"Does my mother really sound like that with you?"
Antony stares at him. To give him credit, he oughtn't need look like a dying fish, gaping and blinking, but Octavian doesn't think it an odd a question, considering he well knows that Antony is fucking his mother. And to give him further credit, this is no Greek symposium, with high philosophy and politics. This is Rome, full of raunchy gossip of which matron fucked whose slave boys and garum roaming in from the kitchens, pungent and delicious with the doormice.
He presses Antony, "Does she? Like Octavia demonstrated?"
Antony raises an eyebrow after a moment, biting into a fat fig. "Do you not hear her moans throughout the house? I was under the impression even the deaf mute in your gardens could hear her."
"I sleep like Dis," Octavian says. It's not wholly a lie. Mostly, he has learned to ignore all the unpleasant sounds in the urbana: poisoned slaves, dogs rutting in the courtyards, most of what his mother says to him...
When Antony choses to drink from his goblet of Cnossian wine before answering, Octavian does it for him, "Is it true that a woman's cries are an indicator of a man's virility? I read in Pol-"
"I can show you what's an indicator of a man's virility," Antony says in a low voice. Octavian can barely hear him over the hired lyre players. There are no Orpheuses at this party.
Casting a sidelong glance to his mother, Octavian follows Antony. She doesn't notice, being too busy watching Servilia of the Junii make her own sidelong glances. Antony ducks into the storerooms near the kitchens, the same room where his great uncle Caesar thrashed about, hardly a few nights before. He can still smell the vomit and sweat amid the roasting meat and fennel seed pastries.
He doesn't know what Antony means until a clammy hand touches his thigh. "What are you doing?" he snaps, pushing Antony away.
"Showing you," Antony says.
His mouth tastes of resin wine and sweet figs. Antony pushes him down onto sacks of flour and they press into Octavian's back. Antony is heavier than him, a real man, and after a sloppy kiss or two, Octavian stops struggling. His mother might call him an old man, with an old man's love of books, but he is a boy, and his prick is as hard and straight as a legion's standard with a few rubs of Antony's hips against him.
Octavian reckons he can pass this off as a simple act of observation and learning, justifying it completely, except when Antony bends him over a large jar of honey and he feels strange fingers creeping up his inner thighs, he turns around and says, "No, I don't-"
But Antony's hand covers his mouth. He can taste the salty sweat between Antony's rough fingers.
"I don't think your mother would want to hear of you seducing me like Caesar, eh?" Antony says, grunting as he lifts up his tunic. Octavian can hear Antony's belt clinking as it hits the floor, a glimmer of gold in the shadowy closet.
He is silent as Antony fucks him. His arse feels aflame until Antony juts his prick, moving it up higher and deeper until Octavian freezes as something numb, something new blooms in his belly and he moans between Antony's fingers, again and again as Antony, chuckling, thrusts over the same sweet place.
Octavian rides the feeling, like the Tiber, flowing flowing slow and steady until it becomes too much and he bursts, unable to hold back any longer. He stains the honey jar with a muffled scream, followed by a shuddering sigh. Antony, too, finishes quickly, filling him with hot spurts.
After, Octavian fixes his tunic and hopes his cheeks appear no more flushed than if only from wine. He sits, awkward and frowning, resting on the side of his hip. "Do you fuck my mother the same way?" he asks.
"Why do you want to know about your mother so much?" Antony says. He stretches his arms out and smiles, lazy and sated.
Octavian shrugs. "You won't tell her of this, will you? I'd rather she not know."
Antony ruffles his hair. Octavian pulls away. The gesture irritates him. He doesn't like being treated like a little boy. He is nearly old enough for a man's toga, even if his mother doesn't think it.
Antony mustn't tell his mother, because she continues to goad him about penetrating someone until Pullo takes him to the brothel. When Pullo asks how it was with Egeria, he says "pleasant", because it was, all womanly curves and swells of hips and tight, wet silken folds surrounding his cock...
But it was more pleasant with Antony.