Alexander & Hephaestion

Alexander instinctively awoke with the first light as he always did.

The torches in their metal brackets had died out during the night leaving only the occasional rays of intruding sunlight to illuminate the luxurious tent. The generals and their women had all left to sleep off their overindulgence during the very early hours leaving Alexander and Hephaestion alone.

Alexander smiled when he looked down at his lover cradled in his arms, their legs entwined, their faces so close that they shared the very same breath they breathed in. He stroked his hands over Hephaestion's muscular arms and caressed his strong jaw line noting the moment when he opened his emerald green eyes. After rubbing the sleep from them, he grinned up at Alexander and winked at him.

Alexander couldn't help but laugh out loud at the irrepressible man in his arms and held him closer to his chest shaking with laughter and then moving his head down to press a kiss against his full lips.

Hephaestion opened his mouth at this and licked Alexander's beautifully shaped lips. Alexander groaned and felt himself beginning to stir against Hephaestion's thigh. He parted his own lips and sucked Hephaestion's tongue into his warm mouth, caressing it with his own. The kiss becoming more urgent as their arousal grew and their bodies began to undulate against each other.

Their hands grasped at the thick heat of each other and began to pump the cocks harder and harder, gasping and thrusting against the hardness of each others bodies until at last they both reached the peak they had been driving towards and exploded onto the rippled planes of their chests.

Alexander fell onto his back, gasping for breath as Hephaestion moved on top of him needing to bring his lips to his. Their kiss grew deeper as their tongues entwined and their breaths gradually slowed. Alexander sucked Hephaestion's full bottom lip into his mouth before opening his eyes and letting it go.

Pressing a final kiss against his rosebud mouth, he spoke, "Come lover, there is much to be done today...there is a king to catch!"

Hephaestion laughed, running his hands through Alexander's tousled honey locks, and said, "I have already caught my king today Alexander."

"You are impossible, man!" he replied with a smile. "Come!" he said again rising from the tangled blanket about them and then pulling Hephaestion up.

With a final embrace, Hephaestion cupped Alexander's warm, hard bottom into his hips and kissed him hard, before pulling a tunic over his head and lazily stretching his arms above him, yawning, and walking out of the tent into the glorious morning sunshine.

Alexander shook his head and smiled to himself. He never could get enough of that man.

*****

Alexander and his generals gathered closely around a rough table covered in different maps all hand drawn and painted in bright colours on thinned and stretched animal skins. They depicted the world as it was then known: a ring of land around the Mediterranean which was enclosed by the vast Ocean. Aristotle had had them prepared for his most famous student, Alexander upon his departure from Macedonia for what would be the last time.

It seemed that this wish was on the verge of completion. Alexander would finally achieve what his father Philip had yearned for and prepared for during his lifetime, before he was brutally murdered at his daughter's wedding by a former lover, Pausanias who had been in collusion with the Persian King Darius. Alexander had vowed that Darius would pay dearly for this grievous wrong and yet he had slipped from his grasp for the second time after the battle of Gaugamela. The first time after the battle of Issus had been bad enough, but this was close to humiliation.

"But surely if he is indeed heading for Bactria and the East we should follow him hard, close the gap and kill him!" urged Ptolemy, "before the distance becomes too great."

"Our men are tired, they need to rest not endure another forced march for thousands of miles to a country we don't even know!" contended Antiochus hotly, thumping his fist onto the table and making the maps jump.

The generals argued fiercely amongst themselves, each truly believing that their desired course of action was the best.

Hephaestion looked up from the maps to Alexander who was staring at the placement of Babylon, the city of the Kings, the city he had dreamed of since a child. He placed his hand on Alexander's shoulder and muttered, "So, it is Babylon first my friend..."

Alexander gave a curt nod, looked up and said in a soft voice that immediately drew a veil complete silence around him with its innately commanding nature, and no one failed to hear him say, "We will march to Babylon, rest ourselves and our men. The scouts will travel along the former King's Road and keep me informed of Darius' whereabouts. I imagine...," he said slowly tracing his finger along the map to the East, towards the mountains of the Caucasus, "that he will go to Bessus ... here," and he tapped the index finger of his right hand on the word 'Bactria.' "If that is where he goes, it is where we will go." His tone brooked no argument.

The generals looked at him and nodded before bowing their heads before him and striding out of the tent to prepare the thousands of men for the march to Babylon.

There was never any question of arguing with Alexander, certainly not in relation to anything that had to do with military campaigning or high politics. He was the pre-eminent master of these having been raised to rule since birth, and rule was trusted by them all in his capable, imaginative and strong hands.

********

Only Hephaestion stayed whilst Alexander continued to look closely through the pile of maps and at length he looked up at his friend. "Why do they trust me Hephaestion?" he asked with a troubled look in his eyes.

"How could they not?" replied Hephaestion with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "We all know you do not take decisions lightly, we also know you are divinely inspired... The light of Ammon shines in you Alexander, and until that dims, we will all always follow you... to the ends of the earth if needs be."

Alexander looked down at the maps once again, both hands clasping the sides of the table. He took in a deep breath and when he looked up at Hephaestion once more, a look of deep certainty and power emanated from his cerulean blue eyes.