Bacura cursed silently at the enveloping darkness, stealing through shadows and ducking behind any available structures. His favourite spot for watching Riou was less than satisfactory that night, the moon having disappeared and the stars themselves dimming to spite Bacura's best efforts. The soothing melody of wooden sword on training log kept him going, inching closer and squinting desperately.

At long last he settled himself behind a pile of sandbags, kneeling down to hide himself, disregarding the dirt that he knew would collect on his beautiful new toga. It was a price he would gladly pay for such a view of the one person in all of the world that interested him in the slightest. His time spent creeping was rewarded: the night was warm, and Riou had discarded his tunic in favour of training bare-chested. In fact, Bacura didn't mind that all he could see was his back, for it was a fine back indeed. None of the disgustingly brawny bulk that most men bragged of adorned Riou's shoulders; his muscle was lean, toned, and carefully hidden. Bacura smirked to himself at the thought. Riou couldn't hide it from him.

It seemed, however, that more time was lost in sneaking nearer than he had thought. The swings stopped, and the training field fell eerily quiet. 'Dammit. He's going to hear me breathing. Chirp, fucking crickets. Make that annoying noise that I've promised to kill you for. Come on.' He had to try very hard not to growl when the crickets refused to obey his telepathic commands. Instead, a slight wind picked up, and his eyes (ever riveted to one thing and one thing alone) caught the shiver that passed through Riou's body. He ducked just in time to escape notice when the young man turned around, and with his gaze riveted at his feet, a different sort of shiver altogether ran through his heart. The tunic, sure to be wanted, sat innocently beside him, and the soft whisper of footsteps on grass was getting closer and closer.

He decided quickly that there was nothing else to do but pretend he had intended to be found out. It was the only way to escape without making a fool of himself. He would just stand up, and scowl, and say something cruel and untrue to make sure Riou didn't figure out the filthy desires of the flesh that ransacked his thoughts whenever he laid eyes on that gentle, attractive, soft looking face-

"B-Bacura?" Riou rather inconsiderately interrupted his line of thought with a yelp that, rather than bringing Bacura to his senses, brought him to flop backwards onto his rump with a rather undignified cry. His speech forgotten, he chanced an awkward glance up at those beautiful brown eyes, glittering with surprise. He had only a moment to think to himself that he looked far nicer like that than when his gaze was dark with accusation and pain, before he let his own eyes slip back down to the tunic (damn that tunic!) that was the source of all his problems.

"Er. Looking for this?" He picked the garment up and held it out to Riou with a sheepish grin. It went unnoticed.

"What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Training. Now it's your turn to answer."

"I was talking a walk. I couldn't sleep."

"Pray tell, were you walking on your knees?" From the tone that had taken over Riou's voice, Bacura knew that familiar look of aversion had entered his eyes. Damn.

"What? What a stupid thing to ask." He snapped defensively.

"It's not stupid to ask if the bottom of your toga is covered with dirt." Riou pointed to said dirt for emphasis, and indeed when Bacura had been knocked onto his posterior, the stains on his knees were rather plainly revealed.

"I tripped." He lied automatically.

"You're lying." Riou replied with conviction. Bacura swore colourfully in his head.

"So what if I am? I'm your superior- your master! You can't talk to me this way!" He jumped to his feet and brushed at the evidence adhering to his clothing with determination. Now he had the advantage! He was taller, and he could use that to intimidate Riou. Advantage turned quickly to disadvantage when that soft, scarless face turned up to meet his, and his chest clenched tightly.

"Well excuse me, master, for daring to wonder what you were doing spying on me." Suddenly a light of understanding sparked to life and fear flooded through his aggressor. "It was you. You were the one I heard the night before last, swearing from behind a bush."

"I stubbed my toe." He snarled quickly, and instantly regretted it.

"It was you, then." Riou said, but somehow lacked any accusation in his tone. He seemed… Bacura stopped thinking about what emotion was touching that smooth tenor. His imagination was making him weak.

"It was. What of it?"

"What are you doing? Planning how to insult me best? Looking for an excuse to keep me back? Silently gloating that I'll never be some sort of champion?"

"Planning, no. Looking for excuses… always. But not to keep you back." He added before he could stop himself. Damn that mouth of his! His heart was getting too big, it was boiling up inside his torso and leaking out into his throat before he could stop it.

"What then? What… what is it you want from me?"

"What do I want from you?" Bacura shuddered inside, sensing that ache, that feeling swelling inside of him. He should blurt it out, tell him everything. Tell him that the only excuse he wanted was an excuse to take him into his bed. No, that wasn't true. He would have been satisfied with an excuse to touch him, and excuse to hold him close and feel him breathe. What did he want from Riou? He wanted his eyes to be bright with something, not surprise or fear… with… no! He wouldn't let the thought cross his mind. "I want strength from you. I want money. Win me matches. Make me famous. That is all I have ever wanted from any of my possessions. What makes you so haughty that you think what I want from you is any different from the rest of them?" He scoffed, and turned away. Inside, a sharp pain stabbed mercilessly at him. You fool, it said. You fool.

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Bacura did not return the next night. Nor the night after that. He became reclusive, bitter, and broody. Inside him, his emotions festered and stung like a toenail, grown unchecked for too long, turned in on itself. He avoided Riou, and Riou avoided him, and they both found themselves miserable with the very effort it took to do so. This went on for days, and would have gone on longer had not an old friend invited him for a romp in the bathhouses.

Something flickered back to life in Bacura (once administered a good hard poke) and a new determination came with it. Discarding his self-imposed law of evasion, he strode right up to Riou's room one morning and demanded he fetch the strigil and oilpots, because he was going for a bath that day and Riou was the only one who knew the routine "well enough to not fuck-up and embarrass me." When Riou asked if he should fetch another slave to help carry supplies, a curt response cut short that idea. Bacura was adamant that they should be alone.

The walk to the bathhouse was in its own way therapeutic, for Bacura had been right about one thing. This trip was routine for Riou, and the familiarity made him more comfortable, as if the tension that had been increasing between them the last few months had never existed. It was so much easier to pretend that he was just the slave, and Bacura was just the master. They greeted the same people, said the same old things, and went up those same steps to the baths, but if Riou thought that nothing was different, he was wrong.

The sight of the change rooms was perhaps another repetition of past events for Riou, but for Bacura it was a confirmation of the fact that this time would be vastly unique. He shed his clothes with a reckless pace, tossing them to Riou for storage. When the other man passed him, headed for the recreation room as was the custom, Bacura broke tradition with one simple action: he cleared his throat.

"…yes?" Riou asked, confusion in his tone.

"You'll be wanting to get rid of your clothes. You can't bathe fully dressed."

"What? Bathe?" He asked, startled. "But I'm just a-"

"You're a gladiator, is what you are. You're not my slave… you're my guest." As inviting as the phrase ought to have sounded, a chill ran up Riou's spine. As wary as he was of some manner of deception, he wasn't about to openly defy Bacura is such a… precarious situation.

"If you say so." He said, and with one last baffled glance at Bacura's expression (already bored of waiting) pulled his shirt up over his head and let his undergarments fall. He missed Bacura's greedy glance at his buttocks and placed his clothes alongside his master's.

"Right, let's go. I have some friends who seem to think they can arm-wrestle, and I'd like to introduce you to them…" A glint entered Bacura's eyes, and it was with a sense of dread that Riou walked with him through the passageway.