He signed off as their loving son, possibly for the last time.

He proofread the dictated message as best he could.

With a shaking finger, he pressed send.

Then, his phone in his sweaty palm, he tapped the number he’d stored in his contacts weeks ago, just in case he ever found enough courage.

Maybe he still hadn’t. But at least he’d found sufficient inspiration and motivation. Enough to do what he should have done years before.

Vika Andrich answered on the second ring, ambient conversation almost drowning out her greeting. She was down in one of the hallways below, no doubt, surrounded by crowds of Gates fans and gathering information for her next blog posts.

“Vika speaking.” She sounded distracted. “How may I help you?”

“This is Marcus Caster-Rupp,” he told her, his voice hoarse. “I have a few misconceptions I’d like to correct. How would you feel about an exclusive interview this evening?”

There was a long, long pause.

“Hold on a moment.” When she spoke again, her surroundings were quieter. “May I be frank?”

He swallowed hard. “Certainly.”

“I’d feel like it was about time,” she said.

Rating: Mature

Fandoms: Gods of the Gates – E. Wade, Gods of the Gates (TV)

Relationships: Aeneas/Lavinia

Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Angst and Fluff, Guilt

Stats: Words: 5,937 Chapters: 3/3 Comments: 9 Kudos: 83 Bookmarks: 4

Sparring

AeneasLovesLavinia

Summary:

Aeneas teaches his wife swordplay—and waits for the day she draws blood.

Notes:

Thanks to my beta. He knows who he is.

* * *

Lavinia was growing more comfortable with a sword in her hand.

That was true in bed, of course, and he was a selfish enough man to appreciate her increased skill there. But the bed wasn’t where she was growing to trust him, thrust by thrust.

At night, she permitted his caresses and ventured her own, willing but awkward still. That wide-eyed look of shock each time she shuddered and came apart in his arms hadn’t yet disappeared. Her lingering hesitance charmed him, even as her pleasure prompted his.

Under the blazing sun, in the dust, she was a different woman. Clothed and confident, she swung back at him. She parried. She engaged.

You must learn, lest I and the other guards of the Latium gate fail, he’d told her.

It was true enough. It was also an excuse, one he refused to relinquish after sparring with her the first time.

Her endearing, lopsided smile bright, she moved her elegant, angular body without hesitation, certain he wouldn’t wound her. Some swords, it seemed, she considered more dangerous than others.

One day, she wounded him instead.

“Tell me about Carthage, husband,” she said as she knocked aside his blade and made an advance. “How did you spend your time there?”

His concentration slipped, with predictable results. The gash on his thigh welled with blood, and she gasped and found a clean corner of her stola to press to the injury.

She choked out apologies, and he consoled her, and he wondered.

If she knew—if she knew—how he’d left behind the last woman he’d loved, abandoning her without a word; if she’d stood on the deck of his ship, at his side, and watched a queen light herself afire in desolation at his cruelty; if she understood him for what he was and what he’d been and what he’d done—

Maybe she wouldn’t accept his sword in bed, and maybe she wouldn’t laugh and use one to parry his thrusts in the dusty yard they shared.

Maybe she’d turn it on him instead.

29

“—SO CYPRIAN AND CASSIA WILL NEED TO MAKE SOME hard decisions about what they mean to each other, and what they’re willing to sacrifice for one another and for humanity,” Maria said in response to the moderator’s question, before turning to Peter. “Anything you want to add?”

As she’d spoken, he’d been gazing at her the entire time, rapt, mouth quirked slightly in a smile. “Another question that will become paramount is whether the island where they’ve been shipwrecked for years is still their prison, or whether it’s become their home. Otherwise, I think you’ve covered everything I’d planned to say. As always.”

Her expression impish, Maria wrinkled her nose at him. “If that’s a hint that I talk too much—”

“Never,” he swore dramatically, one hand clapped over his heart as the audience laughed. “I hang on your every utterance, my lady.”

“There’s a word in Swedish that applies here.” Maria propped her elbows on the table in front of her and gazed conspiratorially out at the session’s attendees. “Snicksnack. Nonsense. Total bullshit.”

Carah snickered at that. “I thought I’d be the first person bleeped today.”

“Swedes are a foulmouthed lot, I’ve found,” Peter said very clearly into his microphone, while Maria grinned at him. “I can only conclude that long winters encourage vulgarity.”

Marcus shook his head at them both. By the time he got on Twitter later, that particular exchange would have already gone viral, one of many such exchanges that had become memes and gifs over the last several years. He knew it already.

The closeness and seeming devotion of his two castmates fascinated even people who’d never watched Gods of the Gates. Maria and Peter had never, ever dated each other, as far as anyone—including Marcus—knew, but that only seemed to encourage the speculation, rather than dampen it.

The moderator turned to him then, the last cast member who hadn’t answered a question specifically about his character. “Marcus, can you talk a little bit about Aeneas’s arc over the course of the show? I know you can’t share any spoilers for the final season, but can you tell us more about the state of your character as everyone prepares for the big showdown between Juno and Jupiter?”

Usually, Marcus didn’t get such probing questions.

Here it was. Another moment of decision. Another chance to be brave, or not.

April wasn’t in the audience. He’d looked, hard. Maybe she’d needed to prepare for her session with Summer, which was occurring in less than half an hour, or maybe she hadn’t wanted to share a room with her ex-boyfriend in public.

It didn’t matter. Her bravery might have inspired him, but this wasn’t for her.

It was for himself.

He’d seen the question ahead of time. He knew what he needed to say.

“I think . . .” A sip from his water bottle helped relieve his throat’s dryness. “I think, when we meet Aeneas in the first season, he’s a man who’s lost his home, but not his identity. He may have been sailing for months, sometimes far from land and at the mercy of Neptune, but he has a very clear sense of purpose and self. Pius Aeneas. A warrior and leader dedicated to the will of the gods, whatever that might entail.”

His castmates were staring at him now, all wide eyes and furrowed brows, and no wonder. He didn’t dare look out into the audience, which had gone very quiet.

“But—” More water, and he kept speaking. “But after being ordered to leave Dido, the woman he loves, in such a cruel and damaging way, after standing on the deck of his ship and helplessly watching her burn on a funeral pyre comprised of their life together, he finds himself unable to reconcile his personal sense of honor with his obedience to Venus and Jupiter.”

Another gulp of water. Another deep breath, before he continued to defy his public image so completely, there could be no mistaking his previous artifice.

“By the time he meets Lavinia, he’s wrestled with the contradiction between duty and conscience, and is trying to determine what piety actually means to him. He’s not the same man. Especially after he begins to build a life with his wife, one not defined by battle and bloodshed.” Marcus offered a feeble, thin smile to the room without actually making eye contact with anyone. “How that’ll play out in the final season, I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”

The moderator, a reporter from a well-known entertainment magazine, was blinking at him. “Oh—okay. Um, thank you, Marcus, for that—” The older man paused. “Thank you for that very thoughtful answer.”

In the front row, Vika was watching Marcus. When he inadvertently met her gaze, she inclined her head with a faint smile. An acknowledgment. Encouragement, perhaps.

“Well, uh . . .” The moderator still seemed a bit shell-shocked, but he eventually glanced at the papers in front of him and pulled himself together. “I believe we have time for audience questions.”

Several moments of general upheaval ensued before a woman near the back of the room stood, accepted a microphone, and addressed the panel. “This question is for Marcus.”

“No fucking duh,” Carah muttered, and patted his arm comfortingly.

To his surprise, though, the woman didn’t address the obvious dichotomy between his previous public persona and the version of him who’d spoken moments before.

No, what she asked was infinitely worse.

“My boyfriend and I have an ongoing argument,” she said, gesturing toward a guy in a Gates tee who sat slouched and smirking in the seat beside her. “He’s convinced you only dated that fan as a publicity thing, or as some kind of political statement. I told him you’re a great actor, but there’s no way you were faking that expression whenever you looked at her. So who’s right?”

Dimly, Marcus wondered what expression he wore whenever he looked at April. Thunderstruck, probably. Lovesick.

The moderator heaved a sigh and glared at the woman. “Please make sure all future questions involve the show, rather than matters of an entirely personal nature. Let’s go to the next—”

“No,” Marcus found himself saying. “No, it’s okay. I’ll answer.”

Before April, he wouldn’t have realized the real implications of this question, the stance the woman’s boyfriend was actually taking. But now he knew, and he wouldn’t let it go unchallenged.