thewidewideworld | (no subject)

{from here}

Sinric lead Hannibal out of a doorway and into the warm light of spring afternoon. He cranes to look up, following the line of the wall and the buildings. "We're in the right place. The bath should be just through there."

He points to a alley that leads out the road and the grand entrance to the bath houses. "It is small by some standards. Only large enough for thirty or forty people. Many of the greater baths have closed for the cost to keep them is very high and many wealthy households have smaller bathes of their own."

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From:

cook_the_rude

Hannibal sighs, looking out over the sea; then, he bends his neck to lean a cheek into Sinric's now-dark curls. "Carve this upon your mind," he whispers, "in this moment, you were happy."

From:

thewidewideworld

Sinric nods, leaning his slight weight against Hannibal's strong arms, feeling the warmth of his breath play against his hair. "In this time, in this place, I knew love." He whispers to himself, holding Hannibal's arm around him.

From:

cook_the_rude

"You do," Hannibal says. "You did. Something to hold on to through your wandering days."

His arms tighten around Sinric, closer, warmer.

From:

thewidewideworld

"Even if my path never passes this way again, this place with never leave me. Home and hearth with die with Constantine but I will carry the memories till my end. And I will have shared it with you."

He is glad of the strength of Hannibal's embrace, a touch he would not have been able to bear even a year ago. Today or feels like being held safe against a strong wind, protected from a dire fall.

From:

cook_the_rude

"These moments is all that we have," Hannibal says. "Beautiful by our very knowledge of their fleetingness. Mono no aware is what the Japanese call it -- who are even now entering into the early Heian period, a long and classical time of peace. Tell me, Sinric, how far East would you like to go?"

From:

thewidewideworld

He slips out for Hannibal's arms to look east, putting the city at his back. "The end of the silk road at least. The palace of the Sino Emperor. From there, who knows. I know little of what lies beyond."

From:

cook_the_rude

"You might be the very first European in Japan," Hannibal muses, smiling into his face. "Because you know where it is."

From:

thewidewideworld

"Perhaps. If I am welcomed there. From what little I have read, it may be a place not open to travellers."

From:

cook_the_rude

"Oh, it is, at this time!" Hannibal says. "It only closes off, oh, eight hundred years in the future."

From:

thewidewideworld

Sinric chokes a small laugh. "Then I need not hurry my journey to get there before the gates close."

From:

cook_the_rude

"Harbours," Hannibal says. "It is an island -- that is why it was so easy to close when they finally did it."

From:

thewidewideworld

But surely even an island city has walls.

Not that Sinric asks that aloud. That he can find out for himself later. For now he simply enjoys the setting sun at his back.

"Then one day perhaps I will see their harbour for myself. As you see my city now - as a traveller and collector of experiences."

From:

cook_the_rude

"And an amazing and unique experience it is," Hannibal says, putting his arms back around Sinric.

From:

thewidewideworld

He leans back into Hannibal for a minute, eyes closed as he centres himself. "But I am robbing you of the core of it with my maudlin thoughts. Let us bathe and take in the beauty within the city as well as the view across it."

From:

cook_the_rude

"I am as interested in listening to your thoughts as I am in experiencing your beauty and your talents," Hannibal says. "But yes, let us."

He bends to kiss Sinric again.

From:

thewidewideworld

Sinric returns the kiss with a soft sigh, permitting himself to enjoy it but glad of the fall of dark curls that protect him from being recognized.

What he is doing is treason here - to have taken a lover without his master's consent, to be absent from the palace without leave. For all Constantine's kindness and love, Sinric is outside the rule of law in this.

Pushing that from his thoughts, he breaks the kiss and leads Hannibal down the stairs.

The entry hall of the bath is large and majestic, retaining all the glory of its pre-Christian art in the sculpted figures that line each wall of the domed room.

From:

cook_the_rude

Hannibal follows him, looking left and right and stopping when they reach the entry hall.

He takes a deep breath.

"It reminds me of a hammam, but there is a subtle difference," he says. "Thank you for bringing me."

From:

thewidewideworld

"You will have to tell me of this hammam when we return to the bar." Sinric smiles. He speaks to Hannibal in the English of Hannibal's time, as he has learnt it at the bar. Without the bar's native translation, his accent has a slight clip of the something between modern Italian and Greek.

A Nubian girl greets them, her skin onyx black and lightly oiled to shine. She bows to them and smiles, a little mechanically.

Sinric requests entrance for two and use of a private area in the palestra. He paid her with two bronze 40 nummus. With a slight of hand visable only to anyone really watching, he slipped her a third coin, meant as a tip and an understanding between slaves.

Her smile turned genuine for a moment and she bowed. "This way, sirs." She guides them into the apodyterium, fetching them each a clean linen towel, showing the clothing niche intended as their locker.

From:

cook_the_rude

"I have seen a place like this in ruins," Hannibal murmurs. "It is lovely to see it alive, as it were."

He's taking off his cloak already, and opening his belt.

From:

thewidewideworld

Sinric bows to the girl as she leave them and starts helping Hannibal out of his clothes, folding them with a servants practice hand. "It is sad to think of such places as ruins. But I suppose it is the nature of time to grind even the most splendid of man's works to dust.

He sheds his own clothes and gestures Hannibal to a stone table, fetching a pot of oil and a scraper.

From:

cook_the_rude

Hannibal sits on the table, and looks at Sinric. "Should I lie on here?"

From:

thewidewideworld

Sinric chuckles at himself and sets the oil down, checking the blade of the scraper. "Forgive me. I forgot this practice is strange to you. Lay down and I will oil and massage you, then remove the oil and dead skin with this." He holds out the elaborately decorated bronze scraper.

From:

cook_the_rude

"In theory, I know that," Hannibal says, lying down. "But I've never seen it done. The oil reacts with the salt in one's sweat to something resembling proto-soap, which is why this method of cleaning is in fact remarkably successful."

From:

thewidewideworld

Sinric chuckles again and starts on Hannibal's legs, his small hand graceful and practiced as he rubs the god clean oil onto Hannibal's skin and pores, kneeding tight muscles as he goes.

Unself-conscious in his nakedness, Sinric sings softly as he works the oil in.

Other men enter, not paying the pair much attention as they chatter in Greek. Other than a brief and open admiration of Sinric's exposed form.