TITLE: 7. "No second choice"
PAIRING: Hephaestion / Alexander.
RATING: PG
CATEGORY: Historical AU.
SUMMARY: Hephaestion is tired and takes a decision.
DISCLAIMER: I do not know the people involved, no harm intended; everything is product of my imagination. Alexander and Hephaestion belong to History and to each other but I would not mind sharing my life with the blue-eyed man.
WARNINGS: Angst.
My mother tongue is Spanish and I work without a beta so all the mistakes are mine.
FEEDBACK: comments are love! Any kind of them will help me to improve my writing or leave it forever.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This idea is just a whim; I just wanted to try and write something different. It is a whole series of 29 short ficlets.
Hephaestion was decided to put an end to a situation he had been tolerating for too long. He was not a woman to feel jealous, however he felt cheated as the one he held in his highest esteem, had done the same thing repeatedly and then, looking sad and repentant, had looked for the brunette's forgiveness.
Hephaestion had always answered in the same way "Alexander, you are my king and my ruler, I cannot dictate or criticize the way you live"
The young king, looking like a beaten up puppy had told his lover that he was the only man on earth who had a claim on his heart. So many times had Alexander repeated that heartfelt thought that the young brunette had truly believed him.
Years went by and Alexander went on with his old tricks; whenever he was unfaithful, he bestowed generous gifts on the blue-eyed man, a more subtle way of asking for his forgiveness, less direct than the one he used to have when he was younger.
One evening, Alexander entered his chamber whistling loudly and fixing his clothes after a quick stumble with a page boy and there, lying in the middle of the room, were the gifts he had given Hephaestion that very same morning, after having laid not with one but with two young maids the previous night.
Alexander was puzzled but then suddenly, quick as a lightning, it struck him what had happened earlier. For the first time in all the years spent together, he had seen pain in Hephaestion's sapphire eyes and not even a single smile had graced his tempting lips.
When the king got closer to the gifts, he found a piece of scroll on top of it, written in his General's clear handwriting.
"Thanks for the gifts but allow me not to accept them. I will no longer be the second choice of your heart as you have killed in me the feeling of having you as the first choice in mine"
