The rain felt deliciously cool and refreshing on Rufio’s skin after the humid and dusty heat of the afternoon. He turned his face up to the storm-blackened sky and held out his arms to let the water run down his body, laughing breathlessly as flashes of lightning illuminated his cousin’s crazy antics in the downpour. The next flash revealed Spurius standing right before him, so close Rufio saw the lightning reflected in his eyes. The wind blew them together like a conspirator, and he instinctively reached out his hands to steady them.

Between the brilliant flash of lightning that had revealed them to each other and the earth-shaking roll of thunder that followed several heartbeats later, Rufio and Spurius seemed to remain frozen, awed by the intimate potential of the moment. Then Rufio caught his beloved cousin around his hard, lean waist and tugged him close to bury his face in the hot skin of his neck, drinking in the scents of rain-soaked skin and hair.

“I don’t do it with men,” he started to say, but the wind whipped the words from his lips and tore them to shreds before Spurius could hear them. It was almost as if some elemental god had acted swiftly to save him from his own stupidity, and he had to admit he was glad the words were lost because surely this was no time to deny something he very dearly – and clearly – wished for.

It wouldn’t have been exactly a lie. As healthy, spirited boys growing up in close proximity, he and Spurius had naturally experimented with sex, but they had been too young and too unequal in status to even wistfully consider themselves lovers. Since those days, Rufio had liked women, sometimes the occasional charming youth, such as Hylas, proving an exception – he just never slept with other adult, masculine males. While not sharing the disgust most freeborn Roman men expressed at the thought, Rufio had never wanted to before, even when the opportunities had been offered to him. But as he had watched Spurius dancing and spinning in the rain like a dynamic spirit of the elements, beautiful and alive, reckless and glorious as the dancing lightning itself, the eighteen years of their separation had been washed away by the sluicing rain like dead leaves down a drain. By the time Spurius’s lips touched his, there was nothing left for Rufio to say, nothing left to think. As was always his way with whatever life offered him, he grasped at it and embraced his cousin in full acceptance of the consequences.

The freedman would later ruefully admit he never had been able to resist Spurius’s wild and joyous enthusiasms, even if he had wanted to. And since he never had wanted to, the blame was never Spurius’s.

Rufio was laughing in pure delight, welcoming the hungry intensity that Spurius’s kiss elicited, revelling in the sensation of the naked, wet body pressed against the length of his own. Shaking rain from his saturated black hair, he seized Spurius’s hand and began tugging him back towards the barn. “Come back inside!” he called, so close to Spurius’s ear that he was heard this time despite the pounding of rain on the flooded earth and the rolls of thunder.

“But don’t you want to dance with me?” Spurius teased, and moved against him like water flowing over a smooth rock. Rufio shuddered, his body aching with sweet anticipation; his breath quickened so it felt like his heart had risen into his throat.

“Always, but I don’t want to drown with you!” This time he would have no argument about it but hauled his laughing cousin with him into the shelter of the barn.

The horses were huddled together at the far side of the structure munching on dried alfalfa as if they had never been startled by the storm at all, and even Ferox did no more than flick a disdainful ear at them. Where the roof hadn’t leaked the hay was still dry, albeit somewhat dusty, and Rufio sneezed as he tumbled down into it and dragged his cousin with him.

Oblivious to the rain running in rivulets from his hair, Rufio straddling Spurius’s hips and ran his hands appreciatively down the finely-muscled, tanned body spread out beneath him. It was a beautiful sight – enticing enough to rouse a stone statue to life, he thought, much less a man’s living flesh! He had often found himself watching his cousin moving gracefully and lightly about his work on the farm, and now he let his hands enjoy what his eyes had so often caressed. He gazed into Spurius’s eyes, reading the warm emotions flickering there before leaning down to kiss him with skilful, loving, tenderness. “It’s been too long,” was all he murmured, and Spurius nodded and caught his breath with a soft moan as he welcomed him home.

The storm outside was forgotten; left to blow itself out in tatters of rain and wind as the lovers rediscovered all they had ever learnt together, all the mutual delights Rufio thought long lost. There was both sensual deliberation and reckless abandonment in their lovemaking, laughter amidst the ragged gasps and cries of pleasure. It was familiar, and yet at the same time, it was all exhilaratingly new. As they rested afterwards, limbs drowsily entwined, Rufio smiled and lovingly ran his fingers through Spurius’s long, tangled hair. It was good, he decided contentedly; all would be good.