A/N: Why are there not more Antonio fics on this site? Antonio is one of the saddest and most wonderful characters in all Shakespeare. Like Malvolio, he's a tragic character who's fallen into a comedy and doesn't know how to get out. But unlike Malvolio, he's selfless, romantic, loyal, and (in my mind) incredibly good-looking. He would have been a better romantic partner for Sebastian than that self-absorbed rich boy ever deserved. He's also a pirate. Come on.
Anyway. This fic is what happens when I have too much time on my hands after watching a performance of Twelfth Night that pretended the play's ending isn't tragic as hell for Antonio.
The night sky rippled with gray clouds, but the sea itself had not been so clear since Antonio set up camp on the beach of Illyria. The water stretched smooth as the edge of a wine bottle, green curved glass edging toward the rim of the world. Beautiful, of course, but Antonio did not care about that. The calmer the water, the farther he could see. And when the horizon yawned wide around him, he could know for certain no ships sailed toward the beach.
He could not let himself be found. Not until he decided what he was supposed to do next.
He sat on the ridge of rock ten feet above the waves, slim arms looped around his shins, watching the clouds roll. His clothes—rough homespun breeches and loose, coarse shirt—betrayed his occupation as a sailor, as much from their poor quality as the faint smell of brine that clung to their worn weave. Skin tanned from years under the sun, face narrow, the proudly jutting nose of an Italian, the delicate expressive mouth of a young boy. His eyes glittered black as the night sky against the gently rolling waves. A long, straight scar, as from a blade, cut across his left cheek.
"So," Antonio said to no one in particular. "Next steps."
If he had any idea what those steps were, of course, he wouldn't need to wonder aloud.
Soon, Antonio would have to find food again. The fish he'd caught yesterday barely lasted a meal—mostly bones, with scraps of salty meat hardly worth the effort of cooking. Assuming the clouds shadowing the sky passed as he thought they would, he would not need shelter, could sleep on the beach again under the stars.
Water, though. Water was a more pressing concern. He had enough for another day. Two at the most. And then he would need to make a decision. The city, governed by the same puritanical, irascible Duke Orsino who had captured the rest of the crew of Antonio's ship, the Myrmidon, under charges of piracy. Or the harbor, in hopes that Antonio could either secure passage on a departing ship or sneak onboard unseen until they reached the open seas.
Not that he'd have trouble securing a crewmember's place in any other city. Antonio was only twenty-five, but he'd been a sailor for fifteen of those years, and had been the Myrmidon's first mate until Orsino's cannons sent the ship to the bottom of the sea. But Orsino's men watched the port, under strict instructions to arrest Antonio Rossi, convicted pirate, on sight.
Neither option, the city or the port, seemed particularly inviting. Then again, neither did dying of thirst.
He sighed and rested his chin on his knees, watching the progression of the clouds. They had started a light, swirling gray, but he quickly realized his initial assessment had been wrong—these clouds would not pass. Already they thickened into a twisted, opaque blanket, their undulations matched by the new disturbance of the sea, rattled into tossing waves.
A storm. A rough one. And soon.
"Damn," he muttered under his breath, and rose. Already on the horizon, streaks of lightning shattered the sky, illuminating the white crests of the waves. The storm would hit the beach within a few minutes. On the brink of a sea this vast, weather would turn in a moment, and what had been a clear, unthreatening night could in a moment become something else entirely. If only he'd thought to find shelter earlier. Safety seemed ambitious at this point, but a place to stay dry, at least. He could have used that.
The first few raindrops splattered against the back of his neck, cold water cutting through the thin weave of his shirt.
Faster than I thought.
He started to turn away from the cliff, back toward the beachgrass sweeping up toward the city, as if suitable shelter might appear if he just looked hard enough for it.
But something caught his eye and stopped him dead.
A ship.
No, not a ship. Not anymore.
The rain thickened; he threw up a hand to shield his eyes, squinting at the tattered sail bobbing across the waves like a shroud. Another bolt of lightning bleached the waves, illuminating the skeletal wreck of a once-two-masted ship, followed by a clap of thunder that rattled Antonio to his bones. The storm was here, whipping his loose shirt around him, stinging his exposed skin with bitter drops. He should have turned away. A small clump of trees grew at the far end of the beach—not enough to provide any real protection, but at least more than standing here on the rim of a cliff, ten feet above the water.
And he would have turned away, had he not seen the figure in the waves. Had he not watched the man fighting desperately to swim away from the wrecked ship, flailing limbs and sodden movement. Had he not heard the man scream.
In Antonio's moral code, discretion far trumped valor. One did not sail the Mediterranean with a crew of convicted pirates because helping others was one's main priority. But his body reacted before his mind could explain it. He kicked off his boots, stripped off his shirt, and dove headfirst from the cliff into the waves, feeling the warm sea smack his limbs on impact.
He was a strong swimmer, but the storm was worse than he'd prepared for. Every stroke cost him more energy than he thought he could spare. He treaded water, feeling the current drag him off-course, shaking water from his hair, scanning against the rain.
There.
Antonio pushed forward, closing the distance between the man and himself. Just in time to see the man's head slip beneath the waves, and not break the surface again.
No. Goddamnit. No.
Antonio dove. Squinting through the dark water, the salt stung his eyes hard enough to make him wince. Underwater, he slipped beneath the man's arm and looped it around his own shoulders, breaking the surface and swimming slowly, laboriously toward shore with one arm. The man did not move. Was so much dead weight around Antonio's shoulders as the sailor forced his way back toward the beach. Breathing hard. Vision narrowing to two feet in front of him, eyes still stinging with rain.
At last, with screaming lungs and burning muscles, Antonio stood, in waist-deep water, dragging the man to shore, laying him out on the sand. He wiped the back of his hand across his stinging eyes, shaking the salt water from his hair.
And then, for the first time, he truly looked at the man he'd rescued from the waves.
Lying there sparkling wet on the soaking sand. Eyes half-closed, long lashes brushing Adonis cheekbones. Hair sun-gold, clothes weather-beaten and torn but well made, expensive. There was a Grecian perfection to him, an otherworldly sense of studied art to his beauty. The kind of man Antonio found himself staring at, stupidly, not moving, not acting, just looking in soaking-wet reverence.
Antonio knelt beside him, resting his hand on the man's chest. It did not move.
"Come on," he whispered, almost a prayer. "Breathe."
Acting without thinking, Antonio brought his mouth to the man's perfect lips, forcing breath into half-drowned lungs. Breath. Pause. Breath. He pressed his palms hard against the man's chest, willing the heart to start beating, the lungs to expand. Breath. Pause. Breath.
Come on. Please.
A flinch, a gasp, and the man's blue-green eyes flew open, startled to see Antonio crouched over him. Antonio leapt backward, face burning. The man convulsed, coughed, hacked up what must have been a liter of seawater out onto the sand. He trembled, his shoulders shaking, on his hands and knees.
After a long moment, the man turned hesitantly to Antonio. The sailor knelt still in the sand with the expression of a hunted fox. Another flash of lightning illuminated the sky, crowning the golden-haired man with a celestial halo.
The man-who-was-not-drowned smiled.
And abruptly, Antonio was the one who could not breathe.
#
The two young men sat on the beach under the stars, listening to the pop and crack of the fire Antonio had lit between them. The storm had passed as quickly as it came on, leaving an unnerving calm in its wake. It was a warm night, with a soft breeze from the west that ruffled the man's golden hair like a field of wheat. Antonio sat with his arms around his shins again, resting his chin on his knees. The fair-haired man lay on his back, breathing slowly, clear eyes open and gazing at the stars.
The fair man spoke, keeping his gaze to the sky. "Thank you. Again. I owe you my life."
Antonio shrugged. He did not look away from the fire. "Any man who can swim would have done it."
The man frowned. "You look like you've seen enough of the world to know that's not true."
Sighing, Antonio pulled his knees closer into his narrow chest. "Perhaps not."
"What's your name?"
He paused—watching this man, listening to him speak, he had almost forgotten the answer to that question. "Antonio," he answered. "Antonio Rossi. And what should I call you?"
"Sebastian Moretti," the man replied. "From Messaline. I was traveling with my sister. If not for you, I'd have drowned as she did."
The hitch in Sebastian's voice sent a stab of sympathetic pain through Antonio's chest. He looked at his own knees, unable to meet his companion's eye. "She might live. You survived, after all."
"Perhaps."
Both Sebastian and Antonio knew this was a lie, words full of more hope than conviction, but neither felt strong enough to say so. They remained in silence a moment, listening to the spitting fire, the sound of gulls crying over the waves. Gulls that sounded like a screaming man, lost at sea. Antonio looked at his hands, cursing his own helplessness. If only he could say something. If only he were better at providing comfort, if only he'd ever had any practice. If only he could reach over and run this useless hand across Sebastian's cheek, brushing his still-damp golden hair from his forehead, and whisper that it would all be all right, that the cruelty of the world would never touch him…
"Antonio?"
He looked sharply toward Sebastian, who sat up in the sand beside him now, watching curiously.
"Yes?"
"What are you thinking about?"
Nothing he could say aloud.
Antonio knew there was nothing much about himself to love. He was too quiet, too rough, too much a man of the sea to hold any allure for this gentleman of dry land. But if Sebastian said something. If he gave some sort of signal, a kind of sign. The smallest shadow of a smile, hinting that Antonio had not lost his mind, that there was hope, that this was not impossible. Then, perhaps. Until then…
"The gulls," he said, feeling the thinness of the lie. "How sad they sound."
"I think they sound beautiful," Sebastian said. He would, Antonio thought. Anything he hears is beautiful, if he's the one hearing it. "They were the first thing I heard when I woke. Right before I saw you. Did I tell you," he added, his smile slightly off-center but no less genuine for it, "did I tell you when I saw you first, I thought you were an angel?"
Antonio flushed red, looked back toward his knees. "I promise you, I'd be a poor sort of angel."
"I don't know," Sebastian said, gently teasing. "You were sent here to protect me, weren't you? My guardian angel. Why else would you have been here?"
Because I can't enter the city, and I can't get a ship. Because the moment I saw your face, I knew I would fight any storm, wrestle any waves, to keep you safe.
"Fate is a strange thing," Antonio said instead.
"Indeed. Indeed it is."
A seal, far away somewhere along the rocks lining the shore, barked plaintively through the night. Antonio nudged the fire with a branch of driftwood, kicking it back into new life.
"You should rest," he said, giving Sebastian a smile. "Get your strength back. We'll figure out what's best to do tomorrow. I'll take the first watch."
Sebastian yawned. "Aren't you tired?" he asked.
Antonio's limbs ached, his head swam, his muscles screamed. The storm had sapped him of most of his strength. For fear of the city guard, he had not slept more than three hours together the past two nights. But his smile to Sebastian was genuine. Between the two of them, silent agreement had already been reached.
"Not at all. I'll wake you for your turn."
#
"You were supposed to wake me," Sebastian muttered the moment he opened his eyes.
Antonio smiled and kicked a small spray of sand over what remained of the fire, dousing its embers. He hadn't closed his eyes all night, but looked twice as awake as the slow-to-rouse gentleman of Messaline.
"It's all right, I couldn't sleep. You look better."
It was true. A measure of life had returned to Sebastian's face overnight. He still bore a harried, weary look, but he rose to his feet without trembling.
"I feel better. Sleep is a powerful healer. Where are you going?"
Antonio had begun to walk away from their makeshift camp, down the beach toward the waves.
"Waking up," he tossed back over his shoulder, and stripped off his shirt—pretending all the while that no self-conscious thought entered his mind. "I'll be right back."
So saying, he slipped out of his boots, let his trousers fall to the sand, and in nothing but his underclothes dove into the warm waves of the sea.
The shock of clear salt waves sparkled through his veins, driving the dregs of tiredness from his body and starting his mind to work. He swam strongly, against the tide out to sea, relishing the power of his own strength and motion, so much smoother against calm waters. Suddenly it felt as though he'd slept a full night. The sea had not been universally kind to Antonio as a man. At sea he had learned the cruelty of men, the violence of the desperate, the vast lonely expanse within a man's own head. It had taught him much to hate. But still it had never taken away the freedom he had always loved.
Liberating as the water was, he could not delay long.
Soon, he emerged and dressed—wet still, but the sun rose hot over Illyria, and within ten minutes he knew he would be dry again. He jogged toward Sebastian, grinning ear to ear at the fair-haired nobleman's salty expression.
"How did you learn to swim like that?" Sebastian asked.
Antonio raked a hand back through his hair, scattering seawater in all directions. "I'm a sailor. First dove into the water when I was three, and never left. My mother used to say my father was a merman."
Sebastian grinned. "And was he?"
Antonio shrugged. "For all I know, he might have been."
"Well, clearly you need to teach me to swim," Sebastian said drily.
The sailor laughed. "Someday, absolutely. But for today, you have a choice to make."
Sebastian frowned. "I don't follow."
"Or did you want to spend the rest of your life on this beach?"
A man could do worse than spend the rest of his life standing on a beach with an angel.
Catching himself a moment too late to stop the thought, Antonio bit his tongue hard, tasting the pain like a fine wine. These were dangerous waters, more hazardous than anything the sea had ever thrown at him. He could not afford to think this way.
"You have two options," Antonio went on, heavy-handedly changing the subject back. "First"—he pointed inland, away into the waving tangle of beachgrass that lined the soft-rolling dunes—"there is the city, under governance of Duke Orsino."
Sebastian's frown deepened. Apparently Antonio's attempt to keep his own emotions from his tone of voice had been unsuccessful. "Why, what manner of man is this duke?"
Antonio paused.
Orsino.
A warlike commander at the prow of his double-masted ship, saber in hand, turning his vessel's cannons on the Myrmidon. An impetuous man, as quick to fight as to breathe, to fly into passions as to blink, a man who would see the waves licking his shores tinted with the blood of a thousand men if it would bring him an airy nothing he desired. A rough, unpredictable devil, possessed of man's form but scarcely touching man's reason, his mercy.
What manner of man, indeed.
"As valiant and proud a man as could ever rule Illyria," Antonio said at last. He could tell from Sebastian's furrowed brow that his silence had said more than his words.
"Or…" Sebastian prompted.
"Or," Antonio agreed, forcing his attention elsewhere. He gestured in the opposite direction, along the shoreline, where a steep, rocky promontory obscured the rest of the beach from view. Sebastian's eyes followed the direction of his hand. "Or there is the harbor."
"What good would that do me, without a ship?"
Antonio shrugged, feigning a fierce nonchalance. "More good than you might think. Merchants and sailors pass through the harbor nightly. With enough money—"
"Because I made sure to bring my purse when my ship capsized," Sebastian drawled, coaxing a grin from Antonio.
"If you look like someone who's likely to have money," he amended, "it shouldn't be difficult to secure passage anywhere you wanted. The world is vast. You have options."
"Would you come with me?"
Had he not been standing still, Antonio would have tripped over his own feet in surprise. As it stood, he was left staring at Sebastian as if the fair-haired nobleman had taken leave of the very last of his senses.
Would I go with him? What the devil kind of question is that? Why would I go with him? I've known him less than twenty-four hours.
If there were any way under the sun I could avoid letting him go, I would take it.
Has he offered one?
He couldn't mean that.
Could he?
Antonio shook his head, dislodging the unproductive cycle of thoughts, forbidding it to spin further. It did not matter what Sebastian might or might not have insinuated. Insinuation was useless. He did not have the time or the mental capacity to deal in hypotheticals. Not when the reality of the present moment threatened a hundred ways to end his life.
"No," he said at last.
"Why not? Or did you want to spend the rest of your life on this beach?"
Antonio glared at Sebastian, resenting the way his own words had been thrust back in his face.
"I've made more enemies than friends in Illyria," he said. "I highly doubt there are many willing to lend me a ship."
"Why, what on Earth have you done?" Sebastian teased. "Killed their children? Burned their homes?"
Antonio stuck out his tongue petulantly—it was a powerfully strange thing to joke about, but it felt natural, somehow. "What kind of man do you take me for?"
"I can't pretend to know. At first, I took you for an angel, and you told me that wasn't right."
"Aim somewhere between angel and devil, and you might hit it." Antonio sighed, folded both hands behind his head, and tilted his eyes up toward the crystal-blue sky. "Nothing so bloody. I was…part of a company of sailors who, who were not as respectful of private property as we might have been."
Sebastian blinked. "You're a pirate."
"Other men have said so."
"Would you say so?"
Antonio laughed, a dry laugh with little humor. "Are you afraid of me now, Sebastian?"
"Should I be?"
A difficult question. At the moment, Antonio was certainly afraid of himself. Of the incredible, reckless stupidity he knew he was capable of. He interlaced his hands behind his back, setting his gaze on a point somewhere beyond Sebastian—safer by far than meeting his eyes.
"You don't seem the type to consort with pirates, that's all," he said, and instantly hated himself for his choice of words. Of all the verbs in all the world, and somehow he'd settled on "consort." If God struck him down with a bolt of lightning on the spot for being an idiot, Antonio would have understood.
Sebastian, though, did not seem to notice. He sighed and glanced inland, deep in thought. "My sister might still live," he said slowly—Antonio could see him working out the problem as he spoke. "And if she does, she'll have gone to the city, to see if she can find me. I have no choice. I have to try."
Antonio nodded, and bit his tongue to keep from speaking. If Sebastian had chosen the harbor, there might have been a chance. There was a possibility he could stay unnoticed near the harbor. He had half-decided already to accompany Sebastian if fortune took him to the harbor, and to hell with the consequences. But the city. To walk directly under Orsino's nose and hope the vicious eagle-eyed duke would not notice. Every one of Antonio's instincts screamed against it.
Then he saw the way Sebastian fixed him with a smile, that otherworldly, perfect smile, and he felt his resolve ebb even as he fought to hold onto it.
"I know we've only just met, Antonio," Sebastian said. "And I would never want to put you in danger. But I do feel safer at the thought of having you by my side."
Antonio's hands clenched into fists. If he'd been waiting for a sign, the way Sebastian's voice had shifted at the words "by my side" was as close as he was likely to get.
And after all, what was life worth living for, if not the shadow of a chance like this? Another day, a week, a fortnight in Sebastian's company, was death not the appropriate payment for something like that? Melodramatic, yes—he wanted to laugh at himself even as he thought the words privately. Still, melodramatic did not necessarily mean untrue.
Antonio nodded, with a twisted smile. "If you want me, then," he said, his voice misleadingly steady, "you have me. Wherever you go."
After all, what did he have to lose?
Sebastian's relieved smile glowed pure under the morning sun. He pulled Antonio into a tight embrace—a small blessing, that he could not see Antonio's face, nor the furious battle the sailor fought to keep his expression flat.
"I can't thank you enough. For all you've done. I'm in a poor state now, but I promise, in Messaline I have the means to repay you."
"I don't need money," Antonio said hastily, stepping back. The burning in his face had nothing to do with the bright sun.
"Right," Sebastian said, smiling. "Pirate. Buried treasure and all."
Antonio shrugged. "As it were."
"Well, there are ways I can repay you beyond money. If that's what you'd prefer."
Jesus Christ. He has to be doing this on purpose.
Drawn on by hope, nothing holding him back but knowledge of his own stupidity, Antonio made a gesture inland.
"Shall we?"
Still hiding his expression from Sebastian's blue-green eyes, he led the nobleman across the beach, deeper into the island, toward the city.
#
"You idiot."
Antonio slowly looked up. His neck ached with the small movement, from the cold prison wall against which he sat, each ridge of his spine eroding against the stone. His wrists had been chained to the wall a few inches above his ears—he'd long since lost feeling in them, except for a deep ache in his shoulders, a pervasive chill at the tips of his fingers. His cell was so dark that he could hardly see where the voice had come from, as he squinted through the black toward the door.
Then, with a hiss of a striking match, a new-flaming torch threw the cell into light. Antonio swore and closed his eyes, would have shielded them with his hand if he could have moved them. A soft, low chuckle came from the same direction as the light.
"Sorry. Ought to have warned you. 'S bright."
Wincing, Antonio opened his eyes, squinting toward the speaker. Gradually, he could make out the details of the man holding the torch, just on the other side of his cell's barred door. A small, slight man, dark-haired, with a short beard and hazel eyes that looked at Antonio with mocking interest. The man wore what could only be described as mourning motley—a patchwork of every imaginable shade of black, charcoal, gray, smoke. The soberest, saddest fool Antonio had ever seen. But then, they were in a prison, after all.
"So," the fool said, as if he and Antonio were in a comfortable sitting-room having an ordinary conversation, "back to my original theme."
"What theme?" Antonio's voice was hoarse. Since Orsino's men had apprehended him just over a day ago—since Sebastian had betrayed him worse than any Judas—he had not said a word.
"The one where I explain to you what an idiot you are," the fool said agreeably.
"You're one to talk, fool," Antonio snapped. Patience was not, at the moment, one of his primary virtues.
"Guilty," the fool agreed. "Feste, the lady Olivia's favorite fool. And in a profession like that, my good sir, trust me, I know an idiot when I see one."
From the pocket of his midnight-patchwork doublet, Feste procured a small ring of keys, brass catching the glow of the torchlight. With a small, decisive "hmm," he selected one key from among its brothers, slipped it into the lock of Antonio's cell, and swung the door silently open. The fool entered the cell, stowing the torch in a nearby bracket on the wall, and sat cross-legged on the floor about a foot from Antonio. Helplessness inching toward rage, Antonio wanted to kick him, to spit in the fool's face, but he held himself back. The fool might not be alone. If Antonio was to maintain any hope of release, he could not afford mistakes.
"You're the most wanted pirate in the city," Feste said, head cocked to one side in seemingly genuine interest. "Even I've heard of you, and I make a point not to know anything. Why did you come back?"
Antonio exhaled deeply and looked down at his knees. Why indeed.
"I don't know," he said.
He flinched—Feste had reached over, cupped Antonio beneath the chin with one hand, lifted up his head so that they looked at one another face-to-face. The fool's hazel eyes were too perceptive, too perceptive by half.
"Yes, you do," Feste said.
He let his hand fall back to his side, but Antonio could not break eye contact now.
"I heard how you were taken," Feste went on. "Drawing your sword in the middle of the street, to defend that boy my mistress dotes on. I've lived in this giddy world nearly twice fifteen years, my friend. I know what sparks a bad decision of that kind."
Though he met the fool's gaze, Antonio did not see him. He saw instead Sebastian's blue-green eyes, wide with confusion, false, lying confusion. The stammered denial on Sebastian's perfect lips, those angelic eyes watching as Orsino's guards bound Antonio's hands behind his back, forced him through the city streets to the palace, chained him in an underground cell and left him. Sebastian's total indifference. Antonio's foolishness to have expected anything more.
I do feel safer at the thought of having you by my side.
The moment Antonio had met Sebastian, all hope of safety vanished. He was a fool not to have seen it earlier.
"I love him," Antonio said, not caring that he had known Feste for under five minutes, that he had never admitted this fact even silently, even to himself.
Feste smiled sadly. "You don't even know him."
The fool rose to a crouch and trailed one warm hand along Antonio's forearm, leaving off at the cold iron cuff ringing his right wrist. Softly, almost reverently, Feste bent over and kissed Antonio gently on the cheek, then looked at him sadly and shook his head.
"You idiot," he said. "You poor, perfect, innocent idiot."
Taking the ring of keys again, Feste selected a tiny brass key and slipped it into the manacles binding Antonio's wrists. Suddenly unanchored, the sailor's arms fell to his sides, the blood rushing back to his hands with agonizing suddenness. Antonio's breath hissed through his teeth—he gripped his right wrist with the opposite hand, roughly massaging feeling into it again.
"Don't get too comfortable," Feste said. "Can you stand?"
Moving slowly, knees trembling, Antonio discovered he could.
"I've been sent to fetch you before the duke," Feste added, his tone perfectly light. "I confess, it doesn't look good for you."
"I never expected it to," Antonio replied. Both his voice and his legs were steadier now. If he were to die today—and the odds were increasingly leaning toward the affirmative—then the least he could do was meet that death on his own two feet. Some storms a man could not outswim, but he could at least maintain dignity while he drowned.
"Come on, then," Feste said. He extended a hand, which Antonio, after a pause, took. "You're more a fool than I am. Let's see what comes of your new profession."
Sebastian.
If I could see you, one more time…
Then what. What good would that do. What did that matter.
"Lead on," Antonio said grimly.
Feste and Antonio walked side-by-side out of the prison cell, Feste taking up the torch to lead the way as they passed. The door clanged shut behind them.
What did the world care who a drowned man might have loved, once?