Unbending, Bare

In Egypt, the emperor sleeps poorly.

His whole frame twists with delirious forcefulness, and he may cry out, or only dreams that he does. He is struggling through dark water, pressing against the tide, but he’s too close to the shore and cannot make his way, cannot reach whatever it is that he must reach, his object unseen. He’s dressed as he would be before his troops, and the weight of the water makes it hang on him with crushing heaviness. The cloth wraps against his legs to impede him and the river has carried his cloak away, an eddy of scarlet. He cannot breathe, he is pressed on all sides. He cannot breathe and will soon drown.

A broad cool hand presses against his breast, the sensation of it piercing even his sleep. All the tension in his sleeping body resolves itself in a gasping jolt; he is safe in his bed, he is alive.

“Are you awake?” A foolish whisper comes from outside himself, a child’s question. Hadrian groans, giving his answer in a voice still thick from sleep, and rolls over onto his side to blink away sick shameful tears in the dark. He’s not a young man any more; under the best of circumstances waking does not come easily to him, some stubbornly luxurious aspect of his composition that remains to be stamped out. His own heartbeat is insistently strong in his throat. Hadrian swallows back spittle and drinks in the perfumed air, the odor of freshly laid stone and of green growing things.

He opens his eyes again and glances up. The boy sits back on his haunches, one arm thrown over his knee loosely. He has been awake for some time, and is as composed as one could ever hope for. It plunges Hadrian into a more acute consciousness of his own dishevelment – that he’s been tossing and groaning in a pool of sweat like a sick man, all while a healthy young one has watched. Circumstances such as these breed contempt.

He didn’t think the boy watched him like this. The only light in the room issues from a dying wick, and it gleams in the boy’s dark eyes.

“Only a dream,” Hadrian says. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No.” Antinous’ eyes narrow; his smooth face carries a faintly reptilian trace of curiosity. In the dark his unperturbed serenity does not seem so much wise as sinister. “You were frightened, I can tell.”

“A soldier and an emperor.” Hadrian rubs a hand through his beard, a self-consciously homely gesture. “What have I got to be afraid of?”

(Hadrian knows of a few things, but naked in the autumn dark he must push the thought of them away.)

“Lions protecting their young,” Antinous says, quietly. “Wild animals. Assassins. Poison. Sudden falls. Deep water.” He brushes his hands over each other, and cracks his knuckles.

Hadrian takes him by the wrist. (Antinous freezes in place, almost imperceptibly stiffens, concerned to see if censure follows from this, some schoolmasterly scolding: don’t crack your knuckles, boy, you will look at me when I speak to you, young man.) Manners aside, the young man in question has filled out considerably into a far more powerful creature, no longer birdlike but full with muscle where he once was soft. His forearms prickle with red-gold hair – Hadrian would know the flame-bright color of that hair even in total darkness, in an unlit room on a moonless night – and his pulse is steady as a drumbeat.

Antinous solemnly allows this, and allows Hadrian to hold him simply for the pleasure of holding on to him; his pleasantly cool weight is a comfort to him in the grip of dread. Indeed, he can hardly remember it now – his riverbed dream, or the one that had come before it. Its impression is fading fast.

Hadrian sits up, and moves to kiss his shoulder. Antinous allows; indeed he leans against him, cocking his head so that the full expanse of his powerful neck is bare. When they break apart he’s likely to come away damp.

“Shall I call you a doctor?” Antinous has seen him sick before, without hating him or holding him in contempt. His voice is all concern.

Hadrian holds him close, strength against strength, power joined to power. Youth joined to ever-mounting age, one day to weakness. One day he will be too old to hunt, and Antinous will still be a man in his prime. Hadrian’s lips brush the place behind his ear. “No need for that. You should be sleeping.”

“I know, I know. I’ll get around to it.” In the dark, Antinous’ hand finds the sharp end of his knobbly knee to press on. In the dark and pressed close to another living body, Hadrian laughs, and shuts his eyes.