It was comical how divided people were in knowing the eventual relationship between Keith and Lance. Some people said it was so far out of their minds that it wasn't even on the list of possibilities while others said they had seen it coming since Lance glared at Keith for scoring higher in one of the Olympian games that no one really remembered the details about anymore. It had been when both men had still been simple teenage boys and most young, unmarried men had been a part of the event.

Important thing was that they had a special relationship now. Or it was special to them. They couldn't marry each other but men warming each other's beds weren't nearly as rare as in other places. The only uncommon thing about their arrangement were that there wasn't a designated lover and a designated loved as eros was usually seen as in all the stories or pederasty was often seen in society.

It was only that uncommon trait that some people had a slight problem with. However, no one said anything as long as both boys served their country as all men and women should. Some men fought for their country in great wars with an obvious hope of being immortalized, some kept the economy going with other goods and services and everyone, men and women, had to participate in creating the next generation for Rome regardless of other interests.

That was why Keith found himself next to his new wife while being congratulated but only having eyes for Lance who sent him a melancholy smile from his spot next to his wife.

Keith hated Lance's wife, Olympias, for the sole reason of her being Lance's wife and knowing that they did the same things he and Lance did in order for her to be pregnant. She was also Keith's second cousin and Keith had never truly hated a family member before she married Lance.

Keith looked at his own wife. A lovely girl he had been engaged to since his teens and only met her face to face once a year prior to their wedding despite being a 21-year-old adult now. She was pretty but all wrong. Her hair and eyes a too dark color and her face was too pale for Keith despite her being a nuance or two darker than Keith's fair face when she wasn't wearing make-up. Everyone else wanted a wife as pale as could be but Keith only wanted the man leaning up against the wall with his tan skin that emphasized his blue eyes and hair a noticeably darker brown than his skin but nowhere as dark as Keith's black hair.

Keith and Lance were opposites in appearance but Keith thought they were perfect together and he would compare it to a god's beauty if he wasn't so afraid of being punished for his hybris. Maybe the gods would even take time out of their schedule to awaken some nemesis as they often did in tragedies.

Keith waited until everyone had left before he stopped pretending that he didn't know what was expected of him now. He knew people couldn't know if he fulfilled his role or not after only one night but he knew that if he allowed himself to stall, then he would never try.

Keith and his wife shared an apple in the name of Aphrodite as a sign of love but mostly just to please Keith's father who Keith didn't want to disappoint and who his wife wanted to give a good impression to. Keith led his wife through the first floor and to her bedroom on the second floor as soon as they had finished the apple.

Keith's wife removed her clothing and her body looked almost exactly like the statue of Aphrodite's body that Keith had prayed to only days prior. It was strong and healthy but with fat softening her entire body and making especially her hips and stomach only a little wider than the statue's had been. Keith's wife was close to Greek perfection but all Keith could think about was how Lance was the last one to leave Keith's house and how he lingered for a moment as they locked eyes. Lance's hand had been on his wife's back and giving her a light tough when it was time to walk out the doorway after having been standing in front of it for a long minute.

Keith had never slept with anyone other than Lance at that point. He had simply never had the urge to but he moved between her legs and took a couple deep breaths. Keith looked down at the girl under him and saw his own unease reflected in her eyes.

Keith bit his lip, closed his eyes and thought of Lance being in him a few days prior. The heavy breathing from both of them and the hard and possessive press of Lance's lips on Keith's lips. Keith's body was just beginning to react when the girl under him sucked in a breath and pulled Keith out of his fantasy.

Keith was almost sure she was as little into this as he was but he didn't know her enough to know or even ask without fear of her complaining about him to someone of authority or even just her family and then everyone would accuse Keith of not contributing to his country and Keith would ruin his family name. His father would never forgive him for that.

Keith knew a lot of guys who wished they could sleep with their wives without risk making them pregnant every time but the thought of having any relations with his wife at all made Keith nauseous and he wished he could impregnate her without having to touch her like that.

Keith let out a shaky breath and touched himself. He still had to dream himself far away from his wife's naked body but the stimulation worked and soon he was erect and moved up until he was face to face with his wife. She looked up at him with wide, brown eyes and he wished that he could just stop this right now. Just seeing her was enough to soften him and he closed his eyes as he tried to find the right place in her before all his hard work was for naught.

There were sounds but they sounded like a cheap version of how Keith knew this could sound like. She grunted and he exhaled every time he pushed forward. None of them touched each other more than strictly necessary. Both his forearms were next to her face and his hands curled up around the bedsheet. Her hands were down her sides in straight lines and her hands started out limp but they quickly also got a firm grip of the bedsheet and tensed more and more the longer she laid with Keith on top of her.

It took so long. Keith wished to have it over with before it even started but it stretched out longer than when it was Keith and Lance even though Keith always tried to stretch those times out for as long as both he and Lance could go.

Luckily just like all good things, the bad things eventually end too and Keith and his wife sighed in relief when Keith rolled off her, gave her an awkward look in the attempt to send her a nice one, and he walked out the door and down the stairs to his own room to sleep the experience off.

"Lance," Keith huffed.

"Yeah?" Lance asked breathlessly.

"Lance," Keith repeated, not really trying to say anything but just wanting to repeat Lance's name.

Lance let his hand run through Keith's bangs and studied Keith's face. "You're so beautiful like this."

"Yeah?" Keith asked. His eyes tried to lock into Lance's but Lance was too busy taking all of Keith in.

"Yeah," Lance confirmed and looked right into Keith's eyes. It was so intense and full of adoration that it frightened Keith but at the same time, it was so comforting that Keith never wanted to leave his spot under Lance.

"Ready for more?" Lance asked with a smirk and an eyebrow wiggle.

Keith would normally remove that smirk before it had even time to mark Lance's face and Lance knew it but Lance also knew that Keith wouldn't be able to not smirk right back in that moment and put his hands on Lance's cheeks as he whispered right in front of Lance's lips, "Yeah."

Keith then held his arms around Lance as he held of tight for every thrust and let himself lose control with no shame of who would hear him.

Keith finally learned his wife's name after their first week of marriage. It had somehow not come up before that and Keith found that fact disturbingly fitting for their situation. He had informed her of him leaving the house and hesitated in the search for her name when she had told him it was Aspasia. Keith had simply nodded, told her his name, and then left. They had already had intercourse twice by then but exchanging names had still felt uncomfortably intimate

Olympias gave birth just as Aspasia started showing. Keith stopped trying to sleep with his wife now that she couldn't accuse him of not fulfilling his duties as her husband and the doctor said it was unhealthy for a woman to have intercourse so soon after giving birth so Lance and Keith had all the time they used to have to just find comfort in each other.

At least Keith assumed that was the reason for Lance's roughness every day Lance saw both Keith and Aspasia, but Keith didn't complain. He needed it every time he remembered the baby in Olympias's arms. A beautiful girl with blue eyes and skin a soft mixture of Lance's tan and Olympias's fair skin. The baby didn't have any hair and her eyes could still darken but Keith could almost see her running around with siblings that looked just like her as if they were sheep running after Lance as their shepherd.

Keith and Lance sat in Keith's bed for once not rushing into sex as soon as they finally saw each other again. Lance looked up at the ceiling.

"I can't believe that you're going to be a father," Lance commented.

"I can't believe that you are a father," Keith fired back but he still couldn't look up at Lance.

"Yeah," Lance sighed.

Keith took Lance's hand, kissed the most pronounced knuckle and turned his eyes away from their hands as he looked up at Lance. "How are we going to do this?"

Lance refused to look up from his lap. He shrugged with fake nonchalance and mumbled, "We're just going to take it as it comes I guess."

"I love you," Keith whispered and sniffed. It would never be enough and Keith would always have to look at Lance walking around with his future children. The only way for them to ever become family was marrying one of their children to each other but Keith didn't want that, he wanted to be the one to marry Lance.

"I love you too," Lance told his own lap as he stared it down.

Aspasia gave birth to a boy. The baby was healthy and had black hair and dark brown eyes. One would think it was the perfect combination between Keith and Aspasia if it wasn't for the dark skin of the child. Keith was livid when he saw it. Not because his wife had slept with another man but because he now had to react to this in the public eye and she hadn't even had the decency to warn him. He wanted to just ignore it but his family name would be ruined as soon as anyone else saw the child and his name would stay ruined if he didn't demand a punishment, but Keith also knew the Solon's Law and that his wife would have to dress in a way that told everyone what she had done. Keith assumed the law was like that in order to punish the woman but Keith's father was already breathing down his neck for him visiting Lance even more now that Olympias had time to heal and the whole city seeing that his wife found warmth in another man's bed wouldn't help his case.

"Who did you sleep with, Aspasia?" Keith asked her as she still laid in bed exhausted from giving birth. Keith was happy that she didn't die in childbirth but he didn't have enough sympathy for her situation to let her recover. Not that Keith was great at postponing any of his emotions under any circumstances.

"You," she answered but Keith could see the fear in her eyes.

"Who other than me?" Keith muttered full of poison.

"No one!" She insisted so loudly that she had to hush her little baby boy while still having her eyes locked on her husband.

"Who else, Aspasia?" Keith asked her with even more poison. He would have shouted but he didn't really hate the baby, only its cry and its existence. "I know that isn't my child."

She looked down at the baby. Keith assumed it was so see if there was any way of her convincing him that the baby was really his but she just sighed deeply and looked up at him again as she answered, "Just a traveler who's never going to visit this place ever again."

Keith knew it was probably a lie but he didn't need anything else than her confession of sleeping with another man and her lying about the father would make it easier for Keith as he wouldn't have to deal with dishonoring another family. He could already see it, the other family would insist that there was no case since Keith hadn't caught them in the act but Keith would be expected to try until he won the case. It would never end or it would end badly with some sort of revenge after a hefty punishment.

He really just wanted this over with and he wanted to forget that he ever had a wife and that his wife ever had a baby. Keith just wanted Lance and for Lance to have no one else.

"Are you going to pull me to court?" Aspasia asked him.

Keith wanted to tell her no. She looked so saddened, scared and so very young. She was in her late teens. Really not much younger than Keith who already felt so old after all the shit life had thrown his way.

Aspasia looked like Lance's youngest sister the day she met her fiancé. All scared and too young to have a future husband but resigning in the knowledge that she couldn't do anything about it.

Keith looked down at the sleeping baby with dark eyes and skin even darker than Lance's. He bit his bottom lip and looked up at her with furrowed eyes and eyes just wet enough for him to notice but hopefully so little that she didn't.

"I have to," he told her full of regret.

Aspasia nodded as her eyes turned noticeable glassy and she had to dry her cheeks with the hand not holding her baby before the tears landed on him.

Keith gave her another look and decided that they had had their talk now and she could have time to recover and interact with her baby. They both needed time to recover and take it all in.

"Please don't do this to me," Aspasia's voice stopped Keith right before he had existed the room.

Keith turned around and looked at her. She still awoke pity in him but he narrowed her eyes as he looked at her. "I'm doing this to you?"

Aspasia widened her eyes and opened her mouth just enough for Keith to see a sliver of her front teeth.

"You got pregnant with someone else's child," Keith scolded her.

"I can only sit at home all day and I'm bored," she complained.

"I'm sorry you're rich then," Keith said sarcastically. "If you wanted something to do, then I could get rid of some of the help."

Aspasia looked to the side with furrowed eyebrows. There were still tears in her eyes but she huffed out her cheeks and turned her now much firmer eyes back on Keith. "No, I don't want you to get rid of the slaves but it's not like you were there to do anything with. You avoid me if you can."

"I've tried and it's not like you're into it either," Keith defended himself. He spoke the truth but so did she.

"It's a little difficult to enjoy it when I know you wish I had a dick," Aspasia scowled and Keith was angry with her but he was mostly amazed that for once, he actually felt something when he looked at her and not just indifference.

Aspasia scowled and muttered, "I knew it wouldn't end well to marry someone with the face of a woman."

"At least we can hope that if you ever have a daughter it will be sometime when you have closed your legs for people who's not your husband," Keith said just to hurt her while she was lying down. Keith was petty and a hypocrite but he needed to hurt her now that he had to deal with this fiasco.

"Get out, get out, get out!" Aspasia yelled after him and threw one of her pillows after him. The baby cried loudly and Keith hoped she would learn to not yell near or jostle the baby in the future.

"I hate this and I hate you," Aspasia complained out of the blue as he ate dinner.

"What?" Keith asked too stunned to react to her sudden exclamation. It had been an entirely silent dinner excluding the sound of plates and his skyphos not to mention that like all men and women, Keith and his wife ate in separate rooms.

"Everyone thinks I'm a whore now all because you went and got me judged. I can't even practice any public religious ceremonies anymore!" Her eyes were burning like embers and Keith was a little anxious about the possibility of her hitting him but not anxious enough to stop himself from being snarky.

"You did this to yourself," Keith said and looked down at his plate of food once more in order to cut the food out.

"Like you're any better," she sneered. "I know what you use all that olive oil on."

"I didn't go out and get pregnant," Keith mumbled but made sure to talk clearly enough for her to understand every word.

"No, I know, but if you could you would have been by now."

Keith really did miss the days when she would shut her mouth. It was less than two weeks prior but Keith remembered it with a thick layer of nostalgia.

"I don't care what you do if you can do it secretly," Keith said honestly. What he did care about though was her stopping him from eating his food in peace.

"You're lying!" Aspasia insisted.

Keith looked up at her without even trying to hide any of his irritation about being interrupted in eating or how little he cared about what she was saying. "Do I look like I care about what you do?"

Aspasia was silent but furrowed her eyebrows and leaned back in her chair.

"Because if I did," Keith leaned forward in his seat "then it's my mistake and I'm so sorry for making you believe I use even a second of my day thinking about you."

Keith didn't even dismiss her, he just continued to eat and pretend like he didn't notice when she eventually left.