Fear
The plan was a gamble with our lives. Theron, through his quiet influence, had arranged for a minor tactical vote in the gerousia—a matter of patrol routes. Brasidas, arrogant and dismissive of what he saw as bureaucratic nonsense, gave it little thought. I, as his dutiful eromenos, was present, silent in his shadow, ready to influence as Theron had advised me.
As the debate grew tedious, I leaned in, as if to better hear him. In a whisper meant only for Brasidas, I offered my counsel. It was brilliant since I had already planted the idea of my mind being my best asset only a few days ago. He was eager to listen, and it was an elegant plan that he listened to carefully.
But it was also subtly flawed.
It played directly into his contempt for the older ephors, a plan of bold action that thinly ignored a key terrain feature that Theron and I had carefully calculated. I knew Brasidas well enough now to know exactly what he would think and do.
"An interesting thought, boy," he grunted, not bothering to lower his voice. He stood and presented the strategy to the council as his own. I saw Theron, from across the room, give an almost invisible nod. Just like we knew he would. Just like we planned.
The trap was set.
Days later, the patrol returned, bloodied and empty-handed. The "bold action" had led them straight into an ambush as Theron and I knew. No one died, but the shame was profound. The whispers started immediately as this was Brasidas’ idea and suggestion.
Brasidas’ judgment is compromised: his focus is on breaking a boy, not leading men.
The disgrace rippled through everyone, and on the second day Brasidas summoned me not to the training ground as I figured he would, but to his own chambers instead.
I felt a chill wihin me as I was escorted to his room. I waited at the doorway, but he did not look at me.
"The patrol failed," he finally said, his voice a low rumble of contained fury.
I said nothing, my head bowed in the perfect picture of subservience.
He turned, and his eyes were not filled with the hot rage I expected. They held a colder, more terrifying emotion: a profound, weary understanding.
"It was you," he said. It wasn't a question.
I lifted my gaze and met his. I said nothing, but I did not deny it.
For a long moment, he just stared at me. I saw not the monster I was expecting. At first, I thought I saw a glimmer of something in him, pride perhaps. But then I stared harder, and saw the pained man who had confessed to me his love for my brother, the man who had failed Alexandrios, and was now failing again.
And it was all because of my plotting and manipulation.
"You have your brother's mind," he said rather quietly, his voice stripped of all its power and fury. "But his was a sword, pointed at the enemy. Yours is a dagger, and you have pointed it at me."
My breath caught and I suddenly felt like the one who was set up. Our trap had worked, and Brasidas’ character was being questioned, just like he had done to me. I lifted my chin higher in defiance as I stood before him, waiting to see exactly how he was to punish me for this obvious betrayal to him.
He took a step closer, and I saw the fury return in his eyes. I met his gaze courageously, seeing beyond the sudden hatred and took in the weight of his years, his losses, his shame and at the same time felt my own.
"I took you to forge a weapon for Sparta. To erase my failure. But I see I was the fool." A bitter snort escaped him. "I tried to hammer a dagger into a sword, and in doing so, I only sharpened its edge against my own heart."
I had forgotten that Brasidas too had a heart.
He looked out his large window, toward Taygetus, and my own eyes followed his gaze. We both looked to where Alexandrios last stood, as if his ghost was somewhere on the slopes waiting to forgive us both.
I saw nothing, but felt the weight of Brasidas’ words betraying my own mind. In trying to free myself, and humiliate him, I only made it worse for him, internally.
Brasidas continued to look, as if he could see the spirit of my dead brother. "I have spent these last few years trying to outrun his death. I thought you were my path to redemption. But I see your games. You have become the very thing that would have broken his spirit."
For a moment I froze, hearing his words strike my heart and land there, ringing true. My brother would have disapproved.
He turned his gaze back to me, and I saw the claim, the obsession, the brutal desire he seemed to have for me return to his eyes with a devastating clarity.
"This war between us ends now, do you understand? Now I will show you what it truly means to be my eromenos.”
I was expecting a victory. Instead his words hit me like a hammer, almost knocking me sideways. Theron and I had gambled, and his words solidified what I feared most he would do.
He did not wait for my response. He moved towards me with decisive steps and stood before me in his full height, puffing out his muscular chest in a deep inhalation, his massive shoulders now wider than ever, his head turned upright in a satisfying display of victory. He was not releasing me as we had hoped.
The knowledge of me still being his eromenos hung between us. The war was over, but neither one of us seemed victorious. This was not how Theron and I had planned for this to end.
His hands suddenly slid up my lifeless arms as I tried not to shake. But there was no brutality in his touch. There seemed to be a grim, solemn ceremony to it, as if he was suddenly performing a task he wanted to remember.
He stood before me, and for the first time, I looked up at him and saw a man: not my captor or someone I had to plot against. I saw him: Brasidas – the pained man who fell in love with my brother; not my captor; nor the monster I believed him to be. I saw a soldier, scarred by a love that had defined and destroyed him, fighting to break it within me to save me. My eyes fell to his body, and I saw it as a masterpiece of functional power. He was a weapon of strength and power, not to be feared, but to be admired. The ridges of muscle on his stomach, the dense power of his shoulders—they were the armor he had built to survive a heartbreak that had never healed. Only now, as he stood holding me gently by my arms, did I see it.
His hands came to my shoulders, but they did not grip. They rested there, heavy and warm.
“You have his fire,” he said, his voice a low rumble, stripped of all its harsh edges, and digging directly into my heart. “But it is your own. I feel it when I am inside you. And it is your duty to please me…as my eromenos. Even if it may be for the last time. Please? Even if you are not him.”
I nodded and then froze, letting all of the air out of my body as I succumbed to him, allowing him to undress me slowly, his calloused fingers tracing the lines of my body not with possession, but with a kind of final, weary reverence. I knew my duty. And I felt I owed him as the words for the last time lingered in my mind.
I watched him as he moved around me, carefully studying my flesh. He was memorizing every spot on me, his fingers dancing over me carefully, his thumb brushing over a fading bruise on my ribcage, and I did not flinch. There was no need for defenses anymore.
I turned away from him, as was our usual routine, but he stopped me, keeping me facing him. He stared at me as he moved me towards the bed. When he laid me down, we remained facing each other, his large hands placing me delicately on my back, following my arms up to hold my hands above my own head, his powerful legs gently moving my own aside. I felt his weight on me as familiar, but the intent was different. He was closer than ever, his mouth hovering near mine, his eyes open and staring into me. This was not an act of dominance. It felt like a farewell. A laying down of arms.
“Just one more time.” He whispered over me before his mouth found mine. I breathed in deeply, feeling his body on me, his tongue searching in an almost devouring sensation as he seemed to give me a final, bitter acknowledgment of the bond we shared as erastes and eromenos. I felt the tenderness in his kiss, the lightness of his touch, the carefulness of his positioning as if the love he had for my brother was now a living, breathing passion this man was allowing into our union.
My hands gripped his back as I felt him pressing against me. Instinctively I spread myself for him as his mouth covered my moans. There was no blinding pain at his entry, just a pressure that seemed welcomed, and I felt his own voice muffled in my throat. He grunted, and groaned but his mouth never left mine. I saw his eyes close and his breath release as he sank all the way into me. I gripped his lower back with my hands as my feet wrapped around him, taking him in deeper, hearing the satisfaction escape his throat.
As he moved within me, the rhythm was not one of conquest. There was something different in his movements, in the careful slow way he thrust into me. I closed my eyes and felt it, a shared sorrow between us suddenly, of a profound loss and guilt and betrayal all at once. I hugged him tightly, feeling him reach something so deep inside me I felt my head fall backwards. When I opened my eyes, his were open again, locked on mine, and in their depths, I saw the reflection of the lonely, honorable future he had chosen for himself. He was giving me up, I could tell now by the way he looked at me as he drilled himself inside me. Not to Theron, but to the fate he believed I was too stubborn to avoid.
A single, hot tear escaped the corner of his eye and traced a path through the dust on his cheek, falling onto my cheek. It was the first and only tear I would ever see him shed.
“I can see him in you.” He whispered as he clasped his hands within mine, pinning them over my head. I felt a surrender I did not ask for as he moved faster, forcing involuntary grunts from my body as he thrust into me harder with each gyration of his hips.
He lowered his head to mine again, with a soft kiss before his tongue traced a path down into my neck. I heard him breathe in as his body dug into mine, lifting me higher as he rammed my smaller body easily with his mighty one.
“You smell like him.” He moaned as his hands moved underneath me.
I was pulled from the bed forward, into him as he rocked back on the heels of his feet, holding me against him like a baby wrapped in his father’s arms, slamming me onto his rod even deeper.
He held me in his arms, rocking me against his massive frame as he stared opened eyed into me, listening to the sounds he was forcing out of me as he drove his tool deeper into my willing body.
“You sound like him too.” He grunted before he leaned forward over me and I was once again on my back being used for his pleasure. My hands now free from his moved to his sturdy hips to try to ease the workings of his body, but I was no match for his brute power and strength.
He pushed my legs wider with his hands, his calloused hands in between the back of my knees as he roared over me, his face crunching in an expression of great release as he erupted within my walls, spilling his seed deep inside me, quivering over me.
In a surprise moment, his big fist grabbed my own swollen member and he tugged me into a numbness I couldn’t explain. My head moved from side to side at the relentless assault on my shaft, my body pinned to the bed still by his own member and large frame, one hand holding my body down as his other brought me to a sudden orgasm of liquid erupting from me like a volcano. I doused my own body with my own sweet smelling fluid, watching his muscles flex as his arm slowed, and he squeezed the last of my drops from me.
When it was over, he did not collapse or remove himself from me. He remained above me for a long moment, until he slowly lowered his head to mine, resting his forehead against mine, our breath mingling. The air was thick with the scent of us, of sweat and salt and a truce between us that was now signed in silence.
He finally pulled away and stood, his back to me as he dressed. His movements suddenly seemed to belong to that of an old man weary from life.
“Go to him,” he said, his voice rough but quiet. “Go to your Theron. I cannot break you. But do not let it consume you both. Sparta will see through it.” He let out a soft shudder and wiped his forehead from the sweat dripping into his eyes. He turned back to look at me with a pained expression. “You are not Alexandrios. But may the gods grant you a better end than they granted me.”
He walked out without another word, without looking back.
I lay in the silence, my body still humming from the savage yet passionate touch of his hand around my tool and the throbbing emptiness of his withdrawal from my insides. There was no victory in my heart. Only a vast, aching hollow and guilt at what I had done. I glanced once more to the door and felt a heartbreaking appreciation for the broken warrior who had just set me free.
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