Resting his head on Alexander's chest, his cock still buried deep within his sleeping lover, Hephaestion wondered why so much was still not enough. Why 'You take me for granted, love. Don't' were words which might have been true, but which he'd never utter.

He knew that of all of the king's wives and lovers he was the only one allowed possession of the monarch's body because, for all their beauty, charm and enchantment, none of them loved Alexander as truly and loyally as he did. Hephaestion knew this some days. On other days he knew that despite all his love and fidelity, Alexander still succumbed to the temptation of their beauty and charm. From the time he was a young prince, he'd been raised to be this way. He had been taught to strive for glory by parents and tutors alike and was only allowed to play with the noblemen's sons, among whom, even though they were all still children, no friendship ran so deep as to be blind to status.

Except for Hephaestion, whose feelings towards Alexander had always been much more than mere friendship.

That could explain why he had never been able to tell Alexander a few basic truths about the nature of relationships for those who weren't born into royalty and its endless, intricate play of power and interests.

However, Hephaestion was too aware of the bitterness that such truths and the demands that followed would impose on Alexander. So he accepted his own sourness and kept silent.

But what did Alexander see in him? Despite his king's knowledge of his love, there were no emotions Hephaestion could offer that another wouldn't have been able to taint with suspicions. He knew Olympias must have tried. Her poisonous words had been trusted before in regard to others. Why wasn't she believed this time? It could not have been due to an excessive passion for his looks on his monarch's part. Despite Hephaestion's height, his slightly dark complexion for a Macedonian and his clear, blue eyes, "fiercely clear," Alexander once called them, his beauty was not as exotic as that of many they'd encountered together on this journey of occupation. And while their looks did matter, he knew that his competitors were themselves conquests, regardless of the position with which they arrived at the royal bed. What, if anything, set him apart from them?

Those who said there was freedom of choice behind Alexander's insatiable drive to conquer were wrong in Hephaestion's opinion. His beloved's conquests could know no end for Alexander himself knew nothing else. Everything he'd ever been taught, all that he loved and was allowed to love by his caretakers, everything was but a means to an end. An end which he now pursued with his own life.

So, what made Alexander feel that their love was different from all the rest? If he truly felt so; Hephaestion was not sure. If it was true the general had only one explanation, which didn't seem sufficient. After all, he couldn't possibly be trusted so completely by Alexander solely because of his instinctive ability to understand whatever was in Alexander's heart, or on his mind and to accept it wholly. Could he?

And they were indeed in sync, except in those wee small hours of the night, when Hephaestion lay in his bed alone, despite the company of a wife or his lover, when his grief would wash over him for all the things he wished Alexander would instinctively understand and accept.

Hephaestion did as right as he could by the wife he'd never wanted, whose sole purpose was to bear him children. Heirs he would undoubtedly love, if only for the fact that in Alexander's mind, the children’s familial ties through their mothers made them a token of the love between their fathers.

He did as right by everyone as he could, most of the time succeeding and that was one of the reasons he made such an excellent diplomat and logistics officer in his king's service. He earned his rank and not only through fighting like most. It should have meant that no one could hold his position against him. Still, many did, especially since he also had their ruler's love and trust. Hephaestion pondered the possibility that Alexander liked it that way, having Hephaestion isolated in the court and dependent on him. Perhaps he did. If indeed, so much trust on the general's part, like his love, was not enough for the king.

What was the question, the mystery that he was trying to solve on a nightly basis through such circular thoughts? There was not one alone, but many and they were all interlinked. Small questions as well as bigger ones joined forces to drown him in the sea of his own doubts, wrestling one tidal wave then the next and back again. And again.

What had he ever seen in Alexander?

A boy, he remembered. A golden boy, confident and friendly, needful of naught, or so he appeared at first. Hephaestion could sense his desperate need for love as plainly as others saw the sun-filled curls and nothing beyond them. A boy, a little scared, looking up at him with true wonder when he first kissed him. A stolen, unsure pleasure back then, which Hephaestion was willing to pay dearly for as he had and still was.

Oh, but Alexander's eyes. His smile at that moment flashed a glimpse of his true shyness. What real choice did Hephaestion have but to love his friend after seeing his soul exposed to him? Such a rare vision.

What did Alexander see in him though?

It was to no avail. Another night's sleep wasted without any answers. Hephaestion could see the first sign of dawn against the tent's white cloth and thought of another kind of dawn. He imagined a day when his love for Alexander would no longer be enough, when words he longed to say would forever remain unspoken. A day when, with his own death, his lover would realize that which he couldn't tell him. What then? How well could Alexander go on conquering – and go on he would, Hephaestion knew – without even a single person who knew him completely and had no secrets from him, by his side?

What a dawn would shine through the tent's linen on Alexander that day, when he would have to pick up the pieces and go on.

Hephaestion's death was not inconceivable. He had already faced what he was certain would be his demise several times. He had also seen Alexander wounded and near death. That might just as well have been his own. The fear which the mighty warrior king didn't feel was passed on to him. It gripped him now and he tried to calm his madly frightened heartbeat by listening closely to another. In his own way, Hephaestion was also on a journey of conquest over his now peacefully asleep lover, but in the face of that final lover who claimed all mortals, he was suddenly unmindful of all other human ones.

The king stirred beneath him, though he was not a king to Hephaestion's eyes at that moment in time. Looking into the lazily opening eyes, at the still mildly shy smile, his heart belonged once more to this boy, devoid of all questions and as Hephaestion heard loving care in the voice which enquired if he had slept at all, while feeling an erection slowly springing back to life, he saw the two of them together in his mind's eye.

He could tell that his thoughts were fleeing from him as some men did on the battlefield, but he could no longer tell what they were. Instead of looking for their traces, he was losing himself again in his Alexander. There was nothing but their perfectly synchronized movements and thrusts, their passionately deepening and lingering kisses, and the fainter and fainter gasps he drew from his lover until their essences rushed from one body to another and between them. Hephaestion was utterly lost in the eyes that looked up adoringly at him, the shining eyes of a lost boy whom he would have loved no less had the boy been merely a servant. His Alexander, who'd had no other choice but to become king of the world.