What Price Fury

Title: What Price Fury
Rating: PG for now.
Fandom: Stones movie
Summery: Not For the first time in their relationship Hephaistion is a victim of Alexander’s wrathful temper. Mitigating issues play a part weakening the faithful General’s defenses causing him to retaliate and havoc ensues before the two can reunite. I can’t help but feel as though these two had there fair share of brawls. Egos aside…besides Hephaistion’s got other things on his mind.
Genre: Anger and angst and reconciliation
Reviews: Please send advice to rothalion@hotmail.com and thanks!
Disclaimer: Mr. Stone for this one, he brought them to life so we can torment them! Not purely movie driven I tweaked it a bit.


Thanks: To everyone who awaits updates to this tale and all who provide encouragement. Once again I thought that this chapter would lean toward a conclusion but it seems instead to have opened up the thing to more stuff…we’ll just have to see where it goes. Do not despair. Leave that to me…. This is a bit of reflection for Hephaistion and me as well. It will probably be boring for you guys but since it wrote itself this way I guess Hephaistion needed to sort it out.

Five

Reality and Eventuality


Hephaistion awoke on his back with the sun shining in his face. Alexander was still asleep beside him one hand twined in Hephaistion’s thick bronze hair and the other arm wrapped tightly, even in sleep, protectively across his broad chest. In a quick flash Hephaistion recalled the previous night’s tussle. He’d been rough too rough and callous in his love making. Violent, something that rarely occurred between them and he was surprised that Alexander had actually stayed for the remainder of the night. Normally when their joining took such an angry turn Alexander left him alone for the rest of the evening knowing that Hephaistion was troubled by some inner demon and needed space and time alone to exorcise it. He knew that although typically satiated by the rough play Alexander was also a bit disturbed when he took him so roughly. It brought Alexander memories of Philip’s harsh treatment of his lovers and Hephaistion was well aware that Alexander had always despised such a base lack of self control. He’d often asked where Hephaistion had learned such violent behavior and why it would erupt out of seemingly nowhere. Hephaistion never answered him, it was too much to think about, too much to share. More than he wanted to explain or try to define even to Alexander. It was what it was. He was what he was, who he was, shaped and defined by his past. Sometimes he simply felt the need to cause pain, to make a show of his so often belittled strength. To remind himself that he could be in control. He wasn’t even sure he understood it, the fine line between love and anger, pain and pleasure but now and again Alexander ignited that spark and things between them took a rough turn. Even before, before the events that had truly forged his rare urge for violence he’d had a mean streak. As a child he’d taken pleasure in tormenting small prey before killing it. Hephaistion had Alexander to thank for gentling him, showing him a kindness he’d not known at home.


On the previous night Hephaistion had been driven to roughness by fear coupled with a gnawing hunger and a repressed anger furiously fueled by grief and an immature fear of rejection. He’d wanted to ‘own’ Alexander if only for a few brief final moments. Making him his, physically and emotionally. Hephaistion had never felt that particular need before and it frightened him. He was not even so certain, this time, that he even felt guilty about taking his pleasure as he had. Pleasure? Had it even been pleasurable? Yes, this time, it had been quite pleasurable he conceded guiltily. Then, pushing the thought of guilt from his mind, he focused on remembering the nightmare that had awoken him and driven his violent desperation. With a shudder, he allowed the vivid nightmare it play in his mind’s eye.

The rats again. Huge horse sized rats with long, vicious whip like tails that tore at his back if he tarried. Flaying his skin even through his leather corset, cutting the armor from his body; trying to run him down as he flees on syrupy legs at an agonizingly slow pace, barely staying ahead of their advancing charge. Philip always rides the lead rat his face twisted in a wicked one eyed grin, his sword held high, ready to come in for the kill. Attulus rides beside him also grinning murderously, a smug satisfied look on his face. What terrifies Hephaistion the most is that Philip never just kills him, he always just hamstrings him and allows the rats slowly eat away at his crippled body bit by bit by agonizing bit tediously nibbling his flesh from his bones as he lies helpless in a bloody heap screaming for Alexander but no sound ever seems to come from his lips. Sometimes in the worst of the dreams Alexander actually appears but slowly morphs into a half rat half human before joining the feast and taking the choicest morsels; Hephaistion’s heart and brain. In the nightmare Hephaistion lies helpless as Alexander hovers above him, holding him down by his shoulders with sharp clawed rat fingers; leering into his dying blue eyes with fiendish, red rodent orbs and as he gags on Alexander’s fetid breath he squirms at the brush of Alexander’s blood stiffened whiskers against his cheeks and throat. It is during those nightmares that Hephaistion wakes and crawls into a corner to huddle and rock like a silly, frightened child until the dawn chases the horrible visions from his beleaguered mind. He wondered why he’d never shared the horrific dreams with Alexander. He always lies and claims to not wholly recall them only saying that there were rats involved.

Last night’s dream had been no different. In it Alexander came to him and began to sup on his flesh with the other rats, but when Hephaistion awoke and headed for the safety of his corner he found Alexander sitting asleep in a chair at his bedside. Fear was replaced by an overwhelmingly strong and raw fury fed desire to ‘take’ Alexander, so he’d grasped hold of the feeling and had sexually pummeled Alexander. Pummeled him out of an absolute fear of being deserted, out of a fear of being cast away like a spoiled bit of food on the dung heap, out of a terrifying need to hold on to the only true and certain source of love, affection and friendship left in his life. Hephaistion had clawed at and crushed Alexander to himself. He’d tried to drive himself into Alexander with force and fury, hammering him like a blacksmith forging layers of steal into a singular blade, trying to meld them irrevocably into the singular being that he knew that they should be. His childish, immature fear of separation overwhelmed him and was fueled by a burning, simmering anger at being cast aside and chastised so brutishly before the men and now to be set aside for a wife. His father had abandoned him and now Alexander, it seemed, though Hephaistion knew better, was taking the first steps at doing the same.

Hephaistion felt the fool. He’d never before had such an urgent desire or need to ‘possess’ Alexander. They’d prepared themselves for years, since childhood, for the eventuality of Alexander’s marriage. Maybe it was just a reaction to the loss of his father. His grief had been deep and he had to admit he had not been himself for weeks now. His self inflicted separation from Alexander and the slow healing of his tantrum wrought wounds had kept his mind numb and unfocused; a dark recess of self pity and self indulgence in acts that he normally did not partake in. The visiting of the temple had become nearly an obsession as had his letter writing to Alexander and his now dead father. Letters which would remain unsent. Letters to himself really. Letters in an attempt to define and reconcile within his fractured heart the coming changes to his life. The parchments were stained with the blood from his damaged hands and his normally precise and meticulous script was shaky and haphazard the victim of his grief and confusion.

Hephaistion sighed, closed his eyes and breathed in the scent that was Alexander. It was sweet. A mix of sex, their sweat and Alexander’s own uniquely succulent odor. The scent held such a painfully deep familiarity that it caused Hephaistion’s breath to catch in his chest for a moment and his heart to race. It was the definition of an infinite intimacy, the scent of a lifetime spent together, of a shared love that was forged by bitter trials and absurdly rapacious bliss and desire. This scent, both sweet and musky with maleness, defined them; defined and framed their duality. One of lusty tenderness entwined with the brutality of warrior masculinity. It had been the later that had driven Hephaistion during the previous night’s encounter, the simple brutish need to be the victor, the conqueror, the possessor of another man’s life and soul. Now sucking that scent into his aching chest he fought off tears. Tears of imminent loss, tears of weary acceptance that what they had prepared for was coming to fruition in a matter of days despite his years and years of secret, fervent praying that by some act of the gods Alexander would get a heir through some means not requiring a wife and queen.

Hephaistion rolled onto his side turning carefully so as not to dislodge or awaken Alexander. He studied the sleeper’s face in the growing morning light, marveled at the peacefulness he found there and allowed it to sift into his heart just a bit, calming him. He shifted his eyes back and forth mimicking the motion of Alexander’s beneath the dreamer’s closed lids. Trying to crawl into his mind and join him in whatever dream he was having. Hephaistion had always done this. Sometimes all night he would watch and wait as cycle after cycle of dreams tickled Alexander’s sleeping mind. He’d get headaches from the act of following Alexander’s eyes, squinting the next day in classes, causing Alexander to worry for him. Hephaistion had never told Alexander the cause of the headaches. It was his secret, his private bit of time with the prince and now king, he’d keep it his private bit of serenity and no one could take that from him at least.

Dreams. Alexander never had nightmares, only dreams; grand and epic in proportion when compared to the rest of the world’s men. Hephaistion furrowed his brow and said a silent warding prayer to keep the dreaded nightmares from touching his beloved. It was for him to suffer such torments for his Alexander, to somehow insulate him from the ravages of nightmare terrorized sleep. As he watched Alexander’s lips moved giving some unseen soldier a silent dream fueled command. Then those fine and sweet lips curled into a content smile. Hephaistion’s heart was filled with a joy he’d not felt in weeks. Such a simple thing, watching one whom you love and need so desperately sleep. Such a simple thing to reap such joy in a gentle smile. Hephaistion reached out and with learned fingers traced the stubble roughened contour of Alexander’s jaw and brushed his thumb across the still smiling lips. The sleeper sighed and shifted slightly but did not awaken. Hephaistion continued to stroke Alexander’s face and hair as his mind wrestled with the gut wrenching fear that this might be the last time they would be afforded such intimacy before the Calvary like charge of change wrecked their lives.

Change. Hephaistion sensed an uncontrollable onrush of change and felt in his heart that he would be over run by it. Duty was making its attack on their relationship and ‘his’ dream and it had followed all the precepts of a perfect attack. Economy, surprise and a focused target. Nothing he could do would stop the charge of this unstoppable force. It would gut him just as Alexander’s perfect charge had gutted Darius’ line at Guagamela. It would play upon the weakness of the lie that the two of them had foolishly nurtured for so many years and then with a swift and decisive attack it would rip his heart from his chest and lay it at the new queen’s feet. The idea that nothing in the universe could change them, that they would forever be bound had been childish nonsense and now in five days time that change would come and shatter every ideal that Hephaistion had innocently and in a the guise of denial held true. Change. It came to everything and everyone. Death. Everything died some sort of death. Men, his father, animals relationships, armies and entire civilizations. How had they managed to fool themselves into believing that they were some untouchable love bound entity. No, change was coming just as assuredly as Alexander was coming to remove the last vestiges of Darius’ power. Change. Hephaistion shuddered and again ran his thumb across Alexander’s slightly parted lips. Change might deal a sorrowful death to this part of them, the physicality of their relationship, but nothing would or could kill the pure and soul nurtured love that truly bound them as one.