The Debt Is Claimed
The air in the syssitia was thick with the smell of roasted meat, sour wine, and male sweat. It was a place of rough camaraderie, but tonight, a different tension coiled beneath the surface. I felt it. I felt Theron’s gaze from across the room, a steady, warm ember in the gloom. I felt Damian’s, a flickering, possessive flame. And I felt Brasidas’—a cold, heavy pressure, like a stone slowly sinking in my chest.
The games were over, the meal presented and enjoyed, and the selections were to begin. He had been silent throughout the meal, a brooding presence at the head of the table. Then, as the servers cleared the last of the bread, Brasidas stood. The room fell silent. A standing man in the syssitia demanded attention, especially one as large and commanding as Brasidas.
His eyes swept the room and landed on me. It felt less like being seen and more like being targeted.
“There has been enough circling,” his voice boomed, devoid of ceremony, cutting through the quiet. “Like vultures around a yearling.” He took a single step forward, his massive frame dominating the space. “The blood of Alexandros runs in this one. A debt is owed. A legacy remains unfinished.” He did not look at me as a person, but as a piece of property, a relic. “I let the first son slip through my grasp. I will not make that mistake again.”
My blood turned to ice. He was speaking of my brother’s death as if it were a personal insult, a slight to be avenged.
His gaze finally pinned me to my seat. “The boy, Lysander, will be my eromenos. The matter is settled.”
The words were not a request. They were a decree. A public annexation of my future.
A collective, sharp intake of breath hissed through the room. This was not how it was done. There was courtship, negotiation, a dance. Brasidas had just trampled the dance into the mud.
My eyes snapped to Theron. I saw the color drain from his face. His knuckles were white where he gripped the edge of the table. His entire body was a bowstring pulled taut, his jaw clenched so hard I thought it might shatter. In his eyes, I saw a flash of pure, undiluted fury, followed by a wave of helpless anguish. To challenge this here, now, would be to declare war on a senior officer, to shatter all decorum. The challenge would need to be answered, and Brasidas would dominate for sure. Theron was trapped, as was I, and the agony of it was a physical force radiating from both of us.
Damian’s reaction was a slow, venomous smile. He saw his primary rival for my favor, Theron, being publicly neutered. He could work with this; he could plot and scheme against Brasidas later. I caught my own father, Myron, his head held high, trying to hide his own disappointment from the crowd. I am sure the words NOT AGAIN echoed in his head as it did in mine.
A chaos of sounds erupted, both in shock and congratulatory noise.
The sounds narrowed in my head as I felt like I was trapped in the center of the storm. To me, there was only silence like the room was a vacuum, and all I could hear was the frantic beating of my own heart. I felt the weight of a hundred stares. Pity. Curiosity.
I looked at Brasidas, at this man who saw me only as a vessel for his own redemption, a placeholder for a ghost. I felt a cold clarity wash over me, freezing the fear in my veins. He expected submission. The whole room expected it.
Slowly, deliberately, I pushed my bench back and stood.
The silence deepened beyond my own ears and the room quieted. Not a single person would dare to move.
But then someone did. I saw Theron approach. He did not charge. He simply stood, his presence a challenge in the still air. I could not hear their words, but I saw the set of Theron’s shoulders, the unyielding line of his spine. I saw Brasidas turn, his laughter a silent, ugly gesture that I felt in the pit of my stomach.
My heart was a frantic drum. Don't, I begged silently, my nails biting into my palms. Don't fight him for me. He will break you. I saw Theron’s hands clench, saw the tremor of rage he forced down. He was holding back a storm for my sake, knowing a battle here would only seal my fate.
Then, I saw him look up. His gaze, sharp and searching, finding me in the centre of the room, as if I was waiting to be seen by only him. It lasted only a second, but in that moment, the entire world narrowed. It was not a look of pity. It was a look of promise. A fierce, silent vow that screamed across the distance: This is not over.
He turned and walked back to his seat, leaving Brasidas standing there, a baffled bull who had won the field but missed the true battle. Theron had not thrown a punch, but he had declared a war, and as I watched his retreating back, a strange, defiant hope began to kindle in the ashes of my shame. He had not saved me from the monster, but he had looked it in the eye and shown it he was not afraid. For now, in the crushing darkness, that was a flame I would cling to with all my strength.
I followed Brasidas to the wine krater, his massive hand dwarfing the clay cup. The firelight played over the immense, unforgiving landscape of his back. My heart was a trapped bird beating itself to death against my ribs. Every instinct screamed to run, to hide, but the memory of Theron’s promise in his eyes gave me a desperate, foolish courage. If Theron could not challenge, then perhaps my mind could sway.
“Brasidas,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
He did not turn. “You have something to say, boy?”
I forced the words out, they felt like shards of glass in my throat. “Release me. Please. I am… I am not what you need. My mind is not for war, not in the way you command. Let me go to Theron. Our… connection… it is a weakness I will not bring upon you.”
Finally, he turned. His expression was not one of anger, but of cold, utter contempt. He set his cup down with a definitive thud. “You think this is about what you need?” he asked, his voice dangerously soft. “You think this is about your mind?” He took a single, ground-shaking step toward me. “You are a tool. A whetstone. I am not honing you for your own sake. I am honing you to sharpen him.”
I stared, confused, the air gone from my lungs.
“Theron,” he sneered. “He is the finest blade in Sparta, but he is developing a flaw. A soft spot. You. I see the way he looks at you. I know that look. It makes him hesitant. It makes him weak.” He leaned in, his breath hot on my face. “By taking you, I am not claiming a prize. I am forging one. Every time I touch you, I am hammering that softness out of him. Your suffering will be the fire that tempers his spirit back to its true strength. Your pleas are irrelevant. Your desires are nothing. You are the anvil upon which I will remake a better, harder Theron.”
The truth of it crashed down on me, more crushing than his physical weight. I was not a person to him. I was a weapon to be used against the man I loved. My plea had not been a negotiation; it had been a confirmation of the very weakness he sought to exploit. I stood there, utterly hollowed, as he turned back to his wine, my hope extinguished not by rage, but by a cold, strategic cruelty I could never hope to defeat.
As I returned to the centre of the room, I did not look at Theron. I could not, or my resolve would break. I looked back only at Brasidas, meeting that gaze with every ounce of defiance I possessed, as he lifted the small cup to his lips and eyed me with suspicion.
“The debt you speak of,” I said, my voice quiet but clear, carrying in the dead stillness, “is not mine to pay. I am not my brother’s ghost.” I let the words hang there, a rejection so absolute, it was practically treason. At this stage, no one dared refuse an erastes with such power and stature as Brasidas.
Brasidas’ face did not change, but his eyes… his eyes promised a world of pain. Even though he refused me privately, I had not refused him. I had declared war back.
“You are not. But your father has agreed. Therefore you are mine to mold. I will ensure that you are even greater than your brother.” He gave me a sneer and waited for my response.
Without another word, I turned and walked out of the syssitia. I left the heat, the smell, the oppressive weight of their expectations behind. I walked into the cool night air, my body trembling, not with fear, but with the terrifying, exhilarating knowledge that I had just set my own course towards a coupling I was not prepared for, and in return, lost the one I truly wanted. I walked blindly, towards my only escape.
He found me where he knew he would—in the wild, shadowed grove at the foot of Taygetus, a place that belonged to neither the city nor the Helots, but to us. Only us.
I heard his footsteps before I saw him. Not the heavy, deliberate tread of the commander, but the quick, tense stride of a man pushed to his edge. He emerged from the pines, his face a mask of stormy conflict in the weak light.
Theron. My Theron. The man who was to be my erastes. A perfect public union to allow us to strengthen the bond we found. It was our plan. But now, as someone else’s eromenos, our public alliance would never be viewed as acceptable. How were we to continue our bond now?
We stood there, five paces apart, the air between us crackling with everything that had been said, and everything that could not be.
“Lysander.” He breathed out, exhausted. “You should not have done that,” he said, his voice rough. “To refuse him so publicly… it was a declaration.”
“What would you have had me do?” My own voice was sharp, frayed. “Kneel? Thank him for the honor of being my brother’s replacement?”
“I would have had you be safe!” The words burst from him, raw and desperate. He took a step forward, then stopped himself, his hands clenching at his sides. “You think I did not see what he was doing? He wasn’t just claiming a boy. He was trying to break you. To prove a point. And you walked right into his hands.”
“I am no longer a boy. I am 18 and ready to be chosen, to fulfill my duty to my erastes, which should have been YOU!” My own words caught in my throat as our plan evaporated before our eyes. I swallowed it down and squared my shoulders up to make myself taller as Theron’s stature dwarfed me into the shadows. “I needed to show him I was becoming a man! Or should I have let him break me quietly, like he did you?” I shot back, my heart hammering against my ribs. “To spare your political standing?”
“To spare you!” he roared, the control finally snapping. He closed the distance between us in two long strides, his hands coming up as if to grab my shoulders, but he stopped just short, his fingers hovering in the air, trembling with the effort of restraint. “Do you have any idea what he will do to you now? There will be no mercy. No pretense of mentorship. It will be a war.”
We were so close I could feel the heat radiating from his body, smell the faint scent of oil and wine on his skin. His eyes were wild, his breath coming in ragged gusts, when all I wanted was to feel his skin on mine, to feel his mouth claim me, and to feel him buried deep within me.
“Then it is a war,” I whispered, the fight draining out of me, replaced by a terrifying, aching need.
The sound of my surrender broke the last of his resolve. His hands, which had been hovering, finally found their place, gripping my arms not with violence, but with a desperate, clutching intensity.
“You are the most maddening, impossible, brilliant…” He didn’t finish, his gaze dropping to my mouth.
The space between us vanished.
His kiss was not gentle. It was a collision. A desperate, hungry answer to all the words we could not speak in Sparta. It was a battle and a surrender all at once. His mouth claimed mine with a fury that tasted of fear and a longing so deep it felt like drowning. I met him with everything I had, my hands tangling in the fabric of his tunic, pulling him closer, trying to fuse us into one being so that no one, not Brasidas, not Sparta, could ever pull us apart.
It was a confession of everything we were denying. That his duty was a cage. That my defiance was a plea. That the fire between us was the only truth in a world of lies.
When we finally broke apart, gasping, we did not let go. Our foreheads rested together, our breath mingling in the cold air.
“This is madness,” he breathed, his voice thick with a torment that mirrored my own.
“I know,” I said, my own voice trembling.
His thumb stroked my cheek, a gesture of unbearable tenderness in the midst of our chaos. “He will destroy you to get to me. To prove his point.”
“Then let him try,” I whispered, leaning into his touch. “I am not afraid of his war.”
He looked at me, and in the moonlight, I saw not a Spartan officer, but a man as trapped as I was, clinging to the one thing that made him feel alive.
“Neither am I,” he said, and his mouth found mine again, softer this time, a vow sealed in the desperate, stolen dark. We were courting ruin, and we both knew it. But in that moment, with his hands in my hair and his heart beating against mine, ruin felt like the only destiny worth having.
He backed me further into the grove. The moon painted his body in light and shadow, a landscape of power I had never truly worshipped during our frantic, hungry unions. Tonight, the frenzy was gone. My chance at Theron being my erastes now gone, seemed to make us forget the unjust world. I watched Theron as he removed his layers quickly and lay himself back on the pelts, his eyes dark and heavy despite their grey blue color of the sea, granting me a silent command that was more terrifying than any shouted order. My hands, which knew only the weight of scrolls, trembled as I touched the sun-warmed skin of his shoulder. I traced the deep, ridged scar that cut across his ribs—a story of a battle I’d only heard in whispers. I followed the powerful line of his flank, the hard plane of his stomach, learning him not as a statue of Spartan perfection, but as a man, a living, breathing mystery of sinew and heat as I crawled towards him, shedding my own clothing easily.
My hands glided slowly over the ripples of his muscles, memorizing each divot of flesh, every curve of power, every corded vein along his sculpted physique. When my exploration found its ultimate destination, he let out a sharp, guttural breath. I grabbed his thick piece in my hand, feeling the heat of it radiating up my arm as I gripped him tight. I pulled on it, marvelling at the length, seeing the effecting results in his eyes. I found myself licking my lips, knowing I was crossing a line beyond the duty of an eromenos.
Never before had I tasted a man, the shock of my boldness sending waves of spasms through his body. The control in his face fractured. To see this unbreakable man come undone under my touch was a power more intoxicating than any wine. It was I who held the leash to his passion. I tasted him, this man who had chosen me now to be something more than just his pupil, and I savoured every vein that ran along his long shaft with my tongue, and breathed in the scent near my nose as I swallowed him down.
But it was a fleeting dominion. With a low growl that was both my name and a command, he moved. In one fluid, powerful motion, the world spun. The explorer became the sanctuary; the observer, the observed. He was above me, around me, his strength a cage and a shelter. There was a moment of searing pressure, a boundary crossed once again that could never be uncrossed. I clutched his pelts, and stretched my body out for his pleasure, feeling his calloused hands run amock over my back. A sound was torn from me—not of pain, but of completion as his manhood entered me in one steady thrust. In the claiming, I was not conquered. I was found. This was what I was made for. This was what I found pleasure in. Our bodies moved in tandom, to a beat we both seemed to know automatically. It was a steady rhythm we found, with the only sounds of our coupling and breathing to be shared in the moonlight. As his body surrounded me, and the pressure dissipated, the urgency increased. I turned to look at him, finding his eyes already watching for me. My hands clung to his back, that part of him that is his most formidable asset—a complex, sculpted tapestry of interlocking muscles, so defined they look like coiled rope beneath the skin. This is the engine that drives the othismos, the shield-push that could break an enemy line, and my hands were on it, groping, digging into his flesh as if my very life depended on it.
Our bodies united even deeper as he drove himself into me as far as possible, his arms clamped around me, and as the storm broke within us both, I knew I had not just given him my body again, but I had handed him the final, broken piece of my soul that I hoped to submit as his eromenos.
But despite not being officially his, I clung on to him as he rode out his pleasure, knowing that even without belonging to him in the eyes of Sparta, he had with his unspoken promise to fight had in return, made me whole.
The others had made their offers with boasts and promises. Brasidas had publicly claimed me as his eromenos. But Theron had won me with a silence that spoke louder than any oath. Now, that silence was a living thing, thick and heavy between us. He stood before me, and in the fading moonlight, I could truly see the body I had pledged myself to. It was a map of his life—the broad, sculpted shoulders that had borne the weight of the phalanx, the deep, ridged scars across his ribs and flank that told of battles survived, the powerful, tapered waist, and the legs like pillars of seasoned oak. He was not polished like Kassander, nor brutally massive like Brasidas. He was real, a masterpiece of function and strength, and he was utterly terrifying.
He did not speak. He simply reached out, and his hand, calloused and warm, cupped the side of my neck. His thumb stroked the line of my jaw, a gesture of possession so gentle it shattered the last of my composure. My own body, which I had always considered a mere tool, felt alien under his gaze—a landscape of smooth, youthful muscle, pale skin against his sun-darkened bronze, trembling not from fear, but from a desperate, aching need.
With a slow, deliberate pressure, he guided me down again onto the piled wolf pelts. His eyes never left mine as he followed, covering me, his weight a solid, grounding reality. "Lysander," he breathed, my name a sacred word in the dark. His mouth found mine, and it was not a taking, but a claiming—a slow, deep exploration that stole my breath and my reason. His tongue filled me, battling with my own with a new passion I had yet to feel with him in our hurried encounters. I was no longer a Spartan youth meeting a man in secret full of shame. I was simply a man, being unmade.
His hands were everywhere, learning me, worshiping me. They traced the arch of my foot, the sensitive hollow behind my knee, the tense plane of my stomach. Every touch was a question, and my body answered with a shuddering, willing surrender. When his exploration became more intimate, when his fingers sought and found the most hidden part of me, a broken cry escaped my lips. It was not pain, but the sound of a lock turning, of a door opening to a room I never knew existed inside myself.
I was stretched, filled, completed. The initial sharpness of his second entry melted into a feeling of such profound rightness that tears welled in my eyes. This was not a lesson. This was a sacrament. With every slow, powerful movement, he was not just claiming my body again; he was inscribing his name upon my soul to make sure I knew I was his, regardless of the lack of title. My fingers dug into the hard muscle of his back again, marking him, clinging to him as the world dissolved into sensation. I was a vessel, and he was pouring his very essence into me again, making sure I would expend my own along the way. And I did, easily with just the feel of him and his eyes on mine.
When the final, shattering wave broke over me that second time, it was a silent cataclysm on his part. He collapsed against me, his head buried in the curve of my neck, his breath a hot, ragged prayer against my skin. The stickiness of my eruption spilled between us, but neither one of us cared. His mouth moved softly to find mine again, and we remained joined, my legs wrapped around the solid mass of his granite-like body, the weight of his enormity almost crushing the breath from my body. But I didn’t mind. This was what we hoped our lives would become, as erastes and eromenos. But this proved, we didn’t need it at all.
In the aftermath, as our hearts hammered a frantic, synchronized rhythm, I knew. The eromenos was just a title, a symbol of duty. I no longer needed to show him: that title wasn’t necessary; it was gone. In its place was a man, forever bound to another. He had not just taken my virtue and disappeared when our match was defeated. He had taken all of me, and in the taking, had given me everything I needed.
He spread his body out along mine, and his straight nose nuzzled into my ear. “Now we just have to figure out what to do next my love.”
And as I stared up at the moon, with the few clouds drifting over it to shield some light from my lover’s outline, I rested my cheek against his and held my breath, as if I was waiting for the answer to appear in the constellations that were slowly fading from sight.
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