poins

If you want a secret fucked out of someone, you send Marc Antony, with his languid mouth and his burning eyes and his lean, muscular body and his way of always, always, always twisting a heart to his own ends and then leaving it destitute, unable to admit even to itself what has happened, let alone tell anyone else what Marc Antony truly is.

 

Octavian knows that Marc Antony is reckless and harsh and red-blooded, perhaps too much so to be a truly effective spy in his circus, but he also knows that Marc Antony is cunning and brutal and will always, always choose the most self-serving course of action—and for the moment, Octavian can make sure that that remains himself. At least Marc Antony’s not Brutus or Cassius, who spend the days they’re not actively gaining intelligence (and, he suspects, a few of the ones they are, more fools them) trailing around after each other with visions of a Republic that will never form in their eyes.  There’s no space in Octavian’s labyrinth of secrets and plots and high, high stakes for the innocence of idealism, so Marc Antony suits his purposes much better.  Innocence, at least, is one of the few things of which nobody has ever accused him.

 

There’s also no danger, Octavian thinks, of Marc Antony ever challenging him for his post of supremacy, despite his honeyed, seductive words and outrageous popularity with both his superiors and the majority of the field agents.  He will consume himself long before he gets the chance to sit in Octavian’s chair, and Octavian will gladly help him to his own destruction.

 

Octavian stubs out his cigarette, absently rubs a thumb along the side of the file folder sitting on his desk, and looks at the man lounging with the illusion of sloppiness in the chair across from him.

 

“Cleopatra,” he begins, and smiles at the sudden heat in Marc Antony’s eyes.