more each day ("that's going to kill you," he would tell his friend, "Name one thing that can't kill me, Agrippa, and I'll quit," was always his response; Agrippa still had not thought of an answer). The little cardboard box flicked open as Maecenas slipped one from its confines, pinching it in his teeth, as he offered one to Agrippa whose expression of horror responded before he could ask the question. The box returned to his pocket and was relieved by the lighter (it was a bright shade of purple). One flick. Two. A flame appeared and then was put out as soon as it had achieved its aim. Inhale. Exhale. A puff of smoke drifted from his mouth as he turned to look at his friend who seemed awfully glum (and not the kind of glum that one naturally felt after drinking too much).

"They're taking a long time."

Agrippa's words were clipped- he thought he hid his emotions masterfully but everything he thought practically painted itself across his face.

"So?" Maecenas responded, vaguely amused by his friend's mood.

"I should go check if they're okay-"

"What do you thinks happening? They're being set on by a pack of lions?"

"Pride."

"What?"

"It's a pride of lions."

"Tomato, tomato," Maecenas realised, as he said this, that such a saying did not take on the same effect when in written form- what he actually said sounded more like "To-MAY-toe, tomato".

Agrippa looked at him with severe disappointment; as if this very conversation was taking every ounce of energy and self control he possessed. Sometimes the most stoic members of society can be the most petulant when their emotions seize control. So, commandeered by whatever feelings had overtaken him, Agrippa scowled at his friend.

"I'm going in-"

"Why?"

"Because-"

Agrippa faltered. Why was he so desperate to go in? He knew why, he just decided not to admit it to himself.

Maecenas returned his attention to the world around them, as a cab drove past them. Rain began to drizzle from the sky, lightly enough that one could not tell it was raining unless they looked really closely at the shallow puddles that dotted the ground form little waves; small, stirrings of life that spoke of a world outside of stillness and the trivial chaos of existing.

Another stream of smoke was pushed softly away by the almost unrecognisable breeze, dissipating in the near invisible rain.

Maecenas knew something was wrong. He was also pretty sure he knew what was wrong. But he stayed silent. You could now hear the light tapping of rain on the awning above them.

Octavian and Livia then appeared. The latter held a bag on her arm. It was light pink and had the store's name printed on it in black, bolded letters.

"What took you so long?" Agrippa practically snapped immediately.

"They wouldn't let me return it- we practically had to fight the manager," Livia sighed.

"We should hurry," Octavian muttered, in a slightly panicked manner, "a massive storm's about to hit."

They did hurry. The storm hit. They still returned to their block drenched. As they ran through the rain, like children on a beach, or what Agrippa had always imagined the dinosaurs ran away from the meteor that killed them all (he thought about dinosaurs an uncanny amount), each member of the group felt differing amounts of joy and dread. Maecenas thought that, with the almost apocalyptic harshness of the downpour, the weather was the result of pathetic fallacy. Someone, somewhere, was experiencing some emotion so severe that the world needed to drown itself in order to fully highlight the extend of this emotion. Whose day was so miserable that it warranted such torrents of rainfall? Not his, certainly, but he hoped they knew the day mourned for them (even if it was just his flare for the poetic that made him hope so). Agrippa, on the other hand, was merely miserable (utterly miserable) at being drenched in rain. His misery was only intensified by watching as Livia tilted her head back to let the rain fall into her mouth; as he watched Octavian laugh slightly at the unfortunate nature of the situation, his eyes twinkling with an almost invisible light. One day, when the feeling of the rain hitting his forehead, running into his eyes, making his clothes adhere to his body, had dissolve and all he was left with was the sound of their laughter, Agrippa would consider the possibility that it was not the rain which had made him so upset that day. He would then scrunch the thought up like a ball before trying to throw it into the bin in the corner of his mind, watching as it bounced off the rim, and then standing to go dispose of it properly.

But that's natural, isn't it?

Sometimes the truth stings a little too bitterly.

Chapter Text

"The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator..."

- Edward Gibbon, 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' (underlined in Octavian's copy)

_

It is a rarely acknowledged fact that the Library of Alexandria was not destroyed by fire. Sure, it suffered damage at the behest of flames but fire was not the true source of its demise.

As Octavian stood in line at the grocery store he mulled on this point in the sorrowful way that anyone who has ever loved art or history or was considered a "nerd" in high school had ever thought about the Library of Alexandria.

The thing was, he pondered as he watched the cashier scan the items of the person in front of him, the fall of the Library was not tied to one moment, like the sinking of the Titanic, but many, little moments across the span of many, many years. Agrippa would always sigh and roll his eyes when he spoke about it aloud; Maecenas would nod his head, agree, then complain of all the works they'd lost as if it were a personal slight to him ("Sappho! Aeschylus! Aristotle!" he would cry in a rather melodramatic manner).

Caesar had been the first to tell him of the story, when he was maybe five years old (the person in front of him was just about to pay). The story he was told, however, was different from the one he now knew. Caesar told him of the conquests of Alexander, the young king, of how he ambitiously planned to gather all the world's knowledge in one place. Then, just as his eyes had begun to twinkle at the thought of so much literature collected in one place, he was told of its demise. "It burned down."

Except it didn't.

It didn't and no one seemed to truly understand what that meant.

"That'll be-"

He was standing at the front of the line.

Snapping out of his daze, Octavian paid the cashier and left the store with a sigh. He liked sighing; it spoke of things that words could never quite capture. A resignation that he himself could never quite voice, like he was surrendering to the hands of Fate to do away with. That was not the way one should lead their life, he knew that, but there seemed something innate in allowing the world to push him down one stream or another. It was really very clear where he was going, too. He'd graduate, maybe get his masters (Caesar was more than willing to fund his academic ventures) in something bland- actuarial studies-, then go work with his sister at their late father's accounting firm. Maybe, if life decided his existence would be a bit more exciting, he would do economics instead and become some kind of economist (though, he did not truly know what economists did). Yes, his life had laid itself before him and it looked like the monotonous coming and going of a small, grey car in and out of a driveway in a cul-de-sac where he would get out of his cheap sedan each evening to go inside his cookie-cutter house with a small front yard and a small bed of flowers (roses, he decided) and greet his wife and kids. Content, maybe, but happy? Satisfied? Fulfilled? That was certainly the life his mother wished for him: grandchildren, a small house, stable job. Yet, Octavian felt something incomprehensible: a deep, ravaging hunger for something that extended beyond himself. To be great, memorable, to not be reduced to how strongly he brewed coffee or not be, well, another person who lived what he believed was a bland life.

"Why do you look like your mother just died?"

"Huh?"

Maecenas barked a laugh as Octavian wondered how he'd gotten home. He placed the bags he'd been hauling on the kitchen counter. It was wet outside. Grey, gloomy.

_

THIS IS THE LAST WILL OF Julius Caesar

1 I REVOKE all wills and other testamentary dispositions that I have previously made.

2 I APPOINT Marcus Antonius and if he predeceases me or, having survived me, refuses or is unable to act, I appoint Cleopatra Ptolemy to be the executor and trustee of this will.....

3c I GIVE $1000 to all employees of SPQR corp. provided he/she survives me by 30 days.

3d I GIVE my Summer house at... to my sister Atia Caesar provided she survives me by 30 days...

4 I GIVE everything else that I own, wherever any such assets may be, to...

- The last will and testament of Julius Caesar (fragments)

_

Looking at the same, grey clouds from the top office of a tall building on another end of the city, Caesar sighed. Maybe not in the same, resigned way his nephew did, but he sighed nonetheless. A pile of paper lay on his desk, waiting to be signed before going away to be stored in a filing cabinet in some lawyer's office. "Paper!" he had exclaimed when they'd been delivered that afternoon, "Who uses paper anymore?!". (Caesar thought himself quite the modern man).

As he turned to sign the paper, his office door opened. Marcus Antonius, his COO, burst in, unannounced.

Mark, as everyone called him, was a tall, sturdy man, with a thin layer of stubble he kept because it made him look "rugged". He was a decade or so younger than Caesar and, for all intents and purposes, his son, heir to the corporation they ran side-by-side.  They were old friends, Mark would tell anyone who would listen they were best friends (although Caesar would not use the same terminology), and they entered each other's offices as such.

He paused, seeing his friend's grim expression.

"Is that it?"

The "it" in question was Caesar's will and the paperwork on the desk was, indeed, "it", a fact confirmed by a solemn nod and the slipping of the paperwork to the side.

"You're young, why now?"

"There are sharks out there, Mark, you know it as well as I do."

The younger man nodded, knowing and solemn. A philosopher may have remarked at the admission how "it takes one to know one" but Caesar was not a philosopher and so he did not voice the thought.

Marcus knew his name was on the paper- it was obvious, wasn't it? Caesar's estate, his shares in the company, his name and fame and glory would all be passed down to him. Caesar had no children, no wife, his closest relative was his sister, who was uninterested, and her children, one already successful and the other practically a child. No, there was no one but Antonius who would be named as heir to the kingdom Caesar has so carefully constructed. Maybe that was why the sight of the paperwork did not send a shiver down his spine- it's implications were positive for him. (Who cared what the exacting of a will meant for the person who's will it was?)

"Ready to go?"

"One sec," Caesar muttered, not really ready to go. Antonius was the type to fancy himself a master at holding his drink despite the fact he only thought this because he never stayed conscious long enough to realise this was, in fact, not the truth. They were going drinking. Caesar was not "hyped", as the kids these days say, to go out.

He grabbed a pen, confident, leaned over, and stared at the line.

"Sign here:" it taunted. This was a test. Did he have the gall to do it? Sign it? It was, after all a recognition that he, Julius Caesar, would not live forever. That he was no longer young, no longer hidden behind a guise of indestructability, unassailability, that he was horrifically, finitely mortal. It is an epiphany that has haunted us all at some point but the own weight of his existence, of its possible end, weighed down on Caesar not as a cross but as a cloak; all-encompassing, suffocating, glittering like gold with the sweat he shed from its sweltering heat. The pen hovered above the line.

"Is this what you want?" the pen asked him as he now realised he had chosen one with red ink. Was he allowed to sign it in red?

With a sigh and a sharp movement of his hand he signed the will before straightening, looking up at his friend and grinning. He traversed to the other side of his desk and grabbed his coat from the hook. Mark had begun to chatter about this or that as they walked proudly from the room, Caesar's signature bloody crimson on white paper.

_

Floccinaucinihilipilification: the action or habit of estimating something as worthless.

- Maecenas' word of the week

_

Scribonia drifted into Livia's room sometime that evening, the latter did not notice when, preoccupied by craning her neck to squint at her own handwriting, deciphering the squiggly lines that, in anyone else's hand, would have taken the form of letters. Meanwhile, the former lingered, forcing a question to hang in the air. Livia could not deny that the pacing was rather annoying- back and forth and back and forth and-

"What do you want," Livia grumbled after a moment.

"Nothing."

That was a lie.

"Liar."

"Do you wanna order a pizza?"

"Sure."

"Now?"

"I'm busy.

"C'monnnnnnn."

Livia hesitated, prying herself from the notebook to look at her flatmate. She checked her watch. "17:00" it read.

"It's 5pm," she sighed, "it's too early to eat."

Scribonia pouted. She was, once again, bored. Livia provided a decent source of companionship, amusement, enrichment- like one of those yoga balls they give to zoo animals so they do not die of boredom or eat a zookeeper in front of schoolchildren.

"But Livia-"

"They might want to eat next door," Livia reasoned impatiently, not taking kindly to the intrusion.

Scribonia was not thrilled by the idea of paying their neighbours a visit but Agrippa was always hungry and there was always someone to talk to.

"Fine."

As Scribonia left, Livia had to wonder for a moment as to why she felt she was a child sitting outside the principal's office, waiting to be reprimanded.

_

"Agrippa?"

"Yes?"

"Would you remember me if I died?"

The loud hum of the fridge outside always filled Agrippa's room, giving life to the still air, making every silence deafening and every moment of quiet serene.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Because I fear my life will not be worth remembering."

Agrippa elbowed him sharply, "Don't talk like that!"

"It's true!"

They lay side by side on their backs, their shoulders just touching, Maecenas lay on the other side of Octavian, knocked out, Scribonia slept on the couch outside. The darkness covered them like a fresh dusting of snow- light, cold, an omen of solemnity (but also a predecessor of snowmen).

"Would you remember me if I died?" Agrippa asked.

"I won't need to- you'll outlive me."

"Wanna bet on it?"

"Throw my winnings in my coffin."

Agrippa huffed a laugh. Maecenas shifted. There was a moment when the silence seemed to lighten to a mere quiet.

Then, Maecenas began to snore. Loudly. Obnoxiously.

_

We're out of milk.

- A note on the fridge of Julius Caesar, written in the hand of Cleopatra Ptolemy

_

Wondering what time it was when he returned home was something Caesar deemed to be a thing of the past; it was not the activity of a man of his age and status. But, alas, that was what he did as he slipped back into his penthouse, Antonius' cologne somehow still lingering in his nose. City lights twinkled from the other side of his window, giving him a hint of the life that lay beyond the confines of his home.

Quietly, he slipped into his room, Cleopatra was, shockingly, asleep. She was never asleep at that time (although, what time was it? Maybe Caesar was underestimating how late it was). Odd. However, worry had seemed to be weighing on her more recently than normal in recent weeks. Maybe she had become exhausted. Caesar watched her sleep for a few more seconds before slipping off his jacket and into bed. He was thinking too much and one should only think whilst eating lunch. No other time lead to pleasant thoughts and "what-time-is-it o'clock in the morning" was an especially bad time to commit oneself to pondering the intricacies of life. Yet, speaking of life's intricacies, the thought of death, rather oddly, did not weigh down on Caesar as much as what would happen after he died. They would tear him apart. He rolled over to face the window and the city beyond it, letting glimmering lights purge him of these thoughts.

It was not difficult for Caesar to fall asleep. He was old. He, too, was tired.

Anyway, it was no use worrying about the inevitable.

_

We need to talk about Caesar.

- Email sent by Junius Brutus to Gaius Cassius, Marcus Cicero, and some others.

Chapter Text

"What do you call a star that stands still?"

It had been a warm night that night by the lake. Humid, sticky, but in the pleasant way that caramel was sticky- there was a certain sweetness to it that tinted the world the colour of burnished honey.

Caesar turned to the boy beside him, his hair pale blonde so that, in the right light, it practically shone silver. When he had been a youth himself, Caesar's mother had told him that the darker one's hair was, the more impure their thoughts. His mother had always been a prude (though maybe he was bitter for his hair had always been dark and thus his thoughts eternally sinful), but he was almost tempted to believe her for it seemed implausible for the boy to have thought anything malicious in his life. His few years had given him nothing but adoration for the world.

"How do you mean?" He asked.

"Well, the stars that move are called 'shooting stars' so what are the ones that just sit there called?"

"Unambitious."

"What does that-"

A voice called for Octavian from inside the house and the young boy stood and scrambled to run to his mother. Caesar sat, alone, still, and stared up at a sky of unambitious souls.

Maybe the stars saw themselves in him, their reflections flickering in his eyes. Maybe one day they would shoot across the sky, too.

_

"Home" was a funny word- what did it mean? What was it? Could a "home" truly exist?

The morning light filtered grey in through Caesar's window as he groggily opened his eyes- he had been dreaming of a time long lost, a time which had slipped through his fingers like sand, all too quickly and all too naturally, having had forgotten the memory until his subconscious reminded him of it. An all too familiar scent drifted into the room as he realised he was in bed alone- the side next to him emptied of all life.

"Home," yes, that was what the smell was. The oily aroma of bacon- that was home to Caesar as he practically rolled out of bed to search for the source of the scent. It is one's natural instinct to make their way home, to follow the trails and paths that guide them to where "meant to be" was but it was not a natural pull, this call to return home, a tug dragging them from their bed or whatever ditch they happened to be slumbering in to this magical land made up of dreams and happy memories. No, this pilgrimage toward "home" was the harshest of treks, through roaring streams and rocky terrain. There were beasts one had to slay, gods they needed to trick, and ravines they needed to climb out of soaked with blood, sweat, and hope, if they wanted to reach home.

But, as of current, Caesar's home was right there, in his kitchen, cooking bacon. (Does one cook bacon or fry it? Caesar didn't much care).

"That's not for you," came the warning, harsh and teasing.

"What?" Caesar responded dumbstruck, half-reaching forward to snatch one of the pieces of bacon from a tray beside the stove.

Cleopatra turned to look at him with mock-disappointment. She, to say the least, was not a cook. Her apron (which she bought because she had always been told that was what one needed in their kitchen) had only been touched once. It was an activity she loathed for its monotony; it reminded her of times she would rather not think about. Yet, here she stood, her dark hair knotted in a low bun she was not really bothered to fix despite the way it vexed her as it flopped against the back of her neck, cooking. The things she did! And for what? No one asked her to cook, to make enough bacon for a group meal no one had asked her to organise, she had subjected herself to this tedious task.

"We have people coming over," she responded sternly, placing her hands on her hips, "Remember?"

No, Caesar did not remember. This fact did not stop him from pretending he did. He nodded dumbly.

Cleopatra raised an eyebrow. Her eyes were hazel, flecked with gold (though, most of the time they seemed to be yellow, like the flame of a candle) and spoke of her skepticism at this claim.

"Who is coming over then?" She asked.

"People," Caesar smirked.

She rolled her eyes and laughed. Cleopatra had an odd laugh (it was Caesar's favourite sound): heavy, rich, bitter, like chocolate so dark it makes one's mouth go dry and forget what sugar tasted like- it was an acquired taste, but were those not the best flavours? The ones that no one else loves but you, that people avoided, allowing you to bask gluttonously in their glory. Yet, there was a certain lightness to her laugh as if it were able to shed the weight of what it was expected to be, what she was expected to be, in order to become what it was: Perfect. There were so many cliche ways to describe someone, so many attributes by which to define them, but "perfect" was the only one Caesar could find. Yet, it was still not enough. He would have put a ring on her finger, on her left hand, beside her pinky, (he had already put rings on all of her other ones) but she wouldn't let him and he did not want to push her. For once in his life, something was enough for Caesar; this was enough for Caesar.

"They'll be over at 10," Cleopatra sighed before returning to the stove.

Caesar sneaked a piece of bacon immediately afterward.

_

10:01am

- The time according to Octavian's watch as he waited to leave for brunch with his uncle

_

"We gotta go!" Octavian called from where he stood by the door.

"One sec!" Maecenas yelled back.

"You said that thirty minutes ago!"

"Who are you? Some guy with a watch?"

Agrippa then appeared beside Octavian, only slightly asleep still. At least someone in that household had some idea about what "being late" meant. It was at this moment Octavian decided that if his uncle reprimanded them for being late he would do something terrible to Maecenas. Killing him would likely suffice as a punishment.

Then, Maecenas appeared, dressed in his most shocking outfit of all.

"What are you wearing?" Agrippa barked, vaguely scared.

"Clothes."

"Normal ones," Octavian added, practically gobsmacked.

Maecenas had appeared in clothes so simple it was shocking they even belonged to him- a pair of jeans and a simple, beige jumper.

"Cleopatra scares me," he muttered, "I'd prefer to avoid her judgement at all costs."

This was a fair argument- Cleopatra was, indeed, terrifying.

With a sigh, Octavian opened the door to leave only to be met with an angry Livia.

"What the fuck took you so-"

Her anger was halted as her eyes settled on Maecenas' outfit. She decided it best not to ask (although, she couldn't really say anything at all because the only words that would have come out of her mouth were "Are those skinny jeans?").

The four of them walked in stunned silence to the garage.

Octavian's car was the kind of old that made so-called "car-guys" drool as they offered up their souls just to touch it (which Octavian would have obliged if asked with a natural level of concern). It was a cherry red vintage Mustang (first generation, if Octavian was correct). Cars were not his forte but they had been his father's and so this car had sat in his mother's garage throughout his childhood under a few dusty sheets, wasting space. He and Agrippa had spent one Summer holiday just after he had turned 17 trying to get it working again. They had thought, if they could get it running, they would able to sneak off and kidnap Maecenas from wherever his family had been holidaying that Summer and go on a road trip. Alas, they had not managed to get it working that Summer. By the end of the next Summer, however, the seats had been fixed and the engine worked as if it was brand-new. Well, until it broke down again after they had gotten it 100m down the street. His car may have been temperamental, but Octavian still managed to adore it with his whole heart and he refused to drive anything else.

The four of them got into the car. Agrippa cringed as Livia slammed the passenger-seat door. Then, they were on their way.

_

"They're late."

Cleopatra raised an eyebrow at Caesar who was moping by the kitchen island.

"They're kids, Caesar."

"I was never this disrespectful when I was their age."

Caesar, with his many years, had forgotten what it was like to be young and that he, too, had once been deemed "disrespectful" by his elders.

Then, thankfully, there was a knock on the door.

Mark stared straight into the eyes of a fuming, and now disappointed, Caesar as he went to let him in.

"Hello, old chap!" He grinned, clasping a still-stunned Caesar on the shoulder before pushing past and letting himself in.

Cleopatra sighed as she watched Mark enter the main room, a bottle of champagne in hand. At least he bought a gift, she mused as she smiled with more warmness than she felt for him. Mark had always been more concerned with being a friend of her and Caesar than being a friend to either of them and, had Caesar not been at all fond of him, she likely would have tried to strangle him at least once.

"Cleo!" He called out to her.

Cleopatra despised being called "Cleo".

"Mark."

"I'm the first one, am I?"

"And yet you still manage to be late."

Cleopatra had become a master at making jokes that were actually criticisms which sounded playful. It was the same trick people played on dogs where they would say horrible things like "Your very existence is an atrocity and the only mark you will leave on this world is the scent of piss that we have never been able to get out of the rug in the living room you peed on that one time" in a happy voice and laugh as the dog wags its tail; except most people would apologise to the dog afterward- Cleopatra didn't apologise. Mark, however, had never gotten the hint.

An awkward silence settled on the room for a split second until Caesar's voice, stern, barked, "You're all late." and echoed down the corridor into the main room.

Cleopatra turned to go down the hall to stop Caesar from bursting an aneurysm as he told off a bunch of kids less than half his age for tardiness but someone beat her to it:

"We're sorry, we got caught in traffic."

This voice was new, to Cleopatra at least. She had told Octavian to bring whoever he wanted so she did not mind the extra guest but it was nonetheless odd for him to bring another person to their regularly-scheduled brunches. There was, however, an odd beauty in novelty.

Caesar seemed to concede to Livia's excuse- not entirely sure how to respond- and stepped aside to let the four newcomers through. Octavian practically melted with relief at not having to deal with his uncle's disappointment. He now understood why he had extended the invitation to Livia- she seemed to be the only person he knew who cold exercise logic and reason, and the only person in the world happy to lie to Caesar.

Upon entering the main room, Livia made a beeline for Cleopatra. Caesar shifted awkwardly, suddenly realising that he was no longer, if he even ever had been, in charge of the situation. Uncomfortable with this, he announced who Livia was from the door, in a manner so obnoxious it was almost comical.

"That's Livia," he called and then hesitated- how should he describe her?- "Octavian went to her fourth birthday party!"

Livia paused in front of Cleopatra.

"I'm Livia," she smiled after a moment, trying her hardest not to shift uncomfortably under the older woman's gaze.

Cleopatra looked her up and down and then nodded with approval (although Livia took this as saying "Yes, you are Livia" in the most judgemental of tones).

"Cleopatra," she replied warmly.

Livia, as if it were a reflexive response, replied "I know" and then was cut off by Mark before she could scramble to clarify this mistake. Later, Cleopatra would laugh about this with Caesar and text Octavian to bring her instead of Maecenas next time (not that she disliked Maecenas but he always looked like he was about to have a heart attack when she went to talk to him).

"She's Livius' daughter," Mark explained, believing it his duty to do so.

"Thanks for clarifying, Mark," Cleopatra replied in the same sarcastic, passive-aggresively sweet tone that made Mark's eyes light up with pride thinking he had done something constructive.

Octavian appeared in the kitchen just then, finally able to wrench himself away from Caesar's judgemental expression. He raised his eyebrows in a quick greeting to his hostess. Cleopatra quite liked Octavian- perhaps despite what others may have thought- he was a good kid and possibly one of the more reasonable members of his family (compared to his uncle at least). Cleopatra shot him a quick look which asked "New girlfriend?". Octavian understood and shook his head quickly, then responded with a look she translated to say "New neighbour".

Livia turned to her left to see who Cleopatra was looking at before glancing between the two in confusion. Cleopatra, a human rights lawyer by trade, was quite high on the list of people Livia deemed admirable and was the main reason she had chosen to major in law so standing in her kitchen was already mind-boggling never mind the fact she and Octavian were seemingly close enough to have a secret language.

Yet, before she could inquire into this any further, Agrippa and Caesar burst into the room, the latter proudly proclaiming it would be a great time to eat. Maecenas followed behind the pair quietly, vaguely afraid of being put on the spot by anyone there.

_

The food was good. Cold, overcooked, maybe, but good nevertheless. Mark burped loudly as he finished cleaning his plate, inciting looks of judgement from Cleopatra and Livia (the latter of whom used to get reprimanded for chewing something a fraction of a decibel too loudly).

"So," Mark began, shifting in his seat to shed the weight of someone's eyes on him, "Octavian, any idea what you want to do?"

"Hm?" Octavian looked up from his plate, "How do you mean?"

"Well you're about to enter the real world," Mark winked at him as all those who sold something winked at their clients, "do you know what you'll do?"

Octavian looked at him in the dazed way a deer stares into headlights or one stares in the mirror after being awake for too long.

Mark continued, "Are you going into accounting like your old man? Or are you going to be a real businessman like Caesar and I?"

Cleopatra turned to shush Mark's prying, even Caesar was about to intercept- he had crossed a boundary they all knew was not to be crossed. But there was no stopping Mark. He was a fool, sure, but a cunning one nonetheless- what Octavian planned to do with his life determined his own future with Caesar and, if there was anything Mark cared for more than himself, it was his future with Caesar. He loved his friend, he truly did, but he loved the idea of what would happen if something ever happened to his friend even more, he loved the idea of inheriting it all. However, if Octavian was ambitious enough, chose to follow his uncle's footsteps well, then, he would become another hurdle Mark would have to jump over (or crash through in a manner where he came out unscathed but the hurdle was utterly spiflicated).

Silence fell on the table like a piano falls from a fifty storey building- heavy, fast, and ungracefully, squashing everyone and thing underneath it. Octavian's father was not someone you mentioned in front of him. Caesar looked like he was about to go on a tirade, Maecenas was trying to formulate some kind of scathing response so his friend did not have to answer, Livia looked around confused, and both Cleopatra and Agrippa looked ready to launch themselves across the table straight at Mark's throat. And Octavian? (Yes, maybe we should look at how Octavian responded). Well, Octavian paused and just stared at Mark, who sat across from him, not sure how to react. It did not take a genius to figure out the other man was fishing for something but he did not know what his objective in this venture was. Sure, it felt as if the ground had collapsed beneath him, like he was in one of those cartoons where, all of a sudden, the floor disappears and he remained suspended mid-air before realising that he was, indeed, floating, looking down and the falling into an endless pit of despair. But that wasn't what this was about- Mark was toying with him and he needed to know why.

So, before anyone else could extricate themselves from the wreckage of a piano that had been subjected to the unfortunate effects of gravity, Octavian smiled.

"I always thought that unemployment sounded fun."

Everyone looked at him for a second. Octavian continued, "How about you? What do you want to be when you grow up, Mark?"

Cleopatra had to swallow her laugh, almost choking on it. Everyone else held their breath for a moment. Caesar then chuckled maniacally.

"The boy may be unambitious," he proclaimed with a slight wheeze, "but he has a smart mouth."

Mark was too busy trying to stop himself from scowling to respond.

_

I never knew my father. Not really. He died before I really got to know him. All I have are fragments, pieces of him that snagged on a branch and tore away for me to find as they flitted in the breeze. My mother was always busy at work and so my sister, Octavia, and I spent a lot of time with our grandmother. I have more than fragments of her, I have more of her to miss.

- Fragment from Octavian's eulogy for his grandmother, Julia. Written when he was 12

_

There was silence in the car as they drove home. No one had anything they wanted to say. The meal had practically ended with Mark's interrogation, there was no conversation that could remedy the tension in the air afterward. Agrippa was driving, Octavian leaned on the door, biting the edge of the nail on his thumb, Maecenas coughed, and Livia desperately needed to understand what happened but knew it was best not to ask- not in front of Octavian, at least.

Octavian could not really remember when his father died, often he was not entirely sure how it had happened, his mother did not like to talk about it, Octavia would always smile a bittersweet smile and give a vague answer. Everything about his father was a mystery to him. All he had was one memory of sitting in the back seat of this car on a Summer day- the warmth of the late afternoon sun making the inside glow golden, the way the world outside blurred into lines of blue and green and black as they drove down the highway. He could remember a smile, but did not know who it belonged to. It might have been his earliest memory but it sometimes felt as if that time, the time before, did not exist, like the memory was not his to start with. He had always been told he had his father's eyes, his father's nose, his hair, his hands, his cheekbones, practically every part of him was the same as his father according to his relatives but he knew this wasn't true- from the few photos he had seen of him, this was not true, they looked nothing alike. All they shared was a name- that, at least, was good- he did not need to spend his life being known as "Octavian Jr".

Agrippa was a good driver- well, he normally was a good driver. That is, he was good at driving when he was not trying to make sure his friend did not jump out of the car beside him whilst watching the road. From the backseat, Livia watched as Agrippa put his hand on his friend's leg.

_

...3a  I GIVE my father's watch to my nephew Octavian Thurinus provided he survives me by 30 days...

- Excerpt from the Last Will and Testament of Julius Caesar

_

That night, Cleopatra had a bad dream. She had read somewhere once that dreams based themselves on one's reality, on what happened throughout the day. Whilst she was unsure how accurate this made the dream, whether or not this gave any validity to what it said would happen, something about it did not sit right with her. There was something she needed to tell someone. She just could not remember who she needed to tell and what she needed to say.

_

I suggest you do not act on what I know you are plotting, Brutus, you do not know what will come of it. It is not worth it.

- Email from Marcus Tullius Cicero to Junius Brutus.

_

Caesar kicked back at his desk, it was early and the conversation from brunch the day before left a bitter taste in his mouth. Mark's behaviour was unacceptable and he would have to discuss this with his friend at some point later that day but, for now, he was happy to drink his coffee in peace. His mind drifted to a fishing trip many years ago, the week after a funeral- his mother's if he recalled correctly.

_

"You remind me of myself, kid," Caesar mused aloud.

Octavian, then no older than twelve, looked up at him from where they sat at the end of a pier, legs dangling off the end.

"How so?"

Caesar laughed, "I don't know, it's just something people used to tell me when I was your age. But you do."

Octavian did not respond- he was a quiet kid. He was content with this answer, or maybe he wasn't and was trying to figure out how to be satisfied with it. There was a tug at the end of his line and Octavian rushed to reel it in but, upon raising his line, lost whatever had been on the other end in the process. Caesar watched him for a moment longer, noticed the steely resolve in his eyes as he rebaited the line and cast it.

"I'll tell you what, kid," he began again, "this is my father's watch-" he pointed at the watch on his wrist, "when I die, I'll give it to you, alongside everything else a father gives his son."

Octavian looked as if he were processing this information for a moment before turning back to the lake.

"You know, if we talk too much, we're going to scare away all the fish."

Caesar enrolled Octavian into a boarding school the next week.

_

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once."

- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

_

Livia found Octavian eating dry cereal out of the box when she went over the next day. She raised her eyebrows when she saw the sight of him staring blankly at the wall and shovelling dry rice crispies into his mouth.

"Want some?" he offered.

Livia shrugged, sat next to him, and grabbed a handful.

"Have you happened to see Scribonia this morning?"

He shrugged, "Don't worry, if she's missing she'll find her own way home like Lassie."

"Fair en-" Livia paused and looked at him, "What? No I-"

Octavian paused halfway through pouring some crispies into his mouth.

"Shit-"

"I'm aware."

"FUCK!"

What Octavian had just realised, as he presumed Livia had also just remembered, was that that day was Scribonia's birthday. Scribonia was intense about celebrating her birthday in the worst way possible. She was like the bride-zilla of birthdays: if she was unsatisfied with how her day was going, she would incite the apocalypse. Octavian checked the date on his phone- it was the 15th. The 15th of March.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE GONNA DO?"

"I DON'T KNOW THAT'S WHY I'M HERE!"

Octavian took a moment to readjust himself. He sighed.

"You wake up Agrippa, I'll wake up Maecenas, then we're going to pray to whatever gods are out there that we can get something organised."

_

Cleopatra's stomach hurt- her stomach never hurt. Something was wrong. Parts of her dream were returning to her, bits and pieces of a wider narrative. But something was missing. What was it that made her so nervous? She had never put much stock in dreams or tarot or astrology or anything of their ilk but there was something about this sense of impending doom that adhered itself to the very essence of her being that made her believe something was going to happen. Something bad was going to happen.

_

Scribonia returned home that evening to find her flat flooded with darkness. As she stepped inside, she kicked something which was light and bounced off of her shoe.

The lights flicked on.

"SURPIRSE!"

The gods had decided to favour Livia and Octavian that day.

_

As she was grabbing her coat, preparing to leave her office, Cleopatra remembered what her dream had entailed. She rushed to her phone.

"I had the weirdest dream last night," she texted, "where you died at that meeting you're supposed to go to."

She hovered over the phone for a moment longer, awaiting a response, only to be left on "read".

_

Twenty-three shots rang out in the meeting hall. Twenty-three so that no one knew who fired the killing shot.

_

Julius Caesar, CEO of SPQR corp., shot multiple times in meeting just now, more information to come.

- 'The Local Times' headline, first published at 7:30pm, 30 minutes after the board meeting began

_

The party-goers had just begun singing "Happy Birthday" when a news broadcast interrupted whatever program was playing on the television. As people began to notice, more and more people stopped singing, turning their attention toward the news.

"Hip-hip!" Octavian started, the last to notice. He looked around to attempt to figure out why no one was responding.

The newsreader was blonde, her hair cut just above her shoulders, she wore a blue dress and she straightened her rectangular glasses as she read off of the report as it came through. She swallowed.

"We have just been informed," she hesitated. Octavian's heart dropped. He knew what the next words would be.

"-Julius Caesar has been assassinated."

Chapter Text

No one really knew how to react. One would argue no one every truly knows how to react to any type of death but these were... extraordinary circumstances. Was there an appropriate reaction to when your friend (or, for most who were at the party, your friend's friend) learns about their uncle's assassination in the middle of singing "Happy Birthday"? It was a valid question, considering that that was what was running through the minds of everyone in Scribonia's flat in the moment after the newsreader, for some inexplicable reason, ran off camera, crying over a man she never knew. Everyone simply froze (well, not the newsreader- obviously). Wax began to drip down the sides of the candles, running like tears to crown the icing on the cake Agrippa had laboured over all day. But what could you do? Say? Think, even? "Octavian, I'm so sorry for your loss"? "Guy-I've-never-met-before I'm so sorry you're oddly devastated by the assassination of this random rich guy"? Do they return to singing? Carry on as if something in the world had not just steered them all off their previously designated courses? (Now, of course, they were not aware of this latter point as of yet but, in a couple of years, when the shock of it had tapered off a little, some of those standing in the room that night would realise that, somehow, fate had shifted its slumbering body and they had all hesitated for fear they would wake it).

"Hoo-ray?" Octavian muttered after a moment, having never received that response to his "hip-hip". He swallowed back that thick, bitter emotion that was scaling its way up his throat like itsy-bitsy spider.

No one moved. They did not respond. Life seemed suspended, time was taking a moment to watch how this would unfurl, everyone rushed to understand, to comprehend what they had just learned. Then, all at once, movement returned like a wave- a tidal wave- crashing over them all with the power to make even the grandest of cities collapse.

When his friends returned to their senses, they turned to find Octavian was no longer there.

_

It was Mrs Dalloway who had left the party- wasn't it? Who had left the party when interrupted by perhaps the biggest interruption of all? Octavian scoured the bookshelf in his room. If she did it then, maybe, she could tell him how to do it, too. He knew what the copy looked like- battered and scrawled over with ink- the spine was light blue, like the sky on a day in early Winter, with bolded letters- a paperback which knew what it was to live. Octavian had always preferred paperbacks to hardcovers- they were flexible, casual, loyal- they would let you scour their pages over and over again- bending them, asking for more and more and more, until their cover hung onto the spine for dear life, and would continue to give you the world long after it had torn off. Hardcovers exuded an air of superiority that made you afraid to even touch them never mind read them, annotate them, ask them for guidance- there it was! 'Mrs Dalloway' he scanned the cover quickly, desperately, as if even the title would tell him what he wanted to know- 'Virginia Woolf'. The spine was fragile- he was careful as he opened the tome, flicked through its pages.

"Octavian?"

Suitably, it was Livia who found him. (Why this was suitable he did not know. It simply was- just because one doesn't know why the sun sets each day didn't mean one was stranded in eternal daylight).

"Yes?"

"Are you-"

He turned to her, book still spread like a bird in flight in his hands.

"Don't say it."

"What?"

"'Are you okay?'"

"Why?"

Now what he wanted to say (and he wanted to say this because it was the unadulterated truth) was: "Because it's a stupid question, of course I'm not okay. Asking me 'Are you okay' is only going to make me break down and I don't think I want to do that yet". But he did not say that because who would ever actually say what they feel? Instead he responded: "You know the answer. You wouldn't be here otherwise."

Livia considered this.

"What should I say, then?"

It was now Octavian's turn to consider what response would be most suitable. Then something slid into his mind- a thought that felt right, words that seemed to make everything better, or worse, when spoken- everything would improve when the answer to this question was right.

"'Why did the chicken cross the road?'."

"Okay- tell me: why did the chicken cross the road?"

"God, I don't know- why did it?"

"To get to the other side."

Octavian nodded and then looked down at the page he was on. It was right at the part he had been searching for, in the middle of the party. The page was covered in annotations in his spindly, messy handwriting. "...had he plunged holding his treasure?" (he read this next part aloud) "'If it were now to die, t'were now to be the most happy'...".

"What?"

"It's Shakespeare."

It was only now he realised that this conversation was, not only bland, simple, tip-toeing around the truth, but almost entirely silent. It was only now he realised that in the pale moonlight Livia almost glowed and she was wearing a necklace he had never seen before and she seemed so alive and yet half dead- Dead! Ha! Get it? Because death seemed to follow him everywhere? It chased him and yet never struck him in the head or heel or heart or wherever he needed to be struck for it to catch up to him. They say that if your Achilles' tendon gets severed it makes a sound as loud as a gunshot, but no one ever talked about how loud Achilles must have cried when he saw the body of Patroclus- not that Achilles was a good guy but, for heaven's sake, love was neither a virtue nor vice; it was simply louder, stronger, and more painful than the sound your Achilles' tendon makes when someone cuts it.

"I know it's Shakespeare, idiot."

Octavian snorted at this and for a moment it felt as if the floor was still there beneath him, like the stars had yet to start throwing themselves from the sky. Then his phone buzzed- who would it be? Someone searching for him? His mother? Sister? Cleopatra? That was when this- situation- which had seemed to be a mere hypothetical a moment ago- became reality. He swallowed, again.

"Livia?"

"Hm?"

"Did the chicken make it?"

She cocked her head.

He clarified, "To the other side, I mean."

"Depends what road it was crossing."

Livia had never been one to philosophise.

_

Octavian awoke to the smell of something cooking. He found himself on the floor, Agrippa unconscious on his bed, Maecenas leaning back on his desk chair, 'Mrs Dalloway' in hand.

"Nothing like Woolf for some easy reading, huh?" Maecenas laughed upon seeing his friend on the floor awake.

Maecenas, who perhaps had a grander view of life, the world, fate, than his companions, saw something rather poetic in the death of Caesar though he did not know what it was yet (Maecenas rarely knew the specifics of the things he knew about- it is the poet's duty to know the future ahead of time and to look at the specifics in hindsight).

"Nothing like Woolf to bore yourself to death." Agrippa responded, his voice muffled by the pillow he had buried himself in.

Maecenas replied, "Nothing like Woolf to know how to live."

Octavian coughed.

"If you two are here, who's cooking?"

"Atia," Maecenas grinned.

Now seems to be a reasonable time to introduce Atia, the mother of Octavia and Octavian, sister of the late Julius Caesar, wife of the late Octavian Thurinus Sr and, now, Lucius Phillippus. She was a busy woman who loved her children and had always thought her brother had likely gotten too big for his own boots and probably should have seen what was coming for him. Her hair was straw blonde and her eyes a deep brown. She was an imposing figure, but in the maternal way that all mothers were terrifying. Of course, Atia's disdain for her brother's inability to be satisfied did not mean she was not proud of him, she wasn't that petty, but there was a certain sense of karma in his death which was likely the only thing that adhered the little pieces of her together as she cooked eggs in her son's kitchen. Upon hearing the news of her dear brother's death she had grabbed the keys to her car and driven to see Octavian, started calling her friends to see if they knew any good funeral directors, and had enough time to buy some groceries to do the only thing anyone wants to do in such situations: distract herself. Now, in order to continue on her quest for distraction, she had convinced a kind girl called Livia (whose reason to be at her son's flat she did not know but she had told her Octavian had attended her fourth birthday party and must therefore be trustworthy enough) to let her in, told Maecenas to get her son out of bed because it was already 7:30am and that was too late to still be asleep, and had started searching for whatever cooking appliances she could find. Atia had already seen her children loose one father figure, and she now knew the drill.

"Mum?"

"Octavian, sweetheart!" she grinned as Octavian appeared in his doorway.

Livia looked over from her stool by the island.

"How did you get here?" He asked, stunned.

"Sweetie, there are these things called 'cars' and if you drive them you can get anywhere. Don't gawk and come hug your mother," she responded. Her son obliged, Livia watched them with a combination of amusement and the awkward air of an observer watching an intimate moment.

"Since when do you sleep in jeans? Have you not figured out how to wash your own clothes?"

Livia snorted.

"A relative has just died, specifically has just been murdered, and yet it's horrifying I didn't get changed last night?" Octavian responded. It was meant to be a joke but it wasn't really, was it? Atia had mastered two things: parenting and side-stepping the issue. When he was a kid, Octavian had broken his finger after falling off the roof of their house (he was otherwise fine, for those concerned) and she continued on as if there was nothing wrong despite the fact his pinky was bent at an unnatural angle for- like- a week!

Her face fell for a moment, before she rebuilt her defences (the emotional ones, of course). "Sit," she ordered. Octavian obeyed.

Maecenas sauntered in, Agrippa dragging close behind him. Atia returned to her pan as the other two sat beside her son.

"Lucius is on his way, Octavia should be here soon. His body's already been identified and we should be going through the will soon enough."

No one responded. In all honesty, Atia didn't want a response- it was a statement, a newspaper headline. The purpose of it was not to prompt discussion but, rather, to inform of what was happening, and, perhaps, to say everything would be okay.

"How's Scribonia doing?" Octavian asked after a moment.

The other three shrugged.

"She kept the party going," Maecenas answered, not quite sure whether this fact would be comforting.

Then, in perfect time with the silence, there was a knock at the door. Agrippa, who had never been good at just sitting still, was the one who answered it. Octavia rushed past him and into the kitchen as Lucius just kind of awkwardly waved at him and followed her.

Octavia had always followed in her mother's footsteps of taking care of everyone else before herself and so she, too, had stopped by the grocery store before going to see her brother. Thus, somehow, there was even more food in the kitchen now. In all other manners, Octavia was her father's daughter with a Roman nose, cerulean eyes, and the kind of brown hair which could be mistaken for blonde in the right light. Pragmatic, reasonable, down-to-earth- she was content with the cards she had been dealt and didn't need to ask the dealer for another hit. Moreover, she was a hugger, which Livia only learned after she had launched herself at her, practically pushing her off the seat she was sitting on. Livia, who would choose getting gum stuck in her hair over an unsolicited hug any day, froze in horror as this occurred.

"I'm so happy you're here, Livia," Octavia said in greeting after withdrawing from her embrace.

Livia did not know how to respond, being very sure she had never met Octavia in her life. She was right about this. However, Octavia had seen her in one of her brother's instagram posts (which were few and far between, so Octavia made it her duty to study them to figure out what he was doing with his life) and went down the rabbit hole of stalking her online. So, in Octavia's mind, they were practically best friends already (they eventually would become quite close but that was yet to come).

"No problem?" Livia responded, unsure what else to say.

Lucius' entrance was much quieter than that of his step-daughter as he sidled into the kitchen. He was about five years older than Atia and had started balding at about 20 years old. His eyes had that sort of kindly-but-awkward look to them and he carried himself as if he were trying to disappear from every situation he found himself in; he was almost the antithesis of Caesar. But he was kind and he loved Atia and her children and wasn't that all that mattered? He could provide, had a stable job, could cook (kind of), never started unnecessary fights, put his family first, he lived in a cookie-cutter house in suburbia in a little cul-de-sac where everyone invited each other over for barbecues to discuss their next hobby in an attempt to fill their lives- who needed more than that? Lucius certainly didn't.

Then there was chatter. Idle, alien, a bandaid. The eggs were served with a mountain of bacon and practically an archipelago of toast- there was too much food to eat, too much to store, and yet not enough to fill the ravine they were all to afraid to bridge. There was nothing bad about avoiding the main topic of conversation for the time being, it was almost pleasant, but the day, the world, life itself, felt askew, as if someone had knocked a painting just slightly off its normal orientation so that any onlooker senses something is wrong but cannot quite tell why.

It was Octavia who decided to dive into the shallow end.

"When are we going to, y'know?" She said as she casually reached for another slice of toast- maybe if she did it in such a nonchalant manner the conversation wouldn't be so grim.

Agrippa thought it was odd how Octavian's family dealt with, well, this, so casually- had any of them even cried? Then again, Agrippa had not been there the first time they'd been through this sort of thing (Octavian never talked to him about it).

"There's about a million things we have to do before putting him in the ground," Octavian responded, slightly bitter about the invasion of his house (although the fact someone just killed his uncle may have also been a contributing factor)

"I was thinking about cremating him," Atia cut in.

"I was being figurative, mum."

"Since when have you been so metaphorical, darling?"

Octavia coughed, accustomed to both her mother and brother's ability to bicker, the role of mediator having naturally always been hers. Octavian could be a little brat but he always meant well- he had been the closest to Caesar after all (but whether this had been the best thing for her brother, Octavia wasn't quite sure).

"When are we going to find out what he wanted us to do with his body, then? As in-"

She didn't have to say it. Atia turned to glare at her daughter for bringing up what she actually feared: the will. She knew her brother and she feared what the reading of that will would mean for her and her family. Someone had killed Julius and it was highly likely that whatever his final will and testament entailed would put a knife in at least one of her children's backs (and she wasn't merely considering the possibility of that knife being figurative).

"Well, I think Marcus and the lawyer are coming here-" she replied, swallowing her fear as she put on a strained smile.

"Why is everyone coming here?" Octavian moaned, "Aren't we supposed to do that on, like, neutral territory or something?"

"No- besides, I doubt legality is anyone's concern at this point," Atia replied dismissively.

Then, as if by some coincidence (or merely the convenience of the plot), there was another knock at the door. Agrippa went to get it, again, and was met by Mark, a small woman in an ill-fitting brown suit, and about 20 other people who continued to pass him as if he was not there. Agrippa sighed, stood still for a second, and then turned to rejoin the main room. This was not going to unfold well.

Along with Mark was the majority of the board of Caesar's corporation- even in death he was not merely a man, was he?

The woman- the lawyer- shifted awkwardly. Her name was Vesta- her mother was obsessed with Roman mythology, hence the (in her opinion) ridiculous name, and when she had accepted the job as Caesar's personal lawyer (was that even a thing? He had told her that was a thing) had not expected to be working in such circumstances. Vesta watched the awkward mixing of family and co-workers from afar, stiffly holding a briefcase filled with the contents of a man's life. For the first, and possibly only, time in her life, Vesta had the feeling that she was doing something of tangible importance.

Atia was the first to welcome the newcomers, she stood and strode over to the man who seemed to be the head of the main group of men. She was oddly regal in the manner in which she did this.

The man she walked up to was, indeed, the leader of the group. Marcus Tullius Cicero, chairman of the board of SPQR corp., was in his mid-sixties and still in shock about the fact that they had actually done it. Jesus- a few hours ago he had been in a blood-spattered suit talking to the authorities about what he had witnessed in a board meeting, about the way they had blown the body of a man who had never been his friend but had yet to be his enemy, to all but pieces. And now? Now he was shaking the hand of that man's sister in his nephew's flat. Cicero had always been an eloquent man (one could argue the only elegant thing about him was his ability to engineer sentences- he was bald and stout and had never really had the grace for elegance even in his youth) but even he had no words to fill this silence.

"We are still in shock about what Brutus and his lot have done-" he started.

Little did he know they knew who was responsible. The room froze as Cicero realised his blunder.

"Brutus?" Said someone finally, their voice broken, shattered, burning, like a plane that has just crashed in the middle of a field- it had a certain destructive quality which made it fearsome despite the apparent wreckage.

He turned his eyes to the source of the voice to find a mere boy- the nephew. Octavian- that was his name, wasn't it?

The only thing that could shatter the tension which had seeped into the room was Mark's interruption.

"Shall we get down to business?"

_

Unsurprisingly, the reading of the will was a largely bland exercise. The lawyer seemed on the verge of having an anxiety attack, Mark seemed ready to just seize the will for himself to figure out what he was getting, the board were too traumatised to listen properly, Atia kept looking at her son in panic, and Octavian seemed desperate to launch a full-blown investigation into what the board knew. And then-

"I give my father's watch to my nephew Octavian Thurinus provided he survives me by 30 days-" Vesta started.

Octavian's attention was wrenched back to the fact that the will of his uncle was actually being read aloud and-

"Fuck!" He cried, drawing all attention to himself.

"Wh-"

Octavian paid no attention to who had started to speak as he got up and rushed to his room- slamming the door.

_

When the Titanic sank, people reacted in three ways (or so Octavian could imagine). There were those who cried and screamed for the obvious fact they were living in one of the most notable disasters of the period, surrounded by death, destruction and the freezing darkness of the sky and sea. Then there were those who, despite it all continued to hold strong, the band continued to play. Imagine that- spending your last moments trying to stop everyone else from panicking- fuck, that would be exhausting. But, Octavian thought, he might have fallen into the latter category had it not just been for the realisation that had overcome him.

That fucking watch.

It was him. Him- the guy sitting on his floor holding his legs to his chest and resting his forehead on his knees- his name was going to be read, he was to be named heir or next of kin or whatever the title was. He was going to inherit everything Caesar possessed that had actual importance. Him- the kid who couldn't hold his alcohol and had no business or political savvy! But he didn't have to do it- he could sell his shares, run away, live a life of beautiful seclusion with a shit tonne of money. Yet, that idea did not truly cross his mind, it was possible like its possible for any implausibility to occur, it could happen in theory but always turned out to be another story in practise. Because, at the end of the day, Octavian did want to do something with his life- something tangible- and this was it! His chance in all the nitty-gritty, cliche ways one can be the "Chosen One"! Fuck, he had a chance to get away from his future in a cul-de-sac, to run away from the possibility of spending his life at a desk doing someone's taxes. But that watch- that ugly watch which seemed to weigh so much he would barely be able to lift his hand whilst wearing it- no, no he was jumping ahead. It meant nothing- surely it meant nothing.

The door opened, he looked up and it was only as he felt a tear role down his cheek he realised he had started to cry. Agrippa slid into the room and shut the door behind him. He smiled softly and went to sit beside his friend. Octavian rested his head on the other man's shoulder and sniffed, albeit pitifully.

"What is it?" Agrippa asked, "Stupid question, but what is it?"

"The watch."

"If it's really that ugly you could probably sell it."

"He told me that he would give it to me when I was, like twelve," Octavian expanded, "His father gave it to him and him giving it to me represents well-"

Agrippa and Octavian, in their many years together, had become relatively proficient at communicating non-verbally but this silence weighed on both of them heavier than any that had come before.

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"And you're sure?"

"No, but I have a bad feeling about it."

"Well, what will you do?"

Octavian sat quietly. He wasn't really thinking about his response but contemplation was a good guise under which he could achieve a moment of silence.

"I won't move to a cul-de-sac."

Agrippa's brow furrowed- who had mentioned moving to a cul-de-sac? What did his friend have against the suburbs? (Octavian had never been vocal about his underlying fear of suburban paradises). It did not answer his question- well it answered his question but not in a way Agrippa could recognise the answer. The answer was not for him, it wasn't meant for him in the first place, but it was nonetheless the right answer.

"Agrippa," Octavian muttered, fiddling with his friend's fingers, "why did the chicken cross the road?"

"If you say 'To get to the other side', I swear to g-"

"To get to the other side."

This response was pursued by a soft laugh, oddly light, as if, for whatever reason, what lay beyond the room, beyond the present moment, was not terrifying. It was the laugh of someone who hadn't been thrown into free fall, or someone who was okay with falling for the time being. Icarus had laughed- hadn't he?

"Never mind moving to a cul-de-sac, don't become a comedian."

"Did it make it, Agrippa?"

"What?"

"The chicken? Did it make it to the other side?"

"Did it look left and right and then check each way again before crossing? If so: yes."

Agrippa was one of those philosophers who, despite hating the idea of philosophy and believing that we were all better off just not thinking about the meaning of life and all that jazz, was actually quite insightful.

_

"We should just keep going-" Mark declared after a moment of awkward silence.

Agrippa had left 5 minutes ago- they needed to continue. Mark was getting nervous. He knew that watch, he knew the fact that, in Caesar's eyes, that watch would go to his heir, whoever he deemed to be his "son"; that watch and the world would be his. But he had not inherited the watch- the fucking kid did!

What was almost worse was the fact that the board and the family were glaring at each other from opposite sides of the room and the lawyer looked even closer to having a panic attack than she did when she got there.

"Let's continue!" Mark ordered again, this time with more 'oomph'.

"I think we should give it another minute," Livia rebutted.

Livia death-stared Mark. She was not willing to let Mark just bulldoze what she was sure was about to happen: Octavian would be given- well- everything. Literally. Jesus- how much money would Caesar have had? A multi-billion dollar corporation, plus whatever other assets he had- plus the influence he would have!

"Why are you even here?" Mark groaned.

"I'm a friend of the family," she smiled back (Livia had learnt the only way to deal with men like Marcus Antonius was to smile and act sweet), "emotional support. Which is, by all means, more than what half of you and your grunts are doi-"

"Livia has always been close to the family," Atia intervened (Livia was not always great at smiling and being sweet), "Octavian actually went to her fourth birthday party."

"Yeah, he came to my birthday party," Livia echoed sharply.

Vesta looked between the two sides and gulped almost comically.

Fortunately, it was then Octavian reappeared, quietly dignified, and took his seat. It almost irked Mark the way he could control a room so quietly, as if it were natural for a room to reorganise itself as he walked in- even the board shifted as he retook his seat at the table.

Of course, the boy did not scare the board. Cicero knew that, if anything, the boy was a minor inconvenience.

"I apologise," he coughed, "it seems I-"

"He pissed himself," Agrippa cut in, both trying to do Octavian a favour and to embarrass him (he simply wanted to hear him laugh again- that laugh might well have been the best sound in the world).

Octavian hesitated- then decided not to rectify the issue that everyone in the room now believed he was unable to hold his bladder.

"Incontinence aside, can we continue?" Cicero edged into the discussion musing at what a shit show this had all devolved into (it was a possibly beneficial shit show but a shit show all the same).

Agrippa opened his mouth to respond "I bet you have some incontenince issues yourself, old man" but Octavian silenced him with a tender kick to the calf.

Vesta swallowed as Mark motioned for her to continue. This next section may very well be the reason she was the one who had received this document. She remembered her meeting with Caesar, sitting in a designer suit that cost more than a year's rent in her dingy little office (her headquarters were situated above a laundromat where she was certain the clothes that went into the machines came out dirtier than before), organising the will. "Who?" she remembered asking as Caesar named his heir. "He'll be fine," Caesar had responded, though it sounded like he was trying to convince himself of the choice more than her.

With a sigh, she soldiered on, her words final like the ink of a book press, "I give everything else that I own, wherever any such assets may be, to Octavian Thurinus, including all of my wealth, property, and stocks."

There are some possibilities that one can acknowledge are plausible, maybe even likely, but still seem like impossibilities until they, well, actually happen. Being named the heir of Julius Caesar was, to Octavian, one of these possibilities.

"No!" Mark and Atia yelled simultaneously- this would be the first and last time they would ever agree about anything.

"That can't be right!" Mark continued as he stood to wrench the paper from poor Vesta's grasp.

"That's what it says!" she yelped, instinctively letting him snatch the will to see it for himself.

Mark saw the paper and realised that it was, indeed, correct. The fucking kid had stolen what was his. That little bitch.

Cicero, on the other hand, watched Octavian on the other side of the table. He seemed bright enough, despite his youth, he looked nothing like his uncle, Cicero thought. Sure, he had that glimmer in his eyes, a certain humour, a lust for something more. He was hungry but, in Cicero's opinion, he did not yearn in quite the same way nor for the same things as his dear, dead uncle had. Besides, he was softer, not accustomed to or fashioned for the harshness of the world beyond his small, well-kept flat. No, the boy would be a good weapon: powerful but easily disposable.

Atia, on the other hand, was preparing to kill her brother (she would have done it too, if someone hadn't beaten her to it).

It did not take long for the yelling to begin. Though, it was the strange type of yelling where everyone was arguing and ready to kill each other but were all on the same side. How dare Caesar have put this youth, boy, kid as his heir? Family ties aside, it was outright stupid. What did the kid have going for him? He had nothing to show for himself; he had yet to have the time to prove himself even bright enough to survive on his own.

"Do something!" Atia yelled at Vesta, then to Lucius, then Cicero, and then, eventually, Mark (who had done the exact same thing in the opposite order).

Octavian sat. Silent.

Livia, however, after a few minutes utter chaos, snapped.

"SHUT UP!" She screamed, looking down to see she had somehow ended up on the table, feet placed on either side of a platter holding a few leftover pieces of bacon.

Everyone went silent.

"There is nothing any of you fu-" (she decided it best not to call her friend's mother a "fuck" and so she change route mid-sentence) "guys can do about what a dead guy put in his will. What you can do is go outside and leave us alone. How does that sound?"

About four people thought that idea sounded good: Agrippa, Maecenas, Octavian, and, well, Livia (obviously). However, despite their silent protests, everyone else filtered from the flat to continue yelling at each other in the lift down. As the door clicked shut, Livia returned her attention to her companions.

"So..." Livia began. She knew something needed to be done, she just was not sure as of yet what that thing was to be.

"Does that mean we have to organise the funeral?" Maecenas winced. No party for a dead guy was fun, even if the dead guy was super rich and had been assassinated.

Octavian shrugged.

"How are you feeling?" Agrippa asked with concern.

Octavian shrugged again.

Livia sighed, "Well, what next?"

There was a moment of silence. Then, Octavian laughed.

"It's obvious, isn't it?"

Octavian was surprised that, apparently, it was not obvious what the best course of action was after inheriting the earthly possessions of the richest man in the world.

"We're gonna fucking do it- we can't let any of those idiots take my inheritance!"

Maecenas smiled as he leant back in his chair; there it was, there was what Fate had decided they would do.

Because, dear reader, there were three types of people on the Titanic. There were those who cried, those who soldiered on. Then there were the lobsters in the tank in the kitchen: those who saw an opportunity for escape, for success, and took it.

Chapter Text

Scribonia knocked once. Then twice. Then went “Fuck it”, turned to her apartment, got her neighbours' spare key and let herself in.

What she found was a grim sight.

“How are we actually supposed to choose a coffin?” Octavian said.

Now Scribonia, who was holding a tray of freshly baked muffins, only knew it was Octavian saying this because she knew his voice like the words to her third favourite song (it was ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ for those intrigued). She was, however, unable to see the source of the voice for it was coming from the interior of a mahogany coffin on the other side of the room.

“Do you like the look of it?” Livia responded (once again she only knew it was Livia because she knew Livia’s voice like she knew the lyrics to her fourth favourite song- ‘Cruel Summer’- this time the voice came from the oak coffin next to Octavian’s).

“Is it comfy?” Agrippa asked next from another coffin (Scribonia didn’t recognise the specific voice but she got the gist of what was happening).

“Would you want to be buried in it?” Maecenas added.

“We aren’t burying him!” Octavian sighed exasperatedly, “Mum wants to cremate him.”

“Can we put him on the fridge?” Maecenas asked, thinking it would be pretty cool to have the Julius Caesar on the top of their fridge.

“I don’t think we get to keep him,” Agrippa replied.

Julius Caesar had died a day and a half ago. Octavian had inherited whatever he inherited a day ago and they had all decided the only thing they could do right now was take whatever this was one step at a time. First was the funeral. What came next none of them had the slightest clue.

“Does anyone else smell muffins?” Agrippa asked suddenly.

Livia’s head poked out of her coffin.

“Scrib!”

Scribonia wasn’t sure when Livia had started calling her that. She liked it- it made things more casual.

Agrippa’s head popped up next.

“I’m so sorry about Caesar, Octavian,” Scribonia said, not knowing what else to say.

“Huh?” Octavian was now sitting and staring at her from his coffin, “oh, yeah, thanks.”

An awkward silence plonked itself down in the room like that one obnoxious kid from high school who was certain you were grateful they were your friend sat at your table at lunch.

“…Can I have a muffin?”

As emotionally intelligent as he was, Agrippa was about as food motivated as a Labrador who had gotten the whiff of cheese once and now started drooling whenever he saw someone look in the direction of the kitchen.

“Umm, sure?”

Scribonia did not know why it came out as a question- she had made these muffins to be consumed by, well, the grieving party. Then again, she had not expected the grieving party to look like... this...

She simply had to ask: “Where did you get all the coffins?”

“I called the company,” Octavian shrugged, “and when they realised who it was for they were pretty responsive.”

“So they let you…”

“Try them out in my living room? Yes.”

“Though,” Maecenas mused aloud, the possibility only just occurring to him now, “I feel like this isn’t what they meant when they said we could ‘trial’ them.”

Agrippa was already half way through his second muffin (Scribonia was surprised at how quietly he moved for someone twice her size) as he waved Maecenas back dismissively.

“They’re pretty comfy y’know,” Octavian said as he lay back down, “Maybe I’ll buy one and use it as a bed- rich people are supposed to be eccentric aren’t they?”

“‘Nephew of assassinated CEO sleeps in coffin’ may not be the most flattering headline for your first week in business,” Livia responded, taking a muffin off the tray Scribonia was now bringing around.

“It’s a fucking awesome headline,” Maecenas mused, surgically removing the wrapper from his muffin.

“Maecenas thinking it’s a good headline says everything you need to know,” Livia rolled her eyes.

“Who’s gonna be writing about me?! I’m not that interesting!” Octavian groaned.

“You’re rich now, bud,” was Livia’s matter-of-fact response, “the tabloids are gonna care.”

“Maecenas is rich and they don’t give a shit.”

“Maecenas is your stock-standard nepo-baby- no one gives a shit about that type of rich. You on the other hand-“

Maecenas threw his scrunched up muffin wrapper at Livia’s head, offended by her insult (even if it was true).

“Aren’t other people meant to be here?” Scribonia asked, “Like your family and such?”

“Livia kicked them out,” Agrippa explained.

“They were giving me a headache!”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY'RE GONNA CARE?”

The thought that being rich and famous meant that one would be, in fact, famous had yet to dawn on Octavian.

“You just gotta seem cool,” Maecenas shrugged.

“He’s lying in a coffin and considering replacing his bed with it,” Agrippa drawled, “he’s incapable of seeming cool.”

Octavian sat up simply to glower at Agrippa in a manner which very clearly said that he expected Agrippa, out of anyone in the world, to be clearly on his side in this situation. Agrippa simply bit into what would be his fourth muffin. Scribonia hesitated.

“What in the world are you kids doing?”

All eyes turned to Atia, who had arrived with Octavia and Lucius, standing in the entrance to the room.

“Trying out coffins?” Octavian responded, unsure whether or not this answer was the correct answer.

Atia sighed.

"I've already bought a coffin."

Octavian sometimes felt like his mother never let him ever have any fun. Atia sometimes felt like her son had a very odd definition of "fun" but she had not come to define "fun" nor shop around for coffins. She was here because she knew her son and he was, in the kindest, most loving way possible, a fucking idiot.

"Anyway, we were thinking that it would be best for you to sell your stock quickly. Their value is plummeting now that your uncle has died and-"

"Who said anything about selling?"

This would always be the point of difference between Octavian and his mother: they were both stubborn. Exceptionally stubborn. And they both had their eyes set on a future but these futures could not have been more different. Atia just wanted her son to be happy and the only way she thought this was possible was if he chose stability: good job, nice wife (or husband if he so wished), kids, a small house. Contentment, simplicity, safety. And this vision was not what Caesar was offering her son. So maybe it should not have been a surprise that Octavian yearned for more- because it had never been expected of him. Maybe he hungered so much because it is natural for children to rebel against their parents. Or, maybe, everyone holds a deep-set, burning ambition and Octavian just struggled to starve it in the same way everyone else in his family seemed to.

"You aren't telling me you're keeping it," Atia replied skeptically, "Octavian, what are you going to do?"

"Keep the family business alive!"

"Sweetheart, you're barely an adult- no one's asking you to do this. Sell them to Mark, he'll take care of it all."

Octavia licked her lips nervously, the air had chilled and drawn itself tight across the room. This silence was soon to snap and Octavia realised there was nothing she could do to stop it.

"But he didn't leave it to Mark," Octavian swallowed. He had meant for the words to come out sharp, definitive, but they were the opposite- his voice breaking slightly as it wavered, "He chose me."

Because, after all, did the fact Caesar the man, the king, the god, had chosen him- Octavian Thurinus- as his heir not mean anything at all? Maybe it did. Or, maybe, Octavian simply wanted it to because he had never truly been chosen for anything and he was intoxicated by possibility.

"Sell the stocks, Octavian."

"No."

"Octavian!"

"No!"

"Listen to your mother-" Lucius went to say only to be shushed by both sides of the debate.

"Octavian, don't be stupid," Octavia warned.

"Why?"

"What?" Atia asked, furrowing her brow.

"Why can't I be stupid?"

_

The funeral was a cannily torrid affair. Atia gave the eulogy, Mark got drunk almost instantly, having still not accepted the fact Caesar had deemed someone else a better candidate for heir than him, and Cleopatra sat at the back of the hall, haunting the space. A question hung in the air which no one could quite decipher the meaning of. The casket was closed- the corpse too destroyed for anyone to hold the contents of their stomachs had it been visible. It did not feel like the kind of funeral one would want to be at. But, then again, was there any funeral one would want to attend?

As he hung by the snack table at the wake, Octavian looked at the names scribbled in his palm: Brutus and Cassius. They were who the world seemed to say did this (at least, who Cicero and every credible news source said murdered his uncle). It was as he was angrily staring at his hand that Mark approached him, exuding the smell of alcohol so strongly that one felt drunk standing in his 5 metre radius.

Octavian raised an eyebrow.

Mark leaned over him.

"Guess what, kid," the older man grinned in an almost sleazy manner.

"What?"

"I am the executor of the will."

"So?"

"I don't have to give you your inheritance."

"I don't think that's right," Octavian replied, slightly puzzled.

Mark recoiled- was that true? Did he have to?

"Well I can put off executing it," he replied after a moment, his previous swagger crumbling under the fact the law apparently said he had to follow Caesar's word.

"Cool."

"Great."

"Thanks for letting me know, I guess."

"No worries, scamp."

The pair looked at each other in confusion before Mark thought it best to straighten and cut his losses before the exchange got even more awkward.

Octavian surveyed the room as Mark scurried away. When had the sun begun to set? He didn't know but the room was cast in the honey-coloured glow of golden hour as a few people began to filter out. Everyone was dressed in black- of course they were, it was a funeral, not a baby-shower- but in the syrup of the sun, the black almost looked like a deep brown. Brown like the bark of spruce trees or dark eyes in lamplight or faded sharpie on fabric- the world was almost sepia. His sister looked older in this light; the way her hair was tied up in some kind of intricate bun only she would know how to do made her look worn, jaded. Octavia had always gotten caught between things, Octavian supposed, their parents, him and their mother- caught between soaring and merely staring wistfully at the sky. His sister stood beside their mother, farewelling those who were filtering out. He should probably be with them but he was here. Where "here" was he didn't know. Maecenas was trying to flirt with someone on the other side of the room. He had seemed awfully calm about the whole ordeal- jovial, almost. But that was Maecenas, wasn't it? He, no doubt, had some plan- he always had some plan to make things work out as they were supposed to. After all, he was the reason that he, Octavian and Agrippa always shared a room throughout their schooling- the amount of times they had snuck into the admin offices to change the roster! (It was frankly amazing no one ever caught them). Agrippa stood a little ways off from Maecenas, fiddling with the rim of his cup. Octavian's eyes lingered on him for a moment. Who was he looking at? Livia. What was going on there? He had never expected Livia to be Agrippa's, well, "type" but then again who was Octavian to say what his friend's "type" was? If his type was Octavian then it would make sense, Octavian decided; he and Livia were quite similar.

"You look like you've just attended a funeral."

Livia thought she was funny as she slipped beside Octavian. She probably wasn't but he laughed anyway.

"Mark doesn't want to execute the will."

"I'll wish him luck with that."

"Where's Scribonia?"

"She left."

He did not pry any further. Sure, he wanted to ask why Livia did not go with her, but he didn't. He stood and looked around the room and Livia followed his gaze.

“Do you think it’s worth it?”

“What?” Livia asked, her attention snapping back to Octavian.

“Is this all a bad idea?”

“Nothing worth remembering ever began with a good idea.”

Yes, Octavian reasoned to himself, yes, that was probably true.

_

It was that time of year where the sun set early and the world seemed constantly like it was on the cusp of consciousness (whether it was waking or falling asleep was difficult to determine) and everything seemed so clear and yet opaque. It was a time of freshness, of new beginning, as the crisp air kissed one’s cheeks, but also of a sad sort of bleakness- the air that of a mausoleum. Movement and still, change and stagnancy. There were no more leaves on the trees, no rustling as the breeze drifted through the city, and yet did things not need to die, to end, for something new to begin? “When one door closes…” or whatever old people used to say when things started to change once again.

“It’s cold,” Agrippa groaned as they journeyed mindlessly through the streets. They were going somewhere without knowing exactly where. All Agrippa cared about was going somewhere warmer than the cold, wet street.

Livia’s heels hung from her hand as she looked upward. It was almost sad the way the city’s lights blocked out the stars aside from the few pinpricks bright enough to pierce through the atmosphere of illumination.

“It isn’t that cold,” Maecenas responded, more wanting to be contrary than anything else; he, too, thought it was cold.

Octavian looked across to the other side of the street— three people gathered in a circle, lighting cigarettes and smoking in silence. Was it friendship that lingered between them or simply understanding? Were they the same thing? He huffed, his breath appearing as a soft cloud in the air.

“Does anyone want ice cream?” He asked, suddenly realising he desperately wanted ice cream.

“It’s fucking freezing Octavian!” Agrippa replied.

“So?”

“You’ll die of hypothermia!”

“Feeling cold means you’re alive,” Octavian grinned, walking backwards to meet his friend’s eye.

Agrippa would have protested further but everyone seemed on board with Octavian’s idea, as everyone always seemed to be, and so the hunt for an ice cream place began.

As if this cold, this feeling of “life”, was something that one could soak up like a sponge, drench and drown themselves in, Octavian took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. Had one not known the group was walking out of a wake, it would have been easy to believe the troops were heading from a party with much higher spirits.

“Are we even going to find a place that sells ice cream?” Someone moaned (who this complainer was is honestly irrelevant).

“We live in a massive city- there will be an ice cream shop somewhere,” (once again, the speaker of this reply has no effect on the plot- it could have been the ghost of Julius Caesar for all it matters).

Of course, a block later, a shop doorway cast bright lights onto the street; the gates to heaven, or hell. Well- that’s if either metaphysical manifestation of the afterlife happened to sell ice cream.

“Voila!” Octavian called, spinning on his heel, a twinkle in his eye.

The bell behind the door jingled as the quartet filed in. A middle aged woman in a pale green shirt with the shop’s name on it and a pastel pink apron greeted them with a jump. It wasn’t that late but ice cream wasn’t the best business on cold nights.

“How can I help you today?” The server asked.

Maecenas wondered if anyone ever answered anything except something along the lines of “we’d love some ice cream”. Had he asked the server, he would have discovered that, yes, they had.

They ordered (I shall leave you to imagine what combinations of flavours each got) and sat down on the little round table in the window which had a view of the street, surrounded by the warm ring of the lamp overhead. At first they sat in silence, the quiet song playing over the speakers the only sound.

Was this... thing... this hope, dream, ambition, worth it? Octavian stared emptily at his cup of chocolate ice cream (did you imagine correctly?) as he mused on this. Could he actually do it? (What this "it" was he did not quite know- it was more a feeling than anything- the "it" knew what it was, it held its own sense of gravity which drew him toward it). But what made him think this "it" was for him to have? It was unreasonable. Just because- what? Because Caesar had handed him the keys to the kingdom? Because something similar to fate whispered in his ear that maybe he could have "it"? Because he was afraid of what his future may be if he did not take this leap?

What in the world made him think he could be everything? What in the world was cruel enough to make him think he could become great?

What made moths so attracted to the light? What made them believe themselves worthy of approaching it?

Livia coughed. Everyone looked up at her.

"Have any of you considered what we'll do next?"

No, they had not.

"Any ideas?" Maecenas asked her.

"A couple."

He motioned for Livia to continue.

"Well the board are gonna be a pain in the arse, same with Antonius so we need to appease and silence them both simultaneously whilst getting our dear leader here to the position of CEO."

"Way to simplify it," Agrippa snorted.

Livia smiled. It was a game of chess, as cliche as the metaphor was. Except for it was a game of chess with at least three different players, the way each piece moved changed every thirty seconds, some players had more pieces than others, and all the players were blindfolded and deaf and yelling at each other. Fortunately, Livia had been in her school's chess club since the age of seven and loved to watch the downfall of her enemies.

"Do I want to know what that'll entail?" Octavian sighed.

"Simple really," Livia smiled, "it's a war of attrition. Last man standing."

That really was not simple.

"So?"

"There's a board meeting tomorrow and, despite the fact you are technically the majority share holder, you have not received an invite. So step one is gate-crashing the meeting," Livia explained, leaning back in her chair. She had spent the majority of her afternoon eavesdropping on the hushed conversations of Cicero and his ilk and was rather proud of her espionage work.

"And then?" Octavian asked.

"We move our pieces accordingly."

If the situation had been different, if Agrippa and Maecenas (though, mostly Agrippa) were not sitting right there beside him, Octavian may have considered kissing Livia (in a victorious way, of course...).

"So we play the long game?" Agrippa asked, just to confirm, trying not to focus on the way it looked as if Octavian was about to marry Livia simply for coming up with a plan.

She nodded. Then the conversation moved to lighter topics before they all finished their ice cream. It began to rain, lightly, a sprinkle, as the bell behind the shop door jingled again and the quartet filed out into the street.

"It's raining," Maecenas complained rather observantly.

"Not really," Agrippa retorted.

Livia twirled, feeling oddly whimsical in the rain as the drops reflected the light of street lamps and shop signs so that they glowed like falling stars. They were in the old part of the city, where the lamps still produced halos of pale orange instead of the harsher light of their descendants in other parts of the town. There was something beautiful about the old lamps that Octavian could not quite put his finger on, as if they possessed some understanding he lacked. They simply were. Glowing, and fading, and glowing again with the rising and setting of the sun. What would life be like if one were a street lamp with a soft glow and the appearance of total warmth? Alas, not everyone can be born a street lamp for then there would be too many lamps and not enough people to fix them.

"Octavian stop staring at the lamp post like you're about to fuck it!"

"Huh?"

What Octavian had not realised was he had stopped to stare at one of the lamps as his friends continued to walking; a moth to a light. They were now 50 metres in front of him and he had to do a sort of walk-jog to rejoin them as if he was not just wishing he was a street lamp.

Chapter Text

"Oi! Maecenas! Get up!"

Groggily, Maecenas rolled over to see Agrippa in a suit (Maecenas had never imagined his friend even owned a suit) looming over him.

"We're gonna be late!"

Agrippa did not think showing up late to a meeting they were not invited to was a good idea but Livia told them they should show up 10 minutes late and she seemed to be who had Octavian's ear nowadays. Of course, at this rate they were going to be late to being late.

Maecenas groaned before turning to shove his face deeper into his pillow.

"Oh no you don't," Agrippa grumbled before grabbing his friend's wrist and dragging him from his sheets.

"HEY!"

"Get dressed you idiot."

With a groan, Maecenas obliged. After all, the hardest part of the morning was getting out of bed.

_

"Well we're 20 minutes early," Maecenas grumbled from the back seat of Octavian's car, "Agrippa take off the glasses."

Agrippa, who had no idea what businesspeople actually wore, had donned a pair of aviators because he thought they made him look cool. Octavian drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he stared straight out of the windscreen. Jesus Christ- were they actually doing this. They were, weren't they?

"We could always go up early," Agrippa mused.

"That ruins the whole point of being 'fashionably late'," Livia sighed.

"And so?"

"We don't want them kicking us out before the meeting even starts."

That was a good point, which Agrippa had yet to consider. What were the legal implications of barging into a board room and just... staying there? Then again, the only reason they were doing this was because a guy got shot a shit tonne of times and so, surely, the law was more a set of guidelines than a solid barrier between "right" and "wrong" they could never cross.

"I feel like we haven't thought about this enough," Octavian mused.

Livia considered slapping Octavian across the back of his head then decided it best not to psyche him out any more than he already was.

"You can always back out after we storm the board room," she soothed.

Yet, the knowledge that there would be no surrender now hung between them. Livia's words of relief were thus more like when parents tell their child "If you don't go to bed now Santa might not bring you your presents" on Christmas Eve, knowing full well the presents were already bought, wrapped, and sheltering under the bed and there was no way they were going to waste all that money now- one knew the words referred to a path that would remain untrodden but heeded them anyway.

A minute passed in silence.

"So what should I say?" Octavian asked.

"Introduce your intentions," Maecenas suggested, "'I am here to follow the word of my uncle's will' or something, you know?"

Octavian nodded. Livia cracked her knuckles nervously, Agrippa reprimanded her for doing so. Then he cracked his own knuckles. It had only just occurred to each passenger that they didn't actually know what happened in board meetings and so today would have to be a bit of a learning experience.

_

“Well now Caesar’s gone,” Cicero began, taking the moment alone with the remaining board members (Antonius had yet to arrive), “we can oust Mark and be free of the scourge of their egos.”

The rest of the board, lining the long table in the almost entirely glass boardroom, nodded their heads. Some clapped, others murmured “yep”’s and one or two whooped in approval.

A moment passed before someone asked, “How exactly will we do that?”

The person asking this was none other than Sextus Pompeius. Now Sextus, a name which had made him subject to endless teasing in primary school, high school, and, for that matter, university, possessed a semi-decent level of power through what one could only describe as “nepotism”. But this was business and it’s not like nepo-babies were any sort of minority. What would the ultra-rich elite look like if not for nepotism? People who actually rose up through the ranks purely through hard work and talent? Preposterous! (At least if you asked Sextus who still believed using words like “preposterous” made him look more intelligent than Einstein, Newton and Hawking combined). Of course, he was much more than a nepo-baby: he also had daddy-issues. Big daddy issues- as in bigger-than-the-milky-way-galaxy daddy issues. You see, Sextus’ father, Pompey, was such a “cool dude” (a term I only use here because Maecenas has yet to trademark it) that he had had the epithet “the Great” legally added onto his name. “Pompey Pompeius” had been a pretty preposterous name after all but having people refer to your father as “Mr the Great” can really do a number on a child’s sense of self, identity, and expectations. But now “Mr the Great” was dead and Sextus could hear him yelling up from hell with pure glee because Caesar was dead (their relationship was most comparable to what tweenagers refer to as “frenemies,” though they were more “enemies” than “friends”) and then screaming at him as to why his dear son hadn’t become supreme leader of the world or something. The truth was Sextus didn’t actually know what was expected of him except to be cool, rich, and powerful and he had certainly become “cool”, and was born rich. So how did he become “powerful”?

“We just fire him,” Cicero replied. He could never bring himself to be patient with that Pompeius kid.

Another hand went up, “What about the nephew?”

“What nephew?” Sextus asked, having not been present at the reading of the will (he had been hungover and the thought of going outside had nauseated him), not on the board’s group chat (they’d forgotten to add him and he said he didn’t want to be on it anyway (an obvious lie)), and was playing golf on the day of the funeral. Thus, since everything is relative, Octavian simply did not exist in Sextus’ world.

“Caesar’s heir,” the asker of the initial question clarified, “if we had actually finished reading the will aloud we would’ve seen it says he is to become the CEO.”

The replier was Marcus Lepidus (but everyone called him “Lepidus” so as not to get confused with Antonius who was undeniably the more “Mark”-esque of the two). Now Lepidus didn’t mind Caesar all that much, was kind of sad that he’d been assassinated, and genuinely thought everyone had glossed over the fact that some of their own had actually shot Caesar during the last board meeting. Lepidus was the kind of guy who had sworn off coffee, drank peppermint tea instead, meditated on the weekends, and called his mother every day (well, until she died peacefully in her sleep and he named a wing of a hospital after her). He was almost so nice it was a punchable offence. But “nice” didn’t always mean “kind” and Lepidus had earned his spot at that table through one method or another which no one really wanted to know about too much in case they realised that this tea-drinking, never-forgetting-to-text-you-on-your-birthday thing was all just a malevolent ruse.

“Does he know that?” Cicero asked.

“No,” Lepidus replied.

“Then what’s the issue?”

Lepidus hesitated, wondering if Cicero, the so-called genius, was serious, “The law? Legal documents?”

Cicero shrugged, “What he doesn’t know won't hurt him,” he paused, “besides we’ll let him help us get the bigger imbecile out of the picture then phase him out. The boy can have his fun and then fade into obscurity.”

Lepidus was about to respond when four people toppled into the room fashionably late.

“Morning all,” Octavian nodded as he stood up after having fallen into the room on top of Livia, having no idea how they had all fallen onto the ground.

Twenty or so faces stared at the pile of newcomers. Octavian smiled and waved awkwardly. Cicero was sure if anything was ever going to kill him it was the persistence of idiots; these ones in particular.

“How did you-“ Cicero began, his words dissipating into the air.

“By the way, Marcus Antonius is snogging one of your HR staff in the staircase,” Livia announced.

It took this short statement for Cicero to regain his bearings and, with a smile, he invited the four to join.

“Now you are just in time to hear about how we’re going to get rid of Mark.”

Cicero explained slowly and in depth to make it seem as if the plan was set in stone, immovable, that there was nothing Octavian could do to change it because there wasn’t. Then, when he was done and had retaken his chair, he asked if there were any questions.

“So what am I supposed to do?” Octavian asked, frankly having no idea as to where he fit into the plan.

“You’ll be the one to fire him.”

“Why me?”

“We’re his friends,” Cicero replied quickly, trying to make up an excuse like a magician pulls a series of brightly coloured handkerchiefs from their hat, “it would take a toll on any of us.”

This was one of those instances when Octavian likely should have shut his mouth. But he didn’t.

“You were my uncle’s friends too, didn’t stop you from putting a couple holes in him.”

Had one been looking more closely at the expression on Cicero’s face in that moment, they would have seen his brows furrow slightly for a millisecond; snark had not been something he expected from the kid seated across from him. It would have worried him if he was not so confident in his plan.

With a sigh, Octavian stood, nodded, muttered, “I accept,” and walked out, his companions filing out quickly after him.

"I have a feeling he isn't going to surrender as easily as you think-"

"Shut up, Lepidus!" Cicero snapped. Lepidus promptly shut up.

After a moment of heavy silence, another idiot sauntered into the room and Cicero had to withhold his sigh of exasperation.

"Does someone wanna tell me why that Octavian kid just told me I was fired?" Mark asked with some amusement. Who did the kid think he was? Him? Fired!? What a joke!

"Because you are," Cicero responded dryly.

It was in this moment that Sextus realised he had actually met the kid before- he'd been invited to his ninth birthday party and Caesar and his father spent the whole time trying not to stab each other with their forks.

"Huh?"

"We believe it is best we terminate your employment in light of Caesar's death," Cicero attempted to clarify.

"Wha-"

Cicero promptly realised that he would have to simplify the statement.

"You no longer have a job here. We don't really like you. Bub-bye."

Mark's mouth was on the floor (well, it would have been if physics and human anatomy allowed for that to happen). How could they? Him? Fired!? Why? Well, he knew why, but his point still stood.

Mark stood up, rebuttoned his blazer, turned on his heel, yelled "I'm coming for you, Decimus," and walked out of the room.

All eyes turned to poor Decimus Brutus, who sat three seats away from that which Antonius had just vacated, wondering what he had done to piss off Mark. Decimus, meanwhile, was wondering the same thing and resolved he would have to go home, have a stiff drink, reflect on his actions, and hope that Mark, who had the memory of a goldfish, would forget his threat by the next morning.

Spoiler alert: Mark would not forget this threat, scribbling a note onto the back of his hand to ensure he wouldn't.

_

"That was easy," Octavian muttered with surprise as he flopped back into his car.

A bird had pooped on the bonnet and Octavian gritted his teeth slightly upon seeing the mark.

"It can't have been that easy..." Agrippa murmured in response, looking back out at the building from which they just strode.

"They're plotting something," Livia surmised, receiving a small nod from everyone else.

"But what?" Maecenas continued.

You see, sometimes (and only sometimes because not all of us are that lucky), there are groups of people who get along so well that they can finish each others' sentences, thoughts and, in the most phenomenal cases, share a train of thought. This slow chugging along of the aforementioned train is exactly what one could observe if they looked into the old red car sitting outside the tallest skyscraper in the city in that moment.

"Next time we'll bring them a cake," Octavian decided, "I'm sure Scribonia will make one."

Octavian did feel vaguely guilty for leaving Scribonia out of the loop on the situation. They were good friends, after all. But it was as if she was like one of the extra screws in an IKEA box- there just in case but not really necessary or adding anything, something to store away for another day that you may well never use. The thought of it made him feel almost ill. But she could be useful. Yes, she could bake.

"I don't think that's what they want," Maecenas mused.

Octavian shrugged, "Wouldn't hurt anybody."

"If they like him, it'll stop them from killing him, too," Livia joked.

"That's dark," Octavian's brow furrowed.

She shrugged, "It's true."

_

"Why am I baking a cake?" Scribonia asked for the seventh time.

"So the board don't shoot Octavian," Maecenas replied calmly, not understanding how it wasn't getting through to her.

Scribonia was more concerned as to why her neighbours had stormed her kitchen. She watched in horror as Agrippa started stuffing his face with garlic bread beside her. Octavian and Livia were cooking together in an almost domestic display of teamwork. She was sure she heard Agrippa sniffle as he watched the scene.

"Why do they want a cake?"

"Who doesn't want a cake?" Agrippa mumbled. Scribonia considered this for a moment before deciding it was a valid point.

"Where do you keep your forks?" Octavian asked.

"Where everyone keeps their forks," Livia replied.

Octavian knew this couldn't be right because he had checked every. Single. Draw. At least half a billion times. Then he'd checked every cabinet, the oven, the fridge, freezer, microwave, and drain another fifty times to no avail. He looked up at Scribonia, confused, lost, and afraid- almost like a puppy in a thunderstorm.

"They're in the bathroom," Scribonia conceeded.

"Why?"

"'Cause that's where you put forks," Livia cut in.

"No?"

"Yes?"

"No?"

"Stop trying to act as if you don't have all of your draws labelled. Maecenas showed me the video of you crying because someone put a spoon in the wrong place."

"Yeah but I don't store my cutlery where I shit."

"Oh yeah?"

As they squabbled, Maecenas mused aloud, "The parents are fighting."

Agrippa and Scribonia turned and stared at him with offence and horror and looks that simply said, "What the fuck are you talking about?". Maecenas had forgotten he was fifth-wheeling and the sorry-for-themselves squad were sorry for themselves for a reason.

Anyway, Octavian went to the bathroom, got the forks, and returned to see the pasta dished up.

Scribonia prodded at her pasta with her fork. It was hard. Too hard. Raw-inside hard. Agrippa crunched on it as if there was nothing wrong with the fact that his pasta was crunchy and Maecenas was happy to inform Livia she couldn't cook for shit. Livia took this feedback and told him to shove it up his arse. Maecenas thanked her for wishing him a good time. Agrippa, in response, choked on his uncooked pasta. Octavian realised this was the most normal thing that had happened to him that day. Scribonia realised this was the weirdest thing that had happened to her that day and, as much as she wanted to complain, she couldn't because she had friends over more than Livia (although her friends were nowhere near as weird nor as unhealthily co-dependent).

"Can we just get pizza or something?" Maecenas asked, certain he'd just chipped his tooth on a piece of penne.

"And waste this delicious meal?" Octavian reprimanded animatedly. He prodded one of the pieces of penne and it made a scraping noise against the side of the bowl.

"C'mon guys, it's not that bad," Livia moaned as if it was, in fact, actually not that bad. She went to eat another piece and cringed as it crunched, proving that it was, in fact, that bad.

"Can we just order Thai?" Maecenas groaned again. For some peculiar reason the idea of Italian food no longer seemed appetising (this reason was certainly not the sound of Agrippa crunching pasta in his ear).

"No," Livia replied.

"Why?"

"Because we don't wanna waste money!"

"But we're rich! Or at least he is!"

Octavian looked up from where he had been prodding at his stiff penne like a dog who was not entirely sure whether it was his or someone else's name who had just been called. Realising that it had, indeed, been his name he responded dryly, "I'm not technically rich until Mark executes the will."

(Apparently everyone was all for executing until it came to executing something that would actually work in Octavian's favour.)

"Besides," Octavian continued, "you're rich enough to buy your own Thai food, cheapskate."

"Technicalities," Maecenas sighed.

"It actually isn't that bad," Agrippa piped up whilst crunching on another piece of penne.

Maecenas decided that, when teaching kids the meaning of the word of "irony", the image of Agrippa eating raw pasta and suggesting it was not "that bad" an effort at cooking (and therefore half-way to getting a Michelin star, according to Maecenas- why? Because he said so).

"Look," Maecenas continued, his voice getting harsher as he slowly began to realise he was fighting an uphill battle, "cooking is what sets us apart from animals. This is not cooking- if we continue at this rate we may as well be telling Darwin to fuck off and return to the seas."

He was met with a contemplative silence. He thought he had convinced his audience to get Thai food. He thought he had won, victory was his, civilisation had once again come out on top. But he had forgotten one thing: his vocation had been a fool's errand from the beginning. A stubborn person trying to convince other stubborn people was always a Sisyphean task.

"I wouldn't mind going back to the sea, actually," Octavian mused, "seems nice."

In all honesty, Octavian wasn't sure why he was arguing about this. He'd barely eaten any of it and knew they would likely get some form of take out eventually. But Maecenas was always fun to rile up (his brows furrowed like those of a little kid who had just been told they cannot have another toy) and so that seemed reason enough.

As punishment for his response, Octavian had a piece of raw penne thrown at his head.

"Oi!"

It hurt. Contrary to popular belief, a piece of raw pasta making contact with the centre of one's forehead hurts. (Apparently.).

Maecenas threw another piece of pasta at his dear, dear friend.

"I swear to God-"

Scribonia watched in abject horror as Maecenas threw another piece of pasta at Octavian who hated touching other people's food with something so primal she was sure someone was going to be brutally murdered any moment now. (Despite hating getting his hands dirty with the likes of salad dressing, Scribonia did not doubt Octavian was happy to get soaked in blood if need be).

She was right.

In the blink of an eye, Agrippa had Octavian restrained, Livia was standing between him and Maecenas (who had had a fork thrown at his face), and Scribonia watched, slightly amused. Then, after another moment of high tensions (taut and ready to snap like a rubber band stretched between the two sides of a make-shift slingshot), the four relaxed into hysterical laughter. Scribonia felt as if she had missed the joke of the century or was one of those researchers who lived with gorillas or chimps and simply observed them. Yes, that was it- she was very much the latter.

Indian food was eventually ordered (neither Octavian or Livia would surrender to Maecenas' desire for Thai), the kitchen was scrubbed meticulously by Octavian, still covered in pasta sauce, and Agrippa did the dishes. Dinner 2.0 arrived, Livia rushed to the door to get it, and walked back into her main room just in time to watch Agrippa (quite lovingly, she might add) wipe the sauce from Octavian's face. Had she not decided to blink a split second later, she would have watched the latter kiss the former's knuckles in gratitude.

Chapter Text

Decimus Brutus (not to be confused with Junius Brutus, one of the killers of Caesar), who at one point in his life had been much more important to the way the world ran, was now rich enough to essentially own his own portion of France (yes, France, the country). The Cisalpine Gaul Association (also known as "CGA") was, in essence, a series of resorts, farms, and developments in France all belonging to Decimus brought in revenues which would make any normal person's head spin until it detached from their body entirely.

Now it was to poor Decimus' misfortune that he, whilst contemplating the path his life had taken which resulted in his name being scrawled into the bad books of one Marcus Antonius, received a text from Cicero, who had shares in CGA, informing him that the stocks were plummeting. Rapidly.

To make matters worse, he then received a text from Mark asking for ownership of his dear, beloved portion of France.

It didn't take much critical thinking to see the link between the two events and, had he not already been drinking, Decimus would have needed to have half a bottle of his precious scotch.

Fuck.

Oh, fuck fuck fuck.

Decimus' wife watched him from the doorway, silhouetted in the warm light of the corridor. Decimus loved his wife, she was possibly the most beautiful woman in existence, but he loved his chunk of France even more.

"Do you really need France, honey?" she asked him, after seating herself on the couch beside him, "If you like France that much we can get a Summer house there."

Decimus' wife, Paulla Valeria-Brutus, did not truly understand her husband's obsession with France, she had never liked the country, having never understood why half the letters in the French language were silent, and had always wished he owned a chunk of some other country. (Greece, she believed, would have been nicer. Yes, in fact, Greece would be nice.)

"It's not about France," he pouted, "it's about my money."

"We have enough money."

"But I want more."

She took his head in her hands and turned it toward her so his teary eyes met hers in the dark.

"Do you want me to go beat Marcus Antonius up for shorting your stock and trying to steal France?"

Decimus nodded pitifully and Paulla wiped the tears from his eyes, hoping that maybe he'd have a change of heart and let Mark take France whilst they went to live Happily-Ever-After in Greece.

_

Agrippa stared at the wall of Octavian's room in a concerned combination of awe and confusion.

"What is this, again?"

"Well," Octavian began, "Brutus, Cassius, and a few others decided to shoot my uncle and so I'm gonna find them and avenge him."

He motioned to the series of photos, newspaper clippings, and post-it notes on the wall detailing the lives, motives, and actions of each assassin.

"You're gonna kill them?"

"Well, no... but-"

You see, Octavian had no idea what he was going to do with the men who killed his uncle-turned-adoptive-father but he knew he had to do something.

Agrippa nodded, ever the supportive friend, "So what do we do?"

Octavian hesitated.

"Find them, I guess."

_

A board meeting (well, the board minus Marcus Antonius) was called early the next day. Octavian sat on one end of the table, surrounded by Agrippa, Livia, and Maecenas, and Cicero sat on the other. Beside Cicero sat Hiritus and Pansa who, whilst otherwise unimportant to this story (or any story, for that matter. In fact, they are so unimportant that knowing their first names or anything about them, their lives, or their thoughts is superfluous), had been appointed the interim co-CEOs of SPQR.

"It seems our dear friend Marcus has decided to attack some of our own," Cicero began after everyone had settled in, motioning to the tear-stained, and pretty pathetic-looking, Decimus Brutus, "and we have to stop him."

"Why?" Octavian asked.

Cicero thought his voiced sounded oddly like a mosquito trapped in one's room in the middle of the night: high pitched and incessant.

"Because Decimus' contribution to this company is pivotal."

Octavian nodded and said nothing else.

Agrippa, who had quickly googled how to stop stocks from shorting upon being informed by Livia why this meeting had been called, raised his hand.

"So we're going to buy the stock back?"

Cicero nodded, "Octavian and our two CEO's will be buying stocks in CGA in order to rebalance them, yes."

"And that'll work?"

"Yep."

All agreed, stood, and went their seperate ways.

_

"I am not fucking doing that," Octavian declared once they were back in his car.

"Then what are we going to-"

Maecenas was cut off as Octavian began to drive like a mad-man (at least, a rule-abiding mad-man as he stopped five seconds later as the traffic light in front of them turned green then amber then red).

"You'll see."

_

“What do you mean he broke in?” Scribonia asked, tilting her head to the side. She brushed a strand of Livia’s hair from her face, tucking it gently behind her ear. She wished the other girl would let her cut it but, alas, one cannot always have their way.

“There was a key under the door mat. I don’t know how he knew it was there.”

Livia had thought it odd that a man of the status of Marcus Antonious would have a joke doormat which said “Warning: this room contains a good time” but, also, did she really find that information surprising?

“Then what happened?”

“Well,” Livia paused, “Octavian told us to wait outside. He went in. We stared at each other nervously. There was some high pitched screaming, some yelling, and then what I think was some sobbing. The sound died down for 10 minutes and then Octavian walked out and told us everything was done.”

“What did he do?”

Livia could only imagine Octavian had gone inside and done some sort of song and dance to hypnotize Mark like some sort of snake tamer. She didn’t even know what agreement they had settled on- she just knew that it was good enough to make Octavian strut back down to his car and play Queen on the speaker on their way home (he never played music that was even vaguely light hearted). Thus, she replied to her companion’s question with a shrug before trying to unwind her legs from hers to go get a drink of water from the kitchen.

“Don’t leave,” Scribonia moaned, rolling onto her back, her short hair spreading itself out like a halo around her head.

“I’ll be back,” Livia comforted as she strolled to the kitchen.

Upon arriving in the kitchen, Livia sighed, stretched her arms, reached up to the top cupboard for a glass (it was tall and tapered slightly at the bottom) which she filled up in the sink. She yawned widely before turning the tap off. The cold marble of the counter cut into her lower back as she turned and leant on it, cool liquid running down her throat.

“Took you long enough to notice we were here,” Agrippa mused, sitting at her kitchen island beside Octavian and Maecenas.

Livia choked on her water, causing it to sort of spray-dribble from her mouth.

“What the FUCK?!” She garbled, swallowing what she could and wiping the dribble from her chin, “How did you get into my house?”

“Octavian owns the place,” Maecenas shrugged.

Livia realised she was in her pajamas. Well, not her pajamas- a bra and a pair of shorts she’d stolen from Scribonia purely for the fact they were the comfiest thing she’d ever worn despite the fact they were covered in cartoons of Barney the dinosaur.

“GET OUT,” she yelled because, apparently, no one realised the issue with breaking and entering.

“Mark texted me,” Octavian said.

“Wow! Amazing! He texted you? Who knew that was possible?!”

“He wants to meet.”

“I never saw you as his type,” Livia mocked, “but I guess you’re pretty enough.”

“What should I say?”

She sighed, could no one think for themself around here?! Surely, she didn’t have to direct everyone’s every single move.

“I don’t know! Do you want to meet him?”

Octavian didn’t really like Antonius all that much but he was, in all honesty, his only chance at getting where he wanted to be.

“I’ll tell him ‘yes’ then.”

“Just thumbs-up his message,” Maecenas said, “put him off his guard.”

“Will that send mixed signals, though?” Agrippa replied.

Scribonia walked into the main room to see what was taking Livia so long only to pause with confusion upon seeing the congregation in their kitchen.

“What’s happening?” She asked.

“Octavian’s texting his new boyfriend,” Livia explained bitterly.

Both Octavian and Agrippa scowled at her. Livia scowled back, not really caring that their feelings were bruised when they were the ones who broke into her flat.

_

Upon arriving at the address Antonius had sent him, Octavian had to do a double take. He had to ask himself whether or not this was some sort of odd prank for the location was- well- unexpected.

Compared to the building Octavian had parked outside, his car seemed gleaming, new, bought straight off the lot. A sign that was once bright hung above the door, slightly lopsided, making him wonder if it had once been straight and then fallen slightly but there was no one bothered to fix it. (If this were the case, Octavian would be saddened for some unrecognisable reason). It was an old fast food chain, the kind everyone had heard of, the franchise once being nation-wide, like McDonalds except infinitely more likely to give you food poisoning (and that was saying something- Octavian once had to spend a night in their dorm's bathroom because Agrippa had gotten a bad batch of chicken nuggets). "Thermapolia" it was called, having skyrocketed to popularity during the 1980’s before its growth plateaued. An old play area embraced one side of the building, like vines on overgrown ruins but made of plastic whose once-bright colours had faded. The building itself, with its beige brick facade and windows that were practically opaque with grime, was the kind one could take a glance at and be almost certain it was filled with asbestos.

“He did say ‘conspicuous’,” Octavian muttered to himself, reaching for his pack of gum. He loosened one strip of gum from the box, looked back out the window at the restaurant which seemed more like the shoebox one puts the ashes of their cat or least favourite great-great-grandfather into than a dining facility, and decided to take another strip. Chewing gum made him look much cooler anyway (he pretended it wasn’t blueberry flavoured because that would just ruin the vibe and peppermint was just too spicy). With a sigh, he slid out of the car and entered the restaurant.

A grating, electronic bell rung as the door closed behind Octavian. The place was empty, the air sluggish and jaded, making Octavian feel like he was trying to breath a concoction of butter and bacon grease rather than any kind of air. A cashier stood by the counter, practically a wraith despite the fact they couldn’t have been much younger than him. Maybe the asbestos wasn’t the only thing killing the patrons and staff.

His eyes fell on Mark, sitting in one of the booths. Who was he with? Octavian centred himself and strolled over to the pair.

“Where are your cronies?” Mark asked as Octavian slipped into the booth across from him, beside their third companion.

“Why am I here, Mark?”

Mark grinned.

“It seems we have a common goal,” he paused for a moment to soak up the quizzical look Octavian shot him, “I assume you’ve met Lepidus?”

Octavian turned to look to ensure that yes, he did indeed recognise the man beside him.

Lepidus grinned at Octavian only to receive a short half-smile before the other man (more like “boy”- god did he seem young up close!) returned to scowling at Mark.

“Yes, and?”

“The three of us should help each other out.”

“Why?”

“Because we were all friends of Caesar, and we all want to see Brutus, Cassius, and their fellow scum get what they deserve.”

“Really?”

Beside where Antonius was sitting was a large, gnarly crack in the red vinyl on the booth, stuffing had begun to stick out, weeping like a healing wound.

“Yes,” Lepidus replied, his voice less revealing than Antonius’ snark.

“And what would be my role in this,” Octavian paused, moving his hand in a deft circle, unsure of what to call this proposed alliance, “group?”

Mark opened his mouth to say something but Lepidus cut him off.

“Well, you see,” he coughed, “we didn’t finish reading the will. If we had, we would have discovered that you’re technically the CEO of-“

“What do you mean ‘technically’?”

“Well, because of interruptions we didn’t get to that part so, uh, yeah.”

Octavian didn’t know how to respond so he just sat there, aghast, and considered buying a glass of water in order to throw it in both of their faces.

“And no one thought of telling me this?”

“Why would they?”

Fair enough.

“Okay, so now what?”

Lepidus and Antonius then outlined the plan to Octavian, who agreed to it with a sigh. Hands were shaken, each got up and walked out, their feet sticking to floor slightly as they went to the door.

A group chat was made that evening and named “The Second Triumvirate”- a reference Octavian was too young to understand.

_

The next day the board sidled nervously back into the board room to find Octavian sitting in Cicero’s chair. (No one ever sat in Cicero’s chair except Cicero). What was more concerning was who sat beside him.

Mark.

Cicero swallowed nervously as he sat down, not in his chair.

"We brought cake," Octavian grinned once everyone had sat down, "Lepidus, where did you put the cake?"

Lepidus slipped a box containing a red velvet cake Scribonia had made the previous night on the table. It was a pretty cake but no one seemed to be hungry enough to try some or, in fact, even slightly grateful for the offering.

"Why have you summoned us here?" Cicero asked shortly. Octavian snorted.

"Yes," he nodded, straightening in his chair, "let us address what we have come here to discuss."

Everyone stared at Octavian, awaiting him to continue whilst he paused dramatically. The air was taught with frustration instead of anticipation and, slightly disappointed, Octavian finally continued upon not achieving the desired effect.

"It has come to my attention that we did not manage to read the will in full and, if we had, it seems we would have saved ourselves some fuss."

"How do you mean?"

Octavian shot Cicero a glare which simply said "Don't play with me," but Cicero, who was becoming increasingly nervous that Octavian knew what he was counting on Octavian not to know, could not help but feign ignorance.

"I am to take over my uncle's role as CEO of this company."

An uncomfortable silence entered the room, it strolled lazily around the table, before lounging across it, dominating the air between the members of the board. Cicero was speechless and, even if he wasn't, he would not have been able to speak for, if he had opened his mouth, he would have no doubt suffocated in the silence.

After an appropriate amount of time spent in silence, Octavian spoke once more.

"Now, as CEO, I see it fitting to appoint my own executives," he paused to let the words register in the minds of his companions, "Lepidus shall rise to CFO and Antonius will remain in his post as COO. Understood?"

A few heads nodded dumbly as if they had been cut off, chucked into the sea, and were now bobbing in the water. Others simply gaped, aghast they had been discovered.

Octavian sighed, leaned back in his chair, and flicked his hand deftly: "Now go."

And so they left.

The board were overcome.

Livia would be proud of his business savvy.

Chapter Text

Gaius Suetonius sat at his desk, having just gotten a text from one of the editors of the tabloid he worked for, 'De Vita Caesareum', about what he was going to write next. Suetonius, one of the three main journalists who reported on a very specific, but popular, topic area, had mousy brown hair and a receding hairline which made his forehead look more like a square than a rectangle (a small difference but one that vexed him endlessly). He worked for one of those publications which featured photographs taken by some poor paparazzo hiding in a bush with writing the size of the moon which said things like "Antonius' New Side Piece?" and "Who is Nicomedes IV Screwing Now? (Hint: You'll Never Guess Who!)" and made his colleagues at other magazines say preposterous things like "Modern Journalism is dead" and "Who cares that Julius Caesar likes it up the arse?". Suetonius shook his head and chuckled just thinking about the fact that such ignorance pervaded his society. You see, what Suetonius liked to do was write about what really mattered. No, not stupid things like war, famine, politics, or even the slow degradation of art in an increasingly capitalistic world. Instead, he maintained that, in order to understand the actions of the rich and famous who practically ran the world at this point, it was important to know them. Actually know them. Humanise them, make them feel like someone his readers actually knew.

Suetonius opened google, he typed up the name he had just received. Octavian. Gaius. Augustus. Thurinus. Enter.

Who was this guy?

Fuck he was young.

Suetonius spat out the sip of coffee he just took.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE'S THE CEO?" He yelled to no one in particular in his empty office.

Surprisingly, no one answered his question.

_

In a similar manner, Cornelius Tacitus, another journalist who wrote about the same niche topic as Suetonius, was sitting in his cubicle at work, trying to edit his father in-law's newest blog entry. Tacitus was one of those investigative journalists who had decided that people skills were not for him and everyone else in the world was corrupt, contemptible, and just unworthy of anything but harsh criticism. He exclusively drank black coffee, the bitter taste seemingly the only thing he could do to quiet the guilt he felt for everything he had ever done (except, of course, his journalistic pursuits), and had a beard he tended to obsessively.

"Have you heard about the kid?" the person beside him asked.

"What?" he asked, looking away from his father in-law's deeply specific recount of his time at boarding school.

"Didn't you see Suetonius' article?"

Wide-eyed and thankful for the new project (he was going to have to rewrite the entirety of his father in-law's blog post because Christ it was boring), Tacitus rushed to change tabs and quickly searched for the aforementioned article.

Reading the first line, Tacitus mumbled to himself, "This is the longest spelling of 'nepotism' I've ever seen."

Then, he began to write his own article slating the subject of Suetonius'.

_

Cassius Dio, the third in the trinity who wrote about this Overly Specific Topic Which I Have Yet To Specify (TM), leaned back in the chair. Dio had found his own niche within this topic as he did not scour the internet as deeply as his colleagues and instead just revamped Tacitus' opinions as if they were the unadulterated truth. For this reason, he closely monitored Tacitus' articles for a topic he could appropriate. That's why, at midnight, as he was doing his final check of the day, he leapt out of bed upon seeing a promising new idea to rewrite.

By the next morning, there were three new articles about the new CEO of SPQR corp. and, by that time, everyone was surprised he was even old enough to recite his ABC's.

_

Livia walked into her neighbour's apartment that morning to find Octavian lying on the floor, distraught, Maecenas trying to hold in his laughter, and Agrippa trying desperately to get him to stand up. Octavian was a brilliant shade of crimson.

"I'm assuming you've seen the article," she said as a greeting, sitting by Octavian's head.

He sat up and stared at her as if there was a fourth wall wall behind her he was desperately trying to break. If there was a fourth wall, after all, then all of this mightn't be real and he could go back to living his non-existent life. (Unfortunately for him, the fourth wall actually lay in the apartment below him and, as a result, in order to break it he would have to break into the apartment of Gertrude, a little old lady who had to be at least 120 years old, made everyone biscuits, and was currently having sex with a man half her age on her plastic-wrapped floral couch). When his attempts at breaking the very confines of his reality failed, he just stared at Livia.

"Article? Article?" he choked on a laugh, "No, no, no, an 'article' would have been fine. No, Livia, I think you mean 'article-S', three, to be exact!"

Dramatically, he flopped back onto the ground and Agrippa made a mental note to buy one of those Victorian fainting couches if this was going to become a regular occurrence.

Livia opened her mouth to say something but was cut off.

"ARTICLES, LIVIA, FUCKING ARTICLES! THREE ARTICLES! THEY FOUND MY SCHOOL PHOTOS, LIVIA! THERE ARE JOURNALISTS FOLLOWING MY SISTER'S INSTAGRAM, LIVIA!"

Livia raised her eyebrow at the other two. They shrugged.

"At least everyone knows who you are," she tried to console him, to no avail.

"WHO wants to show her what they wrote?" he yelled again, his voice cracking at the first word.

No one responded.

"Okay, I will, then. Let's see. The first article was called 'The Boy King: New CEO Replaces Dead Uncle'."

"That's not that bad-"

"That's the best one. The next one was 'The New Synonym for "Nepotism": Octavian Thurinus and the Downfall of Meritocracy'."

"Well-"

"And don't forget my personal favourite 'Can the New CEO of SPQR Recite the Alphabet?'. I wonder! Remind me, dearest Livia, does 'B' come before 'A' or is 'Z' first? I especially appreciated the part in one of them which claimed that I am doomed to fail because my ascension depends on the reordering of the pre-established system. Though, I must admit, the 200 word discussion in the first one about my inability to hold my alcohol is a close contender for my favourite."

"It could be worse," Livia said, not actually having read any of the articles except for the title of Suetonius' when she woke up circa five minutes beforehand.

"Nuh-uh. One of them suggests I fucked my uncle! So, now, not only am I a nepo-baby who exited the womb five seconds ago but I'm also a slut!"

Maecenas decided it best not to point out that Octavian was, indeed, a bit of a slut.

"AN INCESTUOUS SLUT!"

The following garbled screeching rang loudly throughout the entire building, so loudly in fact that Gertrude and her lover the level below had to pause to check whether someone was screaming, a fire alarm was going off, or if their hearing aids were simply malfunctioning. When, five minutes later, this screaming ceased, all four of them sat in a silence disrupted only by the sounds of two seniors orgasming in sync.

"Are they...?" Agrippa murmured, scared of interrupting the- romantic- moment occurring on the floor below them.

Maecenas, with a look of offence, replied, "Gertrude remains a very lively woman even in her advanced age."

"Geez, sorry!"

"I bet you no one's writing overly detailed articles about Gertrude's sex life," Octavian complained.

"Oh, shut up and grow a pair," Livia finally groaned, tired of being his main punching bag.

Octavian did indeed shut up. Not because he wanted to but because Maecenas had started speaking and when Maecenas started speaking it was no use talking for he would just talk over you.

"Well 'any publicity is good publicity' is such a well-known and aged adage for a reason, and I doubt that reason is it is false. I mean the ancient Romans believed that it was better to have your name ascribed to something, pretty much anything at all, and remembered than fade into obscurity. You would not want to fade into obscurity in such a manner, to be forgotten in such a way, would you? Fading into obscurity is for boring people and, according to Suetonius, you are not boring-"

Octavian had started to nod, thinking Maecenas had finished but Maecenas' sentences were rarely shorter than fifteen words so Octavian, who had known him for half of his life, really should have known better.

"-and I would say he has a pretty good handle on things considering he spends a large portion of the article discussing your inability to spell."

Agrippa just stared at Maecenas, wondering why his dear, dear friend thought that would be a good thing to point out at this point in time. He had the time to just stare because, whilst his job would usually have been to restrain someone before they threw themselves at the opposition, he was pretty sure neither Maecenas nor Octavian could actually cause any harm to the other- they were more likely to run around yelling long words at the other and throwing random stuff at (and missing) each other. Livia was just relieved she was no longer going to be the primary target.

"Really, Maecenas?" Octavian asked, unimpressed.

He shrugged, "How can we expect you to improve without constructive feedback?"

Livia and Agrippa just stared at each other, fearing that if they looked at any other point in the room they would cause a bomb to go off.

"Is this about the 'Gatsby' essay again?"

Maecenas did not reply.

"Who cares? It's been four years!"

"Well I'm not the one still upset about it."

Livia decided she did not want to know anything more about this new piece of lore and began to drag Octavian out of the room before she discovered anything more. After securing him in his room, Livia whirled around to look at Octavian, who had become a lump of mortification on his bed.

"Oh, grow up," she sighed exasperatedly.

"Well, they aren't writing about you!"

"They will eventually and I can almost assure you it'll be worse but I'm not going to sulk."

He lifted his head to look at her, she raised her eyebrows at him and he wondered if she had actually seen what she was wearing because she was in a very nice, floral dress which did not seem to suit the weather or occasion, for that matter.

"I wanna talk to Agrippa."

"No."

"Why?"

"Because he'll go 'It's okay Octavian, let me beat them up for you and then we can run away together and live in a nice little cottage and forget about them' and that isn't going to help. You don't want to talk with him because it will help, you want to talk to him because it would be like putting a Spiderman bandaid on a child's scraped knee- totally useless except for making you smile."

Octavian hesitated.

"You know you're wearing a dress?"

"Wha- Oh- am I?"

Livia looked down and realised she was, in fact, wearing a dress. It went down to her mid-thigh and was made out of a light cotton. She had not worn it in forever and was actually quite shocked to see she still owned it.

"It looks nice," Octavian offered, sincerely, "on you, at least."

Livia blinked, "Thanks?"

They stood in silence for a moment, just staring at each other. Perfectly awkward, perfectly sincere, perfectly perfect.

"Now get up, we have work to do."

_

The next day was when work began. Properly began, at least.

At 9:00 am on the dot four new hires sauntered into the main lobby of the tallest building in the city as if they owned the place. They made it approximately 20 metres into the lobby before they were greeted by the welcome wagon: a pack of security guards.

"We're meant to be here!" Octavian cried for the thirtieth time, wondering how many more times he would have to say the same thing before one of the guards considered the possibility that, maybe, just maybe, he might not be lying, "I'm the CEO!"

Now, Johnathan, who had been around the globe a couple of times in his tenure as a member of the military and was now the head of security for some cushy office, was not considering the possibility of loosing his job as he held up a group of children in the lobby. Did he feel bad about letting a bunch of guys with guns into the building and allowing his previous boss to get shot to smithereens? Yes, God, yes! So, obviously, nothing was going to slip past Johnathan again and that included the boy in front of him who barely made it to his chin.

"Can I see your ID?" he asked, voice gruff.

Octavian made a noise one could only describe as "of intense frustration", sounding more like water boiling over on a stove than a living, breathing human being. He gestured at the front desk angrily.

"Well," he leaned forward to see Johnathan's name tag, "Johnathan, I would have an ID if you would let me go get one!"

Classic excuse, was all Johnathan could think, he really thinks he'll get away with that?

"We've had our fair share of trouble here recently so let's make this easy for everyone and just quietly escort you out-"

"Oh, no, no, no, no," Octavian cut him off, "that's not going to happen!"

You see, Octavian, despite his height, his inability to properly catch a ball, and his propensity to just be a little bitch all the time, was stubborn, we know this, but he was so stubborn he always got his way. If Octavian were a plant he wold be some sort of succulent- small, sometimes pointy, dry, but stubborn enough to survive even the most neglectful gardeners, and resourceful enough to do so. If Johnathan was going to force him to leave, Octavian would leave kicking, screeching, scratching, and, likely, biting.

Johnathan would have just grabbed the so-called CEO by his collar and dragged him away were it not for Agrippa glaring at him (Agrippa, Johnathan had decided, would not be easy to deal with, even for the likes of himself). He flinched backward as Agrippa made a sound he was 99% sure was a snarl.

Livia looked between the three and decided it best to step in.

"Surely there is some way we could prove we are meant to be here?"

Johnathan hesitated but decided that humouring Livia, who was by far the scariest of the four, was probably the best course of action. He motioned for them to follow him over to the front desk.

"ID's?" Gladys, the receptionist, asked.

She had narrow, rectangular, wire-framed glasses, attached to her via a beaded string decorated by her grandchildren, whose picture she kept on her desk, in her wallet, in her phone case, on her computer's desktop, and her phone lock screen. Unfortunately, for the crowd surrounding her, Gladys typed slowly. Very slowly. Typing-with-one-finger slowly. They discovered this fact when Octavian showed her his licence and she began to type his name into the system.

About five minutes after he had handed his licence to her, Octavian had started to regret every decision he had ever made. He should have just surrendered and let the security guy carry him out of there like a sack of potatoes.

"You have a very long name, dear," Gladys chuckled.

No one laughed.

Now, this couldn't have been worse, could it? Ha! Wrong. On the scale of how badly walking into the building that day could have gone, this incident only rated "mildly annoying". No, everything was about to get worse. Much worse.

"Octavian!" echoed a booming voice from the other side of the lobby.

Antonius.

He sauntered over to them and Johnathan was starting to get that feeling in his stomach that meant he had fucked up.

"What's goin' on?" Mark smirked.

"We're being held hostage," Maecenas drawled.

Mark was endlessly amused by this information because- well- he believed a little calamity was what the little prick deserved, considering Mark had worked his entire life just to sit beside Caesar whereas Octavian just rocked up and sat in his chair. It was unfair, a cruel twist of fate. Maybe it wasn't right for Mark to be jealous of someone almost half his age but, then again, someone half his age surely did not deserve such a throne. No, no: Mark was totally justified in his anger.

Gladys finally pressed enter. She looked between her screen and the group in front of her in surprise.

"Oh, you're that handsome boy from the news!"

Octavian's eyes widened. He desperately needed to know which tabloid she read (though he did not know what answer would provide him any relief).

"You're all my youngest was talking about yesterday," she continued, "and I told them that I'd get a photo of you-"

"So he's meant to be here?" Johnathan asked, shocked.

"Yep! He's the new CEO!"

Octavian was kind of disappointed he was not able to say "Told you so!" without looking more petulant than he already did as he arched his eyebrow at the security guard. Mark was just upset he didn't get to save the four in the pettiest way possible.

Anyway, Mark went to his office, the four got their photos taken for their ID cards, and their march up to their offices began again.

Now seems like a fitting time to acknowledge that all four of them had scrounged up some form of appropriate business attire and they all looked like they were starring in an episode of 'Mad Men', had 'Mad Men' been set about 80 years later. Thus, they strode out of the lift and down a long- seemingly endless- hallway of cubicles and offices. The four walked in such a manner that it seemed as if some cool song, like 'Brain Stew' or one of its ilk, should have been blaring non-diegetically instead of the quick clacking of fifty-odd keyboards, and they should have all been walking in slow motion. In fact, all four of them felt much cooler, and much more important, then they actually were as they strode forward as one charges into battle. It was almost like Livia had not been up until the early hours of the morning finishing off an essay for the uni course she was still enrolled in, or any of them actually had any experience in the field of work they were actually now employed in (whatever that was).

They parted ways, each heading to where their offices were. Octavian reached his door and paused.

"Julius Caesar," the nameplate read, "Chief Executive Officer."

Well someone needed to change that.

Octavian was not surprised when he walked into the office to see all of his uncle's stuff inside. He popped his head out of the door to ask someone about it, only to see the little foyer in front of his office empty of all people. Did he need to hire his own assistant? Fuck, there was a lot for him to do. With a sigh, he left the office- which also smelt of the late Julius Caesar's cologne- and went to find someone to discuss this issue with (well, more to find aid in escaping the memory of his uncle's death).

Ironically, and possibly unfortunately, the first person he found to do so was Johnathan.

See, Johnathan had decided it was best for himself, his sanity, and his career to go apologise to the CEO he had held up that morning. Thus, Johnathan had decided to make the walk of shame to Octavian's office to try and plead for forgiveness, dignity, and his job. This meant that, before he opened the frosted glass doors that led from the corridor into the aforementioned foyer, Octavian appeared in the doorway.

"Great! I was just looking for you!"

That was never great to hear when one was facing the possibility of termination.

"Oh-"

"We need to talk!"

Johnathan couldn't help but think of what a sick bastard Octavian must be to sack him whilst smiling. Octavian, meanwhile, was just happy he did not have to go back down to the lobby. He gestured for the other man (who was practically twice his size) to follow him into his uncle's- his- office. Johnathan took a chair whilst Octavian opted to stand; it did not feel right to sit behind the desk.

"I am so sorry, sir, for this morning-" Johnathan began quickly, in a last-ditch effort to save his job.

"What? Oh! Don't worry about that. I was just wondering when we could get this stuff out of here." Octavian felt the need to expand, "It was my uncle's."

Humanity is a funny thing. It is endless entertaining, of course, but it is also simply "funny" because, in the end all humans are, realistically, interconnected. Maybe by fine threads, or coarse ropes, or simply with pinky-promises and held hands and punches to the face. Yet, it is not really what holds humans together that matters, is it? Because, at the end of the day, despite- well- despite everything, Johnathan looked at the man in front of him and he did the most miraculous thing: he understood something about him. Sure, he didn't know the specifics of what Octavian felt- not even Octavian knew the specifics of what he felt, really- he wasn't even sure if he was exactly "empathetic". But he understood. After all, he, too, loved Julius- they used to dine together on those late nights when everyone else had gone home but Caesar still had work to do- and he, too, was saddened by his death. After all, Johnathan, at his core, felt guilty for allowing Caesar to die, for allowing the man in front of him to loose someone he loved. And so it should not have been a surprise that, in that moment, Johnathan silently swore his loyalty to Octavian.

It took one phone call and half the security staff, just as guilty as their head of security for allowing any of this mess to occur, emptied the office of any trace of its previous owner.

Thus, Octavian was left alone in an empty room which, as cliche as it was, seemed to reflect how he felt deep, deep down.

What was he meant to do next?

_

Livia drifted into Octavian's office as the sun began to set, casting rays of gold through the windows that lined the room. Octavian was lying on the ground, staring up at the ceiling.

"You look busy."

She flopped down next to him.

"I am considering the future of this company."

A moment passed. Livia sighed.

"I suggest you take a look at our finances."

Octavian propped himself up on his elbows to look at her.

"Are they that bad?"

"No, but they aren't great either."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

Another moment passed and the shadows stretched wider across the floor, reaching for something beyond the realm in which they existed. The shadows covered the pair on the ground in strips of darkness and light, freezing them between the two states. Neither Livia nor Octavian dared to voice it but they both could not help but feel like they had gotten mixed up in something too far beyond them. Yet, they both knew the other felt the same (even if they went about feeling it in rather different ways). This silence lasted a moment longer until Livia decided she needed to know-

"Where is all your furniture?"

"Got rid of it."

This answer seemed good enough.

"I think I'm going bald," Livia mused.

"Why?"

"Like half my hair came out in the shower yesterday."

"You look like you still have plenty of hair on your head," Octavian frowned, turning to look at her. He reached over and played with a couple of strands which had spread out, like a crown, around her head.

"Looks can be deceiving," she joked.

He hummed in response.

"I'd still love you if you were bald."

Livia's eyes met those of the boy across from her, she opened her mouth to respond but-

"What the fuck are you two doing?" Agrippa exclaimed from the doorway.

They both sat up, almost guiltily, to stare at him.

"I have no furniture," Octavian responded.

"I see that."

"How was your day?"

"Boring."

Livia suddenly felt like she was the third wheel as Agrippa came and plonked himself down on the other side of Octavian. The pair chatted idly for a moment before the silence resumed.

Lower, the sun sank.

It was almost dark by the time the door opened again.

"You're all a miserable bunch."

This observation did not stop Maecenas from trotting over and joining his friends on the floor.

Agrippa's stomach grumbled. Loudly. The other three turned to stare at him.

"Should we get dinner?" Octavian asked.

No one else needed to respond as Agrippa's stomach grumbled again. Louder, this time.

_

Across the street from the office building stood a small, family owned pizza shop. The name of this pizza shop was unknown to pretty much everyone who passed by for all of its signs had been covered in posters and dirt, and the lights in the sign had stopped working, leaving them stranded in darkness. SPQR corp.'s four newest employees stood outside and looked through the glass doors. The place was empty.

Maecenas stared at the menu. "They sell Thai food, too."

Livia grimaced at the thought of bad Thai food but said nothing.

"We may as well try it," Agrippa suggested, thinking more with his stomach than any other organ.

He received a few grumbled agreements- everyone was sick of hearing his stomach grumble as that was all they had heard in the period between leaving Octavian's office and finding this place- and so they entered the restaurant.

To put it simply: the pizzeria was the kind of Italian restaurant one thinks of when someone says "Italian restaurant". The floor was covered with a black and white checkered pattern, wooden shelves meant to make the place look "rustic" lined the wall behind the counter main counter, which was surrounded by stools, and the back of the room holding a range of bottles of wine (which were actually empty), and a couple of tables covered in old, white tablecloths that seemed out of place stood guard at the remaining walls. Pictures of the Amalfi coast and the monuments of Rome- the Colosseum, Pantheon, St Peter's, etc- were sprinkled across the walls. No one was at the counter and so the four walked over to one of the tables and sat down.

A middle aged woman with a gold wedding ring and her dark hair tied back in a bun suddenly appeared at their table.

"What can I get you all?" she asked, her accent thick yet indistinguishable.

"Some menus?" Maecenas reasoned.

She disappeared and, five seconds later, returned with menus, a bottle of water and some glasses; no one saw where she got them from. They all eyed each other suspiciously.

"The soup of the day is onion."

She disappeared again. No one knew where she went but a small door at the back of the room shut softly.

"This place is... odd?" Livia whispered after another second, trying not to be overheard.

Maecenas and Octavian shrugged, Agrippa was too consumed by the menu to hear her.

Agrippa usually took it upon himself to order for everyone else. This was not simply because he was obsessed with food, or was attempting to control the situation, but because he was one of those people who was actually good at ordering for everyone else. Like, he was uncannily good at it. So, after a moment of scanning the menu he had made up his mind, and returned to reality.

"Where is she?" he asked.

"Dunno," Maecenas replied.

"What do you mean you 'dunno'?"

"She just- disappeared," Octavian expanded.

"Then how do we order-"

Suddenly, the waitress appeared again.

"Ready to order?"

Agrippa ordered. The waitress disappeared once more. The four of them sat staring at each other in silence; they were too afraid to speak. They all merely stewed in the question "Where in the world are we?" until three servers came out with their food.

Now, Agrippa had decided to order a variety of food. A very odd variety of food. This included: a margherita pizza, a pepperoni pizza, garlic bread, pad Thai, and a lamb ragu with penne. His friends all eyed him suspiciously.

"Trust me," he raised his hands defensively.

Surprisingly, they did. Even more surprisingly, the food was some of the best they'd ever had. In fact, the pad Thai, in Maecenas' honest opinion, was the best thing he had ever consumed.

"Livia, this is how you cook pasta," Octavian teased, pointing at the final piece of pasta, cooked to the perfect level of al dente, left in the bowl.

"If you ever complain about that one time again, I swear to god I'm gonna be serving you beans next time I cook for you."

Maecenas snorted, "As if we'll ever let you cook again."

"You never know!"

Once they finished, the waitress appeared from thin air once more and delivered the cheque unto them. Octavian payed, then they hurried out the door, just in time to see a group of six guys in black suits saunter in.

"That place is a front for something, isn't it?" Maecenas said as they walked back to the car park.

"Probably," the other three replied in unison.

"We'll be going again, aren't we?" he said again.

"Yep," three voices responded.

Chapter Text

I'd still love you if you were bald...

Agrippa couldn't get the words out of his head as he stared at Octavian's ceiling at circa one in the morning. It had been a week since he had walked in on that conversation and he dreaded to think about what would have happened had he not appeared. Not that he cared, of course. No, of course he didn't care because, well, why would he? Love could be a purely platonic feeling! He loved Octavian but it was nothing romantic so why would it be any different for Octavian and Livia? He clenched his jaw. Nothing would have happened. That was that.

I'd still love you if you were bal-

Fuck.

He shot up. Octavian turned to look at him with surprise, tearing his gaze away from the spreadsheet he had curled himself over to get a better understanding of his company's finances.

"Would you still love me if I was a worm?"

Octavian blinked.

"What?"

Agrippa regretted asking but he knew it was too late to pivot or back down.

"Would you still love me if I was a worm?"

"Why?"

"Dunno."

That was a lie. Agrippa wondered if Octavian knew it was a lie- he always seemed to know when he was lying. Oh god, did Octavian know it was a lie? What else did he know? Did he know that Agrippa couldn't stop thinking about-

Octavian turned his eyes back to the screen.

"Are you a male or female worm?"

"What?"

"Are you going to change genders as a worm or-"

"Why does that matter-"

"Because male worms are arseholes."

"How do you know that?"

"Because-"

Agrippa sighed, not wanting to hear Octavian recite the entire Wikipedia page for worms, "I'm a gender neutral worm."

"Well would I know you were the worm?"

Agrippa grumbled, falling backward back onto the pillow.

"Fine, if you were a gender neutral worm and I knew you were the worm yes, I'd still love you and I'd put you in a little worm farm and keep you in my room forever and ever," he paused, his silence a sign he was being sincere and not just trying to shut Agrippa up, "Happy?"

"Yeah..."

Agrippa turned over onto his side to finally convince himself he was happy and go to sleep. He closed his eyes and then-

I'd still love you if you were ba-

Fuck.

_

Scribonia, quite unfortunately, woke up on Saturday morning to find a party in her kitchen. Now this was unfortunate not because Scribonia had any issue with parties- she quite enjoyed them, actually- or the people in this party- she didn't mind them either, actually. No, she was simply upset because it was Saturday and on Saturday she liked to do three things: wake up with her flatmate beside her, walk into her kitchen in the quiet of the morning, and bake all day. However, with this invasion of her cooking space, none of these activities were possible.

"What are you guys doing?"

"Virgin sacrifice," Livia replied dryly, not looking at her.

Her dark hair had slipped over her shoulder as she peered down at a piece of paper on the counter, framing her face almost perfectly.

Octavian snorted, inspecting the same page; no one else laughed.

"I was going to make pancakes."

"Oh," Livia paused, looking up apologetically, "We'll move if we're in your way-"

"Oh no, no, no," Scribonia smiled, "it's not that. I just wanted to know if you guys were hungry."

She received four eager nods and, with a wide grin, she forgot about why she was annoyed in the first place. Breezing past the island, she grabbed the flour, eggs, milk, butter. A whisk. A bowl. A spoon. Measuring cups. The flour made a soft "pfft" sound as it fell into the bowl. Crack. Crack. Crack. She dropped the egg shells into the bin, washed her hands (being ever cautious with eggs), poured in some milk, whisked. More milk. More whisking. Milk. Whisk. Milk. Whisk. There! She then scrounged up vanilla extract and sugar, added a bit of both, and then realised her focus had become so consumed by the batter in front of her she had not realised someone was talking to her.

"Have you talked to Sextus recently?" Octavian asked, for the third time in a row.

"You know Sextus, Scrib?" Livia asked. Scribonia smiled.

"Yeah- he's my cousin-in-law. But I haven't talked to him in a bit."

Octavian nodded, "Tell us if he texts you."

"'Kay."

She went back to making pancakes. Maecenas said something about Horace, Octavian made a joke about not being able to use him as their virgin sacrifice anymore. Livia laughed. Scribonia frowned slightly.

Once she had finished the first pancake, she gave it to Octavian- the first pancake was always the worst.

"Do we reckon I should get a haircut?" Maecenas started, out of the blue.

"Why do you want a haircut?" Agrippa asked dryly.

"Mullets are in now, apparently."

"Who the fuck told you that?" Livia replied.

"The fashion gods- you wouldn't get it."

"I think they were lying to you."

Scribonia laughed a little. Livia smiled back- she loved the way Scribonia laughed.

Maecenas opened his mouth to say more but decided to abstain. Instead, he marvelled at the sight in front of him. It was, in his opinion, the pinnacle of human romance. You see, Livia was looking at Scribonia with loving affection in her eyes and Scribonia was looking at Livia with the same type of affection. Sweet, right? But then- and here was the kicker- Octavian was staring at the two with the kind of disappointment that comes from unrequited (and repressed) affection for someone else (Livia, if Maecenas were to guess). And who was looking at Octavian like Tantalus does an apple, yearning for some acknowledgement? Agrippa.

The four seemed to freeze in this scene. It was as if time had stopped. But time hadn't stopped because time doesn't stop (that's the tragedy of it, after all). Everyone was reminded of this fact when the scent of burning infiltrated their nostrils. Scribonia yelped, spun around, and grabbed the pan. A burning pancake was dropped on Octavian's plate. He screamed and jumped back. However, Octavian was currently sitting on a stool. This meant that "jumping back" resulted in him falling backward off of the stool, onto the floor. When he returned to reality (and the flaming pancake had been put out) Octavian found four pairs of eyes staring at him. They were considering how exponentially stupid he was for ending up on the ground.

"It was on fire!" he retorted to no jest in particular.

"What was it going to do?" Agrippa asked, "Bite you?"

"Burn my face off!"

Unsurprisingly, this answer dd not seem to impress the masses. The other four returned to their prior conversation whilst Octavian spent a moment longer on the floor. After this moment, he returned back to his chair, 99% sure he bruised his coccyx.

_

"I'M GONNA DO IT!"

Octavian walked back into the living room and dropped whatever he was holding.

The scene he was greeted with was horrifying. It was so horrifying, in fact, that it made the experience of climbing under one's desk to grab a pen they dropped in the middle of class seem like a pleasant experience. You see, Maecenas had (unfortunately) decided to give himself a haircut in the kitchen. Livia had then, seeing as she would be at theirs for movie night (every night was movie night, to Scribonia's disappointment), volunteered to cut his hair for him so that he would not look like he was attacked by a toddler who just discovered what happened when you put an electric shaver too close to someone's hair. This meant that a little salon had been set up in the living room. Maecenas and Livia had gone off to discuss styles in the bathroom, Octavian was getting whatever he had just dropped on the ground, leaving Agrippa alone. In a room. With sheers. And an emotional crisis.

For readers who have never had an emotional crisis in the middle of the night, looked in the mirror, and thought "A fringe might be nice" whilst slowly reaching for a pair of scissors, this conundrum may seem odd. However, all Agrippa could hear was "I'd still love you if you were bald" and all he could see was something that could make him bald. It would be a social experiment, he told himself as he tried to wrestle the shears from Livia, who had sprinted into the room to snatch them back after having a premonition something dreadful would happen.

This was the predicament Octavian found himself in. He watched, too stunned to speak, in horror. What the fuck was Agrippa doing? After all, Agrippa had beautiful hair. His hair was so luxurious, in fact, "hair" did not seem to be the right word for it at all- "luscious locks" was more fitting. He had hair so thick and curly and amazing that it could only be described as "Alexander the Great hair" and Octavian was determined to braid it one day. So far, he had had zero luck in this endeavour, so the very thought of Agrippa shearing it off before he could even brush it filled him with outrage.

"LET ME DO IT!" Agrippa yelled again, shocked at Livia's strength as she had not yet lost her grasp on the shaver. He made a mental note to ask for her exercise routine.

Livia, who had never willingly worked out in her life, just let out a garbled yell in response.

Maecenas tried to wrench him back from the powerpoint with all the strength in his body (aka "none at all") and was almost succeeding at pushing Agrippa closer to where all the sharp cut-y things were.

"What is happening?" Octavian asked after another moment of watching the battle.

Everyone froze, turning to stare at him. Agrippa's eyes widened, Livia realised she was crouching on a table, and everyone realised Maecenas was currently clinging onto Agrippa like a backpack, his feet lifted well above the ground.

"He wants to cut all his hair off," Livia replied hastily, like a child trying to shift the blame to their sibling for breaking the ugliest vase in the house.

Agrippa had no retort.

"Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa!" Octavian reprimanded.

"Ooooooh full name," Maecenas whistled.

"Why would you do that?" Octavian continued, a stern disappointment filling his voice.

Agrippa paused. He certainly couldn't tell the truth. The truth, after all, was a rubbish thing to say on any occasion, nonetheless in situations like this where the truth was painful, unrequited, and, to some extent, exceptionally mortifying. Thus, he decided on a toned-down response: "Dunno."

Octavian's eye twitched slightly.

"Ooooooh he's mad," Maecenas whistled again. Livia shushed him this time.

"I do have free will, you know?" Agrippa replied, ignoring Maecenas' mocking and Livia's shushing.

His eyes levelled Octavian who, at his height, should not have been intimidating. Nevertheless, he was. Agrippa was secretly pissing himself. What could he do? Seriously! What could Octavian do to him? It was his choice, he could not care that much! In fact, if you asked Octavian he'd admit he wasn't that mad about any of it, just shocked. However, Agrippa could not convince himself this, the objective truth, was true because, if he did, that would mean Octavian didn't care about his hair. And, if Octavian didn't care about his hair, then he didn't care about him. Never mind the fact that Agrippa's sole drive to shave his hair off was to see if Octavian would still love him. Never mind, the fact that his actions- and thoughts, at this point- were less sensical than the ramblings of a madman on LSD.

"Yeah and the rest of us would have to suffer for your actions."

Octavian could vividly remember the time when they were 16 and Agrippa decided to chop a chunk of his hair off in the middle of a maths class. It had been everyone's problem for the next year and a half. Heaven knows what he would be like in the awkward stage of growing out a buzz cut!

"Now this is where he'll say 'Think of the utilitarian argument'," Maecenas whispered, his excitement clear despite his hushed tone. He loved watching the pair fight- they always fought like they were either about to kiss or never talk to each other ever again and, whenever they fought, one always knew they would be back to sitting in each other's laps (both literally and figuratively) by the next day.

"Think of the utilitarian argument," Octavian then said, causing Livia to raise her eyebrows at Maecenas, impressed. "Surely you shaving your hair off will make us all miserable and, thus, is not a good use of your free will."

"Oh look at you with your big fancy words. What if I look really good with no hair? Didn't think about that, did you?"

"You once cried for two days straight because you cut off a chunk of hair so insignificant no one could tell the difference."

"Yeah but this time might be different!"

"But nothing ever changes, Agrippa! Not with you, at least!"

Agrippa's shoulders dropped. Octavian's heart deflated sadly like a two week old balloon which had been holding on to whatever air was still inside it for as long as possible and finally faltered. Even Maecenas hesitated at this change in tone which felt like it was about more than an impromptu haircut. Livia took the opportunity to wrestle the weapon out of Agrippa's hands.

Scribonia then appeared, an empty bowl for popcorn nestled in her hands.

"Why is there cake on the ground?" she asked immediately.

The room turned to look at the spot on the floor in front of Octavian where a tower of chocolate cake had splattered onto the ground. Why Octavian had chocolate cake in his room, he had no idea, but he did and suddenly remembered what he had gone to get prior to witnessing the beginnings of a tragedy.

"Agrippa wants to be bald," he muttered hollowly, staring at the floor.

"But your hair is beautiful!" Scribonia exclaimed.

"Exactly!" Livia and Maecenas yelled at the same time.

Agrippa and Octavian both kept their eyes glued to the cake on the ground, both on the verge of an epiphany that neither of them would ever reach and would run from until the end of time if they had to.

_

As per usual, by Sunday morning Agrippa and Octavian had forgotten about the fight- or had begun to pretend to forget it- and sat in the kitchen looking at furniture together. Maecenas trodded into the kitchen, proud of the fact he had woken up at a decent time, and froze upon seeing the other two acting so amicably. He shrugged and mused to himself that, maybe, some things never do change.

He filled the kettle and put it on to boil.

"Does anyone want a drink?" he asked in a dull tone.

He received no response.

Everyone pretended to ignore the abandoned chair surrounded by hair cutting equipment.

He got two mugs down from the cupboard, sensing Livia would soon arrive and happily join him for a cup of tea. A few seconds later, he heard the lock click and door shut. Et voila: she had arrived.

"Are you making tea?" she asked, sitting next to Agrippa at the island.

"Oui," Maecenas responded, staring at the kettle with an odd determination.

"Can I have one?"

"Already started making yours."

Livia grinned and thanked him. She did not really know how else to respond to the gesture. Perhaps it wasn't that grand- preparing a cup of tea for someone else without their needing to ask seemed devastatingly banal- but there was a sentiment, an undertone, to it Livia did not really know how to react to. In reality, it was that feeling of simply belonging without having to claw out space for herself which she gloried in. Her keys jingled as she fiddled with them, looking at the cheap news-agency tag on it: "Olivia" without the "O". She rolled the thought through her mind, trying to find some deeper meaning for why she felt the way she felt right now, how it was different to how she had felt in the past, but could not find the answer, quickly skipping over the realisation to save herself from the awful feeling she knew would succeed it.

There was one thing, however, Livia was glad to know: Agrippa still had his hair.

She managed to stop only for a second to wonder if Octavian would react the same way if she tried to shave her hair off.

You see, whilst the words "I'd still love you if you were bald" had been haunting Agrippa like the ghost of Christmas past, they had been circling Livia's mind like a shark about to strike if sharks attacking something made one feel elated instead of like they had just been ripped to shreds by rows and rows of sharp teeth. In fact, the way the words tasted in her mind was so sweet, bitterness had begun to clog up her throat, making her feel ill, making her fear the eventual crash after the sugar high. However, luckily for Livia, she would absolutely loose it if her hair was any shorter than her shoulders and was well aware of this. Thus, she would not be conducting any "social experiments" any time soon.

"Does anyone want to go to IKEA?" Octavian asked, "I need furniture."

Normally, Agrippa would have declined the offer but, he reasoned with himself, Livia seemed too excited to accompany Octavian on account of buying scented candles, and he could only imagine they'd need someone to lift all the flatpack furniture. So he also said he'd go, mostly for the latter reason (or so he told himself).

Maecenas had already started to walk to the door as soon when he heard "IKEA".

God, he loved IKEA.

_

Agrippa had many talents but, by far, putting IKEA furniture together was among his best. Now, whether the furniture was put together correctly he had no idea- the instruction manual was, in his opinion, more a suggestion than actual instruction- but it stayed together very well and nothing had ever looked wrong.

Alternatively, Octavian found it more entertaining to watch Agrippa put furniture together. Livia, too, found the appeal of this activity as she sat beside him, leaning against one of the walls of Octavian's office, watching a master at work.

Maecenas walked in with a tray of coffee cups and snacks, and sat beside Livia.

"You three are creepy, you know that?" Agrippa said suddenly.

"Yep," Maecenas grinned, "but you love the glory."

Agrippa couldn't argue. He did, indeed, love the glory. Being useful, after all, produced a feeling within him that was comparable to the euphoria of being on substances much more illegal than building furniture.

Livia's phone buzzed. She picked it up.

"What is it?" Octavian asked.

"Scribonia wants to know where I am," she replied whilst texting back.

"You can invite her if you want. We're the only ones here," Octavian mused, leaning his head back onto the wall behind him. It was boring and plain white and he hated it simply for the reason that it was irritating to look at.

She nodded and hummed and texted Scribonia this information.

"So you and Scribonia?" Octavian asked.

"We've been through this before," Livia groaned.

Agrippa and Maecenas' ears pricked up like those of a dog who had just heard the word "cheese".

"Things change," he shrugged.

"Rarely."

"But they do."

Livia would have replied "Not according to you, they don't" but decided that was too fresh a wound to prod.

"Does anyone have a projector?" Livia asked, desperate to change the subject, "This wall would be great for movie night."

Octavian had yet to consider the possibility that his white wall could have any use except boring him to death. However, he did like this idea and so he stood up to find a storage cupboard that might have a projector.

Maecenas looked out through the window across from him. It was a sunny afternoon and there was not a cloud in the sky. He tilted his head and thought of nothing in particular. Then he decided thinking of nothing in particular was a waste of time and he should put his mind to something actually important.

"I never got that haircut."

Agrippa snorted.

Livia was shocked any of them found the previous night's events amusing but, then again, what would life be like if one was never found amusement in its follies?

"I'd say we could do it here but there's nothing to do it with," Livia mused.

Circa five minutes later (of course you don't have to wait five minutes seeing as we are experiencing this story in an extra diegetic space) Scribonia arrived, having been close to the building upon seeing Livia's text.

The sight she walked in on would never ever make sense to her, no matter how much context she had.

Octavian was rather proud of himself, having found a projector which he was currently setting up on a table, and was yapping about what he could watch on his amazing blank wall. Agrippa was sitting cross legged on the floor trying to figure out what to do with a screw for a couch whose name seemed more like someone had let their cat walk across their keyboard when naming it instead of an actual word. Maecenas sat in a swivel chair, Livia was about to slap him if he did not stop spinning on it. She held a razor in one hand and a pair of scissors were tucked into her belt as she tried to section Maecenas' hair.

Suddenly, Scribonia always felt like she was walking in at inopportune moments. Suddenly, Scribonia started to realise that maybe, possibly, perhaps, this was not where she was meant to be right now. Suddenly, she ignored this feeling and coughed.

"What is going on?"

"I'm getting a mullet."

"I am not giving you a mullet," Livia sighed.

"But-"

"It's either go mullet-less or have Rapunzel-length hair."

"But-"

"Sh."

"Fine."

Scribonia paused. Then continued, "Where did you get the razor?"

"Antonius has a box of hairdressing stuff in his office," Octavian replied, fiddling with something on the projector, "he calls it his 'grooming kit'."

Livia looked at her hand in horror as she dropped the razor to the ground, "What the fuck has that touched!"

If one deemed Livia's reaction out-of-proportion, then Maecenas' would be absolutely irrational:

"YOU ARE NOT TOUCHING MY HAIR WITH THAT!"

Octavian sighed audibly, "I put a fresh razor on it guys, don't be stupid."

This was a lie. Octavian had not changed anything about the equipment he stole. In all honesty, he could not have been fucked to do that. Antonius surely wouldn't be stupid enough to be doing that sort of "care" at work, could he? Besides, any ailments of that region would definitely have been featured in some tabloid at this point.

This response pleased the other two who continued on their hair-styling odyssey. Scribonia remained in the doorway, Agrippa swore as he knocked his finger on the couch. He motioned for Scribonia to come help him push it into the corner and she, without any other thought, obeyed.

Livia susprised herself as she made quick work of Maecenas' hair. She surprised herself further by doing a decent job. Even Maecenas was pleased, despite the fact he did not have a mullet, and was now considering dying it pink. No one thought it wise to suggest that, maybe, that wasn't the best idea at this very moment. Octavian got the projector set up but realised he had nothing to connect to it. Agrippa finished building a desk. Scribonia then suggested they all went home, the group agreed, and shuffled to Octavian's car.

Now, for those who put any weight or credit to these things, this was the seating arrangement inside the vehicle and how they would always be sat in the car from now on- though none of them were aware of this- and for those prone to overthinking, take from this what you will: Octavian sat in the driver's seat, Livia in the passenger's, Agrippa sat behind Octavian, Maecenas behind Livia. This left Scribonia squeezed in the middle of them hoping, desperately, for the car ride to be over as soon as possible. However, her torment would not cease that quickly because someone suggested they go to a drive-thru and everyone else had agreed.

So this was her life now, Scribonia guessed, squeezed into where she did not exactly fit, where, no matter the position she was in, she was either too small and had a bit of wiggle room in the space, or too large and unable to fit at all. This was a new feeling for her. After all, Scribonia had never thought about whether or not her name was found on news agency key chains or whether her hair was slightly out of place or whether she would ever be seen as more than what she told the world she was. Maybe that said more about her companions in the car than it did her but, at the end of the day, Scribonia had never felt as if she was in an alien world and was now beginning to realise how overwhelmingly lonely it was. The paper bag in her hands crinkled as she folded over the opening.

"What do we think of Lepidus?" Octavian mused aloud as he stopped at a traffic light.

"He's a top," Maecenas offered.

Livia turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow at him, "And that helps us, how?"

He shrugged, "Octavian could use his magical switch pow-"

"If you keep talking, you're gonna be walking home," Octavian replied.

Maecenas, of course, loved one thing above all else: poetry. And what was poetic? Drama. So, of course, he liked to cause it whenever possible. Thus, he decided in the split second between Octavian's threat and his response, a small evil was justifiable in order to create something beautiful. Yes, he decided, he would write a nice Haiku about it later.

"Fine," he groaned, "whatever you say, mum and dad."

Four sets of eyes turned to stare at Maecenas as he grinned like a cat. His work, it seemed, was done. How did he know this? Well he saw how Octavian's eyes had flicked to look at Livia before boring into him in the rearview mirror. He saw how Livia, in the second after Octavian had turned away, threw a glance to catch the driver's reaction. These two glances told him everything he wanted to know without saying anything at all. Amazing, isn't it?

Nevertheless, Agrippa and Scribonia were not pleased, not that they would say anything but their displeasure spoke for itself.

_

Now, it seems, we should be introduced to the two men who, despite their good intentions, had made a mess of everyone else's lives. Why it has taken so long for the issue of Brutus and Cassius to be addressed remains a mystery. Why, as Octavian was driving back to his flat a few weeks after his uncle's death, the authorities had not arrested or even investigated either of them was not as difficult to understand as it was dubious.

Brutus, who currently sat on the deck of his beach house somewhere far away (though not distant enough to be unreachable or hidden from those looking hard enough), had never necessarily disliked Caesar. He was about Antonius' age but of a sterner demeanour and, whilst he had never loved the victim of his most violent crime, any bad blood between them had always been diluted by familiarity. It was the kind of animosity one felt toward their next door neighbour whose views made one scratch their head a little and who one was 99% sure was having sexual relations with their mother. That's because they were and the entire world was aware of this fact. In fact, everyone was so aware that this hypothetical neighbour and one's mother were screwing that a rumour had started that one was the child of said neighbour.

Okay, maybe Brutus was not the fondest of Caesar.

But, perhaps, the image of your mother's lover taking over the world was unsettling enough to warrant the smallest murderous thought. However, Caesar had not died because of his numerous flings. No, Caesar had died because he was an arse set on world domination, on pushing everyone else out of power through over-inflating his own ego and, like all balloons with to much air, it was bound to burst.

Fortunately for Brutus, he had found a kindred spirit in Cassius who had found a similar sense of familiarity in a dozen other people whose names and personal lives cannot be discussed in a timely or poetic manner.

Now Cassius, whose name shall never be as synonymous with betrayal as his partner's, hated Caesar and what he stood for. This was partially because Cassius had always found himself connected to those who also hated Caesar. (It's funny how that happens, isn't it? How we slowly become those around us? Perhaps it is the deepest form of love; perhaps it is the deepest form of hate). Cassius currently sat beside Brutus on the aforementioned deck, staring out at the sea. Whilst Brutus mused on his guilt, Cassius anticipated their victory.

After all, they were so, so close to winning. What were they to win? Cassius did not know but he was, he decided, on the verge of winning something. The future did, in fact, seem quite sunny for all involved in this rather morbid affair. Caesar's replacement was young, inexperienced, and Cicero- who was, rather surprisingly, disdainful of their actions- would be done with him in the time it took Cassius to wipe his arse. For Cassius, Brutus, and the board, success seemed imminent- they were rid of Caesar, they were finally in control. And if that didn't happen? If the tides turned in Antonius' direction? Well, it wouldn't be much worse than Caesar himself. Antonius stood to benefit and the board would no doubt win in the long run. Whilst he was sharp, Antonius had never been one to usurp power from anyone or anything. He was, after all, Caesar's dog. Thus, Cassius was certain his future would turn out to be great.

The pair sat and watched the sun set. One smiled, the other shifted awkwardly. They both hated Caesar; they both had won.

But at what cost?

Chapter Text

Mark Antonius stared at his screen.

Initially, he had sat down at his desk to check his emails. He had then decided, in that very moment, to begin writing a memoir. Then, he had tossed and turned between writing an autobiography and a memoir before he realised he was not entirely sure he knew the difference. Thus, he opened another tab to look it up, saw a suggested search which said "What is the difference between a pen and pencil?", laughed, recoiled, decided he didn't really know the difference between the two writing implements, clicked on it, and went down a Reddit rabbit hole. This meant he had found, and started playing, a version of "2048" but all the pictures were bad images of Octavian stolen from Octavia's instagram. Eventually, he had gotten the "2048" tile (which was a picture of Octavian in all of his Year 9 glory), celebrated for five seconds, remembered what he had set out to do, and now stared at his empty inbox.

His inbox shouldn't be this empty, should it?

Antonius had spent the past few years in a liminal state of importance, irrelevance, and total obsolescence. He was famous, sure. He was rich, sure. He had power, sure. But he was, and always had been, Caesar's shadow- he had always grown taller when the sun hit Caesar just right, followed him wherever he went, spent his life at the top still looking up at Caesar on his throne.

Now Caesar was gone.

What was he supposed to be now?

Could he become his own man now?

An email popped into his inbox and he jumped forward as if he had been caught in a compromising position.

Feeling as if the message were important, he began to mutter it aloud: "Looking for a Sunny getaway from the pre-Winter work blues?"

Okay- so the email wasn't important. He continued to read it anyway.

"Surely you have work to do."

Antonius had started to call Octavian- who had just walked into his office, unannounced- "the brat". This was because he was a brat and Antonius saw himself as a bearer of truth. Of course, he also hoped he didn't accidentally call Octavian that to his face because then he would be the arsehole and Antonius was 1000000% certain he was never the arsehole in any situation.

"I've done it all already."

This was a kind of half-truth as far as Mark was concerned. Had he done any work as of yet? No. Had he had any work to do in the first place? No. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, Mark had already done everything he needed to do.

"What are we going to do about Cicero?"

Straight to business then, Mark thought as he raised an eyebrow.

"Going behind Lepidus' back, are we?" Antonius asked, believing himself sly once more.

Octavian would later snort at the implication that he, who Antonius despised, would approach him first instead of Lepidus. In fact, he only went to Antonius alone because he had texted Lepidus the night before, been told they should talk to Mark as soon as possible, and Lepidus happened to call in sick that day, leaving Octavian to begin the discussion alone.

"He has been consulted," Octavian replied, rather austerely.

"Brighten up kid, it won't be that hard."

"Care to explain?"

Now Antonius, for his part, had a plan. Well he didn't have a plan, per se, but he had been told a rather good plan by his fiancée, who had enough cunning for the pair of them. Fulvia, whose relationship with Antonius was more like that of a flatmate with added benefits than a real lover at this point, was well known for her business acumen and her hatred of Cicero. In fact, she hated him to such an extent that her favourite pastime had become plotting his downfall and all of this conniving had led to a deep search into possible blackmail. So, essentially, the plan to be rid of Cicero was to, well, blackmail him in the most devastating way possible.

Of course, when he revealed this information to "the brat" he was met with a scornful scowl. Antonius decided that had it been anyone else's idea he would have loved it.

"Isn't that illegal?"

"Who gives a fuck about the law?" Mark sighed.

"Immoral, then?"

"Eh," he shrugged, "there's plenty of time for guilt and regret when you're rich and on your death bed dying at the age of 102."

Octavian wondered whether or not one would be lying on their death bed if they were not, indeed, in the act of "dying". He decided against asking about this minute detail for fear of prodding the bear.

"Talk tomorrow I guess?" Octavian sighed, turning to leave.

Just as Octavian was about to walk out, Antonius decided he needed to have the final word.

"You know someone made a version of '2048' with your face on it?"

"I'm aware," Octavian sighed, "Jealous, now, are we?"

As the door shut softly, Antonius began to wonder why no one had ever made a version of "2048" with pictures of him. He grumbled and began to idly spin around in his chair before getting up and going to lunch at 10 AM.

_

Livia had taken up knitting. Not because she enjoyed knitting or had any need to knit but because Scribonia liked it and she had nothing better to do with her spare time. Thus, she had decided to make a scarf which was looking more like it was a jumper for an ant than any garment for a human.

Maecenas puzzled at her project as he reclined on the couch in her flat.

"Don't judge," she grumbled.

"What else am I meant to do? Wave my wand and make it- whatever 'it' is- into something impossible to judge?"

Scribonia, who was off in another room and therefore only heard part of the sentence, yelled, "There will be no wand waving in this house!"

With a sigh, Livia looked up from the few, disappointing rows of yarn she had managed to knit and leveled Maecenas with a jaded stare, "It is possible just to not judge, y'know?"

"Then life wouldn't be fun."

Livia sighed again, left with no retort. Life would be no fun if she couldn't judge people.

Agrippa then, rather suddenly, sludged into the room. He looked around for a moment, and then stared at the gathering on the couch.

"I thought Octavian was here," he started dryly.

"Why would he be here?" Maecenas replied as Livia tried to return to knitting.

"Where else would he be?"

After a moment of silent consideration, it was agreed that Octavian would, in fact, be no where else. As Maecenas opened his mouth to say something more, Octavian stumbled into the flat.

"Speak of the devil, and he shall appear," Livia mused to herself as Agrippa started interrogating him about where he had been.

Octavian furrowed his brow, "I was looking for you next door. I went out with someone..."

"Who?" Maecenas asked, feeling rather out of the loop.

"Some girl called 'Claudia'. Antonius set us up."

"Set you up?" Livia raised her eyebrow.

"CLAUDIA?!" Scribonia yelled, poking her head out of the room she was in, "As in his niece, Claudia? As in 'makes the colour beige seem interesting'-Claudia?"

"You're being harsh," Octavian sighed as he went to collapse on the couch, disturbing Maecenas from his lounging, "She isn't that bad."

No, in fact Claudia was a very sweet girl and her biggest red flag was probably that she was related to Mark. But she was just- well- Claudia. She was the kind of person whose biggest interest was just being nice. Not kind, not funny, not smart, just nice. This, in itself, was not a fatal flaw, either, it simply meant that most conversations with her felt like one was trying to swim in one of those inflatable paddling pools for babies and even this, in itself, would have been a perfectly fine quality for everyone except Octavian for whom the prospect of being "just nice" was almost as horrific as spending an eternity in the circle of hell known as a suburban cul-de-sac.

"But why?" Scribonia groaned, "You know what she's like!"

"Well, Antonius set us up two weeks ago and-"

"YOU TWO HAVE BEEN GOING OUT FOR TWO WEEKS? SHE'S BASICALLY YOUR GIRLFRIEND!"

"No I was going to-"

"Why must you torture yourself in this way? Are you okay? Like, seriously, why are you doing this to yourself?"

Scribonia's dislike for Claudia was only so strong because she had always been forced to play with her when they were growing up because they were both girls and, thus, not allowed to be included in Daddy's Business (TM) when their fathers met at the other's house. There were only so many times one could explain that the Barbies did not have to abide by the law all the time seeing as Barbieland was an anarchist state and so they didn’t hav etc have banal occupations like florist or teacher or dentist.

"Well I broke up with her," Octavian responded sharply, "you don't have to call your therapist for me!"

Agrippa, who was still standing near the door and had been completely pushed past by Octavian, had now recovered from the shock of not knowing his friend was seeing someone else and felt vaguely guilty about the shower they took together that morning...

"Why didn't you tell us?" Livia cut in before Agrippa could ask the exact same question.

Wearily, he point to Scribonia, "'Cause I knew she'd do this."

Scribonia sighed, "None of you understand, okay? She is horrid!"

"You know that's not right."

"It's pretty fucking close, Octavian."

With a strained noise of frustration, Scribonia spun around and stomped out of the room before her rage at the mention of Claudia made her explode.

"Is she really that bad?" Maecenas asked.

"No!" Octavian replied. This was not entirely the truth- she could get close to being "that bad" but he refused to admit that to preserve what was left of his dignity.

_

Agrippa, decidedly, spent the rest of the day and night sulking. It wasn't that they hadn't dated other people before (while they had never necessarily been "exclusive" with anyone- each had had other entanglements- they always, somehow, returned to the other like a meteor crashing back to Earth, drawn in by forces outside of its control). No, Agrippa didn't give a shit about Claude or whatever her name was.

It was that he hadn't known.

This fact set his stomach slightly askew, as if he had just eaten a tub of yoghurt with chunks he wasn’t entirely sure was meant to be in it. Simply put: Agrippa didn't feel good about it. But it didn't matter. It was over.

There was a knock on his door, and Agrippa looked away from his phone to see Octavian slip in from the light of the hallway. The window was open, despite the cold outside, and pale light filtered in, casting him in shades of blue. To some degree, it is a fallacy we can't see at night, Agrippa believed he could see things clearer at night, in fact, but maybe that was because it was only now he could see his friend, truly, wholly, flawlessly. Octavian, whose hair was practically silver in this light, dragged himself through the room and flopped down on the bed beside him, faceplanting onto the mattress. God, he must have been tired. Agrippa set down his phone and turned to look at him.

"Did you fuck her?"

"Jealous?"

Agrippa snorted, "No. Curious."

"No. Didn't really like her all that much."

"Never knew that was a prerequisite."

"Antonius just wanted to piss me off with a bad date. I tried to piss him off by pretending to go out with her."

"You did go out with her."

"You know what I mean," he grumbled, "She didn't like me much either, if you think I'm an arsehole for pretending to want to date her. I reckon she just liked the free meals at fancy restaurants."

"How do you know?"

"She thanked me for breaking up with her!" Octavian turned his head to look at his companion, "Who actually thanks someone?"

Agrippa shrugged, "She's just polite, I guess."

"Maybe."

With a subtle nod, Agrippa paused and hummed over a point.

"Why do you care if I think you're an arsehole or not?"

"Would you care if I thought you were a terrible person?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"Whether we'd still be friends if you did."

Octavian furrowed his brow and bit his tongue. He, quite simply, could not fathom a world in which they were not friends, in which they could not exist without the other. Octavian, who moored himself to those he loved with chains rather than twine, who had never seemed to find a way to love in finite doses, had never considered the fact he could turn his back on any one of his friends, never mind Agrippa, who was always there, who was always fair, who would never leave his side. No, Agrippa was not someone he could just discard and never think of again. He swallowed, "I don't think a world exists where we aren't together".

Funnily enough, Octavian meant what he said but didn't entirely understand what it meant.

_

Livia took a while to fall asleep. She always took forever to fall asleep, always finding herself staring at the fan on her ceiling, or a mark on her sheets, or that speck on the wall which was either, dirt, a bug, or a trick of the light. Sometimes she would recite the same song in her head until she bored herself to sleep, but sometimes that would keep her awake. Other times she simply repeated the alphabet backward until she tired of it. But, most of the time she just hoped she would eventually fall asleep.

Simply "hoping" was not doing the trick on this night.

She didn't know why she was in such a mood. Sure, Scribonia was snoring slightly but "snoring" for Scribonia sounded more like a rabbit squeaking than actual snoring. God, her father always snored. Loudly, too; one could hear him from a room at the other end of the house! She wondered if Octavian snored. Probably not. People like him didn't snore. Agrippa probably did but Livia knew Octavian wouldn't care if Agrippa did. He'd probably care if she did, though. Then again, she didn't snore. He probably didn't care about that, either. Scribonia shifted, tossing her leg over Livia's torso. Why was she thinking about this so much?

Why hadn't she known Octavian was seeing someone?

Why hadn't she realised Octavian could physically feel that way toward anyone but Agrippa?

Why did she care?

She slipped out of Scribonia's grasp and walked to her bathroom, deciding a shower was what she needed. Whilst running her hands through her hair, she turned on the shower. Well, she tried to. As she turned the knob, no water began to stream from the head. She twisted it again. Nothing. Dry as the Sahara. Fuck. Not again!

She made an exasperated kind of sound and turned away dramatically.

Had she not gotten her heart set on having a shower in that very moment, Livia would have just returned to bed and probably gone to sleep, frustrated but distracted from her other thoughts. But now she longed for a shower, to burn her woes away in water that was probably damaging her nerve endings. She pulled her towel from its rail, and walked across the hall.

Before unlocking her neighbours' door with a key they had never asked to be returned, she hesitated. In the past, she had had some... incidents... in that shower. No, it would be fine, what could go wrong? She turned her key and slipped inside.

As she traipsed in, someone yelped in the kitchen.

"Livia!" someone whispered in shock.

Octavian. Just who she wanted to see.

"Why are you here?" he whispered again.

He was currently sitting on the kitchen island, a mug filled with something which produced thin tendrils of steam nestled in his hands. He was wearing those god-awful plaid pajama pants and something twinkled in his eye which made Livia feel like she was a kid on Christmas eve.

"My shower isn't working," she sighed, "and I wanted one."

"It's one AM."

"So?"

"Why are you showering at one AM?"

She blinked.

"Why are you drinking coffee at one AM?"

"It's decaf."

It wasn't decaf, Octavian was just unwilling to let her win this argument. He always became defensive around her: she knew him too well for him not to be. Those who are unused to being understood live in fear of finally being so.

"If you say so."

They stared at each other for a moment. The silence buzzed, brought to life by the fridge beside which Livia stood. She licked her lips, he pretended not to notice the way he saw himself perfectly in her eyes, even if it was dark, even if she was now looking beyond him, out to the city.

"Is anyone else up?" she asked.

"Nope."

"You really shouldn't be drinking coffee this late."

"It's decaf."

"I know you're lying."

"Shut up."

She shook her head and laughed. How had she known? Could she read his mind? Why was she here? Why was it always them? There was no other way to explain it: every story, moment, memory seemed to end with the pair of them alone, together, like this. Nothing would feel right, as if it were tied in a perfect little bow, if he found himself with anyone else. Truly, the whole universe would be out of balance had anyone else walked into that room! Suddenly, the bitter aftertaste of coffee and a faint metallic taste flooded Octavian's mouth. He felt sick, so sick. His breath faltered. They had never talked of that night- did she even remember it? Did she know that he had never quite managed to escape it? Did she know she tasted of pomegranate and blood orange and ginger beer (though the latter was probably the remnants of his drink on her lips)? Did she know she was the best thing he had ever tasted?

The air hummed louder- melodious static- calling for something, calling for more, an entreaty for the inevitable to happen. But was it "inevitable"? Would it ever happen? Sure, it felt inevitable, like it had been chipped into stone by Fate or whoever writes what historians are to interpret, but it wasn't. Nothing was inevitable. Nothing except for death and taxes and the fact that, if he dropped his coffee cup, it would smash on the ground and cover them both in boiling hot liquid. What even was "it", anyway?

She laughed a little.

"You look so serious!" she smiled softly.

"Mark told me his plan to get rid of our opponents on the board."

"And?"

"I don't like it."

"Is it bad or will you feel guilty?"

"The latter."

"If it goes to shit then he'll cop the blame, you'll be fine. It'll probably be better for you."

He sighed and nodded. He knew that, understood it was what they needed to do. But night was when the world caught up with him- all those failures and mistakes, moments of mortification, everything he had ever done wrong haunted him when the sun went down. Maybe that's why he was sitting on his countertop, coddling a cup of coffee, at this time in the morning. (Or maybe he couldn't bear to think about her the way he was doing now with Agrippa lying next to him).

"I'll get your shower fixed tomorrow- it'll be quicker now I own the place."

Livia snorted.

"Yes, boss."

Rain began to tap on the window and the tips of Livia's lips turned upward. Without thinking, she began to muse aloud: "I've always wanted to be kissed in the rain."

"It's not as romantic as it looks in the movies."

"I wouldn't expect it to be."

She walked to the bathroom.

Octavian turned around and watched the rain as he heard the shower turn on, his mind was blank. It was just him, the rain, and his coffee which was still somehow too hot to drink. What was he waiting for? The perfect moment? The room was cool and it felt like something was falling into place- he could hear it "click" like the back of a remote after having its batteries replaced.

The shower stopped.

Livia returned a few minutes later to find a cup of tea sitting beside Octavian. She sat next to him without asking whether or not it was for her.

They sat together and watched the rain as if they were sitting on the edge of the universe, their legs dangling into the abyss.

"What's your favourite colour?" Livia asked, out of the blue.

Octavian had spent his entire life telling people his favourite colour was purple. He wasn't sure why he did it, he just thought it was a cool favourite colour to have, and only a few people knew what his actual favourite colour was.

"Red. Yours?"

"I don't know."

"That's literally the worst answer."

"Dark blue?"

He nodded slightly, "Better."

"But beige is the worst response. Or yellow. Or highlighter orange."

"You just have no whimsy if you don't like highlighter orange."

She tilted her head and turned to look at him, her dark hair, which she had let out once more after putting it up for the shower, fell like a waterfall behind her, framing her face in flowing darkness.

"I don't really know anything about you, do I?"

She laughed in amazement as she said it but there was a sadness in her voice that no one, not even Livia herself, could place. Octavian wanted to respond but all he could have said was the truth: "You know me better than most". However, the truth did not feel right to say. Not here, not now, not ever. Thus, he stayed silent. He just looked at her for a moment longer, placing his coffee down beside him.

Then, he kissed her.

Or, did she kiss him?

Did they even kiss each other at all?

The world went silent with only the steady drum of rain on glass marking that time was still passing, that they had not slipped outside of reality for this one, endless moment. Neither of them pulled back, neither of them thought anything, neither of them would have breathed had they not tried to bathe themself in the other as much as possible, fearing this would never happen again. Each eclipsed the other, trying to hide the world (and themselves) from the fact that this was happening, hiding themself away with the other for as long as possible until their orbits pulled them away again. Once more, they drifted apart and, wordlessly, Livia slid off the counter, took her towel, and walked home.

Now, neither of them were going to get any sleep at all.

Chapter Text

Cleopatra sat cross legged at the end of her— their— bed and stared out at the sprawl of city lights in front of her. She watched taxis drive back and forth, lamps in people’s flats flick on and off, stars shifting between shining through a halo of pollution and total obscurity. Being “alone” was not a feeling she had been unaccustomed to in her youth but it was different now. The flavour had soured. Now she was “Alone.”. Now there was no one, no noise; radio silence crackling with static. Everyone else had ways to move on but here she was, sitting in a bed that had been bought for two, in sheets she didn’t like the colour of but used anyway because he had liked them, all kept in the flat he had owned.

God, what had she become?

She could have blamed his family for leaving her stranded like this but, realistically, they all had bigger issues than her feeling of being adrift. Julius’ friends had never been her friends per se and so she doubted they felt any loyalty to her.

Cleopatra, having been the kind of person to realise from a young age that the only way things would ever get done would be to do it herself and, naturally, that meant she had never needed anyone else. At least that was the case until he had come along and ruined everything. Until he had shown her, as cliche as it was, that one didn’t have to be alone in every venture. Maybe they had never been overly tender with each other but it was as if he had fixed himself to her heart, formed an extra ventricle which had now been ripped from her chest, letting her heart leak until she died either from the lack of oxygen or bleeding into her abdomen.

She hugged the pillow she was holding closer, beating herself up for both being so utterly pathetic and not accepting any of his proposals. Because, she reasoned, had she made one choice differently, then this outcome could have been avoided.

Her phone buzzed on the mattress beside her.

It was Antonius:

“U up? Can't sleep.”

_

Maecenas stared up at his ceiling. Somehow, one of those sticky gummy hand toys beloved by children had found a way to stick to it and now just hung there, pushed slightly by an unnoticeable breeze. He had no idea how it got up there; some part of him didn’t want to know.

The person whose stomach his head was resting on— Virgil, if he was correct (which he usually was)— shifted slightly, making Maecenas hyper-aware of the people crowding around him. And amidst all of it? He felt brutally alone.

God that was so cliche. Who was he? J Alfred Prufrock, cursed to hear empty discussions for the rest of his life? (Eliot’s poetry had always been too gloomy for Maecenas’ tastes but he could respect his artistry). The thing was, however, he had always been on the outskirts of gatherings. It had been worse before Livia had appeared in their lives— he was pretty sure Octavian and Agrippa had forgotten he shared living quarters with them on multiple occasions and, well, he didn’t have another person to have a comparable connection with to make up the difference. There had been Rufus, though he’d also been closer to Octavian and Agrippa even before the… incident.

But Maecenas had learned early on where he sat in it all. He wasn’t one to quarrel with fate but, Jesus Christ, could it give him a break for once?

Livy, whose leg sprawled itself over Maecenas’ chest, suddenly began to snore very loudly. Seeing as his face was right next to Maecenas’, this snoring was also being projected straight into his ear.

As he thought about it, Livia had made things a bit less lonely in some regards. But, Maecenas decided, it would be best for all of them if those three hooked up and then went on with their lives. This solution to the growing “Who should Octavian fuck?"-problem— which Maecenas knew Octavian would ask him about any day now— would, nonetheless, never happen. Octavian had a stick shoved too high up his arsehole and, whilst this was a predicament Maecenas knew he enjoyed when it was a physically occurring phenomenon, Octavian would never survive a throuple. Even if that wasn't the case, it was no secret that he also couldn’t survive making a choice which was ironic considering he was now the CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Virgil found pleasure talking in his sleep. It was usually something about Dante Alighieri. Maecenas was surprised he hadn’t yet been forced to edit an 100 000 word Dante x reader fanfic written by his friend’s hand, though he doubted it would be long before it happened.

“Kindred unto Jove,” the other man muttered as Livy continued his snoring.

Maecenas suddenly realised what it would take to kill a man. Not literally but in the most devastating way possible; how one could remove any hint of the truth from the public eye, from the broader narrative. He suddenly realised what one would have to sacrifice to make such a thing happen.

But what was worse: to be remembered only in fragments or to be seen by all in a form that wasn’t "you" at all?

Maecenas suddenly wondered if he would be willing to kill a man. Would he aid in his friend’s death?

And, he perhaps should have been horrified to realise that yes, yes he would.

_

“Why are you still asleep?”

“It’s Saturday!”

“So what?”

“It’s 7 AM!”

“Yeah and it’s party day.”

“AGAIN?”

This short interaction was followed by Octavian screaming frustratedly into a pillow as Agrippa watched, holding two mugs of coffee.

After this moment of garbled screaming was over, Octavian looked back up at his companion.

“But we had one last week!”

“That was months ago.”

Octavian wondered if his friend’s words actually were clipped or if he was projecting his memories of the events of the previous party, and the repetition of those events only two nights prior, onto this response.

He wasn’t.

Agrippa was pissed about a multitude of things. He was so pissed, in fact, that he tried to stop his eyes from scanning the way Octavian’s back stretched itself across the bed—

“Coffee?” He offered quickly before he continued that thought and forgot why he was angry about the premise of a party in the first place.

Octavian nodded pitifully.

“I’m pretty sure I still have a headache from last time.”

“You could evict him,” Agrippa suggested, setting himself on the edge of the bed.

“I’d prefer the pain of a headache to his passive-aggression.”

Tentatively, Octavian sipped some of the hot liquid. He sighed sharply through his nose. It was not that he didn’t find enjoyment in Maecenas’ soirées (in fact, he likely found too much of it in them) but an awkward taste had lingered in his mouth since the last time. Surely throwing extravagant gatherings with loud music and excessive amounts of alcohol were not a good idea now, considering his new station.

Agrippa looked at his friend for a second, gleaned the source of his concern, and smiled slightly as if to say “Your colleagues have all done the same”.

Perhaps Agrippa should have found it comforting that his friend’s biggest worry at this point in time was his public image. Perhaps he should have feared for Octavian’s demise at the hands of power and the opinions of others.

Any words that the pair could have exchanged were shooed away by Maecenas’ sudden yelling from the kitchen.

_

One would have thought that some time away on an island somewhere would have made Brutus and Cassius bored of each other. Well, one would be wrong.

Cassius was a broad sort of man but he lacked the height of Agrippa or Antonius, making him seem more like the kind of man who would bumble around the same middle management position for 50 years instead of, well, the kind of guy who would plot an assassination. This stature also meant he looked extremely out of place with a pina colada in his hand.

Brutus had decided, in his boredom, to start making cocktails. He did not prove very successful in this venture.

“What do you think our wives are doing?” Cassius asked, flicking the pink umbrella which floated awkwardly near the rim of the glass.

“Porcia misses us dearly.”

After all, Brutus and Cassius really were an “us”. They had been for years. Sure they’d had their ups and downs but it was always “Brutus and Cassius: the Dream team” (okay so the epithet was their own addition but you get the point). Porcia and Tertulla (their wives), they’d decided, would have to learn to live with this fact.

“Do you think anyone’s realised we’re gone yet?” Brutus then asked.

“Probably.”

“Do you reckon they’re looking?”

“Nah.”

In this, Cassius was right. Apparently, no one thought the smoking guns that had literally been in their hands in all of the security footage of the incident was worthy evidence for an official arrest. Well, no one except Antonius and Octavian.

But we'll get to that later.

_

For some reason, Octavian hadn’t considered the fact that his newfound fame and wealth would attract even more people to Maecenas’ parties. Thus, he wasn’t entirely sure how to react when people began to gather around him on the couch and listen intently. He just wanted to merge into the background but no, they were here because he, apparently, was somehow interesting. One would have thought this interest arose from his excessive amounts of wealth but no, they were genuinely invested.

“—and then I told him— the guy in the shark costume— that ‘no you can’t have the donut, it’s mine’ and then he punched me in the—“

What the fuck was he talking about?

Were they actually believing this bull shit?

For those doubting Octavian’s ability to engage a crowd in a totally made up story: yes, they were actually interested. Not for the story itself, but for the ease with which he moved, the spark in his eye, the very way he made it feel like he was talking to each of them individually and not the whole group.

You see, whilst Octavian had never been the socialite his uncle had been nor possessed the same sort of panache, they were not totally dissimilar. Yes, they both had a desire for something more, but Caesar had taken a liking to Octavian for more than that. After all, Octavian had Caesar’s way of carrying himself (perhaps not in the arrogant way Caesar was famous for, but they both walked as if they were in control of the very air they breathed, the very ground they graced with the souls of their shoes), he had his smile (lopsided but somehow perfectly symmetrical), he had the same easy charm (and the same type in love but that's beside the point). Here he was, telling this nonsense story, and yet they loved him! Sure, he’d had audiences drawn in like this before but there was something different about the way he reeled them in now— they were no longer fish putting up a strong fight and instead a herd running to him at the call of a small whistle.

Octavian could not lie: he reveled in the attention. But there was something… off… about it. He had the overwhelming sense that these people were incredibly dense to not realise what he was doing, not to understand that this was all one grand lie, that he was wrapping them around his fingers like a cat’s cradle.

It seemed as if the only person within earshot who realised that a) Octavian’s story was total crap and b) Octavian was quickly becoming annoyed by the fact no one was saying anything about the first point was Agrippa. Of course it was Agrippa! Who else would it be? After all, it was Agrippa who had seen this happen on many an occasion— he’d seen people fall deeply, fatally in love with Octavian when he said something as brief as “excuse me”. Most of the time Octavian didn’t notice this effect but now, as he held the stares of what must have been 20 people, he certainly did. Agrippa had learned that the reason this annoyed Octavian so much was because he saw weakness in not being able to see what he really was (whatever Octavian deemed that to be). It was why he always did a 180 on people whenever they switched from small talk to more serious matters. Agrippa presumed that Octavian saw that part of himself— the one he now put on show for all to see— as some sort of ruse, like he was wearing a mask of Caesar’s face, and he could only imagine that Octavian’s deepest fear was that, without this mask, he would never be worthwhile to anybody ever again.

A small part of Agrippa had always hoped he’d be the one to rectify that issue as if, somehow, he’d be able to shove the truth in Octavian’s face and yell “I told you so!”.

He decided he’d go over and save his friend from his growing cloud of groupies. If he couldn’t save Octavian from anything else, he could at least save him from the physical perils of the world. Sauntering over to the couch, he lent over the back and whispered in Octavian’s ear, close enough that his breath sent a slight shiver down Octavian's neck: “Can I steal you for a sec?”

His friend turned to him, slightly surprised, and nodded before excusing himself and motioning for Agrippa to follow him.

Octavian usually would have gone to his room but he’d let Livia and Scribonia use it for “business” (he decided it best not to consider what this “business” would entail) and so he dragged Agrippa out into the hallway.

“Everything okay?”

A genuine concern filled his voice; the antithesis of whatever charm had overcome him mere seconds before.

“I’m fine,” Agrippa shrugged.

“Then—“

“You looked like you were in hell in there.”

Octavian tilted his head slightly. Of course he had noticed— it would have been a surprise if he hadn’t. He swallowed.

“You didn’t have to—“

“Why should you have to deal with them?”

“Bold of you to assume I like you more.”

“Well you aren’t telling me a story about a guy in a shark costume punching you in the—“

“Maybe that proves the opposite.”

Agrippa rolled his eyes comically before stepping back to lean against the opposite wall. They stared at each other for a moment.

There comes a point in every friendship when the blank spaces between each line of dialogue are punchier than anything either person could say or do. For example, Octavian could have told Agrippa “I think you are as much a part of me as my arm or leg or lungs and I don’t think you realise how direly I need you to make it from one second to the next” or Agrippa could have simply said “I love you” and bathed him in kisses, and neither would hold as much weight as the silence that now seemed to suffocate them.

The door opened and a person stumbled out into the corridor. They paused and stared at the pair for a moment.

“Now kiss!” They grinned before turning and continuing down the hallway.

Octavian’s head rolled back to look at Agrippa.

“You heard them,” he grinned wryly.

Agrippa looked at him, slightly concerned. Octavian was, to say the least, not the most public about any of his affections and especially private when it came to the full extent of their relationship.

“How much have you drunk?”

“Can’t a guy kiss his friend whilst sober?”

Octavian knew any boldness he bore now was simply a product of the extreme over inflation his ego had undergone at the behest of the attention of the adoring fans in his living room. And so what? Could he not be emboldened by such an experience? Could he not be even slightly drunk on power? And the way Agrippa sized him up right now— God— it was the kind of look one expected to see in the eyes of someone who only knew some far away, idealized version of oneself. And yet? Well Agrippa knew him better than anyone and he still looked at him with that desire, that burning loyalty, that steadfast belief he was something Octavian was certain he was not. It was the exact same way everyone inside had looked at him (but real).

The lights above their heads reflected in both men’s eyes as they watched each other, almost frozen in the moment before the act.

Agrippa kissed him in a very different way to Livia. With Livia, each kiss was more a whisper in a deafeningly silent chamber than “a kiss”; one felt the compulsion to do it and never speak of it again. But Agrippa was loud with his proclamations of loyalty; he always had been. He had, after all, always believed one’s actions spoke louder than any word ever uttered.

He approached Octavian slowly, at first, and pressed their foreheads together. Octavian closed his eyes as he felt Agrippa’s breath run down the bridge of his nose. Their lips brushed softly at first before pressing together with more force, enough to rival that with which the sun at the centre of our solar system will release when it eventually collapses in on itself. There was a familiarity in the way these kisses felt— they were like the cookies of one’s childhood, the scent of vanilla, the warmth of hot chocolate on a Winter’s evening. Suddenly, Octavian felt that there were people who would kill for such a feeling. There was something lovely about feeling at home with another person. Christ, they could have been in a swamp, with Octavian’s back against a damp tree, and he still would have felt exactly as he did now.

_

One of the more… unfortunate… parts of getting drunk at a party is one tends to do things and the issue with doing things whilst drunk is that, well, you're drunk and, being drunk, you are inhibited from making sensible decisions.

For example, pretend you are Scribonia, having completed "business" with your flatmate/girlfriend in your family friend's bedroom and receiving a text from your friends who were looking for you. Naturally, you excuse yourself to go save your friends from the clutches of the odd strangers who you know are at the party (specifically Virgil, Horace, and their ilk).

Now, imagine Scribonia's shock upon returning to the kitchen to reunite with Livia with her friends in tow only to discover Livia had gotten immensely drunk in the 5 minutes she had been gone.

And how did Scribonia know she was drunk?

Well, you see, Livia was currently standing on the island counter top, plastic cup in hand, belting the lyrics to 'Piano Man' next to Octavian and Agrippa. She then blinked and Maecenas, just as drunk, appeared beside them and joined the musical number.

It was at this point Scribonia found herself at a crossroads: to join them or not to join them?

On one hand, they really did look like they were having fun. She had never seen Livia with a smile that wide on her face as she and Agrippa did a dip like they were world famous ballroom dancers. On the other, well, her friends were here. Scribonia had never been one to not do something out of embarrassment. In fact she had rarely been inclined to do things that would embarrass her but right now? Now, as one of her friends— her actual friend with whom she had commonalities— pointed at Livia and asked "Isn't that your flatmate?", Scribonia felt a wave of mortification.

She found herself at a cross roads. Instead of choosing out of the paths in front of her, however, she decided to turn on her heel and walk down the path from which she had come. Until—

"Scribonia!"

Her heart tugged slightly, causing her look over the shoulder to see a beaming Livia gesturing her over. Unconsciously, she approached.

"Everything okay?" she asked.

Livia frowned in that animated way she normally did when she was drunk (not that Scribonia would know that, having never seen Livia get this drunk), "Why wouldn't it be?"

"You're singing Billie Joel," Scribonia paused before adding: "obnoxiously."

She rolled her eyes dismissively.

"It's called 'having fun'— get up here and you could be doing it too!"

The next song had started. 'Mr Brightside'. Scribonia suddenly wondered who Maecenas let choose the music because the playlist seemed perfectly tailored to her friends' antics.

Quickly, thoughtlessly, with a smile on her face— as frequently happens when one makes spur-of-the-moment decisions— Scribonia took Livia's hand and let her pull her up onto the counter.

Scribonia could admit that she was having fun in that very moment. Yet, she could not help but feel the weight of the stares of the crowd. Sure, they weren't watching her specifically but it was enough to know she was here, screaming the words to songs that were practically written to be sung badly at karaoke bars or alone in one's car. She escaped this feeling by quickly downing as much alcohol as possible, seizing both Livia and Octavian's cups and sculling what was left. This method worked until she had claimed the bottle of Tequila at the end of the counter for herself.

This was when she started acting stupidly. Extremely stupidly.

You see, Scribonia loved the film Dirty Dancing. She watched it once a month, had always wanted an iconic nickname like "Baby", and quoted it everyday. As one might have guessed, the music that night was not optimal for anything except for screaming one's larynx to oblivion and, of course, Scribonia's favourite song ever happened to start playing.

I assume you can see where this is going.

The world seemed to stop as the opening chords began to drift through the speakers.

"Now I've had the time of my life…"

Scribonia turned slowly to look at Livia.

Livia froze as if she knew exactly what the next thing to come out of Scribonia's mouth would be.

"IT'S DIRTY DANCING!"

Livia hated that film with a burning passion.

"Please don't—"

"WE HAVE TO DO IT!"

"I can't lift you."

Agrippa cut in, having always wanted to try the move at least once in his life despite having slept through the whole movie the one time he'd watched it, "I'll do it!"

Scribonia jumped, giggling with excitement.

In a hurry, Octavian and Maecenas somehow communicated to the rest of the party to clear a strip through the middle of the main room. Livia watched from the counter, filled with concern. Everyone (literally everyone) had their phones out.

The chorus started once again just after Agrippa and Scribonia had both readied themselves.

"So I'll tell you something…"

Scribonia kicked her shoes to the side. Agrippa spread his arms out, trying to envisage Patrick Swayze in his mind. Now Maecenas also got his phone out.

"This could be love, because…"

Scribonia broke out into a sprint. The music was rising.

"And I'm…"

She went to leap into his arms, propelling herself off the floor.

"Having the time…"

When an object is propelled into the air in a gravitational field, the majority of the time it will undergo this thing called "projectile motion" and take a parabolic path. Agrippa, being an engineering student, was well aware of this. Hence, he was not surprised that, when Scribonia hit the apex of the parabolic path her currently flailing body was undertaking, she began falling. Rapidly. As in about-to-face-plant rapidly. She had taken off too early, or maybe she'd simply tripped.

"Of my life…"

It was as the ground was fast approaching and Agrippa was still too far away that Scribonia also realised she wasn't going to make it. Had she tripped? Could she stick the landing?

"And I owe it all to you."

Her revelation was soon followed by a heavy "thump!" and the sound of Livia yelling at someone to call an ambulance.

The one good thing about getting so drunk one decides they can do the leap from Dirty Dancing is that, when they subsequently discover that they cannot, in fact, do the leap from Dirty Dancing, it doesn't hurt too much.

_

Octavian had made a habit of avoiding hospitals as much as possible. He'd been one of those kids who would be sick at least 6 times a term and had spent much too much time in hospitals to not be returned to the memories of being young and weak and dependent on those around him.

But alas, Scribonia had gone and crash landed on his living room floor. Livia sat beside him, absolutely horrified, staring at her feet (she was wearing a pair of Maecenas' shoes). Agrippa had been the one to carry Scribonia to the cab they'd taken to the hospital because an ambulance would have been too long a wait, and was currently trying to raid the vending machines. They had successfully been able to kick everyone out of the flat before they left, and Maecenas was likely apologizing to all of his groupies loudly over the phone as he searched for some coffee.

"It wasn't your fault."

Octavian didn't know why the words spewed from his mouth— it obviously hadn't been Livia's fault— but he felt for some reason they needed to be said.

Livia looked over her shoulder at him.

"Don't you ever feel responsible when those you love get hurt?"

There was a rawness in her voice they both decided to ignore. It felt as if Octavian had just scratched an itch he didn't know was a scab until he looked at his fingers to see them covered in blood.

Octavian opened his mouth to respond but Agrippa reappeared with food. Whilst the effects of the alcohol which had landed them in this situation had mostly worn off, they were still drunk enough to act on impulse rather than rational thought.

Perhaps that's why Octavian decided to sit on Agrippa's lap when Maecenas appeared soon after in order to let him "take his seat".

Suffice to say: the group got a few odd looks as they sat there, huddling together, holding their cups of coffee as if they were religious relics.

"Anyone want to hear a poem I wrote?"

Maecenas' proposal was met with an eye roll from the happy couple on his left while Livia, who was yet to become familiar with the extent of Maecenas' poetic genius, accepted the offer, mostly to fill the silence.

Agrippa groaned.

Livia popped an M&M in her mouth as he began to read a short poem from his notes app.

It was the most horrendous thing she'd ever heard. She clapped anyway.

A couple of poetry recitals later, the effects of the night's amusements had worn off, all four had raging headaches, and Scribonia appeared. Her arm was in a sling and there were a few stitches along her forehead.

"What cemetery did they dig you lot out of?" She said upon being reunited with her friends.

Had Livia not just spent the past three hours listening to Maecenas describe a red door as if it was the most monumental object to ever exist, she would have made a joke about how next time, "Baby" should consider staying in the corner. Had Agrippa not spent the whole time wondering why Octavian was so intent on sitting in his lap all of a sudden (that's not to say he wasn't enjoying it— he certainly was) and, had he actually watched Dirty Dancing, he would have made a joke about how he had "carried the Scribonia".

Octavian, however, practically ushered everyone out the door, into a taxi, and back home so he could sleep.

No one wanted to hear the end of Maecenas' poem about a burning pancake (it was an extended metaphor for love).

_

Octavian was awoken from his recovery nap by a crazed knocking at the front door.

His headache, for the most part, had dissipated as he slipped out of his bed, tiptoed out his door (so as not to wake Agrippa) and went to silence the incessant pounding.

Upon seeing the perpetrator of this knocking, Octavian wished he'd just stayed in bed.

"I've been standing here for, like, five minutes!" Mark reprimanded, "What have you been doing?"

"Who are you? My dad?" Octavian replied blandly, already tired of interacting with his colleague.

Mark huffed and pushed past him.

"I found them!"

"Who?"

Antonius turned to look at him with horror in his eyes: "What do you mean 'who'? The bastards who fucking murdered your uncle!"

Now, Octavian's intrigue overwhelmed his frustration.

See, as hard as Octavian had been searching for the conspirators who decided to turn Julius Caesar into hundreds of little pieces of Julius Caesar, Mark had been working harder. Much harder. But that should not be a surprise. Sure, Mark had been hungry for Caesar's position but he only got to a place in which he could long for Caesar's status because he loved Caesar. You know how, when a child uses the excuse that they did a bad thing because all their friends were doing it too, whoever is reprimanding said child replies with "Well if they told you to jump off a bridge, would you?"? Well, if Caesar had told Mark to jump off a bridge, the top of a building, or the edge of the world, Mark would do it immediately, no questions asked. Now, were I a psychologist, I would have suggested that Antonius' veneration of Julius Caesar was, in part, due to his lack of a father figure growing up (Mark's dad had died when he was 5) and, thus, Caesar had become a surrogate father to him. This theory would make even more sense if one were to deem his rivalry with Cleopatra an Oedipus complex, or if one were to view his hatred of Octavian as simply an overdeveloped sibling rivalry. Unfortunately, I am not a psychologist and thus none of this could possibly be true (obviously).

"Where are they, then?"

"Greece."

Octavian motioned angrily to urge him to expand.

"A little island resort called 'Philippi Sands'. Cassius owns it."

"How do we get them out?"

What Mark was embarrassed to admit was that he had not considered the issue of how to avenge Caesar. He'd been too busy searching for the killers to think even a single step ahead.

"I think Lepidus said he had an idea."

This was a lie. Antonius simply hoped Octavian couldn't tell it was a lie.

Fortunately, Octavian couldn't.

In his excitement, Antonius had decided he needed to immediately rush to see Octavian to flaunt his victory in his face. Now, as they stood staring at each other, he realised this could have probably been an email.

"Okay— I'm gonna go now," he declared suddenly before walking out briskly.

Octavian merely stood and stared at the place Antonius had just left in shock.

Then, he went back to bed (as if he could ever sleep now).

Chapter Text

Lepidus sat in his kitchen. His house was practically in the middle of nowhere, an oasis of polished cement hiding amidst dense flora. He sipped his peppermint tea and watched the trees rustle outside, birds sang, a deer grazed just beyond the glass of the picture window which allowed sunlight to rush into the room. It was a fine moment indeed.

However, as Lepidus considered whether he'd spend his day doing yoga or actually going to work (he had been "sick" for the last week so as to avoid the constant headache of Antonius and Octavian's bickering), he heard someone pull up in his driveway.

Then, there was a banging at the door.

"Lepidus!" someone screamed.

"Lepidus!" yelled another person.

"Lepidus!" both voices screeched together.

God, they were here, weren't they?

Lepidus rolled his eyes, sighed, and went to open his door. Then, Antonius and Octavian practically collapsed into his front corridor.

"We found them!" Octavian announced, looking up at Lepidus

"I found them!" Mark corrected.

Lepidus just stared at the two idiots on the floor.

"Who did you find?"

"Brutus and Cassius— y'know— the fuckwits!" Antonius responded.

Lepidus continued to stare at the pair as they struggled to stand, each trying to use the other to lift himself up. The resulting scene looked more like two puppies trying to figure out how to run in a straight line without bumping into each other than two of the highest ranking executives of one of the most powerful corporations in the world conducting business.

This thought was, to Lepidus, extremely comforting. They might have had a combined IQ of 1 but they were powerful which meant their power was practically Lepidus' for the taking. Unlike Cassius or Brutus or Cicero, Lepidus had settled on playing the long game and it was becoming increasingly obvious that this had been the smart way to go.

Octavian had finally managed to get up, snapping Lepidus out of his plotting, and grinned proudly. Mark then used Octavian's shoulder to pull himself up, too.

"Okay," Lepidus nodded.

"So what's the plan?" Octavian asked.

"I assumed you were here because you had one."

"Mark said you had one!"

They both turned to glare at Mark who shrugged meekly.

Lepidus sighed exasperatedly, "Come in."

In the span of time it took to make a cup of black coffee and a cappuccino (Lepidus' wife, Junia Secunds, had bought him a proper coffee machine for his birthday and Lepidus fancied himself quite the barista), all three had settled around the counter and now sat in silence.

"Well there's no point to dealing with Brutus and Cassius until we get the board on our side," Lepidus reasoned, "They're still pissed at you—" (he glared at Octavian) "—for the stunt you pulled to secure our position."

"That's easy," Antonius replied, "blackmail them."

"We've been through this: we can't blackmail the board!" Octavian yelled.

"I mean…" Lepidus hummed, "it isn't a bad idea."

"You're agreeing with him?"

"Do you have a better idea?"

"…No…"

Antonius laughed, prompting a glare from Octavian.

Lepidus grinned: "Then blackmail it is!"

"Do we even have blackmail material?"

Five minutes after Octavian's question, Fulvia's car screeched into the driveway.

Fulvia was tall like Antonius. She had dark hair she kept short, and a glint in her green eyes which assured all that met them that she knew every single secret they had ever even considered keeping. She was, to say the least, one of those people who knew they were the smartest person in the room at any point in time. Her favourite board game was chess (partially because she had never lost a game) and she was currently the glue holding her fiancé's career together.

As she sauntered into Lepidus' kitchen, she dropped a stack of papers (the length of which was at least 6 times the width of one copy of War and Peace) on the island counter.

"I have three more stacks in the car," she said before the three men were able to comprehend the sheer amount of dirt she had gathered.

It was suffice to say that Fulvia had turned plotting revenge into a hobby. Her mother had suggested crocheting or fencing or stamp collecting the last time she had complained about having nothing to do but she had found plotting the ruin of her enemies much more fulfilling.

"How—" Antonius muttered, having not been fully aware of the extent of her success in her chosen pastime.

"Honey, you're all rich: pretty much all of you have made dubious decisions," she smiled sweetly.

Then, they began to read.

They found nothing.

Well, no. They discovered a lot of things about their colleagues but nothing that was good (or, perhaps more suitably, "bad") enough to hold against any of them. There was nothing devastating enough to force anyone's hand.

"Does Decimus actually have a shrine dedicated to croissants in his basement?" Antonius asked after 20 minutes of perusing the files.

"Page 6 has photos of it," Fulvia confirmed.

Antonius whistled— Decimus really was obsessed with France.

"I don't think any of this will help," Lepidus began to muse.

Before he had time to complete this thought, however, the stack of paper in Octavian's hands crashed to the ground.

_

Maecenas was sprawled on the couch, scrolling idly, when Octavian returned home, vaguely traumatised.

"You look ill," Maecenas mused, looking up at him.

"I know things now I never wished to know."

Maecenas had already bored of the conversation and so he muttered "Good for you" before returning to whatever he had been looking at.

"Where's Agrippa?"

"Gym."

"Typical."

Octavian went to shower as if, by showering, he could wash off the horrors he had experienced in Lepidus' kitchen.

Five minutes later, Livia entered.

"Where's Octavian?"

"Shower."

"Typical."

She stood in the entrance to the main room for a minute before Maecenas sighed, "Want a drink?"

"Sure."

Lazily, he stood and dragged himself over to the kitchen.

"Did we never ask for our key back?" he asked as he began to boil the kettle.

Livia shook her head, "Do you want it back?"

"No. Just checking you hadn't been picking the lock or something."

Maecenas didn't actually know why he asked this question— the answer was obvious, wasn't it? It just seemed right to ask, y'know? Anyway, he was watching the kettle boil intently, observing the way the bubbles rose to the surface, breaching the top of the water before seemingly disappearing, as he felt Livia's eyes on his back. She wanted to ask something but was refraining. He would have asked her to spit it out but decided against it— one could discern the gravity of the question by whether or not she chose to ask it now.

She decided not to ask.

So it was serious but not pressing. Damn, it was about drama, wasn't it? Maecenas cursed himself for not asking.

"How do you survive constantly being their third wheel?" Livia then blurted out.

It wasn't the question she initially planned on asking but the silence irked her and some part of her was curious. Maecenas did seem, to her at least, like an addition to whatever Octavian and Agrippa's relationship was.

He turned to look at her; the kettle had boiled but he didn't bother pouring the drinks just yet.

"Why? Are you sick of being one, too?"

Her brow furrowed. Perhaps, then, Maecenas mused, she didn't understand that she was currently involved in the most blaringly obvious love triangle (though it wasn't really a "triangle"— it was more a "love greater-than-symbol" but that didn't roll off the tongue as easily). Perhaps, she simply couldn't see it.

He chuckled slightly, turning to grab two mugs, "There used to be another one of us, y'know: Rufus. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a bit of a dick."

Were Maecenas being honest he would have admitted that, no, Rufus wasn't a dick. He just got lost in it all. But didn't everyone get caught up in life? Not everyone decides to betray their friends. So, Maecenas decided, this, albeit over-simplified, explanation of the lost "Fourth Musketeer" would suffice. For now, at least.

And, it seemed, he would have had no more time to expand for Octavian, who had never really gotten over what had happened with Rufus, walked out of the bathroom a nanosecond later.

"Livia!"

He practically jumped upon seeing her.

So, Maecenas thought, something has happened there. It mustn't have been big enough for either to be outwardly awkward in the other's company but, seeing as Octavian practically jumped out of his towel (which would have left him standing naked in the middle of the room), something between them had shifted. He then had the premonition he would have to deal with excessive amounts of crying at some point in the near-ish future.

She simply smiled and waved.

So it seemed this tension was very much one sided. Or, perhaps, Livia could not remember whatever had happened to make Octavian jump in such a manner.

"Scribonia wants you guys to come to brunch at ours," she smiled.

"Oh, uh, cool. When?"

"Tomorrow morning?"

Awkwardly, Octavian gave her a thumbs-up and then hurried to get changed.

"I thought you needed Octavian specifically," Maecenas mused, going to refill the kettle to make Octavian's life easier when he returned and ultimately made himself a drink.

"If he comes, you and Agrippa will also come. If I'd told you, you would've forgotten to tell the others and if I'd told Agrippa you wouldn't have been inclined to come."

He nodded thoughtfully, as if to say "smart move", before Octavian returned once more, vaguely afraid of what the two had been plotting in his absence.

_

Agrippa stared at his ceiling in the dark. Octavian breathed quietly, causing air to fiddle with the ends of Agrippa's hair. Had he wanted to humour whatever voice which urged him to pry into why Octavian was suddenly so intent at flaunting whatever their relationship was, he would have been considering how odd it was that this was the fourth night in a row they had slept in the same bed.

But Agrippa didn't want to humour that voice.

Could he not, for once, pretend there was a possibility he and Octavian would be together until the world exploded?

They had practically grown up together. Sure, Agrippa's family was very different to Octavian's, but they had always been intertwined like the threads in a friendship bracelet.

Agrippa's father was a mechanic, his mother a tailor. He had an elder brother and sister, and the second best day of his life was the day Caesar offered him a way to escape his household. Sure, he loved his family but he had realised from a young age that they were all trapped in the same cycle: his father had the exact same job as his grandfather at the exact same place, and his brother had already begun to work there in his free time too. Round and round each generation went, always ending up in the exact same place; every new child, like New Year's Day, presenting a sense of promise which would ultimately amount to nothing. But he had escaped.

He remembered one mid-term break when he and Octavian were 9 and Caesar had taken them camping (Caesar had liked to take Octavian camping because he thought it would "toughen him up" and Agrippa was towed along to stop the pair from ripping out each other's throats). One night they had lit a campfire, it was dark, and Caesar had said, "Wanna hear a story?".

Had their answer been "no", Agrippa realised now, he likely would have told the story anyway. That's just the way Caesar had been.

Alas, they had excitedly nodded their heads, and Caesar began to tell the story. It was one of those campfire stories every person and their dog knew— the one about the girl with the dog under her bed and an incessant dripping sound— but neither Agrippa nor Octavian had ever heard it before and, as the story climaxed, they'd leaned into each other and, for the first time, something made sense to Agrippa: he and Octavian were, in whatever way, meant to exist alongside each other; his life was Octavian's, and Octavian's was his.

Very few of us are lucky enough to know exactly how this feels. Though, there is something painful about being so tethered to another's existence— this burden was one Agrippa chose to overlook.

"And the note on the mirror, written in blood," Caesar had muttered, his voice growing ever more eerie, "read: 'humans can lick too'."

Afterward, Octavian couldn't sleep— he'd never been one to stomach anything horror-adjacent.

Caesar had been in the next tent over and so there had been no one to shush them and he could hear Octavian fidgeting in the sleeping bag across from him. Thus, Agrippa had done the only thing he knew to do: start making a fool of himself. Eventually, after the 100th fart joke and a jab at Maecenas for having to go to a wedding instead of being able to join them on their adventure, Octavian had fallen asleep and, victorious, Agrippa had been able to rest, too.

Of course, that had only been the defining factor of his recollection of the trip. He suspected both Caesar and Octavian would have been much fonder of the next night when Octavian told Caesar an even scarier story he'd crafted on his own. But that didn't matter, Agrippa knew, because his actions, as far as he was concerned, had allowed for that to happen.

Agrippa sometimes felt his sole purpose was to do everything possible to remain beside Octavian; he felt that the very core of his being was a sword at Octavian's hip, that whatever love he felt for him had been etched deep into his cardiac muscle so that every pump of blood was just for him.

Octavian grumbled something inaudible. His arm flopped itself across Agrippa's chest as he shifted slightly.

He had always found himself simpler to understand than Octavian or Maecenas or, now, Livia. Maecenas had always possessed an eccentricism about him which allowed him to appeal to the likes of his entourage— the artists, the talents, those whose names would remain spoken for years after their deaths. Meanwhile, Octavian almost had two sides to him: there was someone who was unmistakably Octavian— slightly awkward, sentimental, fiercely loyal— and then there was someone else. Agrippa had only really seen glimpses of this "other Octavian", this ambition, this cunning, this person who would do anything to attain power. And, at times, he hated the way this side overshadowed everything Octavian actually was. Deep down, Agrippa knew he hadn't been chosen for all this by Caesar for anything else but this hunger, this determination. Deep down, Agrippa knew that without that side, none of them would be where they are now— he'd still be in the same household, going to work with his father and brother, trapped in endless monotony.

And Agrippa hated the fact that he was grateful that Octavian had that side to him even though he was entirely aware that it could lead to his friend's destruction.

He remembered one night when they were 16 or 17. Maecenas had been out, Octavian had been sick, and Agrippa had stayed in their dorm to look after him. Octavian could be pitiful when he got sick but Agrippa didn't mind it too much— there was something nice about taking care of someone.

"You know I can just sleep in the infirmary," Octavian had coughed as he watched Agrippa reading in the chair beside his bed.

"And why would I do that?"

"You might want to actually do stuff instead of spending all your time with me."

"Oh, shut up."

He had shrugged; "I don't know, could be true."

"And I thought you knew me better than that."

"People change, Agrippa."

"I don't."

Octavian always got extra pensive when he was sick, which irked Agrippa.

"You don't know that," he replied softly, as if his response was not a jest, "besides, I might be the one to change."

His mouth had gone dry. "I'll never leave you."

Up until that moment, something had been bubbling up in Agrippa that he couldn't quite name, and, as he said those words, he felt it threaten to boil over. That was the first time he realised what this feeling was because he yearned to do the oddest thing: kiss his friend. Not on the lips, per se, but on the forehead or hand or cheek, on the tip of his nose or crook of his neck.

"Are you still awake?" a voice murmured in his ear, wrenching Agrippa out of the past.

"Huh?"

Octavian laughed softly, "Thought so."

In all his years of sleeping in Agrippa's proximity, Octavian had learned he did not feign sleep easily— his chest always rose visibly faster when he was awake.

"Did I wake you?" he whispered.

"No," Octavian mused, propping himself up to look down at Agrippa (he'd just had a dream where Agrippa had left and felt slightly ill), "I was just checking you were still here."

"I'll never leave you."

_

Scribonia had fallen into a state of panic similar to that of DEFCON 1 due to the preparations she needed to make for brunch that day. She had woken up at 4 AM to start preparing and now the kitchen was covered in spilled ingredients, she would need to go shower to get the flour out of her hair and dough out from under her nails, and she hadn't even started cooking! However, escaping Livia had likely been the hardest challenge of all and, realistically, the only reason she was subjecting herself to any of this was because Livia had been spiraling since the party and, God, was she getting sick of the constant "Are you okay? No, no, sit down I'll do that!"'s. Scribonia had never liked being doted on excessively and the past week had practically driven her insane.

When Livia woke up at 7 AM and went to find Scribonia, she discovered the main room in chaos.

"What are you doing?"

"Making brunch!"

"They're gonna be here at 10."

"I know! There isn't enough time!"

Livia was, suffice to say, dumbfounded.

"Can I help?"

"NO!"

She recoiled sightly from the force of Scribonia's response, and lifted her hands slightly as if to say "Okay! I'm sorry!".

Scribonia, turning to look at her properly, leveled Livia with a stare, "Go next door if you're just going to hover, I don't need any help."

"But your arm—"

"Livia, did I stutter?"

With a huff, she surrendered and made her way across the hall where no one else was awake except for Agrippa.

Agrippa had just been for his morning run and, having just made a cup of coffee for himself, refilled the kettle and popped it on again when he saw Livia enter. With her constant comings-and-goings, Agrippa basically considered her as the fourth inhabitant of their flat, kind of like a house cat (though he'd never tell her that to her face).

"Thanks," she muttered.

"What is it?"

"What?"

"You look like you're about to melt with misery."

"I got kicked out."

He looked at her, asking for an explanation.

"I was 'hovering', apparently."

He chuckled and sipped his coffee which was still slightly too hot as he swallowed it, causing him to burn his tongue as he swallowed. Agrippa grimaced slightly but not enough for his company to notice.

They sat in the kind of silence usually only achievable via years of constant companionship. It came easily to them, naturally. They seemed to have enough in common that the fact this silence hung over them seemed natural. No words needed to be said, nothing needed to be done. They simply stood on common ground and that's all they needed in that moment.

This silence was soon interrupted by Maecenas, who burst out of his bedroom humming loudly.

"Livia!"

"She's in exile," Agrippa explained as Livia went to turn the kettle on again for Maecenas' use.

"I was 'hovering', apparently."

Maecenas nodded thoughtfully before continuing onto more interesting matters: "Did I wake up before Octavian?"

"Yup," the other two responded in unison.

Maecenas considered this proudly, "I deserve an award for that."

He then proceeded to go make himself a warm drink and sit in silence with his companions.

This silence, however lovely it was, was then interrupted when Octavian finally woke up and entered the room.

"Livia?" He asked groggily.

"Scribonia kicked her out," Maecenas and Agrippa replied.

"She told me I was 'hovering'," Livia explained once more, relieved that she wouldn't have to repeat herself again.

Octavian shrugged, went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth, returned, and sat down before Livia received a text recalling her from exile and demanding the presence of "everyone else".

_

While the central focuses of this story were eating a rather pleasant meal, we will shift our gaze to the man of the hour: Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Cicero boasted the colours of being a "self-made man" in the very same way Caesar had once done. Nevertheless, the two men had very different approaches to life. Caesar was, after all, all about the glamour, the glory; he wanted to become some modern breed of king. But Cicero? Cicero believed in a very old-fashioned model of corporations— the profits must trickle surely down eventually, right? Thus, Cicero had very much fallen into the habit of saying he was doing things "for the good of all" whilst being a part of the 1% who were actually actively benefitting from it. Perhaps that's why he'd despised Caesar: he didn't pretend to be someone he obviously wasn't.

Anyway, currently, Cicero sat in his kitchen, eating a cream cheese bagel, and contemplating the state of his career. Antonius would come for him any day now, he was certain of it. The only question was how he would go about it.

You see, Cicero had made his fair share of mistakes, but haven't we all? Sometimes he felt like life amongst the rich and powerful was simply a constant crusade against those who disagreed with you. No one was necessarily "right" or "wrong" (true, some evils may be worse than others, but the fact remained that his colleagues were by no means saints), and people used whatever weapons they could find: laws, loopholes, the size 1 print at the bottom of a page, or, in the case of the small group who had now been nicknamed the "conspirators" (Brutus, Cassius & co.), literal weapons. But the most dangerous of these implements was by far the truth— well, the twisted truth. Anything could be turned into a felling blow if the attacker tries hard enough.

But, whilst Cicero liked to pretend that nothing he had ever done was inherently terrible— and, in the event his past actions were used to bring about his downfall, it would be because his enemies twisted them beyond recognition—, this, for the most part, was not the case. In fact, Cicero had done at least one thing in his life he still couldn't clean his conscience of.

So, perhaps one could argue that Cicero knew what was coming for him as soon as Antonius and Octavian became friends. The former might have been the only one with a visceral hatred of him, but the latter was much to focused on other things to actually stop him from doing something wrong— it was a phenomenon Cicero had seen before and so he wouldn't be surprised if it happened again.

_

Now we shall return to brunch which had been, up until this moment, largely uneventful. It would return to being uneventful after this incident but, in order to contextualise the upcoming events, it would be remiss of me to skip this detail.

As Agrippa went to reach for yet another rasher of bacon, Livia's phone buzzed.

All eyes turned to her.

"Who is it?" Scribonia asked as she checked her phone.

"My father," she replied, furrowing her brow slightly in confusion.

It's suffice to say that Livia and her father rarely spoke. It wasn't due to any sort of tension or dislike between them; they simply were not the most talkative or affectionate people (or, atleast, not the most talkative and affectionate with each other).

Everyone paused to watch her read the text silently, as if it were something momentous. (Of course, it wasn't momentous— they were all simply nosey.)

Livia blinked in surprise.

"He's invited us to stay with him next weekend," she announced suddenly.

And then brunch continued as if the oddest thing hadn't just occurred.