@cummodus Was Being Mean To Me So I Wrote Some Acacius + Geta Lap Sitting. Platonic. CW For Childhood

@cummodus was being mean to me so I wrote some Acacius + Geta lap sitting. Platonic. CW for childhood trauma/abuse and self-harm.

( AO3 )

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“You’re being careless again,” the General said.

There wasn’t any judgement to his voice, but Geta was finding it difficult to swallow despite. Instinctively, he always expected there to be shouting: a sudden grinding of the chair’s feet against the floor, a tall figure standing, and a burning blow against his cheek that’d turn his head so fast his neck would hurt for it as much as his face did later. He could imagine it (remember it) so vividly that when he lifted his hand again to reverse his move, his hand was shaking.

He knew Acacius could see it. Every bit of his fear and this cursed weakness he couldn’t shed. This was a game - be it one to teach him, but still just a game. But he remembered so well, remembered what failure meant, how swiftly the punishment came. Acacius would at least tell him what he’d done wrong, but that hadn’t always been the case. He remembered moving pieces on a board and then that blinding, swift, stabbing pain on his face, inside his head, the watery eyes and the second strike that would come for crying, even though he wasn’t crying. He only cried later, hiding behind his brother’s bed, Caracalla’s clumsy arms looking for purchase around his shoulders, his cold fingers trailing the bruises on Geta’s face, his broken lips.

“Do you know what you did wrong?” the General asked.

Slowly, stiffly, Geta shook his head. “No. I don’t understand.”

“Look.”

Acacius took the piece from his fingers, which were as cold as he remembered Caracalla’s being. He wasn’t making a mention of it, or the shaking, and Geta could only guess as to why. Did the chance to humiliate him not appeal to the man? For so long, Geta had done his best to make him angry. He deserved something in return. His father would have never passed such an opportunity. Instead, Geta now watched as his piece was placed where he’d just removed it - and then another piece moved, a black one to match the ivory piece he’d wielded. The General predicted flawlessly where he’d been heading with his strategy, and in no time, his example had shown why it was a mistake: a long, elaborate mistake, but one which his opponent had nevertheless picked up on far before Geta had realised his own exposed vulnerability.

He’d never been good at board games. Now, this was so much more than that. These were cohorts in the field - and time after time, Acacius was decimating his ranks. No matter what Geta did, it always ended the same way.

“I don’t know how you see that far,” he said hesitantly, his voice breaking a little. “I can only see ahead two or three moves. I cannot predict yours. I don’t understand.”

“I have experience,” Acacius told him, his dark eyes turning to him from underneath his brows. “I have training, an education. I have been taught, ruthlessly at times, how to always think one step ahead of the enemy.”

“And it works out there? On a real campaign?”

A short nod, and Acacius leaned back in his seat. Their pieces on the marble board stayed as they were, in the inevitable climax and closure following the flaws which Geta had exposed into his lines with a single thoughtless move. No, not… not thoughtless. He’d thought. His thoughts just weren’t good enough. He didn’t have the mind for this. That had been what Severus had told him, over the tears which burned in his eyes almost as badly as the bruises and heat of injuries and bloodied lips on his face burned. He didn’t have the mind for it, for commanding armies; he’d never make for a good emperor. He couldn’t even win a game of latrones.

“Leading an army into a battle begins much before the pieces are set. You measure everything, from the environment and the direction of the wind to the angle of the sun and the conditions of the soil. You choose your positions so that the enemy will never have a gain on you, or if it is inevitable, you first have to find a way to turn it against him or minimise the impact by employing your available strengths for defenses. Then you see how he positions himself, and ensure that there is no evident flaw in his own design. Where are his archers? Do you have natural cover available? Is there cavalry? Will the environment separate the troops when the charge begins - can you force it?”

“But none of that exists on the board.”

“All of it exists in the mind.”

For a good long while, their eyes were locked. Geta wanted to retreat, but he couldn’t. That’d be a sign of weakness. But was it worse than the lining of tears in his eyes? The fear that had his lips tight? When Acacius moved again, Geta’s whole body jolted in his seat, and his breath hitched. The reaction had the older man still for just a while, and a flicker of his expression betrayed his awareness of the change between them, and Geta wanted to die; he wasn’t good for anything. He jumped at shadows, always had. Just one move over a board which displayed his loss - his body throbbed with the memories of his punishments, and Septimius Severus had been ashes for three years now.

“Come,” Acacius told him then, his voice softer and his fingers curling once for an invitation. “Come see the board from my angle.”

Geta’s legs shook when he pulled himself up from the chair, but this time he could at least hope that the General did not see how much he had to lean himself to the armrests to stay steady. His steps were careful when he crossed the table. Then, a hand pressed over his back - the middle of his spine, first, then with fingers crawling all the way around his waist to pull him closer. He shifted, his step clumsy until his body was flush with the General’s. Hesitantly, he followed when the grip turned for a tug. There was no space there - nowhere to sit - the way he was being tugged did not allow for him to bend over, nor would he have wanted to, it felt humiliating. The side of his thigh found some purchase from the very edge of the chair, but the armrest was digging into his back when he brushed up there, trying to make himself smaller.

Acacius huffed; he gave him a glance, a measure, and his fingertips pressed into Geta’s side a little harder.

“General, I don’t know what you want of me.”

“Sit.”

“There isn’t any space.”

The look he gained in return was empty in a way that felt tired with him. But he didn’t understand. He felt stupider by the moment: first the game, now this. Where was he supposed to sit? If he’d crouch, he’d be too low, and it’d be -

He swallowed when the hand tugged at him again. Then, closing his eyes, he let his body be pulled over so that his thigh slipped past Acacius’s, the soft spread of the man’s own taking over from the hard edge of the chair. Geta didn’t so much sit on it as he allowed himself to hover over it, and the heat of shame pushed onto his face. The fear in him was changing shape now. He shouldn’t have been here alone. He shouldn’t let someone whom he didn’t trust have this much power over him. Acacius was an older man; stronger, too, by far. And what was he? A boy who couldn’t stop crying when his pieces were cast aside from a game board.

“Do you see?” Acacius asked him, as if his body wasn’t tense like frozen.

“What am I supposed to see, General?” Geta’s voice was small and strained, barely more than a hoarse breath.

The arm around him adjusted, hand turning to the bend of the arm as the fingers came loose and rested in the air. This hold was less possessive, less… less threatening. It was casual, relaxed, half on the chair and half on him, just keeping him steady as he was. Geta’s body loosened with the grip, and he could breathe again - his eyes regaining focus, the empty noise in his mind quieting. He blinked and wiped his eyes to the back of his arm as subtly as he could. At least from here, Acacius couldn’t see how pathetic he was, how afraid all of this made him.

He turned to stare at the board and tried to remember what they’d been speaking of.

“This is your stage,” Acacius began again. He was picking up the pieces, placing them in their starting lanes.

“Your archers.” His fingers drew an invisible circle upon the black pieces in front of them, separating two cohorts.

“Your cavalry.” Another circle.

“Your footmen.” A third one.

“You are here,” he explained then, brushing his fingertip over a piece. “A good general will always fight with his men. You are the point of the blade which thrusts through the enemy line. They will die to protect you, but you cannot waste their lives just because you know that they won’t question the order. The less men you have around you, the more vulnerable you are to the enemy. Even a victory can be fatal to a general whose focus shifted too far into conquest and away from the people around him. Your fight is always here, where you area, and with the men who are around you.”

Geta nodded. Warmth was returning to his body.

“At the same time,” Acacius continued, his hand gesturing toward the white pieces across the board, “You, more than any other piece on the board, must always know how to look ahead. You must keep in mind the enemy’s position, and lead your men always through the most optimal path available to you. Your body must fight where you stand but your mind must fight for the whole army. And you must trust, with your heart and soul, that every other commander is reading the land and the battle as you are. You must believe that you are on the same page, because you can only command those who are around you. There is no guarantee your orders will be heard all through the battle - this is why choosing commanders is important; they must not only have the skills to read a battle as it unfolds, but they must know your mind as well as their own, so that even when they cannot find you, they can make the choices that mirror your own.”

Now, his hand returned to Geta; it took a grip of his wrist first, then stretched fingers to become a cover for Geta’s hand, and together, they began to move pieces.

“When you move your troops through to the side to circle the enemy,” he continued, Geta’s hand in his in a way that felt warm and commanding but not forceful, and it did not hurt, “you must believe that here - on the other side of the field - your commander will know what you are doing, and pull his troops through so that your manouvre becomes the trap you wish for it. If it doesn’t? Your line scatters, and it’ll be easy to break through. The enemy will become a blade and your army is but a hide to pierce. The goal is always to engage them so that they cannot penetrate a weakness in you first. An army which is surrounded cannot fight as a point and becomes much like a field ready for a reaping.”

Geta’s hand was left upon the board, holding a piece: he thought it was obvious where he should lay it next, but something nagged at him. The enemy positions, Acacius’s words. He hesitated. And there it was - to the side of his piece, there was an opening which was being left bare, and would allow the enemy to do exactly what the General had told him not to allow for it. It could turn to a point, and push his forces apart.

He lay down the piece he’d been left holding, and moved another instead. His breath released as a gasp of relief when Acacius gave a laugh: it had no jeer in it, no mockery, no disappointment.

“Good eye,” the General said.

It could have been good. Geta could have enjoyed this, if not for the continued release of his body - the way he was falling into shaking, far too deep into relaxation, into tremors which were cold and warm at once, and if his breath hadn’t… whatever it did - he couldn’t get in enough air. His reaction took his whole focus: his hand retreated, arms pressed against his body to cover him, hands escaped to his face to hide him. Every word his father had ever said to him - all of it at once, as echoes in his ears, and he couldn’t bear it - couldn’t bear the sound of the General’s laugh, the warmth of it, or the sensation of burning soreness and rawness which had suddenly taken over his body. It took him a while to realise something more mortifying: that as he was breaking, the man whose thigh he’d been set to sit on brought his own arms around him, and that his hold was firm but not punishing or restricting. For every one of his tremors, his hitching breaths, the General simply held him tighter for a while, and then let him feel himself loose and able to go when his breaths ran free again but he couldn’t move - if he’d tried, he would have fallen on his knees. There was no strength to him and the tears wouldn’t stop, so he couldn’t take his hands off of his face, either.

Pathetic, pitiful, despicable sight.

His spine curved and he tried to hide, as if becoming smaller could have made him invisible. He wanted the beating. He craved for it. This was too much - a display like this had only one answer to it, one lesson which needed repeating. Where was it? Where was the pain? He wanted it; so badly that when it was not forthcoming, his hands turned to nails on his face and then to a fist and he brought his knuckles deep into his own arm, one colliding into bone, the others thrusting into muscle, releasing an ache that spread into the full length of the limb and left his grip weak.

A hand took a hold of that place, then, where his fist had made for an injury, and wrapped around it. It pulled the whole arm down and because of the pain, Geta couldn’t stop it from happening - his muscles didn’t contract, couldn’t - and he turned his face away, tried to breathe. His other wrist was captured, too, and his hands pressed against his chest, arms over arms, the warmth of a body both pressed against his back and holding him still by the front. The moment was passing: the echoes in his ears turning lesser, his shaking dying down again, but he still had trouble swallowing and breathing. There was nothing in the world that he craved more than to let his body be at rest there, soak up the warmth which was there, be in silence, and forget all that was so disgusting about him, so weak, never good enough for anything. If no one had ever said a thing again, he might have been able to believe that this was gentleness, or care, something which could have belonged to him as a child if he’d only been better - more deserving - but he’d always been stupid and worthless.

When would the punishment come?

Was it ever coming?

And if not, what more would he have to do to himself to repeat the lesson? One strike was not enough to drive in the message.

With a sigh, Acacius’s grip of his wrists grew firmer for a while before he let him go again, and as he did so, Geta had already slipped off and stood up and walked half across the room before he so much as knew that he was moving, or that he was able to stay upright at all.

“Thank you for this lesson,” he said tightly, his own voice foreign to his ears. “You’re dismissed.”

The General stood: slowly, in little hurry to move or be gone from the room. His hand brushed through the marble board and examined the pieces upon it one last time. Then, as Geta’s gaze was picking him up from the very corner of his eyes, he turned to look at him instead.

“I wonder what you could have been,” Acacius said quietly, “had your father not been such a cruel man.”

The way in which Geta’s breathing hitched again was audible, and once more, his nails turned to his skin, wanting to hurt, break, claw red marks into it, make it bleed. Weak. Despicable. Disgusting. Worthless. Like beats of his own heart inside his ears.

“You know where to find me should you wish to continue learning, Emperor Geta. Until then - try to think of the full picture, even when those closest to you remain your first priority.”

The General’s absence left the room ringing, but instead of fright, Geta’s chest was now loosening into warmth. It took him a long time to lift his gaze from the floors: the afternoon’s sun was already tinted a warmer, deeper colour than when the door had last opened and closed, but every moment which he’d spent motionless had been one which he had needed to regain control of himself again.

The birdsong, the breeze across the Palatine; the sounds of music from somewhere inside the palaces, and the laugh of children outside. He was safe here, Geta thought, and the ghost of an embrace still played upon his skin when he finally determined himself able to move. There’d been no price attached to this kindness, and Geta’s weakness, in all its reprehensible display, had not been punished. For the first time that he could remember he was entirely unharmed by it - they both were, this time, him and his brother.

If not for the bruises of his own fist, at least. He let his palm trail over the throbbing marks, the only real ghost of his father that still stood in the room with him, and his mouth turned to a snarl.

He’d lose again, he thought. And next time, he’d shut his mind to his father’s will, and would not do his dirty work for him. For tonight as always, he’d seek the only comfort which he knew for it - he’d find his brother, they’d dine and then sleep. It felt a miracle that Caracalla’s touch would only be the second comfort which he’d be granted that day, voluntarily and without reserve.