There's a part of him that does it for the punishment. A very small part, he tells himself. He does it for the heat of rage in Antony's eyes, the gasp as the breath is knocked out of him and he hits the floor. For the fingerprint bruises, the pain wrapped around his ribs, and the blood inside his mouth. For the way Antony looks at him later, with so much intimacy, as if he thinks Brutus will never do anything like that again. Even though they both know he's wrong. Monumentally wrong. And he's a little sorry, in the end, that Antony can't punish him for his last act - for taking himself away from Antony. And a little sorry that that part of him is not a bigger part. That there are other factors at play and he was only Antony's whore a fraction of the time. That Antony was the last bit of pleasure he still allowed himself because it was more truly last bit of pleasure he pursued, through arguments, and shouting, and goading Antony on until words weren't enough. Time to give that up now too. Antony couldn't ever really punish him for his worst offense. Only he could do that.
—
When Antony finds the body of Marcus Brutus - bled dry, a sword run through it, pale eyes staring empty at the trees - he treats it with unfamiliar kindness. He wipes the mud from Brutus' face, cleans his mouth of blood, wraps him in his own cloak. He familiarly traces the line of livid bruises that run around his arms, disappearing under his tunic. He stays by the funeral pyre till the last of the fire has burned to the ground.
"Why do you care?" Octavius asks.
Antony feels the old sting of teeth against his neck, the burn of fingernails across his shoulders. He thinks of a night - it might have been a hundred years ago - that Brutus came to his tent after a battle and he felt the wild pound of his heart beneath the thin guard of his chest for the first time. The loss of control that would characterize every private encounter they would have from that point on. He breathes in the acrid smoke, "I hadn't thought that I did."