Chester Roman
"Archaeologist Claudia has spent years excavating Roman Chester. When journalist Marcus wants the story behind the artifacts, she gives him something not found in any dig."
Chester's walls had stood for nearly two thousand years, and I'd spent the last twenty digging beneath them. Roman foundations, legionary barracks, the ghosts of an empire that had made this city its northern fortress.
"Dr. Webb?" The man at my excavation site was clearly not archaeology—too clean, too curious, too obviously recording everything with journalist's eyes. "I'm Marcus Chen. The Chester Chronicle sent me."
"Another feature on 'Living Above Romans'?"
"Something different. I want to understand what it's actually like. Not the tourism angle—the reality."
"The reality is mud, paperwork, and funding battles." I wiped dirt from my hands. "Not very exciting."
"Everything's exciting to someone who understands it." He stepped closer. "Dr. Webb—Claudia—I've read your papers. You find the empire in fragments. That's not just science; that's poetry."
"I don't do poetry."
"Then let me do it. Tell me what this place means to you, and I'll translate for people who don't speak archaeology."
The feature became a series, the series became regular visits, the visits became something neither of us named. Marcus returned weekly, watching me work, asking questions that showed he'd been studying. He treated the excavation like a story—which it was—and me like the protagonist.
"Why Rome?" he asked one evening. We'd moved from the dig to a pub built on Roman foundations—practically everything in Chester was built on Roman foundations.
"Why journalism?"
"Because I want to understand things. Know things. Make sense of the chaos."
"Same. Except I do it by digging rather than asking." I sipped my wine. "Rome made sense. They built things to last. They wrote things down. They created order from chaos, and two thousand years later, I can still read their marks."
"And modern life doesn't make sense?"
"Modern life is emails and meetings and people who don't understand why the past matters." I met his eyes. "You understand why it matters."
"I'm starting to." His hand found mine. "Claudia. I know this is unconventional. I know I'm supposed to be objective. But I've been watching you for months, and objectivity stopped being possible somewhere around week three."
"What happened in week three?"
"You found that dedicatory stone. The one to Mercury. And you looked at it like it was the most important thing you'd ever touched." He leaned closer. "I want to be looked at like that."
I kissed him in the pub, two thousand years of history beneath our feet. His mouth was eager, his body warm against mine, and when we broke apart, his eyes held the same wonder I'd seen when we uncovered the stone.
"My flat's above the excavation," I said.
"Of course it is."
The flat was archaeology in domestic form—artifacts everywhere, maps on walls, the evidence of a life lived in permanent dig mode. Marcus looked around with obvious delight.
"This is perfect."
"This is a disaster."
"It's you. That's what makes it perfect." He pulled me toward the bedroom. "Show me where you sleep when you're not dreaming of legions."
We made love surrounded by Rome—reproductions, photographs, the weight of centuries in every direction. His journalist's body was soft where mine was hard, but he touched me with the same attention he brought to interviews.
"You're beautiful," he said.
"I'm covered in two-thousand-year-old dirt."
"You're the keeper of two-thousand-year-old stories." He moved inside me with surprising intensity. "That's beautiful."
We came together with the city outside—the walls, the foundations, the layers of history that I'd dedicated my life to understanding. When I cried out, it was in a voice the Romans might have recognized: triumph, completion, the joy of something discovered.
"Stay," I said afterward.
"In Chester?"
"In my excavation. In my life." I touched his face. "I've been digging alone for twenty years. I could use someone who translates."
The series won awards. His writing made archaeology accessible in ways my papers never could. And every evening, he comes home to a flat above Roman foundations, where the woman who reads empires reads him too—with attention, with wonder, with the recognition that some things discovered are meant to be kept.
Rome fell, eventually. What we're building won't. Because it's made of the same material that made the walls last—attention, dedication, and the refusal to let time erase what matters.