To Break a Hunter
The confrontation did not happen in secret. It was a public execution of reputation, staged in the heart of the agora as the morning market stirred to life. I was fetching water for my father’s household, a simple, domestic task that felt like a memory from another life, before Theron, before Brasidas.
And then I saw them.
Theron stood near the fountain, speaking with one of the ephors. Brasidas moved toward him like a ship cutting through calm water, men parting silently before him. I froze, the clay pot heavy and forgotten in my hands.
“Theron,” Brasidas’s voice carried, too loud for casual conversation, silencing the chatter around them. “A question for you, in your wisdom.”
Theron turned, his face a mask of cool politeness, but I saw the alertness in his eyes. “Brasidas.”
“A matter of strategy,” Brasidas began, his tone rather conversational. He stopped a few feet from Theron, his massive frame blocking the sun. “If you were to lay siege to a fortified city, where would you strike first?”
Theron’s brow furrowed slightly. “The weakest point in the wall, naturally.”
“A sound answer,” Brasidas conceded, his lips thinning into a cruel smile before his captive audience. “But predictable. I have been considering a different approach.” He took a single step closer, his voice dropping, yet still carrying to those listening intently around them. “What if you did not attack the walls at all? What if instead you sought to poison the water supply? Perhaps focus your entire force on finding the hidden spring inside the city: the secret source that nourishes the entire garrison’s…shall we say…spirit?”
The air left my lungs. He wasn’t talking about a city. I gripped the jug tighter than necessary.
Theron went very still. “I am not sure I follow your metaphor.”
“Don’t you?” Brasidas’s gaze was a force of its own, penetrating directly into Theron. “I have been hammering at the walls of a certain… asset… for weeks. The walls hold firm. Impressive, really.” He paused, letting the silence swell. “But recently, I discovered something. The asset has a hidden spring. A source of secret strength that allows it to defy me.”
Brasidas turned and looked directly at me then, his eyes pinning me across the square. Every person present followed his gaze. The heat of a hundred stares burned my skin as I clung to the clay jug like a servant.
“And I find myself wondering, Theron,” Brasidas continued, his voice now a deadly whisper that somehow filled the space, “are you the strategist who would foolishly attack my walls? Or are you really the hidden spring in the shadows, providing a secret strength to my asset to wage a battle you lack the courage to fight in the open?”
Brasidas was smarter than I had anticipated. The accusation was masterful. He had publicly announced their rivalry, spoke of Theron’s love for me as a form of cowardice, and exposed the secret core of my resistance to my official erastes, all without speaking a single explicit word.
Theron’s face was pale, but his voice did not waver. “I fight my battles openly, Brasidas. I do not hide behind innuendo.”
“Is that so?” Brasidas gave a final, dismissive snort before he laid his eyes squarely back on Theron. “I guess we shall see if that is indeed true. I am glad then, that we understand each other.”
He turned and walked away, leaving a horrendous silence. I allowed myself to finally swallow, and at once the spell broke, and the agora erupted into frantic whispers. Theron stood alone. His hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. He did not look at me. He could not. To do so would confirm Brasidas’ accusations.
And I could not look at him either. We were doomed.
I stood there, the water jar a dead weight, the truth of my body and my soul now it seemed a public spectacle. Brasidas had not confronted Theron with a challenge to a duel as I had expected. He had confronted him with a question that had no right answer, and in doing so, had declared a new war. A war not for my body, but for the very secret that kept me alive. And he had made it a war we would have to fight in front of all of Sparta.
I spent the remainder of the long afternoon trying to strategize a solution to our seemingly impossible conflict. If Brasidas exposed my relationship with Theron, if he could prove what we were doing in secret as two men not bound by the rule of Sparta’s master and student, it would mean death for us both.
Theron came to my father’s house that night, directly, to the small, spare room that was mine. There was no scroll this time. He came right in. It was a breach of every rule, a risk that encapsulated our very predicament only further. When I opened the door, he stood there, still in his cloak, his face full of fear.
He did not touch me. He stood rigid, just inside the door, as if holding himself back by sheer force of will. I felt the same resistance in my own body.
“He has painted a target on your back,” Theron said, his voice strained. “And on mine. To touch you now is to play directly into his hands.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“He is waiting for this. He wants the excuse to destroy us both.”
“I know. But WHY?” I breathed out.
He took a step forward, then stopped, his hands clenching. “I do not yet know! We must be smarter. We must be stronger than this… this need.”
But the need was there. It always was. A living, breathing need that neither one of us could extinguish. It was there now, in the ragged edge of his breath, in the desperate hunger in his eyes that fought with his own discipline. It was with me too, in the way my entire body yearned for him, a physical ache that drowned out the memory of any rules of Sparta.
“Then be strong,” I challenged softly, even though I could feel my own control wavering. “Tell me this is too dangerous! Leave then!”
He shuddered, a full-body shake that betrayed the war raging within him. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and the last of his resolve shattered.
With a guttural sound that was half agony, half surrender, he crossed the room and his mouth crashed down on mine.
All the fear, the rage, the public humiliation, the private torment—it all poured into that kiss. It was desperate and furious and tender all at once. His hands gripped my face, not to hold me still, but as if I were the only solid thing in a world spinning into chaos.
“I cannot,” he breathed against my lips, his voice raw. “Gods help me, Lysander, I cannot be strong! Not with you.”
Our clothes were not removed with slow reverence this time, but in a frantic, desperate urgency. I did not worry about my father or anyone else that was in our house this evening. I was focused on Theron. Only Theron. All my resolve, all my fear vanished in an instant.
We tore our clothes from our bodies and collided in a fury. When his skin met mine, it was an electric shock of heat and lust and truth. He pushed me back onto the narrow cot of my room, his body covering mine, a welcome, crushing weight. There was no hesitation, no worries, just a careful knowing and trust. There was only a driving, desperate need to be as close as two bodies could possibly be, to fuse into a single entity that no one could ever pull apart, to join together in one last rebellion.
His mouth was everywhere—my lips, my throat, the pulse hammering at my wrist. It was as if he were trying to memorize me by taste, to brand the memory of this onto his soul. When he pushed himself into me at last, it was with a single, deep thrust that was a complete surrender of passion. His hands gripped mine, his eyes locked in mine, and without words I felt like I surrendered to him completely. It wasn’t like the invasion of Brasidas. It was welcomed, enjoyed, which caused a cry to escape from my throat, not of pain, but of sheer, overwhelming relief, of pure connection and love.
I was his. No matter what Sparta said.
He stilled, buried deep within me, his forehead pressed to mine, his eyes squeezed shut. A single, hot tear fell from his lashes onto my cheek.
“This is who I am,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Not the commander. Not the Spartan. This. Yours.”
It ignited something in me. I wrapped my legs around him, pulling him closer, my own tears mingling with his. “And I am yours,” I vowed. “Only yours.”
We began to move, not in the tender rhythm of our last coupling, but of desperate survival. Each thrust was intentional. Each gasp was a promise. We were not two men, but one single, defiant heart beating in the dark, drowning out the echoes of Brasidas’s threats, the weight of Sparta’s laws, the fear of tomorrow.
His hands clasped with mine tighter, holding them upwards over my head as he moved faster within me. Our eyes locked, and I felt the squeeze of his hands as his body tensed. I nodded, feeling the increase of pleasure surge within me.
“Together then.” He moaned and with one final hard thrust, he released himself deep within me, sending my own eruption from my body as our hands remained locked together. I shuddered, writhing beneath him as his cock pulsed inside my walls.
He collapsed on me, the feeling of his larger body a comfort, blanketing me completely, as if covering me from the world outside. I welcomed the heaviness and panting of his body, slick with our sweat and our own fluids as he found my mouth again with his and we sealed our union further.
But he did not pull away in fear, or worry. He simply remained on top of me, his body giving out, his face buried in the hollow of my neck. His breath was a warm, ragged sob against my skin. I held him, my fingers tracing the powerful line of his spine, feeling the tremors that still ran through him.
We lay there, tangled together in the silence, Sparta and its laws held at bay. The danger was still there, waiting for us outside my room. But somehow I felt a new strength with him. We were not just lovers. We were accomplices, in this battle together. We were one another’s strength. And no amount of pressure from Sparta or the outside would ever change that.
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