(There's a brief reference to the ugliness of a battlefield that some might find disturbing, but hey, you're reading a story about a world conqueror; it's not puppies and rainbows.)
They fed each other date-and-sesame treats on the big bed, and if the servants had brought two cups, they used only one. Not to conceal anything, just for the fun of sharing. They hadn't bothered to dress, even though it was chilly in the tent. Sheep-fleece covered the bed, cured hides from mountain herds somewhere far, far to the east, or so Alexander's Persian servants had informed him. He wanted to find those sheep and send a flock back to Macedonia for breeding. He adored the long, smooth wool on bare flesh and liked even better the look of Hephaistion's black curls and tanned limbs sprawled on pallid bright. Running a hand over his friend's hipbone, he considered the contrast of ruddy fair skin against rich olive. "Why can't I be dark and pretty like you?"
"Who're you to talk, Khrusion?" Golden boy. "Your hair shines like gilded thread, or the sun itself." Grinning, he reached out to slide fingers through it. "I look like any other Greek."
"Not like any other Greek unless divine Apollo, Phaistonaki."
"You're mushy."
"You're one to talk? You started it. My hair is not gold; it's washed-out blond and I've got freckles all over."
Hephaistion grinned even wider, displaying big teeth. There was a charming little gap between the front two. "You do. Even on your ass."
"There's a lovely image."
"What? I like your freckled ass—as I just proved in the tub."
"Stop talking and roll your own ass over. I'll give you a backrub."
"That's all?" Hephaistion waggled eyebrows and Alexander socked him playfully in the shoulder, then leaned in close, lifting Hephaistion's jaw with a finger as if to kiss him, only to lick him from bearded chin up over lips, nose, and brow.
"Yuk!" Hephaistion yelled, but he was laughing.
It was a very old joke between them. Camel kisses. He couldn't remember where it had started except long before they'd become lovers, the sort of silly nonsense boys engaged in.
Alexander pushed Hephaistion down. "On your belly."
Hephaistion obeyed as Alexander retrieved an aryballos, a perfume vial, from a bedside table. It held ointment tinctured with Lebanese cedarwood, sharp and musky. He poured out a palmful, a profligate waste of scent, but he wanted Hephaistion to smell warm like the gods. He spread this over his friend's broad back, the skin smooth, no battle scars from this angle, working it in with strong fingers and hard palms over splayed shoulder blades, then down along his curved spine all the way to the dip of his lower back. Hephaistion lay quiescent, arms up, head turned left, eyes shut. Alexander worked the muscles in silence. Lamps on stands burned bright without much smoking, their jumping dance scattering brilliance in random patterns. Outside the heavy felt of tent walls, he could hear the muffled calls of the night watchword, or distant laughter and a victorious shout, perhaps from a winning bet at knucklebones. Far off, someone was singing.
After a while, Alexander rolled Hephaistion onto his back. His friend moved like wet sand, limp and fluid, his cock half erect. "Again?" Alexander laughed and Hephaistion blushed. Like the size of his prick, Hephaistion's needs had always been greater. Alexander leaned above him, nose-to-nose. "I'm teasing. I like it that it takes nothing more than my hands on your back and you're ready for two."
"You could whisper my name some days and I'd be ready," Hephaistion confessed, expression defenseless like a sacrifice on the altar.
Nobody could undo Alexander the way Hephaistion could, and he lowered his forehead to his friend's full mouth. Hephaistion kissed the skin there. Alexander might be only twenty-four years old, but he was dead certain the man under him was the love of his life. If he marched as far as the Encircling Ocean, as long as Hephaistion marched with him, his heart would be home.
Sighing, he sat back, resting lightly on Hephaistion's thighs to pour more cedar salve into the hollow of Hephaistion's sternum, rubbing it over skin, fingers tracing scars from sword cuts, one quite long on his right bicep where some Persian had got in under his guard at Issos. It was healed, but still a shiny, livid red. Bending, Alexander kissed it. Hephaistion's own hand touched Alexander's thigh and the scar there from the same battle, rather worse; a spear had pierced not only skin but muscle. Weeks later, Alexander still walked with a slight limp. "Did the bath help the ache?" Hephaistion asked.
"Yes, though it's been better lately. Twinges sometimes but not like it did."
"Don't get yourself killed, you reckless damn-fool," Hephaistion said, voice between fondness and fear.
"I could say the same to you."
"I'll do my best. But I have to be brave for you. Worthy of a king."
Alexander returned to kneading pecs and smoothing the long muscles atop broad shoulders. He wanted to say that fighting wasn't what made Hephaistion worthy of a king, but it would come out wrong, as if he were dismissing his friend's valor in the crush of combat. Finally, he said, "Remember, I need you to come back to me when the battle's done. Don't do anything stupid, like Patroklos."
Hephaistion's lips twitched. "I'll leave any Hektors to Achilles."
"Good." He paused, then added, "Let's not talk about war."
They saw, and dealt, enough death. Alexander needed to forget things that were hard to forget, like a cloud of black flies on a dead man's spilled intestines, a random, severed arm, or a skull cleaved half in two, one eye out of the socket—
Don't think. Don't think. Don't think. Don't remember. Just feel.
He ran hands across Hephaistion's abs in smooth sweeps, then moved up to circle brown nipples with his thumbs. Hephaistion's cock, which had wilted, twitched in renewed interest. Dragging his right hand back down over diaphragm and stomach, he palmed Hephaistion's shaft while continuing to circle a nipple. "Oh gods," Hephaistion muttered, hips arching. The cock head had peeked out of its retracted foreskin, leaking a single bead of slickness. Alexander caught it with the pad of his forefinger, rubbing it all around the blood-suffused glans which was red like Macedonian sweet cherries. Hephaistion hissed through his teeth. Fuck, he was beautiful, and Alexander was reminded of the unexpected compulsion earlier in the bath. What had made him think about taking Hephaistion's cock in his mouth? And what made him think about it again now? No one would ask a free man to perform such an act, and no free man—never mind a king—should want to.
Yet he did want to.
Why? Part of his mind—the analytical part that gave him no peace, the part that had to turn every problem over and over, peeling back the skin to scrutinize it—asked if by flirting with the shocking, with the underbelly of permissible, he could black out worse things? Shove the ugly out of mind by doing something uglier?
Yet it wasn't repulsion that excited him. He'd never been drawn to harshness or vulgar sex, and dirty talk turned him off like cold water. He'd once yelled at a slaver for bringing him a dozen pretty boys, thinking he might wish to purchase one or more. What kind of kataratos—disgusting creature—had that man thought him? Love forced wasn't love. He had everything he needed right here under his hands, everything pure.
And it was pure, what he wanted. Maybe he just had an upside-down way of conceptualizing it.
Hephaistion could be shy of his body because of the size of his penis. He'd confessed once or twice that he thought that part of him too big and unsightly. "I'm hung like a bedamned stallion," he'd said. He wasn't, but he probably felt that way in the palaistra, and the only time he relaxed while naked was with Alexander, who he knew loved him. All of him.
And Alexander was going to prove it incontrovertibly.
Decided in mind, he put all his focus on the task at hand: loving Hephaistion.
Sliding his friend's foreskin up over the cockhead, he gave a little twist, then back down. Up, twist, and down. Meanwhile, he used his other hand to stroke the shaft in the same rhythm. After almost a decade, he could play Hephaistion's body like a lyre, and this was why he had little interest in anyone new. Familiar sex wasn't boring. It was ease, and mastery, and tonight, he would add an additional skill.
"S'nice," Hephaistion whispered, head back on the fleece. He was hard, but not rigid. After all, they'd already finished once. Alexander paused to let his thumb move back to the sensitive red glans, just brushing the opening. Hephaistion sucked in breath and the muscles of his belly tightened. Clear fluid leaked again. Would it taste sweet like cherry juice? Alexander had no idea.
"Agapete?" My love.
"Yes?" Hephaistion's voice was breathy.
"I'm going to break rules again."
"What?" Hephaistion's chin came down and he looked at Alexander, heavy brows together in a puzzled frown.
"Do you trust me?"
"What a stupid question. You know I do, or I wouldn't be like this. It's not exactly dignified."
"You're beautiful. A young Dionysos."
"I notice you picked the girly god."
"Phaistonaki, don't." Yet now that it had come to action, he hesitated—not something he often did.
He might be decided in his own mind, and yes, they'd already breached conventions. But what he was about to try was far more than just inverting who was fucking whom. Some would call it wholly depraved, one of Aristotle's animal vices. Would Hephaistion understand, or be horrified and disgusted? Could Alexander risk alienating the man he loved best in the world?
Yet on the other hand, could he risk not trying to love him beyond any constraints?
Couldn't they just be?
To complicate it further, he wasn't sure how to do this. When he'd been a boy and curious about such things beyond watching horses or dogs mate, he'd sneaked into one of the palace androns, or dining halls, to go through the dishes kept in a locked trunk. A lot were precious metal, silver mostly. Hence the lock. But some were painted pottery from Athens. They'd had all manner of naughty images intended to arouse men at the evening supper party or symposion, or to arouse a curious boy before he'd even been able to spill.
Yet some images had upset him deeply. They didn't show playfulness or satyr humor. One had depicted a woman, a prostitute given her short hair, lying on a table while one man entered her roughly from behind and another had a hand in her hair, forcing his prick into her mouth. The young Alexander had quickly put it back and had never looked at it again. After his father's murder, he'd gone back to that chest—his chest of dishes now—to remove the cup and smash it. He'd told no one why, even Hephaistion. And if he'd seen similar scenes on pottery since, none had shown anybody swallowing a cock willingly, not even satyrs, who would do anything.
So Hephaistion might not take this well, and Alexander still didn't know how to proceed at a purely practical level. Yet his lover was watching him, curious, tangled curls a mess around his face. "Come over to the bed edge."
Rising on hands and knees, Hephaistion crawled across sheepskin like a lion. The man was moving sex and how had Alexander won this? Sometimes he feared Hephaistion loved him only because he was king, because the gods above knew he couldn't compete in looks. Then he'd remember that if he suggested such a thing, Hephaistion would kick his ass for being stupid. They'd had this conversation. More than once. And both ways, actually; Hephaistion suffered his own insecurities. In the end, they had to trust each other. Maybe tonight could chisel that in stone.
In any case, Hephaistion had misunderstood and stretched out along the bedside lengthwise.
"No, no, put your legs over the edge."
"What? Why?" But Hephaistion sat up to comply as Alexander rolled out of bed entirely, kneeling in front of him, glad Darius's tent had thick Persian carpets. "What are you doing?" Hephaistion asked. Clearly, he had no idea what was coming because it wouldn't even occur to him.
"Lay back and close your eyes."
"All right," Hephaistion agreed, half laughing. "This is getting weird."
Alexander started with his feet, pulling each into his lap to massage gently. His hands were still slick from residual ointment. Hephaistion's foot twitched a little, ticklish. "Why are you rubbing my feet? By Herakles, you're the blasted king. You could do that on the bed, too. Get up here so I can get my hands on you."
"You're bossy to your king. And this will be easier." Leaning above Hephaistion might have put him on top, but his neck wouldn't thank him. And given the complete inappropriateness of what he was about to try, being on his knees made not a spit of difference.
He let his hands move up over narrow ankles, then hairy calves. Hephaistion had gone quiet, probably wondering where this was headed. Alexander's palms slid over his bent knees up the insides of his thighs. Hephaistion's cock jumped a little in response. Moving the knees apart, Alexander looked down his friend's body as if out over a new vista. One arm was flung across Hephaistion's eyes, the other stretched out, fingers clenched in wool. His diaphragm rose and fell, breath rapid and shallow. He must be nervous. Alexander wondered what he was thinking.
Leaning in, Alexander took Hephaistion's cock in one hand while he kissed the olive skin of an inner thigh over downy hair. Hephaistion's muscles tightened. "Alekos, stop teasing me. That tickles."
'Tickle' wasn't the effect Alexander had been trying for. Rising and leaning in, he licked the hollow of Hephaistion's hip across his belly. Hephaistion's hand, which had been gripping the fleece, slid into Alexander's hair. "It still tickles," Hephaistion warned.
Alexander kissed back down the other hipbone. He'd been stroking Hephaistion's cock the whole time, though it wasn't as hard now. Hephaistion must still be nervous. Alexander lifted it a bit to blow over the length before running the flat of his tongue fast from base to tip.
Hephaistion's reaction was instantaneous. Jerking upright, he yanked the king's face away from his groin. "What the fuck are you doing?"