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“How could you do this?! You realise that’s the house I grew up in?! That I live in when I come home to Sparta?!”
“It’s also the house Alexios grew up in before he had to leave the city. And Myrrine by law is still your father’s wife. You must see that.”
Brasidas kept his tone steady because he’d known Stentor for long enough to understand that joining in his fuming would only turn an already dangerous blaze into a conflagration. Even now he did not doubt that people walking past his house on the street could hear his lover shouting.
“What I see is that you care more about people you haven’t seen in twenty years than me,” Stentor spat. “You’re the same as my father!”
They had been arguing for a good half hour, but for the first time Brasidas felt like he had heard the important part.
“Your father returned to you.”
“Yes, after two years of leaving me to think he had died. And – I knew he had regrets about his family. Maybe he had to go. But he couldn’t have told me he was leaving? Did he think I would give away his secret?”
“Perhaps he just couldn’t bear to disappoint your high opinion of him, Stentor.”
Stentor waved his hand as if to wipe his words away.
“Like it matters. He has his real son back. This Alexios won the Olympics, he won my battle in Boeotia for me, and he saved Sparta from a traitor. King Archidamos obviously doesn’t have any faith in me, he’d probably give Alexios my polemarch’s seal if he had a mind to ask for it. My father finally has a chance to make up for his mistakes and find the regard of the man he actually wished to raise. And you – you seem delighted for every minute you spend in his presence, the way you tell it.” He snorted. “You want me to cheer that you brought him back into the city? Yes, thank you. I’ll be glad to pass on my whole life to a stranger.” He scowled. “But perhaps I deserve it. If I had been stronger in Boeotia-”
“Stentor,” Brasidas interrupted him sternly.
For a man who could come off so arrogant, a lot of the things he prided himself on seemed built on such uncertain ground. No one’s regard ever seemed wholly secure in Stentor’s eyes, and every challenger was assumed to be given precedence over him until Stentor could prove the victor. However, Brasidas did not like to have his own honest regard reduced to a fancy he’d give up at the first opportunity.
Stentor looked at him, all defiance. Brasidas held his gaze. When the silence had stretched for an eternal moment, he stepped forward and grabbed Stentor’s face, holding it tightly between his hands, not allowing him to turn his head away though he tried.
“A man may have two sons and love them both. King Archidamos would have thought you foolish had you left the help he sent you sitting useless in a corner. And do you expect me to stand here and smile when you imply I’m unfaithful?”
“What do you expect? You are raving about the man whenever you talk of him.”
“I think Alexios is a great warrior and a good man.” Brasidas could feel guilt coiling in his stomach as he saw that behind the anger twisting Stentor’s face, there was true hurt in his bright eyes, as if he actually expected Brasidas to be callous enough to get rid of him with a speech about how much he preferred Alexios. Still, he had to put this all out there clearly for once. Stentor was struggling hard now, clawing at his arms to pull him off, and he was not a weak man. Brasidas had to back him into a wall to keep him in his grasp. “He is a friend of mine.”
“Then go back to him, you son of a-”
“And you are the one I love and I have no intentions of switching your positions,” Brasidas said patiently, pulling him close enough to knock their forehead together. “Don’t you trust me at all? After three years?”
Stentor was quiet, but his hands weren’t digging bruises into Brasidas’ forearms anymore, at least. Brasidas waited until his breath evened out a little to kiss him. Stentor pressed his lips tightly together, but from his expression, Brasidas could tell he was just being cross now. He smoothed his thumbs along Stentor’s cheeks.
“Do you?” he insisted.
“I know you’re an honourable man,” Stentor muttered sullenly.
“Then stop this.”
“What else but honour is keeping you here? I do not want to be the burden you carry because of your good character,” Stentor pressed, to his surprise.
He did not sound angry now but exhausted and that was more difficult to handle. Brasidas knew Stentor at angry, but he had not imagined that bringing Alexios back to Sparta would wound him so deeply.
Maybe he should have known. Brasidas, who was some twelve years older than Stentor, still remembered the surprise all over Sparta when Nikolaos had taken a liking to the young helot child who kept joining the Spartan boys of the agoge for practice uninvited. Stentor’s relatives had all been gone or dead before he’d seen six summers. He’d been nothing to anyone before he hadn’t proven himself a greater warrior than all the young Spartans and when Nikolaos had taken him in, everyone expected him to live up to the promise of being the Wolf’s chosen heir. It was perhaps not so strange that a man like that would assume that if he was overtaken, by the true heir, no less, that he’d once again sink into irrelevance and loneliness, and that if there was someone stronger than him who also had Brasidas’ regard, he would logically be left behind.
Brasidas dropped his arms and pulled him into a tight embrace before he kissed him again.
“Stentor, you know your accomplishments if you cared to use your head. But for me it’s more important that you are loyal, you never leave me doubting your affection, and I enjoy every minute I get to spend with you,” he said. “Know that if you left me, I would follow you even to Hades like a lost dog.”
Stentor was a great general, but though Brasidas was proud of him, he did not love him for how he handled a spear or an army. It was the way his face lit up when he saw Brasidas after they had been separated; how he would pick up his duties to the syssitios or around a camp when Brasidas was occupied with another matter, without being asked, just as he saw it was needed; it was the way he never made Brasidas worry about him straying even if Apollo himself had asked for his favour; it were the moments when his fiery temperament drove him into Brasidas’ arms and made him boyish and playful, but also when it filled him with all the fury of an angry god. Brasidas had fallen for a man, not a list of fulfilled missions and victorious battles.
Stentor cast down his eyes.
“You are not the one I should be shouting at,” he admitted, after some quiet. “My father came back and I thank the gods, but there are a lot of questions I cannot ask him, and very little else has gone as I wished.” With a humourless smile, he added: “I got what I wanted and I should ask no more of Tyche, for his return is already a wonder. Yet these last few weeks have been bad.”
Brasidas pulled him close by the back of his neck, kissing his short hair. Stentor nestled against him, a wordless plea for attention, and Brasidas felt in the way his strong arms grasped on to him that Stentor had missed him for that time of confusion. He dragged his hand down the back of Stentor’s neck. The war kept them apart too much. He was old enough now to get tired of it at times, Spartan or not, and perhaps Stentor was experiencing the same. He was no boy himself, even if he was younger.
“Nikolaos is not without reason. You defer to him too much. If you ask him directly, I doubt he would think ill of you for wanting an explanation,” Brasidas murmured into his ear. “And as for the other matter – if you’d like to avoid Alexios, you could always live at my house.”
Stentor huffed against the crook of Brasidas’ neck. “Was that your plan, to drive me out of my home to get me into yours?” he asked, but it was an obviously joking taunt.
Laughing, Brasidas gave him a gentle shove towards the bedstead, happy to hear the fury and sadness lifted from his voice. “They did not make me a spy for my lack of wits.”