AN: Ok so this is something that's been nagging at me since I've read a scene in the book 'The Lion of Macedonia' by John McLeod. My version of Alexander and Hephaestion is not based much on the book ones, but the scene is a kind of follow up to a certain situation. I found the situation a good one to explain one of the dinamics I believe both had, in a very... unorthodox way. I didn't want to re-write the scene before that, because I was afraid that was considered stealing, but if you want a brief explanation of what happened, read the next paragraph. If you don't want to be spoiled at all, then jump to the story, but I warn you, it might seem it starts way too fast.
Alexander is in Mieza, I believe the author writes him as 15 or more in this period. They all go to a brothel, and Alexander, still a virgin, goes with a girl while his companions cheer him on. The encounter is fast, pleasurable but leaves Alexander empty, and he's confused. When he leaves the room, he founds Hephaestion in the lobby, drinking a cup of wine. Hephaestion asks him how it went, and Alexander lies in a boyish way that he 'rode her like a dog', and asks if he's done already, to which Hephaestion says, nonchalantly, that women do nothing for him. Alexander wonders for a while why he had found himself so empty, a few other things happen, and the scene where this story starts is when the prince goes to the bath to find Perdicas and Hephaestion in the bath. Alexander says he is sorry if he interrupted something, but the boys are really calm about it, and they even ask Alexander to stay. Hephaestion offers a massage, saying Perdicass is really good at it, but Alexander refuses it. In a moment when he closes his eyes, he hears the door closing, and when he opens it, Hephaestion is alone, and he starts giving the prince a foot massage. Alexander stays quiet, but his body responds. The scene ends implying that something happens. That is when this story takes off.
To Conquer and To Rule
By Complexly Simple Kiddo
Hephaestion abandoned the massage as soon as he saw the effect it was having on Alexander. He grinned, hoisted himself up slowly, letting his hands slid over Alexander's calves as before, but unlike then, they didn't stop there. His fingers grazed the knees, then traced the sides of the boy's thighs and finally met at the middle, encasing Alexander's desire.
The prince felt a shudder strike his body, but tried to remain still. He was watching, transfixed, trying to understand his thoughs and feelings. Ever since they visited that damned brothel, his mind had been a mess. Hephaestion's touch was different than the girl at the pleasure house. It was less delicate, confident, boyishly rough but with something else Alexander couldn't quite understand or name.
Hephaestion stood a little higher, so he could stand eye to eye with the prince, their faces merely inches apart. He reached to kiss Alexander but the boy, surprised, turned his head and frowned. It wasn't his intention to reject him, but he had taken Alexander by surprise. In a second of panic, he thought Hephaestion would leave, tired and angry at him for being so strange. But Hephaestion's touch continued, steady, with the same care and dedication, and didn't say a thing. When Alexander looked back, ashamed, he saw Hephaestion still staring at him, not with contempt or puzzlement, not even disgusted or mad. He was just staring at him, almost as if trying to understand. Alexander felt an openess there that was alien to him.
"Why would you kiss me?" Alexander finally asked, breaking the calm, tacit silence that had reigned so far.
"Have you never been kissed before, Alexander?" Hephaestion asked, his voice low and soft, but with contrasting confidence behind the soothing sound.
"I... No. What does kissing have to do with this?" Alexander questioned, confused. He wished he had sounded more confident, like when he questioned Aristotle about something, daring him to contradict him. Instead, it sounded weak and insecure and Alexander hated it.
"Everything," Hephaestion replied, still calm, still unasuming. Alexander had found Hephaestion nonchalant attitude infuriating before. When he first met the boy, he thought he was simply shallow and unimaginative, without drive or passion. Nothing seemed to shake him, nothing touch him. It was as if he was disconected with the world. But at Aristotle's classes, in the rare event he would ask something, it was always such a precise, thought out question, as if he had been nursing the subject for a while and thought to ask only when the question was perfectly formed. It often made Aristotle himself stop and ponder for a while. But he didn't seem to enjoy those moments, nor took pride in them. He just listened to what Aristotle said, and continued as if nothing happened. He knew now that Hephaestion wasn't shallow, or unimaginative, and he was terribly proud, but he had no need to show it off like all the other boys did, he simply was, and that was enough for him.
"Can I show you?" the boy asked him, and Alexander felt himself noding before he could actualy think about it. Hephaestion smiled, closed the gap and placed his lips over Alexander's. He placed one hand over the blonde's cheek, the other still steadily stroking his arousal. For a moment, he just stood there, lips touching, but doing nothing. Alexander wondered what was the point. They were soft, yes, and warm, but nothing strange, once the shock wore over. But then the taller boy touched with his thumb the corner of Alexander's lips, and moved. His mouth slowly working, as if a massage itself, lazily dropping kisses that lingered more and more. With a soft pressure of the thumb, he guided Alexander to open his lips, his mouth, and the prince did. The stroke of the tongue inside his mouth was alien but it somehow made the whole thing different. He dared to try and imitate, reciprocate what Hephaestion was doing, and was rewarded with a soft moan. Confident, he tried to raise the intensity of the kiss, like he had seen a lot of people do, and Hephaestion responded, but somehow always managed to slow things down, going back to that lazy rythm.
Hephaestion's hand had left Alexander and he used it to guide the prince down to the bath by placing it on the blonde's hip. The water barely splashed, so smooth had been the transition. Alexander found himself stradling Hephaestion's kneeled body, towering over the boy by a few inches.
It was Alexander this time that initiated the kiss, and Hephaestion went along, letting his hands travel over the boy's body. The prince was so focused on the new sensation that he barely felt the intimate touch at first. He broke the kiss when he felt Hephaestion's fingers at his backside, but they where just there, stroking, almost feeling around lazily. He stared at the boy with his grey eyes, trying to see something in the other boy's face. Cockiness, for daring to touch the prince like that, or submission, regret, defiance. Anything. Instead, he just looked at Alexander with the same unasuming brown eyes. His breath was a little more ragged, but that was the only indication that something was going on inside. He simply stared, as if waiting for Alexander to understand by himself before he proceded. Understand what, he wasn't sure, but when the prince decided to be ok with it, to forget about what was proper to his position, his royal descending and age, Hephaestion somehow seemed to know, and let his fingers inside, coated with the same oil he used for the massage. He adopted the same pace than before, slowly but steadily, confident.
Alexander, once he got over the shock and novelty of the touch, got impatient. He thrusted his hips down, and felt a shock go up his spine, letting his head fall back for a moment, trying to repress a moan. When he looked back, Hephaestion was simply smiling at him, as if enjoying Alexander's pleasure, but his pace did not change at all. He simply lowered his face to the prince's chest, and started leaving soft, barely there kisses. Once again, Alexander frowned, questioning what was the point of it, but said nothing, waiting. When Hephaestion found one of his nipples, Alexander forgot even what the question was. He raised his arms to hold onto the boy's shoulders and cross them at the neck, having something to hold onto, and thrusted his hips once again. The friction was pleasing and exciting, but not nearly enough.
Hephaestion took the fingers out, and when Alexander was about to complain, he felt something else take their place, much more effective. He tried to hurry the movement, but the boy had grabbed the prince's hips with incredible strength and wouldn't let him. Instead, he lowered Alexander inch by agonizing inch. Once they were finally as close as they could be, Hephaestion paused, and lowered his mouth to Alexander's shoulder, showering it with soft touches of his lips. Alexander frowned again, and tried to move, but the boy's grip was unshielding.
"I don't get it," Alexander said, once he got air back in his lungs. "This isn't..."
"You felt empty, didn't you? After intimacy with that girl at the brothel?" asked Hephaestion, still as calm as if they were simply having a conversation out in the gardens. One of his hands was still holding Alexander steady, but the other one was travelling around, lightly, caressing every corner of the prince's body as if trying to make a sculpture out of him. Alexander felt the pleasure of that touch, and how arousing it was, but still not enough. His aching need wanted more.
"What...? Why do you assume I...?" Words failed him after such accurate comment from the boy, and even if he tried to save face, it was impossible to lie.
"I don't assume, I just watch. You have this face, you see," Hephaestion explained, and he moved, just a little. The stillness had gone on for so long that such a small shift had extracted a gasp from Alexander "When something fails to satisfy you, when you're dilusioned. I believe, perhaps, those things remind you that the world is not as perfect as fiction paints it. You had such face that day, it was impossible to miss"
"Am I that...transparent?"
"Not really," Hephaestion chuckled, and thrusted, slowly, only once. Alexander groaned, annoyed at the lack of progress in their intimacy, and tried to move. This time, he found no resistance from Hephaestion, and he thrusted once, twice, again and again, slowly upping the speed and finally getting closer to that feeling, closer to release. Hephaestion's hands steadied him once again, slowing him down before he could acomplish anything. Alexander let out a growl of frustration.
"Are you playing with me? Is this some kind of joke?" he let out, his voice rising and bouncing off the walls of the empty bath. Hephaestion looked up, and smile knowingly.
"Far from it. What you found in that brothel was release, but what you need, what you really need, is pleasure, Alexander"
"Is there a difference?" he demanded, with the arrogance that served only to hide some insecurity.
"Isn't there?" Hephaestion pondered, almost as if they were again in one of Aristotle's class. But this was definitely not how the old man taught them. Hephaestion's method seemed to work far better on the prince's mind, though. "A release, is just a thing of a moment, it builds fast and then it's taken from you even faster. How can you possibly find fullfillment from that?" He asked, staring at the prince's eyes before he moved forward again and took his mouth with more passion than before. He thrusted his hips again, a few times, hitting some spot inside of Alexander that made the prince forget even how to breathe, but never enough to tip him over the edge.
Without letting go of his mouth, he murmured, his lips grazing Alexander's with every word.
"You have the soul of a conqueror, Alexander, but much like release, conquering is a thing of the moment. When it's done, it will leave a man empty. Pleasure is a whole different thing. You have to build it, slowly, carefully. Work on the foundations," Hephaestion started, upping the speed to match the rythm of his words. Alexander closed his eyes, letting his forehead rest against the boy's shoulder, trying to keep up to what he was saying and not letting the sudden rush of pleasure deaf him "carefully make sure all the roads are traced, be absolutely confident about the location, and then you get to start really working on it," he thrusted harder, the speed not yet a frenzy as the prince would have wished, but far more pleasing than before. "Pleasure is about a slow progress that you get to watch, to participate. It's enjoying every single second of it, with no rush, even with setbacks, and then watch it grow into something amazing, bigger than yourself, unstoppable. Pleasure is about patience, and waiting for the moment. Pleasure is about ruling as a king"
It was the last thing he said. As if choreographed, he let go of Alexander, his hands no longer guiding or holding him but merely touching, and Alexander was finally free to move at his own crazy, fast and chaotic speed. His hips rocked again and again and Hephaestion met each and every one of them with equal intensity, letting his voice lose that calm quality and become more animal, more base. Alexander felt a rush like never before. He wanted almost to scream, because he wasn't sure a sexual release would be enough to let go everything that had been bulding up inside of him since Hephaestion touched him for the first time. It was nothing like when he had been with the hetaera. The desperation to get there was much greater, almost like his life depended on it. The long wait had made that single moment a golden one, and when he finally did, when he rode into that peak and let himself crash down, his eyes blind, his ears deaf except for the mad thumping of his heart, he finally felt what it was like to be free. He was no longer prince, or future king, or son, or student, or god, or mortal, or friend, or lover. He was nothing. Nothing but Alexander.
It took him a while to get back to his senses. The water, still hot around him. His lungs, filling with air as fast as they could to keep up. A scalding body beneath him. Inside him. He looked up, rising his head from Hephaestion's shoulder to frown at the boy. He was smiling, tracing with his fingers the sides of Alexander's body, lazily, without any urgence despite the fact that he had yet to find that release.
"How can you stand it?" Alexander asked, amazed at the other boy's self control. It wasn't really self control, he understood. It was something else. It was nature.
"I don't," Hephaestion said, moving slowly now that Alexander was back. He had waited for the prince to return to conciousness before he sought his own release, and Alexander knew it had not been for him. It wasn't a kind gesture, or a sacrifice. Hephaestion wasn't a conqueror, he was a colonizer. He had the soul of a king.
The taller boy finally reached his release, by a few rocking moves, slow and deliberate. It wasn't an explosion or a shocking moment, it was simply as if he had let something go, gently. A holding of breath, a deep sigh, warmth inside Alexander, and that was it.
They had learned, over the years, to make do with their different take on things, their diferent speed of mind and body. When they grew even older, they learned how to combine it to achieve an even greater result.
Alexander taught Hephaestion how to lose things. Hephaestion managed to teach Alexander how to let them go.
And together, they managed to build an empire.
XXX
AN: Thanks for reading! I've been reading Alexander books since ages, and I've always been a bit scared to write something myself. This is the first thing I ever wrote, and english is not my first language, so I'm sorry for any mistakes I made. I hope it was understandable, and enjoyable enough. It would mean the world to me if you told me what you thought, so if you have time to drop a word, I would be incredibly grateful!