Author's website: http://www.mrks.org/~viridian/

Disclaimers: My two lead characters are based on Fraser and Ray K--who, like all things _due South_, belong to Alliance--but I think Quinton Corbin Celeres and Brann are mine anyway. No infringement intended.

Author Notes: I place the fault for this squarely on a thread on the serge list. When costuming the boys came up, someone mentioned Roman centurion Fraser and Celtic prisoner Ray. My mind just took it in directions I don't think anyone, myself included, expected.

Story Notes: No spoilers. This doesn't even take place in the same millennium as the show.
As with "Ashes and Fire," the title comes from "This Big Hush" by Shriekback.
I tried my best here, but any mistakes in history are my own.

This story is a sequel to: Ashes and Fire

The firelight cast intriguing shadows across Brann's face and struck glints of light in his yellow hair and off his torque as he sat across from me. Three weeks ago I'd been in the vanguard of an army of my peers, feeling isolated and not quite at home. Now, I wished for a return to that, knowing at last what it truly felt like to be alone among strangers.

At least we'd left the last tribe at last to strike out alone for the next one. How much more keenly I felt my vicarious position while we were amongst his people. Leagues away from his own tribe, Brann still garnered respect and attention no matter where he brought his warnings of the coming Romans and our... their intentions. Dressed and accoutered as a man of his people, he of course looked far more imposing and human than he had as a naked, filthy captive.

But they treated even me, a stranger of the kind Brann had ridden to warn them of, with respect. The children openly showed their curiosity, but the adults, generous to a fault, treated me as an honored guest. They were kind.

We would put them to the sword when we arrived, rob them of every precious thing they possessed, and set fire to what we couldn't take. My army. My people.

I couldn't help thinking that if my army had deigned to keep Brann alive and bring him to Rome, he would be abused, left naked and chained, dragged through the streets for the entertainment of jeering, fruit-throwing crowds. It galled me to see us as lacking when set against a people we considered savages at best and barely more than animals at worst.

It made me resentful to see such things, and then I felt guilty for feeling that way. I resented so much. Resented being effectively banished among strangers, no matter that the other option was death at the hands of my own people. Resented Brann for being so in his element, no longer the downtrodden captive I'd rescued. Resented him for being so proficient at Latin and getting more so every day, while I still stumbled over the trading tongue his people used. To be kind to me, he used Latin in my presence, helping to increase his mastery, when he didn't attempt to tutor me. Resented him for having the power of life and death over me; if he tired of me, he only had to say so to any of the tribes we visited. I wouldn't even understand his words as he gave an execution order or simply revealed me as his jailer. Or he could try me himself, since he carried a sword while I carried none.

I knew my fears and resentments to be ridiculous. Brann had no malice in him. A twisted sense of humor, perhaps, but I'd never seen malice. He meant only the best for me.

I couldn't help resenting that the most.

He opened his eyes, blue like mine. "Talk to me, Quinton Corbin?" In Latin.

"I don't know what to say."

"You could start with what's gnawing at your self so."

"I don't understand." How often I'd said those words in the past few weeks.

"You're looking like you want to do me murder." As he crossed his arms atop his knees, his sleeves pulled up to show his wrists and the red marks from the rope that we'd bound him with. It galled him, he said, that they couldn't bear the touch of the bracelets he liked to wear. He loved jewelry, as all his people seemed to, and wore a brooch for his hooded cape, a pin, filigreed buckles, and three necklaces along with his torque. They had a talent for metalwork and a love of intricate, interlocking designs.

I thought of such things to avoid thinking of "doing him murder." I knew I was behaving like a spoiled child, but I couldn't stop mourning for my life, now gone. I'd thrown away that life for him, a yellow-haired savage, a stranger, who'd made me feel inferior in almost every way since. As a further indignity, I wanted him desperately, remembered the texture of his bare, pale skin at the most inopportune times. And he did it all so effortlessly, without meaning to.

"I have nothing to say."

"You're strung too tight, you're off-tone, and you look ready to snap."

"I'm not a musical instrument."

"I know you can talk. I saw you do it before." Brann took off his sword, stood, and walked around the campfire. "Will you spar with me?"

"Excuse me?"

"That's the right word, isn't it? Practice fight?"

"Yes. But why?"

Brann bounced a little. "I could do with some exercise. Spar me? Bare hands."

I thought him insane but stood anyway. Truthfully, I could do with a spar. We'd ridden too hard and far of late for me to become soft, but I felt my martial skills rusting from disuse.

We circled for a while, both of us with arms and hands set in our different styles, each trying to take the other's measure, Brann grinning like a madman. Then he moved in quickly on me, but my defensive strike caught only air, while he had managed... to slap my arm? I swung again at where I thought he stood, but he moved out of the way then too.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Sparring." He rushed in on me again but dove under my arms and smacked my chin before darting out again. Grinning all the while.

Sometimes he rushed or ducked in like he intended to land a blow, then didn't, just showing that he could have if he wanted to. Sometimes he came in and slapped me. I didn't know what kind of game he played, but it obviously had different ideas of what winning meant than mine. I couldn't predict him at all.

I landed a few glancing shots, but he remained too fast and graceful for me to tag him squarely. It was like trying to catch a fish with my bare hands. I'd been trained to fight in formation in armor, whereas his people fought naked as individuals. He moved like a whip, sleek and arcing. He kept flicking in over and under my guards, and he wasn't even trying.

I hated him. I wanted him. I couldn't touch him unless he let me. It was embarrassing, and it made me angry.

I finally hit him squarely in the jaw, hard, making his whole head rock from the force of it. It horrified me. "Brann, I didn't mean--"

He shook his head, then rushed in and tackled me down, hitting me with his full weight in my stomach and whipping my knees out from under me. He pinned me to the ground and had his hands hard around my throat. "That wasn't sporting. Are you calmer now?"

I felt light-headed, and pain started to streak through my chest. I croaked out a few words even I didn't understand. He nodded and released my throat. "I'm done. I yield," I gasped in his language.

His grin returned, and he said, in Latin, "Three weeks ago you couldn't understand a word, and now you can say useful things. That's great!"

He was pleased with my progress?

"I know that everything must look awful right now," Brann said, "but you're alive. You're not a prisoner, you have food to eat and a fire to keep warm by, and you're not alone. You're on an adventure."

I was hard against him, which would have embarrassed me if I hadn't felt his arousal against me. "An adventure?"

He looked rueful and shifted the part of his cape that had draped over my legs as he straddled me, covering us better. Incidentally rocking against me as he did so. "It's what I would tell myself when my travels became... difficult. Adventures aren't supposed to be easy, but they're noble, and you can tell yourself that you'll come back covered in glory. So it's an adventure instead." He leaned in closer, smelling of earth, sweet grass, smoke, and wind. "You're not alone."

I couldn't escape this feeling of inevitability, that I'd reached the destination I'd started down the road toward three weeks ago.

When my hand edged up under his tunic to stroke his skin, I felt healthy warmth instead of the fever heat he'd had the last time I'd touched him so. "I have company?" I asked.

"Since not long after we met," he answered as he took off his cape, set it on the grass, and rolled us onto it.

I'd never stripped anyone so quickly in my life, but Brann had me naked even faster. It was all fast, our mouths and cocks aligning and realigning, our hands entwined or wandering across the other's body. He seemed to take a special pleasure in mapping out my flesh with his stroking fingers, taking liberties now that I'd only barely held myself back from taking with him that first day we met when I'd washed him and cleaned his wounds. I saw for the first time since then the blue tattoos that swirled across his skin in places, giving him an extra touch of the exotic. The firelight hid and revealed them in moving shadows.

I felt like I'd been hard and aching forever, wanting him, even if it had only been a few weeks in literal time. But I'd seen it as weakness, further dependency on him. Yet the way he panted my name and surged against me suggested that if I could call this dependency, he felt dependent in reciprocation.

And how could something this strong be weakness?

We thrusted against one another, our cocks sliding and rubbing, slick with sweat and excitement. We'd waited too long and wanted too badly for there to be finesse or endurance in this. As he stroked me and bucked against me, he murmured in his own language, and my poor knowledge of it translated his words as "Missed you; missed you...." His whole body went taut as he hit his climax.

The friction, the knowledge that I was not alone after all, the insistent sounds of pleasure he made, brought me to orgasm. Lost, I cried out the name I'd given him before we'd formally exchanged names. Lucian. Light.

We wallowed for a bit in companionable silence before I slid down his body to lick his stomach, enjoying our mingled flavors. Brann writhed and made an almost pained sound. I stopped and asked, "Too much?"

"Not too much," he answered as he stroked my hair and pushed me back down. When I slapped his hip to chide him for that, he laughed and said, "Three weeks."

I understood. "You could have made a move." I hadn't felt this relaxed and content in ages.

"Not with you feeling like I was your captor. It would have felt like an im... imposition to you. I didn't want that."

He seemed to make a habit of being right. I would have resented him had he propositioned me earlier.

Once I had his skin in what I felt approximated the proper state of cleanliness, with Brann vocally approving my skill at that, I settled up, face to face, with him again and traced the intricate curves of the tattoo he had on his chest. He'd called the figure a triskele and told me that it symbolized the eternal cycle of rebirth, with its three interlocking parts standing in for birth, death, and rebirth. The skin over the tattoo felt smoother.

I smiled at his happy sigh and said, "One of the elders at the last tribe asked you if you were besotted with me."

Brann elbowed me. "You understand more of it than you let on, you sneak."

"You said no."

"I'm not `besotted.' I'm not stupid with love for you. He asked the wrong question."

I still stroked him. "I understand."

"I hope you do."

"Our fight earlier. How did you learn to move like that?"

"It has to do with a tree."

"A tree?"

"Not quite. That was wrong. A tree, but not a tree. Fallen tree." Brann grinned. "A log. Fallen tree. It was a game we played. Last one left on the log was the winner, so you had to slap and distract your opponent into losing his balance. Or make him angry enough to knock himself off." He wiggled. "Or stroke him into distraction." Brann's cock had begun to revive from all the stroking.

At one of the heights of my frustration, when I'd asked him why he'd brought me with him, why he treated one of his former captors so kindly, he'd said that his people believed that they were reborn again and again. At my protests, he furthermore stated that he felt certain that he'd known me before, since people tended to congregate to one another again and again.

If I believed that, I supposed that I'd fellated him into incoherence before. Probably many times. Since I didn't remember it, it didn't make this time feel any less exceptional.

Much later, Brann asked sleepily, "How far do you think your Caesar will go?"

I felt smug but tired, especially considering my own recent second orgasm. "He's hardly `my' Caesar."

"Yes, but anyway. Do you think he might go pillaging as far as Eire?"

"He hardly took me into his confidence, and I don't know where Eire is."

Brann wrapped the cape tighter around us, bringing us even closer together. "I'm just trying to see how far we should travel. Better to go farther and be safe, probably."

"Probably."

"They might overtake us eventually. They're a slow moving large group, but it could happen. You don't have to fight them if they do." The firelight and coming dawn illuminated his face. He looked worried. For me.

"You will."

"I'll have to."

I knew my path now. "So will I."

**THE END**

More Viridian5 stories can be found in The Green Room version 2.0 at http://www.mrks.org/~viridian/

No-frames but no-frills access available at http://www.mrks.org/~viridian/Viridian_side.htm

Fandoms represented: due South, Hard Core Logo, Twitch City, Andromeda, X-Files, Once a Thief, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, Angel, Two Guys and a Girl (was Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place), X-Men, Doctor Who, Fight Club, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

End Ashes and Fire II: Tell-Tale Signs by Viridian5: Viridian5@aol.com

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