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Bright. Dusty. Impossibly hot.
Geta leaned over the banister and wondered at the drop below. Rome never looked quite so beautiful: the paved street beneath the towering insulae and the bits of palace refuse flowing down the hillside like a landslide stuck in time, marble here, marble there, all reflecting the great Sun’s glory. He tried not to breathe in too deep, both for the stench and for the dust: races were on again, and Circus Maximus was covered in a golden haze which he knew by experience to taste of dry earth and manure.
From inside the building, laughter carried like a river bursting through a dam. First a violent, cracking rush, then a flow which exhausted itself slowly, passing him by and leaving him feeling like a rock sticking out of the waters. What was he? He let go with one hand, examined his pale skin in the light. He swallowed thickly and wished he was more drunk, maybe drunk enough to slip over, as if by accident. He could imagine the fall: another kind of a rush, ending with a crack but not starting with one. A body over the rooftops, slow trickle of blood glimmering in the first rays of sunset turning darker upon touch.
Would it feel like the maiden flight of a fledgling? Wind catching the width of his wings, useless for the purpose of rising, but good enough for a fall.
“Brother,” a familiar voice called for him, slurring.
Geta barely straightened from where he’d a heartbeat before been lying, stomach and ribcage lifting from the stone which their father had once built. Not with his own hands, of course, but the hands of slaves and builders hardly counted in comparison to the might of emperors. What were their names? Those were not written into eternity, but the names of rulers always were. He didn’t know if he was disappointed or relieved that Caracalla was there now, but both feelings made him want to snap at his brother.
The feeling twisted and burned inside him when Caracalla brought his arms around his waist from behind and tightened his grip until it felt like a second belt. The metal edges of the one which Geta had worn before his brother’s arrival buried into his flesh, feeling like they might bruise. He laid his hand, cold from where it had touched the marble, upon Caracalla’s knuckles and felt the warmth of him, which was much the same as the warmth of the sun and the heat of the stone city radiating back at them.
“Where’ve you been?”
The words were so close together, conjoined, malformed, that Geta had to repeat them in his mind to make sense of them.
He twisted around, turning his belly for his back which now bent over the banister the same way his stomach had moments before. Caracalla’s eyes were dark waters, heated and stale in this summer weather, and he would have tasted of wine if someone had dared to try drinking of him.
“Here,” Geta replied, knowing that the response was as infuriating as it was uninformative.
Anger flashed through Caracalla’s gaze, but when didn’t it. It passed as quick, a note taken for later when they’d go at it again together. Shouts and sharp steps taken, hands thrown wildly at directions, hinting at blows and slaps which were never exchanged. It was Geta’s turn to wrap his arms around his twin, and he felt Caracalla melting into the touch, almost too heavy to bear. Once more he imagined it: slipping over the banister, falling, the crack of an impact, and then the sweet embrace of nothing at all. The last thing he would ever feel would be his brother’s weight on him, not going as they’d come, which suited him better than the thought of even a moment’s separation. Of course, the softness of his mortal body might cushion Caracalla’s fall enough that he’d survive it. The loneliness that would come after would end him slowly, painfully, like a wild animal with a broken limb, even if Caracalla didn’t know it. And still the call of the fall was nearly irresistible. Just one flight into the dark. Crows off a battlefield toward dusk at nightfall. One last breath, and then silence.
Geta’s mouth sought the wild fur of his brother’s hair, his hand to tame it, but there was no hope for that. The blasted monkey made sure that it would never sit down and pretty like his own did. If it wasn’t the monkey, then the whores. Geta wanted him pretty, but Geta wanted him many things that he wasn’t and would never be. Caracalla was digging his face in; visions of hyenas and lions nuzzling their bloodied muzzles into the cavities of their prey, a carnage and a feast all at once. Geta’s hand ran his hair down, again and again, fingertips touching warm scalp underneath. He loved him so much. Which one? Both, at once. It was painful and it made it hard for them to breathe.
“Is it the noise again?” Caracalla asked, and Geta shrugged.
He wasn’t sure. He’d just wanted to be out. The wine tasted old and decayed before it even touched his lips and the touches of beautiful women upon his covered skin in turn reminded him of apes smearing shit over walls. He was sore and he wasn’t sure if that was on the inside or the outside.
“I just needed some space, and fresh air.”
Caracalla’s chin landed on his shoulder, and then his nose and mouth and closed eyes into the crook of Geta’s neck. Geta’s hand followed, resting upon the back of his twin’s neck without pressure; it was too intimate, if anybody had seen it, and there was a banquet. But then what? His brother was drunk and he wasn’t sober, either. The day was too warm and its height had long since turned for an end, a sluggish and prolonged death of a thing which would inevitably rise again, and again, and again, until they’d close their eyes from it for good. What did it matter what other people thought of them? They loved each other, as brothers were meant to. The rest was malicious whispers and the games which people liked to play for a sense of power and control. They said anything, and there wasn’t one thing that Geta could do to stop them, beyond having the whole city nailed to an endless field of crosses. Blood trickling down the spines of carved wood, the carvers themselves nailed to the branches: his own hands still hammering in the last of them. Commoner, noble, soldier, craftsman, each hanging until the life in him would finally be convinced of the inevitability of death. Broken sockets, dehydration, dislocation.
“You feel feverish,” Caracalla noted.
His fingertip trailed the sticky skin of Geta’s throat on the other side, then fell upon the collar of his silks and turned to a palm upon his heart. He was right: even Geta’s heart beat too fast. It might have been a fever. The city never ran out of diseases, after all.
“Come inside, so the sun won’t burn you.”
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“In the middle of what? Being sick? You can be sick indoors, brother, where it is not so warm.”
“No.”
Geta tasted the next word in his mouth and closed his eyes to it.
“Flight.”
Caracalla shifted. He lifted his gaze up to his brother but Geta didn’t see him, his lids mercifully separating him from the evaluation which was inflicted upon him.
“You’re insane,” Caracalla declared then, and there was a careful hint toward a smile in his words. “Come inside. Please.”
“Have you thought of it?” Geta asked him, and Caracalla’s hand fisted in his clothes, uncertain, just in case.
“Flying? Everybody dreams of flying.”
Geta shook his head. He allowed his eyes to open again, casting a sideways look toward the cliff behind them.
“Falling,” he clarified.
Caracalla shifted again, this time so that he could look where Geta was looking. Geta felt pleased, though his twin’s fist was still in his clothes, as if to make sure that he wouldn’t fly just yet. He was looking now: seeing what Geta was seeing, he had to see the same thing. The exhilarating loss of solid things around him, the rush of wind against his face, catching his clothes like wings. When Caracalla looked back at him, his expression was solemn and serious.
“Come back inside,” he said, his voice caught between command and pleading.
Geta nodded. The hand of his which had returned back to the cold banister lifted, and his body pushed itself into motion opposite from the freedom promised to him by the swirling of a breeze behind him, where the stone walls of his prison were not restricting it like they restricted him. His other hand, the one which had sought the comforts of his brother’s warmth and softness, fell now to Caracalla’s hand and Caracalla held it firmly in return.
They were enemies, Geta thought to himself, but also every opposite of that: friends, family, perhaps only an inch away from what he thought lovers were, or could have been, if love had been something that they could have afforded to know. Was it not their lot in life to be as man and wife were? Joined in life and soul and body and duty above all else in these constricting halls they had no right to escape, nor the ability to, like birds locked in cages for far too long so that their wings would not have carried them even if the doors had been left open all day long. All of the city, and everything beyond it, so far out of reach. That was why flying was falling, a fast drop and a crack, the trickling of warm blood against the burning tiles of rooftops. The people were their forgotten and mistreated children, laughing with intoxication, slowly being eaten alive by parasites both internal and external. Fleas, bedbugs, lice, worms. Stale wine sweetened with syrup to cover up the flavour of rot.
Caracalla led him into the shaded hall beyond, then stopped there, and so did Geta. He hesitated, never looking up though Geta looked at him in question.
“We could choose not to go back,” he said then, though slowly. “The races are on.”
Geta nodded, the gesture accompanied by a small sound for emphasis.
“Take the horses and ride down to watch,” he agreed, and Caracalla nodded, too.
“It won’t be any less warm there,” he said and finally lifted his gaze, “but it could be like flying. Being free, for a change.”
“You’re drunk,” Geta noted, and to this, Caracalla chuckled.
“You have a fever,” he noted back, and Geta nodded again.
It felt like conclusion.
“We’ll go," he said.
“Yes.”
So they changed directions, turning their backs to the noise of the banquet, and Caracalla held Geta's hand a little tighter. This was a satisfactory compromise: to leave behind the laughter and the cloying noise and the bitter safety of the cage, and though their descent now was slow and controlled and lacked the thrill of a sudden and sharp fall, they were still headed for the dust.
So much dust in a city built of stone.