Alexander the Great story: LOVE LETTERS by Moon71
LOVE LETTERS by Moon71
Chapter 2: Alexander and Hephaestion love one another and know it. But they’re about to realise they have very different ideas about how that love should be expressed…
NOTES: Let the angst commence! Oh well, it’s the holiday season so I suppose it fits well with spending too much money, eating too much chocolate and stuffing your face with roast turkey and Christmas pudding? Guilty pleasures, guilty pleasures…
Thank you to all who gave this story such an overwhelmingly warm reception on FFnet and LJ. I won’t have much time to reply until after Christmas but I wish you all a very happy Christmas (even if you don’t celebrate it!) with lots of blessings, peace and happiness to come.
They collapsed together at the foot of a tree heavily laden with blossom, panting and laughing. “You - may be - taller - my friend …” Alexander gasped, rolling over on the grass and aiming a clumsy kick at Hephaestion, “but… I… am faster…!”
Hephaestion gulped and shook his head. “You… you… always cheat!”
Alexander shifted abruptly from his back onto his side, glaring indignantly at Hephaestion. “I do not cheat!”
“You do, and I think you know it,” his friend replied, stretching his arms back and clasping his hands behind his head, his eyes fixed resolutely upon the sky overhead. Though he was smiling, there was something abstracted, almost sad in the tone of his voice.
“How!” Alexander demanded, digging him playfully in the ribs, wanting to lighten his mood. Hephaestion had seemed more and more restive since the early spring, and Alexander did not like it. Nor did he much care for the intense, brooding looks he too often found Hephaestion casting upon him, or the way he would quickly look away when Alexander caught him at it.
“When you’re about to challenge me,” Hephaestion answered slowly, “to a race, or a match, or even a debate, you strike at me with that smile of yours…” he drew a deep sigh, sending an odd little shiver down Alexander’s spine. “And it… it dazzles me, so I lose concentration, and you get a head start!”
“Hephaestion!” Alexander giggled, feeling his cheeks growing warm, “of all the poor excuses - I’ve heard of the sun dazzling someone, but a smile!”
“But nobody smiles like you,” Hephaestion turned his head towards Alexander, his expression grave, “I love your smile, Alexander.”
“Hephaestion…!” Alexander looked down into his eyes, his whole body glowing with love, “I love yours too… I love everything about you… I am so blessed to have you…”
He sighed sleepily, breathing in the sweet scent of the blossoms and marvelling at his own inner peace. So often peace was something which evaded him, driven as he was even at his young age by so many conflicting desires and ambitions, haunted by so many unanswerable questions. Hephaestion brought this peace, channelled from the Gods themselves!
Alexander shifted closer, intending to rest his head on Hephaestion’s chest as he had done many times before. But as Hephaestion’s arms came up to encircle him, the other boy suddenly rolled over, pinning Alexander beneath him. Alexander chuckled, thinking Hephaestion wanted to wrestle, but Hephaestion simply held him down, looking deeply into his eyes. Alexander could feel how fast Hephaestion’s heart was beating against his own.
“Oh Alexander…” Hephaestion breathed, softy brushing back Alexander’s golden curls as he lowered his head to his friend’s, “you are so… beautiful…” As he spoke, his mouth pressed down upon Alexander’s.
Alexander liked to be kissed by Hephaestion; his lips were soft and warm and his breath was sweet. Since the day of his father’s visit, they had exchanged a number of light, tender kisses. Alexander loved to be kissed and cuddled, though he knew it was not particularly manly, and was pleased that Hephaestion seemed to feel the same way.
But this kiss was different. It lingered. When Hephaestion finally drew away, it was to press his cheek against Alexander’s, breathing hotly into Alexander’s ear. “Sweet Aphrodite, how I love you…”
“Hephaestion…” Alexander began in a thin voice as Hephaestion’s hand began to slide gently down his side to his belly. Hephaestion shifted and Alexander gasped as he felt something hard pressing against his thigh.
“My Alexander…” Hephaestion murmured, just as his hand slipped between Alexander’s legs.
“Hephaestion, no!” Alexander caught roughly at his hand. Hephaestion clasped Alexander’s fingers, pressing them against his own thigh as his lips brushed Alexander’s throat.
“I know… my Alexander… I know…” Small, fevered kisses covered Alexander’s face, “but you mustn’t… be afraid… please let me touch you… I love you so…” Hephaestion’s body rubbed against his, “I would… oh, Eros, son of Aphrodite...!” a moaned exclamation, little short of a prayer, “never…hurt you…” Hephaestion’s hand drew Alexander’s gently but insistently to that hardness between his legs.
Alexander snatched his hand away. “Hephaestion, I said stop it!”
Hephaestion drew back, breathing quickly, his eyes wide with confusion and growing dismay. “Alexander, I…” he began, then, responding to Alexander’s angry glare, “I’m sorry, I only wanted to show you…”
“I think you’ve shown me enough, don’t you?” Alexander lowered his flashing eyes to Hephaestion’s groin before glaring accusatively up at his friend once more.
Hephaestion gazed back at him in such dismay that for a horrible moment Alexander feared he would actually begin to cry. Hephaestion hardly ever cried, even if he got a beating. It was Alexander who was usually the hot-blooded, emotional one. “I’m so sorry, I thought… the other day, when you… I thought that you… I didn’t mean… Oh Gods!” Quickly he rolled off Alexander and sat up, drawing his knees up to his chest and burying his face between them.
Alexander continued to stare indignantly across at him. Why? Why did Hephaestion have to start something like that? Was he seriously trying to suggest that it was Alexander who had encouraged him? He resented the sudden shattering of that brief, blissful moment of peace, feeling a gullible fool for thinking it Hephaestion’s gift; worse, his body was still tingling strangely from his friend’s touches and bringing to mind feelings he did not want to contemplate.
“Hephaestion, what did you think you were doing? What possessed you? We’re not a couple of farm boys or a couple of sex-starved soldiers! I thought you understood, I thought you were different! Why did you have to ruin it? You’re just like all the others! How can you say you love me when you… you…”
“But I do, I…” When Hephaestion briefly raised his head, his face was flushed; his expression was one of utter mortification. And sure enough, those normally serene dark eyes were brimming with tears.
At once Alexander regretted his harshness. “Hephaestion…!” Alexander cried, reaching out, but too late. Hephaestion sprang to his feet so fast for a moment Alexander thought he meant to attack him and then suddenly he was gone, fleeing back to the school grounds before Alexander could collect himself to follow.
It was twilight before Alexander made his way back to the grounds; he affected an air of mild curiosity as he appeared at the evening meal and asked one of the other boys where Hephaestion was; when he was informed that his friend had gone to bed early with a stomach ache, he forced himself to sit through supper and make bright chatter with his fellow students, though he had very little appetite. At least he was calm, and knew what to do and say; he had sat under that tree until the light faded, searching for a solution and had finally decided that a rational approach would be best.
When the meal was finally over, he slipped away with the bread, cheese and watered wine he had saved and entered his room. “Hephaestion…?” he whispered into the darkness.
Silence.
“Hephaestion, please talk to me… I’m not angry, I was…” he hesitated; he hated to admit when he was wrong. “I was unkind to you, earlier, I’m… sorry, but I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
A movement in the shadows; Hephaestion turned over on his bed, and Alexander caught the faint glint of his eyes upon him, but still no answer. “I brought you something to eat, I thought you might be hungry… you don’t really have a stomach ache, do you?”
A shuffling; a creaking of the wooden bed. Hephaestion had sat up. With a small sigh, Alexander lit the lamp on the table by his bed and sat down. Hephaestion blinked at him with reddened but dry eyes, his expression apprehensive. Taking a deep breath, Alexander began.
It was a misunderstanding, he explained; Hephaestion had got swept away in the moment, it was natural enough for boys their age to have those sorts of feelings, Alexander wasn’t naïve about these things, he’d spent enough time in the company of rough, common soldiers to know what went on. (He didn’t feel much like discussing what he’d also seen going on at Court.)
But their friendship was purer, nobler, superior to that; they were lovers in their hearts and souls. They should not give in to the base urges of the body; that would lower them, taint the quality of their spirits; cloud their judgement with lust, possessiveness, petty jealousy; might even drive them apart. Once they had both (he magnanimously put great emphasis on this last word) come to terms with their new physical longings, and learned to control them, they would both be happier; they would both have peace and their friendship would be truly perfect. And would last forever.
Hephaestion listened to this speech in silence, staring down at the plate of food Alexander had placed before him. Finally he said in a flat, rather muffled voice, “what of Achilles and Patroklos? Did their… physical longings…” he trailed off, as if losing heart, poking distractedly at a hunk of bread.
“They lived in a different time, closer to the Gods,” Alexander answered quickly, slightly disconcerted by Hephaestion’s argument, “a nobler time… people respected them, nobody thought of… of trying to drive them apart…” he met Hephaestion’s gaze for the first time as he said this, letting his expression soften. “I would die if anything came between us, Hephaestion…!”
“Nothing - no-one - ever will, Alexander,” Hephaestion replied, with a new tenderness that filled Alexander with relief, “but…”
“Please Hephaestion,” Alexander cried, moving quickly across to Hephaestion’s bed to slip his arms about his friend’s waist; Hephaestion was naked except for his loincloth and his skin was warm and very slightly moist and felt pleasant, but Alexander ignored his response to it. “I know I’m right; you will too when you’ve had time to think about it… I know you’re older, but I… I’ve seen things that you… anyway, I know what’s right for us, will you trust me in this?”
“Are we…” Hephaestion swallowed and turned his head away, his arms hanging limp by his sides, “are we… never to be… to be lovers, then?”
“But - dearest Hephaestion…” Alexander gently reached up and turned Hephaestion’s face to his, though his friend still refused to look at him, “aren’t we lovers already?”
At last Hephaestion’s eyes shifted to his, but the look of incredulity in them was hardly reassuring. “What…?”
“I mean…” Alexander felt his cheeks burning as he smiled shyly. “I am very much in love with you, you must know that. And I hope you feel the same for me?”
Slowly, expressionlessly, Hephaestion nodded. “Yes, Alexander.”
Alexander frowned. This was not quite the response he had dreamed of. Hephaestion sounded more like a soldier forcing himself to accept an unappealing order than a youth acknowledging he loved, and was loved by, a prince. Anxiously he leaned closer; when his friend still made no move to return his embrace, he whispered, “please kiss me, Hephaestion…”
Hephaestion looked at him for a long moment, chewing on his own lip; Alexander could feel the tension in his body and was worried he was going to begin arguing again. But then he touched Alexander’s cheek with soothing fingers and kissed him sweetly on the mouth; this kiss lingered too, but went no further.
Hephaestion put out the lamp and let Alexander settle into his arms as he lay back on the bed. It was only much later, when Alexander leaned up to kiss his cheek as he slipped out of Hephaestion’s bed to his own, that his lips encountered the salty wetness of fresh tears.
TBC