Fic: Light on Marble
Title: Light on Marble
Author: Angel,  May 2004
E-mail: valarltd@hotmail.com
URL: http://www.oocities.org/lady_aethelynde
Rating: Hard to say, Hard R. The sex is there.
Summary: Janus, the sculptor, takes an unusual assignment
Fandom: Star Wars
Type: AU
Archive: Sure, let me know where.
Disclaimer: Lucas's originally, not sure he'd know them now.
Acknowledgements: jkb and irene_heron for reading it over and pointing out the missing element.
Warnings: Slash, The premise is SLASH, read that again, SLASH, Yaoi, gay stuff. I'm here, the boys are queer,
get over it.
Feedback: It makes the plotbunnies breed.




"There." The enormous Mongol’s Latin was strongly accented, but the carters understood it well enough. They set the
rock where he indicated.

The block of marble glinted through the dust and slag that covered it. It stood taller than a man and had certainly cost the
Temple of Apollo more denarii than Shuie’s employer was likely to see in his entire lifetime. And Janus lived very well,
even by Roman standards.

Born to a legionnaire in far Germania, Janus had gone to Legion himself, changing his birth-name of Han to one more Roman,
and adopting the ways of his father’s people. Now middle-aged, he lived in the Eternal City, a sought-after sculptor. The big
hands that had once wielded a gladius with devastating effect instead carved stone, wood and metal for the wealthy. Janus had
acquired Shuie from captors who had taken him during a skirmish with the Mongols, and had freed him when they came to
Rome, but Shuie stayed on, out of loyalty and friendship, and took care of the practical things his friend did not.

Now the Mongol paid off the carters, and shooed them from the house. Janus was still sketching, trying to decide the best look
for the new statue of Apollo. Shuie knew he’d be out to the workshop soon to look at the marble. He’d seen his friend do many,
many statues over the years, and knew, even if Janus did not, that the sketches would be disregarded once the block arrived, and
began to yield its form to the sculptor’s hands.

It would be good for Janus to carve something large again. He hadn’t touched marble in almost a year. Not since Lilia had died,
her belly hard and swollen, carrying no child, only sickness.

He had made his wife’s urn, lavishing all his love for her on the pure white marble he’d chosen then, carving her image: the sharp chin,
the intelligent eyes, her lovely face and tiny shape. She moved across the jar, going about her business: spinning, cooking. And in one
 spot, although everyone had told him it was bad luck, that it suggested he would die soon himself, he carved her in his arms.

Once the monument was placed, he had not touched marble since. Gold and wood, bronze and limestone, but never the fine white
marble he had so loved.

"Is it here?" Janus bounded into the workshop, and stopped, transfixed by the block of stone before him. He walked up to it and laid an
almost reverent hand on its coolness.

"It is here, little one." The name was an old joke. Janus was a tall man by Roman standards, but Shuie towered over him by a head. "Now,
I will see to the household so that you do not starve yourself, lost in the wonder of flow and limb and veining for the next six months." Janus’
single-mindedness was another of their jokes.

"It’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever done." The words were said more to the marble than his friend. Already he could see the shape
of the man that lay beneath the stone. Apollo, the sun god. Usually depicted as a youth, Janus had decided to make him slightly older, a
man, wise and fair. He would be healer, artist and light to his worshipers.

While Janus believed in none of the gods, he had spent time studying the beliefs of the temples he carved for, learning what the worshipers
expected of their deities. He stroked the stone where the head would be. Fair, delicate yet strong, controlled power, beauty, benevolence,
 it would be hard work to capture all of that. But he could feel the statue inside the block, almost yearning to be set free.

He picked up the mallet and chisel and set to work.

The days passed in a haze of marble dust. The block drew him to it at first light, and relinquished him only when the dusk failed, seeming to
hoard the light of the god it would become. On nights of the full moon, he would work as Apollo’s sister silvered the block with her light.

Even in sleep, he saw Apollo. Not the half-finished, blocky form that grew, day by laborious day, into a man, but the man himself. Eyes like
the sky, hair as gold as the chariot he drove. They hurtled through the sky, across the lands known and unknown, wind in their hair, laughing
together from the sheer exhilaration of flight, into the purple shadows of dusk. Apollo would stable the horses then lead him to a secluded
grove on the slopes of Mt. Olympus. They never spoke, but Janus could tell he was lonely. Apollo was the only one of the gods who had
no wife and no regular lover. There were virgin goddesses, Apollo’s own sister was one, but the gods found it frustrating. Just as the sun-god
bent in for a kiss, he awakened, every time, aroused and eager to return to the marble.

First the general form of a man emerged from the block, looking like nothing much. Shuie, long accustomed to the sculpting, could see progress.
The work was going amazingly fast, almost as if divinely hastened. He kept Janus in bread and olives, cleaned the house and argued with the
priests who came weekly. He knew that they would see nothing worth their time yet.

Slowly, details took shape. A hand here, the fingers long and powerful yet perfectly shaped. A calf there, strong and rounded. A nose, oddly
snub. Shuie questioned the proportions, knowing longer, better shaped noses were fashionable.

"I carve what the stone tells me, old friend." He stroked the marble where the god’s cheek would be, loath to relinquish the feel of it under his
hands. "He’ll be beautiful. You’ll see."

"He’ll be short. Once you’ve carved his base, he won’t come up to your nose."

"Everyone’s a critic." But Janus was too distracted to really complain. He’d already taken up his chisel and begun smoothing out a shoulder.
"Let the priests in to see him next time."

As the god emerged from the marble, the dreams became longer, almost as if they drew their power from the statue. Now, he no longer awakened
before the kiss. Apollo would kiss him, stretching up to reach his mouth. As Shuie had said, he came to Janus’s nose. He had full lips, a mouth
made for kissing. In the night, it was enough for Janus to hold the sun-god and be held in return, to sit beneath the laurels of the sacred grove and kiss
 in the purple shadows, watching virginal Diana drive her own chariot through the sky. A mere sculptor, yet he dreamed of easing the loneliness of a god.

Dawn brought the same urge to return to the marble, to continue to carve, and shape it, until his dream would stand before him.

The hair came, not in the curls of youth, but in a lush thickness that Janus admired even as it appeared under the point of his tools. Were his statue
alive, he knew the hair would be fair. Golden as the flowers Lilia had planted, golden as Apollo’s own chariot. It would feel like fine silk under his
 hands, pouring through them like water.

The feet made their appearance, elegant and well-shaped, like the legs that followed. The body was slim but athletic. Proportion was the heart of
beauty, and the emerging Apollo was indeed beautiful.

The priests came. They looked over the half-finished god, clucking among themselves. "So short, sculptor. And such a small nose. We shall see."
They left.

"Janus, do not be downcast. They do not love it as you do. You see the complete statue and uncover it. They see half-shaped rock." Shuie steered
him out of the workshop and down the street to the baths, insisting he get cleaned up before dinner.

"Janus! Where have you been?" Landus Marcus Rissus flashed a grin, marble-white against his dusky skin. The Carthaginian importer was an old
friend and they spent some time in the bathhouse, playing dice and enjoying the hot water. Shuie finished quickly and left to get dinner from a nearby
hermopolia. When he returned, the three men ate together, Janus already hearing the call of the stone. He finished the roasted dormice and left.

"He carves marble," Shuie explained. "It’s different than it has been of late. I look and see the old passion. But he is always working."

"When a man does a thing he loves, let him. He is better off now than I’ve seen him for the last year, my friend. He took losing Lilia hard. Most
unseemly of a man to love his wife so." The Carthaginian’s attention had wandered, drawn by a fair-haired slave boy that had cast a second
glance at him. "Take care of him. I can’t wait to see this statue." Landus stood and followed the youth.

Shuie finished his dinner, gathered their bath things and went home. Janus was covered in dust already, his hands gently tapping out the sun-god’s
sex. He’d made it much larger than fashionable, not quite the oversized monstrosities satyrs sported, but not the small and elegant genitals of better
statues. This was a man proportionate in every way. The fine curls at the base began to take shape, and Shuie quit watching. There were herbs
to tend, and small pieces to deliver.

The days passed. Curves of muscle, angles of bone, locks of hair all took shape. The dreams of the laurel grove became longer. Apollo’s hands,
with their perfect fingers, now stroked him, and his own moved over the god’s body. The kisses found throat and ears and chest, as they lay,
bare of their tunics, in the shadow of the sacred trees.

Slowly, a single flake at a time, the marble came away to reveal the face. Round-faced, with a cleft chin and solid cheekbones, Apollo stared
blankly from empty eyes.

The carving was finished.

Janus spent hours polishing and smoothing the marble. All too soon, the priests would come and take his beautiful work away to the temple.
Thousands, millions, would look on it, but not one would caress it, would feel the smooth, cool face under his hands. The face of the god
might inspire a million dreams, but only he would know how the kisses in the night-shrouded laurels tasted.

At last, there was no more to be done. He was finished, and he knew it. Janus went to the baths, cleaned himself from his labors, and went
home to bed. There would be no more nights filled with a loving god, no more days spent loving him out of the rock. There would be tombs,
generals, caryatids and other work, but he knew he would not be likely to carve another god.

That night, as they lay among the laurels, the spicy sweet scent surrounding them, Apollo’s hands slid lower, grasping Janus, touching him,
stroking him to completion. A last kiss, and a mysterious smile, and the god left him, lying among the trees, only exhaustion and their smell
as a reminder.

Janus awoke, tangled in sticky sheets, and went to where his statue stood. He had these last hours before the priests took his Apollo, his
light and art. He looked it over, making sure it was flawless.

A trick of the moonlight made him think the statue had moved. He knew that was impossible. The beauty of it took his breath, and he could
resist no longer.

Knowing it was sacrilege, that he could be exiled and that if Apollo truly existed he’d probably shoot him dead with the golden bow that
had slain the children of Niobe, Janus wrapped his arms around the statue and kissed it. He’d wanted to do so since the lips had emerged.

The marble was cool under his mouth, in his arms. It drew the heat from his body as he held it, pressed against the beautiful man he had carved.

When the lips softened and returned the kiss, Janus flung himself backward as if burned. As he watched, the marble left off its pallor, taking
on the rosy flush of living flesh. The limbs moved and Apollo stretched.

Janus pinched himself, knowing it had to be a dream. He had to wake up. He didn’t want to. Not when the god stepped off his pedestal, and
walked to him, with nothing but an outstretched hand and a smile. He let himself be handed up, and when Apollo gathered him in for a kiss,
he did not resist.

"Hello, my love," the god said. "Thank you for finding me."

"Are you?" Janus couldn’t complete the sentence.

"I am alive, but not Apollo. He sends his regards, and says not to worry about the priests."

"Will you go back to being a statue?"

His man kissed him with a smile. "No. I’m as human as you. No more stone for me. Come, kiss me as you did a moment ago."

Janus didn’t have to be asked twice. He wrapped the lean athletic form in his arms and kissed long and passionately, feeling the warmth of
the perfect mouth, letting his fingers trace the body he’d carved and knew so well.

"I am Lucius, the light," his lover said as they broke apart to stare a bit more.

"The best gift of Apollo," Janus managed before he had to kiss his Lucius again,

They went in together, never noticing Shuie at the window, watching them with a smile. The Mongol made one last offering of oranges, laurel
and incense on the small altar to Apollo that he had in his room. His Janus would be happy again, well-loved.

The sun rose early that day, startling priests and astrologers alike. It was as if Apollo could not wait to see what transpired on the earth.

The light fell on the new statue in the Temple of Apollo. Made of purest white marble, by a skilled hand that loved the stone, it smiled benignly
over the worshipers. The priests made the morning sacrifices, marveling that the sculptor had finished so quickly and had delivered it without
their knowledge.

The early beams crept into the house of Janus the sculptor. Carefully, so as not to wake the men who slept tangled together, the light caressed
their faces before sliding to the more appropriate place on the floor.

Shuie sat basking on the bench beneath the laurel tree he had planted when the priests of Apollo first approached his friend. He softly stroked the
lid of the waist-high marble urn at the end of the bench. "He’ll be happy, Lilia." Shielding his eyes, he looked up at the sun, and saw the handsome
god within it pull the reins and rear his horses in salute.