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Title: Animae Dimidium Meae
Author: Cicero
Fandom: Ancient Roman RPS
Pairing: Horace/Vergil
Rating: R
Summary: This could be one explanation for Book 4 of Horace's Odes.
Email Address: Cicerothewriter@livejournal.com
Categories: Drama, Angst
Feedback notes: Any kind of feedback will be appreciated, even if you just write me a one-line email telling me that you've read the story, and I will be happy.
Warnings: Character death (and maybe character assassination, I'm not sure). Also, because I was working on Latin translation when I stopped to write this, I was thinking in Latin-ise.
Notes: This topic is inspired partly by my research for my paper. Nobody wants to come out a say that they loved each other *like that*. Written for Anima_mecanique at LiveJournal.
Disclaimer: I don't own any ancient Romans nor to I claim their work as my own. I am writing this for fun, not profit.

Horace was angry, very angry. He was so angry, in fact, that he forgot his goblet of wine on the rocky sand behind him. The ocean gently rolled before him. Now it was calm, but Horace could remember being on a boat with his father - the wild, enterprising freedman. The nausea had been unbearable, but his father had just laughed. Horace's fear of sailing - of the unthinking ocean - had caused him much private shame.

Vergil had not laughed. Shy, staid Vergil, as dark as the water's depths, had taken Horace out to Maecenas' seaside villa, and as Horace stood up against the sea, Vergil had made love to him - with fingers, lips, voice. His voice, made rich by his full lips, held no trace of stuttering, merely of love.

Horace sobbed once long and hard. His lungs felt empty, as if he were under the waves unable to breath. "I told you not to go."

Granted, Vergil had not died on the ocean. He had made it back to Brundisium before his body had collapsed. Horace was the one who had not made it in time. Vergil's body had already been laid out on the pyre when Horace arrived, Maecenas in tow.

Augustus, once long ago Octavian, blood-thirsty for revenge, a cruel youth, had been requesting more odes from him. Vergil had said that it might be a good idea. Vergil had believed in Octavian - in his dreams and plans. Horace would give Augustus his celebratory poems - as Vergil wanted - a fourth book of odes to immortalize the divine man.

For Horace, it would not be a tribute to Augustus himself, but to Vergil's Augustus, Vergil's hero.

Horace knelt against the sand, which was damp and salty. "Not only I'm ready," he said to no one.



Back to the tablinum of Cicero.