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"Are you still there?" Alexios asks.
The path is steep and dark and winding and he could've lit a torch, he supposes, when they started to walk or at any point along the way, except he has such a terrible feeling that being able to see well would lead him straight to the one thing he's not allowed to do. Stumbling and falling and grazing his knees and fumbling at the walls where the light's worst is better than the alternative, because he won't allow himself to fail. Maybe if Orpheus had had a blindfold instead of a lyre, Eurydice would have made it back alive.
"I'm still here," Brasidas says. "Like I was the last time you asked. And the time before that, and the time before that."
Alexios could swear he can hear him smiling as he speaks. It's in the fond but exasperated tone he remembers from when they were both still alive and not just one of them, before Amphipolis. It feels like it's been a lifetime, but it's really only been four years.
"Fine, fine, I'll stop checking," Alexios says, but he doesn't actually manage to sound petulant about it. Probably because he doesn't mean a word of it, because he absolutely won't stop checking until it's done. He can hear Brasidas' footsteps on the rocky path behind him, sandals slipping against stone just like his own do, but that could be anyone. Maybe Hades lied to him; it's not like the gods are known for their truthfulness.
And he's come too far to let him slip away again now.
---
"You're not exactly Orpheus," Hades said.
Alexios wasn't sure what he'd expected of the king of the underworld, but the man sitting in front of him wasn't it. He had a medium height and a medium build and honestly looked a lot like Alexios did himself, at least if he'd cut his hair short and grown a beard the size of a small forest. He had the look of a man who didn't get out much and didn't see many people while he was in, possibly because of the large number of scrolls the table he was sitting behind was currently buried under. He'd expected a throne, not an office.
"You're Hades?" he asked.
"You're a genius," Hades replied.
"You're charming."
"And you're wasting my time. You probably think I have a lot of it, but as you can see..."
He gestured at the scrolls. Alexios sighed, and he took a seat at the table. Hades didn't seem interested in stopping him.
He hadn't expected the journey to the underworld to be easy and it hadn't been: he'd walked the length of the Acheron from source to sea to find the place where legend said it branched down into the underworld. He'd found the half-buried ruins of the Nekromanteion and he'd gone down into the earth, through the winding corridors, past iron gates long rusted shut that he'd had to shatter and tumbled walls he'd had to find new ways around. The lower he'd gone, the louder the roar of the water. In the next chamber, the final chamber, he'd understood why: there the Phlegethon and the Cocytus flowed into the Acheron and then rushed down into the ground like a huge black well. The sound was very nearly deafening. The chill of the spray made him shiver. He told himself it was too late to turn back, but the truth was he just wasn't willing to.
He'd jumped, and he'd held his breath, and he'd felt the water drag him down. As long as he kept his spear clutched in his hand and his mouth and nose covered up tight, it was fine, he'd thought: the bruises would heal with their usual speed and he wouldn't drown. He hadn't drowned, as it happened. When he'd dragged himself out onto the riverbank, soaked and beaten, before the things beneath the water could pull him down to join them, his bruises had healed quickly. He'd spluttered into the mud then pulled himself upright again. He remembers thinking that at least it was the Acheron and not the Lethe, but then again he might have liked to have forgotten the fall. He'd only ever had one fall that was worse, and he'd never forgotten it.
He had drachmae to pay the ferryman when the boat arrived, who'd studied him with eyes that glowed like embers but allowed him to embark. Alexios had sat himself down in the prow and half-turned to see the way ahead, though really all he saw was dark water. He supposed he had to be pleased he couldn't see the faces underneath.
"We don't get too many guests down here," Charon had said, surprisingly personable considering his voice sounded as sharp and brittle as skipping across hundred-year-old bones. "You demigods and your katabasis. So, who's the famous parent? You don't look like one of Apollo's. Poseidon? I saw you swim. You're Poseidon's?" As Alexios turned to look at him, he narrowed his glowing eyes as if that might help get a better look at him. "Or your mother's a nereid, at least."
"I'm not a demigod," Alexios replied. "I'm just a mercenary."
Charon laughed. It wasn't a good sound. It sounded like it hurt, or at least it scraped at Alexios' eardrums.
"The worrying part is, I think you actually believe that," he said. "I'll ask again next time you come this way, see if you've changed your mind."
Alexios didn't see how time could change his opinion of fact, but he'd kept that assessment firmly to himself and let Charon chatter as they carried on across the Acheron. Alexios had seen how wide the river was on the surface of the world, because he'd swum across it more than once, but in the underworld it seemed like he'd have been better off bringing the Adrestia. Of course, Charon didn't seem to tire - not of punting across the river, and not of saying every single thing that came into his head. Barnabas would probably have liked him, he thought, after he'd stopped cowering.
"So, how do people usually get past the dog?" Alexios asked, when the shore was finally in sight.
Charon laughed that same broken-bones laugh, apparently unperturbed that he'd just been cut off in the middle of an anecdote about the time he rowed Odysseus across the Acheron. "Usually, they don't," he replied. "That's sort of why he has the dog."
"Any tips, then?"
"Don't get bitten?"
"Any useful tips?"
Charon smiled, his bloody mouth full up with broken teeth. "He's a really big dog," he said. "But in the end, Cerberos is still a dog."
Alexios had stepped onto the dock at the far side of the Acheron and as Charon turned the boat and he watched him go back the way they'd come, he'd known in a moment of perfect clarity that at no time had he had the faintest hint of a plan of how he was going to accomplish this. He wondered if Orpheus had, or Heracles, and if having gods' blood in their veins had made it easier. Probably not, he'd thought - the gods never made things easy, as far as he could see.
Then he'd taken his broken spear in his hand and he'd headed for the gates. And actually, Charon's advice had turned out useful.
"Just tell me who you came for, at least," Hades said. "The sooner you do, the sooner I can tell you no in no uncertain terms, and you can go back the way you came."
"Two things," Alexios said, holding up the forefinger of each hand. "One, there's no way I'm going back the way I came."
"Please tell me you didn't jump down the well." Alexios crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his chin. Hades dropped his head into his hands - rather theatrically, Alexios thought - and rubbed his face. "You jumped down the well, didn't you."
"I might have done something like that, yes."
"And the second thing? Bearing in mind if you say you brought a lyre and you want to sing me a song, I'll probably kill you myself."
"I don't sing."
"I'm pleased to hear it."
"Do people think that will work?"
Hades shrugged. "You'd be surprised how many people think they're Orpheus reborn," he said. "They're not. Well, one was. But he'd taken up the salpinx instead of the lyre and let's just say when I burst into tears it wasn't because I was moved by his grief."
"More by your own, I imagine," Alexios said, and Hades grimaced as he inclined his head in agreement.
"I had words with Apollo. There've been no more horns." He raised his brows. He leaned forward, elbows to the table. "So, the second thing? Before I send you back without your Eurydice."
Alexios shrugged, arms wide, palms up. "That's just it," he said. "I don't have a Eurydice. I didn't come to bring anyone back."
"So you came to play with my dog?"
"Well, no. Though he's very cute, once you get past the fact he's as tall as five men and has three heads. I think I made a new friend."
"Then you came to flirt with my wife? I'm sorry to say she's staying with her mother at the moment."
"That's not it."
"If you came to ask the dead for advice, you could have done that from the Nekromanteion. Without jumping down the well. All that takes is a bit of blood."
"I came to visit, not to ask questions."
That was the point at which Hades actually seemed to turn curious. He rested his bearded chin on one hand and tilted his head as he looked at Alexios across the scroll-laden table.
"Who did you come to see?" he asked.
"A friend."
"Does your friend have a name?"
"Brasidas of Sparta."
"People usually come for a lover. Or a hero; you'd be surprised how many people want to rescue Achilles and they've never stopped to ask themselves if Achilles wants to be rescued." He sat back in his seat and drummed his fingers on the table's edge. "You're sure? It's a rather long way to come for a friend."
Alexios gave him a firm nod. "Brasidas of Sparta," he said, because he didn't want anyone else. Most of his ex-lovers were still alive somewhere in the world, and the ones he knew who weren't he could live without revisiting. He wasn't Odessa; he didn't need to meet Odysseus. He'd have liked to have met Leonidas, he supposed, but more from curiosity than anything more personal. And there was Phoibe, of course, Phidias, and Skoura, friends he'd lost, but he'd mourned them and let go. Brasidas was the one he'd never let go of.
"And if I say no?" Hades said.
"Then I'll stay until you change your mind." Alexios leaned forward. He raised his brows. "And I'll find a salpinx. I'm not good, but I'm sure you'll appreciate it."
Hades laughed. "You drive a hard bargain," he said. "Stay as long as you like, Alexios. It actually might be nice to have some company while Persephone's away."
He didn't ask how the lord of the dead knew his name, because he wasn't entirely sure he'd like the answer; maybe it was on one of the scrolls, awaiting the end of his allotted days. He didn't question it when Hades left his seat and had him follow and showed him to a door across the room, tall and wide and wooden and completely unassuming. There was a sign on it, a rectangular slate hanging from a nail to the wood, currently blank but it had clearly been overwritten many times; Hades tapped at it with two fingers.
"Write the name of the soul you want to visit on the sign," he said. "When you go through the door, you'll be where they are." Then he handed Alexios a piece of chalk.
"Is it magic?" he asked.
"It's chalk," Hades replied. "We used to use blood, but chalk washes off better."
Alexios groaned. Hades patted him on the cheek. The gods, if he was anything to go by, really weren't what he'd thought at all.
Hades showed him to a room down the corridor with a bed and a table and a chair and a fire already burning in the hearth, though who knew where the chimney took the smoke to, given they were in the bowels of the earth. He was ready to start, he thought, but Hades wasted no time pointing out that the dead were, well, dead, so he thanked him awkwardly for his unexpected hospitality and made use of the bed. He still ached, after all, though it was maybe just a kind of phantom pain; it was one thing to heal and another to forget he'd ever jumped down a well in the first place.
Of course, he had jumped down a well. It hadn't been his finest moment, he supposed - there were legends about other entrances to the underworld, but it had just seemed the most expedient and it wasn't like he'd never done anything at least partially foolish in his life before. But, as he lay there, in the surprisingly comfortable bed considering he was fairly sure Hades didn't have a lot of living guests and chances were the gods didn't need much sleep, he didn't have to ask himself why he'd done it: he already knew. He missed Brasidas. All he had was a memory of him and an aching lack where skin and bones should have been and when he asked himself the question - is this worth it? - well, there really was no question. It was worth the fall, and worth the risk, and worth anything else it might have taken, if he could just talk to him again.
In the morning - assuming it was morning, which was frankly very hard to tell in a place where there was no such thing as sunrise - he went back to the throne room and Hades, still sitting there with his inky reed pen and a mountain of papyri, tossed him a pomegranate. Alexios turned it in his hands and raised his brows at him across the table.
"Don't worry, I'm not trying to trick you," Hades said. "You can eat. Besides, I'm sorry to tell you but you're really not as good looking as my wife."
Alexios snorted and took a seat and a disconcerting wispy grey shade of what might have once been a person served them both an odd kind of bread and meat and fruit and cheese for breakfast. Hades had a sheaf of papers at his elbow that he kept glancing at with a grimace as they talked over their food - it turned out ruling the underworld came with a grim amount of paperwork no one had thought to mention to him before he'd taken the job. Alexios could sympathise; it wasn't often he took a job himself that turned out to be as simple as it sounded.
"So, you haven't changed your mind?" Hades asked, when Alexios pushed back his plate and fished the chalk out from his belt pouch.
And honestly, until he went to the door, he wasn't sure himself - what was he even doing there? But then he raised the chalk and scrawled Brasidas. It wasn't neat, but it got the point across.
"One thing, before you go," Hades said. "Most of them don't know they're dead."
"Now you tell me," Alexios replied.
But it didn't stop him opening the door.
---
He really wasn't sure what he'd expected, but what he found on the other side wasn't it. Of course, he'd expected a grand king on a grand throne with servants and the cries of the damned filling the air, and what he'd found was a bureaucrat with a poky little office filled with paperwork; he really shouldn't have been in any way surprised.
He remembered the Monger's warehouse, of course, so he knew it when he saw it from the gate by the road where the door spat him out. He remembered going inside it - he saw himself there, going in, clear as day, though he'd forgotten how much he'd liked that breastplate and he had to admit it looked quite good on him. He remembered the fire that came not long after that, and Brasidas' unexpected arrival - he saw him approaching this time, from his spot by the gate. But he didn't remember the part that came next, and it wasn't because his memory was failing. He was certain it just hadn't happened.
He remembered the conversation about the Monger and about him surviving the drop from Mount Taygetos and not really knowing why he'd told someone he'd literally just met that his father was the Wolf of Sparta because frankly, in hindsight, he'd said a lot of things to a lot of people over the years that he really shouldn't have. What he didn't remember was that look on Brasidas' face or how close he'd stepped, his hands at his breastplate, or...that. Brasidas kissed him there on the dock by the water in the midst of the Monger's recently deceased men and he watched as he hid just out of sight, wide-eyed, as his double kissed Brasidas back. That hadn't happened. He'd probably forgotten a lot of things over the years, but he definitely would've remembered that.
It didn't stop there and he had the distinct impression that he should've left and gone back the way he'd come, back out the door that was currently standing oddly in the middle of a road, to Hades and his paperwork, but he didn't do that. He watched. The warehouse was still on fire like a gigantic flaming, crackling beacon but Brasidas and the other Alexios absolutely didn't seem to care about it; they were pulling at each other as they kissed there right in front of the burning building, the fingers of one of Brasidas' hands clenched into a fist in Alexios' hair and Alexios' hands tucked knuckle-deep into the arms of Brasidas' breastplate, pulling him in like neither of them could get even close to close enough. Then, when the kiss broke, it wasn't so they could step apart and claw back some sense, it was just so they could stand there, eyes closed, still so close their mouths almost touched as they caught their breath together. It was a kind of passion that they'd never had while Brasidas was living. And it was clear that they weren't finished.
Brasidas rested his forehead against the other Alexios'. Brasidas said something Alexios couldn't hear, but his double evidently could because he smiled toothily. And when they started to strip off their armour, that was when Alexios bolted for the exit. His heart was thumping so hard in his chest that he was almost surprised the two of them hadn't heard it and discovered him.
"Not what you expected?" Hades said, archly, once Alexios had slammed the door. "It never is, you know."
Alexios winced but otherwise ignored him as he took a cup of wine that a passing wispy shade offered him, then he dropped down into what was quickly becoming his usual seat at the table. He had other things on his mind than entertaining the wiseass lord of the dead, like wondering exactly what he'd just seen. Not that it was exactly ambiguous, and not that the thought if it had never crossed his mind before. Hades shrugged when he didn't reply and went back to his scribbling and Alexios slumped there with his cup, swirling the wine around inside it as he tried not to think about blood on the ground and blood on their weapons and how many times he'd imagined that day, except different. What he'd just seen was what he'd always wanted but that they'd never had.
He finished his cup and then, soft touch that he supposes he must always have been, he gave into Hades' exaggerated sighing and offered to help him with his work. Hades lit up like Helios and Alexios realised, belatedly, that he'd fallen into a trap; apparently the underworld was a lot like running a warehouse except full of souls instead of merchandise, and Alexios had never had much of a flair for business, but it seemed that Hades really hadn't either. It was somehow more exhausting than jumping down the fucking well; he'd've rather have done that again, he thought, but at least it took his mind off what he'd seen.
Then, as he lay there in his borrowed bed that night, with fingers so thoroughly bathed with ink it'd probably sunk in deep enough to stain his bones, listening to the dull roar of the river through the walls, he remembered times he'd thought about exactly what he'd seen inside that door - he'd wondered if in any world there could have been a way for that day to have gone differently, and if Brasidas had ever wanted it to. But the fact was, there had never been anything like that between them. They'd been good friends, and they'd trusted one another, and Alexios had mourned when he was gone, and blamed himself for it. If he'd understood back then, after Amphipolis, that the gods literally existed, maybe his trip to the underworld might have been a little earlier and substantially more Orphic. He'd certainly imagined it more than once, for a very long time. He'd just never known.
The next day, he went back. He told himself he'd watch from a safe distance, but for all his promises fulfilled for others he'd always been particularly terrible at keeping ones he made to himself. He went into the warehouse through an upstairs window and he watched, crouching, as the fire burned. He knew it couldn't harm him, somehow, though he couldn't have said how he knew.
He knew what he'd see, too. He remembered it, but knowing it and remembering it were so much different from seeing it; he saw himself and he saw Brasidas and he saw the way they fought together. It had been one thing to be there and to do it all first hand but seeing it, he understood every misstep, every slight miscalculation, and how it didn't matter because their errors only made them outstanding as a team instead of perfect.
The fight continued outside once they'd broken down the doors and Alexios followed them. He watched the two of them kill every single one of the Monger's men who'd attacked them, quickly and efficiently, there by the dock, exactly as he remembered. Then he watched them step in close. He watched them kiss. He watched them strip down to their tunics. There was a cart nearby, full and heavy-looking, and they went over to it; Alexios' double leaned against the side of it, his hands above the wheel, and he watched Brasidas stand in close against him. He watched Brasidas press his mouth to his neck as his fingers caught the hem of Alexios' tunic; he pulled it up and bared his arse and tucked the hem under his belt to keep it out of the way. Then he knelt there on the ground behind him. Alexios watched as Brasidas spread his double's cheeks and tongued his hole. He wasn't sure his cheeks had ever felt so hot in his life.
And then he watched Brasidas rise, and shed his tunic, and fuck him here in bright broad daylight as the warehouse burned behind them. He wrapped one hand around his cock and stroked. He was done before they were; he didn't stay to watch them finish.
"Not what you were looking for?" Hades said, when he stepped back into the office.
"Please don't tell me any more stories about Orpheus," Alexios replied. "I'm really not in the mood." But he dragged his chair over to Hades' side of the table anyway and settled in to argue over the underworld's lack of clear filing system.
In the morning, he went back to Brasidas. He chalked his name on the door while Hades pretended not to look, and then he went inside. And he meant to approach him, talk to him or at least try to, he really did, but he expected Korinth through the door and found Sparta there instead.
He hadn't been back in a couple of years but the huge bronze statue of his grandfather was just as unforgettable as the lions at Thermopylae. He saw people, but it didn't seem much like they saw him. He saw Lysander by the foot of the statue and approached to see if he'd have better luck with him; he greeted him casually with no reply, but that wasn't exactly out of character, given what he remembered of the man. He waved one hand in front of Lysander's face and got no response, and pushed him except he really really managed to move himself more than he did him. He gave Lysander a pat on the cheek that the real one would probably have at least threatened him for, then moved on.
His double was there, dressed in mismatched bits of scavenged armour he remembered on sight - he'd forgotten those greaves and the long leather vambraces and the breastplate he'd taken to blacksmiths all over Greece because he'd really liked the way it fit, like it had been made for him and not someone he'd probably put his spear through. Brasidas hadn't killed for his armour, of course, and looked every inch the proper Spartan general as he approached from behind and clapped his hands to the other Alexios' shoulders.
If he'd done that in life, there was a better than even chance that Alexios' elbow would have found his jaw and left him spitting blood till sunset. The other Alexios, though, just let him do it, and when Brasidas leaned close and said something to him, right there by his ear, that Alexios couldn't hear, he smiled and laughed and turned to him. As Alexios went closer, he could see the scar at Brasidas' throat, a pale line almost lost under his beard except it caught Alexios' eye. He hadn't had a scar there when he'd still been alive and for a moment all Alexios could see was Brasidas' own spear pushed straight through him. He hadn't been fast enough to stop it. He wondered if any part of Brasidas could remember that, or if this reality was all there was for him.
They left the statue and Alexios followed close behind. He followed them as they walked, close enough that he could hear their conversation. Had they always been so familiar with each other? He thought they had been, though it looked different from the outside. Had they always walked so close together, so every fifth step their arms brushed against each other? He thought he remembered that, too, though that also had a different tone from this new point of view. He remembered reaching Brasidas' house, and going inside. What he didn't remember was Brasidas' mouth on his, or spending the afternoon in bed with him.
It continued day by day, or at least morning by morning. Alexios entered Brasidas' afterlife to find himself there in it, if only peripherally sometimes; he saw the two of them side by side in the Spartan phalanx, shields locked, ready for the battle; he saw them side by side at the tables with Brasidas' syssitia, smiling and laughing amongst Brasidas' friends; he saw himself, younger, as if he'd never left, eromenos to Brasidas' erastes. He saw them fighting. He saw them fucking. He saw twenty ways it could have gone between them and none that it actually had.
One morning, after who knew how many mornings, he entered Brasidas' lamplit home as if he'd stepped through his front door and not the door. Brasidas looked up. He smiled at him. And when Alexios frowned and looked around to check, there was no one else there.
"There aren't many other men walking into my house in the middle of the night, Alexios," Brasidas said, and he patted the bench beside him. Alexios sat down, close by, so close that their knees brushed together the way they always had, and Brasidas slid one hand onto Alexios' thigh. It was high up, his fingers tracing the inside of it as he ran his hand up just underneath the hem of his short tunic. Alexios rested his own hands against the table and gripped tightly at the edge.
"You seem nervous," Brasidas said. He leaned a little closer. "Are you going to pretend this is new to you and we haven't slept together?"
Alexios frowned. "No," he replied. "Yes. I mean, we haven't slept together."
Brasidas chuckled, the sound of it familiar, low and warm and faintly wry. "Would you like to remedy that?" he asked, and Alexios understood that he should have said no. Brasidas was dead. It wasn't right. But when Brasidas kissed him, he had no way left to refuse.
There was a bed in the next room where Alexios had seen Brasidas with his double, and that was where they went to next. Brasidas took his tunic off and took Alexios by the wrist, and he brought his hand down to his cock. He wrapped Alexios' fingers around his shaft, and he tightened them, and he showed him how to stroke until he felt him stiffening against his hand. He felt moisture at the tip that he swiped away with his thumb. Then he pulled back, and he took off his own tunic while Brasidas went down onto his forearms and his knees.
There was no oil in the room, or at least Alexios had no idea if there was or not, but that really didn't seem to matter very much when he was rubbing the length of his cock between Brasidas' cheeks, teasing his hole. When he pulled back, he spread Brasidas' cheeks and traced his rim with the pad of his thumb and he leaned low, gave it just a second's thought, then spat against his hole. He rubbed his thumb through it, slicked his rim with it, tipped the tip of his thumb inside him and made Brasidas groan with it. He spat again, then pressed the tip of his cock against him, rubbed there, pushed, used what little moisture there was there to press the head inside. Brasidas groaned, strained and low, and Alexios felt his hole relax around him. He felt himself push deeper, till there was no deeper he could go.
When Alexios came, he came inside him, pushed in to the root with his hands gripping his hips and Brasidas shoving back against him. When Brasidas came, he was inside Alexios, on his back on the bed with Alexios astride him, palms spread at his chest. And afterwards, once they'd put their clothes back on, Brasidas stepped in close and wrapped his arms around him. He rested his forehead down against his shoulder, then turned his head and nudged his neck with his nose.
"I wish you were real," Brasidas murmured, and Alexios' stomach lurched. He understood: despite what Hades had said, Brasidas knew he was dead. Brasidas assumed this was a fantasy.
"I am," he said.
Brasidas chuckled. "Of course,"he replied. "In this place, I suppose you are."
Alexios took two handfuls of the back of Brasidas' tunic. He turned his head a fraction, his cheek against Brasidas' hair. "I really am," he said, and after a second's pause he eased Brasidas back. He hesitated, just for a moment, then took his face in both his hands. He looked him in the eye.
"I know where we are," he said. "I know you're dead. I know this is the afterlife." And Brasidas frowned.
"Tell me you're not dead, too, Alexios."
"No, I'm alive."
"Then why are you here?"
Alexios smiled helplessly. He rested his forehead down against Brasidas'. "Would you believe I came to visit?" he said. "Then I saw you with me. The other me." He pulled back, if only far enough to look at him. "You wanted this and never told me?"
"Well, we were in the middle of a war. And death got a little in the way of declarations." He raised his eyebrows. He took Alexios' hands. He smiled. "Until now, that is. I suspect you might have realised I don't treat all my friends like this."
Alexios couldn't help but laugh. And he didn't walk out through the door until morning.
---
"I want to take him back," Alexios told Hades, in the morning.
Hades put his pen down. He pressed his inky fingertips together as he peered at him.
"I thought you didn't have a Eurydice," he said.
"I didn't."
"And you do now?"
"It seems that way."
"Then it's a shame that's not how it works."
Alexios sighed, and he sat down to breakfast. Afterwards, he went back to Brasidas; they spent the day in bed.
"I want to take him back," Alexios told Hades, the next day, as he helped him file his papers.
"I thought I told you no."
"Technically, you said that's not how it works."
Hades shook his head. "Technicalities," he said, and passed him another stack of documents. Alexios sighed, and got back to work.
"I want to take him back," Alexios told Hades, the day after that.
"If I say no, will you stop asking me?"
"If you say no, I think it's time for the salpinx," he said. "With Hermes' staff, I could annoy you for centuries."
Hades eyed him, like he was trying to figure out if he was serious. "Fine," he said, in the end, though whether he was swayed by the promise of music or had just developed a warm heart was quite debatable. "But half the year you're both coming back to help me with my paperwork."
Alexios narrowed his eyes. "A week, maybe," he said.
"Three months."
"Two weeks."
"A month, and that's my final offer. I can't have your father thinking I've gone soft."
Alexios knew better than to try to haggle further. Alexios knew better than to fall into his father trap. And when Hades waved his hand at another door, across the room, opposite the other, Alexios realised he'd never seen it there before.
"The way out," Hades said. "The way that's not the well, you towering fool." He looked up from his work again. "You know the rules. Don't look at him until you're back."
"You know that makes no sense, don't you?"
Hades shrugged. "Bureaucracy," he said. "I make it easy for one, suddenly all the demigods want their lovers back." And when Alexios opened his mouth to argue the point about demigods, and how he wasn't one, Hades raised his eyebrows pointedly. He thought better of speaking. He had a feeling he might not be so keen on what he heard.
He went through the door that still had Brasidas' name chalked onto it. "It's time to go," he said, then he took him by the hand. And now, they're walking out of the underworld together. Alexios didn't plan for this. He wonders if he had a plan, or if he ran out of those some time ago.
He sees light ahead and he stumbles toward it. It's not far, but it seems to take so long, and he stares out into it, letting it blind him in case he stumbles and looks back. He doesn't.
"Still there?" he asks, as he almost falls out into the daylight, as he steps from the stone of the almost never-ending passage and onto grass. He can't seem to make himself turn around to look, just in case this is all some sort of cruel joke, but in the end he doesn't have to; as his heart hammers hard, Brasidas steps in front of him. He rests his hands warmly at Alexios' shoulders. He smiles. There's sunlight on his skin, and in his eyes.
"I'm still here," he replies, and when he kisses him, that feels real. When he wraps his arms around him, that feels real. And when he steps back, he says, "So, where to now?"
It's been almost five years now since Brasidas died. Peace with Athens is tenuous at best and Alexios knows that Sparta misses its general almost as much as he missed his friend. He knows Brasidas will want to go back and take his place there, if they'll have him. But not yet.
Alexios has been to places he'd only ever dreamed of back on Kephallonia, where he grew up; now, Kephallonia seems as good a place to start as any. He wants to watch the boats on the water from the roof of his house with Brasidas sitting next to him. Then maybe Korinth, where they met. And one day, soon enough, they'll go home...but not yet. Not yet.
"I have a few ideas," Alexios says, and he kisses him again.
In the meantime, there's a lot of lost time to make up for.