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The firelight played off the walls of stone, making stories out of shadow. Above the cracking of logs and snoring of worn soldiers was the quiet rise and fall of Dilios' voice as he told tales to rival those firelight foes. Astinos reclined, his cloak painting most of his body a bloody red. Eyes half closed and arms behind his head he listened to the sound of the man's story and even though he was too far to understand the words he thought he might have known it for the story of Marathon. The pattern of laughing cheer from those closer than he was a familiarity of his childhood. "You smile prettily, for a woman."Astinos opened an eye to find Stelios folding his legs in front of what had been a private fireside. The orange light made his long hair a wild mane. "Don't all women smile prettily?" He reached out with a hand and was offered a skewered piece of meat, horse by the smell of it. No reason to waste the equine dead when there were men with hungry stomachs. Juice from the meat stained Stelios' chin and was backhanded away. "Aye, before they lead you to hell," he laughed, showing that grin he had, a smile like the insane mask of Ares himself. Each time it was given in Astinos' direction something fierce and raw responded with an answering roar from deep in his belly. Stelios took another bite of his meat, teeth ripping through toughness. "Is what the King said true, then?"Sitting up and putting teeth to his own meat – it was overcooked on the outside but almost red in the middle, and Astinos sucked at it as much as he bit – he raised his left shoulder in a shrug. "He speaks much truth," he said around the mouthful, unable to guess Stelios' real question. His friend leaned forward, the quality of his smile far from diminished. "That you're too young to have known a woman's touch." Astinos set his jaw and blamed the sudden heat in his cheeks on his fairly new proximity to the dancing fire. Stelios laughed and clapped him on the arm, leaving smears of charcoaled grease. "Enough of an answer for me, sweet boy."It was one thing for the King to call them boys; that was rank, that pride, that was Leonides. But when Stelios did the same it caused a hot wash of shame to creep into Astinos' blood, pricking with little claws intended to cling. "There are more important things," he said, his voice as raw as his veins. "You should know that." He was trying to even the sudden imbalance between them but his words only made it worse because they both knew that Stelios was a good, tested soldier, and that made what he'd said both hollow and asinine. He looked away."Of course there are." Stelios' tone was even, his statement a fact. Without looking Astinos knew that the grin was gone, no more was there a war god at his fire but only a man who regretted.In the close distance the men roared, their voices momentarily washing out the storyteller who'd drawn out their fever. The sound rolled back through the high walls of the Hot Gates like thunder. What came next was the rain.Stelios' words fell more quietly, single beats against that storm. "But for a man," – a man – "to be sent to battle, to death, without knowing the heat of a bed..." He'd leaned closer. Astinos had never realized that his comrade's voice could be gentle, he'd never heard it used as such; Stelios was always the first to yell, the first to raise his voice in elation, anger, triumph. The first to laugh aloud when the rain of arrows began. Astinos knew that if he closed his eyes now, hours after that steel downpour, he would still be able to see Stelios as he had been. Laughing under the raised cover of his shield, laughing, eyes bright and alive with it."You are unwed." Astinos braved a look; that it should be harder to face a friend than an army he couldn't understand. He found Stelios' eyes waiting. As wild as the rest of him; everything about the man seemed to hang on control's edge. A horse still green with the break. A wolf too hungry to heed sense. There were times when Astinos would meet eyes with the other – in the sparring grounds, across the marketplace, the fountain – and felt elated and wild himself, wanting to challenge and run and feel the burn of muscles. To laugh at death. "Spartan women have high standards."Astinos let himself laugh. "Are you saying that they've found you wanting, then?"Pulling the last bite of meat from the stick it was skewered on, probably some shaved spar of a weak Persian shield, Stelios grinned around the supper. "I'm saying that they want to marry a man with a beard. In which you, my friend," he said, stretching to leave more fingerprints, this time on Astinos' chin, "are as wanting as I!" Astinos laughed along with Stelios and bumped the light, warm grip away. His own food was only half eaten but he stuck the spar of wood into the dirt and left it to stand. "I don't grow but fuzz, but I think that you might shave your face so that you can stay married to the phalanx instead of a woman." Wiping his hands on his cloak, Stelios gave that wolf's grin again. "One day I shall raise fine Spartan sons. Today is not that day." He leaned forward and when he spoke again his voice was a hot promise against the shell of Astinos' ear, lips brushing the sensitive skin and raising the hairs at the back of his neck. "Today is for war, and warriors, and the chance at a noble death. How can you laugh at death, Astinos, when you do not know what life is of?"A hot promise. "I know of life." The protest was breathy and weak.Stelios' teeth, which had torn and shredded meat just before, caught Astinos' earlobe and bit delicately with a sharp and entirely pleasant sensation of pain. His groin was cupped with an abrupt pressure that the thick leather did little to mute. "This is life," Stelios murmured, teething, as Astinos straightened with a breath. The fingers that traced over the creased, worn garment were too knowing and Astinos pushed the man back roughly, tumbling him to the dirt and dismayed to hear laughter. His heart beat an unsteady rhythm against his ribs."You're no better than an Athenian!" Heat flushed his cheeks and worse, his cock. Astinos felt betrayed and undone and all was made worse by the laughter of the man before him. Stelios' mirth turned into a smile. "How little boys know of the affairs of men! Astinos, leave the Athenians to Athens and the sea; they have no place here on bloodied ground." He pulled himself up, dirt sticking to the sweat of his arm. "Let them love their boys. This," the whipcord of a man held up a hand, callused palm still stained by charcoal and death, "is not Eros, friend. I will not worship you come morning." He laughed and Astinos flushed further. He didn't understand. He felt lightheaded, as if he were poised on the edge of a battle. His heart thudded wildly and his blood was hot. "You and I, Astinos," Stelios said, still with that manic grin that would not let Astinos' heart subside, "are men. Tomorrow we will fight and maybe we will die. You will be a man with one spear – it is not wrong to be a man with the other. A man. Not a bloodless boy, soft and untried." He moved closer, the brush of his knees across the ground stirring transparent demons that rose and fell. Astinos trembled but did not move away. "You have proven yourself today," Stelios said, something under his words as poised and trembling as Astinos was, tensed to spring, "but cannot call yourself a man with the tale of blood alone."Dilios might have been proud of that speech. But he just spoke on from his place further into the night, chorused by the bloated birds and the ever-hungry sea.When Stelios' hands found him again, Astinos did not pull away. He quivered like a fly-stung horse as calloused fingers traced the muscles of his thighs and fingertips curved in, cracked nails leaving thin white lines across sun-polished skin. The touch infected Astinos with some sort of foolhardy bravery and he lunged, knotting his fingers into Stelios long, curling hair. He gulped a breath as if it would be his last and pressed his mouth against the taller man's until Stelios broke the fumbling kiss with a laugh. Their foreheads rested together. Astinos panted."You do not kiss like a woman," Stelios said, a hitch in his own breath and a smile in his voice. "You kiss like a charging bull. I don't need my teeth broken." He stood, leaving Astinos wide-eyed and confused, feeling the loss of touch like unexpected famine. Three steps away and Stelios looked back. "Are you coming?"Scrambling would have been undignified, but scramble Astinos did. He saw enough to see Stelios grin before turning his back and heading along the cliff face. His steps were long enough that the wind of his wake caught the red cloak at his back and flicked it up in a erratic dance; Astinos watched it, feeling unbalanced and surprised to be walking straight. The jerk and billow of the material before him was mirrored by his pulse. Barely a minute they walked. The night was not silent but there was a silence between them until Stelios reached out and caught a outcrop of rock in order to swing himself around it and into a narrow sheltering that Astinos must have walked by any handful of times in the last two days and never seen. He followed the older man, glancing up to notice the dark spill of ink that was the heavens that night, stars a tumble of white pinpricks. The storm that had drowned the Persians and raised Spartan spirits last night was gone. There was not a cloud in sight. Astinos had little time to contemplate the heavens; with his head still tilted up his eyes closed as Stelios made quick work of the brass fittings holding the sides of the garment he wore for modesty. Then his friend, his brother-at-arms, his rival, was close to the length of his body – now bare but for the cloak and the leather fastening that held it – the heat of the other a balm and a cause for fever all at once. Stelios nipped at the underside of his jaw as his hands closed around Astinos' cock. "No," he murmured against smooth neck, "not a woman, and certainly not a boy." Astinos shivered and lowered his head, finding Stelios' ear as Stelios had found his earlier and sucked on the soft lobe with long hair tickling his face. This close he smelled of musk and ash and life. Stelios moaned and his hands jerked against the sex they held. The contact ceased and Astinos made his own sound for the loss. He watched with lidded eyes as Stelios stepped back and flashed a grin, white by the light of the moon. His hair was silver now by that light instead of the gold of the fires. The leather covering his lap fell away without eyes doing the same and then Stelios spit into his hand and reached for Astinos again. His knees trembled at the quick, light jerks across his cock, eased by the saliva. Astinos huffed a breath as his hips shifted instinctively, craving more. Stelios came closer just for a moment with his smile. "Time to use your spear, Spartan." The words were a rasp that filed along Astinos' nerves and he might have had virgin knowledge of this but he knew he wanted and he knew how to get. Stelios laughed as Astinos shoved him around and pushed him against the rock wall; the man's hands came out and saved his cheek from a scrape. He spread his legs and found solid footing, panting through the feral smile he wore that Astinos could see over the man's shoulder. It fueled rough hands and desperate intentions.The long red cloak was jerked out of the way. Astinos grabbed himself, still slick with spit, with one hand – the other settled on a taught globe of flesh without thought and his thumb slipped along that warm, damp cleft, spreading outward. Stelios made a whining growl and then laughed as he jerked his hips back, startling Astinos. "Come, boy," the older man said. "Or are you afraid?"The taunt was enough to break the sudden paralysis. Astinos had seen the pink pucker of flesh and his throat had dried, his knees locked. Now he set his jaw and grabbed his friend's ass again, spreading to reveal. A step closer, a tilt of his own hips, and the thick head of his cock was fitting against that small spot. Astinos could feel the way the wrinkled skin worked as if desperate to swallow him before he'd even begun to push and heat washed through him, thick and tight and with a small cry he came right then, seed splashing out against Stelios' grasping little hole and the top of his back when Astinos' body jerked. Embarrassment was a flood on the heels of the orgasm. He didn't even know what to say, was terrified that he'd lost too much face to redeem, was terrified that Stelios would tell the men that he was still a boy and shouldn't be able to hold a spear or fight alongside them...The self-depreciating thoughts were sliced through by a warm hand wrapping around his sensitive sex. Astinos opened his eyes to find Stelios watching him over a shoulder, reaching back to grab. "Use it," he gruffed out, "just for the gods'sakes, do something!" The words made Astinos realize how hard he still was. He blinked, drew a burning breath, and looked at the mess he'd made of his friend as the hand holding him fell away. He ran his hand across the swell of Stelios' ass and brought it away covered in thick, still-warm semen. With a sharp little noise he stroked himself with it – the saliva was certainly dry by now – and then grabbed Stelios hips roughly. The older man groaned and let himself be handled, pliant. Lining himself up once again, Astinos held his breath and pushed into that tight place. Stelios hissed at the hard thrust and arched up and away but Astinos followed him, relentless, until their bodies were flush. He was gasping at the sensation, the sucking heat, the flutter and spasm of muscles around him, eating him alive. Stelios was breathing in thin rasps that echoed from the rock, Astinos digging bruises into his hips with fingertips. After a still minute of marvel he began to move and a minute after that Stelios was moving against him, making each thrust sharper and deeper.Astinos had seen animals rut, growls and arched backs and a pumping of hips that was frantic and driven. He felt like one of those animals now, Stelios hot and sharp and rocking beneath him, making choked sounds that tightened the renewed pressure at the base of his cock. And against that he moved as if life depended on it, understanding what his friend had meant earlier. What they'd done this morning was death but this, this was life, even if no life would come of it.He moved frantically, building back to that steep cliff, that sharp pinnacle. In front of him Astinos saw Stelios hang his head and drop a hand from the rock downward. A moment later the man was moving faster, his hips pistoning in a rhythm that was more shallow and swift and then he tensed with a grunt. The place where Astinos was buried clenched around him, released and clenched again and his own body shuddered forward without thought, spilling himself for a second time. It came with a good, deep ache and Astinos lost himself for a moment. A little death, here in the middle of life.Sound came back first. The roar of the close sea.The quiet cloth and metal movement of sentries so far above. The erratic howling of Boreas over the steep teeth of rock and wall, mortared with blood. Dilios' voice, much diluted under the heavy pull of two sets of breath, spinning stories of men.