Fatigue drained out of him in one sharp breath. For a long moment he just stood there, watching—taking in the quiet confidence of that body, the way Flavus owned the space without even trying. It pulled something feral out of him.

He crossed the room without ceremony.

Flavus stirred when the mattress dipped, breath hitching as Marbod’s weight pressed down, hands already firm, claiming without words or warning. 

“You’re late,” Flavus murmured, voice rough with sleep and expectation, already spreading legs for him. 

Marbod leaned down, teeth grazing skin, grip tightening.

“Still here,” he answered. “That’s all that matters.”

Flavus couldn’t answer. Marbod was already thrusting in him, messily and urgent and real—heat chasing away the cold that had settled into Marbod’s bones. The room filled with breath, movement, the bed creaking under a hunger that had waited all night to be unleashed.

When it was over, Marbod barely had time to breathe before exhaustion finally won. He collapsed against Flavus, dead weight, consciousness slipping away. Flavus shifted just enough to hold him there.

“About time,” he muttered.

Marbod didn’t hear it.

Marbod lay beside him, still asleep, one arm heavy across Flavus’s waist. The room was dim, greyed by early light filtering through the hide that covered the doorway. Outside, the camp had not yet begun to exist: no voices, no boots, no orders waiting to be shouted.

This was the quietest part of the day.

Flavus did not move. He did not want to break it. He counted Marbod’s breaths instead. There was a time when silence meant danger. Here, it meant nothing was required of them yet. Flavus rested his forehead against Marbod’s shoulder, careful not to wake him. For a moment—just one—there was no Rome, no tribes, no command, no future pulling at them from opposite directions. Only warmth. Only the low, shared breath of a life that, for once, was not being watched. Then, far away, someone coughed. The day shifted. Marbod stirred. The moment passed.

No answer. Just the crackle of embers. Marbod crossed the room and touched the handle. It was warm. Recently handled. His chest tightened—not with fear, but with something more unsettling: familiarity. As if this had happened before. As if he had known, once, why the knife was left there. Behind him, floorboards creaked. Flavus stood in the doorway, hair loose, eyes half-lidded with sleep.

“You moved it,” Marbod said, not accusing. Just stating a fact.

Flavus frowned.

“No. I didn’t.”

They looked at each other, the space between them filling with the unspoken. The knife remained between them, quiet, patient. Marbod finally exhaled and turned the blade flat on the table, breaking the line.

“Then someone else did,” he said.

Flavus stepped closer, voice low. “Or you did. And forgot.”

That was worse somehow.

The knife stayed where it was for the rest of the night. Neither of them touched it again. But Marbod kept glancing at it, uneasy—not because it threatened him, but because it felt like a reminder of something he wasn’t ready to remember.

He stood alone in the quiet room, the fire low behind him, staring at the wooden panel propped against the wall. The same portrait that had followed him through years of campaigns and half-forgotten houses. A likeness made when he was young—too young—still dressed like Rome wanted him to be. He frowned.

Something was wrong.

Not wrong enough to name. Not wrong enough to accuse. Just… wrong. The jaw looked sharper than he remembered. The eyes—those were not right. The painter had given him Roman eyes once: distant, controlled, obedient. Now they looked darker. Less patient. As if the man in the portrait had stopped pretending. Marbod stepped closer. The shoulders seemed broader. The posture looser. The shadow along the neck deeper, almost careless. And there—there was a mark at the collarbone. A faint line, half-hidden by paint. That mark had not been there before. He touched his own skin, instinctively. The scar was there. His breath slowed.

“No,” he muttered, more tired than afraid.

Portraits did not change. Wood did not remember. Paint did not revise itself. Yet, the mouth in the painting no longer looked closed. It looked like it was holding something back; a word probably, maybe a refusal, perhaps a name.

Marbod leaned his forehead briefly against the cool wall beside it, eyes closed. Too many winters. Too many homes. Too many versions of himself layered one over the other.

When he looked again, the portrait was still. Harmless. Just a bad old drawing. Still… he turned it face-down before leaving the room.

Just in case.

“Quiet,” Flavus muttered, though he made no effort to soften himself.

Marbod didn’t answer. He never did when he got like this. He leaned in, all weight and intent, his presence a heat of its own. Flavus’s shoulder brushed the wall; the glass behind him bloomed white with condensation where his breath hit it again and again. The curtain shifted. Just a little. Enough to let moonlight spill across their shadows, tangled and restless, moving in sharp, broken lines on the wall. Marbod caught sight of it — the way their silhouettes merged, split, merged again — and it only drove him closer.

“You’re shaking,” he said low, almost pleased.

Flavus laughed breathlessly. “You’re crushing me.”

“Liar.”

The fire in the hearth crackled once, then settled. The room felt smaller by the second, sealed tight by warmth and bodies and the way neither of them was willing to step back. The window was completely opaque now. No view out. No view in. Just heat, breath, and the unmistakable sense that if the glass could sweat any harder, it would shatter — and neither of them would notice.

The fire was almost gone now, only a dull ember breathing faintly in the hearth. Shadows clung heavier to the walls. The room felt larger without the heat, emptier somehow. Flavus exhaled and reached out, slow, careful. His hand found Marbod’s arm, solid and warm beneath the wool. Marbod stirred, half-awake.

“The fire?” he mumbled.

“It went out,” Flavus said quietly.

Marbod drew closer without opening his eyes, pulled him in with a wordless insistence. Flavus pressed his face against Marbod’s shoulder, stealing warmth where he could.

Outside, the night held steady. Inside, the cold lingered—but it did not win. Flavus closed his eyes again.

The fire could be rebuilt in the morning.

It was a Roman marching song, an old one. The kind drilled into you until it lived in your bones. He hadn’t heard it in years. Yet his mind supplied the rest of it instantly — the next line, the wrong note, the way someone used to whistle it off-key just to be irritating. He frowned.

Stop that.

But the melody clung to him, looping, persistent, threading itself through his thoughts while he tried to focus on anything else: the cold air, the smell of smoke, the weight of command on his shoulders.

Instead, he remembered a corridor in Rome, stone walls, echoing steps. Flavus leaning against a column, pretending not to wait for him, humming that exact same tune under his breath. Marbod exhaled slowly.

“I don’t even like that song,” he muttered.

The humming inside stopped. Someone laughed. The tune resumed, louder now, still wrong in exactly the same places. His chest tightened, sharp and unwelcome. Some things, it seemed, didn’t need permission to stay.

The song followed him as he turned away — unfinished, unresolved, stuck in his head like a memory that refused to decide whether it belonged to the past or not.