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“Stop,” Esca says, and Marcus does, his hands falling away from Esca’s body. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” Esca mutters.
“But—“ Marcus says. He’d thought—he’d been so certain. Not at first, of course, when Esca had said, diffidently, that he’d stay at the farm as long as he might be useful to Marcus, but later, as they laughed over the house they built together on the slope above the little pond, the wall that sank oddly to one side and wouldn’t be put right, the uneven rows of thatch on the roof—a sad comedown, Esca said, eyes crinkled in mirth, for such legendary warriors. Later still, in the slow-darkening autumn, when they had lain next to each other by the glimmering fire, sharing blankets, talking, planning, Esca curled close enough to him that Marcus could feel the heat of his body, the warmth of his breath. He’d thought all that remained was for one of them to find the courage to ask.
“Esca.” Marcus reaches for him and Esca twists his face away, swallowing. There’s a dark suck mark rising on his neck. “I’m sorry, please. I can’t.”
“All right.” Marcus licks his lips, uncertain. “I can—slower?” He’d been trying to push Esca’s tunic up, wanting to press his mouth against Esca’s throat, his stomach, the narrow lines of his shoulders, but maybe even that was too much for Esca.
“No,” Esca says, dully. “I can’t at all. not ever.”
“What, but—“ He’s joking, Marcus thinks, although that’s not like Esca at all. “Did I do something you didn’t like? I’m sorry, I—”
“You didn’t do anything,” Esca says. His cheeks are hot, stained with—regret, Marcus supposes. Esca puts the tips of his fingers softly against Marcus’ jaw. “It’s not—I just can’t.”
Marcus flinches out of his grasp, grateful for the dim light of their little hut, that Esca might mistake his disappointment for anger. “If you didn’t want me, you could have said,” he says. “You didn’t have to humor me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Don’t insult me by lying to me,” Marcus says. “I’m not as stupid as you think I am, I know I’m not—there’s nothing wrong with wanting someone young and, and whole—”
“That’s not—” Esca begins furiously. Marcus turns away. He’d gathered up Esca in his arms and pulled him up, bracing him against the wall as they kissed. It had strained his leg but Esca had gasped and twisted against him and he hadn’t cared, but now there’s a dull burn in his thigh that makes him wince as he moves. All these weeks, all the work of building, digging irrigation ditches, hauling enough stones from the field to build a long, low wall that ran the length of the hill; he’d done as well as he could. He’d been a fool to believe he could trick Esca into thinking his leg didn’t matter.
“Marcus.” Esca catches his arm and pulls him around, fingers tightening roughly over his wrist. He’s kind, Esca. He’ll have some excuse that isn’t about Marcus’ lame leg. Esca hesitates, and then his mouth firms into a harsh line. “I want to fuck you,” he says. “I know you—don’t,” he adds, hurriedly, and then his face softens in sudden hope, “unless,” he says, “you—”
“No.” Marcus hates how it sounds, low and ungracious. “No, you have the right of it.”
Esca nods. “I won’t stop wanting it and I’m—it’s selfish,” he says, “I’m sorry. I fear I would come to hate being denied.”
“Oh,” Marcus says.
“I could not bear to lose your friendship so,” Esca says, staring at the floor, and Marcus nods, agreeing, lips burning still from Esca’s kisses.
*
Esca makes himself a new bed, folding his blanket in the nook of the chimney; it’s less than a fortnight before Marcus grows accustomed to the cold and doesn’t wake before dawn, shivering.
Esca acted honorably, Marcus reminds himself as Esca hands him a dish of thick stew and takes the bread Marcus offers him, telling Marcus a little silly news from the village, face glinting in the light from the fire. It is unthinkable, what Esca wants.
He tries to allow himself only thoughts of friendship; he fails. He aches for Esca still—not only in the moments that he brings himself to completion, hiding himself away carefully from Esca, but in the hollow ache of his chest when Esca claps him on the shoulder and takes himself off to his bed at night and Marcus has to fold his hands over his knees to keep from reaching for him. Esca never says anything or commits any act that betrays his feelings, but Marcus sees him, just once, cut his eyes down sharply away from where Marcus has stripped off his tunic to scrub himself clean and knows that Esca is not unaffected.
But Esca has the right of it, so Marcus says nothing.
*
It comes to him slowly, in the short dark winter days when they struggle to get the chores finished before sundown, when there is an endless list of tasks for them to work over in the firelight before they fall into bed: Esca is unhappy. Marcus has been himself so heartsick and lonely that he hasn’t seen that Esca suffers as well, that he smiles little, overworks himself that he may more easily sleep, lingers listlessly over his dinner even though his cheeks are too thin.
Marcus has ample time to make these observations; Esca is careful not to look at him too long. He speaks to Marcus kindly, attempts to joke as he did before, but there’s a dull effort to it that makes Marcus stumble over his answers, caught flat-footed, again and again.
It’s unthinkable, but Marcus thinks of it; wonders if he was a gutless liar, all those times he thought there was nothing of himself that he wouldn’t give for Esca.
*
Marcus waits until Esca has taken their six goats to graze in a sheltered thicket a half a days’ walk away. Then he drinks wine until he finds the courage to touch himself, to put his fingers inside himself.
It doesn’t hurt; he doesn’t like it, but it doesn’t hurt or disgust him. Marcus thinks of Esca’s cock, hard, pressed against him through their clothes—it was bigger than Marcus’ fingers. Marcus bites his lip and puts another finger in and it’s—nothing he wouldn’t do for an opportunity to lie with Esca, to kiss him again, to run his hands down Esca’s narrow flanks and feel Esca surge against him. To tuck up against Esca in sleep, to see him grin, to not have to think: today is the day Esca will leave to find his fortune elsewhere.
It’s past noon when Esca drives the goats back into the pasture.
“Are you hungover?” he says curiously, staring at Marcus’ face.
“Gets boring without you,” Marcus says, allowing some warmth to leak into his tone. Esca flinches.
“I forgot something in the barn,” he says and turns sharply on his heel. The flush climbing up the back of his neck only strengthens Marcus’ resolve.
He wants to speak, to offer. He tries for some weeks to gather the words together and finds he can’t; how can he say, over a dish of beans, over dosing a goat with a bad cough, that he’ll spread his legs for Esca for a few kisses, that he’d rather be shamed than lie alone in a cold bed.
*
Marcus waits on the neatly folded blankets of Esca’s bed. Esca will know immediately, he thinks. He won’t have to say anything.
Esca nods when he comes in, pours himself some water from the jug, takes off his shoes, scratching idly at a healing bug bite on his shin. Marcus realizes, too late, that he should have gone naked. It’s well into spring, the air soft and damp.
“Esca,” he says.
“Yes?” He turns. Marcus fights the urge to hunch his shoulders. “Are you well?”
“I thought.” His mouth is dry. He lurches up off the bed and takes Esca’s hand, folds his fingers around the little clay bottle of oil he’s been holding. “Will you lie with me?” he says. Esca cannot possibly mistake his meaning, but still he stands, looking at the bottle, his mouth knitted together in consternation. Oddly, it’s this that gives Marcus the courage to drag his tunic off over his head, to fold himself back down on the blanket and say,
“You can fuck me.”
“What—” Esca says, a sharp exhalation.
“I thought you wanted—” he twists his hands into fists, digging his nails into his palms, “did I take too long, do you not—“
“Not this way,” Esca says sadly.
“But—“ Marcus says. “I’ll do it, I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll—don’t send me away, please—” and Esca kisses him then, crawls into his lap, clutching at him, hands in his hair, palm clasped around the back of his neck.
“You’re braver than I,” he says. “I wanted to come to your bed many times, I regretted everything I said, but I could not—”
“You can fuck me,” Marcus says doggedly. “I tried it with—with my fingers.”
“Did you like it?”
“I want it,” Marcus says and the hot flicker of interest in Esca’s eyes dims a little.
“That’s not what I asked,” he says. Marcus thinks of lying, knows well what Esca wants to hear and wants to give it to him, but honesty chokes him when he tries to say the words,
“I didn’t mind,” he says. “It’s what you want, I don’t mind.”
Esca sighs, but Marcus sees victory in his grasp and draws Esca into another kiss, slides his thumbs gently against the wings of Esca’s ribs until Esca shivers against him, laughs a little. “All right,” he says.
“All right,” Marcus agrees, and urges him in for another kiss and another, lying back and pulling Esca down on top of him. “This time let’s not,” Esca murmurs. His hands are on Marcus’ shoulders, sliding down his chest, thumbs looping down into the groove of his hips. Marcus slips a hand over his waist and draws him in closer, and the color in Esca’s cheeks climbs higher, “I can wait—“
“No,” Marcus says. “I said I’d do it. I don’t want to always be waiting for—waiting.”
“But,” Esca begins. Their eyes meet and Esca blinks, and looks away. “If that’s what you—“ he says, but doesn’t finish. He stands and shucks his clothes off, his face resolute, and then comes into Marcus’ arms again, mouth open against his, on top of him at first, their legs twined together, and then, when Marcus forgets himself, underneath him, letting Marcus suck kisses against his throat and collarbone.
“It’s—you don’t have to do this,” Marcus says, when he remembers. Esca is in his lap, Marcus’ shoulders braced against the wall while they kiss. “We can just get on with it.”
Esca pulls back “I am getting on with it,” he says, his eyes narrow. “This is how I do it.”
“Oh,” Marcus says.
“We can move it along a little, if you like,” Esca says, and drops his hand between them, running the tips of his fingers up Marcus’ cock, which twitches against his stomach at the contact.
“Yes,” Marcus says.
Esca takes him on his side, tucked up behind him. The first slick touches of his oiled fingers against Marcus’ hole make him tense in surprise.
“Sorry,” he mutters, “keep going.”
“All right,” Esca says. He’s gentle with Marcus, soft, first one slow finger and then another, the careful slip of his fingers inside Marcus unlike anything he did to himself.
Marcus had prepared himself for it to be ugly and humiliating, had steeled himself for it, but it’s just—fucking, and Esca makes it sweet, the way his hands stutter against Marcus’ hips when he enters him, the way his voice goes hoarse and low, shaken. Marcus thinks, at first, that he can bear it well enough, and then Esca shifts behind him and runs his hand up Marcus’ cock and Marcus jerks back down onto him, almost unconsciously, and Esca says, sounding nearly surprised,
“oh you—you want more?” Marcus does. In the end he comes with his knees tucked under him, forehead pressed to the bed, both their hands stripping his cock and Esca deep in him, fucking him, wordless at the feel of it, sweat blooming on his back, Esca panting and panting his name.
*
“I could—allow you that again,” Marcus says, when his breath evens. Esca's thrown himself down next to Marcus on the twisted blankets, chest still heaving. “If you wanted.”
Esca makes a contented noise in his throat. “Next time I want to be on my back,” he says.
“Oh,” Marcus says, a sudden shivering flash of what that might be like, straddling Esca’s hips, riding him, touching his cock while Esca watched, but—
“My leg,” he says. “I don’t think—. Well, I can try.” Esca turns his head to look at him, giving him a little flash of a grin.
“You can sit on a milking stool,” he says.
“I don’t—what? How does that work?”
“With me in your lap,” Esca says, patiently, sounding a little sleepy.
“How would you fuck me like that?” Marcus says.
“I’m n—you’d be fucking me,” Esca says.
“I—Oh,” Marcus says. Esca’s mouth flattens, displeased; angry, Marcus thinks, not understanding what he’s done wrong, and then Esca says, very softly.
“Did you think the only thing I wanted was to fuck you?”
“No,” Marcus says, quickly. Esca says nothing. “That’s what you said you wanted,” he says stiffly.
“Ah,” Esca says. He huffs out a breath. “That was ill-done of me. I want—with you, I want everything.”
“Do you like it?” Marcus says. His voice cracks, and Esca’s face twitches into a sly, hungry smile. He catches Marcus’ hand and presses a kiss into his palm, and they speak no more of it that night.
*
Esca does like it, holding tight to Marcus’ shoulders while Marcus holds his ass in his hands and works him up and down his cock, licking at the hollow of his throat while the milking stool creaks in protest, but that happens after, after Marcus slides down on Esca’s cock and finds he can ride him, watches the bright color rise in Esca’s cheeks, his eyes wide and fierce and wanting, his hands on Marcus’ hips, urging him into a rhythm. It’s Marcus’ turn, that second time, and he chooses to please himself.